In your mission to compete with the big guns, are you underutilizing these small business branding hacks?
When you’re trying to boost your online visibility, it’s hard to know what tools to use, what methods you should be targeting and how to effectively measure results, especially when you’re already consumed with the day-to-day operations of your small business. You’re also unlikely to have an infinite budget to allocate toward this. That, combined with the confusing nature of SEO, with loads of companies promising to get you to rank but few actually being able to deliver, can leave many small business professionals wondering what direction they should take with their small business SEO. Here are some common mistakes:
Not Being Specific About Your Market
It may sound counterintuitive when it comes to SEO, but it pays to tap into a niche.
Logically, you might think that ranking for as many different keywords as possible would…
Recent analysis has highlighted how more often than not, longer-form content out-performs short-form.
The introduction of "Panda" changed the search landscape quite drastically. No longer was awful, poorly written content dancing around at the top of the SERPs, instead it is wallowing away in the "double digitted" results pages.
The ever-present Brian Dean over at Backlinko recently conducted some analysis of over 1 million Google search results, to answer the question...
Which factors correlate with first page search engine rankings?
It's a great piece, so I'd recommend checking it out. But one of the most pertinent takeaways for us here at Smart Insights, were the findings around content length. It's something as a editors and content creators we wrestle with on a daily basis.
Something that comes as no surprise is that there is a blatant correlation between…
With more than 100 billion calls expected to be made to businesses each year, here's a break-down of what is driving them.
Recently, Invoca published their Call Intelligence Index 2016 where they dissected the most influential marketing channels for driving calls to businesses.
It doesn't come as a shock to many that digital marketing outperforms more traditional forms of marketing, such as Newspapers, TV & Directory.
Again, somewhat unsurprisingly, mobile search outperforms all other channels of marketing by quite some distance. With over 48% of all calls to businesses coming from mobile search, it again highlights the growing importance and impact it has over our world. The ability to wrap CTA's such as Google’s call-only ad types and click-to-call buttons have proven too convenient to ignore.
Desktop search comes in as the second highest driver of calls to businesses, accounting for…
As we head towards some of the busiest months of the year, Google has decided to roll out some new Adwords features.
Value: [rating=3]
Recommended links: Paid Search Strategy
On Tuesday 12th July 2016, Google posted about a whole host of updates for their shopping ads and their Travel search ads.
Shopping ads
These new additions to Google are across three sectors Product Listing Ads (PLA's), YouTube and International Shopping
Product Listing Ads
In previous instances with broad terms queries such as "women's athletic clothing", Google has shown less defined and sometimes irrelevant items in the PLA's.
An example used in the post was a broad term search for "living room furniture", which may show a teal sofa, and this may not be the most useful experience for the person who isn't sure what they want to buy.
The new feature introduced with the aim to provide more relevant and engaging options is "Showcase Shopping Ads". The…
How to Increase Your Website’s Speed And Ultimately Your Conversions
The time that it takes your website to load is one of the most important factors your online business will face. Literally every second counts as even the smallest of delays can cause customers to go somewhere else.
Today we’ll look at just how much your site’s speed affects your bottom line and how you can lower loading times with quick and easy fixes.
Logic may dictate that another second of loading time is worth it for a great web design, users today are more interested in how fast your website loads. A slow website will kill your conversions faster than anything else. Not even an amazing digital marketing strategy can save a slow website.
You may know how to create a blog, but if you want it to be successful, it has to be fast. Consider these compelling reasons why you…
Late 2016 the tipping point will be reached, as digital spend outstrips TV advertising for the first time
If the forecasts based on current data from emarketer are correct, the US is about to spend more on digital ads that it does on to TV for the first time ever. This is the culmination of years of growth in digital advertising, but has been given a massive boost by the explosion of mobile ads over the last couple of years. From virtually nothing a few years ago, mobile advertising is in a renaissance. Now that over 50% of internet users are on mobile devices, it makes sense for budgets to be shifted to digital spending.
The data in this chart also points to other mega-trends, such as increased online video steaming rather than cable TV viewing, as well as increased time spent on social networking sites. These all combine to mean we…
The average marketing budget spends 48% on advertising, but how does it breakdown?
Not too long ago, broadcast and print reigned supreme, taking up a huge quantity of the advertising budgets. Then, along came the internet and began to shake things up.
The ability to accurately measure how adverts were performing was all too enticing and we have now seen a shift in favour of digital, with an average of 64% of the advertising spend.
Percolate, recently conducted a survey of over 300 enterprise U.S. CMOs, VPs, and Marketing Directors, to dig a little deeper into the hidden costs of marketing.
Search Ads
Search Advertising, refers to the adverts that appear on the results page, (usually near the top) when a user types a query into a search engine.
This takes on average 12% of the budget and can be…
When Parents and Grandparents started turning to Facebook, there was fear this would lead to a max exodus of the privacy conscious Millenials. Will this happen to Snapchat?
Well so far, so good. New data from eMarketer, has shown that Snapchat is getting more popular with the older demographics. Particularly from the ages of 25-34 and 35-44.
What's interesting is that this follows a very similar trajectory to that of Facebook - a rapid growth which started with the students and teens, before the slightly older generation of 25-34 and 35-44 year-olds began adopting it. Following from this, their Mums and Dad's, before finally a few Grandparents joined the party.
Although following a similar trajectory of Facebook isn't a bad thing; bearing in mind they have surpassed 1Billion users and are now valued at in excess of $330Billion, Snapchat still…
Web Hosting 101 for SEO
When people talk about SEO, web hosting seldom comes into the picture. What people forget is that registration and hosting data can affect your search engine rankings in a big way.
In the world of SEO where there are only ten slots that matter in SERPs and thousands of webmasters competing to find favor in the eyes of Google, any competitive advantage you have access to should be quickly taken advantage of.
Optimizing your registration and hosting data is one of the things you can do to improve your search engine rankings. Not all hosting services are created equal. There are some that are good value for money, and there are some that you should actively avoid like the plague.
When looking for a hosting service, you should pay attention to the factors that will affect your SEO.…
European online advertising spend is growing 9.7% year on year. But who is spending the most?
IHS Inc. & IAB Europe have recently announced some interesting findings from its European Online Advertising Report, highlighting a sizeable increase in advertising spend, compared to this time last year.
One of the most notable statistics from the report is the difference in spend between the UK and the rest of Europe.
With the UK spending in excess of €11.8 billion on online advertising, almost double that of the nearest country in Germany and triple that of France.
Eleni Marouli, principal analyst at IHS Technology highlighted the disparity, stating how the UK is
"clearly the first stop for advertisers in the region and shows no signs of slowing down.”
He goes on to highlight how the top three markets account for the lion's share of the advertising spend…
