Tips for Making More Interesting Blog Content

Tips for Making More Interesting Blog Content was originally published on: http://www.coronationim.com

One of the most significant problems with the idea of creating compelling blog content is staying fresh, relevant and interesting over a long period of time. The problem with this lies in the fact that every niche has a relatively limited number of topics that you can get into before your content become, well, repetitive. Nonetheless, there are so many different angles, voices and narrative techniques for you to discover. With that in mind, these several tips might be something that every single content creator might end up needing at one point.

1. Try storytelling

The first thing you might want to try out is a tad different approach from the way you usually write. For instance, instead of just going with a regular, run-of-the-mill narrative, why not start with a problem and hint on the solution (foreshadow) in order to keep your audience tuned in? This is just one of many narrative techniques that writers are using to keep their readers interested, even prevent them from skimming. Aside from this, you can also try to write in the first person, make underdog success stories and even resort to many other, similar storytelling techniques. It all depends on your audience, your preferences, and your writing prowess.

2. Invest a fair amount of research

Numbers change, and just because you’ve unveiled an important industry-related metric a year ago, it doesn’t mean that it still holds up. In fact, even if nothing’s changed in the industry (which is highly unlikely), the chances are that your readers might be turned away by the fact that the content that they’re reading is not from 2018. Therefore, you should regularly revamp and edit old content, even make a comparison as to how numbers hold up over the course of several years.

Furthermore, you need to look for credible sources, which is why it’s wise to look for government organizations or prestigious institutes. Just because you’re not the original researcher, people will still hold you responsible if you’re the one that they got that information from. For those who are doing a lot of research in their creative work, a dual-monitor setup might be particularly useful, since you can write and fact-check without having to switch between tabs or windows. This is also why your creative work might benefit from an additional Samsung monitor.

3. Don’t be obsessed with word count

As of late, there’s a statistic that blog posts that average more than 3,000+ words tend to do much better than shorter posts. This makes some bloggers try so hard to get past this threshold that they quickly go off topic, and it even makes them feel compelled to resort to fluff text as much as they can.

Sure, a quality 3,000+ words long post may be more efficient than a quality, under 1,000 words post, however, keep in mind that this only happens in a scenario where both of these articles are of the same or similar quality. Sacrificing your post’s quality for a slight algorithm-favoritism (potential favoritism at best) is never a good idea.

Besides, three 1,000-word posts can be stretched over two or three weeks, while publishing a single 3,000-word article per month won’t be deemed nearly as appropriate. Keep in mind that this is usually the same amount of work that we’re talking about.

4. Don’t stick to text

Previously, we talked about words and word count, however, if you aren’t that keen on writing, keep in mind that there’s no reason why you should stick to it in the first place. A video, a podcast episode or an infographic are just as informative and can be far more entertaining than their textual counterpart. Besides, keeping your content diverse may help you attract more audience, while at the same time making your job much more interesting. Remember, once you stop being passionate about what you do, the quality of your work will inevitably start declining. Keeping your content diverse is one of the ways to keep things spicy and exciting enough.

The problem with this particular idea lies in the fact that different formats may require some specific knowledge that you currently don’t possess, or they might even need some specialized equipment. This means that you would either need to enroll in a course and get some shopping done or that you will have to team up with someone from this branch and start outsourcing/collaborating.

Conclusion

The best thing about the above-listed four ideas is the fact that they’re not exhaustible. There are always new narrative techniques to discover, new content formats to explore and old content to revamp. In other words, for those who are serious about keeping their blog content fresh and exciting, there’s no excuse for failing to do so. Especially now that you know better.

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Dan Radak is a marketing professional with eleven years of experience. He is currently working with many companies in the field of digital marketing, closely collaborating with a couple of e-commerce companies. He is also a coauthor on several technology websites and a regular contributor to Technivorz.

source https://coronationim.com/?p=13582

7 Top SEO Tips for Using images on Your Website

7 Top SEO Tips for Using images on Your Website is available on: Coronation IM

In internet terms, a picture can be worth more than 1000 words, so choose wisely. Learn about using images on your website and winning at SEO here.

Did you know that using images on your website can be done in a right way or a wrong way?
And we don't just mean that you're using the wrong images, although that's definitely a factor.

Images can be an essential part of your on-page SEO strategy, but you have to take the correct path to do so.

Interested in boosting your SERP? Read on, and we'll give you ten hot tips to help you make sure that you get the most out of your images when it comes time for SEO.

1. Pick the Right Images

All of the great stuff you can do isn't going to mean much if you're not using great photos in the first place.

Many places actively discourage the use of stock photos, but they can be remarkably effective when picked well in the first place. You can also use slightly off the track websites like Unsplash to find some surprisingly beautiful photos with full rights for free.

The important thing is to make sure that the photos are relevant and add something or don't detract from the overall message of the content you're using.

Bad photos, or even good photos that seem randomly placed, aren't going to get you anywhere no matter how much SEO work you do with them since user experience will suffer and Google hates that.

2. Size Things Appropriately

With platforms like Wordpress, it's really easy to take an extremely high-resolution photograph and jam it in wherever it might fit in your formatting.

And people do, frequently.

What they don't realize is that just because you've got a 480x480 frame on your site, that 5000x5000 pixel picture is still loading in its entirety behind the scenes.

That means slower loading times. Load speed is a huge part of your SEO. It's also a just a big part of keeping your site together, those with a high-speed connection who notice a page is taking an exceptionally long time to load aren't going to stick around.

3. Optimize Your Alt-Text

You're also going to want to optimize your descriptions of the photos. You know, that little rollover text that shows up when you leave the mouse cursor hanging around for a bit.

Insert your keyword, or a secondary keyword here, but do it naturally. It's actually more important to accurately describe the image in question than to try keyword jamming in a photo's description.

Alt-text is designed for web accessibility, which means that an accurate description can be used to help a visually impaired person view your web page.

This is another reason that choosing the right image is important: to maintain relevant alt-text you want something which is related to the content of the page.

4. Optimizing File Names

File names are the right place for you to add in your keywords for the most part. Things should always be relevant, of course, but it never hurts to add another primary or secondary keyword into your photo descriptions.

Optimizing your on-page with photos is all about care and the little touches, and this is one of those which can help immensely.

Click here for a good example. You can inspect the element in the background photo and see that the file name remains relevant to the topic and descriptive, giving it a great little bit of additional SEO.

5. Optimize File Types

A lot of people will tell you to make sure that all of your files are .jpegs.

It's not a bad idea, but it depends on the type of image that you're working with. Instead, make sure that photos are in a .jpeg format and any logo or vector art is placed as a .png to ensure that the colors stay more true to the original.

This can solve a lot of the issues people have when placing photos on their pages, where sometimes colors bleed and other "unexplainable" images happen.

You can also compress your files further, programs like Caesium will let you do it without sacrificing too much quality but make sure that everything still displays well before you finalize the decision.

6. Organize The Images in Your Sitemap

You'll need to make sure that all of your images are included in the XML sitemap. Fortunately, most of us use Wordpress which is remarkably good about keeping things updated but anything else, and you may need to submit your site to Google manually.

For Wordpress, there are a ton of plugins which will handle it for you in the background.

7. Keep the Rest of Your On-Page SEO in Mind

Your images can help, but they're usually not going to be the make or break part of your SEO unless you're vying for the top spots in a highly competitive niche.

That said, it's good practice, and you never know if you'll have to get more competitive in the future.

Using images on your website is important, both for user experience and SEO but if you go through our checklist of tips then you'll be in good hands.

The really important thing is to make sure you've got a full SEO strategy, including your pictures, rather than thinking a few file names and alt-texts are going to bring you up the SERPs.

Using Images on Your Website Isn't Optional

Images are actually quite important for SEO. Using images on your website is pretty much a requirement to rank, how many times have you seen something top Google without them?

SEO is perhaps the most competitive edge which you can gain when it comes to organic searches, and it's vital for all businesses. Your images may seem like a small factor but when you're trying to top things out.

If you're looking for more SEO tips, then why not dig into our blog and see what you can find?

 

source https://coronationim.com/?p=13570

Understanding the Value of a Fully Optimized Google My Business Listing

The article Understanding the Value of a Fully Optimized Google My Business Listing was first published on: Coronation Internet Marketing Website

SEO, SERPs, the ‘Walled Garden,’ knowledge graphs and maps all thrown in with a mix of thousands of websites can boggle the mind. Every company makes a website with the intention of driving more business.

But with so much competition out there, chances are that a website won’t get much visibility from a Google search unless it’s engaging in SEO.

Luckily, some of those terms that opened this article can actually benefit small local businesses and give them a place of prominence on the all-important Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

One of the best tools offered by Google to get better results for local searches is Google My Business. A Google My Business listing could make all the difference to the success of a small business and even bigger businesses. Matter Solutions did some in-depth research and found that optimizing your Google My Business listing is incredibly beneficial for your website’s SEO, in some instances showing improvements of up to 30%.

What is a Google My Business Listing?

For companies that are not yet familiar with this feature, Google My Business is a free tool provided by Google for businesses and organizations. With the help of Google My Business, companies can create a profile and manage their online presence.

A verified Google My Business listing is more likely to be thrown up in the suggestions at the top of a SERP for local searches. In other words, an interior designer can get a Google My Business listing and have the business verified.

As part of the profile, the designer adds location and more details about what the business offers. The next time someone in the same locality searches for an interior designer, the designer with a verified Google My Business listing will show up as a suggestion close to the top of the page.

Being at the top or near the top of a SERP is every business’s dream come true. With an updated Google My Business listing the same interior designer stands a much better chance of getting a click than one without a GMB listing.

How to create a fully optimized Google My Business listing

There are a few steps that every company should be aware of when creating an optimized GMB listing:

Check for presence: The thing about a GMB is that one can be created for a business by anyone. A customer that liked a particular restaurant could build a GMB for that restaurant and add a review there. Before creating their own GMB profile, every company needs to check if one already exists for their business.

Claim it: If a GMB already exists, then the wise thing to do would be to claim ownership. There is nothing better for a business than for the owner to take responsibility for how it is viewed online.

Or create it: If a company does not already have a GMB profile, then is it time to create one. The process is simple enough and shouldn’t take too long. The important point for a business to remember is to give as much information as possible.

The name, address, services, any special offers, and so on should be added to the profile. Customer testimonials should also be invited.

Pictures: A GMB profile allows businesses to update photos of the company. This feature should be used to maximum advantage for a fully optimized listing. Photos of the beautiful interiors of a spa are more likely to attract business than just a written description.

Verify: To have the GMB listing verified, the company will have to inform Google who will then send a code via postcard to the business’s address. Once the code has been received, it can be used to verify the GMB profile. A verified profile is a company’s best bet at showing up on maps and suggestions on a SERP.

Keep updated: Updating a GMB listing keeps Google interested. Every comment, query, and testimonial that is responded to keeps the profile alive. Regular updates about new products and services also increase the possibility of the business showing up in suggestions for local searches.

The bottom line

Every company that depends on local business should have a Google My Business listing. It is no longer enough to depend on a well-designed website and search engine optimization (SEO).

Everything revolves around user-experience these days, and every search is customized. To gain maximum visibility on a SERP an up-to-date GMB profile that has been verified is an absolute must.

source https://coronationim.com/?p=13562

Are You Using These 5 SEO Strategies to Boost Your Lead Generation?

The blog post Are You Using These 5 SEO Strategies to Boost Your Lead Generation? was originally seen on: Coronation Internet Marketing Blog

It’s been some time now that you haven’t been satisfied with your lead generation results, so you are looking for quick fixes to make your leads grow overnight.

You can’t exactly remember where, but somewhere in some article some time ago, you read that optimizing your website for search engines can help you grow leads quickly and easily.

We will be honest with you straight away. Don’t fool yourself, SEO is not a quick fix. Rather, it is a long journey that will take both your time and energy. But the benefits you eventually reap will be more than rewarding.

When you use the best SEO practices over a long period of time, your website will be more visible to your potential customers, and you will stand much better chances to turn them into leads.

But before we start listing the most effective SEO lead generation strategies, we want to answer one fundamental question.

Why is SEO important for lead generation?

More and more users are no longer interested in paid ads. According to Statista study on ad blocking from 2014 to 2018, 24.4 percent of the people in the United States were using ad blockers on their devices. Moreover, this figure is estimated to increase to over 30 percent by the end of 2018.

In other words, if you are relying only on paid ads and neglecting the high power of SEO, you are probably failing to reach a large number of web users and turn them into leads.

Stats revealed the following findings:

• 18 percent of the people who performed a local search on the mobile device purchased the product or service on the same day or within 24 hours.
• Half of mobile local search resulted in visiting the store on the very same day.
• 78 percent of mobile local search led users to an offline purchase.

All this shows that SEO is crucial for your lead generation. It is the language of web search and, more importantly for you, the foundation of successful long-term lead generation.

That is why we decided to list the five most effective SEO techniques that will improve your online visibility and ultimately grow your leads.

Know your target audience

You will not send the same type of message to your friend and your annoying team member, will you? As a matter of fact, you may not even use the same app to communicate with them.

That is the thing with SEO as well. Your audience is your friend, so you want to communicate with them in a personal and pleasant way using different apps like Slack. But to do that, you need to know them like the back of your hand.

What is your audience demographics?

You need to create a buyer persona with as many details as you can think of. This includes their age, gender, education, income, and so on.

Once you determine all this, you can use it to create engaging content on your website that will speak the language of your audience.

What bothers them?

This is a big one. Finding out your potential customers’ problems and addressing them can play a significant role in your lead generation efforts.

This is not to say that you should manipulate your audience. Instead, try to answer their questions directly and help them solve their problems. This way, you build trust and make them more likely to convert to leads.

Where do they search for information?

To turn someone into a lead, you need to know where they spend time on the web. For example, if your customers are avid social media users, then focus on social media platforms and get the most out of them.

Optimize your website

Once you have found your audience, you need to host them at your home and make them feel amazing. In this case, your home is your website, so you want to do your best to optimize it for your visitors.

Website speed

Nobody has time to waste on a slow website. And not only is your website speed important for your audience but for search engines as well.

Here are some tips to improve your website speed:

• choose a reliable web host
• optimize your scripts
• enable caching
• optimize your images
• make your website responsive
• remove unnecessary baggage (scripts, plugins, spam comments, broken links, etc.)

Landing pages

A landing page is essential for an advertising campaign. In fact, it is the entrance to your website. That is why you need to build landing pages that convert.

Always make sure that your landing pages are optimized for search.

A good landing page will have:

• useful content based on the keyword that the visitor has searched for
• no navigation (because you want users to stay on the page)
• a clear call to action that will ask your visitors to sign up for email list through downloading a lead magnet (We will talk about lead magnets later in the article.)

Is your website mobile-friendly?

Stats show that responsive websites are necessary if you want to keep your visitors on the site. You need to understand that a mobile-friendly website is no longer a luxury but a necessity.

Therefore, if you don’t want to be penalized by Google and other search engines, make sure you create the landing pages that can help your business grow.

Optimize your content

The next step in your SEO lead generation journey is optimizing your content. This is a crucial aspect, especially when you know that only one page of high-quality content grew at an average of 413% in product signups for Freshsales in just four months.

Here are the most important aspects you should consider when optimizing your content:

Titles and descriptions

Titles and meta descriptions are what people see in search engines before they decide to click, so you need to optimize them the best you can.

Put your target keyword early in the title and make your descriptions appealing as this will make more people click on your content.

Page content

Include your target keywords in your content if you want to rank for those terms. Apart from targeting the main keywords, you should also include semantic keywords, which are the terms related to the primary search term.

Link building

First, make sure that you link your content to other content on your website as this enhances the website’s value and encourages your readers to go deeper into the site.

After that, you need to attract external links from high-quality sites through guest blogging, participating in expert roundups, as well as creating pillar content and mentioning influencers.

Content marketing

Even though this is not a content optimization technique per se, creating a solid content marketing plan and sticking with it will do wonders for your lead generation.

To get the most out of your content marketing, you should consider using content marketing tools as they will help you boost your content strategy and attract more visitors.

Think social media

With over 2 billion active users on social media platforms every day, it is easy to see why this type of marketing is essential. Moreover, social media marketing can be a very affordable and easy-to-use method to grow your leads.

Here are some tips that can help you get the best results on your social media:

• post valuable content
• speak the language which is used on the platform
• use the combination of your landing page and call to action
• use paid ads
• organize contests
• target the right audience using Facebook marketing tools

Finally, when it comes to social media, quality trumps quantity. This means that it is better to be more active on one or two platforms than to have accounts on all platforms and be unable to dedicate enough time to each of them.

Maybe your audience is not addicted to social media, but you have to build your social media presence nevertheless.

Google and other search engines take your social media presence into account when ranking websites. Therefore, fostering an active social media approach will have a positive long-term impact on your search optimization efforts.

The sooner you realize that everything is interconnected, the more effective your marketing campaign will be. After all, the Internet is not called the world wide web for no reason.

Use lead magnets

Lead magnets are special offers that you give to your website visitors. This can be any free offer which encourages them to subscribe to your email list.

It is very simple to use lead magnets. First, you create a high-quality post aimed at your visitors who are at the beginning or middle of their buyer’s journey.

However, you also need to create a downloadable companion resource such as a PDF checklist or a worksheet. The key is that this piece of content is useful to your readers.

These are the lead magnet ideas that work best:

Email courses and mini-courses

In a series of emails, you can teach new visitors how to achieve something. Similarly, you can host free mini-courses on Teachable, LearnPress or your website to show your visitors how to do something specific.

E-book

A free e-book lets you expand on a topic already covered in a blog post. In an e-book, you can combine several existing posts or even create new content, but make sure that the e-book content is longer than your regular blog posts.

Resource

If you have a post that covers a list of things (e.g., a shopping list or a step-by-step guide), you can turn it into a PDF file and offer it as a lead magnet.

Conclusion

As you can see, SEO is one of the top inbound marketing strategies, and it is among the most important lead generation factors.

It is far from being a quick fix. As we said, it is a long journey and a strategy that builds on itself. If you are wise enough to invest time and effort into optimizing your website for search engines, you will undoubtedly see an increase in your leads.

When you develop more high-quality content, optimize your website and use other top SEO lead generation strategies, you will start building an organic system that keeps your sales pipeline filled with quality leads and ultimately grows your revenue.

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 Dave Schneider is the founder of LessChurn, churn reduction app. In 2012 he quit his job to travel the world and has visited over 65 countries. In his spare time, he writes about SaaS and business at DaveSchneider.me.

source https://coronationim.com/?p=13296

Small Businesses and Social Media: Tackling the Essentials of Your Social Presence

Small Businesses and Social Media: Tackling the Essentials of Your Social Presence is available on: Coronation Internet Marketing Blog

It’s time to leave the safety of your comfort zone when it comes to content creation and your digital presence. You may feel right at home when you post blogs on your website, but disseminating your brand story takes a much more versatile approach to get more followers, views, and higher engagement. All of that, of course, for the sake of more loyal customers down the road.

Social networks are a place where your audience hangs out to be entertained, informed, and educated, with a much greater range of communicating. Through emoticons, informal comments, as well as shares, reviews, and likes, social networks have become the place where everything happens – including your possible customers’ decision-making.

Choose your platforms

Not all networks are created equal, at least in the sense in which you will use them to get your brand in front of the right people. Choosing the right platforms means that you first need to know who your customers are, which will also significantly shape the kind of content they enjoy. For instance, Pinterest and Instagram are highly visual, even though the latter leaves plenty of room for lengthy texts, they are predominantly used to create a visual appeal around your brand.

Then again, Tweeter is all about short and sweet posts that get plenty of traction, while Facebook allows a vast variety of content types to be mixed and matched. Maybe you should consider them all, but perhaps only two would suffice. Also, don’t forget the professionally-oriented LinkedIn, as well as YouTube as a great platform to educate and impress!

Create a plan

Even if you’re running your business all on your own, being an entrepreneur takes all of your energy, and then some, to actually grow your business. It’s not a coincidence that the tasks around social media are summed into an entirely separate job post, which means that you might even consider hiring a social media manager, or at least tech-up your posting to make it easier on your workload.

Now that you’ve established where your audience is, figure out when, how often, and how much time they spend on each network. Businesses all over the world have implemented social media tools that can help you create a desired schedule for your different platforms and organize your posts according to your needs.

Monitor and adjust

No matter how much you know about your audience, the fickle human mind changes often, even if not drastically. These changes in preferences, opinions, tastes, trends, and styles affect every brand differently. You need to know in what contexts your brand appears, how people communicate about your company, and whether there’s a fire that needs putting out.

You can learn from the best in business, as including media monitoring in Australia across many industries has become an essential part of any brand’s online strategy. You need to stay in the loop when it comes to the news in your niche and the latest events that may affect your business – and utilize the data to tailor your social media posts every time.

Diversify your content

As a small business, you deal with a large competition, which in turn means that you need to keep your social content game at its best. People get quickly bored with monotone, predictable posts, and they prefer content that provides actual value, in addition to being branded, and they least of all appreciate promotional posts. That is why you should do your best to balance the types of social media posts you share and make them as appealing and as audience-specific as possible.

The world has shifted towards a more visual-focused type of content, which lets you introduce imagery, videos, infographics, memes, gifs, and similar animations into your posts. That way, you’ll keep your audience interested! However, make sure that your posts have a purpose – whether they aim to educate, intrigue, inspire, motivate, or inform, they need to have an applicable value, or else they’ll end up delivering no results or engagement.

Meet your influencers

Finally, every business, no matter how small it may be, can make friendships with the right people. The era of influencers began a long time ago, but the trend is only growing. You can reach out to your existing customers to be your brand ambassadors on social media, or find someone who would do a review of your product or service.

This relationship alone will get you much more visibility and more engagement with each post. Influencers are the lifeblood of many up-and-coming brands, as they give your brand a more relatable look and feel, and your audience will always make decisions based on the opinions of those they trust.

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Dan Radak is a marketing professional with eleven years of experience. He is currently working with many companies in the field of digital marketing, closely collaborating with a couple of e-commerce companies. He is also a coauthor on several technology websites and a regular contributor to Technivorz.

source https://coronationim.com/?p=13279

Which SEO Hat Are You Wearing – Black or White?

The following post Which SEO Hat Are You Wearing – Black or White? was originally seen on: Coronation IM

Like everything in life, SEO, or Search Engine Optimization for the uninitiated, has black and white areas of operation. In technical parlance, these have been defined as ‘White Hat’ or ‘Black Hat’ techniques; white for the acceptable and black for the not acceptable SEO techniques. But who decides if a method is good or bad?

All this fuss is about search engines, Google to be precise. Being the foremost authority amongst search engines, Google has defined a set of rules which outline how your content should be optimized. Fail to do that, and you will be penalized with bad ranking.

This post aims to highlight both the good and bad methods involved in Search Engine Optimization. Let's take a look at some of these white and black hat techniques which will either make or break your website.

Tip your White Hat To SEO

Applying white hat techniques to your SEO will ensure you give yourself the best chance to rank better in search results. With the use of these methods, you will also be preparing your website to face any changes in Google’s algorithm.

These changes or updates are aimed at improving the relevance of search results thus impacting optimizing techniques.

A case study that Andrew Dennis did shows how website traffic can be increased with the help of these methods. The visitors on his website grew from zero to 100k in just 12 months, all thanks to white hat SEO.

Source

Some of the white hat techniques that work best are:

1. Content Quality

Apart from being the most crucial aspect of any SEO exercise, this happens to be the most basic of all the techniques. Like any product, good quality content sets apart the good websites from the average ones.

Many Google updates later, marketers have wised up to the fact that keywords alone will not get better ranking, unique content definitely will.

Search engines like Google take pride in providing the best experience to their users, and anything coming in the way of that will not go down well with the search behemoth.

Keep these things in mind while creating content:

• Originality counts - Being original with your content will pay rich dividends in the long run. Plagiarism can invite a penalty. Save yourself the blushes and stick to the original material.
• Stick with long-form content - A recent study of search engine ranking factors found a strong correlation between long-form content and search rankings. So in 2018, in-depth coverage of a topic is your most useful white SEO hack.
• Place your keywords where they belong - Use relevant keywords, woven seamlessly into the content. Overuse of keywords will have the opposite effect and can also lead to penalties.
• Give users what they want - AI technology, Google Rankbrain has revolutionized the search engine landscape so if you offer users what they are looking for, you have a better chance of ranking higher.

The quality of your content is the deciding factor upon which your website’s ranking will depend. If you keep your audience at the core of your content strategy, your ranking will take care of itself.

2. User experience

Having great content will undoubtedly lead you to SEO glory, but the way you present it also makes a difference.

Google closely notices the amount of time people spend on your website.

And what the users get to experience on your website determines the duration of their stay. Let’s see some of the things that define a great user experience:

• Navigation with ease - The way a site is structured effects not only the user experience but also helps search engines crawl better. An easy-to-navigate website will make the users spend more time on your page increasing the dwell time thereby increasing your credibility and improving your visibility on the search engines.
• Load Time - Google lays particular emphasis on speed. With site speed being an essential part of their ranking metrics, it is imperative that your site loads up fast. This will not only better your page rank, but will also give users a smoother, all-around experience.

Google’s Page Speed will lead you in the right direction towards increasing your website’s performance. It offers suggestions and methods through which you can attain an optimal site speed.

The techniques mentioned above help you put on the white hat and climb your way up the search results. These methods will not only improve your conversion rate but will also hold you in good stead with search engines.

A black hat that is never in style.

Google is working hard to fight the unethical techniques which fall under the category of black hat SEO.

Matt Cutts from Google explains in clear terms how black hat SEO is detrimental to your website’s growth.

Plus with the regular tweaks in Google’s search algorithm, black hat SEO is now inviting heavy penalties.

Let’s see what some of the common Black Hat SEO techniques are:

1. Content Duplication - Search engines respect unique content. Content duplication, as a practice, is frowned upon.

As explained in Google support pages,

“Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely matches other content or are appreciably similar.”

So refrain from using someone else’s content Also work on minimizing duplicate content issues across your pages.

2. Cloaking - Considered a major red flag, as per Google, cloaking is the technique of showing different types of content to the user and the search engine, for the same request.

This video by Matt Cutts explains why cloaking will never get you the desired SEO results you’re after.

To avoid cloaking penalties, place your images as close as possible to related text. Do not embed text within the image, instead place alternate text in HTML. Also, DO NOT use Flash as it is not supported by most browsers anymore.

3. Link Scheme - Google forbids any sort of link arrangement that manipulates a site’s ranking in search results. Link schemes can be of various types, like exchanging links for monetary gains, use of auto-generated links to your website or link swaps done with non-related websites.

If a search engine thinks the link adds no value to the user’s experience, it will consider it a link scheme that falls under black SEO.

4. Keyword Stuffing - One of the most prevalent black hat SEO technique, keyword stuffing involves incorporating keywords unnaturally in your content, in places where they might not even be relevant. Keyword stuffing is easily detected by the search engines leading to a demotion.

Conclusion

The methods mentioned here are by no means the only ones around. There are several other techniques that may fall into the black or white space.

SEO is an ever-evolving process, much like the search engines that it aims to win over. With clearly defined guidelines and optimization practices, the onus is on webmasters, website owners and marketers to provide better content and overall experience to the users.

With their frequent algorithm updates, search engines strive hard to make it a level playing field for everybody. Your approach can be black or white, but in the end, the hat that you wear decides your fate in the search results.

So which hat are you wearing?

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Vaibhav Kakkar is the CEO of Digital Web Solutions, a globally trusted agency with a full suite of digital marketing & development solutions. Vaibhav believes in building system over services and has invested in multiple tech startups including RankWatch, NotifyFox and a CRM software to help scale up client agencies from scratch to niche-leaders with million dollar turnovers.

source https://coronationim.com/?p=13067

SEO Or PPC: Which Should You Choose?

The following post SEO Or PPC: Which Should You Choose? was first published to: www.coronationim.com

SEO and PPC are two of the most common strategies employed by start-up companies and SMEs, and understanding the pros and cons of these marketing techniques is essential when it comes to getting the best for your business.

And of course, you also want to be sure that your funds are being used in the most effective way possible and that any marketing tactics you use will generate the maximum profit. If you are uncertain whether SEO or PPC would be a better approach for your business, read on for a closer look at both of these strategies.

SEO

It's essential that you have some clear understanding of what SEO, or search engine optimization is and what the results might mean for your company. The consensus is that SEO is more useful for companies in different industries as customers looking at search engine results are over eight times more likely to click on organic results than in a PPC ad. However, if you are faced with an extremely competitive target market, getting organic search results can be a challenge as well as an often lengthy process.

However, being able to stay ahead of the curve is a must if you adopt SEO as a strategy, as algorithms often change, and many see this as a drawback. It's also important to realize that effective SEO is more about being able to keep your position in the search engine rankings once you have obtained it.

PPC

Firstly, you will need to budget more for PPC, as it can be very costly to maintain. PPC, or pay per click, is a paid search advertising approach, in which you are paying a small amount whenever a customer clicks on your campaign. There is a much lower chance of getting your company's name noticed in those all-important search engine results, although PPC offers a much higher conversion rate, with customers about 1.5 times more likely to convert.

So Which is Better?

Your company's digital marketing budget will be a significant factor in deciding whether PPC or SEO is a better strategy for you. If you don't have as large a budget as you would like, and the target keywords are very competitive, it can become very costly to use PPC, even though you can impose small bid limits on each campaign.

With SEO, you shouldn't expect to see positive results immediately, as it really should be seen as a true invested, yielding results over the long term. In general, you can expect to enjoy better results the longer you invest in SEO. One benefit is that you tend to know fairly accurately just what you are getting for your money, as a monthly retainer can be used. The bottom line is that you need to be somewhat patient; if you are the kind of person that expects instant results, then you may find that this isn't the right strategy for you and your company.

One recommended step is to find out the average cost of the CPC's in your specific industry to help you determine whether PPC really can be an effective marketing tool for your company. To help decide whether the budget constraints that you have would support an SEO campaign, you should make a point of finding out just how competitive the SERPs are in your particular industry.

There are some questions you should be asking yourself if you are trying to decide if a PPC campaign or a strategy that relies more on SEO would be a more effective solution for your company. As you can see, there are pros and cons to both of these marketing methods, and you want to be sure you choose the strategy that works for you. And of course, the available budget is also something that has to be considered, and whether a PPC strategy justifies the extra expense.

source http://coronationim.com/?p=12915