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The answer is simple — they know how to develop a marketing strategy that will get them noticed. In this article, you are going to learn how to develop a marketing strategy that will get your business noticed.

Whether you are a business owner, an entrepreneur, or just getting started and  looking to get your foot into the door of business, this information is for you. It’s important that your company has a marketing strategy in place, no matter what size of business currently is.

The reason for this is because a marketing strategy will help you convert your prospects into customers, and potential customers into long-term customers. In other words, a marketing strategy will help you get your business out to the people who will be most interested in it.

Let’s look at what’s involved in developing an effective marketing strategy.

An Effective Marketing Strategy is Important for any Business

A marketing strategy is essential for any business when it comes to getting their business out there. The problem with this is that many people think they can get by without one. They might believe that they have a great product, service, or idea and all they need to do is advertise it publicly and people will find them.

Well, the truth is that’s not true at all. When someone thinks in this way, they are setting themselves up for failure because there are millions of other businesses doing the same thing, which means no one will notice them.

Define Your Audience

When developing a marketing strategy, it is imperative that you first define your audience. Your marketing strategy should be tailored to them and their needs. If you are an author, for instance, your target audience may be people who enjoy reading.

This means that when creating your marketing campaign, you will want to use images of books and quotes from famous authors in order to attract these specific people. If your business is a construction company and the audience is made up of professionals in the construction industry, then you will want to place images of construction sites and building materials on your site in order to draw attention to those interested in this field.

The point here is that the more specific you are with your defined audience, the better chance you have of getting their attention.

Develop A Solid Content Marketing Strategy

An important first step for long-term growth is to develop a content marketing strategy. In order to get your business noticed, you are going to have to create a lot of content that people will want to read and share. The best way to do this is by finding content that is relevant to the people in your target demographic and then providing even more valuable information on top of it.

For example, if your business sells healthy kale chips, you could provide healthy recipes for dips other food items that are complementary to yours.  By taking the time and effort to put out valuable information, you will be able to draw in readers who are interested in what you have to say.

Always Be Updating

One great way to get people looking at your marketing is by updating it. This will show prospects that you are confident in what you have to offer, and that you are constantly trying new ways to keep them interested.

For example, you might update your social media posts every day with new information about your products or services. Or, you may post a video of a new experience that is coming soon on your website. Whatever the case may be, updating your content often will get people talking about it.

Always Be Consistent

One of the biggest mistakes that a lot of businesses make with their marketing is that they are not consistent. You need to be consistent in your marketing if you want it to be effective. You need to put out content on a regular basis, whether it be once or twice per day.

You also need to use social media daily and have ads running on Facebook and other sites on a regular basis as well. The more you do this, the better chance you have of building a following and gaining trust among your target audience. One of the best ways to stay consistent is by using an editorial calendar.

An editorial calendar can help you plan ahead and know what you’re going to post when without having to think about it.

Always Be Testing

The first thing that you need to think about in your marketing strategy is how you are going to test what works and what doesn’t. In other words, you want to try different strategies to see which ones work better than others.

For instance, if you are advertising on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, then you will want to test out different ads with different types of images and copy.

If you are doing PPC advertising then this should be pretty easy for you because you can get results very quickly. Testing both Social advertising and PPC ads is great way for you to figure out what strategy will work best for your company.

By running A/B tests and tracking the metrics like views and conversions you’ll be able to determine what method will give you the best ROI. Then you can optimize your campaigns over time so that they produce the the best ongoing results possible.

You want to always be testing so that you can find the right formula that works best for your business — there is no one size fits all approach when it comes to marketing strategies!

Always Be Watching For Trends

One of the first things that you can do to develop a marketing strategy that will get you noticed is to always be watching for trends. You never know when something might explode, and if you are not paying attention when it does, then you could end up missing out on a lot of potential customers who would have been very interested in your business.

For example, one way that people use social media is by following hashtags. When you post to Instagram use hashtags relevant to your business. If you sell custom furniture you might use hashtags like #customfurniture, #customcoffeetable, and #customchairs etc. If someone who follows these trends happens to come across your business and they see that your company offers custom chairs or custom coffee tables, they may end up contacting you and becoming a customer because they did not know that these products were available before and they live close enough to pick them up.

Look For Opportunities

Always look for opportunities to get noticed. For example, if you are the owner of a clothing boutique, the opportunity to get noticed could be as simple as placing your promotions in a high-traffic area whether it’s online or offline. This will ensure that people have an easier time finding your store.

You also need to think about other ways to get noticed, such as creating pop-up shops or even sponsorship deals for events in your area. Look at that activities of other businesses related to yours and see if there are ways to work together to benefit each other. There are plenty of opportunities for you to get noticed, but it all starts with looking for them.

Conclusion

So you’ve got your business plan complete and now you are ready to develop a marketing strategy that will get you noticed. You may be wondering where to start and all the steps that need to be followed in order to create a successful marketing strategy. The 8 tips outlined above will help you develop a strategy that will get you noticed and establish your business as the go-to in your industry.

The post 8 Tips To Develop A Marketing Strategy That Will Get Your Business Noticed appeared first on OceanOne Design.

So how do you generate area specific customers from using the net? There are a few methods that work. Here are three of the best:

#1) Google local

Local.google.com is essentially an “area specific” search engine. When somebody uses it, they just type in the business you are looking for, such as “general contractors.” Then the map will pinpoint the general contractors in their area.

You don’t even need a website to appear here. As long as Google knows about your business, you will appear on the map. Google will also list your address and phone number.

How many people use Google local?

More than fifty million people do so every month. Therefore, it’s easy to see why this would be a good place to target.

The smaller search engines like Bing and Yahoo have their own version as well. It would be a good idea to get listed with them as well. However, Google is the most important, because the vast majority of people use it for local searches.

#2) SEO

Despite the fact that Google local is so popular, tons of people continue using Google.com for their local searches. For this reason, you will want to do an SEO campaign as well, targeting only area specific keywords. For instance, if you are a carpenter living in Toronto, you would probably want to rank #1 for “Toronto carpenters”.

How do you get to the #1 spot?

You will need links pointing to you website. The more links you have, the better. Not all links are created equal.

There are basically two kinds of links: one way and reciprocal. Reciprocal links are where you agree with somebody else to link to their site, as long as they link to yours. This used to be very effective, but that is no longer the case.

Why are one way links the best?

This is because Google knows if another website links to yours without getting anything in return, your site must be quality.

Where should you get one way links?

Guest posts, directory, forum and blog links are among the best out there.  For many terms, focusing exclusively on these sites will get you ranked. Reaching out to other relevant website and asking for a backlink is timing consuming but well worth it when you succeed at it.

#3) PPC advertising

Pay per click campaigns allow you to geo-target you campaigns. This allows you to specify which locations you want to show up for.

For instance, if you target the geo-target the keyword “home renovations” to only Richmond Hill, you will only appear when people in Richmond Hill search for that term. If somebody from Windsor types in the same keyword, you won’t appear in their search results. In other words, even though it doesn’t have the word “Windsor” in the keyword, you will still only appear when local people search for it.

The bottom line is, if you aren’t using the internet to generate local sales, you could be losing a lot of money. Hopefully these three tips will help you get started.

If you need help with this, contact us and we’ll setup a time to discuss it.

The post 3 Ways to Generate Local Sales Online appeared first on OceanOne Design.

Key factors

First things first. Be sure to sign up on Google My Business (GMB). This will be the centre of your local strategy for getting rankings on Google. There may be a listing for your business there already so you’ll need to claim it. Do a Google search for your company name and you may see a listing for your business on the right side hand side in the search results. If you have not claimed it already you will see a “Claim this listing” button that will allow you to do so. Once you have access to your listing you will be able to add all kinds of information about your business and this will get him placed on Google maps as well. Be sure to upload lots of pleasing, relevant images for your business. You can great insights about your business listing in there like how many people viewed you listing and took action etc.

Writing Posts on Google My Business

We highly recommend that you create a post on your GMB listing everyday for at least 2 months. I know this sounds like a lot of work but it’s worth it and they only allow 300 words and you can back it off after your see your listing get into the top 3 local results for your keywords. Don’t stop completely though or competitors will eventually catch up. Try to keep posting at least once a week. This of course depends on how competitive your category is so you may need to adjust accordingly.

Add local content to your website

Blogging is the most effective way to help your rankings in search engine results. Write some blog posts that are unique to your local area and align with your local business. Doing some good keyword research prior to writing is articles will go along way. By doing so you can find out what people actually search for when they’re looking for your type of business in your area. For instance if you are a roofing company people might search for “toronto roofing company” (720 searches per month) but there are more searches for “toronto roofers” (1900 searches per month) so you should definitely have the data beforehand so that you can get the most out of your efforts. You can use Google Keyword Planner to get this data. Another new favourite free tool for keyword research is Ubersuggest from SEO expert Neil Patel.

Get listed on directories

Leveraging online directories is an excellent way to improve your online visibility. Claim any listings you can on sites like Yelp and Yellow Pages and other similar ones. Make sure all your profiles have the exact same contact information about your business. This is very important. You’ll also have to monitor these listings as many of them except reviews about your business. You need to stay on top of this and respond to reviews good or bad. Your online reputation is really important so I need to take this seriously.

We have a great tool to help you monitor this – checkout the OCEANONE Reputation Manager. And, if you don’t have the time we also provide a fully managed Reputation Management Service.

Here’s an excellent video on how to respond to reviews…

SEO Best Practices

Finally, be sure that you are using SEO best practices throughout your website. Things like properly formatted URLs and keyword rich descriptive title tags as well as descriptive metadata are important to make sure that Google’s algorithms pick up the best possible information about your page. Of course, make sure that your contact information on the website matches exactly what you added to all those directories you just listed on.

These are just a few things you can do to improve your visibility for local searches but they are the most important. Make sure these on-page improvements are done before taking any other steps. Depending on how competitive your category is, this might be all that you need to do to get the results you want. Start there and see how goes. If it’s not enough to get you in the top three local results there are other strategies. It’s not that complicated but it can be very time consuming.

If you don’t have the time, we can help. We have a Free listing builder app to get you started with getting your listing synced up on Google My Business, Facebook and Twitter. Once you have that set up you can easily add one of our paid packages that make it very easy to get listed on the sites we have discussed here. Learn more about it it out here.

Download our list of “Top 100 Sites To Be Listed On“. Our Listing Distribution add-on lets you build accurate business listings on the four major data aggregators—Factual, Acxiom, Infogroup, and Neustar Localeze. These aggregators are referenced by over 300 websites.

When multiple sources have consistent business data, two outcomes occur:

1. Google’s WebCrawler finds the same information in multiple places and adds more confidence to their business data
2. Good backlinks are created with more referring sources to the business’ website creating better SEO.

Here’s an excellent video on the importance of have accurate listings online…

Also check out our recent post “Online Reputation Management Tips for Boosting your Local SEO” .

If you already have listing and you have experienced Fake Reviews you’ll want to check out “How to remove “Google reviews when you know they are fake“.

It’s also important to get as many backlinks as you can in order to generate organic traffic. If you need help with that or any other SEO tasks, checkout our SEO services page.

The post Effective Local SEO In A Nutshell appeared first on OceanOne Design.

You are likely well aware of the concept of content marketing by now. It’s a tactic that helps you engage and attract customers and prospects by delivering quality content that provides value for everyone who visits your site. And the strategy has a lot of staying power.

Here are just a few areas in which content marketing can help you.

Driving Conversion

A great benefit of content marketing is that it helps your company drive more conversions over time. Research shows that companies that create consistent marketing content experience conversion rates almost six times higher than their competitors.

Increasing Traffic and Brand Awareness

Publishing consistent blog posts that engage audiences will help you bring in more traffic to your site over time. According to HubSpot, companies that published more than 16 blog posts per month got almost three and a half times more traffic than those that only published fewer than four posts.

It also helps educate people about your brand and raises the level of brand awareness that is otherwise not there when you don’t publish blog posts outlining what your company does or sells.

Check out our Pro Blogging Packages

Building trust and Fostering Relationships

You can build real relationships with your customers through content driven marketing. It allows customers to really absorb your philosophy and thinking patterns and associate themselves with your values. This allows them to take a peek in to the way that your company does business. It’s a lot more personal and less presumptuous than an advertisement.

Building Credibility and Expertise

Well written and polished content automatically comes across as professional and authoritative. It allows people to see your company as an expert or an authority on the subject of your business. It also allows you to be seen as a major player in the industry.

Cost Effectiveness and SEO Visibility

According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing costs 62% less than outbound marketing even though it generates three times as many leads. It also helps your company and topics trend better in search engines, specifically Google. Allowing your content to trend well allows for greater visibility.

Targeting Specific Audiences

It’s important to know exactly who you’re selling to when you’re selling a product or a service. For this reason, content driven marketing is useful to get your message across to your target demographic. It sounds extremely cold and calculating, but it’s useful without a doubt.

Engaging Content Makes a Personal Connection

As outlined above, it’s more engaging and personal than an advertisement. The written word, when written well has a much better connection with your readers and customers than an ad ever can, hence, the emphasis on content driven marketing.

Can bring you Unexpected Customers

It’s incredible that content marketing can bring you customers from so many different places that are not your target demographic. You can use trends and current hot topics to market your products or services to people that won’t normally look twice in your direction.

Do you need great content for your website? As on of the top small business branding agencies, we have great writers standing by that can produce excellent, affordable content on any topic. Check out our packages.

It’s also important to get as many backlinks as you can in order to generate organic traffic. If you need help with that or any other SEO tasks, checkout our SEO services page.

The post How Content Marketing Can Transform Your Business appeared first on OceanOne Design.

Good SEO involves many elements. There is the technical audit where you make sure there are no technical problems that prevent your site from ranking. Then there is the whole keyword research and optimization process which is the most important step and beyond the scope of this article. Don’t forget about backlinks of course.

Then there is the most powerful aspect of all and that is high-quality content. Stop thinking in terms of ‘SEO’, ‘blogging’ and ‘social media marketing’ as separate things and instead think about your SEO in terms of ‘content marketing’.

Think of SEO as a combination of all your marketing strategies – merge them together. You need to remove technical issues first. That is an absolute. Beyond that you need to use all the digital marketing strategies, keyword relevant blog posts, guest posts, social media posts, backlinks, videos and more to really succeed at getting ranked on high in Google searches.

Now “Good SEO” also means writing amazing posts and when you share them you have a better chance of getting more backlinks. That great content will keep people on your page longer – another Google ranking factor. Yes, Google notices how long visitors stay on your page.

Regardless of your strategy, there is no doubt that content is absolutely the most important asset when it comes to attracting traffic and impressing Google.

But just what is content marketing?

Content Marketing – What is it Exactly?

Content marketing is about creating content that will build a readership on your site and ensuring that people begin to hold you as an authority and trust what you have to say. While this is powerful and useful is in its own right, it’s actually only one part of what content marketing is about. At the same time, your excellent blog post articles will also help Google make sense of your site, its posts, and its content. This greatly aids organic search.

It means demonstrating your knowledge and point of view. Ultimately, you want people to seek you out as an authority. Once you get to that point, you’ll be considered an expert in your field and you’ll be able to greatly influence your audience – possibly influencing their buying behaviour. The content doesn’t just have to be posts on your blog. Content can be presented in Guest posts, Social media posts, Presentations, Infographics, Case Studies, White Papers/Reports, Ebooks, Email Newsletters, Webinars, Quizzes, Polls, Podcasts, Checklists, Photos and of course Videos.

DOWNLOAD Our Free Content Marketing Planner (In Google Sheets, click FILE > make copy). It has a daily, monthly and archive view as well as a brainstorming tab.

How to Build Trust and Authority with SEO 

So what is the process behind reaching authority? The key is to think about the sites and blogs that have influenced you over the years – the ones you read regularly.

How do you think they did it? This isn’t about building trust with Google alone but rather with your readers so that they want to keep coming back. That means delivering value time after time in posts and content.

Each post that you create for your blog should provide highly useful and relevant information that is not fluffy but is actionable.

At the same time, users should be able to see that your site offers something unique compared to competition sites, something which isn’t available elsewhere. The differentiation between your sites and others is extremely important, especially in crowded niches. You can’t simply follow the pattern of other sites, you need to try and take your own perspectives.

There are hundreds of thousands of posts covering almost everything possible. Offering something different amongst this content mountain may seem like an impossible task but with the infinite opinions of people, you can always find a unique angle to take on even the most run-of-the-mill subjects.

Once you’ve conceptualized your posts, you should ask yourself: would you read the content?

You also need to be consistent and reliable and always live up to your brand ethos. Make sure you establish a mission statement and objectives and portray these through your content efforts to create a continuous self-branded stream of information.

Always work hard on reflecting your brand with design. Logos and website designs are extremely important. You must remain consistent throughout different forms of marketing on different platforms, including on different forms of social media.

When writing, always bear your reader in mind. This ties into the fact that Good SEO is about making things great for the reader. That way, people can actually get excited about you and will really get behind what you’re trying to do!

What’s Your SEO Goal?

The immediate goal should be to offer consistent value and to become a source that people start to trust. That way, when someone searches for the answer to a question, they might read your post and be impressed. That leads to more shares, more engagement and better SEO.

If you then repeatedly come up in search results, individuals who were impressed might recognize you and be more likely to click your listing over the rest. Then they might decide to look around the rest of your content after they’ve been impressed a few times. Eventually, you become their “go-to source” for answers in your niche. Well done: you just won at content marketing!

The key to content marketing is consistency and value. Always deliver good information that is manageable. By doing this, you’re working with Google to serve the user and Google are promoting you as they know you are delivering relevant and effective content. It makes sense from both an SEO and business perspective – you want to build trust, reputability and authority alongside a base of repeat users.

After investing a lot of time writing a blog post, you should certainly consider repurposing it. Maybe it would make a good video or slide presentation. Perhaps write a few related post a create an ebook that you can distribute or use for a lead magnet.

While the focus of this post is content marketing and how it relates to SEO there is certainly a lot more you can do. We’ll write more about that in future posts. If you need some free tools check out this list of free content creation tools by @lilachbullock .

Needless to say, before you dive deep into content marketing, you need to make sure that you you have optimized your on-site SEO factors. The amazing @Neil Patel recently made that a little easier with his awesome SEO Analyzer which will show you what you need to fix in a few seconds. It provides your overall SEO score and your competitors score. You can check your site speed score, keywords and more. Plus you can download the report as a PDF so you can send it to your webmaster.

Here’s a great resource from Guru99 that has a list of the 20 Best Web Analytics Tools to Track Your Website Performance.

If you need help with SEO for your website, checkout our SEO services page.

Also check out our recent post “10 MUST-KNOW SEO TIPS TO BOOST YOUR SEARCH RANKINGS“

The post Why Content Marketing is the Key to Good SEO appeared first on OceanOne Design.

SEO is considered as the main element to ultimately getting more website traffic. This means that you also want to be sure to use the best white hat methods and search engine optimization strategy On-Site and offsite for best results. Here are some of the most important fundamental SEO tips.

Whether you have a small or big business website, using proper SEO techniques can help Google, Yahoo, and other search Engines to rank your website higher in the SERPs. (Search Engine Results Pages) when customers or clients search for keywords that are relevant to your business.

1. Operating a great website is not all about having the slickest or coolest looking website. It is equally important to have a site that users will find easy to navigate and employing the best SEO techniques to drive traffic towards your site.
2. Before writing content for your website, you will need to make a set of keywords to utilize that provides the best SEO results. You can do this by checking out the keyword’s monthly search volume. Choose keywords that contain good search volume level and lower competition and avoid the keywords with the best and lowest search volume. Do this and you’ll you’ll be a more successful in your online endeavours as a website owner. Quite simply, don’t make an effort to rank in search engines for the keywords like “Houses” or “Doors” as this is a complete waste of time and money. The intent of the keyword is now more crucial than ever. In the last couple of year we have seen a significant change in the way Google delivers search results.
   Google Keyword Planner is definitely one of the tools you must use. You can access this in your Google adwords account. There are some other amazing tools for keyword research…
   Checkout Answer The Public. We really love this amazing tool. It will provide you a ton of questions that people ask about any topic. Just put in your target keyword and it will generate an overwhelming number of questions you can work with. Many bloggers use this to come up with blog post ideas.
   Also try UberSuggest. It is now run by SEO and online marketing expert Neil Patel. If you haven’t heard of Neil, you should check out.  He gives away amazing online marketing advice.  Try UbberSuggest, it’s free and it will help you come up with a lot of keyword phrases that you may never think of.

   Keywordtool.io is another excellent keyword research tool worth trying out.The above tools are free to use. If you need more intensive research tools and advanced options there are plenty for great tools that have a monthly subscription based model. Some of the best ones are Ahrefs, Wordracker, SEMRush, MOZ, SEOBook

3. Your website budget must be shared between Web Design, SEO, and Online Marketing. Be sure to reserve a large portion of your website budget for search engine optimization and Online marketing, it’ll be the best investment you make for your business if done effectively.
4. Once you build the best keywords or keyword phrase for every single of your website web pages that phrase should be present in the title Meta tags, descriptions, and URLs. For On-Site, content writing the keyword or keyword phrase should be within the first three or four words of the headings on the page. This is also true for article writing titles.
5. When you don’t have any pages that currently rank well, you have a greater chance of ranking when you choose less competitive, keyword phrases or long-tail keywords related to your niche. Focus on relevant low volume keywords at first and then once they rank well it means you are building authority on that topic. Once you have done that you can focus in on the more competitive high search volume keywords. It applies to writing content for your site or articles as well.
6. Don’t overuse any keyword phrases in your web page content because search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing consider this spam and although they don’t claim to penalize, it will feel like they do because you will end up with a lower page rank for keyword stuffing/cramming your web page content. This also applies to the blog posts you write. Always strive for high-quality content that will provide value to your readers.
7. While creating a web page bear it in mind that it is best to use a hyphen rather than an underscore in the URL Because this can result in better search engine optimization and keyword search results. This page is a good example. After the domain URL ending in .com/ you will add the title of this page with a hyphen between each word – “10-must-know-seo-tips-to-boost-your-search-rankings”
8. Another one of the greatest SEO techniques for best search engine optimization is giving your viewers with content that offers great information, answers to a relevant question, a solution or something that just entertains them. The content must be well crafted, clear & concise, and totally correct. Keep the website frequently up to date with great content and overtime; it could even become an authority website. Answering questions is one of the most powerful methods you can use to write content. For one, it will provide you with endless possibilities for topics to write about when you have difficulty coming up with ideas. You can find excellent sources for questions at Quora as well as Answer The Public mentioned above.
9. All SEO strategies start at the top of each of your website page. Use your keyword phrase in the first word of the first paragraph on each of your site web pages, like Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines focus more on keywords nearby to the top of the page, a lot more than other parts of your website.
10. Include your keyword phrase in anchor text links for your On-site web content and also within articles, PR releases or blogs. When you get an Off-site anchor text link, it will help you get a backlink from do follow sites, and that subsequently helps boost your page rank. Having more backlinks can and will surely get you better search results.

Also check out our recent post – WHY CONTENT MARKETING IS THE KEY TO GOOD SEO

The post 10 Must-Know SEO Tips to Boost Your Search Rankings appeared first on OceanOne Design.

There’s no question that there is much to learn in SEO but if you have some time and patience you can achieve results that can really pay off in the long run. You can save a lot of money not having to rely on Google Adwords. This is a Do-It-Yourself SEO guide meant for website owners. It is not a comprehensive guide for SEO professionals.

This post is primarily about “On Page SEO” which involves what you can do to improve your web pages. This must be done first. Next you’ll need to do “Off Page SEO” which includes acquiring backlinks to your website, Social Media outreach and a whole lot more so we’ll cover this in another post.

We’ve put together some steps to help you if you want to do it yourself. There’s also a huge list of links to free and paid SEO Tools and resources at the end of this article!

Step 1 – Choose the Ideal Keywords

The most important starting point is choosing the most effective keywords. Making solid choices will keep your campaign focused and it won’t be so overwhelming. Once you achieve results for 1 or 2 terms you will find it easier next time.  If you are sure you have the best keywords already then you can skip this part but I highly recommend that you revisit this phase often.

I usually start with the Keyword Tool in Google Adwords. Use this to explore all the keyword combinations you can think of and it also tells you how many times that term is searched in a month so you’ll know if it’s worth your time to pursue. Sign into Adwords with your Google account. You’ll be prompted to sign up for one if you don’t already have one.

Set up a new campaign answering a few simple questions and afterwards make sure the campaign is paused so you don’t get charged for running ads. Now it’s time do so some research.

Keyword Research

Once you have a campaign set up, click on the Tools link in the very top menu and select Keyword Planner from the drop down menu. On the page that loads, click on “Search for new keywords using a phrase, website or category”.  Then enter a couple of phrases that are relevant for your business.

If you have a roofing company you might enter roof repair, roofer, roofing contractors. Hit enter and you will get results back that show how many times those phrases and related phrases are searched for each month. It also hows how much it would cost per click if you ran an AdWords campaign. This is also a good indicator of competition.

If you are a local business then you’ll make to make sure you are looking at results for your location and not the whole world. The screen hot below show where you can filter by location ie. Toronto, Canada etc.

When companies are paying like $15 per click, you know it is highly competitive but worth ranking for. If you can rank high in organic results for one of those words it would be very valuable to you. Copy all the words you would like to rank for. If there are several then I you can click the “Download” button (see below) and it will download an Excel file or .CSV to your computer or Google Drive.

Google AdWords’ CPC (Cost Per Click) provides excellent data on how well a term converts — basically, the higher the cost, the better it will sell. Learn from the trial and error of others – the higher the amount your competitors are paying per click, the more valuable that traffic must be for them. Click on the header of the CPC column to sort your keywords by their Cost Per Click — and look at the conversion rate.

Take your time to really think about the keywords. If you have been trying to rank high for a keyword and it is just not working then choose another variation and get success with it first. Once you get success with a few keywords it will get easier.

Using the roofing company example, the words “roofing experts” had a very high cost per click $35.22 and is likely very competitive while “residential roofing” is $15.70 but get just as many searches every month and is likely easier to rank for.

Consider the intent of a keyword phrase as well. A person searching a phrase like “repair leaking roof” may be looking for information they can use to fix it themselves so it may not have potential for an immediate sale of your services but it may be a good idea to write a DIY article on the subject. It’s in the spirit of sharing useful information, it helps build your reputation and it boosts your authority on the subject as far as Google is concerned. Plus, who knows, the person reading the article may decide that it’s not worth doing themselves because of the extra tools and time that it will take so you might sell you services after all.

Earn more search hits by using longer or plural versions of keywords. Keyword stemming is a popular technique of some search engines. For example, using “roofer” as your keyword may not result in hits from people who search for “roofing” or “roofers.” Always use the longest form of a keyword. This will ensure that your site comes up in a variety of different searches.

Like I said this keyword research phase is very important so think it through carefully.

Another tool we like to use is SEMrush. It’s is a powerful and versatile tools that is amazing at competitive research. It’s free for a few searches. See links to more SEO tools and resources at the end of this post.

Keyword.io is a free keyword generating tool that’s worth trying. It will give you tons of variations and then you can export those to a CSV file and upload to Google Keyword planner to see how many searched there are for those. Then you can decide if they are worth using.

Step 2 – Great Content

Your first priority when trying to get a higher ranking should be to write great, informative, and totally unique content. It’s important to say something new. This can range from a different spin on subject matter to covering a more detailed aspect of your subject matter. There is a lot of traffic on the Internet and you’ll want to stand out in order to keep traffic coming to you. People stick around when you offer them information that is unique and has great content.

Hone in on one component of your business on each page. It really is a mistake to try to cram in each of your services or products into just one posting. This practice confuses customers, and as a result, they won’t return. Having each product the sole focus of its own page yields much better results and Google like it better that way too.

Google likes fresh content so for most businesses the solution is to have a blog and post articles on a regular basis. The extra time involved to do that is certainly a challenge for many companies so you may want to consider outsourcing that task. That can be done at a reasonable cost – some starting around $100/month.

Step 3 – On Page SEO & Technical Adjustments

Titles, Descriptions, & H1 Tags (DON’T Repeat!)

You must include the exact keywords you selected within the title of the page and the body text. The title should be both relevant and easy to remember. Although, at times an off the wall title will work, if it leaves an impression on the reader. People will click on the link to your site since it will fit the user’s search results. Here’s a great guide to writing effective headlines. I highly recommend that you install the SEO by Yoast plugin as it will let you know if your title is too long, if you have enough keywords and lots of helpful tips.

The common recommendation used to be that you put your exact match keyword in your URL, your title tag, your meta description and your H1 tag.

That’s just not the case anymore as Google rejects over-optimization.

Instead, what you want to do is use your synonyms and partial matches to give the page meaning, but not repeat the same keywords over and over.

Example: If you are ranking a page about “Vancouver Roofing Repairs,” don’t just keep repeating that one key phrase in your title, description and h1.

Instead, you can replace instances of that phrase with variations like…

• “Vancouver Roofers”
• “Roofers in Vancouver ”
• “Roofing repair companies in Vancouver” etc.

Google is better at detecting synonyms now, which means you will start  ranking for more long tail phrases as well!

The easier your website is to read, the more likely people are to return time and time again. Including accessibility functions like the ability to enlarge fonts can help your site rank higher. It is important that your site is designed to attract the attention of both your viewers and the search engines.

A great way to increase the flow of traffic to your site is by placing key search terms within the main page of your site.  The first paragraph of your page should feature the target keyword at least on time.  It’s only necessary to use the keyword once in your body text, but you can certainly put it in more as long as it sounds natural in the context. It’s very important to not over use the keywords making it unnatural.

More Tech Stuff

A site map for your site is an important for yout SEO strategy. This is how search engines find out information about your website. Large sites may have several maps. As a guide try not to have more than 100 links on each map. If you need to generate a site map there are many free tools you can use – here are a few we like: xml-sitemaps.com. Here’s a good Sitemap plugin if you use WordPress.

You also need to have a robots.txt file. You can read more about it and generate one by clicking here.

Step 4 -Website Audit

After you’ve done the work, run a website audit to see if you have everything covered. There’s a great FREE Audit tool at woorank.com .  Just enter you URL and it will send you all a report of all the things that can be done to improve your Search Ranking.

Another excellent tool to use is the SEO Quake plugin for Google Chrome. It can provide a page diagnosis and lots of other great info. Click here to get it.

That’s it for On-Page SEO

Getting the On Page optimization done is a must before you take the next steps of building links and reaching out through Social Media.

What’s Next?

Backlinks

Getting backlinks to your site from other websites is the next most important thing to do. It’s a whole other enchilada and I’ll cover that in another post. However, you can start by asking reputable companies,  customers and non-profits to provide links to your web site. Your site will receive more favourable treatment when search engines see that your site has received good quality links.

Always provide the best in content and verifiable information. When you do, reputable websites will feel comfortable featuring your website. Create content that these organizations will find useful and worthy.

SEO does not have to be just for professionals. You can effectively implement your own SEO strategies by applying easy and proven methods, like the suggestions in this article. Follow these steps you will improve your numbers.

Social Media

Google algorithms also look at activity coming from Social Networks so today a website needs to be easily shareable. I will write another post that goes into more depth about Social Media strategy.  For now, assuming you already have some Social Media accounts like Facebook, Twitter etc., there are many plugins out that you can use to connect you site with your Social Media accounts. Sumome is awesome and currently my favourite. It’s also great for building up your email list. For now, reach out and connect as much as you can.

Analytics

If you haven’t already, install Google Analytics to track all kinds of data relating to the traffic that comes to your site. Sign into your Google account here. Once you are logged, click on “Admin” in the top menu. Then from the account menu, select “Create new account”. Fill in your website URL and a few other fields and then you will be provided with the Tracking ID that beginning with “UA-“.

If you use WordPress, install a Google Analytics Plugin. I like one called Google Analytics Dashboard for WP. It makes it very easy to install analytics and it gives you a basic report right into the WordPress Dashboard so you can see how many visitors you have had without having to login to Google Analytics.

If you aren’t using WordPress or you don’t want to use a plugin then go back to the Admin Menu in Google Analytics and click on  “Tracking info” form the side menu and select “Tracking Code” from the sub menu.  You will see a box with the tracking code. It starts with <script>. Select all the code in that box and copy it. Paste this javascript tracking code into your website template page so that it appears before the closing </head> tag. It needs to be in the template page so that it is inserted on all pages.

Make Sure Your Site is Mobile Friendly

It is now essential that your website is mobile friendly because Google just announced that it is switching from a desktop focused index to a mobile-first indexing. That’s big news, because Google always favoured desktop versions of websites for ranking but with the fast rising use of mobile devices I can understand why.

You can easily find out if your site passes the mobile friendly test by clicking here. If you pass great. If not you go some work to do. You may want to talk to your web developer about that. If you want to do it yourself here’s a good place to start.

There’s a a great open source project called AMP  (Accelerated Mobile Pages) that embodies the vision that publishers can create mobile optimized content once and have it load instantly everywhere.

If you have a WordPress site here’s a YouTube video that show how you can implement it quite easily. It may take some tweaking beyond what this video shows but it does work in most cases. (Video by Scott from Curation Suite)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_W0UYlvJW8

I hope this helps. If you need any help with this, let us know.

The post Essential Do-It-Yourself SEO guide to get more traffic appeared first on OceanOne Design.

Plenty of businesses and individuals have relied on content as a go-to marketing tool for years. And, for a long time, text-based content remained king. Most online marketing funnels, such as blog posts and link building, relied on text-based content to network and, eventually build an audience.

The evolution of technology has changed all of that. A decade ago, people didn’t have access to other forms of content, such as videos and images. Most people had dial-up Internet access, so it was difficult to access that type of content on a regular basis.

Today, most people use faster Internet connections that have evolved with the times. Video and image-based content are the norm now, and with most people watching or viewing some type of image-based content nowadays, businesses need to adapt and start marketing with that form of content, too.

2016 was a revelation for many businesses in that respect. And, there’s a reason behind that. In this article, let’s learn about why content marketing’s so important nowadays.

Why is content marketing important?

Content marketing is a necessity for businesses if they want to have a successful online marketing campaign. It even helps businesses convert prospects into leads far faster than other marketing methods have in the past and it will help your Google ranking. Here are a few other reasons why that’s the case.

Content: more than text

Content, in the early days of the web, mainly referred to text-based content like articles, blog posts and web copy. Nowadays, content is more than just text. You can lots of interactive elements and of video which is the most engaging of all.

Include text, images, audio and video . And, they’re not just useful separately, either. People now combine all four elements to create multimedia content for their audiences to view and consume.

If you write some great content, you can also re-purpose it by turing it into a slideshow and posting it on slideshare, make a video with it and post it on YouTube, Vimeo and lots of other video sites. Turn it into a PDF and post it on document sharing sites like Scribd. Maybe use it to capture leads by making it downloadable after users give you their email.

Now that technology has evolved to allow people access to information at any time, so has content.

Studies have show that longer content is gets better results. Articles with over 2,000 words get shared a lot more that shorter articles of only 500 words. The most obvious reason being that longer articles provide more value because they can get into a lot more detail.

Don’t forget about mobile, too

Mobile platforms exploded over the course of this decade—and it’s only going to go up from here.

More people access content from their mobile devices nowadays. In fact, mobile devices like smartphones and tablets are some people’s only form of web access. With the aforementioned fast becoming a reality, it’s imperative for businesses to get on board with promoting their goods and services via mobile platforms.

Of course, it’s an even better idea to start developing content befitting a mobile device. That means utilizing responsive web design. Responsive web design is a type of practice used to create websites and web pages that fit any device where people view that website or web page.

Responsive web design displays content properly, and in ways attractive enough for people to, well, want more out of that content. There’s a reason why many businesses want their websites and web pages to be responsible. Not only does it look attractive, but it’s the best practice, too.

Your content, your story

Another thing about content marketing in this decade is the phenomenon of telling your story to your audience.

Creating content that reaches out to your followers is one of the elements of having a successful content marketing campaign. Don’t believe that?

When people are encouraged to act after reading content, they’re acting because something within that content encouraged them to act. In most cases, the content appealed to them enough. It spoke to them.

You can speak directly to your audience if you create content that engages. That content can be as simple as a blog post to as intricate as a series of video advertisements geared toward showing others your work process.

People want to relate to the brands they love to buy. They also want their favorite brands to be transparent. By staying transparent, relatable and honest with your audience, you’ll gain the potential to grow that audience in the future.

Promote your old and new content

Of course, you can’t really create content that’ll languish in the depths of the web. You have to, eventually, promoting your older content alongside your new content, too.

There’s always an audience for something on the web. And, your content isn’t going anywhere, either. Content from the mid to late 1990s still exists on the web somewhere, so it’s not like your content will disappear in the next decade.

Even if the information is outdated, it doesn’t hurt to update that content. That way, you’ll have twice as much content to promote when you do decide to finally update.

As you can see, content marketing is a vital part of promoting and building a business via the web. Content marketing is so effective that it actually helps small businesses save money on online marketing. So, that alone makes content marketing worth trying at least once.

The post The Importance Of Content Marketing appeared first on OceanOne Design.

Online marketing covers a range of possibilities. Some of your online marketing plans will make demands of your web design ambitions. Others will cover the potential of social media marketing. There are literally dozens and dozens of tips out there that are yours for the taking. Your responsibility, which some might call an unenviable one, is to choose amongst all the suggestions and concepts to find the ones that are right for you.

It’s not an unenviable task by any means. Although online marketing has become increasingly elaborate and complex over the past few years, it is by no means impossible. Whether you’re looking at online marketing plans in a broad sense, or if you’re considering your options with social media marketing specifically, you can find tips that are viable in your situation.

One thing is for certain: Great web design is really only the beginning.

The Future Of Online Marketing

The future of online marketing is actually quite exciting when you think about it. Social media marketing is getting bigger and bigger. The algorithms of search engines like Google and Bing are becoming increasingly smarter. While it’s true that these things are becoming a bit crowded with possibilities, it’s still a fairly straightforward matter to develop strong marketing tactics for your website and business. Website design is no less important now than it was ten years ago. It’s just that there are more things to consider as you build your website and prepare for it to go live.

As stated before, some online marketing tactics can be implemented as you’re designing and building your website. It’s just commonsense in this day and age to let your visitors share things from your page on their favorite social media sites. It’s a good idea to research your SEO (search engine optimization) possibilities ahead of time, and have content on your site ready to go on launch date that keeps your SEO options in mind. Is blogging something you’ll want to incorporate in your online marketing strategies? You’ll certainly want to keep that in mind.

The list goes on. The possibilities are not quite endless, but they’re certainly going to feel that way.

Essential Online Marketing Plans & Strategies

If you’re new to the world of online marketing or social media marketing, the following suggestions are worth keeping in mind as you research and learn. If you have an established website with a good social media presence, it never hurts to see if your online marketing strategies could use a little tweaking or enhancing:

• Look for social media outlets that are ideal to your marketing: Twitter is perfect for businesses that are keenly interested in establishing strong human connections. Facebook is an established social media entity that allows you to share content and interact with your audience. Those are just two possibilities. There are dozens and dozens of others out there. Pinterest has become extremely popular with companies that sell furniture, clothing, or jewelry. Instagram allows you to connect to followers who are eager to share their stories (and pictures) with the world. Are you starting to get the picture? Research your social media options. Find out which ones are going to generate the kind of attention you’re after. Don’t overextend yourself. Focus on four or five that have the strongest potential.
• Build a dedicated following: While building an audience, keep in mind that you want to build what is called a proprietary audience. This refers to an audience that is only going to be interested in what you have to say. Your content, offers, and level of personal interaction should be peerless.
• Don’t publish just because: Steady content on your website, your blog, and your social media outlets are certainly essential. However, strong online marketing or social media marketing emphasizes the importance of quality over quantity. Don’t publish just because you feel as though you need to. Publish because you have something genuinely compelling to share. That means you’re going to have to work hard to create that content.
• Look for outside help: If you can afford it, you may want to consider a social media manager or online marketing company. In the same way that an expert can help you with your web design, these individuals can help you focus your online marketing or social media marketing strategies.
• Prioritize: A good rule of thumb for many websites lists content, the user’s experience, social media, links for traffic, and basic search engine optimization on-page material as being the order in which you should focus your priorities.
• Value organic over non-organic: Avoid any opportunities to build your audience in non-organic ways. Buying Facebook likes is a small but important example of this. It won’t do you any favors in the long run.

Build Your Audience

Never forget that your audience is indeed out there. Even if you’re a smaller company, you can still compete with the bigger fish.

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