The most important challenge, and usually the biggest, for any business, is to make sure they stand out from their competitors. This is especially true in the digital landscape today because consumers are constantly bombarded by content and different marketing messages from brands. You want to make sure that when people are searching for a service or product similar to what you offer or sell, they find you and not your competitors.
Sure, you can engage in paid advertising like pay-per-click and search engine marketing, but there are plenty of excellent SEO strategies that can help boost your website traffic organically. When your website traffic increases, your sales increase as well, so of course it’s in your company’s best interest to engage in organic strategies in addition to any paid strategies.
Here is a how-to guide on how to boost your website traffic organically.
Write for humans, not robots
Assuming you know exactly who your target audience is already and you have taken the time to create buyer personas, you should write all of your content on your website and blog for readers, not search engine algorithms. If you’re spending all your time crafting content for search engines, your content will read poorly, will be full of keywords, and will ultimately turn customers off.
Instead, focus on writing for your audience and speaking to them as if you were having a conversation in real life. Be personable and offer them information that they can use, instead of trying to please Google’s algorithms. If your audience finds value in your content, the search engines will automatically take notice.
Create a website blog
If you haven’t already, what are you waiting for? Blogging is one of, if not the most, effective way of increasing organic website traffic. It fosters better relationships between you and your target audience, it builds trust between your brand and your potential and current customers, it improves brand awareness, and it can even help establish you as an industry thought leader or expert in your niche.
Regularly publish content
Maintaining an active presence on both social media and your own company blog is an essential way to maintain good SEO and boost organic traffic. Having a consistent posting schedule will reinforce your brand as a strong voice and a good place to find solutions among your audience. Moreover, your content should always be high quality, so don’t sacrifice quality for quantity because this can do more harm than good.
Use the right keywords
Choosing the most popular keywords in your market is not always the best way to go about this practice. Instead, you should focus on the keywords that are most relevant to your audience. This usually means using more long-tail keywords than short keywords, especially in the age of voice search, since that’s what audiences are shifting to when they’re searching for solutions online.
Your use of keywords is important because top search engines will use them to recognize your website as the right destination for specific questions in a particular subject or niche. Over time, your ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs) will increase, making it easier for your audience to find you instead of finding your competitors.
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As a small business owner, one of the most important processes that you need to go through is building your brand. You need to build a strong brand image so that you can stand out from the crowd, be memorable, and establish yourself in your particular industry. It can be a challenging an lengthy process, especially if you are in a competitive industry, but there are a few steps to take, which should deliver powerful and lasting results. So, if you have recently launched or you are simply looking to improve awareness about your company, below are a few tips for building your brand.
Create A Strong Identity
First, you need to make sure that you have a strong brand identity. You can never stand out from the crowd and be memorable if you do not have a strong identity. You may need to make a few changes. Look to the world’s most famous companies for inspiration and focus on these areas:
Once you have a strong brand identity, you then need to use this everywhere so that people start to become familiar. It means having the company logo on all forms of communication, having promotional materials like pens made up, and even having the logo and tagline on the main wall in your office.
Use Social Media
In today’s digital age, social media is an incredibly powerful tool for building your brand online and reaching a huge audience. Make sure that you have strong branding on your social media channels and then create and share a stream of engaging, helpful, and relevant content to your target audience.
Use Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is the most effective way to increase your visibility online. Using experienced agencies like 1stchoicemarketing.co.uk should deliver fast and lasting results, which will help to improve brand awareness and reputation while directing more traffic to your company website. Online visibility is key in a time where modern consumers use the internet to find what they are looking for so this needs to be a key area of investment.
Give Back
Today’s modern consumer is also more selective with the brands that they use when it comes to their morals and ethics. This means that it is helpful if you are a company that operates ethically and also helps to give back in one way or another. It could include donating profits to a charity, getting involved with the local community, hosting fundraising events, or anything else that shows that you are a brand that cares.
These are the main areas to focus on when building your brand as a small business. It can be hard to stand out from the crowd when you are a smaller company, especially if you are operating in a competitive industry. Strong branding and knowing how to get your name out there is key if you are to succeed and compete with the larger brands and these tips should help you to achieve this.
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Marketing is one of the central processes in the running of any business. If the marketing is done in the right way, then the business itself is going to be a success. However, if it is not right, you never know what fate might befall the company. But perfecting interactive marketing is a real challenge. There could be many times when you find you need help with it. It’s helpful to know for sure when you need that help, so that you can seek it out in time and make the most of it. In this post, we’ll look at a few of the clearest signs that you might need some help with your marketing.
Your Sales Are Low
One of the surest signs that you might need to consult a marketing agency is that you just aren’t shifting any products. Most businesses experience the occasional dip in sales, and that can be the result of a number of different things. But sometimes marketing is the problem, and it’s good to be aware of when that is so. Even if that is not the reason, you will find that improving your marketing is going to make a huge difference to how many products you sell, and for that reason it is absolutely worth looking into anyway. If you feel that you could be selling more, take a look at your marketing and see whether you might need any help with it. That alone could well be enough.
A Weak Brand
As a business, you need to have a strong brand which people can immediately recognize and relate to. This is central to keeping your business in line with what you want to achieve, and it is one of the things that you are going to want to keep an eye on throughout your business. However, if you have come to realize that your brand is actually relatively unclear, then you might find that it is necessary to step back and allow some marketing experts to take a look at it. If they can improve your brand in any way, you are bound to find that this will improve your marketing generally, and the performance of your business.
You Don’t Have The Time
Marketing well takes time, and if you just know that you don’t have the time, then that is one of the things that you are going to need to think about. That means that you will benefit greatly from giving your marketing over to the professionals. It is a good idea to make sure that you bear that in mind when the issue of time management crops up and becomes hard to bear. By giving the work to someone else, you can keep your eyes on the prize in other places, and hopefully it will all come together in a business that is functioning much more accurately and expertly.
With an awareness of when you need to get help, you will be able to keep the business operating much more efficiently. Consider this early on if you want to make a big difference in your company.
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Ecommerce is the rocketship that doesn’t run out of fuel. Year-on-year, ecommerce continues to grow. It’s the way of the future and it makes perfect sense. One of the best reasons why it makes perfect sense is because it makes shopping easier and quicker. These two things lay in the website design field. Navigation is one thing, but the user experience is going to cater for outright speed. Online customers want an ecommerce website to do one thing above all else and that makes it easy for them to find what they want. That’s it, it’s not complicated. Well, in theory, it’s not but website designs have to be unique and interesting which puts a spanner in the works of UX. There are some rules to follow, which for any ecommerce business will make it easy for customers to search and filter their way to the products they desire.
Optimize suggested searches
At the top of your ecommerce website, you should have a search bar. This is best kept right in the middle of the high bar so it’s clearly in view for every page. As visitors click on the search bar, there should be an automated search suggestion. For example, you’re a retail clothing business, a visitor types the letters ‘jea’, your search bar should immediately suggest things like ‘blue jeans’, ‘jeans for men’, ‘dark denim jeans’, etc. However, the trick is to bind your search bar, suggestions and your cookies to remember each search that an individual has made. This way you can optimize the suggestions to include products or similar products they may have already bought or looked at before.
More options the better
It’s important to understand some customers may only be half sure of what they are looking for. They may be in the business of searching for a new pair of jeans but they don’t know what sort they would like. This makes a suggestion bar kind of limited as there are no visual representations of those suggestions. That’s why a faceted search for bigcommerce is invaluably useful. The search results will show images and prices of the jeans but with a filter option, they can decide to only see jeans in their size, in their desired color, brand, price and category. By seamlessly clicking on each option, they can narrow down their search with the aid of changing visuals to accurately represent their options.
Recovering baskets
Many times consumers don’t have the time or the patience to log into their account and start shopping. Sometimes they’ll just swipe and browse items they are interested in. they might also click ‘add’ or ‘buy’. Since they’re not logged in, if they were to click off the page they would lose their basket. However, with a flexible cookies policy, you can remember the machine or the IP address the basket was made from. Therefore it will remember the same items that were selected when that person does eventually log back in and make the purchase for real this time.
The quicker you can find products for your customers, the easier their shopping experience with you becomes. Focus on optimized search suggestions first to get a feel for what individuals may like. If you need help, get a B2B website designer.
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In the course of my years partnering with web developer and SEO specialist Sagapixel, I’ve learned a lot about how to market my firm. I am a busy Philadelphia appeals attorney and had to learn the hard way that running and marketing a law practice has nothing to do with the practice of law. They don’t teach you this in law school!
Hopefully this synopsis of what I’ve learned will help anyone starting their own law practice, or anyone who has trouble marketing their law firm and needs more clients. The Four P’s work!
What Are the “Four P’s” of Marketing?
First, I learned about the 4 P’s of Marketing—Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. This is a fundamental marketing model that worked 80 years ago and will work 80 years from now, regardless of what new technology arises that changes the way we shop for and purchase goods or services.
If you keep the four P’s in mind, you will have a clear, defined marketing strategy that supports your client acquisition goals.
The First P of Marketing a Law Firm – “the Product”
A lot goes into choosing an area of practice to focus on. Often, an attorney will get a job out of law school, become highly skilled in one area of law, then go out on her own to open a solo practice without looking first to see if the local market is saturated.
Not ideal.
Before you commit to paying for advertising services in a market that you may or may not be able to compete in, consider the following:
1. Is there a big player that already dominates the market?
If there is, be prepared to languish as a very small player for a very long time.
For example, in the Philadelphia area market there is a law firm that does TV ads, places billboards all over the region, and spends a few million dollars on Adwords a year. Yes – a few MILLION dollars.
This firm has made a name for itself as “THE workers’ compensation firm” and it is now incredibly difficult (and expensive) to get workers’ comp clients through advertising. Keywords related to workers’ comp are about 50%-100% more expensive to bid on than keywords from other areas of practice.
The upshot is, it will be difficult and expensive to penetrate a market with a dominant player.
2. Can You Create a Niche?
Frank at Sagapixel told me about a conversation he had with Eric Diaz, a prominent real estate attorney in Philadelphia. He was telling Frank about some of what he does for his clients. During the conversation, he mentioned something his firm must do for all clients that involves tedious paperwork that many attorneys do not like doing.
Frank told me how he interpreted this as an opportunity and suggested to Eric, why not offer this service to other firms? He could train a young associate to do that tedious paperwork, then own it.
I thought this was great. I was lucky in that early in my career I gained experience in a fairly narrow area of practice in government service, then was able to parlay that experience into my own appellate law firm.
By creating or taking over a niche, an attorney will have both a strong value proposition and differentiator that will allow him or her to stand out in a market. Think of it in your own case—would you prefer to hire an SEO agency that specializes in law firms or a firm that works with just anyone that walks in the door? Prospective clients feel the same.
The Second P of Marketing a Law Firm – “the Price”
I’m not going to get too much into pricing here though I will recommend that you take a hard look at your pricing model. The hourly model that many attorneys use could be inferior to a value-based model such as those promoted by consultant Alan Weiss. I have seen that using flat fees that are standard in the region works for many types of law practices.
The Third P of Marketing a Law Firm – “the Place”
This is another area into which I will not go into much detail because this is most often specific to an attorney’s area of practice.
If you have your own law firm, you’ve probably already decided about the “place” of your firm without realizing that that decision is a crucial part of your marketing plan.
Different areas of law have different “place” requirements. A medical malpractice attorney might choose a pricey office right across the street from a hospital. But an attorney whose practice is primarily electronic, like bankruptcy, might relocate to an area with lower costs of living and work remotely.
If you can work from home, do it – for any new firm keeping costs down is vital. Of course, consult your jurisdiction’s rules as some states do require a physical office.
The Fourth P – “Promotion”
Your Law Firm’s Website
The days of people searching the phone book yellow pages are over. People go online to search for goods and services, legal services included. Even if you have a big billboard that someone happens to notice, you know that someone finds you online and checks out your website.
I’ve seen that creating an effective website is as much art as it is science – please choose your web developer wisely. Your website developer will help you:
Develop your personal brand – what differentiates you from other attorneys practicing your area of law?
Generate relevant content that establishes your knowledge and experience in your practice area
Generate content that starts clients on their Buyer’s Journey to retaining you
Optimize that content to help convert leads into clients by creating a “call to action”
Get your website seen by people who need your service, through SEO
Create a positive user experience by organizing the site logically with fast loading pages and a prominent
Contact form
Optimize the site for mobile users
Google Ads – Adwords for Law Firms
But what are Google Adwords? I certainly had no idea until I started working with Frank at Sagapixel.
Google Adwords (now called Google Ads) are an “online advertising platform developed by Google, where advertisers pay to display brief advertisements, service offerings, product listings, video content, and generate mobile application installs within the Google ad network to web users”, according to Wikipedia.
How Do Google Ads Work? Advertisers bid on certain keywords in order for their clickable ads to appear in Google’s search results. Since advertisers have to pay for these clicks, this is how Google makes money from search. This is also called Pay Per Click, or PPC.
If this sounds like it takes too much time away from your law practice – you’re right. This is why you should consider hiring Google AdWords advertising agencies that handle law firm SEO and PPC to do it for you.
Google Reviews
It is important to touch base with clients after you’ve represented them to ask about their experience. If they respond that they had a positive experience, you should ask them for a review.
There is software that automates this process so that it is hands-off for you. Use it.
Tracking the Performance of Your Online Marketing Efforts
Google Analytics tracks viewer’s behavior and shows you which of your online marketing activities are working and which need some tweaking. Again, this is something your SEO firm handles for you.
As you can see, there are many moving parts to marketing a law firm online. When you establish your own firm, you are taking a big leap of faith that you are going to make it. Educating yourself, then choosing the right web design and SEO firm, will help you create the online marketing strategy that brings you the business you need not only to survive, but to thrive.
About the Author
Todd Mosser, Esq. is a Pennsylvania appeals attorney admitted to the bar in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the U.S. Courts of Appeal for the Third, Sixth, and Ninth Circuits, and the United States Supreme Court. Mr. Mosser attended Shippensburg University and the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, graduating with honors.
Mr. Mosser worked for eight years as an Assistant District Attorney in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office Appeals Unit prior to opening Moser Legal in July 2013. Since then his firm has litigated over 900 civil and criminal appeals. Mr. Mosser is a leading legal authority in his field, having been quoted in The Legal Intelligencer and having served as a television legal commentator.
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