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5 SEO Tips To Make Your Page Titles Pop

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Not everyone can be a search engine optimization master. SEO takes a long time to understand, and to top it off the best practices often change. Google and other search engines are always improving their algorithms to better serve the searcher, and web developers and business owners like you and I have to keep improving our sites to stay on top of search results for our chosen keywords.

We get quite a few questions every month about how to write page titles which conform to SEO standards and help a page rank for certain keywords. In light of that, let’s take a look at a few tips we’ve gathered and be sure to contact us with any questions of your own!

 

1. Understand Yourself and Your Searcher

 

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” – Sun Tzu

 

I think Sun Tzu, ancient Chinese military strategist, said it best. If you don’t know yourself and your enemy, it’s a lost cause, but if you truly understand, you’re well on your way to victory.

Now, I’m not saying searchers are the enemies of businesses and digital marketers, but it is important to really know the intent of the searcher when they are coming to your website, and to really know what benefits your service or product offers and not just the features.

Take for example the following page title examples:

 

Two Boots Pizza

Happy Pizza

 

When someone types ‘Pizza’ into a search engine, they’re probably not looking for a specific place, otherwise they would have just types the name of the business in. So general keywords like this are your opportunity to shine and grab a customer by the collar!

Two Boots Pizza really didn’t get the memo on this, as the page title simply states the name of the business and nothing further. But Happy’s Pizza at least tries to grab attention with “The Best Pizza In Town” immediately following the business name. While not necessarily the most well crafted tagline around, if the customer were given only these two page titles to choose from when ordering pizza, it’s no contest.

 

2. Make It Mechanically Sound

When I say you should make your title mechanically sound, I mean exactly that. When someone builds a boat, they need to make sure it floats before they spend time decorating it. The same goes for your page title.

Google and other search engines only show a certain amount of the title text in any given search result, whether on a computer, tablet or mobile. Generally, we suggest keeping a title length in between 40-65 characters (including spaces), as this gives wiggle room for when certain characters are a few pixels wider than others. Once you know how many characters you really have to work with, then you can start crafting your title.

 

3. Know Your Keywords

Next SEO tip: know your keywords. A digital marketing company like us can really help you out and make sure you’re using the best keywords for ranking your business, but if you don’t have access to someone like us or choose not to work with a digital marketing firm for some reason, a good way to start is to log into your Google Analytics account (I hope you have one, if not, you just need a Gmail address). From there, there are keyword tools which can help you determine what keywords might be best for your specific business. If you need help with this section, I do recommend you contact a digital marketing firm like ours for expert assistance.

 

4. When Appropriate, Make It Local

When it comes to page titles, certain pages have different functions than others. For instance, Happy’s Pizza may want to make a page to market specifically to their customers in Brooklyn, NY. My suggestion would be a page title like this:

Happy’s Pizza | Brooklyn Pizza Parlor | Original New York-Style Pizza

 

If Happy’s Pizza opened a location in Memphis, TN, they might want something more like this:

Happy’s Pizza | Memphis, TN Pizza | Authentic New York-Style Pizza

Each of these pages references the local city, and hits on what the searcher may be looking for. In Brooklyn, it may be a return to the original pizza of the area, while Memphis searchers may be looking for something different than they can find locally – an authentic, New York slice.

 

5. Execute

Finally, the most important SEO tip I can give is to execute. Do it. Make that page, because if it doesn’t get made, there is no way it can rank. This goes for your content, your ads, anything.

Make a decision and let it ride for a while and see how it goes. If after a month or two the title doesn’t seem to fit anymore or you’re having a hard time ranking or getting people to click on it, it may be time to change it up a bit.

The most important thing is to do it, and have fun. And let us know if you need any additional SEO help or tips, we’re always just a phone call or email away.

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Digital Marketing Myths You’ve Internalized & Why They’re Wrong

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Digital marketing myths continuously pop up these days, from client meetings or on ‘digital marketing myths’ lists on sites across the web.

We’ve been scouring the web for digital marketing myth lists and comparing them against beliefs our clients hold, and discovered that many of these lists have ‘myths’ which aren’t even commonly held beliefs anymore. So we set out to display some myths here that we still find prevalent among our clients, friends and family so we can provide real value in our digital marketing myths list. Enjoy, and let us know if you have questions!

1. Negative Reviews/Comments Are Bad NewsSEM Spend

We have our own proprietary review management software, so when we’re pitching this to clients they’ll often say that they need it because they have a few bad reviews they want to get rid of. We reframe the conversation right there, because bad reviews are not inherently bad for business, and in fact can help! Here’s a few ways to make that negative review or comment a good thing:

A. Opportunity To Grow

A bad review of your business is an opportunity to grow. Take the complaints the person is making, decide which hold merit and see if there is a way to address those complaints so another bad review like that doesn’t happen.

B. Evens Out Your Rating

The bad review doesn’t necessarily doom your Google or Facebook star rating. One or two bad reviews actually helps even out your stars a bit, as people tend to think the perfect 5-star rated companies might be manufacturing reviews.

C. Good PR opportunity

Responding to the review is a great PR opportunity. Take the time to really listen to the customer, and respond in a way so as to either address the issue or open up discussion on how the issue can be address. Thank them for pointing out the flaw in your system or bad egg on the staff, and encourage all customers to provide you with critical feedback. Other customers will see how smoothly you handled the review and think better of you for it.

 

2. Message Personalization Isn’t Possible

This myth hits home for people using LinkedIn, Google AdWords and email marketing.

A. LinkedIn

On LinkedIn, if you’re using Sales Navigator or another tool, it can feel downright overwhelming to market your business and brand at a mass scale while trying to personalize the messages. One way of doing it is to spend hours on it each day. Another way is to use software, like our proprietary myProspector, to help you create templates to contact other users which are easily and quickly personalized on a mass scale, within LinkedIn’s guidelines.

B. AdWords

In AdWords, people who are just getting used to the system might only set up a few variations of a display campaign for different geographic areas or different income brackets. But in AdWords with display ads, your ads can be personalized down to an email address, zip code (or even down to a few blocks) and in other ways. This means you can really personalize messages to fit a specific person you may know, or someone who fits a certain profile.

C. Email Marketing

Another way to personalize is through email marketing. Most email marketing solutions now allow you to segment your email lists, and it’s something you should take advantage of. For instance, if you have a list of customers from your pizza store, you may want to segment them by people who mostly order online and those who mostly order in store, and tailor different deals to them.

 

3. Visitor Volume Is A Key Website Metric

Visits are great. It’s nice to have people looking at your website, but volume of visits alone doesn’t mean much. In Google Analytics and other software which helps organize your website and marketing data, what you really should be looking at are the following metrics:

A. New Users

New users is a way of tracking how many new visitors have navigated to your website within a timeframe. This allows you to see if the same people are coming time and time again or if you’re able to attract new potential customers with your AdWords, social media, email marketing or other strategy.

B. Pages/Session

This is the number of pages a visitor views per session. Typically more is better, and if you’re seeing your average drop down near 1 you know people are clicking on a link to your site and then heading back out without looking anywhere else. That’s not good.

C. Average Session Duration

This is how long a visitor stays on your site before navigating off. You want to see a good amount of time here, but it depends on your industry. Adding value to the page, like more engaging or informative content, a video, a download or other things can help bring this number up, with the goal of getting them to remember your brand and feel their time was spent wisely. If the average session duration is low, it means they probably didn’t find what they were looking for.

D. Bounce Rate

The bounce rate is a measure of how many visitors leave your site after viewing only 1 page. Anything less than 70% is typically considered a ‘good’ bounce rate, so if your bounce rate is already very low it means people are finding something of value in your website!

 

4. Social Only Works For Select Industries

This is a big one. People feel that lawyers offices or other ‘traditional’ or ‘boring’ industries have no options when it comes to social media. It simply isn’t true, you just have to find the channel that fits your brand, and craft your strategy to how people want to interact with your service.

For instance, with a law firm, LinkedIn is a clear winner for most law firms because it helps build your reputation among the business community, no matter what kind of lawyer you might be.

Facebook might not seem like a natural choice, but it may be that people don’t want to post directly on your wall or about you, they want to find your contact information quickly and easily or drop a quick note into Facebook Messenger to see if they really need to come in for a consultation or not.

There is always a channel or strategy that will work, it just takes some time to find the right fit.

 

5. Visitors Won’t Convert On Mobile Devices

If you aren’t able to convert visitors into customers or sales leads when they’re using mobile devices, it isn’t the visitor’s fault for using a mobile device – it’s the content’s fault.

You need to take a look at your interface and the way people actually use your site from a mobile-first website design standpoint, and find a way to simplify your process. From reducing the number of fields to fill out in a contact form, to one click downloads for ebooks, there is a way to do it, you just have to find it.

For help figuring out how digital marketing fits into your business, and to separate fact from fiction, drop us a line.

Multiple open books stacked on top of and next to each otherPhoto by Nicole Honeywill / Sincerely Media on Unsplash

How To Improve Your Search Engine Ranking With Content Marketing

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When a new client approaches us for a website design, one of the most common issues with their current site is that it hasn’t been updated in months or years. Your web designer or a dedicated person on your team should be constantly crafting new content for your website to keep it fresh.

A decade or two ago, it was common thinking that a website should be set in stone and only updated very occasionally, like a brochure or business card. That’s simply not the case anymore.

The Online Experience Centers Around Contentcms-265127_1920

As can be seen by the popularity of sites like The Huffington Post, Reddit, HowStuffWorks and countless blogs, fresh, ever-changing content helps sites retain and grow a following and build their ranking in search engines. Sites which are constantly changing their content, being added to and improved are getting the most traffic.

However, each of those sites have a focus: news and opinion, cool and strange things from the internet, and explanations of how language, mechanics and other things work. Their content focuses on those things and their readers reward good content with clicks, time spent on the page and site, and sharing those articles on social media.

Therefore, your site should not only have new content, but it needs to be centered on topics which reinforce your business. This is the heart of content marketing.

Experimentation

Another great way content marketing can improve your search engine ranking is by experimenting with different types of content and different types of pages.

Do you have a blog currently? If not, that’s a great place to start, as blogs are a good way to create consistently new content based around a theme. Experiment with different formats of blog posts, like lists, ‘How Tos’ and others.

Also experiment with infographics and videos as well as text posts to see which perform better. Use your websites built-in analytics or sign up for Google Analytics to get a better idea of how each piece of content performs with your visitors, and don’t forget to promote it on social media!

For help with the whole gamut of content marketing, contact us today!

Social Media icons on a keyboard

5 Misguided Myths About Social Media Marketing

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Social media marketing has been of interest to marketers and business people since at least 2007, but has been steadily popular since 2011 according to Google Trends. The need to fill your funnel from your fans and followers has grown, as has the mythology around the process of doing so.

Let’s take a look at some of the most misguided myths social media marketing manifests

1. Social Media Marketing Is Freehands-1167618_1920

Sure, signing yourself and your company up for a social media account is free, and you may think that since you aren’t paying to advertise on the platform you can get away with your marketing plan for free!

The truth is, no matter what you do on social media, your marketing is going to cost you either time, money or both.

Your team’s time and effort are valuable, and the more of it you pour into your social media marketing campaign the better ROI you will likely see. However, time and effort cost the business money, so just know that nothing is free.

2. Social Media ROI Can’t Be Measured

When most people first start utilizing social media for marketing, they focus on the metrics in front of them: likes, shares, comments, etc.

But it’s important to go beyond these metrics and focus on two things at the same time: building a community, then driving that community to your website/landing page. In order to know if you’re building a community, you focus on those likes, comments and shares. To know if you’re converting people from your social media page to your website or to a sale, you’ll need to utilize Google Analytics and build trackable links for your social media posts.

3. Every Social Media Platform Is Valuable

Depending on your industry and needs, you’ll need different social media platforms. The demographics who use the site, it’s functionality and purpose, as well as how it is accessed will all play into whether the platform is valuable to you and can be used to increase sales.

For instance, a consulting business will see a lot more ROI on investing in LinkedIn, while a restaurant will see better results through Facebook and Pinterest or Instagram. You may not have the resources to tackle multiple sites at once, so be sure you choose the right ones to concentrate on.

4. Social Media Marketing Is It’s Own Strategy

Truly, social media marketing is best done in conjunction with a series of other strategies, like content marketing, search engine optimization, reputation management and more.

Content marketing helps you build content on your website worth sharing, which then draws people through to your website and makes them more likely to convert.

Search engine optimization helps your website flow better and become easier to read and navigate while making it rank higher in search engines, meaning people are more likely to enjoy working with you and like or follow you.

Reputation management helps monitor and direct people to leave you positive reviews on sites like Facebook and Google, which are also social media sites. This means your social sites will pull more weight with people, making them easier to convert.

5. Making Social Posts Mobile-Friendly Isn’t Worth It

If you still believe mobile phones aren’t where people do most of their web browsing – as well as nearly all of their social networking – you are living in the past. Nearly 80% of social media time is spent on mobile devices these days, so it’s extremely important to make sure you’re optimizing your social media posts for mobile devices. You may be writing them on a computer at work, but that’s not how your followers are going to read them!

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How Small Businesses Like Yours Are Leveraging Search Engine Optimization

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When it comes to trying to capture the attention of potential customers online, search engine optimization is key to your online success, especially for small, local businesses! In fact, in 2016, searches containing “near me” – i.e. auto repair near me, tacos near me, etc. – increase 34x since 2011!

This means customers near you are looking for your category of business, but the question is: are you appearing in the search results? Because a huge amount of the traffic from a search goes to the first three results on the first page of google. And very few people head to the second page of results.

Let’s look at how you as a small business can make search engine optimization (SEO) help build your business! And remember, we’re always available to talk.

The below statistics were supplied by The Google Mobile Playbook.

Producing High-Quality, Local ContentSearch Engine Optimization

One of the best things you can do to boost your SEO ranking is to create high-quality, engaging and local content. This content is what will help searchers convert into customers, giving them the information they need to make a decision and providing a link to the product or contact and location information so they can come to the store and make the purchase.

In regards to local, mobile searches, 51% of searchers will visit a store after completing the search; 48% of them will call the store; and, 29% of them will visit the store and complete the purchase quickly. This means local searches are extremely valuable, and creating content geared toward them is rewarding.

Employing An SEO Firm To Clean Up Data

Another way of boosting your SEO to get further up the rankings is to clean up the data behind your website.

It’s usually a good idea to hire an SEO firm like ours to go in and clean up these bits, such as page titles, descriptions, dead or misdirected links and organizing the sitemap. Everything needs to be geared toward your business and streamlined to give you the best ranking for the keywords your business needs.

Contact us anytime to learn more about how we can help you climb the rankings and capture more customers searching for your products or services locally!

How Small Businesses Like Yours Are Leveraging Search Engine Optimization

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When it comes to trying to capture the attention of potential customers online, search engine optimization is key to your online success, especially for small, local businesses! In fact, in 2016, searches containing “near me” – i.e. auto repair near me, tacos near me, etc. – increase 34x since 2011!

This means customers near you are looking for your category of business, but the question is: are you appearing in the search results? Because a huge amount of the traffic from a search goes to the first three results on the first page of google. And very few people head to the second page of results.

Let’s look at how you as a small business can make search engine optimization (SEO) help build your business! And remember, we’re always available to talk.

The below statistics were supplied by The Google Mobile Playbook.

Producing High-Quality, Local ContentSearch Engine Optimization

One of the best things you can do to boost your SEO ranking is to create high-quality, engaging and local content. This content is what will help searchers convert into customers, giving them the information they need to make a decision and providing a link to the product or contact and location information so they can come to the store and make the purchase.

In regards to local, mobile searches, 51% of searchers will visit a store after completing the search; 48% of them will call the store; and, 29% of them will visit the store and complete the purchase quickly. This means local searches are extremely valuable, and creating content geared toward them is rewarding.

Employing An SEO Firm To Clean Up Data

Another way of boosting your SEO to get further up the rankings is to clean up the data behind your website.

It’s usually a good idea to hire an SEO firm like ours to go in and clean up these bits, such as page titles, descriptions, dead or misdirected links and organizing the sitemap. Everything needs to be geared toward your business and streamlined to give you the best ranking for the keywords your business needs.

Contact us anytime to learn more about how we can help you climb the rankings and capture more customers searching for your products or services locally!

Times Square packed with billboardsPhoto by Luca Bravo on Unsplash

How Search Engine Marketing Has Brought Billboards To Their Knees

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These days, search engine marketing is king. Television, radio, newspaper and even roadside billboards have begun to fall by the wayside as Google and other advertising providers have brought the ability to target advertisements down to the individual, to the masses. In fact, the goliath of advertising spending – TV – is set to be overtaken by search engine marketing and online advertising in 2017. Meanwhile, billboards continue to be a miniscule portion of advertising spending in the U.S., with $9.2 billion spent in 2015, while online advertising had about $67 billion spent by advertisers with a much higher growth rate.
We’re always available to talk, anytime you want to take a look at how search engine marketing can help your business thrive.
For this post, a study by MarketingCharts supplied the statistics.

Statisticspexels-photo-12

The biggest reason billboards are not growing as fast as search engine marketing and other channels is they can’t be tracked. When a person drives past a billboard, you as the advertiser won’t be able to track whether they saw the advertisement, whether they later go to your website or call you, whether they see your ad again later or who they were (demographically speaking)!
With online advertising and search engine marketing, you can track all of those things and more, making sure that your ad is as effective as possible!

 

Location

With billboards, you can only place your advertisements in certain locations: alongside roadways, in city centers, etc. And you’ll need to rotate the billboards in order to be able to reach new audiences, with no guarantee that people are actually looking at your billboard.
With online advertising and search engine marketing, you can target ads directly at certain demographics, and with Google you can even target ads at people who live on a certain block in a city! This means they will be served the ads in many places across the internet, without having to waste money showing the ad to people who aren’t your target customer!
Contact us anytime to chat about how we can help boost your ROI with search engine marketing!

How Search Engine Marketing Has Brought Billboards To Their Knees

/in ,

These days, search engine marketing is king. Television, radio, newspaper and even roadside billboards have begun to fall by the wayside as Google and other advertising providers have brought the ability to target advertisements down to the individual, to the masses. In fact, the goliath of advertising spending – TV – is set to be overtaken by search engine marketing and online advertising in 2017. Meanwhile, billboards continue to be a miniscule portion of advertising spending in the U.S., with $9.2 billion spent in 2015, while online advertising had about $67 billion spent by advertisers with a much higher growth rate.
We’re always available to talk, anytime you want to take a look at how search engine marketing can help your business thrive.
For this post, a study by MarketingCharts supplied the statistics.

Statisticspexels-photo-12

The biggest reason billboards are not growing as fast as search engine marketing and other channels is they can’t be tracked. When a person drives past a billboard, you as the advertiser won’t be able to track whether they saw the advertisement, whether they later go to your website or call you, whether they see your ad again later or who they were (demographically speaking)!
With online advertising and search engine marketing, you can track all of those things and more, making sure that your ad is as effective as possible!

 

Location

With billboards, you can only place your advertisements in certain locations: alongside roadways, in city centers, etc. And you’ll need to rotate the billboards in order to be able to reach new audiences, with no guarantee that people are actually looking at your billboard.
With online advertising and search engine marketing, you can target ads directly at certain demographics, and with Google you can even target ads at people who live on a certain block in a city! This means they will be served the ads in many places across the internet, without having to waste money showing the ad to people who aren’t your target customer!
Contact us anytime to chat about how we can help boost your ROI with search engine marketing!

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4 Awesome Stats To Help Small Businesses Win At Email Marketing

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Email marketing can be difficult. One of the best ways to make sure that you’re successful at it is to be consistent. You may need help with that, and we’re always available to talk about how we can help you increase your revenue. But besides consistency, what other tips can help make your email marketing more effective?

HubSpot, one of the largest email marketing solutions out there, supplied the below statistics for this post.

1. People Are More Likely To Click Certain WordsEmail Marketing

When you’re writing the ‘call-to-action’ for your email, stick with something which includes “Click Here” rather than “Go” or “Submit”. “Click Here” has a much higher click rate than the other words, meaning more people will head to wherever you’ve linked the button to which is hopefully a landing page on your website!

2. Images Are Preferred To Text

Before you start typing your first draft, consider doing more with less. Use images to help get your message across. It turns out that 65% of people prefer more images than text in their emails, so be sure to capitalize on that with descriptive imagery and fewer words. We generally suggest 200 words or less per email.

3. Don’t Send Plain Text

In line with that, images are only visible in HTML emails. Even if they weren’t, 88% of users prefer to receive HTML emails over plain text emails, plain text meaning that there isn’t any formatting, fonts, colors or anything like that. So while some of your customers may find value in having emails be bare bones and get straight to the point, a vast majority appreciate a little flourish and style.

4. Optimize For Mobile Reading

And, we believe the most important tip here is to optimize your emails for mobile devices. 80.8% of users are reading emails on a mobile device!

Your email marketing software may be able to help you with this, but be sure to send yourself and/or your staff a test email and open it on multiple mobile devices to see how the images show up and how the text wraps, as well as if the links/buttons are able to be clicked easily.

Contact us anytime to chat about how we can help boost your ROI with email marketing!

Two people with laptops on their laps browsing onlinePhoto by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

4 Reasons Online Advertising Will Make Or Break Local Businesses

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Online advertising is growing and growing, and will only continue to grow as more people get online and businesses can’t reach consumers through traditional means.

At Cohlab, we work hard to help small, local businesses succeed in their online advertising strategies because we know this is make or break for many local businesses, and will only increase in importance. Contact us anytime to chat about how we can help boost your business!

1. More People Are Online Than EverOnline Advertising

In 2016, the number of Americans online increased to 87%. That’s up from only 52% in 2000, an increase of 35%!

The number of people online, and searching and shopping online will only continue to increase, especially as younger generations continue to mature. The target market for your business will be online from here on out, and while the methods of reaching them may change, the channel will remain online.

2. Ads Are More Effective

New techniques, like retargeting (targeting online consumers based on past online actions i.e. visiting your website or searching for a keyword) allow you to get way better ROI than in the past. In fact, users who are retargeted are 70% more likely to convert into customers than those who are advertised to randomly. As well, the average click-through rate for display ads is .07%, but with retargeting it’s 10x higher at .7%!

3. Searches Are Becoming More Local

Google continuously works to help local businesses more prominent in search results, as they can typically fill searchers needs better. In light of this, when searchers are looking for something local i.e. “car repair near me”, the 3-pack of map results shows up in the top spot 93% of the time! So it’s very important to target those local searches with your ads, especially if you’re not naturally showing up in those local searches.

As well, getting your name in front of a searcher is important because 50% of searchers who conduct a local search on their smart phone visit a store within a day.

4. Searches Are Becoming More Effective

With recent updates like Penguin and Possum, searches are only becoming more and more effective at displaying the most relevant results to searchers. This means you either need to have the best and most pertinent content, or you need the best online advertising campaigns possible in order to keep your business running. If you don’t have the manpower or time to keep your website fresh and top notch, online advertising is going to help keep those online dollars rolling in.

Let us know when you’re ready to chat about online advertising, and how it can work for your business!