The Need of SEO in the 21st Century

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The term Search Engine Optimisation is quite a head-turner. It is something that dominates the market scene of the 21st century. If one were to put things into perspective, Search Engine Optimisation or SEO, was always there since the advent of the Internet; just not in a way and scale as it is today. You cannot think of a business venture that still puts its faith in medieval methods of marketing and branding. It does not work anymore. New age requires newer and fresher solutions to every marketing woe. This is exactly where SEO steps in. Its revolutionary approach to notch up the branding and marketing game few notches up has become a game-changer in the arena of digital marketing. There is no way one can hope to thrive and scale businesses without seeking refuge in SEO.

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article | The Need of SEO in the 21st Century
 
The article discusses the importance of SEO in the 21st century, how it has led to a tectonic shift in the world of digital marketing and how enterprises can keep benefitting from it in the days that shall follow. But first, we are going to run through the basic concepts.

What is Search Engine Optimisation?

Simply put, Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is a technique which helps in putting your business website on a suitable spot in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) and thus, enhances its ranking. Ranking on search engines is of paramount importance in this century since that is the only way a business endeavour can hope to gain the required attention to its products and services. You might have the best products or services in a certain niche. But if you cannot get them to your target audience, all your efforts into making the best for public and making money hands over fists will end up in smoke. You must first be able to convince your target group about what you have to offer and how they differ from the rest of the products in the market, before you can do something to convert them into your loyal customers. Search Engine Optimisation helps you take your business out there in the world by acquiring good ranks on the results page and by grabbing the eyeballs of your target group.

How Does It Work?

We have discussed quite a few points on SEO and how it works in this day and age, in the previous section. But we now need to see how exactly it contributes towards scaling a business. So, we talked about how SEO helps in tweaking the rank of your website on the SERPs. But why do you think that is even important? It is tremendously important for visibility, yes. But that is not all. It is crucial because the right techniques of SEO draw more and more potential clients and customers to your website and help them make an informed decision regarding your service.

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article | The Need of SEO in the 21st Century
 
The technical jargon of this world would be, drawing optimum ‘traffic’ to your site. Once your website keeps drawing organic traffic to itself, it will definitely succeed in converting customers, and thus, help in enhancing the conversion rate. Therefore, it is quite clear why Search Engine Optimisation has such importance in today’s world.

Coming up with the right SEO hacks is not very simple and we have excellent analysts and agencies who handle this part of digital marketing for almost every business venture. They look into what kind of websites are drawing traffic, study their on-site and off-site elements, research on Google’s metrics and then come up with ways that conform to Google’s standards of ranking. Google is the smartest search engine ever devised, and that is why it is not easy to fool it with reverse engineering hacks. But smart SEO analysts and experts know just the right ways to do that. Google keeps upgrading its metrics for ranking to enhance user experience. Therefore, if you want to outrank other websites from their topmost ranks on the Search Engine Results Page, you have to up your SEO game and look for ways in which you can conform to Google’s ever-evolving needs.

Conclusion:

Search Engine Optimisation is an institution in itself, one that cannot be understood in one article. It has several techniques and methods associated with it, and not even one carefully structured course could deal with all the details. It requires years and years of experience and maybe only then, one can hope to understand what this entire world of SEO actually is. However, for starters, know that SEO is an integral part of digital marketing, and no business can climb its zenith of success without asking for its help. Therefore, if you have been in two minds about the SEO and whether you should rope in an agency or an expert to cater to its needs, brush any dilemma off your mind. The 21st century calls for SEO to be involved in every venture and marketing tactics, and you should do the same.

3 Ways To Harm Your Online Marketing Campaign Before It Gets Going

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article | 3 Ways To Harm Your Online Marketing Campaign Before It Gets GoingIt’s often seen that social media marketing opens up a massive amount of marketing potential. That is true to an extent. Now customers potentially hold your miniature-billboard in their pockets, and throughout many social media timelines may see the product you are offering. However, while this sounds easy, it’s important to understand what you are now competing against.

You are competing against other notifications and ‘skip ad after five seconds’ video options. You are competing against consumers are effective at ignoring marketing due to being bombarded with it day and night, at least in most countries around the world. You are also at the whim of simply being too boring, not engaging enough, or not as clear as you could be regarding your business messaging.

This means that without care, you could harm your online marketing campaign before it even gets going. That’s unlikely to be a scenario anyone wants. So, let us help you subvert that with the following advice. We only hope it can help you reach the business heights you have been dreaming of:

Fail To Find A Clear Message

You might have some art-school ambitions in you, but it’s not up to the audience to try and figure out what product you are selling or what the point of your entire messaging was. Even vague, suspense-building campaigns, such as Orange, one of the UK’s most famous telecom firms in the mid-2000s, announced its launch by placing Orange squares on billboards allowing people to question what that meant. However, pretty soon they revealed their intent, and allowed people to see what their presentation was, until there was no doubt in the mind of those who had previously questioned this approach. Isolate your message, because when distilled, it can have the most impact.

Fail To Care About Sudden Trends

Social media moves at a staggering pace these days, and is also one of the most lucrative means of marketing your business. We would recommend utilizing expert social media analytics to stay ahead of the curve, allowing you to focus on your approach with dedication and care. Staying relevant and able to keep on top of data points, of building a picture regarding your audience and also keeping forecasts of activity in mind can help you truly become the business that catches the early worm.

Fail To Incentivize

It might be that you are happy to offer a 10% off code to those using your services for the first time. This is a solid incentive. But instead of factoring that into the price and not mentioning it, mention it as you should. Show that Twitter users have their own code if they follow your link, or perhaps even more concessions made to those who have tried to learn more about your business. This can help you reward those who engage with your firm, slowly investing them and heightening the chance that they will return.

With this in mind, we hope you can solidify your online marketing campaign, and avoid issues before they happen.

Why Your Online Presence Needs Maximizing

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It doesn’t matter what sort of business venture you are hoping to launch, from a restaurant to a street food van, and from a tee shirt printing company to a freelance blogger, you will need to hone your online presence. Being online and visible is vital in the twenty first century. Your main market will be the millennial. These are individuals who are keen to get online as much as possible and utilize every aspect of the web to source their news, their services and their shopping. You need to ensure that you can tap this market.

The millennial demographic will communicate with their potential market online and will be keen to source companies via reputation. Your online presence can enhance your ability to appeal to the millennial market. Take a look at how you can maximize your online presence.

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Website Development

The face of your business will be your website. While you could have an all singing and all dancing website with most impressive of flash animation, this is pointless if your navigation is cumbersome and it takes an age to get to your shop page. As a rule of thumb, you should keep things as simple as possible. Have a short and simple menu and make it easy to get to your shop page within two clicks. You need your website to be attractive, but don’t worry about this so much that you forget about functionality and ease of use.

The most important aspect of your website is its visibility. Your website could be phenomenal, but what if no one can find it? Instead, you need to consider what is it worth to rank #1 in Google? The answer is everything. Google is the number one search engine that all Internet users have on hand should they need to locate a business or have a question that needs answering. Google always has the answer. Forget Lycos and AskJeeves. Times have moved on, and Google has emerged the winner.

You need your website to be searchable. So how do you compete with your already established industry rivals? You need to harness the power of SEO. If this sounds like a whole different language to you, consider outsourcing this business function. This could be money well spent. Otherwise, you could find yourself wasting a small fortune on an AdWords campaign that is not fruitful. An off site specialist will formulate a strategy to help you achieve your aims, whether this is enhancing your following on Twitter or converting more hits to sales on one particular product. Your online presence needs to have your website at the center of everything within your digital strategy. This is the platform that will result in sales and leads.

Social Media

Your social media channels are a great way to feed traffic towards your website. Ensure that you have a Twitter feed, an Instagram page and a Facebook account. These channels will allow you to display your wares, communicate with customers, post relevant content and promote discounts and offers. All of these strategies will help to direct more traffic to your website, and will enable you to increase your following online. With more shares, you will reach a greater number of people within your niche market.

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Reputation

Being online means being at the mercy of the elements. Nearly everything online is public from the comments on your Twitter feed to the remarks under your Instagram snaps. If someone chooses to review your product or customer service, it will be visible for all to see. You cannot expect a potential customer to pay a premium for your services if you have a swathe of negative reviews. You cannot allow it to get to this point, as the first thing people will check out about your company will be the reviews.

Ensure that you under promise and over deliver. If you know that you can deliver a product in two days, state that you’ll have it on the customer’s doorstep in three. This way, you can make it appear that you’ve gone the extra mile when your customer has a pleasant surprise a little early. Add an incentive, a voucher code or a freebie, and focus on customer experience. Get this right, and the positive reviews will flow in online, resulting in a more glowing presence to show off to your demographic.

You shouldn’t forget the more traditional methods of marketing, but your online presence should be the main focus in your early years as a startup. Get this right, and your business will thrive.

4 Ways To Ensure Your eCommerce Website Is Easy To Use

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, 4 Ways To Ensure Your eCommerce Website Is Easy To Use

One of the best ways to improve your customer journey on your eCommerce site is to ensure your website is easy to use, but where do you start? With so many things to consider when it comes to creating an eCommerce website, you need to ensure you’re putting usability at the forefront of all of your decisions. Whether you’re improving your site navigation or using a trusted checkout provider, doing what is best for your customers is important. With that in mind, here are 4 ways to ensure your eCommerce website is easy to use:

Make The Navigation As Simple As You Can

One of the best ways to make your eCommerce site easy to use is to make your navigation as simple as you possibly can. Although you may want to add in multiple pages for SEO purposes, ultimate your sales will come down to how usable your site is. If your customers are having to click through hundreds of different pages to find what they want, chances are they’re going to look for another stockist before wasting any more of their time. Keep things as simple as you can and you will start to see immediate results when it comes to your bounce rate.

For a guide to reducing our bounce rate, you can visit this site here.

Don’t Use Too Many Pages To Click Through To Checkout

If you want people to have a quick and easy journey through your site, you need to ensure there are not too many pages to click through before they get to the checkout page. Although there may be a number of things you need to confirm, the more pages there are the less likely they are to pay.

Use A Trusted Checkout Provider And Make It Easy To Pay

If you want people to feel safe when they’re purchasing products from your site, you need to ensure you’re using a trusted checkout provider. Often, when it is a provider they don’t recognise or they haven’t used before, you will find they’re less likely to purchase from you due to fear of fraudulent activity. Whether you host your own checkout or you use a gateway service, you need to ensure your provider is as trusted as it can possibly be. For more information about API and gateway services, you can visit this site here.

– Make Returns As Easy As You Can

Finally, it’s important you’re making returns as easy as you possibly can. Although you want to aim for no returns, you need to be sure you’re making it as easy as possible for those that do need to send something back. Whether they find the item doesn’t fit or they ordered the wrong colour – if it’s too difficult to return you may find they’re less likely to purchase from you again.

For a guide to making returns on your site easy, you can visit this site here.

Is your eCommerce website easy to use? What can you do to ensure customers have a positive experience on your site? Let me know your thoughts and ideas in the comments section below.

Why No-one Is Visiting Your Company Website

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article Why No-one Is Visiting Your Company WebsiteStruggling to attract any traffic to your company website? There could be a number of reasons as to why your site isn’t getting any visitors. Here are some of the most likely reasons as to why people aren’t visiting your site.

You rank low on search engines

Search engines are the top way in which people find local businesses. Most people rarely look beyond the first page – if you don’t show up until page 10 of Google, you’re unlikely to attract many visitors. You can improve your rankings by investing in SEO (search engine optimisation). This involves using a variety of methods to make your site more appealing to search engines. This SEO guide could be worth reading to give you an idea of some of the tactics you can use. Search engines are always changing their algorithms and adding new features, so it can be worth regularly delving into SEO.

You rarely post new content

Keeping content consistently fresh shows people that your company is active and it can help to encourage return visitors by offering something new. Posting new content regularly is also good for your SEO – search engines tend to rank sites higher that are constantly active. The best way to keep your site constantly fresh is to add a blog. Also consider updating testimonials and offering a calendar of events.

Your website isn’t mobile friendly

If your website isn’t compatible on mobile devices, it could be stopping you from getting a lot of visitors. The bulk of internet use in now from mobile users, which is why it’s essential to have a mobile-friendly site. Most sites are automatically mobile compatible – the only exception may be very old sites that haven’t been updated for a while.

Your website takes ages to load

It’s possible that people may be visiting your website but leaving before it had a chance to fully load. This is likely to be because of a slow loading rate. Sites can load slowly for a number of reasons – it could be the server you’re using or it could be because you’re using lots of plug-ins and high-resolution images. This guide on how to speed up your site could be worth reading to help fix this problem.

Your aren’t advertising your website enough

There are so many websites out there that it can be difficult for people to simply stumble across your site. Advertising your site can help to raise exposure and increase traffic. PPC ads and email marketing are the main way to advertise your site online. As for offline advertising, you should consider printing your website address on business cards, flyers and other physical marketing products. You could even look into using QR codes.