Listen up you entreprenerds! It’s time for a knowledge dump on your mind mattress. Let’s do a quick thought experiment for a second, let’s pretend that you’ve actually got a business, and you haven’t just been attending seminars for the free coffee and attractive trainers. Let’s call this business ‘TRUNK JUNK’ which is a product that helps you organise your trunk space using clever containers and shelves; Brilliant. In this experiment I would like to you imagine how you’re going to sell your JUNK to people, where are you going to sell it? Continue reading →

The digital marketing landscape changes at such a rapid rate that businesses need to change strategies and tactics ever so often to keep up. Online marketers need to keep learning and changing tactics in order to keep up with marketing trends and gain an edge over competitors.

New marketing trends will undoubtedly emerge in 2020 based on consumer demands, but we’ll look at the top 5 trends businesses should not ignore. If you are looking to expand your marketing strategies and learn how to generate impressive results, here are trends you should seriously consider.

Voice Search

If your business survived 2019 without using voice search in your marketing strategy, you might need to make it a priority. Some brands have already jumped at the opportunity, and it’s a trend that may be impossible to avoid in the near future.

Voice search is becoming the new norm, and an expected 50 percent of searches may be voice generated. How do you capitalize on this trend? Your website needs to be optimized for this feature by switching from short keywords to long-tail keywords. Invest in an excellent SEO strategy that will help you find the most relevant keywords and gain more traffic.

Original and Interactive Content

Consumers will be more engaged with your business if the content you provide is not only original but interactive as well. New, refreshing, and interactive content make customers feel valued. It gives them a unique browsing experience that captures their attention long enough to convert.

Additionally, interactive content equals shareable content, and the more customers share, the more potential customers you harness. Brand awareness will hike, and so will your reputation. People like doing business with people they trust, and if you provide interactive and original content, you’ll come off as an authority in your field, and more customers will trust you.

Social Media Stories

Social media stories are gaining momentum and for all the right reasons. These stories are a digital marketing trend that you cannot afford to ignore come 2020. They’ll not only increase engagement but promote brand awareness too. Customers will share stories, and you’ll get product or service reviews, which will help you improve your business.

Video and Audio Formats

A large percentage of digital audiences include Generation Z and Millennials. You need to find the best marketing strategies that reach out to this specific market, which is audio-visual content. More and more marketers are incorporating live videos and podcasts in their marketing strategy, something you should start doing as well.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is expected to change the way people market their businesses. The same goes for chatbots. Despite being available for a while now, artificial intelligence has been out of reach for most marketers. However, with a wider range of AI technology available, you can utilize lead generation and marketing automation.

There You Have It!

These hot marketing strategies could help you stay ahead of the game come 2020. You’ll not only empower your brand but increase audience engagement and meaningful conversations that will help your business grow.

If you are looking for significant digital marketing strategies that can provide better value and lead to higher conversions, look no further. Here are a few simple, valuable and profitable digital marketing strategies for marketers:

Invest your time in link audit

To gain substantial results, invest your time and energy in link audit. The goal of link audit is to remove problematic or unnatural backlinks and keep a website clean.

Here are a few simple ways to perform a link audit:

• Use Google Search Console, Majestic, Ahrefs, and Moz.
• Extract a list of unhealthy/dead backlinks.
• Identify dofollow and nofollow links.
• Keep an eye on malware or hacking attempts.
• Check for manual penalties and algorithmic penalties.
• Pay attention to sudden ranking or traffic loss or de-indexation.

Use effective CRO techniques to improve conversions

As SEO has become more challenging, it’s good to use quality CRO techniques. Proven CRO techniques help to convert traffic into leads. For rich dividends, change banner ads, themes, buttons as  per your study and analysis.

Here are a few effective ways to use CRO techniques:

• Conduct polls.
• Track the behaviour of users.
• Invest your time in funnel analysis.
• Improve your website’s speed.
• Study analytics report and track new users.
• Focus on boosting user signups.

Use On-Page Optimisation techniques for concrete results

On-page optimisation is more than just optimising meta tags. It involves careful examination and optimisation of various elements of a website.

Here are a few actionable and effective on-page optimisation techniques:

• Keep the site’s URL simple and logical.
• Use internal and outbound links as well as LSI technique.
• Compress images and use a CDN.
• Invest your time and efforts in competitive research.
• Frequently measure results to estimate the degree of success.

Use Twitter to empower your brand

Unquestionably, Twitter is one of the most powerful weapons that can help your website to stand out. You must use its potential to get success. Here are a few tips:

• Promote your tweets for better exposure. (always select a target location and a spending budget)
• Find and follow top performing tweets.
• Analyse content promotion performance. (use BuzzSumo)
• Frequently analyse the results of your activities.

In short, if you desire to add value to your website or grow traffic, you should embrace SEO.

SEO can improve the online presence of any business by keeping it healthy and competitive. Go through this article to understand SEO and how to use it to make a website competitive:

Always think about UX

If you want to attract customers and improve their overall browsing experience, you need to improve UX.

Tips:

• Use high quality pictures.
• Reduce the number of clicks to complete a task.
• Ask for sign ups.
• Provide special offers.
• Focus on the elements of design.

Use Google Search Console

It’s a great tool that is designed to provide complete information (actionable reports, tools, and a wide variety of learning resources) about a website’s health. You must use it to improve the performance of a website.

Tips:

• Add and verify your site in Google Search Console.
• Use fetch as Google tool to test the accessibility of your web page.
• Use it to check the overall health of your site.
• Study – https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6258314?hl=en

Focus on Google My Business profile

No doubt, a Google My Business profile is key to success for local SEO. It’s completely free and enables you to attract local customers. It is ideal for small business owners.

Tips:

• Claim your listing.
• Use actual business name as well as choose the correct categories.
• Update your opening hours and phone number.
• Use quality pictures and encourage reviews.

Use HTTPS

According to Google, if you use HTTPS instead of HTTP your website may experience a minor ranking boost. In other words, Google prefers websites that are trusted as well as certified. Hence, use HTTPS for safe and secure transactions.

Advantages:

• Increased rankings
• Security and privacy

Tips:

• Understand the difference  between HTTP and HTTPS.
• Obtain the most suitable certificate for your website.

Use high quality Backlink Checker tools

As an optimiser, you should use quality backlink checker tools. You must use them to identify total number of backlinks and referring domains.

Tips:

• Identify New/Lost Backlinks.
• Study trust flow.
• Determine top anchor terms.

Bonus tips:

• Use high-volume keywords.
• Improve page load speed.
• Educate yourself and test your tactics.
• Always try out new things and measure your success.

So, focus on all the above mentioned SEO factors and make your website strong and competitive.

Today, there are plenty of digital marketing techniques, but they vary in functionality and effectiveness. Hence, it is important to use them after understanding their strengths and weaknesses. Here are a few digital marketing techniques that can provide positive results:

Improve your SEO efforts

SEO is a bit technical; however, it yields high visibility as well as ROI. Here are a few elements to consider:

• Create quality and relevant titles and descriptions for each web page.
• Optimise each web page.
• Make sure your website is accessible to search engines as well as humans.
• Use Google Trends and Twitter to know what your customers want.
• Use Quora and Reddit to get the most relevant information about your industry.
• Use premium keyword research tools and use as much business related keywords as possible.
• Remove low quality links.
• Optimise images.
• Create blog posts on popular and engaging topics.

Streamline Site’s Architecture to improve its functionality

Website’s popularity depends upon a number of elements, one of the most prominent one is site’s architecture.  Here are a few techniques to streamline a site’s architecture:

• Always maintain a logical hierarchy of categories and sub-categories.
• Focus on improving a site’s functionality because it may lead to lower bounce rate and high customer engagement.

Get more views on Youtube videos for long-term benefits

Today, one of the most effective ways of attracting customers is to create quality Youtube videos. Here are a few techniques:

• Create quality video content.
• Put keywords in title, description, as well as tags.
• Use YouTube analytics to improve your efforts.
• Always reply to comments.

Use local business SEO to push organic rankings

If you want to increase business leads as well as entire ROI, you should make use of Local Business SEO. It is one of the most productive and smart ways to push organic rankings as well. Here are a few techniques to use:

• Use paid traffic strategies.
• Understand the trend and create engaging ad copies.
• Measure the performance of your ad copies.
• Always include your brand name in the business listings for maximum visibility.
• Use both call tracking and event tracking for better outcomes.
• Analyse your site’s conversion rates.

Content marketing is all the rage

Content marketing is a diverse technique that works for both industry leaders as well as start-ups. So, if you want to target audiences in a precise manner, go for content marketing. Here are a few tips to gain success:

• Create a powerful content marketing campaign that involves YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and even email.
• Integrate statistics, easy-to-understand graphics and quotes when it comes to social media.
• Focus primarily on blog posts, YouTube videos and Twitter links.

So, use the above mentioned digital marketing techniques and achieve your goals.

SEO is undoubtedly a powerful online marketing tool that helps businesses to improve their visibility across the web. However, for the maximum output, it is imperative to use it systematically and wisely to reach your target audience. 

Here are a few systematic SEO methods to improve a website’s visibility:

Analyse links

Whether you have an e-commerce store or a service-based website, it is important to check backlinks and determine their legitimacy.

Tips:

• Identify domains linking to your domain.
• Analyse anchor text.
• Measure social metrics.

Study Google Search Console

You can establish a strong presence on the web if your website is free from errors. To make your website error free, you need to study and analyse Google Search Console. It is a free tool that helps you to identify and fix technical issues.

Tips:

• Always add your website to Google Search Console.
• Set preferred domain to prevent duplicity.
• Study crawl rate.
• Work on HTML suggestions.
• Submit sitemaps, test & measure robots.txt files, as well as adjust sitelinks.

Include a Review Section

Customers always want to know how a particular product can fulfil their requirements.  Hence, you need to include a customer review section on your website to satisfy your customers.

Tips:

• Include testimonials as well as videos.
• Use the name of your customers or businesses.

Tell Success Stories

If you want to grab visitor’s attention, you need to integrate case studies on your website. It is an effective and excellent way to show your skills, experience, expertise and innovative approach.

Tips:

• Describe everything (objectives, solutions, methodology, etc.) in detail.
• Write case studies in a simple and conversational language.
• Always follow a specific pattern.

Improve Presentation Style

According to a survey, if you present your product in an innovative style, people are likely to buy it.

Tips:

• Write better descriptions.
• Use high quality and multiple product images.
• Use clear navigation path.
• Provide zoom in option.
• Deliver unique customer service.

Optimise your Website

To improve traffic and ranks, optimise your website using the best SEO techniques.

Tips:

• Create keyword rich titles and descriptions.
• Create fresh content for your customers.
• Wisely use H1 tags, alt tags as well as sub headings.

Include a Blog

For better visibility, include a blog section on your site.

Tips:

• Display social sharing buttons.
• Use plain language.
• Create a responsive blog.
• Select trendy topics.
• Respond to comments.

So, use the above given systematic SEO techniques to get your website ranked.

Digital marketing techniques assist small businesses to capture the market and achieve better outcomes. Here are a few digital marketing techniques for small businesses: Make use of online reviews According to a report, 83% of buyers claim that they no longer trust advertising, but trust recommendations from users online. Hence, you should make good use of online reviews. Here are a few ways to use reviews:

• Use Yelp, Google, and Facebook.
• Add a Yelp button to your website.
• 68% of consumers go to social networking sites to read product reviews; hence, rely on Facebook reviews.

Keep your content updated Create valuable, informative and fresh content for both users and search engines. Here are a few ways to keep your content updated and effective:

• Regularly update your content.
• Focus on current news and trends.
• Understand what is “Page Quality Rating”.
• Update your blog frequently.

Study and analyse reporting metrics Whether you are a marketer or business owner, you should study and analyse SEO reporting metrics thoroughly; it will help you to understand what’s going on and what you need to do further to improve.  Here are a few tips to study SEO metrics:

• Understand Bounce rate, Average Session Duration, Conversion rate & volumes.
• Study Google Search Console and keep an eye on penalties as well as technical issues.
• Study landing pages as well as their overall performance.

Perform SEO audit An SEO audit is a procedure to check serious technical issues on a website. Do it on a regular basis. Here are a few ways to perform an SEO audit:

• Stay away from negative SEO practices.
• Work according to Google’s webmasters guidelines.
• Focus on both accessibility and indexability of your website.
• Wisely create meta tags. (https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/05/16/how-to-write-meta-title-tags-for-seo-with-good-and-bad-examples/)
• Find and remove duplicate title tags.

Improve your site’s trust signals If your site is unable to convert browsers into buyers, something is wrong somewhere.   Most probably your website doesn’t appear trustworthy. Here are a few ways to improve trust signals:

• One of the most effective ways to gain credibility is by using security trust seals.
• Use SSL security protocols.
• Get testimonials from satisfied customers.

Empower email marketing Email is the best mode of establishing relationship with customers in today’s world. Here are a few ways to empower your email marketing efforts:

• Use standard email templates.
• Avoid using junk words and improper pronouns.

Use the above mentioned digital marketing tactics to generate traffic and gain credibility.

Wondering how to optimise your website for visibility and reach? One of the best ways is to use the best online marketing practices. Here are a few best practices to follow:

Focus on reviews

92% of people hesitate to buy a product that doesn’t have a review. Reviews and testimonials play an important role in attracting maximum number of customers. Hence, you should focus on getting customer reviews to build trust and confidence.

Tips -

• Ask satisfied customers to provide product and service reviews.
• Use videos testimonials.

Use new search engines

Today, people focus only on Google, Bing and Yahoo; however, there are many new search engines that are equally powerful as well as effective.

Here are a few new search engines to use:

• Oscobo
• Good Gopher
• Semantic Scholar
• Omnity

Create smart content

Content is the main driving force when it comes to online marketing. According to a report, 71 percent of marketers report that less than half of their content has been used by their target audience. Hence, create readable and useful content.

Tips -

• Create a data-driven content marketing strategy.
• Create high-quality videos, Quick Answers and images.
• Always create SEO-enabled content for maximum visibility and reach.

Voice search

Voice search has changed the way people communicate as well as process information. According to Google, 1 out of 5 searches come from voice queries.

Tips -

• Use long-tail search keywords.
• Focus on users’ intent.

E-commerce SEO

E-commerce SEO is a difficult task. It needs specific skills and expertise. In fact, you also need to perform several things, like:

• Implement AMP (https://www.searchenginejournal.com/amp-for-ecommerce/211540/)
• Shun 302s, 307s, meta refresh, and JavaScript redirects.
• Prefer readable and clean URLs.
• Create custom 404 Pages. (https://www.searchenginejournal.com/404-page-examples/211154/)

Local SEO-Best Practices for WordPress

According to a report, WordPress powers 28.8 percent of all websites. It allows SEO professionals to optimise websites.

Tips -

• Focus on on-page optimisation (use Yoast SEO plugin)
• Fix broken links.
• Integrate Google My Business into your wordpress site.
• Minimise server load with a caching plugin.

Create effective link building strategies for better results

Marketers always look for innovative link building ideas; however, they do not focus on building relationships. Hence, it is advisable to use both traditional and new link building strategies. (Links are still the #1 most important ranking signal when it comes to organic rankings. – Searchenginejournal)

Tips -

• Write news-worthy press releases.
• Write columns in authoritative sites.
• List your podcast.
• Write case studies to attract better links.

So, use the above mentioned online marketing practices to change the game…

Search Engine Marketing is one of the best ways to improve the visibility of an online store. Here are a few proven search engine marketing techniques to use:

Create keyword rich pages

Most marketers believe that keywords should only be used in titles and descriptions, which is wrong. Keywords should be used strategically across the website.

Tips:

• Creatively use keywords on landing pages.
• Use keywords in anchor text and alt tags.

SEO friendly URLs

Many marketers are still unaware of the URL parameters. That is why, it is important to understand the rules and create SEO friendly URLs.

Tips:

• Understand the structure of a URL (Hypertext Transfer Protocol, domain name, Subdirectory, file name)
• Use keywords in URLs.
• Avoid using stop words in URLs.
• Use small, easy-to-understand and static URLs.
• Study https://moz.com/learn/seo/url.
• Use URL rewriting modules.

Site design

Of course, a well-structured and designed website can make a huge difference. If your website is poorly designed, it will fail to attract audiences. Hence, pay attention to minor design details. You can get the most out of your website design, if your think creatively and innovatively.

Tips:

• Use unique and professional templates.
• Take advantage of graphic design services.
• Pay special attention to home page design.
• Creatively showcase products.
• Minimise total number of elements to maintain page load speed.

Business listing

Take advantage of free as well as paid business profile listings in order to increase your website’s visibility. You can also improve your website’s exposure through authentic websites such as Yelp. Both local business and profile listings are effective.

Tips:

• Provide complete business details – address, phone number, hours of operation, etc.
• Choose the most appropriate business category.
• Describe your business in detail.
• Use quality images.
• Update your listings at regular intervals.
• Encourage customer to review your products/websites.

Video marketing

If you want to gain success in the digital marketing landscape, you need to embrace video marketing. It has its own advantages.

Tips:

• Create short and interesting videos.
• Don’t forget to create a video sitemap.
• Create how-to videos and explainer videos.
• Relate your videos with your brand, services or products.
• Study – https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/5-secrets-super-successful-video-marketing.

Google Analytics

Digital marketing experts can measure their sites’ traffic, conversion rate as well as rankings with the help of Google Analytics.

Tips:

• Identify strong and weak performing pages.
• Set goals and monitor them.
• Review traffic sources and referrals.

Use search engine marketing techniques to gain success and lead your niche.

Today, there are a number of ways business can use online marketing. Here are a few strategies:

Use basic SEO techniques to generate rankings

Whether you are a small or a large business owner, always follow basic SEO rules and techniques to make your website search engine friendly. Here are a few tips and techniques:

• Use the new SEO Starter Guide. (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7451184)
• Keep an eye on hacking attacks and resolve 404 errors.
• Make sure to verify your website in Search Console.
• Use PageSpeed Insights to ensure your website adheres the best practices.
• Make sure you use open source accelerated mobile pages.
• Use new “rich results testing tool”. (https://search.google.com/test/rich-results)
• Improve your website’s search performance with the help of “Search Performance report”.

Make your website competitive to get long-term ROI for your business

In today’s fast changing landscape, it is essential to make a website competitive so that it can face tough challenges. Here are a few ways to make a competitive website:

• Make use of responsive web design and implement it properly.
• Include text, images, and videos in the mobile version.
• Keep an eye on the sitemap status in Search Console.
• Always take preventative measures to secure your website.
• Use clean URLs without (# or #!)
• Make sure metadata is present on both versions. (mobile and desktop)

Go an extra mile to follow the trend

Today, it is essential to follow trends to gain momentum.

Here are a few trends to follow:

• Use long-tail keywords across the website.
• Optimise videos. (title, description, file name, etc.)
• Pay attention to algorithm changes.
• Obtain information of emerging tools and techniques.
• Never follow blind trails and unproven optimisation rules.
• List your business on Google My Business.
• Enhance your site’s user experience by using quality images.
• Use Google Analytics (https://www.wix.com/blog/2017/05/how-to-use-google-analytics/)
• Simplify and submit your sitemap.
• Use social media to create competitive advantage.

Provide quality content to capture wider audience

Unnatural content isn’t just frustrating, but can ruin your site’s credibility as well. Hence, it is advisable to research and create content and put your own views. Tips:

• If you are not sure, refer to authoritative sites for research.
• Research your niche to know about your competitors.
• Address specific concerns of your users.
• Study facts, statistics, and original work of authors as well as market trends.
• Make use of visual storytelling techniques.
• Create comprehensive, data-driven, and motivational content that can generate traffic and backlinks.
• Use Instagram, Blogger and Quora to build a loyal audience.
• Keep experimenting and learning new techniques.
• Always publish your original work.

So, don’t boil the ocean; just apply the above mentioned strategies to write your own success story?