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Why Backlinks Are Critical for Your Online Success

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, Why Backlinks Are Critical for Your Online SuccessEach and every day, more people are creating websites for business and other purposes. The cyber-world is getting quite cluttered. It is more important than ever that your website is visible to interested eyeballs, But, how can you ensure that your site is even seen online at all?

One way to do so is by creating a strong backlink campaign when building out or revamping your website. Indeed, if you are serious about building a top-notch website, you may choose to work with a backlink service.

Website Backlinks: A Primer

To make matters as simple as possible, backlinks are hyperlinked connections from one website to another. A backlink, often just called a “link”, is an encoded pathway for one site to communicate electronically with another. You can think of them as roadways, using the transportation analog, or neural synapses, using the brain physiology model.

Links are easily seen on a webpage as a highlighted text string referred to as an “anchor text“. You can click on it and you will be quickly directed to another page on the web. It may be an internal link to another page on your site. But, in the case of a backlink, it will connect to another site in cyberspace.

Why Backlinks Are Important

High-quality backlinks make your site rank higher with the search engines like Google and Bing. Indeed, before your website site can rank, it needs links. The search engines use backlinks to “crawl” the web and make internet connectivity a reality. The better you help the engines with their operations, the better they will reward you.

Your reward comes in the form of high ranking on the search engine result pages (SERPs). You want to rank near the top for each of your keywords. Indeed, if you are not ranking in the top few pages, your site is essentially invisible.

Not all backlinks have an equal value to the search engines. Some are much more valuable than others. If you have a backlink to a popular, high-volume site, this will curry much more favor with Google than a link to a small site that is never seen. That is why high-quality links are of utmost importance.

If you have a site that has more than one page, be sure to practice deep linking. This is when you have backlinks not only to your homepage but to other pages on your site. For example, let’s say you have a site about coin collecting and you are in the business of buying and selling various coin types. You’ll certainly want links to your pages on dimes, quarters, and halves as well as your home page. Search engines love sites with deep linking and reward them with a higher ranking.

Why You May Need a Backlink Service

Hyperlinked connections from another website to yours can and do occur organically, but at first, the process can be excruciatingly slow. Because link building is so important in raising your site’s online visibility, it is often prudent to work with an SEO-savvy backlink service. A quality backlink service is up-to-date on the ever-changing SEO best practices. You want them working for you.

Tips for Finding the Best Backlink Service

These days, it seems like everybody and their brother has a shingle out on the web posing as SEO experts and site builders. The same is true in the areas of link building. Some of these are excellent firms, others are less scrupulous or savvy. How do you pick the best backlink-building service if you need one?

Here are several tips that will help you ferret-out the very best backlink service providers:

  • Will they evaluate your site content for quality as part of their service?
  • Will they assist you with internal link building as well as in the generation of quality external backlinks?
  • What do they know about SEO?
  • Can they provide a list of super-satisfied customers?
  • Are all costs and fees spelled out upfront?

The online world has become complex and busy. Quality backlinks will help your site will actually be seen.

Role Of Marketing Professionals In Healthcare Systems

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Marketing Professionals in Healthcare|Role Of Marketing Professionals In Healthcare SystemsA common misconception many people have is that all healthcare facilities work for social welfare. Even though it is partially true because healthcare professionals have a better work motive than making money, it is not entirely accurate. Apart from state-owned organizations, private hospitals have ends to meet, and maximizing profits is one of their agendas. And this brings us to the topic of our blog today!

Much like every other business, a healthcare facility also comprises functions that support its operations. These may include finance, administration, marketing, etc. However, that said, we may wonder what role can marketing professionals perform in a healthcare facility?

By definition, marketing professionals are responsible for identifying and creating strategies and tactics to attract customers to a business. You create a product or a service. Your marketing department works towards selling that product or service to your consumers. A marketing professional may perform a similar role in convincing customers to visit your hospital or clinic in a healthcare facility. Here we have a list of functions a marketing professional may act in a healthcare system:

CREATE A WELL-DEFINED MARKETING STRATEGY:

Healthcare organizations are unique business structures. They aim to provide top-notch care to their patients, which is why it is imperative not to sound too greedy for profits! However, being in business, you would still want to increase your customer base.

Marketing professionals can help create an effective marketing strategy and a detailed promotional campaign depending on its subtleties. They are experts in their field, so they know how to position the company using its core strengths. They may also work towards hiding the business’s weak spots or portraying them in a positive light. They can also identify the marketing elements that will best suit your business structure, such as using online marketing tools or sticking to conventional methods.

Expert marketing professionals are remarkable in creating effective strategies and add significant value to a healthcare system. You can look into a hiring business administration individual specializing in healthcare career path to take up a marketing role in your organization. Both the fields would fit perfectly together as such professionals are well-versed in marketing along with healthcare administration.

ASSIST IN DEVELOPING A USER-FRIENDLY WEBPAGE:

Many patients now look towards booking online appointments through websites or calls. Since the advent of the internet, most of what we do has gradually shifted over to the virtual world. In the past, people would have to either make a phone call or pay a visit to book an appointment. Now, merely logging in your details on the facility’s webpage can give you a booked slot!

Customer expectations have altered in the wake of changing communication dynamics. And this is also why healthcare facilities need to advance according to the varying needs of the customers. Marketing professionals can help analyze the expectations of potential customers and devise appropriate strategies for webpage creation. Additionally, they can also link the webpage to the overall promotional campaign. Often your customers may fall in the adult age category who are usually not very tech-savvy. And this is why user needs must come into consideration when building the webpage. The website needs to have a user-friendly interface and have minimum complexities. It is one aspect where marketing professionals can play an imminent role.

OPTIMIZE YOUR WEBPAGE FOR SEARCH RESULTS:

After you build an interactive webpage, the next step for marketing experts is to optimize it. Today customers use the internet to search for whatever they need. Therefore, if they need to find the nearest eye physician, they will log on to the internet and search. Now, the marketing professionals working for you will be responsible for optimizing your webpage to appear on the top of all searches. This way, you will have higher chances of increasing website traffic and scoring new customers.

Search engine optimization is the trendiest marketing tool these days. Marketers use several tactics to ensure you get a place on the first page of search engine results. These often get done by designing the webpage appropriately, creating online blogs, or other useful content. Whatever suits your marketing strategy; however, it is one of the areas where marketing professionals can offer their expertise and play a vital role.

MONITOR YOUR ONLINE PRESENCE:

The reputation of a healthcare facility is of crucial importance. For example, will you ever choose to go to a hospital that recently had a case of patient mishandling? You will surely not. We hand our lives to healthcare professionals. We expect them to exercise extreme caution and care when dealing with health-related issues. It is a risky choice, so customers often take several recommendations before deciding which doctor or healthcare expert to consult for treatment.

Hospitals need to ensure that their online presence and reputation is excellent. A single negative review can taint the reputation manifold and make people fear the facility. And this is why keeping a check on online presence and addressing issues as soon as they arise is imperative. Marketing professionals are apt to handle customer satisfaction and recouping situations where satisfaction levels are low. Marketing professionals can tackle, compensate, apologize, and cover up the situation before such cases create a bad name for the healthcare facility.

UTILIZE SOCIAL MEDIA TO MARKET YOUR ORGANIZATION:

Social media is now the hub of most marketing activities. The majority of people today use these internet platforms since they provide a vast customer pool to target. You can gather customer testimonials, physician interviews, create webinars, or any other useful content that grabs your customer’s attention. Such content is often a great way to create awareness among your potential customers regarding your business. Once your customer knows you, they can quickly look into what you offer and how you are performing. It is the first step towards gaining new clients.

Marketing professionals can help devise social media marketing strategies and utilize it to create new business for your healthcare facility. An absence on social media can prove futile in the days when customers judge you on your online presence. It is imperative to represent your business and that too in a way that favors your organization.

CONCLUSION:

Marketing professionals provide a central role in attracting customers to a business. An organization is nothing without customers, and therefore, marketing is a crucial function in any industry. Healthcare businesses are peculiar; hence, their business functions are also a tad different. Hiring the right professionals can grow your business in the right direction and help provide higher customer satisfaction levels.

Key Factors That Affect the Quality of Your Backlinks

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Backlinks|Key Factors That Affect the Quality of Your BacklinksIn today’s tech-savvy world, digital marketing has made its mark as a superior form of advertising. As search engines continue to give us better ways to reach our audience, marketers use various methods to remain visible online. Among these methods, Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the most result-driven technique to create brand awareness. SEO is all about gaining top rankings on the search results page, enabling customers to engage with relevant products/services for transactional purposes.

Search engines rank websites based on multiple factors that marketers categorize into two parts: on-page and off-page SEO. On-page SEO is about creating an experience on a landing page or website that users find attractive. It includes page layout, color schemes, informative content, design, and other factors present online.

Off-page SEO, however, is much different and complex than its on-page counterpart. It is about receiving endorsements and validation from other highly ranked websites on the internet. They give authority in the form of links called “backlinks” that increase rankings if it has quality.

Importance of Quality Backlinks

Backlinks are the links on other websites that direct visitors to your website when they click on them. While you have various sources to receive backlinks, blog posts and website pages are the most relevant and widely used source. Backlinks are the most crucial page ranking factor that dramatically impacts search rankings. Whenever an authority website links your page, they endorse that you have quality content worth sharing. Since searching for high quality and informative content is the point of searching, linking is a prominent factor for high rankings. Search engines decipher the authority and importance of a site by interpreting the links that point towards them.

Why Do Backlink Quality Matters?

A quality backlink is the link that comes from a high authority and trusted website from the same industry or business. Marketers use various methods and tools like backlink checker to determine a website’s authority and the quality of a backlink. Sites with the highest authority and trustworthiness are the ones that produce the best backlinks and, ultimately, search rankings.

Receiving backlinks does not mean going to any high ranking site and putting a link in comments to obtain authority. There is much more in play that marketers understand and take into consideration. Several factors determine the quality of backlinks that marketers need to keep in mind. These include:

Site Reputation

The first factor that determines the quality of a backlink is the reputation and authority of a website that links to you. Links obtained from a website with higher domain and page authority weigh more than those from an unknown or new site. For instance, if you receive backlinks from sites like HubSpot, TheVerge, or SmashMagazine, they’re generally considered as high-quality backlinks. Google knows that the content present on those websites has relevance and have a long history of publishing quality content for popular keywords.

Page Rankings

Page Rankings (PR) is a benchmark that evaluates each ranking of a website in search engine as set by Google. Pages with high PR often have better authority than the ones with lower or zero PR. Although with recent updates, PR no longer has the same value as it used to before. However, it still holds its share of importance in ranking evaluations and assessment of quality. An important point to consider here is that even high PR websites fail if they do not contain relevant content. That is why marketers do not consider links that have low PR or do not include relevant content.

Same Content Pages

All the SEO tutorials and digital marketing experts emphasize the importance of quality content for getting good rankings and backlinks. If you cannot find a page with sufficient authority, then the best option is to create backlinks on websites with the same content. It does not matter if those pages have a high ranking or not. Suppose you have a blog about digital marketing; you can build backlinks from sites with WordPress or SEO tricks. If you are a guest blogger who providing writing services, you can easily create content to link to that site. The backlink you receive from the site has a quality that Google will appreciate and rank accordingly.

Website Type

The type of website is also a factor that influences the quality of backlinks. Many marketers use methods like submitting articles on famous directories as an easy way to get backlinks. The procedure does not depend too much on backlink quality, and in fact, Google does not appreciate backlinks from such sources. Search engine algorithms categorize such links as spam. Hence, the best backlinks come from blogs, news portals, and digital magazines with high authority. Journalism, education, healthcare, and lifestyle are popular categories.

Placement

Some backlink service providers claim to generate the ‘best’ PR backlinks by placing them in header, footer, or sidebars. Google considers these backlinks the least useful and sometimes penalizes content creators and publishers. For bots looking through the website for indexing, placement plays an important part. Backlinks placed on the top are the ones most preferred. However, they should be contextual via natural placements. Additionally, if you place a backlink at the beginning of an article, it is more likely to get more clicks.

Number of Links

Google and other search engines don’t like too many outbound links placed within the content. They consider it as spam. The best way of avoiding spam is to avoid placing too many links within an article. Just insert relevant links and avoid obtaining them from an unknown or non-authoritative source. Additionally, do not place every link that points to the home page only. Have multiple pages linked to relevant content, or else Google will place the site in the sandbox.

Final Word

For significant SEO results via backlinks, you need to have an endorsement from relevant authorities. However, the quality of a backlink is an essential factor that influences search engine rankings. Remember, relevance, authority, and quality content are your key to success.

Increasing In-Store Visits In A Growing Online World

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Physical Store|Increasing In-Store Visits In A Growing Online WorldOnline shopping has become a massive new market in just the past twenty years. So much so, that now many businesses are purely online, with no physical stores.

But for those who balance both online and physical stores, how can you convince people to visit in-person? Surely, with the ease of access and greater range associated with online shopping, the prospect of coming in-store would seem unnecessary.

Yet your physical store or stores are great investments of capital and staff and can be a great source of revenue. To dismiss them could bring greater losses.

So how can you increase in-store visits in the online world we find ourselves?

Promotion

Customers aren’t going to come to your store if they don’t know where it is, and even if it exists! Depending on the location of your store, you might have to do more or less promotion.

If you find yourself on a busy high street, less promotion will be needed compared to if your store lies out of the way. But in both cases, a little promotion can’t hurt.

Window displays are a great way to catch passer-bys’ eyes. You can get really creative with these, so do some research into the kind of window display that will tempt the right demographic into your store.

Consider making yourself known within your community. Sponsoring community activities – like this company sponsoring the local football team – to promote goodwill, and advertise both place and purpose of your business.

Website

On a similar track to physical promotion, consider the promotion of your physical store on your website. This is a great place to promote, as you already have customers who are considering buying with you there.

Tactical SEO can actually bring customers into physical stores, so signing up for live SEO sessions will help.

The question lies around how to convince those already on your online store to shop physically. There are several options available to you in regards to this:

Quality and Price of Products

When customers shop with you, you want them to shop again—basic business strategy. To even consider tempting customers into your physical store, you first need them to want to shop again.

Therefore, focusing on both affordability (in relation to your target demographic) and quality across all products is necessary.

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Physical Store|Increasing In-Store Visits In A Growing Online WorldRewards & Incentives

Another option for bringing customers to a physical store is to implement incentives. Physical stores can’t offer the range or ease of access that online stores can, so they must offer something else exclusive.

Try using offers like 3 for 2, or discounts on products that cannot be achieved online. Advertising these incentives on your online store has the potential to move customers away from online shopping and into the physical store.

By making these offers bright and eye-catching, it will be impossible for buyers to miss.

Presentation

So you have customers into your store with your promotions and incentives. How do you make them want to come back? The answer is simple: their shopping experience must be excellent.

Focusing the presentation of your store – from basics like wall colour to key details like store layout – can massively impact the shopping experience for consumers. You want everything to be clear and understandable, whilst also being a pleasant place to be.

Presentation isn’t just physical attributes, however. Your store is also presented either positively or negatively. Top-quality customer service is key to incentivising customers to return to your store to buy again.

Health & Safety

Right now, there is an extra level of importance when it comes to in-person stores. With the pandemic, fewer people are shopping in-store than ever before.

When people do come to shop in-store, they need to know that they will be safe. Depending on your location, there will be different regulations, but the inclusion of some general safety precautions can only serve to help you.

Safety precautions to follow:

  • Hand sanitiser upon entry to the store
  • Workers in masks or visors
  • Limited capacity depending on store size
  • One way systems

By following these safety precautions, customers are likely to feel much safer, and return to your store, as they know they will be protected.

Given the increasingly online world business must operate in now, it can seem like physical stores are growing to become dead weight. But a flourishing physical store can boost a business. All it takes is a willingness to focus resources onto enticing people into the store.

Local SEO on Steroids: What Is Schema and How Will It Help You Get More Traffic?

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Schema|Local SEO on Steroids: What Is Schema and How Will It Help You Get More Traffic?If a business or website owner is searching for a way to improve organic rankings and SEO, something to look into is schema markup. While it may sound like some type of jargon that only industry pros use, what many people do not realize is schema markup is not that hard to understand or take advantage of.

Schema markup is an important part of Local SEO efforts. It is also easier than it may sound to implement. With a free online tool, it is possible to mark up all website pages without having to learn any new code. Also, schema markup can provide an immediate boost to organic traffic coming to a website. Keep reading to learn more about schema markup and how to use it to benefit any business and grow traffic.

Schema Markup Defined

Put simply, schema is a type of microdata that provides search engines with a better understanding of what a website is about. Remember, search engines such as Bing, Yahoo, and Google cannot actually read and understand the content on a web page. While it recognizes phrases and words, the web browsers do not know what the words mean.

This is why markup is used. For example, if a website contains the word “apple,” it is possible to use schema markup to tell the search engines if the word refers to the technology company Apple, or the fruit. This has a significant impact on what results are shown.

When search engines have more information about a page, it makes it easier to display content that is relevant to the user’s search. It also allows a website to display additional information on SERPs, which will help the site stand out from the others.

How Schema Markup Works

When used properly, schema markup allows individuals to add more information and new functionality to organic results in the top search engines. It is possible to use schema markup for all types of topics and items. Some of the most common ways that schema markup is used include reviews, organizations, recipes, events, creative works, events, videos, articles, videos, people, products, places, and people. There are full lists related to schema markup online.

By adding schema to the HTML on a web page, web crawlers have a much easier time finding it. This is something to keep in mind when trying to decide if schema markup should be used.

Creating Schema Markup

To begin the process in Google, open the Structured Data Markup Helper. The second step is to select the type of data to be marked up from the given list. Enter the URL of the page where the information should be added and then highlight an element on the left side of the page. Next, it is necessary to select the type of the highlighted item and repeat the steps until everything has the proper schema markup on the page.

Getting Help with Schema Markup

Schema markup is going to help ensure people who are interested in what you offer find your page. While it can seem confusing at first, there are professional services that can help ensure the desired results are achieved. For some busy business owners, allowing the pros to handle this process is best.