Posts

Top 4 Things to Keep in Mind When Developing a New Business Website

/in /by

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, Top 4 Things to Keep in Mind When Developing a New Business Website

No matter what your business is about, your target audience is online. People are constantly browsing the search engines and social media to find exciting brands and local businesses.

In fact, according to last year’s Local Consumer Review Survey by BrightLocal, 92% of consumers look at businesses’ websites when deciding on a business. So, the short answer to whether you need to invest in a business website is a resounding yes.

A business website will help you stay competitive, establish credibility, and take your marketing to the next level. But as you go about developing your new business website, there are some things you must ensure on your website, the four most important ones being:

Usability

First off, think of your website user’s perspective and answer these questions:

  1. Does it load fast enough?
  2. Do you find it intuitive to navigate?
  3. Do you like the look-and-feel of the site?
  4. Is the copy engaging enough?
  5. Does it look trustworthy?
  6. Is it mobile-friendly?

You must focus on creating a website that allows you to say “yes!” to all the questions above. That is, your website shouldn’t take more than three-to-five seconds to load.

Make sure your site’s design is easy to navigate and responsive (adapts automatically to the screen size on which it is loaded) while being aesthetically appealing. Also, ensure the content on your website is engaging and exciting.

NathanIves.com Designing Your Digital Products Platform Online Training Program

All these factors make up the web core vitals that Google will be analyzing on your site for its much-anticipated update in 2021. Cobiro shares that sites that do not meet the requirements the search engine powerhouse are looking for will fare badly in the SERPs once this update is rolled out. So getting ahead of the curve and taking action is the best way to get your site in line with Google’s priorities and help you to ride out the changes without your traffic being affected adversely.

What’s more, your website should also be accessible. Simply put, an accessible website is one that accommodates all visitors on all devices irrespective of the physical or mental ability of the visitor.

As website accessibility is mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), failing to make your website accessible makes your business vulnerable to costly lawsuits by advocacy groups. Indeed, discussions about website accessibility have increased and 2018 saw a 181% rise in Federal ADA lawsuits over 2017.

So, test your website with web accessibility evaluation tools and consider using a web accessibility software so that everyone has a great user experience on your website. You can also hire agencies like Web Integrations that build websites that are compliant with accessibility.

Ranking on the first page of Google is crucial to bringing in more business and achieving a better ROI for your website.

Search Engine Friendliness

As such, usability and search engine friendliness go hand-in-hand. Search engines like Google are quite smart. If your site delivers a great user experience, then it is already well on its way to becoming a high-ranking website.

For example, site speed, which is essential for usability, is officially a ranking factor for both mobile and desktop searches. Likewise, a poor site structure will hamper your site’s indexability by Google crawlers.

While SEO is a vast topic that needs special attention, ensure that your website is in line with these basic best practices:

  • Content, page titles, meta descriptions, and URLs should be keyword-optimized.
  • All external links must be pointing to high-quality websites, internal linking must be done properly, and there are no broken links.
  • All images should be compressed and have appropriate alt text.

In fact, search engine friendliness is also influenced by your website’s security…

Security

Needless to say, your website’s security is critical for both your business and your website visitors. A secure website serves as a safe environment for potential clients which in turn, helps boost sales.

So, don’t wait for cyberpunks to remind you of the significance of having a secure website. Make sure to have the following in mind when developing your new website:

  • Strong login credentials for better immunity against brute force attacks.
  • Up-to-date content management system (CMS) and plugins.
  • Frequent site backups, malware scans, and vulnerability tests.

Also, get an SSL certificate to secure the connection between your hosting server and your visitor’s web browser. Once an SSL certificate is in place, browsers will show a padlock sign next to your website address which indicates that all the information exchanged by the visitor on your site is safe.

In other words, an SSL certificate guards your customer’s sensitive data and is considered so important that Google uses it as a ranking factor.

So many small businesses, including SaaS startups, agency websites, blogs, and eCommerce stores fall prey to hackers every day. The last thing you want is to lose your business to a hacker, or worse, compromise your customers’ data due to a cybersecurity lapse on your part. So, prioritize security when developing a new business website.

Grammar

Yes, you read that right. If you wish to create a website that people would find credible, you can’t afford to have grammatical inaccuracies plaguing your website copy.

Sure, as a business owner, grammar may seem like a trifling matter. But make no mistake, something as simple as a spelling mistake has a big influence on your business’s credibility.

Poor grammar and frequent typos can become a major distraction for visitors, making it impossible for them to focus on the meat of the matter. It indicates a lack of professionalism and sloppiness in business practices, which would be off-putting for your site visitors and potential clients.

Therefore, see to it that every piece of content and copy on your website is grammatically flawless.

Over to You

Right off the bat, paying heed to just these four aspects of your website will most certainly result in quicker, more sustainable, and scalable business growth. And so, make sure to get them right.

About The Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Pratik DholakiyaPratik Dholakiya is the founder of Growfusely, a content marketing agency specializing in content and data-driven SEO. He regularly speaks at various conferences about SEO, Content Marketing, and Entrepreneurship. As a passionate SEO and content marketer, he shares his thoughts and knowledge in publications like Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, Entrepreneur Magazine, Fast Company, The Next Web, YourStory, and Inc42, to name a few. He can be reached at Twitter @DholakiyaPratik

 

How to Market Your Business in 2020

/in /by

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Market your Business|How to Market Your Business in 2020Nowadays, businesses have access to an unprecedented range of marketing tools. By leveraging all of them, you’ll be able to access the maximum possible number of would-be customers. Some, however, may be better suited to your circumstances, and thus worth extra attention.

Let’s take stock of a few of the key marketing tools available.

Business Cards

For good reason, many new entrepreneurs place considerable focus on digital marketing. But it would be a mistake to neglect the enduring appeal of a physical business card. Hand out a business card to a potential lead, and you’re achieving several things:

  • You’re avoiding what might be an awkward and time-consuming conversation.
  • You’re giving them all of your contact details in an instant.
  • You’re establishing that you are a serious professional who is worthy of their attention.

instantprint, the online printing company, recently studied the science behind the business card, finding that white, yellow, and green were the most successful colours with 45.4% of Brits favouring a traditional design that represents the business. 30.8% also prefer a no-frills design with only the necessary information on display. This information is worth bearing in mind when designing your own business card.

Flyers

For some businesses, flyers remain especially effective. This includes businesses whose reach is very short. A local takeaway should be focusing its marketing efforts on the surrounding area, and door-to-door menu posting remains by some distance the most effective ways to do this.

Social media

A presence on social media will allow you to communicate with your clientele, drive their engagement with your brand, and thus gain access to valuable insights that can inform your future decisions.

Even if you don’t create any content yourself, your presence alone will yield benefits. With that said, taking the time to create content can pay dividends in drawing traffic to your business. If you have a special area of expertise, then why not publish some instructional blogs on the subject? Do your keyword research, establish what your customers are looking for, and then give it to them. You’ll be rewarded with traffic.

Influencers

Influencers have become significant players in the global digital economy. Their behaviour influences (of course) the behaviour of those who follow them. If you can get your products and services to feature in their content, then you’ll create an avenue through which a new audience can discover you and what you’re about. You’ll want to do your research before engaging with potential influencers. Vet their social media to see whether their approach makes a good match with your brand, and whether their audience coincides with your own. If you’re looking to market to younger people, then online influencers remain among the most effective ways of reaching them. Court them and keep them onside.

Ways Monitoring Your Competition Can Drive Your SEO and Business

/in /by

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, Ways Monitoring Your Competition Can Drive Your SEO and Business

What would it feel like to have a competitor beat you to the top of the search engine results page (SERP) after all your effort and hard work in search engine optimisation (SEO)?

What if you’ve applied all the SEO tactics you know, yet a competitor’s web page keeps ranking higher than yours?

You don’t have to hate a website for ranking higher than you or beating you in the SEO game. Hating a competing website is a thing of the past when it comes to the Internet. It’s true that having a higher ranking competitor could lead to not achieving target website traffic, more time, and extra expenses.

However, the online world today has made it possible to use a better ranking site to your advantage. Your SEO drive doesn’t have to dwindle. Instead, you should monitor and analyze your competition to get more benefits from SEO and increase page rank. You should look at their content, keywords, and site optimization. You should monitor your competitors’ social media activity.  You might wonder, “how can monitoring a competing website help me optimize my site?”

Let’s take a look at a few ways that can happen:

It Helps You Create Better Content

Content is king on the internet. Search engines primarily rank web pages and sites based on content. Google rates websites on E-A-T which means expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. This rating guideline concentrates on quality and reputation of the entire website content, including blog posts and landing pages.

When a website is consistently at the top of the SERP, you can be sure the site is creating epic content that meets search engine criteria. You can look at such site’s landing pages and blog posts.

However, don’t copy their work and regurgitate it on your site. That is plagiarism. Instead, put a twist on the topic or find out a recurring question by visitors in the comment and write an article to answer the question. This means you can get content opportunities from this strategy. You’ll always have fresh content in the form of blog posts, articles, ebooks, and press releases.

It Helps You Find and Use Better Ranking Keywords

While analyzing the content of competing websites, you can find out their potential relevant keywords, domains’ link popularity, and page result characteristics. You will also need to use the Google Webmaster Tool to research traffic that your site gets for various search queries.

This will show you the most effective keywords that bring in traffic. Find out how your competitor ranks for those keywords. Then, you can use the keywords to create researched, high-quality content. Once a user types in the keyword in search engines, your web page will have a better chance of appearing in the results.

You Can Improve Your Branding

Your branding is what sets you apart from your competition. It can help drive your site to the top of your niche market and create customer loyalty. SEO helps build brand awareness. A competing website will have its own branding and unique selling point too.

First, you need to research their website content. How do they promote their brand in each post? What is their brand strategy? Then, you can research their online presence, content output, and customer engagement. By doing this, you can identify the competition’s target audience, targeted niches, and customer attraction strategy.

With the information you’ve gotten, you’ll know what to do to strengthen your unique selling proposition. You can also find new methods of creating brand uniqueness and making your site more appealing to a shared audience. Through this, your online brand presence and search visibility can increase.


It Improves Your Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing and site optimization are intertwined. Let’s say your website’s profile has millions of followers, and your article has a hundred thousand shares on social media; if this is the case, your search rank will likely improve. You need to monitor your competitors’ social media activity by noticing how they interact with followers and what is shared the most. You can track their posts with tools like Hootsuite.

One way to take advantage of their social activity is to reach out to their followers with your content. Some of them won’t be following you. They can be interested in your content and visit your website, which can lead to increased traffic for you.

Another way is to analyze their marketing tactics and tweak your social media strategy to accommodate the successful methods they’ve used. You can also find out which content does well on social media. A post that’s successful on social media will rank high on the SERP. Once you identify the competitors’ content, write an article with a similar topic and mirror their content strategy on social media.

You Can Gain More Backlinks

Getting inbound links from authority sites can help your SEO drive. A competing website that is properly optimized will be building links, just like you are. You can reach out to those sites to get them to link to similar content. Also, you should track any new backlink they have and find out if they’ve adopted a new strategy.

The most important thing here is not to copy every detail of the competing websites’ link building strategy. Instead, use their methods to strengthen your SEO techniques. You can build on their strategies and incorporate yours at the same time. That way, you can have a better internet marketing campaign overall.

It Can Help You Improve SEO Activities

By examining a competitor’s SEO strategies, you’ll be able to keep up with industry trends and find out when something new is on the scene. For example, higher ranking websites may change their SEO strategy and style suddenly.

This can mean a few things. There could be a new algorithm update, and they’re adjusting their optimization strategy too. They might have found out a better way to make their web pages rank higher in the SERP. They might be trying to avoid a penalty or might be removing a black hat SEO technique. Whatever it might be, you can quickly learn from it and ensure your website benefits from it or avoids disaster.

It Can Help You Avoid SEO Pitfalls

By watching your competitors’ ranking and optimization strategies, you’ll know what works and what doesn’t. You’ll find out the SEO tactics that are not yielding much result and will likely become obsolete. This takes a lot of effort because you’re recording every detail in terms of their optimization actions. On the other hand, it helps you avoid falling in the SERP ranking because you know what strategies to copy or not.

Final Words 

Winning in SEO means ranking at number one in the SERP, having strategic keywords, and increasing your website’s online visibility. Analyzing a higher ranking website’s SEO style can help you create better content and give you insight into what optimization strategies work best for your industry. You should always research and monitor your competitor from all angles to improve your SEO New Orleans and to stay one step ahead.

5 Methods to Attract More Customers to Your Restaurant

/in /by

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article | 5 Methods to Attract More Customers to Your RestaurantRunning a restaurant is hard work. It’s not simply a case of cooking up some food, serving it up to customers, and earning a profit. Many different elements need to be considered. This includes everything from managing a front of house team to the logistics of regularly ordering fresh ingredients.

With so much going on, it can be challenging to find the time to actually market the restaurant.

However, adequate promotion is an essential component for your restaurant – particularly if you’re a newcomer to the market. Established, award-winning eateries can get by on their reputation alone, but beginners have to fight for every customer.

If you’re struggling to get people through the door to sample your food, here are five methods to attract more customers to your restaurant.

Place your restaurant details online

As a starting point, ensure your essential restaurant details can easily be found online. This should begin with both a Google My Business and Facebook page, where you can feature details such as the restaurant’s location and opening times.

Also, it’s highly recommended to create a dedicated website for your restaurant. This site can add further information, including your menu complete with prices and exclusive deals.

Speaking of deals…

Run a limited deal

If someone is undecided about visiting your restaurant, there’s one way to ensure they turn up as a paying customer: offering an enticement of some sort.

What can this enticement be, exactly? Well, for one example, it could be an offer where a customer buys one meal and receives another for free. It might be 20% off the total bill or a significant reduction on a set menu.

People love to feel like they’re getting a deal, and this is an effective way of giving them that feeling.

Use PPC advertising

If your restaurant is in a bustling city with a plethora of restaurant options available, it can be challenging to gain any visibility via local SEO means. There is, however, one way of having your restaurant show up in local search results: PPC.

PPC, aka pay-per-click, is a way of placing an advert for your restaurant above organic results in search results. Mostly, if you use Google Ads, your restaurant will appear first in any relevant local searches. For more information, Made by Factory, one of the leading PPC management agencies around, can provide all the help you could need.

Ask for reviews

Reviews are often the lifeblood for any small business. Positive reviews for your restaurant will help illustrate the quality of your food and service. The more glowing reviews you receive, the more potential customers will believe your eatery is the real deal.

As a result, don’t be shy in asking previous patrons to leave a review if they were happy with their visit.

Don’t avoid traditional marketing techniques

Yes, the above tips primarily focus on digital marketing. However, you should never avoid traditional marketing techniques. Leaflets are an excellent method for supplying potential customers with details about your restaurant. Another example would be to run a print ad in a local newspaper.

This Is How Much to Spend on Facebook Ads

/in /by

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, This Is How Much to Spend on Facebook Ads

Facebook ads! They whisper promises of high revenue and ROI until they cost too much. People spend up to thousands of dollars on Facebook ads hoping for the best results, but there is usually more at play on how much to spend on Facebook ads.

In 2019, Facebook ad spend reached $25.56 billion, which was a 107% increase from 2016. As a business, you obviously want to try out Facebook ads for yourself, but the question is, how much should you spend on them?

One of the best things about Facebook ads is that it doesn’t matter how big or small your budget is, and you can spend as little as $1 a day and still get results. However, this strategy doesn’t work for everyone, so we’ll help you figure out how much to spend on Facebook ads for your business.

How Much Should I Budget for Facebook Ads?

There isn’t an absolute answer to this question because so many things are at play. You have to consider the exact costs of the click-through-rate, cost-per-click, cost-per-1,000 impressions, and cost-per-action.

When showing your ads, Facebook considers two things; positive and relevant experience for customers, and value for you as the advertiser and how your ads reach your target audience. You get to reach the people who are receptive to your ads, and users get to see ads they are interested in.

Essentially, this means advertisers with the highest monetary bids win. It means that the advertisers with the best value come out on top, so what you need more than a high budget is valuable adverts.

Factors That Determine How Much to Spend on Facebook Ads

There are several factors at play here. You need to consider them to come to a decision about how much to spend on Facebook ads.

Consider Your Bid and How Much You Need to Show Your Ad

Once you create a Facebook ad for your business, you’ll be joining a huge pool of advertisers, some of whom are your competitors. You’ll be competing with multiple businesses for the ad spaces available, and your bid amount will determine how interested you are in getting that spot.

The higher your bid is, the higher the chances of getting that ad space and having your ad shown to your target market. You can set your bids manually, or automatically. Manual bids involve setting a maximum amount of money you want to spend on your ads, and you’ll enter bids depending on how much they are worth to you.

The thing about bidding manually is if you bid too low, you may not get the kind of exposure you’re looking for. You still get what you pay for, even on Facebook ads. When you choose automatic bids, Facebook will decide the bid amount for you and use the entire bid budget to maximize your results.

Consider the Ad Quality and How Interested Your Target Audience Will Be

Facebook determines the relevance and quality of an ad, depending on how it performs. It considers both positive and negative feedback. Positive feedback in terms of video views, clicks, or app installs and negative in terms of the number of people that clicked on the “I don’t want to see this ad” option.

They provide a Relevance Score for all ads, and if yours is high, they show your ad more times than those with a low relevance score. Even better, you’ll get to pay less and reach more people in your target market.

Consider Estimated Action Rates

Estimated action rates refer to how likely people are to react to your business ads. Are the people who come across your ad likely to click on it? Facebook makes a determination based on the past actions of your target market and how many times they have clicked on similar ads and purchased products or signed to the services advertised.

Your Target Market

How many people are you targeting? Your target market and the number of people you’re trying to reach will essentially impact how much you spend on Facebook ads.

Your competitors are fighting the same battle and trying to reach the same people, and the more competitors you have vying for the same audience, the higher the cost will be to reach them. Beyond that, the age, location, languages, interests, and behaviors of your target audience may influence your advertising costs.

What Time of the Year Is It?

Certain peak times of the year, more advertisers vie for the same ad spaces, and during such times, the advertising costs rise as well. Some of these times include holidays such as Thanksgiving, Cyber Monday, Black Friday, Christmas, and New Year’s Day.

Where Your Advertisements Appear

The Facebook ecosystem is huge, and placement will also determine how much you pay for your ads. Your ads could appear in Facebook’s desktop News Feed, Facebook’s desktop right column, Messenger, Audience Network, Instagram’s mobile News Feed, or Facebook’s mobile News Feed. So, determine which location your target audience is likely to be while making a choice.

What Your Adverts Are Optimized For

Optimization for ad delivery could determine who gets to see your ads. For instance, if you were to optimize your Facebook ads for lawyers for clicks, Facebook will show them to people who are more likely to click on them. This will profoundly influence how much to spend on Facebook ads because any action taken will affect your Relevance Score.

Additional Extras

Alongside paying for your adverts to be posted, it’s also important to consider the cost of getting adverts made in the first place. Tools like Creatopy banner maker make it incredibly easy to get started with a beautiful advert banner, all without having to pay the price for a graphic designer.

Using options like this is great for businesses that would rather spend time than money. Of course, though, there’s nothing wrong with paying someone to do the work if you are short on time.

How Much to Spend on Facebook Ads: A Guide

As much as you want to consider how much to spend on Facebook ads, you should also consider your ROI, both financial and social. All these factors come into play when determining how much you should spend on Facebook ads and what you want to achieve.

If you like our post and would like to read more informative articles, please check out our blog section.