Year: 2020

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In-House Vs Agency Marketing: which one is best for your business?

A business owner like you is well aware of the importance of Marketing and how a good marketing strategy can make your product more visible and appealing to potential customers. Having an effective marketing strategy can become the voice of your business.

Now that you already know the need for marketing, let us proceed with what kind of marketing. In this post, we will help you decide which marketing is best for your business or product.

Types of Marketing

With the advent of the Internet, everything’s changed, including advertising tactics. On the one hand, “Traditional” marketing is focused on print media, radio, t.v. On the other hand, in-store marketing, “Digital” marketing considers all online marketing techniques, including email and social media advertising.

Following is the list of types of marketing:

Branding: When you create an identity and decide some values for your business.

Advertising: presenting your product in front of customers.

Social media: advertising through social platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.

Email: an essential campaign that can convert your visitors into customers.

Search Marketing: SEO and PPC strategy to rank on search engine result pages.

Market Research: researching the needs of your potential customers.

If your competitors grow through a particular marketing strategy, it would not necessarily work for you the same way. So a million dollar question here arises which one is better for your business: In-house Marketing or Agency Marketing?

Which one to rely on Agency Marketing or In-House Marketing?

Agency Marketing

When you do agency marketing, you hire a third party for handling your business’ marketing. There are several marketing agencies to choose from depending on your business niche, which can provide A to Z services for marketing. No matter how small or big, a marketing agency has a team of experts capable of managing all your marketing affairs.

Finding a marketing agency that best suits your business and understands your brand and mission can completely take the burden of marketing off your plate. All you need is to develop a relationship with your marketing agency and let them help you grow and do all the marketing stuff on your behalf.

In-house Marketing

In-house marketing might be quite economical, but you have to hire marketing professionals for your company and train them to work together with your entire staff. You can train your team the way you like and make them work on specific goals and expertise in mind. This marketing is quite tilted on the disadvantageous side as the team you hired may not necessarily learn quickly or adopt new marketing strategies and that team won’t take risks for your business and work the way you train them, which ultimately gives you the burden of creating a marketing strategy.

What does a typical In-house Marketing team look like?

Deciding the type of marketing for your business is always your call as who knows your business better than you, right? Perfect marketing is the key that defines your business’ marketing goals, and you need to determine whether you want in-house marketing initiatives or require outside experts’ assistance.

Key factors to consider while deciding between In-House marketing and Agency Marketing:

Factor #1: Your Company Culture, Vision, and Values

Nowadays, most businesses prefer working with marketers capable of taking their business marketing to a whole new level. If you, too, are such a business firm who finds it better to work with marketers who get along with your company’s culture, vision, and values that you have set for yourself, then you are more likely to grow in better ways. Also, in general, it’s quite easier to hire a team internally for your marketing strategies as that team is your own employees who are more closely invested in your company’s success and growth rather than an external marketing team. It is a well-known fact that for external agencies working with several businesses just like yours, it becomes tough to understand your company’s day-to-day cultural values.

Factor #2: The Need for Wide-Ranging Skill-sets

You very well know your business’s nature and need, and that’s how you make strategies. Your in-house team needs to be skilled in different fields like web development, social selling, email marketing, pay-per-click advertising. This is not an easy task to build an in-house team equipped with all these skills.

The agencies which are already working with businesses like yours already have a team with all the above skills. In other words, hiring an agency for your business marketing can prove to a one-stop-shop for all your marketing needs.

If you are planning to recruit a digital marketing agency or an in-house marketing team for your business, you should dedicate some time and patience in researching for the same by keeping in mind all the outcomes you are expecting from them.

Factor #3: Keeping a Competitive Edge with Industry Best Practices

You being a business company, must be well aware of the evolving landscape of the digital marketing world. The need to stay ahead in the competition is also a well-known case scenario for you. It’s not necessary that the tactics or tools that provided you a great number of leads previously would provide you the same every time. With the growing competition, technologies are changing at a lightning pace, and keeping with that change is the only key that will promote your business.

This is simply a cakewalk for Digital Marketing Agencies to keep your marketing latest and greatest always. This is because marketing agencies often adapt to the latest technology as they have access to the same sources. On the other hand, this is not the case with an in-house marketing team.

Factor #4: A (Much) Larger Network of Brainpower

This is quite simple to understand that an in-house marketing team that you hire for your business marketing campaigns is not much exposed to large networks as they were hired by you and are only familiar with your business. No matter how skilled your in-house marketing team is, but this advantage can make you pay in the long run. On the other hand, an agency providing marketing services are more likely to have supplementary sources and resources to promote your business on a whole new level. 

So if you are ever in need of marketing services, you need to think about what is best for your business and agendas; they could be video production, script-writing, social media promotion, email marketing, etc. For all these requirements, hiring an agency marketing could be your best bait.

Factor #5: Easy Communication

You need to have efficient communication if you want your business marketing to run smoothly. This best works with an in-house marketing team that you hire internally for your business. You can conduct various sessions with your marketing team members that will let them feel more connected to your business.

Digital Marketing Agencies, on the other hand, are not easily accessible as they are working with other businesses as well, along with yours. In this case, you might feel left out as well, sometimes. Day-to-day communication is not possible with them as they have to look into their every client’s needs. They would prefer weekly or monthly meetings regarding your campaigns’ progress and share reports of the same. 

Although both methods work, it’s always your call that you’ll choose which one.

Factor #6: Access to Tools and Platforms

While a digital marketing team can access several difficult tools for an individual business, like yours, to buy, when you hire a digital marketing agency, you no longer have to worry about researching or purchasing marketing tools or software for your marketing campaigns. These keywords are more important than you think. If you hire an in-house marketing agency, you would need more budget than you have estimated to buy all the tools. You need not even think about this if you are working with an agency marketing service.

Also, digital marketing agencies have access to more platforms for marketing purposes, then you. So if you consider this point, we would highly recommend you go with a digital marketing agency without any second thought.

All about Digital Marketing Agency

Pros of a digital marketing agency

How sure are you about the effectiveness of your current traditional marketing campaigns? Suppose you are unable to answer this question. In that case, it’s high time you switch to digital marketing services and start investing in them to drive valuable results for your business’ marketing campaigns.

Let’s drive into the following undeniable advantages of agency marketing for your business

Cost-effective

One of the biggest benefits of agency marketing is that it not only generates more leads for you but also is cost-effective.

With traditional marketing, it would become quite difficult for you to compete with large businesses as they have more money advertising and sources to make their marketing campaigns successful. On the other hand, digital marketing methods will put your business on the same playing field as your competitor.

Easily Measurable

True, it is essential to invest in a proper marketing strategy, but it is more important to track those strategies and know if they are driving results for you and helping your business grow.

In- house marketing methods don’t allow you the same, while in agency marketing, you can track your campaign’s results accurately rarely.

Helps you in targeting customers

Out of all the perks, the most significant one is it makes you able to target your potential customers. It’s a challenge to obtain leads through an in-house marketing team, but via agency marketing, you reach the specific people who exactly match your business niche.

Improves match version Rate

Investing in agency marketing services like Conversion Rate Optimization(CRO), you ultimately increase your conversion rate as it gives you the ability to target more potential customers for your business. A better conversion rate is always a plus point that helps you grow effectively.

The expertise of a digital marketing agency

The expertise to have a marketing agency that has a team of experts who can develop has integrated all your marketing needs. Digital Marketing Agencies have both inbound and outbound marketing strategies, including SEO, PPC, advertising, social media and content marketing, etc. They help you with devising a strategy, providing you creative insights and designs so that you can stand out in the competition.

But also keep in mind that not all the agencies expertise in all the above factors, and that is where you need to do a little homework. Ask the agency you are planning to hire if they are well aware of the above technologies or not. This will help you in the long term run when you start getting results for your business marketing campaigns. This is why you need to have complete knowledge of all your needs would be fulfilled or not, and if that agency understands your needs and the values of your business.

Capabilities of a digital marketing agency 

Now, you must be curious to know what a digital marketing agency is capable of doing for your business’ growth. Have a look at them too: 

Social Media Marketing

There is no denying that today, social media is the most powerful network that can grow and take down any business in seconds. An excellent digital marketing agency is well equipped with how to turn the power of social media in favor of your business campaign.

Content Marketing

You very well know the importance of finding the right content, which has the ability to engage your audience. It is essential to earn your audience’s trust, and good content opens that door for you. It would not be wrong to say that “content is the king” and can set you apart in the competition.

Community Building

Even if you are just starting with business marketing, the first and foremost thing you need to do is focusing on building a strong community. Building a community is also important as it improves SEO, and also you become a trusted brand among your audience.

Agency Marketing services are beneficial in providing you a constant engagement as they target your business’s people’s niche, which is always a plus point for you.

Influencer Marketing

To stay one step ahead of your competitors, it is essential to identify your relevant influencers. Anyone capable of affecting your business positively could be an influencer to you, and you need to harness their expertise in order to grow. Digital Marketing agencies are a big help in this too.

Software and Tools used by a digital marketing agency

When you hire a digital marketing agency, you no longer have to worry about researching or purchasing marketing tools or software for your marketing campaigns. This is because marketing agencies are well equipped with all the marketing tools like keyword research that you would need for your campaigns.

Having years of working experience, some digital marketing agencies have software that can measure and track your online marketing campaigns. This software uses Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, through which they track your marketing strategies and ultimately help your business in generating leads.

Here’s a list of the tools that you should enquire about before hiring a marketing agency: 

File Storage Tools

To store all the files as a backup so that you have all the information available at one click

Customer Relationship Management tools

Look out if the agency you are hiring has the tools to manage their relationship with your business

Project Management Tools

What is the use of hiring an agency if they don’t pay attention to keeping a project management tool? You must put that too on your checklist.

Resource Planning Tools

Make sure the agency you hire has access to all the relevant resources for your business marketing strategies and that they have all the relevant tools for the same

Reporting Tools

When you hire an agency, it’s your right to have timely reports of all the campaigns they are running for your business so that you know if your business is growing effectively or not. Watch out for these tools as well.

Diverse specialties of a digital marketing agency

Social Media Management

A digital marketing agency promotes your business on all social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. Which helps you attract customers.

Email marketing

By email marketing, you can directly get in touch with your potential customers or target audience. Digital Marketing makes that feature available for you

Paid Advertising

Digital Marketing Agencies provide you all sorts of paid marketing for your business to reach an even more comprehensive range of audiences.

Conversion Rate Optimization

Digital Marketing is capable of converting your visitors into customers and customers into buyers. This helps you in gaining popularity very quickly and thus increases your profits.

SEO

A good digital marketing agency is your key to a better SEO by making you rank on search engine pages.

Web Design

You need to update your website regularly according to the change in technologies, and digital marketing agencies can help you with that. A well-designed website doesn’t only bring a new audience for you but also increases your revenue.

Copywriting

In today’s era, when digital marketing is significant everywhere, copyright has become more significant than ever. A marketing agency is capable of getting your reader to take action on your website through this technique.

Cost Comparison between In-house Marketing and Agency Marketing

Let’s look into the cost of In-house Marketing and Agency Marketing to help you get more clearer and to let you decide which one to choose: 

In-House Marketing

If you hire an in-house marketing team for your business marketing campaigns, you need to keep each member( in your marketing team ) in mind. The median salary of a marketing manager or multiple marketing specialists full-time ranges between $60,000 to $70,000. However, the cost of each campaign entirely depends on your marketing needs; that is why you should make a proper plan before making a decision.

You may think that if you hire a single person, you would need to spend less on your marketing strategy. This fact might be accurate, but this is also true that the process of hiring might belong as you need to train that person and make sure that he/she fits appropriately in your business.

Apart from this, you need to have a proper space for them in your company to work and have to spend on computers and programs and other things that they need.

Agency Marketing 

A Digital Marketing Agency, on the other hand, offers you different plans to choose from. You may select any plan from the pre-set price based on your business type and marketing needs. One plus point here is that they are negotiable.

An agency has a team of experts, its own software tools, tech, and all the other requirements that take the whole burden off your head. 

Cons

Everything, no matter how good, does come with some disadvantages. Have a look at some of them-

Based on Location

There are several agencies worldwide, which could be a disadvantage for you if you are planning to extend your business on a local level and want a local marketing company for the same. Even if you find a perfect company for your marketing needs and they are abroad, then also you are at a loss here.

So if you are planning to work for such an agency, you need to do a lot of research and have a backup plan too if that doesn’t work. 

Multiple clients

Having a good relationship with your digital marketing agency is something that always gives you an advantage over your competitors. The fact that an agency works with a number of businesses at a time may make you feel a bit left out. Though this is not the same while working with an experienced and client-focused marketing team.

A good agency is one that understands your needs and goals prior to you, and that is how they make you feel like they are part of your business team. In any case, if you are not feeling the above facts, then probably it’s time for you to change your marketing agency.

Control

When you trust some agency, you need to give them some freedom to carry out their work more efficiently. If you are someone who wants to have complete control over your business, then hiring an agency marketing team might prove to be some pain for you.

Digital Marketing Agencies work best when you allow them to devise your marketing strategy or let them carry your marketing campaigns. This provides them the freedom to make strategies that work best for your marketing tactics and help you grow positively. That is why you are advised to give some freedom to the agency you hire.

Comparison between: In-house and Agency Marketing

Pros of In-House Marketing Team

Dedicated and focused team

The best reason to hire an in-house marketing team could be that you will be having a team of dedicated on-site staff. An in-house team is available 24*7 for you and is 100% focused on your business.

Stronger knowledge of the brand

If there is someone who knows your business best, then these are your employees. This means that your in-house marketing team knows your customers, culture, and industry well.  

Better access to resources

Since your in-house marketing team is on-site, they have better access to your business’ audience and processes.

Cons of an In-House Marketing Team

Expensive

The in-house marketing team is on the expensive side as you have to pay each employee separately and also pay for their needs at your office.

Lack of skills

If you have a low budget, you won’t hire the best skilled in-house marketing team for your business.

Tunnel vision

The in-house marketing team is often behind in acquiring new marketing trends, making your marketing still or stale. They are not exposed to the world outside your business, which leads to a lack of ideas in them.

Pros of a Marketing Agency

Breadth and depth of knowledge

After hiring a digital marketing agency, you are relieved from all the marketing problems because they have profound knowledge of every aspect.

Cost-effective

You won’t be worrying about your budget with an agency marketing team as they provide a variety of plans to choose from

Access to technology and resources

A digital marketing agency is always equipped with all the essential tools which your business might not easily access. They give you all the data and resources for a seamless marketing campaign for your business.

Cons of a Marketing Agency

Less access and attention

Since an agency is working with more than one business at a time, you would have less access and attention.

Slow learning curve

If the agency is not an expert in your niche, it would take some time to understand your business.

Requires management

Some of your employees do need to manage the outside marketing agency to manage their efforts and introduce them to your business.

In-House vs Agency Marketing: How to decide which one is best for you?

Are you still confused about which marketing type between in-house and agency is best for you? We are here to help you compare both, have a look:

Skillset

Skillset is defined as the skills required to complete a job or project successfully.

It depends on your budget. If you can afford to hire multiple people with different skill sets and train them to work according to your requirements, you should go with in-house marketing. But if you want a team to go with each marketing strategy altogether, then hiring an agency makes more sense.

Creativity

Creativity is nothing but the use of imagination to develop original out of the box ideas for your marketing campaigns.

An in-house team hired by you may or may not be very familiar with your business working style, but an experienced agent and has worked with several businesses like yours is always full of creative and great ideas for your business marketing campaigns.

Adaptability

Adaptability is the ability to adapt to situations or tasks that change with time.

Your marketing team needs to be adaptive to any change that often occurs in the field of digitalization. If your agenda is to have constant communication and gradually change your project or campaign, you should consider going with an agency marketing team.

What types of digital marketing can agencies perform better?

Digital marketing agencies tend to have more capabilities in using these tactics: 

SEO

Let us start with SEO, which is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. This simply means making your business website optimized for search engines like Google, Yahoo, etc. It ranks high on these search engine result pages, which improves your visibility. In turn, you receive more audience. Think from the visitors’ point of view, would you bother to scroll more than two pages while searching? No, right? This is the sole reason that you need a good SEO value to rank high on SERPs. This is quite a long process and takes time before it gives you some positive results.

Digital Marketing Agencies provide you the information about your place among your competitors by doing keyword research and ranking analysis of your website. By this process, they optimize your website and build good quality content for you so that your website can rank up high on search engine result pages. They also build quality links for you, which helps your website crawl up on SERPs efficiently. When a user searches for the solution to their problem, Google does research and returns the most relevant results to their queries; this is why you need to have a good SEO value.

PPC

PPC is an acronym for Pay-per-click, and this is a kind of advertising technique on search engines. Unlike SEO, it is a way of moving up on the search engine result pages by paid methods. When you hire a digital marketing agency, they promote your website in different ways, and this is one of those ways, and you are charged every time someone clicks on your advertisement. The cost you are going to spend ultimately depends on your website’s quality score, the number of clicks, and the competition among the keywords you have selected.

PPC campaigns can be short term campaigns when you want to promote your product for a particular season or for a short period.

Selecting appropriate keywords in this method is crucial. There is no denying that digital marketing agencies are experts in keyword research, and they can provide you the right keywords for a PPC campaign on your business website. Not only do they find appropriate keywords, but they also don’t charge you much for that. You need to stay a step ahead of your competitors and not have some positive leads.

Email Marketing

Email Marketing is yet another form of marketing or rather say, a direct form of marketing as it involves keeping in touch with those people of yours who have already been your customers in the past. It consists of sending them information about new features or promotions running on your website directly into their email inbox. It is a technique of luring them in by providing some loyalty discounts too.

Your email will disappear if you don’t make it eye-catching, and for this, you need to address your customers with their names to make them feel more connected.

A digital marketing agency can be a big help in this regard as they can save your time in creating those personalized emails. They use tools that can not only assist you but also provide you the right audience to target. They use your existing mail list to send in the advertising emails directly to your potential customers. Always keep in mind that this remarketing technique is very frequently used by your competitors to lure in the audiences. That is why you need to acquire this technique too. This simply brings in more traffic to your website.

Social Media Marketing

Social media is proving to be the most powerful tool in the present scenario, and if you are not advertising on social media, you are losing too much. You can advertise on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. So that your business grows at a faster rate. For this purpose, you need to invest in agencies providing social media marketing services.

Like other campaigns, where you target your niche audience via ads, the same is done on social media platforms, flooding with your niche audience, waiting for you to reach them. Digital Marketing agencies collect data of users who might be interested in taking services from your business. This information can be used effectively by you in advertising your business, services, products, etc. Social media marketing can be a long-term and short-term campaign for you as per your needs. Thus, maintaining your social media is the key to digital marketing in this age. Target your audience via ads, and you will see tremendous growth in your business sales.

Website Design

In today’s fast-evolving digital market, your company’s website is considered one of the most important digital marketing channels. Your website can make or break the first impression of your website in the eyes of your visitors. You need to provide the relevant information that your visitors are looking for and provide them the necessary information about your product and services.

Website design involves many factors, and you need to keep in mind all those factors while designing a website for your business. Providing a seamless surf experience to your visitors should be on the top of your priority list and the layout, images, designs, logos, etc.

A digital marketing agency assists you in developing an attractive and optimized website for your business. Their team of experts makes sure that your site is clearly labeled, user friendly, and easy to navigate. They also make sure that your website can provide relevant information to the users. This ultimately acts as a funnel and converts your visitors into buyers and which is a massive success for your business.

Monarch Web World is a full-service digital marketing agency

Now that you have reached the end of this article, we assume that you have decided to hire a Marketing Agency to take your business to a whole new level, then Monarch Web World is the one-stop destination for all your needs.

Monarch Web World is a Google AdWords Certified Marketing Agency with 8+ years of experience with a demonstrated history of working in the marketing and advertising industry. We provide you our services in Marketing Management, Digital Strategy, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Advertising, and Sales, Agency Management & Business Partner Management.

If you are looking for an agency to help you in your marketing campaigns, Monarch Web World will help.

Read more: 7 Unique hacks to stay creative with an SEO-driven Content Strategy

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Page Speed Optimization: Speed Up Your Website to Increase Revenue

Page speed comprises one of the crucial components of search engine optimization as the business shifts online; optimization becomes an important part. It has been observed that 47% of the population expect the page to load in less than 2 seconds while another 43% of the population abandon the site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. How fast the content loads on the website page is considered as page speed. Read on to learn how to improve website loading speed.

Much emphasis is laid on page loading speed as it affects the traffic directed to the website. The faster the page loads, the higher are the chances of customers staying on the page. In this article, let’s talk about what exactly is page speed and why it is essential to bring about page speed optimization.

What is Page Speed?

Popularly it has been observed that page speed is at times confused with ‘site speed.’ The amount of time it takes for the content to appear fully is considered page speed. It is also the page load time. Just like site speed, page speed also forms a critical part of search engine rankings. It’s important to improve website loading speed. Page speed adds numerous advantages to the overall performance of the website. It makes it as smooth as a knife through the butter and helps in user delight.

Techniques to Improve Page Speed

Since page speed is an essential part of search engine optimization, maintaining it is also equally essential. The faster the page loads, the more enhanced is the user experience. It also increases the chance of traffic conversion. The following are some of the techniques to follow to improve website loading speed and page speed:

Compress the files

One of the techniques to improve page speed is compressing the page’s files. There are various tools available that can be used for this purpose. Compressing the files reduces their size. The lesser the file’s size on the page, the time it takes to load the content will be automatically reduced.

Optimize the codes

Various codes are employed for page development. By optimizing the codes, i.e., by removing the comma, spaces, and other unnecessary characters, the page’s speed improves. These extra substances present on the page are unnecessary and not required and only hamper the page speed. Reducing them will improve page speed.

Reduce page redirects

Whenever a user sends a request to redirect a page, there is some time lag for processing. This reduces the loading time of the page. The more you reduce the number of redirects to the page, the page speed will improve. Including backlinks to the website in the pages also improves website loading speed as extra time is devoted to the backlinks’ response.

Work on server response time

The server response time is affected by several factors like the amount of traffic that is being directed to the site, resources which the page use, and at times the hosting solution that is employed. Reducing the server response time increases the speed of the page and hence should be worked upon.

Optimize the images

For reducing the size of the image files, Photoshop software is put to use. Also, one needs to ensure that the size of the image that is put up is also in the correct format. Ensuring the above two allows the heavy image files to load in less time, and hence the speed of the page is improved.

Content distribution network

To distribute a load of content delivered, the content distribution network functions to do so. Copies of the site are created and kept at geographically different data centers for the users to have faster access to your website.

How to check Page Load Time?

There are several tools available online which provide the scope of checking the page speed. The URL of the page has to be entered, and in an instant, the page speed is displayed. Once you get an idea of the page speed, you can work on improving it. As George Will puts it, “the pursuit of perfection often impedes improvement” it is through continuous evaluation of the page speed which can bring about improvements.

Keep checking the page speed now and then improvise it to reduce the page’s time to load. Sometimes the fault arises in the heavy content that makes up the page. Larger content size impedes the page speed. Hence work should be done to reduce the content size and improve website loading speed.

Why is Page Speed Optimization Important?

Broadly considering, there are two significant factors because of which page speed is considered necessary, which are as follows:

Search Engines

With the concept of search engine optimization, which prefers sites with good page speed, search engines rank them higher. It is even because users gain enhanced experience with good page speed. Good page speed is like a cherry to the pudding.

While both search engines and users are fond of good page speed, it becomes mandatory for an online business to maintain one. This is because here, the search engines are not only providing information and answers but even a worthwhile user experience.

A noteworthy line “You cannot settle for a page 2 or page 10 ranking. If you want to grow your business, you need a page one ranking, which demands a fast website.” One cannot settle in for page 2 or page 10 of search engine results. If the business has to flourish, it becomes essential to achieve page 1 results.

Research has shown that 75% of the users remain glued to the first page, and 80% of the clicks go in for the top three results shown on the first page.

For every part of the purchasing funnel, including the discovery, research, and finally buying a product, people depend on search engines. 95% of online experience begins with a search engine. Any business that intends to generate leads from its online services needs to go in for page speed optimization.

User Experience

Any user that intends to use an online service expects a fantastic user experience. Imagine a scenario where you have typed a query on the search engine, and you have to wait to view the results.

Won’t you be annoyed?

In this situation, most of the users abandon the site. The online business is negatively impacted. Faster sites are reported to have 15% higher chances of conversion.

The user experience has to be according to the wants and demands of the people. If users are provided with a fast and smooth experience, they are more likely to purchase from you. And not only this, a high-class user experience allows the customer to keep coming back to your website, i.e., you even win customer loyalty.

Does it make a difference?

Here let us consider an essential factor.

Does page speed optimization add value to my business?

In a study conducted by Amazon, they discovered that a time difference of 100ms- a unit that humans can’t perceive is enough to bring down their sales by 1%.

Every second counts when it comes to sales. And it won’t stop there.

How fast your page loads has a direct impact on organic search results and pay per click. Your competitors have invested in that critical area and won’t mind eating your part.

Hence, for every stage of your business, having a good page speed contributes a lot to your business’s overall performance.

Additionally, website speed influences visibility. The Mobile-first index is something recently launched by search engines.

Here the search engines have started ranking pages based on the speed at which the page loads on a mobile phone. The mobile version of the websites is given more preference than the desktop version.

It is essential to spend some time with your website to determine the speed and the overall user experience. Remember, it is you who can best analyze your website.

The tips and techniques mentioned above will help you maintain your website speed and improve search engine rankings.

The entire idea is to recognize the gaps that hinder your page speed. Working through the gaps will improve page speed. You may consider some of these as minor changes, but when it comes to your business’s success and healthy conversion, small steps taken towards it will have a more significant impact.

The entire effort is dedicated to the seamless performance of your website and generates traffic for your business.

Read More: Off-Page SEO: How does Off Page Optimization helps increase traffic?

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Top 7 Social Media Mistakes All Brands should Avoid

Today we’re going to share with you the biggest social media mistakes that you’re making that’s causing you to not do well. We all know how big social media is these days, everyone’s on the social web. But why is it that no one follows your account, or you can’t get any traffic on your social profiles? Well, it’s about to change. Continue reading.

7 Social Media mistakes businesses make

Hey! This is my new product! Buy it!

Social media pages are more than advertising platforms. Posting other information relevant to the followers and fanbase is necessary to keep them in hold. Being overly self-promoting will make a company to be ignored as just another spammer.

Speaking to no one in particular

Being too general is too dangerous. Addressing a general population with no target audience is the best way to be ignored in the stampede of posts.

Failing to keep track

Analytics is the silver bullet to rectify all issues related to the number of visitors and conversion rates. Not tracking visitor’s data to observe what throws the followers away and what rivets them to the post is necessary to understand what they like to promote products relevant to them.

Shutting out negativity

Being positive is not a mistake. But trying to act like one is. No company is free of mistakes. Once it makes one, it is imperial to face them with polite assurances to rectify the issues. Deleting, ignoring, or censoring negative comments is just like letting a snowball to build up to flatten a company, later.

One-stop solution

Social media marketing is not a short-term goal. It requires a life-long commitment to deliver fresh, meaningful content to the audience. This can only be achieved with dedicated effort and resources. Having a social media marketing team is necessary to manage the profile and satisfy the viewers.

I’ll say whatever I want, just follow me!

When a company’s belief is incompatible with its customer’s belief, the audience will naturally lash at it by trolling and boycotting- both of them are very damaging to its business. Respecting the modern and most widely accepted norms like gender equality, and racial equality is necessary to survive online.

Jack of all trade, master of none

Companies try to grab as many followers as possible to get maximum outreach by posting on all available social media platforms will only result in lame content in all of them. Instead concentrating on one platform at a time is the best way to keep the audience engaged.

Why is Social Media important and how does it impacts your Business in 2020?

Same brand everywhere!

3.8 billion people are active in social media. Each person has an average of 8 profiles on various platforms. That means putting a word with a bunch of followers about a brand will give an impression of the brand being spoken by everyone. This will naturally attract buyers to the product.

Personalized for individuals

More than 91% percent of people are more likely to buy a product if it is catered and designed with their needs in consideration by personalizing their searches. Modern developments like Chatbots and AI has made it easier.

Increased loyalty of followers

Social media is now the best platform to review a new product launched by a company. These reviews, when are heard by the company, generates a group of loyal followers who would prefer to buy and refer to this company over others.

The wildfire spread of referrals

Referrals to a product from a familiar person is much likely to make a product sell than any other form of advertisement. What can now be better than social media to carry this word-of-mouth to all friends, families, and other potential buyers?

Opportunity to appear trust-worthy

Holding up to a cause and having a value is necessary to become a credible company. Social media helps people understand the company’s worth by judging the way it deals with the audience, especially negative reviews. This opportunity is easily available to all, unlike ever before.

Why hashtags are important on Social Media?

Spreading the word

The key strategy in any form of marketing is to disperse the word about your brand to as many relevant people as possible. Hashtags allow the people including the ones who are not a brand’s followers to get the information about the kind of solution they are looking for to solve their problems.

Knowing our opponent

Hashtags are not only for buyers. They can also be used by companies to study competing brands by analyzing their trending hashtags and thereby understanding the needs of the people looking for similar products, in real-time.

Confining the business to the local communities

Globalization is not always a good thing, especially for small businesses. Focusing on local communities by using the city’s name as a hashtag will save their resources and help them build their business within reachable distance.

Staying up-to-date

Today’s trending hashtag will be forgotten tomorrow. This constant change requiring constant effort from the marketer’s side will ensure a continuous flow of content and thereby earning more followers.

Self-explanatory

Hashtags by themselves are a trending subject. Using catchy, relevant, and short hashtags will be posted and reposted effortlessly by the company’s fan-base if it manages to please them in the first place.

 Read More: 5 ways how content marketing and social media work together 

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5 Simple Tips to Reduce Page load time and Speed up your Website

Have you been struggling with low ranks on search engines? Ever wondered why it is happening with your site? One of the possible reasons is the low page speed. It is important to reduce page load time. Page speed is entirely different from website speed. The amount of time it takes for the entire content to appear on the screen when the page is clicked is what we call page speed. 

The search engine ranks websites based on page speed. About 90% of the audience prefer search engines to look up for businesses online, and these are mostly displayed in the organic results. 

However, a point that should be considered here is that it is page one of searches where the websites are checked mainly by the users. It is said that “the best place to hide a dead body is page 2 of google search results” as no one ever looks at it. What search engines are specifically looking for is enhanced user experience. The faster the page loads, the more convenient users find it, and more are the chances of conversions.

With Search Engine Optimization where specific keywords are incorporated to improve the rankings, it becomes mandatory to bring about page speed optimization. A number of factors contribute to low page speed. 

The size of the content that constitutes the page is a major factor participating in low page speed. A number of tools and techniques are available today that help in bringing about page speed optimization. In the later part of the article, we will discuss that too. 

For users to have an enriching experience with your website, one must ensure that along with information and answers that your online business provides, the availability of content at a click of a second is the highlighted factor.

Tips To Reduce Page Load Time and Improve Website Speed

Compress the files

Most of the files that are present on the web pages are in the form of CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files. If you wish to improve your page speed, then decreasing the size of the files is an option. Various tools are available to achieve this. 

Server response time

Page speed is also affected by the time the server takes to respond. Slow server speed lowers the page speed too

Reduce the image size

The size of the image should be available in the correct format. The size could be compressed using various tools and techniques available. The smaller the image size, the better is the page speed.

Minify the codes

In order to minify the codes, it is essential to remove spaces, comma, unused code, comments, and formatting. Your SEO agency can do this for you. This will help reduce your page load time significantly.

Avoid redirects

Redirects lower the page speed as they go in for the HTTP request-response cycle. If used excessively, they hurt the page speed tremendously, which is why it becomes essential to keep the minimum.

Read More: Blogger Outreach: drive Traffic and Conversion

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How to create buyer personas in 5 simple steps?

A buyer persona is a representation of your ideal customer’s preferences and behavior. Reduce your marketing costs and increase your sales and ROI by paying attention to your customers’ behavior.

When customers are happy with a brand, they’ll want to share their experience with their friends and family. The recommendations help boost your trust with your business prospects and can get you more sales. 

However, to make any customer happy, you should know who your customers are and their user behavior. A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.

It is a profile that depicts your target customer. Buyer personas describe who your ideal customers are, the challenges they face, and how they make decisions.

But buyer personas are more than just numbers and graphs that shed a little light on a company’s clientele by breathing life into them, creating model purchasers guiding them how they should market their products to increase sales, generate and maintain consumer interest and how to grow their business by addressing the needs of their consumers.

Buyer personas provide tremendous structure and insight for your business. As a result, you will attract the most valuable visitors, leads, and customers. They assist businesses in understanding and empathizing with their customers to acquire and serve them more effectively.

Putting your customers’ needs first can help improve relationships with your audience and retain customers. This is because customers like to feel like they’re being given special treatment.

90% of consumers found personalization appealing, while 80% said they’d be more likely to do business with a personalized approach.

Creating buyer personas help in clearly defining your target customers and create marketing messages that will resonate with them. As every customer or prospect cannot be targeted individually, a customer persona helps represent each segment of your customer base. This makes it simpler to filter different customer groups and craft more potent and penetrative marketing strategies.

How should your business use buyer or audience personas?

To drive sales and increase your business, you need to market to the right audience. Depending on various customer characteristics, adjustments need to be made to your pitch and your marketing tactic. This means that you need to create buyer personas to identify the most relevant customers for your business and then use these personas to create targeted marketing campaigns that are highly suitable for your target customers.

Marketing personas can be effectively leveraged to craft compelling, targeted messages that speak directly to each customer group.

Different tools can target different target groups based on their age, work profile, industry, pain points, goals, buying patterns, geographical location, and gender.

Understanding your buyer personas allows you to understand the best ways to reach each customer group. Marketing personas can be a useful testing ground for evaluating your business decisions. For example, if a new product feature does not meet the needs of your buyer personas more effectively, it is advisable to reevaluate your plan, no matter how exciting it might sound or appear.

How to create buyer personas in 5 simple steps?

Your buyer personas need to be based on real-world information, not gut instinct. There is a difference between the people who want to buy from you and people you wish would buy from you. That means you need to start with some in-depth research. Well-defined buyer personas make it easier to create personalized experiences for your customers. This is crucial because personalization can have a massive impact on people’s purchase decisions.

“According to Accenture, 75% of consumers are more likely to buy from retailers that recognize them by name and know their purchase history.”

This data is used to provide purchase recommendations to them accordingly.

Extensive and comprehensive audience research

Learn about your existing customers in terms of age, location, language, education, income, buying behavior, interests and activities, and life stage (such as new parenthood or retirement).

Information from customer records, and supplementing that information through email surveys, online surveys, focus groups, or even customer interviews would also enhance and complement the research offering to prospective customers and whether they are reaching the same target audience as yours.

Are they doing something more useful than you are missing out on?

Communication through websites and social media tools can provide useful information about people interacting with your brand online.

Facebook Audience Insights provides incredibly valuable and detailed information.

Knowing about your competitors can be useful in terms of understanding what they are on.

Extensive and in-depth research helps you drive more sales by creating accurate buyer personas. Thorough and precise research helps create a valuable database that can and should be utilized in designing the company’s marketing campaigns.

Identify customer pain points

This essentially means The problems or hassles your potential customers are facing and trying to solve? What barriers do they face in reaching their goals?

Possible solutions: Engage in some social listening and social media sentiment analysis. Setting up search streams to monitor mentions of your brand, products, and competitors gives you a real-time look into what people say about you online.

You can identify why your customers love your products or which parts of the customer experience are not working? 

Keeping abreast with your customer service team to find out what kinds of questions they get the most help to identify patterns about which groups tend to face different challenges. 

Identifying customer goals

Having a comprehensive understanding of your customers is the key to achieving core business goals. This involves determining what your customers seek from your product and then trying to match their expectations/needs with your product. Their feedback gives you an insight into their ultimate goal and needs.

Understand how your brand can help

Once your customers’ pain points and goals are known, efforts can be directed towards designing your campaign and products accordingly.

Turn your research into buyer personas

Using all the information gathered through all the research, the same should be carefully analyzed to identify common customer personas. Your campaigns and products should be designed based on these.

How to use buyer personas to convert potential customers into buyers?

Buyer personas help you craft messages by thinking of buyer personas as real people. While designing your campaign, you must keep in mind what the prospective customer’s queries are, what social media tools they use, the language they use, their interest groups and should be able to answer or address the fact as to how your campaign would help or be beneficial to them.

Each persona will have different and specific problems and hence would require unique and different solutions. So the marketing campaign should be designed so that it answers all such questions and should address the questions particular to each type of persona.

All decisions about your business and your marketing strategy should revolve around the personas you are catering to. This will help you build a bond with the real customers they represent, boosting sales while creating brand loyalty and trust.

Though it takes a lot of time to research and build customer personas, the payoff makes it all worthwhile. Switching to persona marketing makes it easier to focus your marketing budget and resources on providing valuable content to your prospective customers.

Understanding the customers’ desires, habits, pain points, and other things can help you influence their purchase decisions. Building a persona of a typical customer helps them understand what they want from you as a business, giving you the power to connect with them more effectively in your marketing campaigns.

 Read More: Refine your Digital Marketing Strategy during Covid 19 for business growth

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The Modern Marketing Funnel: What works during the Covid-19 situation? 

All the businesses need to boost up in 2020, once the lockdown gets over, after the COVID-19 effect. The marketing funnel describes the key stages a customer needs to go through before buying something. People don’t just wake up and decide to buy a new car for no reason. Likewise, people don’t always wait until they truly need something before buying it. And one of the key causes people to buy things they don’t need is because top brands know the consumer journey. Not only that, but they know how to induce this journey and guide customers through it.

AIDA– Digital Marketing Funnel Formula

This is how the AIDA funnel works.

Awareness

People can’t buy something they don’t even know exists.

Interest

Once people know about your offer, you need to turn this awareness into interest.

Desire

With consumer interest, the next stage is establishing an emotional connection that inspires a desire to make the purchase.

Action

Finally, you show consumers how to turn that desire into reality (sign here, click this, sign up, etc.).

In 2020, there are more variations of the marketing funnel than ever.

Unlike the AIDA funnel, the 2020 marketing approach considers consumers after the initial purchase. This is really important because you want your existing customers to keep buying from you, and you also want them to help you attract new customers.

The new customer life cycle in 2020 is

Awareness

The moment a user first discovers your brand, product, offer, etc.

Consideration

They’re interested but not ready to buy now – perhaps comparing you against the competition or waiting for an exclusive offer.

Conversion

When a user finally makes a choice to buy (hopefully with you).

Loyalty

Users who regularly buy from you and find it difficult to go elsewhere.

Advocacy

Users who actively recommend you to potential buyers.

The key thing here is that the marketing funnel doesn’t end with the purchase. There is plenty more work to be done at post-sales too.

Capturing leads at every stage of the modern marketing funnel is the new funnel in 2020. It’s not a linear process any further in 2020. There can be thousands or even millions of people out there already who may know your brand but simply aren’t interested in it yet.

There are even more people out there who are interested in what you’re selling but don’t know your brand exists yet. Each stage of the new marketing funnel represents a state of mind. Every brand wants to capture leads at every stage of the sales funnel and target potential audiences with messages that reflect their state of mind. Right user actions are needed at each step of the marketing funnel.

By mapping out the interactions on every stage of the modern marketing funnel and assigning them to a call to action, you can then target each user – based on their previous efforts on your digital assets – with marketing messages designed to move them closer to the purchase.

An overview of how every stage of the modern marketing funnel works

Awareness

Get your message in front of the right eyes.

Marketing goals

Build awareness, target relevant audiences.

Build awareness with SEO.

Build awareness with paid advertising.

Build awareness with social media.

Consideration

Make yourself the most compelling option for your potential buyers.

Marketing goals

Target higher-intent audiences, turn awareness into purchase intent.

Target buying intent keywords.

Capture email leads for lead nurturing.

Conversion

Turn leads into profitable actions.

Marketing goals

Convert leads, minimize conversion barriers, turn consideration into action.

Create search campaigns for people ready to buy now.

Optimize your forms to maximize conversion rates.

Do Conversion rate optimization (CRO) the smart way.

Reduce loading times.

Switch to single-column layouts.

Use the ‘inverted pyramid’ for CTAs.

Switch to multi-step forms.

Remove navigation from landing pages.

Test CTA placement.

Test secondary CTAs further down the page.

Try exit-intent popups.

Loyalty

Turn customers into repeat buyers.

Marketing goals

Get customers to buy again, reduce churn rates, build loyalty

Make customer service a priority.

“No matter how good your products/services are, customers are going to experience problems from time to time, and how you deal with these is going to be a major factor in your retention rates.”

Reward your customers.

Run upselling/cross-selling campaigns.

Advocacy

Get new leads from your existing customers.

Marketing goals

Turn happy customers into a lead generation strategy.

Build a profile of positive reviews.

Get success stories from your customers.

Create referral campaigns to turn customers into new leads.

Maximizing leads & conversions at every stage of the modern marketing funnel.

The consumer journey doesn’t end with the first purchase; this is where the customer journey begins, and your efforts move to maximize further purchases and customer value.

Read more: Blogger Outreach: drive Traffic and Conversion

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12 Best White Hat Link Building Techniques to improve your Rankings

Link building might seem a lot of hassle, and you might not consider it while trying to rank your website up. Well, you might be wrong there!

There have always been numerous changes in the Google ranking algorithm, in which backlink remains an essential ranking signal.

Google itself has revealed backlinks being one of the top 3 ranking factors. Hence, it is important to get high-quality backlinks to your website to rank high in SERPs.

What exactly is a backlink?

A backlink is a link to your website mentioned on other websites. They are known by various other names such as incoming links, one-way links, or inbound links. Most of the search engine algorithms consider them as votes from other websites. The more the number of votes, the possibility of a website getting a higher rank in SERPs.

Why is Backlink so Important?

They are essential because they are referred to as “vote of confidence.” SEO protocols are always changing and updating. It also builds a brand value along with ranking you up in SERPs. It increases traffic to your website as well. Link building creates a win-win situation for you.

Quality Backlinks over anything

Say your website has a backlink from Huffington Post and a backlink from a random website no one really knows about. The backlinks from quality sites are always more preferable than random sites. Therefore, if you want to get ranked high on search engine page results, focus on getting quality backlinks.

Engage in White Hat Link Building Only

Google released a Penguin update on 24 April 2012, which was a way of rewarding high-quality websites by ranking them higher on SERPs. It focuses on eliminating websites that use manipulative techniques to rank higher on SERPs. It is now a part of Google’sGoogle’s core algorithm, making it impossible to rank up using manipulative link schemes.

Practices aligning with Google’s guidelines

White-hat SEO refers to the usage of Google-approved website optimization strategies. There are certain dos and don’ts in guidelines for outreach strategy, which are to be followed. Shady tactics don’t last long and may be harmful to your website at the point in time. They might seem tempting and easy, but with regular updates in Google’s policies, you might end up getting caused by a penalty.

White Hat Link Building Techniques to improve your website rankings

Link building is a never-ending task, and you always have to strive for more. However, we are here to provide you with easy and clean strategies to help you get backlinks and shoot up your organic traffic. Let us have a look at some most effective link-building strategies.

Asking for it

One simple way of getting backlinks is by asking people you know to give you backlinks in their blogs and websites. You can ask your friends, family, and people you know in the SEO business.

Make sure the website is relevant to your niche. Being relevant matters to a huge extent, and if not relevant, it may even be harmful.

Moving backlinks

In this, you have to take care of the backlinks you already have. You should keep a check on your website pages, which are linked, and if they are updated and are still relevant in today’s world. If that is not the case, restructure and update and ask them to change their backlink to newer and more important pages of your website.

Giving testimonials to certain brands: Several brands ask you to write testimonials for them. In which you have written about your experiences with that brand or product.

This provides you with an opportunity to get a backlink from the site along with a fair amount of traffic, and the company gets a testimonial for their product. Therefore, it is beneficial both ways.

Getting listed in directories

There are certain spam directories that are removed by Google search results. But there exist certain directories with useful information for users. Those directories are niche directories, in which there is a list of websites related to a particular topic.

This helps a website in getting ranked high in search engine page results and maximize outreach.

Finding Unlinked Content

There could be certain content or brand-specific graphics that are unique just to your brand; reverse search for them, and find if any website used it as a resource without mentioning you or giving you a backlink. Make a list of such websites, ask them to mention your website, and give you credit.

Redirecting Status 404 to backlinks

This arises when the client is able to establish a connection with the server but is unable to find the requested resource. You can redirect those broken pages to a newer and relevant page of your website. This will help you in keeping the backlink of your broken page to yourself.

Guest Posts

Writing a guest post is a good way of outreach and earning a backlink. You can write an article or a blog for some other website. The article has to be of good quality as brand reputation matters. Bad links are harmful in various sorts; therefore, we should focus on good link building.

Looking out for Lost Links

You have to check the recent links that you lost. This includes figuring out the reason for the lost link, which could be due to many reasons, either the website was being restructured, or a competitor replaced you. You can reclaim your lost link if you figure out the reason for losing it in the first place.

Converting mentions to backlinks

There are times when websites have mentioned you, but they did not give you a backlink. You could simply ask them to change that mention into a backlink. You can do that easily by contacting the webmaster and ask for a change of mention to backlink.

Finding Link Building Opportunities

There are several articles and blogs related to your niche, but they don’t give links to any websites. It becomes difficult to search for such websites, but you can use SERP research tools to make the task easier and find the potential articles which can give you a backlink.

Enhancing the content

You can work on the betterment of your website content for better traffic and more backlinks. You could work on quality articles, infographics, extra materials, and videos. This includes providing a better user experience by enhancing your content quality.

Giveaway

If you host certain scholarships and giveaways, you can get a good amount of traffic and backlinks. Launching scholarships get you backlinks in University blogs.

This can be beneficial for your website if you can afford to do so. You may use a few or all of these tactics to increase backlinks to your website and figure out which works for you the best.

Now all you have to do is start trying all these methods to get more backlinks.

Read More: Off-Page SEO: How does Off Page Optimization helps increase traffic?

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Exploring Domain Authority and Page Authority to improve the SEO “Organic Growth”

There is no doubt in the fact that the internet has become a necessary part of everyone’s life

Nowadays, and if you are not using it to promote your business, then you are missing out on some of the good ways to increase your sales. However, when we talk about business “selling through the internet,” your audience is looking for your services and authenticity.

Google’s rank websites based on over 200 factors, and it is quite difficult for you to optimize for all of them. But here we are going to know about two factors (not included in Google’s list) which not only help you increase the audience on your website but also helps your audience to know the legitimacy of your website. In other words, these two factors are like your website’s reputation as a thought leader.

These two factors are-

1. Domain Authority

2. Page Authority

Domain Authority

Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score that predicts your website’s ability to rank on search engine result pages or SERPs. It is developed by the SEO software company Moz and is not related to Google in any way.

It informs you about the ability to rank your domain.

Calculating Domain Authority score

To calculate the website’s DA, Moz accounts for over 40 factors; the DA score of your website is relative to the DA score of the highest authority website. Since Moz can not give a score over 100 to the highest-authority websites, it lowers the DA score of other sites.

DA scale is logarithmic(ranging from 1 to 100), and this means that when your DA is higher, it’s harder to improve your authority score. For instance, increasing your DA from 60 to 70 is more challenging than increasing your DA from 20 to 30.

Understanding Good Domain Authority Score

According to Moz, DA is best used as a comparative metric rather than an absolute concrete score. In simpler terms, let’s take, for instance, that your domain score stands at 70 while your competitor stands at 90, then your competitor has better chances to rank up on SERP.

So if you think that you have a great DA score, then you might be wrong till you know where your competitors stand. Keeping this in mind, your objective should be to have an authority score higher than your competitors.

Page Authority

Moz, an SEO software company, also develops Page Authority(PA).  PA is a search engine ranking score that predicts a certain page’s ranking ability on your website on SERP. The value obtained at PA includes DA as a factor. PA also ranges from a score of 1 to 100. 

Calculating Page Authority score

PA score is ranked using a 100-point logarithmic scale. PA rank. Similar to DA, it isn’t easy to increase from 70 to 80 rather than 20 to 30.

One thing to keep in mind here is that since PA considers DA as a factor, having a good DA score is definitely going to benefit the score of your website’s pages.

Understanding Good Page Authority score

PA, similar to DA, is also affected by several factors. So finding the exact reason for PA rank changes is quite difficult, but you can always make predictions and simply run experiments to improve your PA score. Google includes several criteria to rank your page, and all of them can affect your score.

How does the Domain Authority and Page Authority affect the SEO?

Now that you have a clear idea about DA and PA and how they rank or score your website, you must be wondering if they impact SEO. Well yes, they have–

Helps in determining your business website’s authenticity

There exist thousands of illegitimate websites on the internet that disappear after a course of time. So it becomes quite challenging to earn your audience’s trust and convince them to buy your product. DA score tells you the legitimacy of a website, and it’s experience. Having a good DA and PA score helps you perform well at SERPs and ultimately improve your SEO.

Connecting with high ranking websites

Connecting with a website having a better DA than yours can help in improving the visibility of your website on the search engine, but while investing your time and money in other websites, make sure they are authentic and are having a DA score better than yours. Websites with a high DA score are supposed to have a strong domain, and your connection with them improves your DA score, and you get a better optimization on SERP. DA and PA Score, making SEO processes easier.

Checking the ranking ability of keywords

The first thing you need to know is your links help you rank. Apart from getting a higher ranking, you can access more keywords or be specific “competitive keywords.” Thus it becomes essential to check the ranking ability of a keyword you are using. This process is simple; you need to Google the keyword and check the PA for it to know it’s ability to rank.

Good PA score makes Google crawl your pages

When you have more PA scores, Google will crawl more of your pages. But suppose you only have a handful of links and a million pages on your website. In that case, it will be complicated to get Google to crawl and index all those million pages until or unless you are some big e-commerce or business website like ebay, Amazon, with a DA of 100 you might not be able to attract Google.

Helps in increasing indexation speed

You might be able to get Google to crawl your pages with low DA, but it will take a while for Google to revisit those pages. At this point, we get into the idea of indexation speed. With a higher DA, Google will crawl and index your content at a much faster rate than at a lower DA score.

Make your links powerful

Just so you know that with increased link equity, your links become more powerful, which gives you incredible ranking power. So it makes everything easier to rank. Your link with other businesses or websites increases your value. 

Getting rid of bad links

Google has a policy of penalizing the sites with spam links on them, increasing your risk of being impacted by negative SEO. A good DA score makes Google crawl on your web pages, and by this, you can check and remove those links.

Saving you from over-optimization

Google says that they don’t have an over-optimization penalty. But many SEOs understand that if you’re a small site that is just starting, it is straightforward to over-optimize for keywords. With a high DA score, you can save yourself from over-optimization and thus increase your SERP rank.

Having unique content is the key

According to a saying- “Everything has been said or done but not by you” sort of fits right in this context. In the digital market, everyone is trying to experiment with their content to attract the right audiences. You need to see what is out there and do it in your own creative and better way. This ultimately increases your DA and PA score and has a significant impact on your SERP ranking.

Zero error and properly working external links

Before posting any content on your website, make sure there are no errors or improperly working external links. It can have an adverse effect on your DA and PA score and so on the SEO of your website.

Researching keywords to have a good DA/PA score

Keyword phrase research involves identifying the keyword or phrases used in optimization. This step is the balanced combination of two essential factors: highly used keywords by searchers and relatively low competition within the search engines.

Determining the most used phrase that contains your targeted keywords is easy but has high competition. Thus, it is better to opt for less competitive keywords to have a good DA and PA score and save your optimization efforts.

Conclusion

If you were wondering why, despite having clinging and robust content, you were unable to attract an audience, then you must try working for a better DA and PA score for your business website. On the one hand, PA will determine your content’s success when it comes to search keywords, and on the other hand, DA is going to determine how your domain ranks compared to every different domain.

Read More: Voice Search SEO: The Importance of Voice Search Optimization

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Google May 2020 Core Update: Analysis of its Impact on Web ranking

May the “fourth” be with you” – this is the phrase Star Wars fans look forward to saying on May fourth; it is typically a happy day. Unfortunately, this day was met with gloom, unhappiness, and unjust.

So, you heard about Google’s “core “update, and you’re wondering what changed. What is so special about this particular update? Why has your website’s ranking changed so significantly? Why the nepotism towards top sites like Amazon, Pinterest, Etsy, etc.? Lastly, was this update core enough?

While every day and night bring the same monotony to the rest of us amidst this rising pandemic environment, things seem to be a little more exciting at Google.

 The pandemic does not directly handicap the workings of the major search engine as it has done to us – and Google takes proper advantage of this perk. No pandemic, or recession or anything stops it from doing its job – and that is precisely what it did on May fourth, 2020. It was just protocol, having a major update – yet this update was just over-hyped and not as relevant as it was made to seem.

Every year, Google has some updates; records show that it made a whopping 3000+ updates in 2018, which must mean that it had 8+ updates each day- can we keep up?

Every year, Google has these updates – some are regular ones, and some are the more important updates. In 2018, amongst the incredible 3000+ updates, one such update was of significant importance – called the “Medic.”

Coming back to 2020, there have been two updates so far – One In January and one that took place on May fourth.

Now obviously being a core update, it was of major significance because these core updates substantially affect site ranking. Despite this, the response so far has been far from affirmative.

 What exactly is a core update? How is it important to Google?

Well, for starters, it brings about some major changes to Google’s algorithm – which means it affects several websites. And these major changes are relevant for sites because while these changes roll-out, the rankings are highly volatile. The sites with better and updated content will rank higher and then ultimately, proudly take home the winner award.

To put it in simple words, rankings can move around a lot during a core update. Now, although there was a major update back in January (when going out was not illegal), the one that happened in May has seen some negative responses from several sources. But a core update is supposed to be important and relevant, not bring about a negative pool of opinion. So what happened to the update, and why are people taking to Twitter to troll Google’s newest update? Does Google plan on retaliating and defending the update?

What are Google May 2020 Core Update facts, and what do we know?

Well, if you would have noticed, your website probably was going through a volatile period sometime between May 4th-6th. This was not there before, obviously, and you might have been able to track it this time – it’s pretty natural during a core update.

But after it got over, you would have noticed that your website seemed to show a fluctuation in rankings because of the volatility, and would also notice that your website’s ranking has either gone up or down. If your website’s ranking has gone up, then Kudos to your hard work, and you would have nothing to complain about – but, if your website ranking dipped dangerously lower than expected, then fret not, you are not alone.

This was the case for many websites.

To the dismay of many e-commerce sites, there were a few top companies that took to the winner’s list. According to famed blogger and entrepreneur Neil Patel, Industries such as travel, real estate, pets and animals, health, etc. were affected by this volatility. Some companies, you normally wouldn’t notice otherwise, showed an unexpected surge in rankings.

Several people found this rather surprising and unexpected. It’s still believable that the health industry took a few hits on the upper side, but what about the others?

That’s not all.

Sources have revealed that only top-notch companies such as Amazon, Ebay, Etsy, Pinterest, etc. were on top of the search results during the update. What about the other companies?

Don’t they matter? Or are they not top-notch enough to get on the list? No one really knows why it happened, because there isn’t an exact reason. However, we are aware and agree that this is not fair. Some people call this update “a carnage,” “a monster,” “heavily flawed,” – seen as trolling on Twitter – and other negative things, and no one could blame them for showing such a blatant display of disdain towards the change.

It is difficult to comprehend that when all the hard work put in towards your business doesn’t work out and, in fact, turns out to be a set of futile exercises, then disappointment prevails. Everyone works hard to attain some objective or success, and should it not be fruitful, then the expected result would be heartbreak, to say the very least.

Many renowned sites such as Spotify.com, Linkedin, etc. had turned prey to this partial ranking. This led to an outcry, trolling, and reposts on social media – something that is natural when anything scandalous turns up, and this was nothing short of one.

But does this mean that the other companies have to cut their losses and move ahead? Does this mean that these sites will never see the light of top SERPs?

Fortunately, unlike the Coronavirus, there is a cure to this raw deal – you just need to keep updating your content and make it fresh to get back on top. The best interpretation would be to strive to make each piece of content the most holistic resource on the web for the user and the website owner.

But what is the relation between Covid-19 and search results?

Pinterest’s quarantine surge – rightly compared to a typical Christmas bump?

Studies have shown that during the quarantine period and more specifically, during this core update volatility period, sites like Pinterest, Etsy, Amazon, etc. have shown a significant surge in SERPs – one that can be rightly compared to the Christmas season sales, which are at an all-time high every year.

Sources have mentioned that sites like Pinterest and Etsy have been at the top of results during the 2-3 day rolling out. Essentially Pinterest and Etsy are the sources of handmade DIY projects, which several people have started to enjoy. It could be possible that since the pandemic has handicapped our ability and access to the outside world, most of us have resorted to traditional handmade projects at home – it is a beautiful hobby that helps kill some of the boredom and gloom from being locked up at home all day, every day.

Studies and cases have also shown a surge in SERPs involving Pinterest and Etsy, and sometimes Amazon too. There seemed to have been a direct link with Pinterest, where the keyword “handmade” was typed. It’s not that we have something in particular against the sites; it’s just that Google SERPs did not give other companies and businesses a chance to be found on the internet, despite belonging to the same niche as the desired keyword.

However, this was not the only site where Google’s flawed SERPs showed so much partiality.

Spotify, a leading music and streaming service, showed a sharp decline during this two-day rollout. All of us know that Spotify has gradually risen to the top music apps list. It is known to dominate the streaming industry, with first-hand professional expertise always ready to update the content, market, and promote. It is considered number one in most countries; hence domination and authority are clear. However, having an authoritative position could not spare this site from ranking low during the core update.

Linkedin’s Ranking Crash – Did Google adjust its algorithms according to quarantine?

Another example of an unjust ranking was Linkedin. During the 2 day roll with Google’s heavily flawed SERPs, Linkedin was shown to disappear from the list completely. Linkedin – a major communications site where professionals and employees connect and have helped millions of people get jobs matching their requisites – too, could not save itself.

It is agreeable that Linkedin, as an online employment site, had not much of a role to play during this pandemic situation where employment was laid off, retrenched, and forced remote jobs were the trend – but the treatment this site received was not just, and entirely out of proportion.

Linkedin is such a powerful website that the name itself creates brand loyalty – and yet, it failed to do well during this core update. The ratings had gone so low in the SERPs that it just disappeared from the search results. For many of us, what could be more unfair than that?

This led to a flood of negative opinions, trolls, articles, etc. Although things have stabilized a little after the live rolling out – this question still plays on so many minds. Why did this happen? Why was Google so partial about selected companies? Did these companies not deserve any better?

Read More: Exploring Domain Authority and Page Authority to improve the SEO “Organic Growth”

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Top 5 Digital Marketing Books to Read in 2020

Books are the best source of knowledge (and sometimes wisdom). Digital marketing is no exception in this aspect. Finding and reading books is much easier than in the past since the onset of Internet usage. Here we have chosen the top digital marketing books that every marketer should read. Scroll down to find more about the sources of knowledge in the field of Digital marketing.

Top 5 Digital marketing books that every marketing professional should read in 2020

Digital Marketing for Dummies by Ryan Deiss

This is the guide the world turns to, to stay afloat in the quicksand of ever-changing trends. Ryan explains the how-to-dos of a wide range of topics from the art of ad campaigns to the basics of Social media marketing.

Google AdWords for Beginners by Cory Rabazinsky

Google Ads can easily be the most powerful tool for advertisement in the digital realm if used wisely. Explore the labyrinth of procedures and processes behind the scenes of AdWords to understand and use it for your business’ progress.

Spin sucks by Gini Dietrich

A widely ignored fact by companies in social media: followers are humans and they expect human communication from companies. Spin Sucks explains this concept in-depth to establish an ethical communication system between the audience and the companies to foster trust.

The Clarity Project by Liam Thompson

In this book, Liam explains the ways to identify the target audience,  digital marketing strategies to increase visitors and conversion rates, building a relationship with clients, and many other mind-bending concepts of digital marketing in easy-to-grasp concept bits and with clarity.

Hug Your Haters by Jay Baer

Ego stands in between negative feedback and an effective solution. Hug your haters explains exactly how to overcome it to avoid both ignoring and reacting to haters by drawing in crazy case studies to show us what went wrong. This book on digital marketing is the perfect solution to turn your haters into stepping stones for success.

Search Engine Optimisation for Dummies by Peter Kent

Keywords linked to the webpage are what help search engines to save us the pain of wading through the heavily crowded Internet. In this digital marketing book, Peter helps you to unravel the secrets of optimizing these keywords for your company’s Ads to be readily found by search engines.

These digital marketing books will be an unequivocal power in our hands. However, always do remember that books can only do so much. Learn from them and never hesitate to put what you learn into practice. After all, the experience cannot be dug out from books.  

Mantras for Writing Great Content

Once upon a time, writing was a tool for the rich and the powerful. In this digital era, it is no longer a privilege reserved for the elites. Anyone can write to express their views on anything they wish to. However, the art of creating great content is an elusive dream for many. Slide down to make the dream come true.

Read, read, read….

Reading is the unequivocal solution to sow and grow ideas. It doesn’t matter what one reads. Time spent on reading is never wasted. Besides, it comes with an added benefit- increased vocabulary. Great ideas to present content and good vocabulary to write it downturns good content into great content.

Know what you write

Lengthy and purely opinion-based writings are no match to the compelling and short articles out there. If one decides to write more, then the length of the article must reflect the depth of his research. Not knowing what one writes is the quickest way to lose track of the point.

Draw a picture

Humans are visual beings. We love visual content rather than text. So, painting a scene with visually stimulating vocabulary would help to process and retain content. To make them more enjoyable, literally inserting relevant images can enhance the reading experience manifold.

Don’t settle for it

Losing the will to push harder is the difference between a trending writer and a former writer. Trying to learn and practice new techniques and subjects will make one stay on track. In the long run, people read content for what it is, not for who wrote it.

Keep editing

Never submit the first draft for publishing! However appealing it may look, it is not the best. Simple errors like a typo and grammatical glitches will ruin the overall feel of the piece. So, editing drafts repeatedly with a short time between each draft will make wonders for the final copy.

Be an SEO expert

As we are focusing on digital content writing, being discoverable is very important to reach the potential audience. This requires the need to be listed in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Learning to incorporate keywords that have a high potential to be searched for will go a long way to gain a wide outreach.

2020 Digital Marketing trends

One may call 2020 the year of reform. Changes are happening in every possible social, medical, and technological setting. Marketing trends are no exception here. Keep scrolling to learn the emerging trends in digital marketing

Voice searches see an upward slope

With the advancement in voice assisting tech like Alexa and Google Assistant, voice searches have gone up by around 20% and are still increasing. Optimizing the keywords for marketing ads for voice searches by switching from broken groups of words to full sentences are helping businesses gain greater outreach.

Position zero- nothing less

Position zero- the first result in a SERP- is the most coveted position in 2020 for any business. Being on the first page alone is no longer enough. Increased optimization of SEO is done to fight for the top position.

Personalization to a new level

Consumers now readily dismiss irrelevant ads, without even a glance. Utilizing modern tech like AI and chatbots with human backup is done to extract details from every single user. These data are promising in displaying highly personalized ads for every denizen of the internet.

New tech: VR and AR

People love to know more about a product before buying it, with very little difficulty. Virtual and Augmented Reality are the most informative means available in 2020. Their realistic feel is being used by companies to sell large products like a car, furniture, or even a house that conventionally relied on video ads and personal visits. 

Finding the right influencer

More than 72% of Instagram users buy products via the app. 70% of teens trust products supported by an influencer rather than a celebrity. Putting this knowledge to use by partnering with the right influencer has guarantee increased sales for all kinds of products. 

A video ad is a must

More than 49% of Internet users watch at least 5 videos per day!

That means people are more willing to watch video ads than any other ad forms. This has made all companies scramble to make video ads.

Content marketing is not dead, yet

Even though the technological advances may seem to say a different story, they all are diverting the traffic to the contents! People now wish to learn more about a product than ever before. So, it is imperial for companies to deliver quality content with more focus on the context.

Read More: 10 effective Content Marketing ideas for small business