5 Social Media Mistakes Your Business is Making
Social media connects our world in a way that no one has ever seen before. Revolutions, social movements, and critical political discussions are constantly happening on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. For small businesses and entrepreneurs, social media has become the great equalizer. It gives access to the same marketing tools that big companies utilize for themselves.
Having a solid marketing plan enables you to use vital social media channels to help you reach your business goals. There are, however, common social media mistakes that even the most successful of companies tend to make at times. Here are some of them:
Ignoring Customers’ Social Media Habits
Using social media is not just about making customers understand your business. In fact, it’s the other way around. Your primary goal should be to make customers feel seen and understood. It’s not about you. It’s about your customers.
If you dabble in social media without even an inkling of your customers’ online behavior, your marketing plan is already doomed from the get-go.
As digital marketers, our first task is to get to know our clients’ target market intimately. The first step is to identify social media usage statistics. What social media platforms do the target audience use? How are they using them? What makes these platforms appealing to our market? What kind of content do they typically consume? When are they most active?
Once you have the answers to these questions, you’ll find that formulating a strategic plan has become a lot easier. If your users tend to be active from 7 pm onwards, you must post content during that period. If they engage more with videos, it’s logical that your content must be geared more toward video content. If they spend more time on Facebook, you might want to put more effort into your Facebook page and cut back on Instagram or other social media platforms.
Use this information and incorporate it into the decision making process. Having a clear idea of where your target users are and how they behave saves you time and money in regards to marketing experiments. Leverage the knowledge to your business’ advantage.
No Solid Content Strategy
Some businesses might regard social media as an easy platform to leverage, therefore not allotting the much-needed resources for it. These companies often tend to generate lots of mediocre content, post non-stop, and wear everybody out.
Content is king, but great digital marketers know that quality content beats any other type of content. Quality content takes the what, where, and when into account.
Make sure that your posts provide value to your customers. Don’t just post anything for the sake of posting. Each piece of content must serve a purpose, may it be to educate, inform, or entertain. Use Buzzsumo or Social Blade. These tools can help you research what it is that your customers care about. Understand where their interests are. From there, you can brainstorm relevant content that has higher chances of engaging audiences.
Post only once or twice a day to avoid people seeing your brand too often and getting tired of it. If you update your accounts too much, you run the risk of people getting desensitized and straight up ignoring you. Stories and live updates are great social media activities, but you must limit your status updates to once or twice a day to ensure quality and create anticipation.
Leverage your video content. Facebook, YouTube, and yes, even LinkedIn’s algorithms are friendly when it comes to videos. They want users to stay longer, and videos are an effective way to achieve that. Videos get twice as much engagement and views compared to other mediums.
Disregarding Your Audience
Think of it this way. You’re a shop owner that sells plants. A customer walks in and browses the store. They notice a rare indoor plant that’s usually hard to take care of. They proceed to compliment you for taking such good care of it. Do you stand there and not answer them? Of course not. You smile, engage them with small talk, and perhaps, you might even score a sale.
Social media is called social for a reason. It’s a two-way street. Meeting customers halfway is the best practice. We have noticed that some companies with exciting products don’t engage with their audience. Even though they have quality services to offer and superb content, their posts are not gaining much traction. They only receive a comment or two. This is because these clients are missing a vital piece of connection with the people.
Likes, views, and comments will naturally come in if you put out a friendly persona that anyone feels they can talk to. Even if it’s just a simple “thank you” message, having a nice “You’re welcome. We hope you enjoy our services!” reply could make all the difference.
People respond to people. If they feel that your brand is someone they can relate to and even respect, it will put you right ahead of the competition.
A general rule of thumb is to treat people on social media as if they’re right in front of you. Having a strong and genuine connection with your community is always good for the business.
Not Understanding the Difference Between Search and Social
We’re giving it to you straight. Social media is a different beast from search engines like Google and Bing. You must understand the mentality of why people go on social media and why they go to search engines. People go to search engines with a need, while people typically go on social media to kill time.
We socialize with our family and friends, watch videos, and consume articles on social media about things that matter to us. People aren’t necessarily going to social media with their credit cards in hand.
Unlike search engines, pushy or hard-sell posts don’t generally do well on social media. People aren’t looking to buy anything there. If you keep pushing the same direct response, infomercial-type posts to your audience, you might be on the wrong platform. If you’re looking to sell a product that is where a national SEO campaign can come handy. Social media is great for brand awareness and engagement.
Seek to engage customers by having content that serves to educate, entertain, and inform them.
Being Afraid to ask for Help
Let’s look at the statistics. Facebook influences more than half of all online and offline consumer purchases. Pinterest accounts for 25% of all retail website traffic. 80% of millennials check Twitter at least once daily, and Snapchat reaches 41% of all 18-34-year-olds in the United States. Social media is inescapable.
With so many options available, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and put off from crafting a comprehensive social media plan. People usually end up posting content that doesn’t help them get to where they need to be.
Learn to reach out and ask for help. Whether it’s in the form of buying a book, taking online courses, or even hiring a marketing agency, entrepreneurs must actively learn how to utilize social media to help their business grow and become successful. Achieving virality is not just about luck. It’s about understanding the algorithm and learning how to play with it.
The Bottom Line
Our everyday lives heavily involve social media. When we wake up in the morning, the first thing we do is check our phones. We spend hours scrolling through our news feed, taking in information left and right. Social media marketing is an essential tool that you can implement if you want your business to thrive.
Our agency offers top-notch social media marketing services that can help build your brand’s credibility. We have launched hundreds of successful social media marketing campaigns that helped local businesses boost their brand performance online.
If you’re looking to grow your presence online, contact us today. We’re happy to help out!
Top 6 Steps To Effective Social Media Marketing
Start a Successful Social Media Campaign
Running social media pages is one of the most cost-effective ways to increase brand awareness, enhance customer experience, and boost sales. No matter how big or small your company is, social media marketing can help you achieve your digital marketing goals.
As digital marketing experts, businesses often ask us for tips on how to improve their social media pages. Read on for six steps to effective social media marketing.
Step 1: Clearly Define Your Target Market
This advice is straight out of basic marketing classes, but many business owners forget about this step. We highly recommend clearly defining your target market before attempting to run several social media sites.
Defining the target market involves knowing your potential customers’ age, location, gender, interests, and digital habits. Here are some interesting facts about how Americans’ age affects their social media preferences:
- Sixty-nine percent of American adults have a Facebook account, and 75% of them visit the site once a day.
- Seventy-three percent of American adults use YouTube.
- Thirty-seven percent of American adults have an Instagram account.
- Smaller percentages of adults use Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Whatsapp.
- The top social media site for American teens is YouTube, with an 85% usage rate.
- Instagram and Snapchat are the top two and three social media sites for teens, with 72% and 69% usage rate.
- Fifty percent of American teens still use Facebook.
Choosing social media platforms for your business entails knowing your target market. As you can see in the numbers above, markets have different digital marketing habits. If you are targeting adults, use Facebook, YouTube, or Instagram instead of Snapchat or TikTok.
Additionally, Facebook Custom Audience settings can help you target your potential clients based on where they are in the sales funnel. You can create distinct ads for top, middle, and bottom-funnel clients. Using this feature is a powerful tool that lets you customize your strategies to fit your customers’ preferences.
Step 2: Set Goals
The next step in boosting your digital presence is setting social media goals. Set SMART objectives — specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound. We suggest using similar social media goals:
- Increase Instagram followers by 1,000 per month for the year.
- Grow monthly site traffic from social media by 20%.
- Generate 50 new leads per week.
- Increase sales from Facebook by 10% versus last year.
Another goal you can have is to optimize your social media pages to strengthen your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. It’s not easy to measure, but surveys reveal that half of the companies failing at their SEO attempts don’t integrate their SEO and social media efforts.
Once you’ve set goals, you can adjust your budgets and techniques accordingly.
Step 3: Analyze Your Competition
The third step on our list of social media tips is creating a competitive analysis of your rivals’ social media efforts.
Employ the best practices you observe, and find their weaknesses. Through your competitive social analysis, you should observe the following:
- Preferred platforms
- Posting frequency
- Effective campaigns
- Consumer feedback
Use your research to make your social media sites stand out.
Step 4: Practice Content Marketing
The dictionary definition of content marketing is creating and sharing online material such as videos and blogs intended to stimulate interest in products or services. Content marketing suggests using high-quality posts that don’t always explicitly promote your products or services.
Using quality content can help you attract and retain visitors that you can eventually turn into customers. However, 60% of companies have difficulty consistently creating content, and 65% struggle to produce engaging content.
Lego uses content marketing well. Its YouTube Channel has over 11.4 million subscribers, and they gain access to Lego creations, campaigns, fan features, and more. Lego shares the YouTube videos in its Facebook and Instagram channels, with a combined 20.7 million followers. These videos often get tens of thousands of social media views and shares.
Of course, it takes a while to build a digital presence as relevant as Lego’s. The point is, your content should bring value to your page. Instead of always posting about your products or services, you can post about recipes, fun facts, beauty hacks, infographics, and other compelling content.
Step 5: Create a Social Media Plan
Step number five is creating a social media plan with goals, a content plan, and a calendar. We’ve already discussed goals and ideal content, so let’s talk about your calendar. Your weekly calendar should always be a combination of functional, thematic, and valuable posts.
Here’s a guide on how often to post on social media sites. To summarize:
- At a minimum, businesses should post on their Facebook pages three times per week. Anything more than once per day is too much for this platform. We recommend posting between 1–4 PM.
- For Twitter, you can post anywhere between 3–30 times per day. The most popular Twitter accounts tweet around 23 times a day.
- For Instagram, once a day is ideal. Three times per week is acceptable. Remember to choose the ideal Instagram sizes and use appropriate hashtags. Avoid posting photos or videos on your home page in quick succession.
Step 6: Measure and Analyze Your Results
The last step in creating an effective social media plan is to measure and analyze your results and compare them to your objectives. Here are some things you can measure:
- Volume: Find out how many people are talking about your brand. You can count brand mentions, hashtags, and tags.
- Reach: Measure how many people have seen your content. Doing so can help you determine your potential audience size. Reach has three classifications.
- Organic reach is the number of people who saw your post in their feed.
- Viral reach is the number of people who saw your post from social sharing.
- Paid reach is the number of people who saw your post through a paid social media ad.
- Engagement: Measure how many actions your post received. This measure includes comments, likes, and shares on Facebook. On Twitter, this translates to replies and retweets.
Enhance Your Social Media Presence
Enhancing your social media presence is one of the most cost-effective methods you can use to boost your digital presence. Work on your social media presence to unlock your company’s full earning potential. Contact us at SEO Locale if you’re looking for an agency to help your business grow digitally.
2021 Growing Your Business with New Years Resolutions
2021 New Year’s Resolutions For Businesses
The year 2020 was a year filled with change and uncertainty. We saw many businesses shut down or downsize due to the effect of the global pandemic. It has been hard for many, but we saw that there was always room for opportunity.
Some trends, methods, and businesses flourished last year and have set the tone for 2021.
What Happened In 2020?
Due to the threat of the coronavirus, many industries slowed down, and some even shut down. Airline travel was almost nonexistent. Prices also lowered for many industries, including retail, causing them to lose profit because demand was also too low.
Businesses that have relied on foot traffic took the biggest hit. Those that could not adapt to an online or safety-focused model were ones that lost the most.
Our clients saw improvement with their SEO as we pivoted for their business. Staying on top of the changes when the pandemic hit.
2 Client Digital Marketing Pivot Examples:
There was light in the midst of the chaos and darkness, though. Ecommerce had one of its best years, with most people turning to online shopping as the budget for travel and events converted.
Computers and home office accessories also jumped in prices due to high demand. Everyone was working from home. Companies also realized that there are ways to function even in unusual conditions.
Resolutions For 2021
We don’t need to put a lot of focus on 2020. The best thing we can do about it is look ahead to decide what we can do for this year. If you’re looking for some resolutions for your business, here are some ideas to help you start moving forward.
Prepare For The Resurgence
People are hungry for a return to a normal state of living. They want to catch up on the time they lost in 2020.
Many analysts believe that people will be more open to using their money for goods and services this year. This is especially true since they haven’t been able to do many things in the past year. With vaccine distribution underway, we may be closer to a virus-free future.
Every recession opens the door for a new boom in all markets and industries. The last major recession occurred from 2007 to 2009, when both the housing and oil industries collapsed. After it ended, economies and various markets returned to their pre-recession form in the span of two to four years.
Keep your customers informed of how you are operating. Pivot for the changes ahead.
The question is if you’ll be ready once this resurgence hits. Here are some ways to prepare for it:
- Create goals and objectives for 2021
- Do competitive SEO research to expand your local or national reach
- Prepare your marketing plan for the year ahead
- Look for beneficial partnerships and build relationships within your community
- Update any outdated content or processes you may have
- Update your website with a clear message of how you are operating
- Create a new web design if you have not done this recently
- Try new things (social media, update logo/brand)
- Nurture your current or previous customers with email marketing
Remain Flexible
New trends will occur as the year progresses. By staying flexible and relevant, you will not only survive this year, but you can flourish in it.
Consider how a focus on safety and health paved the way for safety-focused products to thrive. Even before the pandemic, businesses had to adapt to each new change they face in their respective industries.
For example, the pandemic brought about a more work-from-home environment. Many companies realized that they don’t need to pay expensive upkeep for office space and materials. If you are functioning well with this current setup, why not continue with it for a while?
Stay Positive And Optimistic
Despite what many consider one of the worst years for business, the global economy is still on track. Many business leaders believe that the world will be back on track by the second quarter of this year. If inoculation occurs by the middle to the end of this year, then we only have a few months left before it happens.
If you remain positive and optimistic, you can see areas of action to take advantage of this year. Not only that, but your attitude will also influence and drive other members of your team. Stop focusing on what has happened and see what you can take advantage of this year.
Get Creative with Digital Marketing
It always pays to think outside the box and approach problems with a different perspective. One of the ways to do that is to learn something new. Figure out ways to present your company in the community or increase your online presence with creative digital marketing techniques.
You can take an online course and commit yourself to learn a skill. Not only will it add value to you, but it can also give you a different take on how to approach your business.
The skill doesn’t even have to be directly related. You could be learning a new language or having music lessons and still get something out of it. New experiences allow you to meet new people who can turn out to be new colleagues or customers.
Give Yourself Time To Rest
As business owners, we are always thinking. We are thinking of ways to survive and to thrive. Entrepreneurship can be demanding, and it can take a toll on us. You may not feel it physically, but your mental and emotional state could have suffered a lot the past year.
Take some time to rest and relax. Set your mind on other things for a while. Here are a few things you can do:
- Read an interesting book
- Listen to audiobooks or podcasts
- Start a journal
- Become involved in meditation or yoga
It’s Time To Make Plans And Set Goals
Every step you commit towards a better 2021 is a step that will affect your business from now on. Put your plans on paper and set goals that define what direction you want to fulfill this year.
Don’t forget to relax and enjoy each moment along the way. We’re always looking at the big picture, but looking at the end of the line will not benefit you if you still have many things in front of you.
Take things one step at a time. 2021 will be the start for many business owners to move forward. If you stay true to your New Year’s resolutions, you can enter a very different 2022. This year has promise, and you wouldn’t want to miss out on taking advantage of it just because the previous year didn’t work as well as you wanted to.
Why Your Marketing Plan Should Include SEO
Search engine optimization improves your online visibility, increasing your chances of gaining customers. When you are marketing, you’re actively promoting your products and services. By implementing SEO in your marketing, you allow this promotion to reach a wider audience.
Starting off with SEO you need to understand what type of digital marketing you’ll need for your audience. Will you need to setup a local SEO campaign? Maybe a national SEO campaign? Or a hybrid campaign that has the benefits of local and national SEO combined.
The Benefits of an SEO Focused Marketing Plan
According to studies, over 62% of consumers turn to search engines when they want to discover new products, services, or businesses. This is a large pool of potential buyers we can tap into if we implement SEO best practices. Optimized marketing leads to your business appearing at the forefront of consumers’ searches.
Each rank you increase in search engine results translates to more traffic. It is one of the most affordable marketing methods because most techniques that improve search engine rank positioning (SERP) are reachable. You can market your business to the exact people looking for your services rather than blindly firing your marketing materials into the crowd. With high intent keywords you can find the people looking for your product or service.
You can measure, adjust, and improve SEO. Being aware of SEO in your marketing puts you a step ahead of the competition. If you maintain your website or campaign’s SEO, you will remain a popular option even when competition becomes tighter. You can use an agency to help you maintain your rankings or use SEO tools out there to keep you ahead of your game in SEO. Keep in mind that the first option for any search always gathers 20.5% of all clicks.
Examples of Effective SEO Marketing Methods
There are many ways to improve marketing by using SEO. Let’s tackle two ways you can apply immediately.
Video Marketing and YouTube
Data shows us that YouTube is the second most popular website on the internet, accounting for two billion active monthly users. It is the second most popular search engine, and many people prefer to view video content over text. Videos catch people’s attention. They are also one of the most shared types of media on social networking websites.
Of course, you can’t just make videos and expect to gain traffic. You need proper implementation of SEO to get noticed. Once you start getting noticed, your traffic will only go up from there. Here are some steps you can apply to your video content:
- Create an engaging and clickable SEO friendly title using relevant keywords.
- Create a short blog post on your video description, describing your content in detail. It helps YouTube categorize your video.
- Use an enticing thumbnail to optimize your video
- Create playlists to entice users to watch more of your content
Content Marketing
One way to improve your credibility and connect with your audience is by focusing on your content marketing.
Longer content that helps users and collates information is valuable online. If you create comprehensive and updated content, people are likely to use you as a reference. The more people refer to you, the more you connect to your intended audience.
Build A Strong Marketing Plan
SEO is a great tool that can help enhance all your marketing efforts. The benefits are cumulative as each step you improve on SEO creates an online foothold for your business. More people will be able to see and connect with you, building your brand. SEO is efficient, and you should always apply it to your marketing plans.
Work With An Agency – That Can Get You Results
You can see in our video above we got our client Cupid’s Box the results of a lifetime in 2020 compared to his year in 2019.
+2,022.18% Increase in Revenue via Google Organic.
+3,419.69% Increase in New Users via Google Organic.
-91.39% Decrease in Google Pay Per Click (Saved ~$55,000) to make 75.25% more revenue!
Need Help Building a SEO Marketing Plan for Your Business?
SEO Locale knows how to create a custom SEO marketing plan that will be right for your business. It isn’t a cookie cutter plan that is created for all. Let us do the heavy lifting and show you how you can be successful with the correct SEO marketing plan.
Contact us if you are looking to hire an SEO agency to help grow your business online.
How COVID-19 Impacted E-Commerce and Paid Search in 2020
COVID Makes E-Commerce and Digital Marketing More Important Than Ever
No one would have been able to predict the catastrophic economic turmoil that many businesses went through in 2020. Thanks to the Coronavirus, 2020 saw the closure of many brick-and-mortar buildings. Unable to transition to an e-commerce platform, these businesses were among many of the casualties of the pandemic. Yet those who were able to make the transition noticed that it brought with it many changes in how e-commerce performs, particularly where Google is concerned. Here is how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted e-commerce and paid search in 2020.
E-Commerce Grew Exponentially
Unable to perform business in their own buildings, many small businesses were forced to transition to an e-commerce service. While this meant that some merely needed to open an online store, others made the switch to a complete e-commerce business structure. Those who made the transition saw that they were able to keep their business afloat, even as spending briefly stagnated.
Yet consumers, thanks to stimulus packages, were still willing to spend their paychecks on essential and other services. Small businesses that made the switch outlived their competitors who did not adapt to the changes brought on by the pandemic.
In particular, those businesses that implemented the winning strategies to bring themselves high on a SERP saw their profits increase. Those strategies consistently revolved around:
- Digital marketing
- Social media integration
- SEO performance
- Emphasis on user experience
Google and Bing Encourage Small Business Shopping with Local Shopping Ads
Both Google and Bing did their part in bringing awareness to local businesses that offered curbside pick-up by implementing new ads. In various places, consumers were able to see local stores that offered the products they needed through curbside pick-up. Even Google Maps introduced new optimized ads to help bring awareness to local businesses.
Bing introduced visual search to their product listings. This was done in the hopes of consumers discovering products easily and making comparisons between prices and product descriptions even easier.
Social media platforms also included e-commerce. Pinterest added a Shop category that allows consumers to purchase goods based on pins. Facebook launched Shops which allows businesses to create an online storefront. Online shops are able to be integrated both on Facebook and on Instagram.
Artificial Intelligence is More Present in Ad Development and Usage
Machine learning has played a key part in the development of ads for Google. Google made a few changes for the automation of ads that emphasize the idea that artificial intelligence will continue to play an important role in ads in the future.
Some of the key areas where automation played a part are:
- Audiences
- Discovery feed
- Search terms visibility
- Automation
Automation and machine learning for audiences have allowed advertisers to target predictive audiences more easily. Using information based on churn probability and past purchases, the data advertisers receive can help them create more impactful campaigns.
Google released Discovery ads from testing and monetized them. Spanning across Gmail, YouTube, and Discover, Google can now boast a combined audience of 2.9 billion users.
Yet Google has also made it more difficult to know what keywords are working in your company’s favor. It seems to be pushing everyone to a zero-keyword future. While they will still release information about certain keywords that see a significant amount of usage, they did not disclose what that significant number would be. This change can make it difficult for companies to know if their SEO campaign is working or not.
Lack of Ad Support for Small and Medium Businesses
Google made a misstep when it announced that it would not be supporting ad rep support for small and medium businesses. It also changed its Google Partner eligibility requirements. However, they did roll out $340 million in ad credits to small and medium businesses to help them transition to an e-commerce platform in the wake of the pandemic.
Need help with your digital marketing or national SEO campaign feel free to reach out to us.
Online Shopping Shatters Old Records on Black Friday 2020
Economic Woes Didn’t Stop Online Shoppers
Many experts were wondering how holiday sales would turn out in the wake of the pandemic. With many stores having to change their policies due to the influx of Coronavirus cases, there was significant doubt as to how well the economy would perform. In addition to changing the physical shopping experience, experts also wondered if the economic situation would impact how much households were willing to spend.
Miraculously, statistics indicate that holiday sales did not just exceed expectations–they overcame them.
The small businesses who prepared to switch their business model with eCommerce SEO did exponentially well. We’re excited to see the consumers helping out the small businesses through tough times in 2020. These sales numbers are encouraging a ton of businesses to completely stay up with the times in terms of their digital marketing.
The Lead-Up to the Holiday Weekend
Black Friday and Cyber Monday saw a lot of trouble leading up to the holidays. Coronavirus cases continue to spike in huge cities. Businesses are forced to either close or limit the number of people in the store at a time. Due to some states having to go back down into lockdown, manufacturers had to reduce the number of products they could produce.
All of this was occurring with the fact that households are still suffering financially. Many people are still out of work. Those that are able to return find themselves either working part-time or being forced to stop as businesses are closed again and again.
Despite economic uncertainty, this did not seem to stop holiday sales.
Thanksgiving saw a significant rise in sales. However, the majority of those sales came from online sources. In fact, compared to past Thanksgiving days, this year saw an increase in online sales by 20%. The amount raked in through online stores was $5 billion.
Interestingly, half of the online transactions that took place were conducted on a smartphone.
Those retailers who offered curbside pick-up for those who ordered online sales also had a stronger conversion rate in their sales.
Black Friday saw similar growth. They had an identical increase in online sales. Consumers ended up spending $9 billion despite their financial insecurity. The number of people who used their smartphones to pay for purchases was 40% of the total consumer base.
Small Businesses Flourished
Luckily, small businesses saw a good deal of sales. Their sales increased by 500% compared to what was happening in October. That would continue into Saturday with revenue growth of 300%.
This means that small businesses that made the investment in switching to online sales and service were able to bring in substantial financial growth.
The Smartphone Angle
Perhaps one of the most interesting trends of these holiday sales is that most of them were conducted by a smartphone. This only further confirms that consumers are relying on their smartphones to purchase goods and services over other platforms. Small businesses that want to continue to engage their consumers and bring in sales need to ensure that they have a website that is mobile-friendly or design an app specifically for their company.
Switching to an eCommerce & Online Service
By making your website SEO-friendly and having a mobile site available for smartphone users, your business can have just as much success as some of the other small businesses that made the investment. Building a competitive edge in the market is important moving forward. Businesses panicked in 2020 because their “offline” sales weren’t ready to be online.
SEO Locale is a premier SEO company in Philadelphia that provides top-notch digital marketing services. We’ve been doing digital marketing for decades and can help you pivot your company to a better 2021, contact us today.
Google’s New Small Business Advisors Program Aims to Help SMBs Grow
Small business owners are not given the same resources as corporations or enterprises. They are often left on their own trying to figure out how to gain an edge over one another. Google wants to help. In the wake of businesses having to shut down due to being unable to adapt to the current pandemic climate, it is vital that small business owners take advantage of the kind of advice that Google offers. Here is what small business owners can learn from the new Google Small Business Advisors Program.
Who Can Apply?
One of the aspects of their advisor’s program that Google has emphasized is that its program is for small businesses only. While they do not give a fine definition of the parameters of a small business, it likely means anywhere from a handful of employees to just under 500 workers.
If you have employees within that range, then you can likely apply for their program. As it stands, Google charges $39.99 per session.
What Will Occur During a Session
During your session, which will likely take place through a video call, you will sit down with a Google expert. You are able to tell the advisor about one or two different products that your business sells. Due to time constraints, Google does not suggest attempting to squeeze any more in. You will likely need to pay for another session in order to discuss other products that you have.
However, in the session, the advice that the advisor gives will likely be scalable. You may be able to extend it to the rest of your products.
In particular, the session is about helping your business make the most of Google’s tools and services to grow your business and bring awareness to your brands. Google has tons of programs and services that can make running a small business more profitable.
Yet not all small business owners know how to use these tools or what they even do. An advisor can show them what tools can have an impact on their business and in which way to use them.
Digital Marketing to Beat Your Competitors
One avenue that the advisor will likely discuss is digital marketing. If your small business is running to catch up to join the rest of the businesses around you online, then you have a lot of work ahead of you. To ensure your business attracts the traffic it needs to stay afloat, you need to master digital marketing.
One move that some small business owners make is to internalize digital marketing. Yet simply passing on the construction and upkeep of a website to a typical employee is not a good business move. It is unlikely that the employee has the digital marketing training and experience your company needs.
Instead, you should look for an agency that can grow your traffic for you. This includes helping your business understand SEO, Google Ads, and other forms of monetization and traffic growth that translates into sales. Our premier digital marketing agency in Philadelphia has a proven track record to help all types of businesses thrive online.
Start Growing Your Small Business Today
Learning from Google’s Small Business Advisors Program can help your small business grow and expand. If you want an agency to do the digital marketing for you, we’re here to help grow your small business. Contact SEO Locale if you are interested in any type of digital marketing.
Holiday 2020 is Do or Die for Many SMBs
The COVID-19 pandemic hit small businesses the hardest. Big box stores frequently have investors and savings and even help from the government to rely on. Small businesses, on the other hand, don’t have easy access to these resources. Many had to shut their doors. A few managed to hang on, but they’re facing a crisis coming into the holidays. Most business owners was not prepared for online order or eCommerce and struggled once COVID-19 came crashing down on the United States. Here’s why small businesses need to do everything they can to make a sizable profit during Holiday 2020.
The Impact from the Coronavirus
For months, several businesses had to shut their doors to their customers. Lockdowns kept businesses from running their operations. Customers and workers were unable to utilize their services or make an income. Yet some businesses still needed to pay their employees to keep them on board. Others had to keep paying health insurance premiums and other bills even though they weren’t bringing in any profit to cover their expenses.
This has left many small businesses in the red. With the virus still hitting many cities hard, small business owners are hoping that the virus remains contained enough that they can keep their doors open to the public.
Yet many reports have indicated that the majority of shoppers will be doing their holiday spending online. Small businesses that haven’t utilized certain SEO strategies may not see the kind of profit margins that they need to survive the new year.
How Small Business Owners Can Take Advantage of Holiday Sales in 2020
More than ever, it’s important for small business owners to adapt to the times. Consumers are worried about big crowds in stores. Some states may not even allow stores to accept that many customers within them at a time.
To ensure your small business can receive the profit it needs to get back on its feet, you need to have strong traffic on your website. The best way to acquire that traffic is through SEO or search engine optimization.
SEO involves the process of using strategies and tools to increase your ranking on a Google search. Proper honing of your SEO score can land your website on one of Google’s first few search pages. By showing up sooner in a Google search, consumers are more likely to visit your website and make a purchase.
It can be tricky nailing down the particulars of SEO. While experts know a few key strategies that can dramatically increase your SEO score, much of the algorithm is still a mystery. To ensure your website performs as best it can, you need the help of SEO experts.
Contact Us to Increase Your Score
Start preparing for the holiday sales today by contacting us to increase your SEO score. We’re ranked as one of the best national SEO agencies out there. Let us save your business.
Online Holiday Sales Could Reach $200 Billion Thanks to COVID
With a recent report from Adobe stating that online holiday sales may reach $200 billion, it’s more important than ever for businesses to hone their SEO and bring traffic to their website. SEO Locale is a leader in the eCommerce SEO space, we help businesses grow their online sales and we’re going to break down the reasons why you need to step it up. Here’s why businesses can expect their online stores to be hit harder than their physical stores in 2020.
The COVID-19 Pandemic
While online sales have been steadily rising as the preferred way for consumers to shop, it’s the Coronavirus pandemic that is pushing most consumers into the arms of online stores. It’s simply safer to buy their holiday gifts online than it is going to a store.
Yet the pandemic has also brought into question as to if consumers are going to spend as much this year as they did last year. Many families were hit hard with job furloughs and lay-offs. While many of those families now have their job back, others are still unemployed, and for many, a large gap in their savings is gone.
Another stimulus check may help bolster families and allow them to spend as much as they would like this holiday season. However, as of yet, there hasn’t been any real action on a second stimulus check.
Regardless, any holiday shopping that is going to be done will likely be performed online.
Other big businesses are gearing towards this shift. Some, like Wal-Mart and Target, have even closed their doors for their usual Thanksgiving shopping sales.
With Black Friday quickly approaching, businesses need to be prepared to garner as much online traffic as possible to make up for the losses that the pandemic waged on them.
How to Find Those Holiday Sales
Businesses who haven’t implemented an SEO strategy are missing out. SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process in which a website utilizes certain tools and strategies to make Google’s search engine rank their website higher on their search result’s list.
If you’ve ever searched for anything on the internet, then you know that you likely don’t look past the third or fourth page during a Google search. No one has time for that. If your business is on that fourth or fifth page during a Google search, then you’re missing out on tons of traffic.
Implementing an SEO strategy can increase your SEO score and land you more consumers. If you have money to make up for because of the pandemic, then investing in SEO experts and strategies is essential to your survival.
Start Including SEO Today
It’s a race to the first holiday sales and those who hone their SEO score will receive most of the sales. Contact us if you want to learn more about our custom national SEO packages.
How Does User Experience Affect Your SEO?
A lot has changed since the initial days of SEO. Back then, all developers needed to do to make their website rank well on Google’s search page was keyword stuff. Times have changed. To ensure that spammy or low-quality websites are not clogging up the search page, Google has implemented a number of changes to how their search engine optimization algorithms work. Now, more than ever, the state of your UX determines how well your website does when determining its rank. Find a white hat national SEO agency that can help you achieve your digital marketing goals. Here’s how UX affects your SEO score.
What is UX?
Those who do not continuously dwell in the land in web development and web design may not immediately understand what UX is. UX stands for User Experience. It describes the sort of experience and ease with which your users have when using your website. It has made up of a few key components. They include:
- Bounce rate
- Page dwell time
The bounce rate of a website corresponds to how many times users visit a single page on your website and then leave. This indicates to Google that they either visited your Home Page or a landing page and could not find what they were looking for. Patience is incredibly thin when users visit websites. If your Home Page or landing pages are not giving them the quality information that they seek, then they will exit and move on to the next website. A high SEO score requires a low bounce rate.
Page dwell time refers to how long the user spends on the website. It is a measure of their engagement. Obviously, if they spend a lot of time on a page, then they are reading what the page says because it is informative for them. To rank high in SEO, you need a high page dwell time.
Now that you know the two main metrics that Google uses to analyze your UX score, you can then influence those metrics to better your overall SEO score.
Factors That Influence UX
The key to improving your SEO in terms of your UX is to focus on these key factors:
- Load time
- User-friendly URL structure
- Mobile syncing and optimizing
Let us break these down further.
1. Load Time
Users are not going to wait a long time for a page to load. They have things to do and can’t wait around for your website to get its act together. A few variables may add to the load time. Large pictures, in particular, are to blame. They can also make your page look messy. When it comes to pleasing website design and fast load time, less is more.
2. User-friendly URL Structure
If you look at your search bar at the top of the screen, you should see a URL. A high-quality URL structure is an easy-to-understand list that describes and categorizes which page you are on in a website. Search engines use the structure to index the websites. Using a user-friendly URL structure that includes the website’s name, the category they are searching, and then the specific page, is a great way to help both the search engine and the user.
3. Mobile Syncing and Optimizing
If you do not have an app or a mobile website, then you are not going to do well for your SEO ranking. More users than ever use their phones to search for businesses or ask questions. The interface of your mobile site needs to be compact, easy to understand, and load quickly.
Trust the Experts
Clearly, there are a lot of variables involved with creating a great UX for your website. To make sure your website is ranking as high as it can, trust the experts at SEO Locale.