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Marketing Tips For Bloggers in 2018 and How to do it in an Easy Way

In recent years, blogging has proven to be one of the most valuable tools within the digital marketing strategy of companies that want to grow and increase their sales in a productive and lucrative way.  A blog analysis and monitoring company, more than 175,000 blogs are published daily and 1.6 million posts are published. Amazing, right? If you do not know how to create a blog and still do not have one, it can be a problem. Do not panic with numbers, blogs are valuable for companies to build a lasting and trusting relationship with consumers and potential customers. Besides being an excellent way to generate leads and opportunities for your sales team.

But to generate leads and sell more, it is important to have a good blog organized, attractive and constantly updated. Therefore, we create a complete and detailed content, providing all the knowledge you need to create a successful blog and potentialize your content and digital marketing strategy.
WHY ARE BLOGS IMPORTANT?
The forms of communication have changed over the years. The time when brands only spoke and consumers only listened is past. Today, the communication and marketing process is two-way: Consumers also speak and companies also listen.
Therefore, it is important for any company to create a channel that generates these relationships, through visits and educating those visitors through relevant content. But first, we go in parts. A friendly company is always remembered.
WHAT PROVES THAT THE BLOGS CAN HELP ME?
The number of companies that invested in digital marketing and inbound marketing has grown considerably over the years. We are talking about various businesses, small businesses, SMEs and large companies, all of them perceived the importance of designing their brands online and be seen in blogs as a powerful tool. But how?
  • Positioning and recognition
  • Direct and simple
Create a blog and update it with relevant content helps your business to be found in the queries that are made in the search engines. Quality content attracts the attention of Google and visitors who require information. Some companies concerning the software administration and finance, demonstrate how they increased traffic and the correct use of tools marketing automation and how the conversion was essential for the newly launched brand, create recognition and generate more leads qualified for the sales team.
How to create a blog on WordPress?
WordPress is the main market platform, with more than 53 million blogs published each month with a community of more than 409 million people reading over 19.8 million pages each month. Creating a new blog in WordPress is really very simple. The first step is to access www.wordpress.com and click on create the site. The creation process is simple:
Choose a name for your blog (like ours is Content Marketing)
  • Register with your name
  • Password
  • Email
  • Choose your preferred template.
  • The process is simple and several attractive templates are available.
How to create a Blogger?
Blogger, also known as Blogspot, is a free Google publishing platform that works in integration with your Gmail account. Despite also being well known, it is less used for corporate blog, however, it is still worth checking out. To create a blog is really very easy. The first step is to have an account with Gmail and enter www.blogger.com. With the login made, click on the new blog. And choose the title, address and the theme or model of the blog. Super simple!  and the theme or model of the blog. Super simple!
EXTRA TIP: WHAT DOMAIN TO USE FOR YOUR BLOG?
One of the most frequent questions is about what domain to use for the blog. There are some options, of which not all are recommended. But one thing is a general rule: a good blog, serious, that inspires confidence should not be something like nor. The first step is to use your own domain
CHOOSING THE BEST HOST
Hosting your blog may not seem so important to have good results with your content marketing strategy, but think: this can make all the difference. Good hosting services are valuable weapons to position your site well and ensure that your visitors have stability and quality when accessing your blog. Well, it’s important but what difference does it make in practice? First, Google considers dozens of different aspects of organizing the indexing in searches and one of them is the quality of navigation.
When a site does not have a quality hosting, that is to say, it is unstable, it has constant drops, delay to load the page, because of the quality of the connection, this site appears in lower positions in searches and that is never good, mainly for your SEO strategy. The first step is to choose the right hosting for your needs and for your blog platform. In the case of WordPress, for example, the platform we use for our blog, there are specialized hosting services. Services for specific platforms have better integration with the format and content, which generates better hosting. 
IT’S TIME TO TALK ABOUT THE CONTENT
Creating a blog is not limited to placing a site on the air with a very good hosting and an attractive subject. The truth, those are just a very valuable tool for your digital marketing strategy and you need to have results.
Define a clear objective
The first step is to define what the main purpose of your blog is. Having a clear objective is the only way to define what success means for your content strategy. Some of the objectives that we see daily in Rock are: generate leads, attract traffic, become a reference, educate customers and increase brand recognition.
Define your people
Every business has an ideal client and every blog has an ideal visitor. Creating people, also semi-formal profiles of people who buy your product are the best way to get the language of your texts right and create a more effective content that really has value for visitors to your blog. To create buyer people we cannot make assumptions. It is necessary to conduct searches, interviews and collect data systematically with clients and prospects to know in detail what the characteristics of your visitor or ideal audience are. Many questions can be asked, but it is always important to remember that these vary according to your business. However, there is one of them that cannot be absent: how is it that your product or service helps to improve the life of your client?
Plan your content
We have already defined two important steps and now we need to put content production into practice. It is important to remember that the planning and strategy of content production are linked to your personal and the sales funnel. The first step to start the production of any type of content is to know well in which stage of the funnel is your person and what kind of content is interesting for this stage.
SEO, OPTIMIZING THE CONTENT
SEO (search engine optimization) has a very simple objective: to optimize your content to improve your position in organic Google searches for example. When they are applied, the techniques of content optimization for search engines have good results, but remember that these are a part of a whole. Let’s see a little more about what makes up SEO.
Head vs long tail
The basis of optimization is given by a keyword. That is a word that defines the theme of your blog post. This can be divided into two groups: long and short, but also, these are directly related. Keywords head tail, are the base words for publications. You summarize the general theme of the publication and help the visitor to decide if that post is interesting or not for what he is looking for.
Long tail keywords are longer variations of the head and refine the search on a topic. For example, in this post we talk about how to create a blog, we can assume that we are talking about: how to create a blog in WordPress or how to create a blog in blogger. They are more specific versions of the same keyword.

How Google works?
When starting with the use of SEO as a tool for blogs and sites, it was very common to saturate the texts with keywords that were repeated tirelessly and meaningless phrases that do not add anything to the content. Today, Google’s algorithm is very smart. It is not possible to deceive him. Now, the search algorithm not only needs keywords in texts, but it analyzes in context and the relevance of this topic to the user.
Therefore, it is not enough to fill your text with repetitive content, you need to build the context and the relevance for the reader because this is the crucial factor to position yourself in the results. Today what Google is looking for to index and position the sites is quality. Using SEO techniques it is possible to define the topics well and know what is the basis of the content that will be developed, but always remember that this content must be relevant to you.
BLOG READY AND NOW?
Having a well-updated blog is a constant job. It is necessary to revisit the old publications whenever there is any new material related to the published, create links with CTAs for rich materials published later, such as ebooks and whitepapers. Some practices can be applied regularly to ensure that your texts are well positioned and up-to-date.
A good topic should be:
Simple
If your blog is very confusing, surely you will have more difficulty attracting readers and retain those you already have, which will impact your conversion rates.
Responsive
Nowadays there are more users who access the Internet from mobile devices than from desktops and laptops. That’s why the chosen theme of your blog should be easily adjusted to different screen sizes and mobile devices.
Quick
Although most topics will not affect the speed of your blog, it is important to conduct some tests. After all, nobody likes to enter slow websites, right?
About the Author
Tom Sanders, of doit4state.com studied business and engineering at the New York Maritime College. His passion lies in educating, entertaining and empowering anyone who wants to learn.

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How to Measure SEO Performance: Vital Metrics & KPIs

How do you measure the success of your SEO campaigns? What are the best SEO KPIs (key performance indicators) or metrics to track?

I’m asking for a friend…

But seriously, how do you prove that when, or if, the changes you’ve made to your website have had any effect at all on your bottom line, or your top line for that matter? It’s not always easy to prove to key stakeholders that what we as SEOs are asking them to do isn’t some kind of fruitless shamanistic ritual or hand-wavey snake oil sales tactic.

Fear not fellow Search Engine Optimists! There are plenty of ways for us to show the impact of our work and the value of SEO.

Start With Your Goals

How we measure the success of our SEO campaigns depends on the goals of that campaign. For example, the KPIs will be different if you are trying to rank no. 1 for “wedding dress” than if you’re trying to cram as many people as possible into the top of your sales funnel by getting them to register for a webinar or book an online appointment.

I’ve broken out these SEO KPIs into four main groups based on the type of SEO campaign or initiative you might be running.

Visibility Metrics

In SEO, visibility means getting your website in front of as many eyeballs and potential customers as possible. Visibility KPIs for SEO can include impressions in search results, organic ranking positions in search results, and your share of voice (I’ll talk about this later in this post).

Overall Visibility (Impressions)

Search impressions broadly measure your overall organic visibility. For example, if you are starting an SEO/content strategy that is turning out five new, high-quality articles a month, the number of impressions your website is making in search engine results pages (SERPs) might be the KPI you need to monitor.

Use Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools to benchmark your website’s number of impressions at the onset of any campaign or promotion. Be sure to annotate whenever changes or additions are made to the site so you can closely monitor the effects of the changes.

Sample screenshot showing tracked impressionsSample screenshot showing tracked impressions

 

Topic and Keyword Rankings

The oldest and most recognizable SEO metric is keyword rankings. We hear it all the time, “Is my website ranking number one for Keyword V?!” “Are we ranking higher than Competitor Q?”

Tracking and reporting on individual keyword rankings can be a double-edged sword. If stakeholders become too focused on ranking for a specific keyword or phrase, your ability to prove the value of your SEO may hinge on the next Google algorithm update. We don’t want that. As long as you are strategic with which keywords, topics, and groups of topics you are tracking and reporting on, this can be an invaluable way to prove the success of your SEO efforts.

There are any number of tools out there that can track your individual keyword rankings: Moz, AWR, Raven Tools, etc. Personally, I love the way that STAT allows for the tracking of target pages and groups of tagged keywords.

Share of Voice

Like I mentioned before, it can be dangerous to focus solely on keyword rankings, since there are so many factors that are out of our control. Share of voice is one way to get your point across without putting all of your berries into one bowl. In organic search, share of voice is a calculation based on the search volume of a given keyword, your position in organic search results, and the expected click-through rate for the position. STAT does a fantastic job of tracking this SEO metric:

Screenshot showing share of voice trackingScreenshot showing share of voice tracking

 

Traffic Metrics

After you get your site in front of searchers in the SERPs, you need to get them clicking through to your website and converting.

Organic Traffic/Sessions

Any analytics platform can get you the data you need here. Whether you’re using Adobe Analytics, Google Analytics 360, or Matomo, you can track and measure the organic traffic to your website. Be sure to put a focus on the pages or sections of the site that you are working on and don’t forget about Dark Traffic.

Screenshot showing how to track organic traffic and sessions in Google AnalyticsScreenshot showing how to track organic traffic and sessions in Google Analytics

 

Click-Through Rate from SERPs

Click-through rate from search result pages is a good way to measure the effectiveness of your new title tags and meta descriptions. By this point, you’ve managed to get your pages ranking higher in the SERPs, but are searchers clicking on your shiny blue links?

Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools track all of the necessary metrics to show your improvements in driving people to your site from the search results pages.

Engagement Metrics

Most of the focus for SEO is getting your website visible to your target audience and then getting them through to all of your wonderful content. Visibility metrics and traffic metrics are great for reporting on those SEO successes, but that’s not where the money is going to come from.

However, your success involves more than just SEO. It also relies on a coherent content strategy and conversion optimization. You need people to take action and convert on your website, and engagement metrics are about measuring those user actions.

So, to make sure users are taking the desired path through the website and eventually converting, we look at some of the traditional SEO metrics like pageviews, time on page, bounce rate, and conversions.

Pageviews

Pageviews give you an easy-to-understand view of user engagement: how many pages did a visitor to your site see during their session?

Depending on the nature of your website (B2B e-commerce vs. B2B SaaS, for example) the pageview metric can be interpreted differently. Ask yourself, are users engaging with the content in a way that you expect? If you are running a nurture, awareness, or educational campaign, you’ll be looking to see the number of pageviews per session increase. If your SEO campaign is focused on bottom-of-funnel, high intent traffic, the ratio of sessions to pageviews will be closer to 1:1. So every additional pageview earned is more valuable to the bottom line.

Time on Page and Bounce Rate

Once users get to your site, are they consuming all of the content they should? Time on page and bounce rate metrics can be used to show the quality and effectiveness of your on-page content. For more on engagement metrics, check out our guide to choosing content KPIs.

Organic Conversions

Conversions are where the ROI meets the road. If you’ve set up your analytics platform properly, you should be tracking all of your desired website conversions. So, is your organic traffic converting? You’ve got your pages ranking and people are clicking through to the website, but are people taking the desired actions when they get there? If not, this is an opportunity for some A/B testing and conversion rate optimization (CRO).

Technical Metrics

It may be a little more difficult to prove the value of technical SEO implementation. The challenge comes from making changes that very few people will ever see, and trying to justify the amount of effort that goes into those changes. Some key metrics to prove the effectiveness of your technical SEO fixes include page speed and performance, the number of pages indexed in search engines, and the number of crawl errors associated with your website.

Page Load Speed

Page speed is a ranking factor and it is critical for mobile traffic. If you are trying to make your site faster to capture and retain mobile users, start benchmarking now. Use tools like WebPagetest, Lighthouse, or even just use the DOMContentLoaded and Load times from Chrome’s developer tools to gather your data. Then, take those metrics and plug them into a data visualization tool to track your progress over time.

Screenshot showing an example of Chrome's page speed tracking toolScreenshot showing an example of Chrome's page speed tracking tool

 

Pages Indexed

Depending on the current state of your site and the goals of your technical SEO efforts, you may want to see more or less pages indexed by the search engines. For example, if you’ve inherited an e-commerce website with millions of duplicate pages you’ll want to track your success in removing the cruft pages. Or you can track the success of a new website launch by monitoring how quickly your new content is getting crawled and indexed by the search engines. Google Search Console, or third-party indexes like Ahrefs, are useful for tracking which pages are being indexed.

Screenshot showing an example of page index tracking in Google Search ConsoleScreenshot showing an example of page index tracking in Google Search Console

 

If you need to tie your technical SEO work a little closer to major KPIs, line up the number of impressions from Google Search Console with the number of erroring pages. GSC even has that as a built-in functionality now.

Crawl Errors

Crawl errors (server responses like 404, 403, 500, etc.) on a website can be an indicator of a low-quality website. Too many crawl errors can add up and then start to drag down the overall quality of your website and start to negatively affect your rankings in search results. Using the number of crawl errors from a crawler tool like our very own RainGage or Screaming Frog is a great way to report on your day-to-day work.

Screenshot of a pie chart report showing website crawl errorsScreenshot of a pie chart report showing website crawl errors

 

Other SEO Metrics

I don’t want to forget about some of our tried-and-true SEO KPIs! Metrics like the number of backlinks and linking domains, Moz Domain Authority, and Majestic Trust Flow are a few of the more traditional SEO metrics that can still have a major impact on your SEO success.

Backlinks

The number and quality of backlinks and linking domains to your website will always be a core SEO KPI to track. If you are running a content promotion campaign, monitoring your new links to the target pages is one of the only ways to show how effective your investment is. Use a tool like the Moz Link Explorer to track the quality of your backlink profile.

Screenshot of Moz Link Explorer backlink dataScreenshot of Moz Link Explorer backlink data

 

Moz Domain Authority

Moz’s Domain Authority (DA) is another way to demonstrate your SEO and content outreach campaign effectiveness. Since DA is a good indicator of a website’s potential for organic visibility, tracking it in conjunction with the optimizations made on your website, and any of your link building work, will ultimately prove their worth.

At the end of the day, being able to measure the success of your SEO work is essential. By using any combination of these SEO metrics like share of voice, organic sessions, and conversions, you should be able to paint a picture of your SEO performance for your key stakeholders. What you choose to track ultimately depends on your business and your goals. With this list of SEO KPIs and reporting metrics, you are well on your way to being able to justify your SEO efforts to decision-makers, building your case for the value of SEO.

The post How to Measure SEO Performance: Vital Metrics & KPIs appeared first on Portent.

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CX Journey™ Musings: On Means and Outcomes…

Image courtesy of Pixabay

Do you know the difference between means and outcomes? Between the journey and the destination?

I know. I know. Those are silly questions to ask.

Of course everyone knows the difference between means and outcomes. Of course everyone knows the difference between the means to an end and the end.

Or do they?

As I was driving to an appointment the other day, I saw a sticker on the back of a construction truck that read, in big red letters: Safety is the goal.

So, let me throw out some definitions here.

Tags: 
Annette Franz (Gleneicki)
customer experience
employee experience

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An SEO’s Guide To Getting $h!t Done

SEO consultants love the principled stand. We make recommendations like You Must Change Your Sitewide Navigation Or Die. Change Your Content Or You Are Doomed. Optimize for E-A-T.

Clients don’t want to hear it. They don’t trust us. We’re walking in off the street and making arcane, complex recommendations about a single channel. So they respond by saying “We don’t have the resources” or “Prove it first.”

They’re not bad clients. We’re lousy consultants. We need to learn to make incremental requests that will pay off, then use successes to build trust and momentum.

This is my presentation/rant on the subject:

I’ve talked about client participation and roadblocks in digital marketing, too. Have a look here: Digital Marketing Strategy That Works.

The post An SEO’s Guide To Getting $h!t Done appeared first on Portent.

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White-Hat Link Building: What Is It and Why Does It Matter?

Outreach as an SEO practice is becoming more common—and more difficult. With backlinks being one of the top Google ranking factors, the term “link building” is turning into a popular buzz word within the marketing industry. Most online marketers are desperate to build their brand’s backlink profile and are willing to do anything to get a link. But there is a fine line between how you should and shouldn’t build links, and it can drastically affect your search engine rankings. That’s where white-hat link building comes in.

What Does “White-Hat” Mean?

The term “white-hat” isn’t limited to just link building. It’s used to define agreeable SEO practices as a whole and should be an important part of any outreach strategy. Practices that align with Google’s guidelines are considered white-hat. In other words, keep it clean and play by Google’s rules. Your goal should be to focus on the user by creating a good experience and adding valuable content to the internet, not manipulate search rankings with dirty (black-hat) SEO methods.

Why Should You Engage Only in White-Hat Link Building?

While black-hat tactics are tempting and seem quicker and easier, they won’t withstand the test of time—or Google’s algorithm updates—and could cause you a manual penalty that will set you back months, if not years and have you buried trying to correct it. It’s serious stuff.

Google is constantly updating its algorithm. When it identifies spammy or low-quality backlinks pointing to your site, you will likely be penalized, and your rankings will plummet. Just ask JC Penney—they learned the hard way.

Manipulating search engines in any way is against Google’s guidelines, so make sure you aren’t using black-hat tactics. Don’t participate in link schemes, such as buying, selling, or trading links for SEO purposes, using link farms, or producing low-quality, auto-generated or spun content to place links.

If you have only authoritative, high-quality backlinks, earned naturally through a variety of white-hat link building strategies that I will go into next, you don’t need to worry about your rankings when the algorithm updates since you aren’t breaking any rules. White-hat methods are “future-proof”; they hold up in the long run.

White-Hat Link Building Techniques

If you can’t buy, sell, or trade links with other websites, then what can you do to build authoritative links? Here are a few squeaky-clean white-hat strategies that you can implement without crossing the line.

Guest Posting

This is a slow process and yields a lower number of links, but these links can be highly valuable to your site—well worth the extra effort if they’re relevant! The links you place through guest posting should be extremely relevant and authoritative, and it allows you to control the context around your brand and include suitable related keywords. Placing guest posts on sites with greater authority will add nicely to your backlink profile and gain link equity (the value a link passes onto your page).

Your main focus in this approach is to create quality content and cater to the audience. Reach out to online media outlets, bloggers, and other websites related to your industry and ask to write an article for them. Within the article, you’ll link back to relevant content on your site as a resource. Many outlets that accept outside contributors will allow you to have a link to your site in the author bio as a way for you to gain additional exposure. This will help establish your brand as a reliable source of information and an authority in your industry.

It’s against Google’s guidelines to trade or pay for links in any way. If another site asks you to place a link on your site for them or asks for payment to place a link or publish a post, RUN. This is a clear violation of Google’s guidelines and puts your site at risk of being penalized.

Content Promotion

Guest posting is a slow, low-volume approach, but content promotion is quite the opposite. You can place a large number of links in a short amount of time, which can result in a high volume of referral traffic and quickly expand your brand awareness.

You’ll create and publish an exceptional piece of content on your site, such as a comprehensive how-to guide, tool, or original data. Then, reach out to online media outlets, like news stations and magazines, and ask them to cover your content on their site. This tactic will showcase your brand’s expertise and help to build its authority in your industry.

Utility Link Building

If your company sells local services like home security, TV, or internet, then utility link building can be beneficial and require little effort on your part. You don’t need to write articles or create new content at all, just send a quick email.

Look for utility and resource pages on local government (like city and county) sites and real estate sites. Reach out and ask them to include your website as a resource. This is an easy way to target local, engaged audiences that are already searching for the services you provide.

Link Reclamation

Like utility link building, link reclamation doesn’t require you to create new content. It’s a simple way to turn unlinked brand mentions into links or fix broken links that should lead to your site but don’t.

Reclaiming Unlinked Brand Mentions

Using outreach tools or Google search queries, find instances online where your brand name is mentioned but doesn’t link back to your site. Email those sites and thank them for referencing your brand, then ask them if they would (pretty please) include a link to your site.

Broken Link Reclamation
You might have discontinued a product or service, removed outdated content, or re-launched your site and it affected some of your URLs so the pages they refer to no longer exist.

Use your outreach tools to find these broken links that should lead back to your site. Figure out what the links originally referenced and find a new page on your site with products or content similar to the original. Email the sites and let them know the link is broken, provide them with a link to the new page, and ask them to replace the old link with the new one.

Stick to the Guidelines

In the end, white-hat outreach is the only way to ensure your brand obtains high-quality backlinks and maintains its place in the SERPs over time. Don’t be tempted to use sloppy black-hat tactics and link schemes, or else your site will pay the price in the end. Adhere to Google’s rules and don’t be a cheater!

The post White-Hat Link Building: What Is It and Why Does It Matter? appeared first on Portent.

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Social Media Marketing: The Know How's

Gone are the days when social media platforms were just a means of socializing and a virtual school reunion. The millennials and their millennial means of communication have brought to the fore a new avatar of social media in the face of marketing through the Google Adwords and Sponsored ads which is beneficial both for the brand and the consumers. With channels like Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, LinkedIn, the marketing avenues have spread its wing-like anything. This new avatar of social media is called Social Media Marketing.

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Why Should You Invest in SEO?

In the era of rising awareness amongst consumers about their needs and wants, the marketers to need to strategize to stay ahead of the pack. This can be done with better consumer insights which are provided with the huge penetration of social media into consumer data. Facebook and its likes have a separate data analytics page which provides real-time engagement data. This way social media has a quantifiable effect on the marketing process.
Word of mouth publicity has received a facelift with the advent of social media marketing. Before the age of social media, marketers had to create a content which was one-sided and company-centric but now with microblogging and citizen journalism, consumers can review the brand and connect with a whole lot of consumer base themselves. Consumers, this way, are much more equipped this way and this gives them a sense of authority over the brand.
“Companies are better equipped to handle more customer issues with the help of social media, making the process faster and easier for everyone involved. Now the majority of issues can be resolved with something as simple as a link to a page that has all the answers they’ll need,” says Lisa Giosi, social media manager at Active Web Group. 
Customer service is not just restricted to telecommunication, but also social media platforms for complaint redressal through reaching out to consumers complaining about the brand online. It has made marketing more fluid. 
Through Social Media Marketing, a consumer can judge a brand’s voice and personality. There is no better way to market a product than this. Social media marketing agencies and all around the country have made the marketing process more interactive and targeted. The swift feedback and focused branding the advertising wastage has reduced to the minimum.
About the Author
Barun Thakur is a professional Digital marketer co-founder of Avenir Digital Stories; leading Digital Marketing Agency Delhi NCR offers SEO, PPC, website designing, development services through worldwide.

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