Aug 29, 2022
14 ways to improve Digital Marketing Skills during your lunch break!
The number one concern for digital marketing professionals or aspiring ones is that they do not have enough time to learn more or improve their skills. It's something I have personally gone through and the reason I built something called Time hack for myself. But that's a conversation for later. Let's get on to how we can improve digital marketing skills during your lunch breaks.Agencies and e-commerce companies have their breaks clearly outlined to help improve synergy and overall performance. Lunch breaks are typically around 60 minutes and rarely get reduced. Here comes the trick. You ensure that you order lunch ahead of time or bring your packed lunches. This way, when your lunch break starts, you are ready to start eating. Please ration your food. Do not binge during the afternoon. Please take your time chewing your food. You will harm yourself more if you do not take your time to chew and eat your food properly. Moreover, the rationing is to let you eat your food in 30 minutes. So that leads to 30 minutes of available time - exclusively for you.Allocate 20 minutes for quick-byte-sized learning classes. The remaining 10 minutes are for relaxing and prepping yourself to get back to work.So how can you learn digital marketing skills in just 20 minutes every day?Here's the plan:Use Google's free digital marketing courses from here - https://learndigital.withgoogle.com/digitalgarage/Learn from the Google Primer app - simple and easy-to-consume flashcards for digital marketing courses. iOS app, Play Store appHubSpot's digital marketing courses - are usually spread across modules and have videos from instructors. Just one video a day or a couple of them are good enough to keep you goingSkillshare - You get a free trial of around 1 month and post that at a low cost. You can learn from experts such as Gary Vee - https://www.skillshare.com/user/garyvee to further your skillsListen to one or two episodes from popular digital marketing podcasts - https://podcastle.ai/blog/best-digital-marketing-podcasts/ Learn from online learning websites such as Coursera or Great Learning Learn SEO tactics and best practices from Moz academy and their blogMore SEO-specific courses from SEMrushLearn how to use TikTok for business (I'm sure they will be back in India too) from Later.comBlogging for business from AhrefsDigital marketing skills from AccentureTwitter flight schoolGoogle ads from SkillshopSelf-learn SEO for Free from Learning SEOAll the above resources are either free or extremely low priced compared to their competition. But the key focus here is that they are simple, easy to consume and can be used to learn digital marketing skills fast. Hope this information helps you to improve your skillset and take your career forward. http://feeds.feedburner.com/ChaitanyaACV
Read moreJan 6, 2021
Social Media Marketing Trends for 2021
Every year we have a few trends that come to the top. Of course, COVID-19 is an unbeatable trend for 2020. There are even challenges that catch the fancy of many and become trends in social media. But what we have here are qualitative trends that are likely to rule during 2021 in Social Media.The list of Social Media Marketing Trends in 2021 are as below:SEO will come into play for your social content tooInstagram Reels can boost your organic reach75% more online shopping via Social MediaBe HumanLook at nurturing your audienceBe AgileMake your creatives natural and mobile-firstFocus more on UGC and PersonalitySEO will come into play for your social content tooWe have all long known about tweets being indexed in Google search, Facebook search algorithm tweaks that will help your post content to rank in their own search.Now even Instagram has joined the party!So in 2021, we expect people to find accounts based on the content they are posting and not just the hashtags they are using.And this trend is likely to get implemented in other social media networks too.Look towards investing in keyword research for your social media channels going forward.Instagram Reels can boost your organic reachInvest in Reels, try to get one out every day. It helps immensely for your organic reach. Believe me, at the beginning it will look like a lot of effort to do a 15 to 30-second video initially. But with due practice, one could get the hang of things and start churning out TikToks or Reels much faster.Pro Tip: Invest in Instagram Guides, treat it like a visual blog rather than anything else.75% more online shopping via Social MediaWith COVID19 more and more brick and mortar stores are moving online shopping. And eCommerce ads are already exploding. Social proof is likely going to play a major role in such ads performance and this is exactly where your Influencers, micro-influencers and nano-influencers are likely to come in handy.Pro Tip: Put Facebook Pixel and other tracking tags to your website before you run the ads. This way you'll be able to collect user information and thereafter, run personalised ads. Personalisation of ads is the key to improve your ad performance.Be HumanGo less on sales-oriented content.Be opinionated.Be authentic.Be real.The best way to do it is by case studies, social proof testimonials and use cases of your products or services. End of the day what makes sense is what works.Look at nurturing your customersAs social media-driven shopping increases, be focused on improving your content and nurturing people through your catalogue and what matters for them.Most forget that customers are also humans and they need care and love + loads of information to make the right choice. Along with personalisation of ads, one has to invest in a content strategy for your social media presence, wherein, you decide what content goes where and how.The main objective is to help users go through a journey of sorts with the help of your content. This evolution of a prospective buyer has to be crafted with such precision that, buying your products or hiring your services becomes a no brainer.BE AGILEThree things need to be agile in social media marketing for 2021:ContentAdsNew feature adoptionThere no longer can be set content calendars or set templates for ads. What we should start doing more is experimentation. Try out all the features available at your disposal. Be creative and be genuine.Make your creatives natural and mobile-firstSocial media users are 95% driven to take actions on their mobile devices from the respective social media app. In such cases all, you need to doThe best way to do this is by following the trends in your chosen social media platform of choice.Creating your content as close to reality as possible.Gone are the days of hyper stocky visuals and abstract ads. Only premium brands such as Apple can afford to do such random and out of the world stuff as they have their brand power to support such out of the context creatives.Most of the small brands cannot afford to go abstract or dreamy. So get your creative stuff done from your mobile devices itself to be as close to reality as possible.Pro tip: Build your creatives on mobile apps to get the best results in your ads.Focus more on UGC & your personalityYou need to look at the following key factors:More conversation on social mediaAutomate your customer serviceMobile-friendly websiteTrack & repeat what worksUGC is user-generated content. One of the easiest ways to get amazing content is by providing exceptional customer service. People usually take to social media to complain about a bad product or service. But the only way they talk about a brand positively is when they receive an amazing quality product or service and support.And of course, there are other ways to generate such content - run a contest, feature customers, etc.The second point is to portray the true personality or character for the brand on social media. It can be done by showcasing your support to sports teams, singers, dancers or other creators who have done exceptional work and you want to appreciate them for their efforts.Surprisingly, the personality/character of a brand on social media is perceived by their affiliation and charity they do, promote or showcase online. So get ready to feature your favourites in your social media too.Hope these trends are useful and helpful in your social media strategy planning for the year 2021. Have a good year everyone and stay safe.Please feel free to post your comments, queries or doubts to me. I'll be happy to respond.http://feeds.feedburner.com/ChaitanyaACV
Read moreDec 30, 2020
How to learn from your competitors Facebook ads?
In 2020, thanks to COVID-19, Facebook ads have seen an unprecedented rise in use. The overall quantum of ads has increased. There was a time back in 2017 for your niche you might have been the only Facebook advertiser running ads on Facebook & Instagram. Instagram shop or product ads have exploded now. It has become difficult reaching your target audience cost-effectively. So what should you be doing?Good advice would be to become as creative yet natural in your creatives and connect with your audiences.But a bit of informed advice would be to check on what your competition is doing and then be different and more sensible. So how do you do that?I mean, how do you check up on what the competition is doing?Well, here are three simple steps to understand the tactics of your competition. Like, follow as favourite and follow offers from your competitors. Simple right? Just by doing these steps, you will know the Facebook content strategy they are having. A note of caution you can do something like this only for 30 pagesWatch videos on the page and randomly like and comment on the page content.Scroll through your newsfeed until you receive a sponsored post from your competitor's page. Click on the three dots and "Why am I seeing this ad?", Voila, you'll have a fair idea of what the targeting settings used by the advertiser. There are two main things you'll understand from the above steps:What kind of content seems to be working for the competition?What is the ad targeting setup in Facebook ad manager?The final step is to understand currently live ads.Visit Facebook ad library - https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/. There fill in your competitor's page name and search all.You'll see the different placements where the ads are active - Facebook feed, Audience network, Instagram, Messenger.This approach will give you a holistic approach to understanding your competitor's strategy. Hope this helps in your Facebook & Instagram ad campaigns. Please feel free to let me know your queries in the comments below.http://feeds.feedburner.com/ChaitanyaACV
Read moreDec 28, 2020
Top 7 simple Facebook ad manager hacks that boost results!
With the advent of COVID-19 pandemic, the world took cover. Loads of inefficiencies and non-value-adding no longer happen. All small and medium business owners are now focusing on Digital marketing. Three main channels have caught their fancy:SEOFacebook AdsGoogle AdsIn this blog post, I'm sharing 7 of my top hacks for Facebook ad manager. These will bring in a massive impact on the overall efficiency of the ads.Location targeting: Add relevant location tags to your posts and promote them in the central area or main areas in that location. So, you will end up spending your budget in just those spots. Lesser scope to cover but the same ad budget means more effective ads. Manual placements: In most cases, the goal is to get comments, likes and reach on Facebook & Instagram. For such campaigns use Manual Placements and select to promote posts on Facebook just on Facebook. Similarly, for Instagram too. Simultaneous campaigns: If you need to reach many people within a short period, run a set of different objective ads. Start a reach campaign for 1/3rd your total budget. An engagement campaign with 50% and finally a traffic campaign with the remaining 17%. This combination of ads is highly effective as the audience overlap is small, even though the targeting location is the same. Hyperlocal location loops: In this technique, you drop pins for 3 to 5 very close areas and set them to 1 km radius. Essentially you'll get to reach people out of those rings too as the location data keeps jumping. More reach for less money spent.Dynamic creatives: There are many instances when driving traffic, leads and sales on a website are crucial. In such cases, use this option to test up to 10 creatives - video or image plus five different ad copy plus five headlines and five calls to action buttons. Please look at putting 10x budget for this campaign and do not have more than two ad sets at a time.Audience insights: Facebook provides audience insights on what pages people like in a place. Use them to find out what pages people are actively engaging. See their content and visuals. Try to match your ads to those. You'll see an improvement in your ad campaigns. Mobile device model: It becomes difficult to target the right age-group or demographic of the audience for a few niches. In such cases, try to target by mobile operating system versions. Hope, these tips are useful for your campaigns. Feel free to comment your thoughts and questions. http://feeds.feedburner.com/ChaitanyaACV
Read moreOct 11, 2020
How to build backlinks for seo effectively?
Link building gets 50% weightage in terms of ranking. Here are the main elements that decide how good your links are and can be considered as pre-requisites of link buildingDofollow or nofollow - Dofollow links are preferred but very rare and difficult to obtain. Nofollow links are easier to obtain but their volume has to be more to offset the less weightage. Typically a ratio of 3 to 1 for nofollow to dofollow is fair to get you good traction in search resultsDomain authority (DA) of the website from which link is obtained - It is recommended to get from websites whose DA is greater than your website. That being said, it is also recommended to have links from websites of a wide range of DA. But the lowest can be 6Anchor text - this is the text phrase for which the link is given. Having a keyword as the anchor text can help improve ranking much faster than normal. The most common anchor text option given by websites is click here and no text at all (naked links)Position of the link: Always try to get a backlink to the website in the first part of the content - both Google & users take the links in the first paragraph more seriously than the ones at the endLinks per domain: Do try to get more than 20 links from a single domain at a time and definitely not to the same page or same bunch of pages. This is taken as link spamming and a penalty can be applied tooTrusted sites only: Any site with a spam score over 10 is to be avoided at all costs. Similarly, sites without SSL, traffic or very low DA score too are to be ignored for link building purposesOutlinks: As much as links coming back to the website is important, it is also important to link back to highly relevant and important websites of high DAGeneric & useful content: Content used for link building purposes cannot be too self-promotional and should aim to be useful for the readersGrammar & silly errors: One of the most avoidable yet very common reasons as to why content gets rejected is Grammar errors and typos or addressing the concerned person name with a spelling mistake or with another name. Please avoid these errors to improve the conversion rate of outreach to links. Use tools like https://www.voilanorbert.com/ to identify the right email address, as not being able to even send an email to the correct email address is another big low to avoidSubject lines: The email templates and subject lines have to be highly customised and specific to the person you are sending the email to. Unless your email gets opened you are not likely to get any link backFirst 80 characters are all that you have to impress the reader of your emails. That’s the first 5 seconds after opening your email. Most people drop off after that if they didn’t like the first lineOnline social presence: If your brand does not has a good social presence most websites are going to ignore your efforts. Instead, a strong social presence makes them interested in you and likely to link back in hopes of getting traffic from your social followersAuthor profiles: Most websites have blog content but there is no insight as to who the writer of the content is what they do. Having author profiles on the website which gives a brief bio about them along with their social channels can help build authority and trust not just with people you are asking for links but also for Google (Google has something called as E-A-T)Internal links: Having a good URL structure and great internal linking will help in getting people to stay on your website longer and also build hierarchy within your internal pages to help with rankingContent: Product content regularly and in different formats to publish on your websiteThere are various kinds of link building approaches, of which the most common and popular ones are discussed below:Citations: These are crucial for Local SEO. They need not have a link back to the website but the main objective is to have the Name, Address and Phone number correctly mentioned and if the possible reference to the website. Though they are not always having a link, the approach to get local citations is very similar to directory submissions or guest post link building. Hence, citations are also a part of link buildingDirectory submission: By far the easiest way to get links is to submit to company directories or phone number and local business directories. They get a good amount of traffic and are highly relevant to their end-users resulting in relevant traffic to our website Guest posting: Industry-specific websites are to be approached with content valuable for their readers and get a backlink for the relevant keyword to your website. Buzzstream is a very good tool to execute guest post outreachCompetitor link building: Check out the backlinks your competitor is having from Ahrefs or SEMrush. In fact, first, approach the lost backlink websites with your contentContent repurposing & outreach: People consume content in different manners. Some prefer video while some prefer audio. So if you have written a great blog post, create content in video or podcast format with someone else and get a backlink from their YouTube channel or podcast description. This works wonders in getting more new audience to your website. Similarly, content can be repurposed into other formats as well and pushed out on different portalsInfluencer outreach: The easy way to execute this is by mentioning a big influencer in the industry in your content. Add your opinion and explain the influencer’s impact in the industry. Once that is done reach out to the influencer about it. If even one of the links back to your website from their social media or website, that would have a huge impact on traffic that is driven to your website. This technique is also called Ego bait (quite correct to be honest)Broken links: Most popular websites have broken links. It's just normal that with huge amounts of content being published, some of it goes missing and a broken link is generated. So shortlist popular websites from your industry. Find their broken links. Prepare content that would be the right fit for the missing link and approach the website/publisher with your highly relevant content and ask them to link back to your content instead of the broken linkLost links: We would have built links based on the relationship with other websites or participating events together, etc. Over course of time, things may change on the associated website and they might end up removing content linking back to your website. This loss in backlinks can be taken as an opportunity to rebuild relationships and approach them to get back the content on their website or offer to do something more relevant for the current times. This usually helps get back the linkBrand mentions: Some of the websites on the internet might find your content or product or service highly valuable. They will go about creating content on it and then mention your brand instead of giving a link back to your website. Such brand mentions too can be approached and easily converted into a backlink.Image links: There are many websites which search for images and then pick the ones they like and use them in their content. Some of your images too might have been used like that. So a simple reverse image search of all your original images on the website can help you find such websites. Instead of doing a copyright claim or DMCA takedown ask them to attribute the image to your website and get a link backLists: Many websites have content talking about lists of [product/service] in a city or other themes. What we could also do is find lists about our industry and get ourself on the list. This way, you can easily get highly relevant traffic to your websiteBlogger outreach: Though blogging has gone out of fashion, there are still many reputable bloggers in each city. Select your cities of operation or brand presence and get bloggers in those areas to talk about your brand. You can offer them content in infographics, video, podcast or as images which they would not otherwise have access to on their own. This way, it will be easier to get the blogger interested and in getting the link back to our websiteSkyscraper technique: Find out the best content item in your industry. Write something much better than it and approach relevant publishers citing that this is much more authoritative and better than the current existing top contentNews, PR, Contests, Discounts and Events: This is one of the most valuable and easy ways to get backlinks as well as traffic to the website. Take part in events, conduct contests and ask news + pr to talk about it. The reach such obtained is very highPublish downloadable ebooks: Useful ebooks that are published for people’s benefit not only give a link back to the website but also help in increasing the brand image or worthMarket updates, reviews and testimonials: Having good testimonials and reviews on popular review portals will eventually end up being great backlinks to the websiteSocial media outreach: All links from social media are nofollow links but a reshare of your website’s link with relevant brand mentions or keywords can go a long way as they are high traffic and DA websites. So get as many social media users or influencers to reshare your content as possibleBlog & forum commenting: Reach out in relevant blogs and forums and add a link back to highly relevant content on your website Contribute to PR/Publications/Roundup blog posts: Some publishers like to collect industry perspective and do round-up with all related people. Try and contribute to such publications and insist on getting a backlink when mentioning you or the brandCreate RSS feed of your blog: There are many scrapers and feed readers still functional which pick RSS feed content along with links and publish them. So having proper internal linksSponsor/Donate or buy stuff: Crowdfunding sites give a link back to your website in case you purchase from their featured products. Similarly, sponsoring helps gain links from the event organisersJob postings: Jobs get recirculated a lot more than normal and they all eventually have to link back to youQ&A & other crowd contributed content sites: Quora, Imgur and GIPHY are good examplesAsk customers: If your customers have a website of their own, asking them to have a testimonial for you on their website or a recommendationOutdated content: Find out content which is based on outdated content or legislation or laws. Approach the website owner with relevant content for a link back to your websiteContent syndication: Republish your existing content on different platforms and link back to the relevant section/page of the websiteHopefully, these will help you in your quest to Linkbuilding. http://feeds.feedburner.com/ChaitanyaACV
Read moreOct 11, 2020
How to increase chances for your success? 30 points to note!
From the time of our birth, we are all running behind success. And in some cases not being successful in the eyes of our peers is one of the main reasons for most of our frustrations.So if that is the case, then how much time do people invest in understanding what exactly does being successful mean?Do you want all your friends and relations say that you have made it?Or is it being rich enough to stop working for the rest of your life? If that is so, how many of the successful people who have made a lot of money, stopped working?Or does success mean that people realise who you are and start praising about you? Well, for that, you have to be a celebrity or a person who has done loads of charitable or humanitarian tasks. I wonder from the above options which or what you would consider to be a success.I personally have the following as my own definition of success:Being able to help people who come to you with a problem of theirs.Making enough money to take care of your needs and that of your family, friends and relatives. I need to be in a position where if required, I would be able to help the ones I care about financially.Being able to make at least 1 person every year to step on to their path of success or profession.Working towards making my family and home a self-sustainable one. A house which need not rely on electricity grids for power, no dependency on piped water or gas or waste disposal. I have been working on this pet project for the past 18 years. With just over 1% of progress, there is a long way for me still. Most of my criteria for success would seem tame and lame for many. I agree too. But right now, taking in to account my earnings and financial position, if I'm able to achieve the four points I would be satisfied. But hey, over 95% term success to be equated to an immense amount of money and fame. So let's get to the hit formula for success which everyone knows but never accepts. Activities that can increase your success chances:Wake up early: There are many popular books such as The Five AM club and others which explain how waking up before your slot, makes you successful. Just do it. It'll not really make you successful. You'll have more time to work towards your success. So how should we go about it? Small steps at a time. If you wake up at 7 am, then try to wake up at 6:45 am. After a week, push towards 6:15 am. Then 6 am after a week. This will make your body slowly accustomed to the new wake up routine. Keep waking early as much as possible. If you can only wake up as early as 5 am. That is fine. If waking up at 6 am itself is difficult, then keep waking up at 6 am. In these extra hours work only on those things that will make you successful - whatever it is for you. If it's money, then work in those extra hours on how you can earn more money. If it is being a great player of a sport, put efforts in mastering that sport. Get sunlight and fresh air: Imagine your mobile phone was out of its battery. What will you do then? Put it on the charge, right? Does it mean that next day again you'll not need to charge it? Similarly, your body needs different kinds of energy charges to function at its optimum efficiency. Our bodies derive energy for mental and bodily functions from sunlight. Do read this article on sunlight and health benefits. The next most important thing is the fresh air. Spend around 30 minutes every 3 hours once in an area where you get loads of fresh air from. Preferably, in a garden. It helps get you going.Exercise: We are so happy with our mobile phones and all that we can do with them. But hey do we really know if we are using our bodies to their fullest extent? I certainly don't think so. The main reason being that most of us are overweight or underweight, majorly due to our sedentary lifestyles. We hence, need to clock in at least 20 minutes to 60 minutes working out to be fit. The fitter you become, the better your confidence and your overall peak performance increases. Trust me, this will make the maximum impact on your life and improving the probability of success. Plants: Take care of growing at least 3 plants on your own. It is the essence of life. In a way, we are all versions derived from farmers. Now coming to the reason why 3 plants. Have one plant to be grown indoors. This will improve your air quality inside the house. Then have one plant at your workplace, whether it be an office or your home office. The remaining plant is for outdoors. You can place it in your garden or neighbourhood. If you start caring for them, you'll become a more pleasant person. Being pleasant makes you approachable. Being approachable will eventually make you successful.Ensure cleanliness and be organised: Having things cluttered in your room spreads negativity and sticks to you. Many do not believe this. But it has been proved more times than needed that by having your surroundings clean and organised can make you better. The main factor is the rhythm you set for yourself. If you can get up early, make your bed, clean up and be ready as soon as possible, you get more confidence in taking whatever life throws at you. At least you will have those tasks out of your way. Being organised improves your productivity and efficiency. You will spend less time finding things.Pray: I know, it is again something some might not agree with. For those, let's just say that - make your own personal quote or pick one of your favourites and stare it at the start of your day at a specific time. For those who do pray, make it a daily routine at a fixed time. The key here is praying or seeing your favourite quotes at a specific time slot daily. This can be considered as tuning your mind and body for the battle ahead in the day. Be humble: We are all entitled beings. We are all high-end consumers now. Press a few buttons we want someone to answer all our questions. Press another bunch of buttons, we want people rushing to pick us up and wait on us. The convenience and comforts we have in this modern have not really made us happier. Instead, everyone is busy. No one really has time to spend with others meaningfully. And that is why we are not able to be successful. Be humble, compassionate and emphatic. Just try to be calm and see the wonder that the world is. Imagine if your great-great-grandfather had access to iPhone or Uber. How their life would have changed? How happy would they be? Are you feeling that happiness when you use those services? Most people get frustrated at traffic jams or delayed flights. Just imagine if you had to travel the same distance on a horse. Even worse, on your own foot! How long would it take then? Be helpful: Help not just your friends, family or colleagues but even random strangers. A help done at the right time can take you forward by a long way. Not just that. If you keep helping others, you are becoming exceptionally good at solving other's problems. That is a skill which is exceptionally valuable and treasured. Save, spend and donate: Savings have to be a part of your life. And it is not just money you have to save. You to conserve your energy, thoughts and peace from getting lost in this hustle life. Donate money regularly for a variety of causes. Every donation matters, no matter how small or big it is. The world has a way of giving back the help you do. And that is the way I'm suggesting. At the same time, spend your time and effort for the welfare of others and your close ones. If you know where to spend, where to save and donate, you are on your way to success.Appreciate others: Genuinely appreciate hard work and consistent performance. They deserve it. If you can recognise talent and celebrate it, you are on the step to success. Note-taking: We are highly forgetful, our actions are decided by the circumstances we are in. But what really helps is if you can take notes of those great thoughts & ideas you have. When such things are relooked periodically, taken action on a realistic priority basis, success is near. Be fair: The current scenario has made all of us highly opportunistic. We just pounce on offers and do not really think about the impact it can have on others. Hence, you must look at things holistically. Give credit to others where they deserve, be fair in all your activities. Take opportunity from negativity: Things do tend to become negative. But the point I do not understand is why are not humans expecting bad things to happen? We have a day & night. Similarly, there will be good times and bad ones. We just have to celebrate during good times and prepare for the upcoming bad ones. There should not be any surprise for that. What matters is that during the bad times, you have to look for opportunities and ways to come on top of them. This positive approach is key to success. Let's the current pandemic scenario as an example. Most automobile manufacturing employees are out of work. The industry is in a slump. But what should be the approach of such employees? Learn a new skill, fall back to your hobbies - make revenue from them. Be smart & look smart: Appearance, ambience and thoughts play a major in improving your chances for success. We do not know when who is observing us and what their thoughts are about us. Being dressed appropriately and being good at your work will have the necessary positive uplift not just for you but for all those around you. People: People are the most essential part of anyone's success. At the same time, it is a given that not everyone is going to like you. So stick with the ones who appreciate you. Be loyal, friendly and take care of them. This will majorly up your chances for success.Self-motivate: Do not expect someone or something to keep motivating yourself and your achievements. You have to pick yourself up and move on to the next level. It just has to be that. Every day, every moment, push yourself to make the best effort possible. Stop multitasking: Multitasking is to be avoided at all costs. Try reducing distractions while you work. Attend only phone calls. You can browse the internet or social media at a later time when your work for the day is done. Plan ahead: Always plan ahead in your activity and tasks. Have some buffer time and scope for everything that is getting done. This way, you are accounting for failure, which, as I have explained earlier, is a 100% guarantee. Burnout: Do not overwork. With planning, plan for work detox as well. It is necessary to wind down and take a break every now and then for a healthy mind, body and relationships. Plan this too!Clarity: Often, the main reason why people are successful is that they know what exactly they want. Clarity of thought and vision is essential in achieving success. If having clarity about your success is difficult, then try and bring about more meaning in your daily tasks. If you can clearly specify what you will do at home, at work and outside, you will soon be able to able to envision what you need and work towards it. Self-belief: Strong resolution to succeed at all costs and belief in your abilities is key to achieving your dreams.Do more with less: The ability to get more done with fewer resources is what everyone wants. If you can keep looking for ways to improve a process or your work, you are on the path to success.Expect difficulties & adapt: Do not expect life to be easy going at all times. Problems will be thrown at you when you are tasting success or least expecting it. Adapt to the new rules/scenario and rework your plans. Get back on track. Work with deadlines: Most of us do not have deadlines as we become anxious and then do not really follow them. But that is why you need them. Unless you measure your progress with a realistic deadline, you will not be able to understand what's happening and the position you are in. So always work towards your goals with deadlines. Try to achieve them within the deadline. Be calm & observant: Make it a rule every week, for a set period, you will try to observe your surroundings and talk as less as possible. This way, you'll get better insights into people, work and what's happening around. Unless you know your surroundings well, you cannot take maximum advantage of your scenario for the best outcome possible. Remove mistakes: Mistakes happen. But put in place systems and checks to prevent them in future. That being said, new mistakes will keep coming. All you have to do is learn, remove and do not repeat the old ones. Learn every day: Learn something new every single day. It can be even a word. But please keep learning. You never know what will come handy, when. Take feedback: Feedback is essential in improving yourself. Keep getting feedback from relevant people and always take it with a pinch of salt. Do not blindly accept all feedback. At the same time, do learn from the feedback and become a better person.Keep your promises: The most common ingredients for success are trustworthiness and ability to deliver on time. The more reliable you become, the better your chances are of being successful.Cultivate happy habits: Cultivate habits that will help you become more appreciative of yourself and others. Check this article of 25 HABITS to add to your routine. Hopefully, these tips can help you improve your chances drastically. Check this blog if you are looking for some motivational hacks.And in case you are struggling to make decisions - then check this blog about taking Life decisions. http://feeds.feedburner.com/ChaitanyaACV
Read moreAug 23, 2020
37 awesome factors for SEO success
Almost everyone wants to get to the first position on Google search.It's a dream for most of the business owners and SEO professionals. Is it easy? No.Can it be achieved? Yes.How exactly can someone do it?Simple. Follow the following set of SEO factors.Quality content - Have a thematic flow of information between the page title, meta description, H1, H2 and H3 along with the overall content on the page. The content should add value to the reader + there should be executable insights which others can use right away.Research - Do proper research market research and validate your conclusions or findings. Read this blog on Market research - https://chaitanyaacv.blogspot.com/2020/02/how-to-do-market-research-in-age-of.html for more information. You can use that or your own research methodology. Neatly done research right can help uplift your content's performance. Words/Phrases - Use the right words or phrases based on the topic. Unless there is a search volume for the words you are writing about, there is really not much point in that content. Freshness & Relevancy - Google values the relevancy of your content. And often updated, latest content is given more priority than the information that has been there just like that for a long time. Also, writing about trending - hot - topics helps. Mobile-friendly content formats - Mobile traffic accounts for over 65% of the overall web traffic. Logically, your content should be suitable for mobile-oriented consumption or in vertical. So make your visuals in portrait or square formats. Answer - Try to answer direct questions from the search queries on the internet. This provides your content with a boost. Users are searching for more and more question-driven queries. Depth of the content - There are all kinds of readers on the internet. Some like to get to the point fast and get on with their work. While some want to get a full understanding of the concept and then move on. So my suggestion is to write for all kinds of users. Showcase your quick insights at the top. And let your in-depth research be explained in the later parts of your content page. Crawlability - Search engines use spiders or bots to crawl through your website and index your content to show for related searches. Most SEOs don't focus on is the level of indexation of their website they are enjoying with Google. In many cases, because your good content is not in the index of Google, you are not even visible in search results. Checking this should be regular and mandatory.Duplicate content - The other most common problem with most websites is the amount of duplicate content within their website and their competitor websites. If you have a lot of similar information, then keyword cannibalization will happen. If you have a lot of content from other websites or competitors, then the chances of your content on Google search goes down.Mobile-friendliness - Ensure that your website has all the pages in the mobile version as well and works across all kinds of mobile devices. Pagespeed - It is highly recommended to keep page load times to be under 2 seconds. There are many sites and blogs which have achieved 0.5 seconds as their load time. URL Structure - The URL structure should make sense to humans and search engine bots as well. Following a simple and easy to follow a family tree structure with relevant keywords in them. Making the URLs easy to remember and navigate. Eventually, this increases the chances of conversion. HTTPS - It is a commonly known and well-accepted fact that having a valid SSL certificate for your website gives it a ranking boost.Cloaking - Try to avoid the practice of showing different content to search engines and different content to humans. Titles - Titles are the primary most element in SEO. Try to make them highly relevant to your webpage and also have relevant primary keywords used in them.Meta Description - This is the second key element in SEO. It is a 2 liner summary of the entire webpage. Can have or not have the primary keywords in it. In most cases, it is made up of entirely secondary or tertiary keywords (related or synonym keywords).Structured Data - I recently read this blog post on The history of Schema. It is an excellent read. The article explains how by adding structure data code on a website helps both search engines and webmasters to better communicate their content to users searching for it. So visit https://schema.org/ and implement all the relevant schemas for your website content. The more, the better it will get. Headings - Header tags are the third most crucial element in SEO. Your different header tags should communicate the essence of each content they are heading. Having relevant keywords in them can also help deliver extraordinary results. In some cases, Header tags are used for Questions in the Q&A section. Keyword stuffing - Stuffing keywords into page content is an age-old technique. It is both wrong and practically useless in terms of SEO value. The best-case scenario is having original high-quality content written in a manner that it can actually help the reader. Hidden Content - There are some website owners have content hidden in their content to rank for a particular search phrase. For example, if someone wanted to rank for the phrase best cars for parents in 2020. Having that phrase written over 20 times in white font colour on a white background page to rank for it is considered to be hidden content. The purpose of such a tactic is to trick search engines into ranking the webpage for the search phrase. There are other ways too of hiding content, majorly by the design of the webpage and the elements on it. This tactic is to be avoided at all costs. The negative impact is far more than the gains in rankings. Authority - A website's authority is decided by the number of "do" links, shares, author profiles and many other factors. Here's a list of such factors: Specific to domains - Age, trust, popularity, relevancy. Specific to individual pages on the website - Age & trust, amount of value received from links over time, the freshness of the last update, overall relevancy of the page. Specific to link authority - link ratio - do follow to no follow, "domain authority" of the linking websites, the total number of links to the page and the number of outgoing links. In a nutshell, all these combined with author page validation for your content can take your website to the next level. Engagement metrics - Google search is also a website. Like other websites, it too can see how fast users are coming back to its search results after visiting one of them. This is one way it understands the engagement level of your website for the search query - bounce + time spent on the page. So try to have helpful, relatable and executable content on your webpages. In many cases having an audio or video embed can also help improve the engagement of the users.History - Things once uploaded to the internet leave a mark and cannot be completely wiped away. Similarly, having a website true to its content themes and purpose over a considerable amount of time is useful for rankings. Identity - Validating a company's authenticity, the people involved and linking back to their active social media profiles, is good enough to prove your identity online. Listing Google My Business verified physical addresses on the maps on a contact us page too helps. Piracy - If you have ever hosted pirated content on your website, then, of course, it is going to be tough to rank on search. Ads on the website - If your content is ad-heavy, especially, in above the fold area. The user experience will not be good, resulting in a very high bounce rate. Link quality - A general thumb rule is not to have over 100 links in a single page. Similarly inbound link quality is to be assessed as well. Having links from websites which have a good spread of domain authority from low to high is essential. Most of the links should have domain authority above the website's own domain authority. Anchor text - The text used for linking to your internal and external pages has to be highly relevant to the content. This has two benefits. First is that your pages will soon start ranking for the keywords in your link anchor text. Secondly, if you had linked to other websites with very relevant anchor text, trust is built, engagement levels improve. The number of links - If there are over 100+ do-follow links to a page from few domains, then it gets flagged as spam. So it is necessary to maintain a consistent number of links to websites ratio. Paid links - Paid links are not really beneficial in terms of gaining ranking success. Spam - There is this rampant practice of guest comments on blog posts linking back to websites. Most of them are spam and not in the least helpful. There are other kinds of spam on maps, social media platforms, etc. Such practices have to be avoided at all costs. Country - The country of residence for the website's business dealings. This can be set in the target country option in Google search console. The locality - This is the local area where the business is situated or operates in. Known historical traffic - Is the website a popular one and having direct traffic?Social media clout - Does the website have many followers and related people who could become visitors?Reputation - Are there any influencers or people with the relevant following on social media recommending your website?Shares - How many people share your content and genuinely appreciate it?Hope these help!http://feeds.feedburner.com/ChaitanyaACV
Read moreJul 10, 2020
6 absolutely easy to do motivational hacks
Depression is troubling everyone across the globe. These tough coronavirus times has just increased the number of people suffering with it. I have struggled with it too. Might even be fighting with it on an hourly basis too. It is a war that you need to put up against it. And you have to win this war, my friend. It's not going to be easy. Never was and never will be. But you have to fight through it, with effort, courage and consistency. In due course of time, I have realised that following hacks can help keep you stay motivated no matter what happens around you and against you.Hope these six motivational tips/hacks help you too:Set small, easy to understand, clear and specific goals: Essentially, you should be able to know what you need to do and how much time and effort it is going to take. Here is a well-explained article on the topic - https://www.mindtools.com/page6.html Take care of yourself. Treat yourself as you would one of your most close friends who is working very hard. Self-care is crucial in keeping in you physically and emotionally happy. To develop self-compassion, refer to this detailed article - https://positivepsychology.com/self-compassion-5-steps/.Get help. Sounds odd right? But this is the most crucial point. Everyone needs help. Have people who believe in you as part of your support group. Have a WhatsApp group or do group video calls to get yourself out of those odd, bad and ugly moods. This article can help - https://www.considerable.com/life/community/emotional-support/.Try to experience how you would feel on completing the toughest problem. Look towards enjoying the process & work. Do not just enjoy the framing of the goal😊. Many just set up the goal, even write it down, frame it as well but never go through the actual work. When you go beyond in terms of effort - appreciate yourself. Self-appreciation is necessary to help keep depression away and your mental happiness intact. Read this well-written article to know more on self-appreciation - https://liberationist.org/self-appreciation-is-the-foundation-of-life/.I'm writing this on the spot, without any preparation but with references to articles that helped me.Hope they help you too!If you decided to do more about enjoying the process & your work, that's great! But if you are finding it difficult, trust me, it'll be difficult. This is how I'm dealing with it by making a podcast about SEO & it's processes:https://anchor.fm/seo-academy http://feeds.feedburner.com/ChaitanyaACV
Read moreJun 27, 2020
How to do Voice Search optimisation in 13 simple steps
This blog is an attempt at demystifying the process of optimising for voice search. It involves a systematic data-driven approach explained with all the steps involved. IntroductionVoice queries contain conversational words and are longer22% of voice queries are for local contentUsers want immediate results on their smart devicesPrerequisites for Voice Search visibilityWork to get your brand in the Knowledge Graph using structured dataRank videos in search resultsUse structured data and as many forms of it as possibleThe site should be mobile-friendly and loads fast in mobile - that’s how it should be expressed in Google Search Console (Speed section)Optimise the website content or sub-headings with long-tail keywords including question terms - We can also optimise FAQ sections for question-related keywordsCreate blogs & pillar pages (specific to concerns of your customers - https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/what-is-a-pillar-page) try to answer your questions of your customers in Natural LanguageOptimise videos with natural language and conversational words to rank videos in search results Generate loads of engagement on different social media platforms for your blog & owned content/mediaOptimise your content for Google Discover - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9046777?hl=en Submit your website’s blog section to Google News Publisher (of course after complying to their content terms & policies) - https://publishercenter.google.com/publications Submit your website’s blog to Bing News Publisher - https://pubhub.bing.com/Home/Welcome, in case your website is not already in Bing Webmasters (https://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster), it is recommended to submit there first and then to the publisherActions to be takenRelook at sub-headings for main pages and tweak them to become questions which people are likely to ask. Here are few guidelines to followGet a set of people also ask questions for your topic or main keywords - Use tools like Scrape Similar to collect these in a spreadsheet for analysisGet another set of generic questions which people are likely to ask on the topic or main keyword by using tools such as Answer the public - https://answerthepublic.comCompare and pick the ones you expect people to start asking more or currently being used - human insight is crucial as no tool or mathematical analysis will work help out beat voice queriesWrite new headlines and see their scores here - https://www.coschedule.com/headline-analyzer Build social media content based on these questions and drive engagement on social platforms while using these specific natural language questions/contentImplement speakable schema on each of the pages for which you want results in voice searchPlease note the titles/headings have to be in natural language and should be highly similar to the questions people are likely to askThe description path added in the schema has to be around 3 to 5 lines and should ideally be a standalone gist of the content which would make sense when they are read out to someoneHave the content read out to team members who were not involved in the process and account in their feedbackTry to analyse the current voice search results for the topic and see the content length Try to make your content longer than the current competition by at least 150 wordsRepeat this process for a total of at least 3 articlesSubmit to Google for being indexed in Voice Search or Speakable section https://services.google.com/fb/forms/speakablenewsinterest/ Finally, Inspect the schema implemented URLs in Google Search ConsoleGoogle News Publisher Submission StepsBelow are the requirements for submitting your blog to Google News Publisher - https://publishercenter.google.com General - Basic informationPublication nameDescription - SEO friendly Category - blog Primary languageWebsite property - needs search console accessLocationCountryContactsProduct updatesTechnical issuesDistributionCountries: multiple countries can be selectedGoogle propertiesAutomatic translationTrackingGoogle Analytics tracking For AMP version we can provide another analytics property if applicableContentDifferent sections can be addedNeeds Atom or RSS feeds - Feedburner ImagesSquare logo - 512px * 512pxWide logo - light version (white background) - 2000 px * 200 pxWide logo - dark version (dark background) - 2000 px * 200 pxReview & Submit for approval - it takes 2 to 4 weeks for review and approvalBing News Publisher Submission StepsThe below are the steps required to submit to Bing News Publisher Hub:A Microsoft account is needed Bing webmasters account has to be created with this Microsoft accountAfter that, it has to be submitted to the Bing News Pub Hub - https://pubhub.bing.comThe contact details to be provided are as followsCompany nameContact person name & email addressContact person phone numberEstimated ImpactKey points for considerationIt’s estimated that 53% of adults use voice search at least once a day, and 76% of smart speaker owners perform local business searches weekly.Voice searches are 3 times more likely to be local-basedBack in 2016 Google revealed that 20% of mobile searches were made via voice72% of people who own a voice-activated speaker say that their devices are often used as part of their daily routineGoogle Assistant = Google Search ResultsApple Siri = Google Search ResultsAmazon Alexa = Bing Search ResultsBy 2020, 50 per cent of all searches will be voice searches of which 40% would be from adults and are likely to use voice search at least once per day15% of UK consumers now using voice search at least once a week – studyA 1,000-person survey has found that 15% of UK consumers now use voice search at least once a week, while almost two-thirds (66%) of respondents have never used voice search. The remaining 19% have dabbled with voice search, using it on an irregular or infrequent basis.Some 55% of respondents felt that voice search will be crucial in the future, with the remaining 45% stating it will not be so.A study in the Uberall Voice Search Readiness Report 2019, also analysed the top reasons British people are not adopting voice search more frequently. Either they are not used to it (27%), they do not feel that it is the most efficient means of search (19%), or they do not think it is accurate enough (18%).In 2019, 42% of UK users conducted a Voice-based Search in Q1. This increases to 46% among 16 to 44-Year-Olds.23% of children and teens in the UK have access to a smart speaker. 55% of these use them daily. Music, searching for information and weather updates are the top 3 most used tasks.79% of the market share for smart speakers in the UK is held by Amazon Echo, who use Bing, not Google, for their answers. This share is 61% in the US.Will voice search be monetised?As ‘Early adopters’ become the ‘Early majority’ in the UK and Germany, and America heads towards greater maturity, the question of paid-for voice search advertising is bound to arise.Will voice commerce be a $40bn market by 2022?This is, literally, the billion-dollar question. At the beginning of 2018, OC&C Strategy Consultants issued a very upbeat report stating that with 10% of the UK owning a smart speaker, voice commerce was only worth £0.2bn in 2017. However, as ownership spreads to nearly one in two Brits in 2022, voice commerce will expand quickly and is estimated to be worth £3.5bn a year.According to Comscore, by 2020, over 50 per cent of all searches will be done by voice, and Gartner predicts that 30 per cent of web browsing sessions will be done without a screen by next year too.Infographic on Voice search - https://i.imgur.com/jzdAaGCg.jpg Voice Search Performance AnalysisVoice search is expected to be dominant by around 2025 to 2027. But this could change or become 2022 itself if there is a widespread roll-out of 5G services which is highly unlikely in the current Coronavirus scenario. Bing is likely to lead in terms of Voice search results in the UK due to the popularity of Amazon Alexa over Google Home (and other devices)Smart screen devices with cameras are expected to dominate in terms of the market share of amongst smart devicesVoice & Vision driven engagement with the audience is likely to be crucial. Hence, the adoption of QR code & Image processing or vision-based AI processing is key to dominating the search marketOur estimate of voice search queries for 2020 is at around 25% (not 50%) of the total search volume in the UKThere is a going to be heavy competition, the easy way to survive or dominate the would be by not ignoring Bing platform while working on Voice optimisationMore and more people are likely to be taking up voice search not just for information queries but for eCommerce transactions as wellHere is a YouTube video of me explaining this article postReferences:https://www.thehoth.com/voice-search-seo/https://backlinko.com/voice-search-seo-studyhttps://neilpatel.com/blog/seo-for-voice-search/https://searchengineland.com/study-11-voice-search-ranking-factors-analyzed-unpacked-293221https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/speakable https://www.oncrawl.com/oncrawl-seo-thoughts/use-googles-speakable-schema-org-markup-google-assistant/https://powerdigitalmarketing.com/blog/new-schema-markup-qa-page-and-speakable/#grefhttps://sagapixel.com/seo/voice-schema-markup/https://www.stateofdigital.com/why-and-how-you-should-implement-speakable-and-connected-markup-now/ https://www.searchenginejournal.com/leverage-schemas-drive-seo-performance-voice-search/318335/ https://wostrategies.com/measuring-voice-search/ https://brandastic.com/blog/what-is-google-discover-how-will-it-affect-seo/ https://www.theukdomain.uk/voice-based-search-what-smes-need-to-know/ https://blog.stormid.com/voice-search-optimisation-guide/ https://www.seoworks.co.uk/voice-search-hey-siri-what-is-the-future-of-marketing/ https://internetretailing.net/mobile-theme/mobile-theme/15-of-uk-consumers-now-using-voice-search-at-least-once-a-week--study-19606 https://www.blueclaw.co.uk/2019/12/17/why-you-should-be-addicted-to-voice-search-optimisation-in-2020/ https://resignal.com/voice-search/future-of-voice-search/ https://www.marketingtechnews.net/news/2019/oct/25/why-voice-search-where-puck-going-digital/ https://smallbusiness.co.uk/voice-search-for-small-businesses-2546553/ http://feeds.feedburner.com/ChaitanyaACV
Read moreJun 22, 2020
10 absolutely simple steps for error proofing your blog
Everyone knows content is the king👑.But what will happen if your content has errors in it?Typos are the worst of the lot👀. In fact, there are 10 more common mistakes, which you can explore in this lovely blog post - https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/most-common-writing-mistakes/. Now that we have established the kind of errors and how difficult & necessary it is to write impactful content without any mistakes, here is a 10 step checklistDouble-check your content with Grammarly.Read your content aloud. If possible, have someone else listen to it.Remove fancy words or jargons. Eliminate passive voice.Use very few adverbs.Shorten sentences over 20 words. Keep paragraphs to a maximum of 5 sentences.Double-check links in the blog postLook for spelling & word errors - there could be mistyped words such as form instead of from.Ensure the tone of voice for your brand is maintained all through the post.These are 10 simple steps, which I'm sure almost anyone can easily follow. Good luck with your content writing✌!http://feeds.feedburner.com/ChaitanyaACV
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