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Mar 19, 2021
What Is a Search Engine Optimization Audit? | What is an SEO Audit?
With over 1.5 billion websites on the internet, one thing is certain: you’re up against a lot of competition when trying to rank organically on search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. This doesn’t mean, however, that search engine optimization (SEO) shouldn’t be a crucial part of your marketing strategy. So how do you get your website to show up on top search engine results? Do you hire an SEO expert, a marketing agency, or do you try to do it yourself? If you’re new to the SEO game, where should you start? Do you use free tools? Or Paid ones? Doing a comprehensive SEO audit is where you’ll want to begin in your journey. Read below to learn what an SEO audit is and the various components that make up a thorough SEO brand audit. What Is a Search Engine Optimization Audit or What is an SEO Audit? Let’s start with the basics: what exactly is an SEO audit? At its most basic level, it’s the process of analyzing how well your website is ranking in Google search results and identifying what’s causing the results you see. The core purpose is being able to identify as many issues as possible with your organic search efforts along with being able to double down on what is working well for you. This way, you’ll know what you’re dealing with, know what you need to do to improve, and where you might need to invest more effort into developing. A comprehensive website SEO audit looks at many different ranking factors to include a site audit covering: Website structure issues, ensuring you have your robots.txt & XML sitemap setup properly and submitted for indexing An optimized web User experience or usability for desktop, mobile devices & laptops Identifying Duplicate content using SEO tools like screaming frog Optimizing your homepage, javascript, HTML, meta descriptions, title tags, meta tags, proper canonical use, headers, paragraph formatting, image alt text, & proper website schema markup Your SERP rankings based on different search engine algorithms, crawlers, indexing, webmaster tools, their website audit tools, their SEO ranking, organic traffic based on keywords they rank your website for & keyword rank tracking to see changes Setting up and using google search console for your digital marketing strategy Optimizing your social media profiles for brand congruency Google analytics, webpage bounce rates & webpage click-through rates (CTR) Optimizing the speed of your website, speed ranking, and ensuring the site speed loads quickly across all devices—Desktops, laptops & mobile devices Doing a site crawl to identify all potential on-page SEO issues including broken links, wrong 404, 410, 301′, 302’s, 303’s, 304’s, canonicals, metadata, link profiles, external links, internal links & contextual anchor text User experience problems through auditing & setting up heatmap tracking Gaps in your site content, doing keyword research, viewing things from your searcher’s viewpoint & intent, optimizing your site’s SEO for intent-based marketing, developing a content marketing strategy & execution plan Off-site issues including your backlink profile, external link profile using tools like ahrefs, Moz, or Semrush. Competitive market analysis, link building results or lack there-of, key performance metrics & whether or not you should hire marketers, SEO professionals, or help to do the work for your company or non-profit. Also, keep in mind that an SEO audit shouldn’t be a one-time occurrence. Think of it as a health checkup. Perform them often, and you’ll be able to better control and improve your website rankings. What an SEO Audit Should Be Now let’s talk about what an SEO audit service should and shouldn’t be. To begin, it should be comprehensive. It should look at your website & brand holistically, giving you a complete picture of what’s going on. It should also include actionable advice or strategies you can implement to start ranking or boost current SEO rankings. You’ll want a report that’s detailed and in-depth, but that also lets you know what your next steps to take are. This is a crucial part of a successful SEO audit. These recommended actions should also be prioritized by impact and the effort needed for each idea. This will help you know where to start or invest more resources. What an SEO Audit Shouldn’t Be Next, there are two big things an SEO audit shouldn’t be. First, it shouldn’t be one size fits all. Every company is different and every website or brand has different strengths and weaknesses. Each company also uses its website in unique ways. Some prioritize lead generation, while others rely solely on e-commerce sales. Knowing these details will help you know where to focus the core of your SEO audit. An SEO audit should also not be rushed. A thorough audit takes time, usually between 2 and 5 days. The 3 Core Elements of an SEO Audit While SEO audits are incredibly complex, there are 3 essential elements to every successful effort. These are on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO. On-Page SEO First, you’ll look at on-page SEO. This part of your audit focuses on elements of your website that you can control. This largely focuses on the content of your site that can be optimized. Your audit will analyze every page of your website and look at the keywords it’s ranking for and the position of these keywords. You can then take this information and optimize your content. Each page of your website should focus on one core keyword with multiple variations. This keyword should live in the page title, the headline, and be included multiple times throughout the page. Looking at your competitors’ sites can also help you know what keywords to focus on. Off-Page SEO Next, your audit will look at off-page SEO. These are things you don’t directly control, but that you can influence. The core of this effort revolves around backlinks. Backlinks are a huge part of a successful SEO strategy. This is because Google loves to see that other websites are linking to yours. This shows that your content is high quality and trustworthy. And this is exactly the type of content Google wants to deliver to its users. Your SEO audit will look at your backlink profile, which is information about the different sites ranking to your pages and the domain authority of these sites. In the eyes of Google, the more domain authority, the more valuable the link. The good news is that you can do things to generate more backlinks to your site. There’s a whole area of SEO called outreach that focuses on this. Technical SEO Lastly, your SEO audit tool will look at the technical side of your website. And the truth is that this can get really complicated really fast. But there are some key elements you should focus on first that isn’t too overwhelming. The most important is web page speed. If your website takes forever to load, people are going to be frustrated. They’re going to have a negative experience. If this happens, your bounce rates increase, click-through rates decrease, signaling to google and other search engines a bad user experience. Google & the other Serps don’t want that. They want their users to be satisfied, and they want to direct their users to good user experiences. So to accomplish this goal, Google & other Search engines prioritize sites that load quickly, offer a good mobile experience, and have a high engagement or click-through rate. The technical part of your SEO audit helps you know the speed of your pages and give you recommendations for speeding it up. Some technical SEO tools you can use include Semrush, ScreamingFrog, Moz, Ubersuggest, & ahrefs. What Is an SEO Audit Answered Now you know what an SEO audit is and how it can help your business. What’s next? You should start working on your SEO. While you can definitely DIY with SEO, you can really save a lot of headaches and time by relying on experts for a complete audit. We have years of experience helping our clients understand their SEO issues. Contact us today to see how we may help!
Read moreMar 9, 2021
Quick Guide to Email Marketing (Updated 2021)
Do you want to know how to grow your company’s profits and convert potential customers? Want to then turn those customers into brand ambassadors? If you’re a business owner, you want to look for ways to turn business leads into people who purchase your services or products and become interested in your company. When you gain potential customers, it’s important to keep them up-to-date with what’s going on in your organization. Email marketing serves as a crucial part of gaining and retaining customers. It also helps you improve your customer’s lifetime value. But how do we use email effectively? Below, we’ve compiled an easy-to-follow email marketing guide just for you. Keep reading to learn how to use email to get more customers! What Is Email Marketing? Email marketing consists of composing and sending emails to people who have signed up to be on your contacts list. These messages often feature a variety of different features, including company updates, reminders to purchase items left in a cart or promotional offers. When you partake in email marketing, you give your customers the opportunity to either make their first purchase or continue supporting your business efforts. It also keeps you at the top of their minds and entices them to buy from you again by letting them know when sales are taking place. So, are you wondering how to get your email marketing off the ground? After all, it’s one thing to agree that it’s necessary to keep your supporters updated and engaged, and it’s another thing entirely to implement that engagement. Usually, email marketing takes a lot of thought and time. You have to compile your email list, use an email service, define your target audience, compose your messages, and schedule out your communications. Fortunately, we have tips to help you do just that! 1. Build Your List In order to send an email, you need to have recipients. But how do you figure out to whom you should send your messages? The key is to get your clients to opt into email communications. You can do this in a variety of ways. Many choose to put options to sign up for email updates on the home pages of their websites. Others offer buyers the chance to receive emails when they make a purchase. But do you want to make sure you don’t lose potential customers if they just click away and forget about you? Many companies now make use of systems that sense when a website visitor is about to switch over to a new tab or leave the page. This triggers a pop-up that catches the viewer’s attention and invites them to join the email list. While some people may choose to click away anyway, others will give you their email addresses, to which you may then send your messages. 2. Work with an Email Marketing Software As you start collecting email addresses, consider what email marketing software you’d like to use. What is email marketing software? Companies developed this type of software to assist businesses with their email marketing endeavors. They come pre-programmed to help you create your emails and often allow you to store and segment your recipients. They also give you incredible templates, which you can use to create professional-looking emails. These templates are usually customizable, meaning you can add your logo and other necessary elements to your emails. 3. Define Your Target Audience Your target audience should be at the forefront of all your marketing communications (not just email marketing). If you haven’t defined your target audience yet, now is the perfect time to do so. But what is a target audience? Think about the average person who buys your products or services. Do you sell mostly to young women in their 20s or stay-at-home dads? Your choice of target audience should be backed by research. Who needs you the most? Who’s already buying what you are selling? Once you decide this, start targeting your marketing materials toward this person. Write your email marketing campaigns with this person in mind and show them how you fulfill a need they have. That way, when someone who falls within your target audience reads your message, they’re prompted to make a purchase. 4. Composing a Message If you’ve never written a marketing email before, this might seem a little bit daunting. This might especially be true if you don’t consider yourself someone especially good with words but have no one else to write your messages. You don’t have to worry, though. There are several things you can do to send an effective email. Let’s get into some tips below. Focus on Engaging Your Audience Your reader needs to know how your email impacts them. After all, why else should they care? Engaging your audience begins with your message’s subject line. Use a hook to get them in. For instance, if you have a sale that’s ending, use something along the lines of “Last Chance to Get 40% Off!” This shows your reader immediately how your email impacts them (they can save money) and catches their attention by including “Last Chance.” When they open the email, use the text to continue communicating how your email impacts them. For instance, if you’re running a sale near the holidays, you could say, “Get Last-Minute Gifts” and include a link to one of your collections. Create Emotion Whenever possible, you want to create an emotional connection between your brand and your customers. This can be done through a variety of means. If you’re using images, show your models expressing an emotion. For instance, you can use images of your models that spark happiness and joy. But what if your emails are more story-based? This is the case for a lot of non-profits or businesses involved in charity. For these, select stories that tug on the heartstrings of your readers and tell them how they can help people in similar situations. This allows them to feel like they are making a difference and encourages them to get involved. 5. Schedule Your Messages The general consensus for email is that they shouldn’t be sent every single day. If you do, you might annoy your clients and drive them farther away rather than drawing you in. Because of this, you and your team should decide how often you want to send your emails. Research has shown that Monday-Thursday mornings are the best times for people to receive emails because people are just arriving at work and checking on the communications they missed overnight. Still, different tactics work best for different businesses, so you should always make sure you test for yourself. Like This Email Marketing Guide? Get Better Marketing Today! Email marketing can be a great way to keep your clients engaged and increase your revenue. Using this email marketing guide, you should be able to improve your chances of launching a successful email marketing campaign. You’ll be able to build your list, work with an email marketing software, define your target audience, compose a message, and schedule your messages with ease. Need more marketing and growth help? Talk to our specialists today!
Read moreMar 3, 2021
How to Properly Budget a google PPC Advertising Campaign
People who click on pay-per-click (PPC) ads on Google are 50% more likely to make a purchase than users who visit the same site through organic results. Wouldn’t you like to give your business that kind of advantage? PPC advertising can help you drive traffic, increase revenue, and improve brand awareness. Figuring out how to budget for a PPC campaign can seem challenging, though. Find out how to develop your PPC budget and get the most value from your advertising investment. Why Use a Google PPC Campaign? Google is one of the biggest advertising platforms in the world. Google PPC ads give your business access to millions of people every day. SEO will help you rank higher on Google’s search engine results page, but to rank at the very top you need PPC. How Does PPC Work? With Google Ads, you bid on keywords. Google uses an algorithm in combination with your bid amount and Quality Score to determine who is at the top of their results when someone searches for those key phrases. Your company pays every time someone clicks on your ad. Benefits of PPC Advertising A PPC advertising campaign gives your business advantages you don’t get from other forms of marketing. PPC gives you quick entry. In contrast to SEO, which can take months to start affecting your results, PPC can give you better positioning and traffic within minutes. PPC in combination with Google Analytics gives you measurable and trackable data. You have access to details like impressions, clicks, and conversions. You can clearly see what you spent and how it performed based on your goals. Faster access to data lets you make informed decisions more quickly. You can see what you should change or improve on your site. Google PPC can be a significant investment. Setting your goals and analyzing your existing advertising data will help you create a realistic budget. Set Your Business Goals for PPC Advertising Before you can establish a PPC advertising budget, you need to define your goals for the ad campaign. You’ll get the most benefit from goals that follow the SMART framework: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Vague or unattainable goals won’t get you the results you want. A company’s goals for online paid advertising often fall into one of three categories: Lead generation or customer acquisition based on ROI Growth of absolute lead generation or customer acquisition Brand awareness Generating leads and acquiring customers with a focus on ROI means first setting a target for leads or new customers. You’ll also define the maximum advertising spend per customer. With absolute lead generation or customer acquisition, you’ll define the number of new customers you want within a certain time frame. With this type of goal, you want to meet your target number of new customers with a specific set of ad budget allocation. Finally, brand awareness wants to show the company’s website to a certain number of potential customers. Determine How Much Traffic You Need to Meet Your Goals After you establish your goal and a timeline, you need to define how much traffic you need to reach the goal within the timeline. Data from your analytics platform can help you make more educated estimations of the number of conversions you’ll need. What Data to Use Data from previous PPC campaigns is the ideal place to start. If you’re starting PPC advertising for the first time or you have a new strategy that you expect will have a different conversion rate than prior campaigns, you can use your website’s overall conversion rate to help you estimate the percentage of people who convert. Keep in mind that paid traffic will probably represent people at a different stage of the buyer’s journey than organic or direct traffic. Calculating Traffic Volume The traffic you need to meet your goal is the total number of customers you want divided by your conversion rate. For example, imagine you want 200 new customers. Visitors to your site from paid advertising convert 2.25% of the time. The traffic required to meet your goal is 200/.0225 or 8,889. Using a range of conversion rates will help you plan more accurately. If your conversion rate is 2.25%, a good range would be 2% to 2.5%. With the lower conversion rate, you would need 200/.02 or 10,000 site visitors. The higher conversion rate would give you 200/.025 or 8,000. To reach your target, you would need to drive between 8,000 and 10,000 visitors. Research the Likely Cost-per-Click The best place to start researching how much you’ll probably need to pay for each lead is data from previous PPC advertising. The cost-per-click (CPC) is always changing. However, your past numbers will still give you a good general idea of what you’ll need to pay. If you’re new to PPC or you have new goals that differ from your previous spending, you can use Google’s Keyword Planner. The Keyword Planner gives you estimates for search volume and cost. It doesn’t account for other factors like Quality Score that affect your actual cost. However, the Keyword Planner can be a good place to start if you’re new to PPC and want to understand the competition around certain keywords. Calculate Your PPC Budget You can calculate your PPC advertising budget by using your traffic and CPC estimate ranges. Your budget is the required traffic multiplied by the average CPC. Using the previous example and a CPC range of $0.40 to $0.85, with the lower conversion rate you would need to spend 10,000 visitors x $0.85 average CPC or $8,500. With the higher conversion rate, you could set your advertising budget at 8,000 visitors x $0.40 average CPC or $3,200. Your Return on Ad Spend You can determine your return on ad spend (ROAS) if you know your customers’ average purchase value. First, you need to calculate the expected revenue if your PPC campaign meets its goal. The expected revenue is the average purchase value x new customer goal. For example, if your average purchase value is $250, your expected revenue is $250 x 200 or $50,000. Your ROAS is (revenue – ad spend)/ad spend. Continuing the example, the lowest ROAS would be ($50,000 – $8,500/$8,500 or 4.88. The highest ROAS would be ($50,000 – $3,200)/$3,200 or 14.62. This means that at the low end, for every dollar you spend on advertising you get $4.88 in revenue. At the higher end, you get $14.60 in revenue for every dollar of advertising. Now, we’re not diving into actual profit per customer in this blog, which is what you’d really want to calculate your ROI’s correctly. This post is more about giving you the basics in general. Maximizing Your PPC Budget To get the most from your PPC budget, you need a Google marketing expert. Splash Factory is dedicated to helping you get the most from your PPC advertising. We start by learning about your business strategy and goals. Then we profile your ideal customer so we can target the best keywords. You need to use the keywords that your highest-value customers are searching for. You can then provide them with the products or services they want, which benefits your clients and grows your business. Contact us to find out how we can help you meet your business goals through PPC advertising.
Read moreFeb 25, 2021
How to Write SEO-Friendly Alt Text for Your Images
Providing quality content is one of the key components of your website’s SEO. Adding images to your articles and posts encourages people to read them. It helps them visualize the details described in the text. Images also add credibility to your message. It also helps in getting you a good ranking in organic search engine results by increasing the time people interact and spend on each page. One key factor you should not overlook for your images is in adding an SEO-friendly alt text. The alt text pertains to the written copy that appears in place of an image, in case it fails to load on the screen. This also aids speech-reading tools to describe the images pictured to the visually impaired. Alt text also helps with increasing your website’s rank. Today, we will look at ways on how to write alt text that works great with your SEO. Describe the Image with Brief Details In writing SEO-friendly alt text, you need to describe the image. You do not plaster it with a bunch of keywords. Instead, try to describe what happens in the picture or image. This is where you need to go in detail as much as possible. Form a coherent thought for your image text as a first step. This way, you make it easy for situations when the image fails to load on the page. It helps the user know what happens in the image, as in the case of visually impaired users. Speech-reading tools get to describe what happens in the picture. Consider structuring your alt text for your images in a short sentence. Make sure that sentence has a complete thought. There are other layers to this setup that you should take note of, which leads us to the upcoming steps. Add Specificity In writing the details, you also need to be more specific with the descriptions. This works better when you provide specific details rather than general terms. This helps especially when you have a certain subject pictured on the image. For example, you have an image that shows a celebrity using one of the microphones that you sell. Instead of stating the detail in general terms, consider adding specific details. For this example, include the name of this personality. Along with that is the specific microphone model when you write the image text. This brings a more defined image of the situation pictured. It helps paint a clearer situation on that matter. This leads us to yet another layer to the alt tag. Always Put Context Aside from putting specific details while writing the details on the alt text, go and add context. This puts a deeper degree of specificity in the details you describe. For example, the picture has this copy “Instructor clashing practice swords with a student.” It does cover the detail with specifics, but it seems to miss the context to explain what exactly is going on. Imagine if the article talked about HEMA, describing longsword training. With that as context, you can add more details by doing this text instead. “HEMA instructor drills student in longsword training.” Blend specificity, detail, and context in your image text. This can help when it goes hand in hand with SEO friendly images. Include Primary Keywords The image text you have can describe the picture in detail. Now, you can bump this even further by including a primary keyword. Integrating it in the sentence helps the image and your website. It helps you get SEO-friendly images, which boosts your website’s rank. While it is an effective method, you also need to figure out the proper balance in using it. In the early days of SEO, keyword stuffing was an effective method to boost your website’s rank to make it visible. This leads to the act of cramming as many keywords as possible. The changes applied in search engine algorithms made the practice of keyword stuffing defunct. As much as possible, avoid shoehorning the primary keyword in every image that you use for the article. Instead, look for an image within the article that best represents the topic. In using your keywords, you also need to make sure it flows well with the copy. If you find it easy to blend the keyword into the sentence, go for it. If it doesn’t blend well, use semantic keywords where you use the important terms. This way, you have an alt text that describes an image in full yet concise detail and still has the relevant keyword. Having this setup for your images can help push your website rank higher. Keep Alt Text Short Enough You can see how having an SEO-friendly alt text helps with your images and your efforts in content marketing. Now that you have your alt text ready, you need to take note of how much you can write down on the alt text. More so as you have to keep the speech-reading tools in mind when writing them. In this case, aim for your image to be within 125 characters or less. Aim to convey everything within that character limit. This way, speech-reading tools can provide succinct information without stumbling. Words to Avoid You also have words to avoid when writing your image text. Do not preface your copy with “image of…” or “picture of…” or it would cause problems in both speech-reading tools and in search crawlers. In this case, it would end up misidentifying it as an image from the article’s HTML source code. Instead, go straight to the description. It also helps you save up on the character count. Create SEO-friendly Alt Text Today Writing SEO-friendly alt text can help your website optimize. Your images are part of the grand scheme of your website’s search result ranking. With the right setup on your alt text, you can create SEO-friendly images that can improve your content quality. For this, we can help you grow your business in the long-term. We provide the services you need to aid your growth such as SEO and Content Marketing. You can contact us today to get started with that journey.
Read moreFeb 18, 2021
How to Find Guest Post Opportunities
Are you looking to improve traffic on your website? Have you heard that writing articles for other websites is a great way to attract new clients and establish your authority in your field? Are you wondering about the benefits of guest posting? Guest posting is a fairly simple and exciting e-commerce strategy. If you have unique insights because of what you’re providing or selling, you’ve got the skills to write some excellent posts. Yet how do you get started, and where do you find guest post opportunities? Here’s what you need to know. What Is Guest Posting? Guest posting, or guest blogging, happens when you write free content for someone else’s site that includes backlinks to your own site or information about yourself and your business. Beyond getting actual customers to visit your website, guest posting can help to boost the credibility of your brand. It can also help you to network with others in related industries so you can begin to benefit from one another’s business. What Are the Benefits of Guest Posting? Guest posting can help your website and blog to have better rankings in engine searches. This can bring even more prospective customers to your site. You’ll also find your brand mentioned more often on social media. The more authority you build online, the easier it will become to get prospective customers to trust your brand. This will help you to land sales more quickly. Guest posting will benefit the site you’re posting on as well since they’ll be getting free content from an expert. You’ll also get the opportunity to hear constructive feedback from leaders in your industry. The more you guest blog, the better you’ll get at finding your voice and selling your brand to prospective customers. It’s a great way to hone your writing skills and showcase the unique services you have to offer. How Do I Find Guest Post Opportunities? One of the easiest ways to get started finding guest posting opportunities is to do an online search for websites looking for guest posts in your field. It’s as simple as typing in the topic you want to write about and the word “guest post.” You should be able to find several websites related to your field looking for free content. Other searches that will work include your keyword or words and phrases like “write for us,” “submit an article,” or “suggest a post.” You’re sure to find active websites where you’d be a welcome contributor. Once you’ve found a website you’d like to write for, take a look at their blog posts and see if you’re post would be unique or offer a fresh perspective. You don’t want to post something repetitive or anything that wouldn’t add value to readers’ lives. You can also go on social media and find online communities for digital marketers. Here, there may be shared lists available of blogs that accept guest posts. You may even be able to ask folks in your groups about their success with guest blogging for these sites. How Do I Pitch a Guest Post? Before pitching an idea to the owner of a blog, make sure you’ve done your research. You’ll want to take a look at the blog and possibly reference themes you like when you contact them. Make sure that the topic you choose provides unique value to their readers. When you pitch, your subject line should be something that catches the site owner’s eye. It may be something valuable, personal, or compelling. Make sure it’s succinct. Your pitch can be short, and it needs to get right to the point. Give a quick greeting. “Good afternoon,” or “hello” will work just fine, but be sure to personalize it to the blog owner. Let them know who you are and what you’re selling. Next, tell them why their site is a good place for your content. Finally suggest a few different topics that you’re interested in writing about with brief descriptions. If you’ve written before, provide links to your previous articles. Finally, you can provide links to your website and social media profiles, followed by a courteous good-bye. How Do I Write a Good Guest Post? Good guest posts will drive readers to your site as well as engage them. This means they’ll be commenting on your post and sharing or liking it. Get to know the website you’ll be writing for before creating your post. Are the articles geared towards novices in your field, or towards intermediates or experts? You won’t want to write your post at too simple or difficult a level for your audience. Make sure you’re product or service isn’t the main focus of your article. Your goal should be to provide information or advice that’s valuable to the reader. Occasional backlinks are the right way to get your website into the article, but they will need to fit in naturally. A great article will also include internal links back to the blog itself, as the owner will greatly appreciate you showing that you know their content. Finally, a call to action for comments or a visit to your website will get your readers engaging with your brand right away. The Magic of Guest Posting Finding the right guest post opportunities for your brand may take a little time and research. However, once you’ve found the right spot for your content, you could be drawing new customers to your website and brand name faster than you thought possible. Don’t stop getting smart about e-commerce now. For more help with increasing your brand’s awareness, contact us today.
Read moreFeb 18, 2021
Social Media for Content Marketing (Updated 2021)
Are you trying to leverage content marketing for your business? Content marketing serves as an important part of any company’s success in the modern era. Before, business owners used to rely on people seeing their print advertisements and coming into their stores to gain clients. Now, though, most people first encounter businesses online, and you need to know how to get your platform before your potential clients. Many people use social media for content marketing. But, in order to perform well on social media, you need to know the difference between social media marketing and content marketing in general, and you should know how to market your content on social media. Sound confusing? It doesn’t have to be. Let’s get into it below. What Is Content Marketing? Before we define social media for content marketing, let’s first explore content marketing. Content marketing consists of the processes and methods marketing teams use to get an online platform noticed by web users. They employ a variety of methods to achieve this, including search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), and pay per click advertising (PPC). These all focus on getting the website to the top of search engine results, where clients are more likely to find them and click on the provided links. Social Media for Content Marketing So, what is social media for content marketing? Social media can also be part of content marketing. If you have a page to which you wish to drive traffic, promoting it on social media is a good idea. Yet, you need to use different tactics on social media in order to help it get attention. That’s why social media is part of content marketing, but it doesn’t necessarily employ the same methods. Promoting Your Content on Social Media So, how do you create a social media presence that drives up your engagement and gains you more website traffic? There are several factors for you to consider. In fact, it’s best if you and your team sit down and come up with a comprehensive social media strategy. For this strategy, you’ll need to have social media accounts, know about your target audience, create content with which your followers want to engage, and use ads. Want to know how to do all of this? Take a look at our tips below! Create Social Media Accounts Before you establish a thriving social media presence, you must first open social media accounts. Many of your clients use social media on a regular basis, and if you’re on the same platforms, you increase your ability to engage them. Social media platforms often allow companies to create business platforms, which have access to social media performance metrics and ad-making services. In many cases, this will also allow you to verify your brand account so that users know it’s actually you and not someone else posing as your company. Knowing Your Target Audience Before you create your first post, you need to know about your target audience. But what is your target audience? To answer that question, first answer this: who is the most likely to buy your product? Don’t just guess, either. Do your research and figure out as much about your potential customer as possible, including their age, gender, and socioeconomic background. That is your target audience. Knowing your target audience assists your social media efforts by giving you someone to whom to tailor your message. If you’re a fitness company and your target audience consists of working mothers in their 30s who struggle to find time to work out, create posts to which this demographic can relate. Create Relatable Content Now that you know your target audience, it’s time to sit down and brainstorm the content you post on your website and social media accounts. To begin, first decide how often you want to post. Most experts agree that you should post on your social media site 1-2 times a day. This shows that your page is active and keeps followers engaged without flooding their feeds. Then, think about some topics you would like to explore. These topics should be both relevant to your company and in line with your followers’ interests. For instance, if you were the exercise company mentioned above, you should create posts related to staying healthy when you don’t have a lot of extra time in your day. When you create an article on your website, you can link to it on your social media account to boost its visibility and engagement. In fact, in the long run, this might give you valuable feedback. You will be able to see which articles your followers clicked on and liked and which they didn’t care for as much. Use this information to hone your approach. Use Ads Content marketing on social media consists of a lot of ad making. Fortunately, social media platforms have the built-in ability for you to create ads and even specialize them to target your intended audience. These ads give you a lot of options for customization. You can write the copy for your ads and center them around any product or service you want to highlight. In addition, most ad centers allow you to specify your budget and which groups of people you want to see your ad. Ads help you get greater recognition, help you grow your client base, and increase the visibility of your brand. Want More Marketing Help? Social media for content marketing serves as an effective technique to gain clients and drive consumer interaction. Yet, it requires different tactics than regular content marketing. When you do social media marketing, know your target audience, create relatable content, and if you have the budget, use ads. If you do these things properly you’ll have taken your first steps toward creating a robust and profitable social media presence. 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Read moreFeb 18, 2021
How to Keep Social Proof in Advertising (Updated 2021)
Studies show that 84 percent of people trust a customer’s review as much as they would trust a friend or family member’s recommendation. This statistic alone proves that marketers have a significant opportunity for growth customer-recommended advertising. But, of course, gaining those customer reviews is easier said than done. Luckily, there is a simple strategy you can use to mimic the efficiency of a review. The secret is social proof. From higher conversions to increased ad reach, using this one simple trick can elevate your e-commerce marketing. So what does this term mean and how can you keep social proof with each new ad set? Follow along to learn everything you need to know about this marketing technique and how you can grow your e-commerce business with this approach. What is Social Proof? If you walked into a restaurant during peak meal hours and there was no one else there, what would be your first assumption? Most likely, you would grow concerned about the service or food quality before you even have a chance to judge it for yourself. You see, the lack of other people taking part in the activity makes you weary and probably sets a bias in your head about what is coming next. On the other hand, if you walked by a restaurant and there was a line-up outside because it’s so busy, you’d assume that this spot must be a great place to eat. The sheer volume of people flocking to this establishment makes you believe that it must have great service and delicious food. Why else would everyone be there, right? This is a real-world example of social proof, but it can just as easily come into play with marketing and advertising. Social proof is the element that taps into the subconscious part of a consumer’s brain and encourages them to follow a trend. When potential customers see other people responding to a post, brand, or store, they feel that the right thing to do is follow the action. In the digital world, this social proof is created through elements of engagement such as likes, comments, and shares, as well as reviews and high-status recommendations. Why Do You Need It? When potential customers see high rating social proof elements associated with your brand, it gives you instant credibility. Viewers will feel that others must be onto something good and follow the crowd to find out what they are missing. This actually promotes a higher level of trust and confidence in your products or services. As you know, trust isn’t an easy thing to earn on the internet and customers are incredibly skeptical of e-commerce sites because they feel it may be a scam. Having social proof attached to your ads expedites the trust-earning process and improves your conversion rate. And of course, there’s no secret around the connection between your conversion rate and your revenue. Making this one small change with your advertising campaign could be the missing piece of your profit-earning potential. How to Generate Social Proof The engagements that provide social proof are highly dependant on the post you share and how it’s received. Luckily, there are a few measures you can take to generate or mimic this social proof. For starters, integrate user-created content at the heart of your ad campaign. If you have a great review on your Facebook page or website, don’t let it go unseen. Delivering this review in the form of an ad is a great way to ensure a positive impression. Partner up with a content marketing agency to pull these positive reviews from your site and turn them into eye-catching posts. If you haven’t received any reviews on your pages yet, this is a great place for an e-commerce marketing agency to start building your online presence. In addition to user reviews, the value potential customers place on an influencer’s opinion of a product can be a huge marketing advantage. Ask relevant bloggers, YouTubers, and other social media influencers to create a post around your product. Once they have promoted your brand, if you get their permission, you can build their recommendation into an ad and send out the influential word. Now that you have some built-in social proof, you need more engagements. Every e-commerce brand would love to launch an ad and gain an incredible amount of buzz from the release date. Fortunately, there is actually a way to make this look real. A Facebook Hack to Keep Social Proof on Ads This trick to keep social proof from past campaigns will actually carry over the engagements you received on an ad and attach the social proof to your new set. The number one mistake an e-commerce marketer makes when trying to keep social proof is using the ‘duplicate ad’ function. This does not carry over your social proof and instead creates an identical campaign with no engagements attached. Instead, you’ll need to use the post ID of your ad. To do this, head over to your Facebook Ads Manager and view your page posts. Identify the ad that has a high amount of social proof and copy the post’s ID. Once you have this ID ready to go, you can build your ad by clicking ‘create’. This is where your process will change slightly. Instead of selecting ‘create a new ad’, you’ll actually choose the ‘use existing post’ option. From here, paste in your predetermined post ID, and a preview of your ad should come up. This ad now contains all of the likes, comments, and shares that your high-performing ad did right from the start. Continue with any changes you’d like to make and generate your ad the same as you would if you were starting from scratch. If you’re starting a whole new campaign, you can actually set up this system to work throughout your ad sets. Simply start with your primary campaign and publish like normal. Once published, use that ID to create your other ads. Follow the exact same process as above and enjoy the compounded social proof on your traffic ads. Keep Social Proof in Your Ad Campaigns Now that you know the importance of social proof and how to keep it on your ads, you can set forth with confidence in your e-commerce marketing approach. From gaining customer trust to cracking the Facebook algorithm, you’ll be on your way to skyrocketing your sales. Ready to start generating social proof for your e-commerce brand? Get in touch with us today to take your marketing efforts to the next level and grow your e-commerce brand’s impact.
Read moreFeb 12, 2021
Methods for Writing Compelling Web Copy
Do you want to improve your content writing? Content marketing is an effective method for reaching new customers and audiences. However, writing online web copy isn’t simple and easy. If you want to write effective web copy, you need to be engaging, encouraging, and creative. Below, we’ve got a list of methods and tricks to writing web copy for your webpages. Why Do You Need to Write Compelling Web Copy? The data you put up on your online store is what we call web copy. It is the written content on your home page, about page, product pages, and more. When a person visits your website, they expect to see one created with professional writing. You’d want to meet their expectations. Also, remember that good content writing can increase your brand’s perceived value. Top-notch web copy can make your brand the audience’s top choice. With this reputation, your sales, brand awareness, and loyal customer base will improve. Not many things are as valuable as compelling web copy. Thus, you need to always make sure you write the best web copy for your online store. Know What Your Audience Wants and Needs As with everything you do in business, you need to know what you’re working with. Always try to learn as much as you can about your target audience. Get to know them through their demographics, behaviors, and preferences. Once you understand who you’re writing for, you’ll know the best way of writing the content. For example, the method for writing web copy for people who belong to young or old age groups will differ. If your target audience includes professionals, you’ll want a hint of formality. With that said, always write for the audience, not for yourself. Put your audience’s needs in front of yours. Focus on what the audience wants to hear and not what you want to write. Write Web Copy Like How a Real Person Speaks Imagine how awkward and unfamiliar your web copy will be if you use too many formal sentences. Imagine how alienating or weird web copy will look if you keep using stiff and formal language. Web copy that feels too formal can also bore your audience. Avoid lengthy paragraphs or complex sentences. Use sentence variety to create web copy that feels more engaging and sophisticated. Keep your tone conversational, like you’re talking to a colleague. Keep jargon or technical terms out of the web copy if you can. If you want help in rephrasing your web copy, use writing tools like Grammarly. It will check the grammar, spelling, and mood of your web copy. Include All the Necessary Details and Put the Important Ones on Top While 91 percent of people read online reviews, 84 percent trust online reviews as much as friends. For many, this is a great way to learn what the sellers or manufacturers aren’t saying. However, this can also cause problems, especially if you’re selling a unique product or service. Not all product features or benefits will get highlighted or mentioned. Sometimes, reviewers will focus on the negatives of a product or service. Writing good web copy and web content can fill in that gap and give them a balanced look at your product. If you’re writing a product page for your web copy, list down all the important things your audience must know. Write it down and be candid with it, be it the best features, changes in model design, or other. Also, make it a habit to place the most important details at the top of the article. Remember That Your Readers like to Scan The next entry in our web copywriting tips is to keep your copy mobile and reader-friendly. Studies say most internet users keep the same reading behaviors as people did over 20 years ago. People prefer to scan rather than read word for word. Nobody wants to see a great wall of text when they open a webpage. Instead, they expect headlines, sub-headlines bullet points, and block quotes. Thus, when you write your web copy, make it easy on the eyes. Keep paragraphs and sentences short. Use bold, italics, or underline formatting to highlight points. Be creative with your image use and text formatting. In Writing Web Copy, Use Your Content to Tell a Story Creating informative web copy is a good way to educate your audience. However, spitting out plain facts and statistics won’t pique your audience’s interest. After all, what is web copy if not a way to engage potential customers through their emotions? There are a variety of ways to elicit emotion in your audience when they read your copy. One of the most effective ones is to tell a story. Use a humorous or heartbreaking anecdote to reach your audience’s hearts. It’ll be easier for your target audience to remember your copy if you evoked emotion in them. Don’t Forget to Write a Call-to-Action What do you want your reader to do after he or she reads or scans your web copy? Do you want your audience to add a product to their cart, subscribe to an e-newsletter, or other? Figure out what action you want your audience to take and tell them. For example, to encourage a reader to buy a product, tell him or her to visit its product page. If you want the reader to subscribe to your newsletter, add a link to your newsletter subscription page. Tell them to call you via the contact page if you want them to connect with you. Always add a call-to-action or CTA whenever you finish writing web copy. Be direct and helpful with your CTA. Finally, also make sure that the action you’re encouraging the viewer to do is actionable and easy to do. Write the Most Compelling and Best Web Copy Now Our quickstart guide on writing web copy ends here. We hope you enjoyed reading this quick guide on how to write web copy. Now, you can use what you learned here to create powerful and engaging content. Do you want to learn other techniques that you can use to promote your online store? Our blog has many more helpful posts that can help you develop your web copywriting techniques. Schedule a call with us today to learn how you can improve your digital marketing efforts.
Read moreFeb 10, 2021
What Frequency Should a Website Publish Blog Posts?
It is believed that 25% of all the websites in the world are blogs. There are likely more than 500 million blogs out there on the Internet. If you are starting a blog or are trying to help your blog gain more traction, you’re likely wondering how often you should publish blog posts. There is not a simple answer to this question and it depends on your preferences, your audience, and your needs. Let’s take a look at what you need to know about how often you should publish blog posts. How Often Should You Publish Blog Posts? Anyone or any company that has started a blog has asked this question at one point or another. Publishing more often can help to increase your traffic, as it gives search engines more chances to list your site. The more often your site is listed in search engines the more visitors can be brought to it. If you are using affiliate marketing to increase your income from your site, then the more posts you make the more opportunities you have to utilize this method of turning a profit. You want to build up and create more content like list posts, reviews, and more. However, if your blog is a place filled with more in-depth topics, you likely won’t want to publish as often. Instead, you want to focus on publishing longer-form blog posts that are packed full of information and value for your audience. Depending on your situation, you might have more or less means to publish blog posts with frequency. If you are just one person, you likely won’t be able to publish as many blogs per week. For a company with a large marketing budget, they likely have the option to publish blog posts as often as is like. The Pros and Cons of Publishing One Blog Post a Day There are some good reasons to publish one blog post each day and also some risks to this. Let’s take a look. Pros of Daily Blog Posts If your blog is news focused and in a fast-paced niche, posting daily is likely a good idea. It will be hard to be a trendsetter if you are only posting weekly or monthly. It’s also a good idea to posts frequently if your audience is engaged and loyal and they are regularly visiting your site. It can encourage your readers to visit your site as a part of their routine each day if there is rest content on a daily basis. If you post daily, it will also be very helpful for your search engine ranking. In general, more content will result in more traffic. Lastly, if social media brings you a lot of traffic, then you likely want to post a new blog post every day. This is so people will have a lot of content to share at all times on their social media pages. Cons of Daily Blog Posts There is also a downside to posting blogs every day. Firstly, it can be easy to burn out if you are writing a blog post every day. You don’t want to become something that you dread or feel like it’s a chore. If it competes too much with the other things going on in your life, you might not be able to stick with it. Second of all, it’s possible that your style or the topic of your blog can’t sustain a schedule of a daily blog. This means that if you continue to post daily, the quality of your posts will decline. You will inevitably lose readers this way. The more content you produce, the more difficult it will be to keep it relevant and updated. It can also bury your older content in all of your newer content. It’s important to understand that not many people will ever click past the first page. Blog posts on subsequent pages will likely be read much less. Blog Posting-Frequency: Should You Only Be Publishing Blog Posts a Few Times a Week or a Month? There have been a number of prominent bloggers that have recently changed their posting schedule so that they are posting less frequently. The switch was made because readers are bombarded with so much different content from all angles that it can feel overwhelming. The most common reason that people unsubscribe from blogs is that they published you often and they, therefore, can’t keep up. Your blogging schedule should reflect how often you have something valuable or useful to say to the reader. How to Find the Right Frequency of Blog Posts For Your Brand The best blog post frequency for you or your brand will be particular to your circumstances. The three things you want to keep in mind in order to find the perfect frequency of publishing blog posts are your goals for your blog, the preferences of your target audience, and how able you are to consistently write quality content. You can check in with the readers with a poll or survey and hear straight from the horse’s mouth how often they want to read content written by you. You can also try to experiment with how often you post blogs in order to see what works best. Is It Time For You to Take Your Blog Posts to the Next Level? Are you interested in growing your business through online content writing? If so, click here to apply for help implementing Splash Factory’s Massive Growth Framework.
Read moreFeb 3, 2021
How Content Marketing Can Drive Business Sales (Updated 2021)
Do you want to improve your sales marketing tactics through content marketing? Content marketing is one of the top ways to secure more conversions or customers. You’ve likely seen an infographic or blog post from other businesses that drive sales their way. You can do the same thing in your niche or industry. However, you may ask yourself, why bother writing such content? Will it profit you to share some knowledge of your product or services? Keep reading below to learn how to increase business sales with content marketing. Content Marketing Helps Your Audience Understand You Better What is content marketing if not informative and valuable? It doesn’t only help your audience understand your products better. It also helps them learn more about your brand and business. When audiences learn that you are a dependable, secure, and consistent vendor, they’ll be more likely to buy from you. If your customers discover that you are a trustworthy vendor, their loyalty and trust in you will grow. It’s a surefire way to then have them recommend you to their peers and to other people. Consumers Can Learn More About Your Products How much do you learn about a product you’ve never used before you buy it? Before buying a product, 87% of consumers gather information about it first online. They find blog pages and websites that offer helpful information about a product. If you want them to read your content, you must offer them relevant information and knowledge. You can do this by writing guides and how-to posts about using or troubleshooting a product. If the product that you’re selling is complex, create a guide to understanding it. Audiences will enjoy the content that lists the benefits of your product or services. They want to know what relevance or utility your products can offer them. Use content like this to show your audiences how helpful and relevant your products are. You Nurture the Relationship With Your Audience An excellent way to drive customers to you is to take care of them. The better your customers’ experiences are, the more likely they’ll buy from your brand again. If you want to increase business sales, make sure your website has all the content your target audiences need. How will you nurture this relationship with your target audience? You can do this by creating useful and helpful how-to guides on your products. Your other posts can answer common questions about your product, like the best way to recycle them. You can also create a post that is customer-centric and puts them in a positive light. Customers love to come back and buy your products if you do this right. It’s one of the top reasons for repeat customers. You Also Understand Your Audiences Better If you open your blog to comments, you can get feedback from your audiences. It will help you know where their interests lie and what they want to know. When this occurs, your audiences are already giving you more content ideas for the future. You don’t need to open your blog to comments if you don’t want to. Instead, you can leave a link to your customer service page or number. However, remember that people always want what’s most convenient for them. You Increase Traffic to Your Website If your content is helpful and relevant, then people will want to read it. When they visit your blog page, you’re not only driving sales up but also bringing traffic to your website. This puts your SEO rankings up, which is quite essential if you want more online visibility. You’ll need a good SEO keyword strategy first. Use a combination of short and long-tail keywords that your audiences will often use in a product search. Don’t forget to optimize your content with these keywords. However, remember that you also need high-value content. It’s not enough to write the keywords in your posts again and again. There’s an art to using organic SEO to build your brand. You Get to Stand Out From the Competition Business owners who aren’t keen on writing find it difficult to use content marketing for business sales. If you’re good at writing entertaining content, make good use of it in your posts. Once you do this, you’ve got a big edge against your competitors. Remember that audiences want something entertaining, relevant, and informative at the same time. Try your best to create posts that are all these things. Don’t forget to create a marketing message that will also distinguish you from your competition. Be conversational and casual, unless your audiences expect the utmost formality. Don’t be afraid to insert jokes or puns into your writing. Finally, use a format that looks good to the audience’s eyes. You Establish Your Brand as a Thought Leader Customers like to buy from brands that establish thought leadership in their niche. You do this by posting informative and in-depth content about something you work with. Again, this is one way of establishing your expertise and experience in the industry. This will establish your authority in the industry in turn. Your content can help others learn about the ins and outs of a trade or product. You can also create content that will help buyers decide what they want to buy. It’s a great way to guide potential customers in your direction. Get More Conversions From Content Marketing Now That ends our guide on the benefits of content marketing for your online business. Through this guide, we hope you now know why content marketing is crucial to increasing sales and ROI. Now you know why you’re creating content on your website. Don’t have time to apply all these things to your e-commerce website? Let us give you a hand! Fill out our form here and see how you can work with us on your e-commerce website. Don’t have time to apply all these things to your e-commerce website? Let us give you a hand! Fill out our form here and see how you can work with us on your e-commerce website.
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