How to write the right engaging content?

Those days are gone when bloggers used article spinners to make their content. All that has changed and now there is more emphasis on quality content. Google is focused on playing fair and give preference to the quality material published on internet. This made the content writing industry shift their gears towards quality rather than quantity. Moreover, writing quality content is also important due to the follow reasons:

·         Increased readers base – Content written with quality is easy to read and understand and can be a great tool for social media channels. As people spend most of their time on social media channels, quality of the content encourages them to share it with their social connections as well. Once people know the quality of material you provide. They look forward for more quality content from your end. In Addition to that search engines give preference to your content as you provided quality to your readers.

·         Less penalties – Search engines like Google awards such content by higher rankings. Search engines look for fresh content which is written with quality, without spelling or grammatical errors. So making the content work towards your brand’s success was never so easy, use it wisely.

There is lot of buzz about how to write quality content to increase engagement. We dig into the subject and came with 4 tips to write engaging content.

1.       Get inspiration and assistance – Learn from the masters of the industry, connect with the leading writers on social channels. Let them see your content and comment on it. Engage on regular basis, become a student, ask questions and listen carefully.

2.       Dedicate a little more time – Learn the trends of your previous posts and find out what your readers like to read the most. Spend some time to think and research on how to write interesting yet useful articles.

3.       Framing your format – Writing for internet channels is quite different from writing for print formats. Plan your write-ups accordingly and then write. Try to be short and precise to your point. Make the content interesting, beautify it with bullet lists and small paragraphs.

4.       Make it talk – “Images are worth a thousand words” use this rule for your content. Make your articles talk to the audience. Use images relevant to the content, examples with infographics or even videos, if needed. All these interesting methods help you increase engagement with your readers.

Following the above mentioned tips will eventually help your search engine optimization team as well. Both SEO and SMO teams can work hand in hand to achieve similar business goals. 

3 Tips business owners should learn in 2014 for best SEO results.

Year of 2013 brought a lot of changes in digital marketing world and “SEO is dead” was the talk of town till the end of 2013. Google released few updates last year and that changed a lot the way businesses operate in 2014. Let’s find out what strategies businesses can adopt in order to get the best ROI on their SEO investments.   

1. In-depth knowledge of SEO is a must in 2014. -  6th Feb 2014 was the day when Google launched its latest algorithm update called “Top Heavy 3” which doesn’t seem to impact much. However, the results seem promising for Google. For any SEO program, links, content and social media are the three core elements. So in order to make your SEO campaign work, you need to maintain a balanced equation between its core components more rigorously.

2. Understand your content marketing standard and improve it – Providing fresh and relevant content is the key to your success in online marketing. In the last few years we have clearly seen the impact of effective content marketing on global businesses. With time this industry is also reaching digital maturity. As content marketing domain grows at an immensely faster rate, the ROI on this is also expected to increase.

3. Let your business GO Mobile!  – Google’s Hummingbird updates came to existence last year and changed the way we search online. There are nearly 7 billion mobile users in the world today and most of them search on their mobile devices. With the Hummingbird update it has become more challenging to rank well on Google search. Businesses now need to work on their responsive web design and mobile content more efficiently to run their SEO program effectively. Responsive web design (RWD) helps your online presence reach to numbers of mobile devices, hence, optimization of your website as per RWD methodology is a must.

‘Top Heavy 3’ is the latest news in digital marketing industry. So far Google has not released any official data about the changes this update has brought. SEO community is eagerly waiting for the latest information from Google about its newest update.

Facebook to add trending topics to website

Facebook is one of the leading social media platforms. It has now come up with another a new interesting feature called Trending box that will appear the top right side of the Facebook news stream page. It will highlight the links to popular stories on Facebook. Clicking on the trends will show what other people are saying about that particular trending topic.

The intention behind the introduction of trending topic is to let people talk about the trending topics discussed on Facebook as well as to keep the Facebook users informed about the news and events that are happening around the world.

The Facebook users can personalize the trending topics and can choose from various trends that the user thinks that is relevant to them. The users will get updates from those chosen trends and will see what's trending across Facebook overall.

The trending box feature is rolling out and is available to only few. But the feature that is available to few Facebook users are reporting positive feedbacks. The users who are exploring the new feature are saying that this new feature has enabled them to be updated towards news like celebrity, current news events and much more.

The trending topic was first introduced by Twitter and is not too surprising to see the feature on Facebook. But Facebook is one such social media platform where users are active 24x7; this will help them explore the trending news on the go. Besides that, Facebook is in process of testing the mobile version of this feature.

Facebook in some time will become one news source for current events! It will be useful for people to find every information at one place! 

Ways to attract people to your Website!

Since the number of internet users has increased in the past few years, there has been a shift from the traditional marketing to the internet marketing, and due to this, every brand and the business owners have started establishing their business on the internet as well. The technology is changing day by day and it has become a need to establish a strong presence over the internet.

 A strong presence can only be established if the customers get what they want easily. A website owner always wants that maximum traffic hits their website. In the present time, there are over millions of users browsing the internet with various needs. There are few important things on which an owner should pay attention so that they increase the number of visitors to the website and increase sales further:

·         Quality of the Content:

The website should contain good content and should appeal the business. Quality images, videos, content that explains what the business is all about impress the visitor. The content should be lucid and to the point so that it generates an interest within the visitor.

·         Refreshing the content often:

The content on the website should be changed often, as there is no obsolete things are accepted. The visitor feels good to see new things on the website and especially when some innovative ideas are used.

·         Making it Fast:

It is one important thing to be considered by the business owner, that time is important and especially for the visitors visiting the website, the website should never consume much time in loading and presenting the content. If it does, it may annoy the visitor and may not be further interested in checking or visiting the website.

·         Enhancing the website with graphics and pictures:

Using the graphics and pictures will develop an interest within the user to browse the website more. It enhances the look and feel of the website. Graphics and pictures will add depth and breadth to the marketing strategies.

·         Helping the visitor to navigate:

Enable the users to search the website through navigation. Navigation helps to understand the site map and hierarchy of the website and help the user in finding whatever they want.

·         Optimizing the website for various other devices:

Today, people can have the access to the internet and website using Smartphones and Tablets. Therefore, optimizing the website according to various devices will help users to have a good experience irrespective of devices that they are using.

·         Establishing Multiple Platform access:

Nowadays, users are present everywhere, be it any social media platforms or search engines. The business owners should make sure that their website is present where ever the user presence is also there. This may bring the potential customers and increase the sales.

These are few major points which a business owner must consider for their website. The suggestion may fulfill the customer’s expectation from the site and transform them into the potential clients.  

Impact of Social Media over SEO

Over last few years, social media has grown very quickly, with over millions of users on the social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Reports show that one million links are shared in Facebook in every 20 minutes. With much of the content being shared on such social media platforms, it can benefit the search engines in finding out the best possible result desired by the users.

Google and other search engines are growing day by day, not just with the social media presence, but also in terms of social media that affects the search results. Therefore, setting up certain standards for the content that is being shared is necessary to be seen on the top page of search results. While creating content, one should maintain certain standards to be viewed on the SERPs:

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Boosting Social Engagement in 2014

Social media platform is one of the most effective platforms that have been adopted by most of the marketers to promote a business. Social media campaigns should be carried out smartly, to make sure that the campaign turns out to be as effective one. Below are the four social media strategies that every marketer could implement to carry out a successful social media campaign.

1.      Making social presence on Multiple Channels

Engagement with Facebook and Twitter is not enough, audiences are present on such social networking sites in a wide range, but at the same time audiences are also present on other social networks too, therefore, social presence of business on those social networking sites is equally important. Use the content sharing on different channels according to its functions and audiences and implement the social tactics that manage one streamlined campaign.

2.      Quality content that encourages consumers to get engaged

It is necessary to analyse and understand what the customers want, what are they looking for. Creating content that interests the fans is important, as it helps grabbing the attention and this way, people know about a business or a brand that is being promoted. Encouraging the social audiences to create content themselves and are likely to share it further will result in a strong reach to more audiences.

3.      Creating Community Platform

Marketers can make use of community platforms to reach more audiences. Creating a community strategy may turn out to be an effective strategy which gives consumers to have a bigger voice and be a part of broader community. Engaging the audiences by asking various questions and polls will be a good strategy. A friendly forum is always good to have a conversation about various topics and elevate brand’s social credibility.

4.      Enhancing personality of Fan Page

The look and layout of the fan page must sooth one’s eye so that one must stick to the fan page and keep checking for the updates. Using media such as different photographs, videos also contribute to the social reach of the page. Creativity fosters the social engagement of a page, therefore, creativity on the social platform is a must.

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Google’s Top Trending Searches For 2013

With Google having published its list of top ten global trending searches of 2013, it is now clear what people searched the maximum this year on the search engine giant. Without any doubt, Madiba rules the hearts. To many, it must be an unsurprising fact that the #1 trending searches of 2013 was an international symbol of strength and peace: Nelson Mandela.

The global search interest for the former President of South Africa was very high even before his passing away. And now after him, people from all over the world have turned to Google to learn about the life and contributions of Nelson Mandela’s legacy.

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Mobile Apps: To boost the performance of business

Smartphones have drastically changes lives of not only a common people but mainly business professionals. Smartphones supports a variety of mobile applications that make life of people convenient. Businesses have started understanding the multiple advantages of the mobile applications and have started utilizing them to benefit the business.

MobileApps provide a number of benefits to the people, smartphones have replaced the normal personal computers and people can access no matter where they are, it has become more convenient as well as efficient. Mobile apps are now one of the advertisement strategy used to promote a business. It has made most business communications smoother and effective.

By developing a mobile app for a business benefits brands awareness, and spreads about the business to a wide range of people and also to the social media platforms. A well performing app will be welcomed by everyone and this way the advertisement will be carried out. Mobile app development encourages a business to get a good edge over its competitors, if they make use of innovation and ideas and the application gives advantage to its user. This way, customer interaction is generated.

If a client makes a deal with a company, it is important to sustain the client for the long term basis, loyalty from both sides should be there. With mobile apps, loyalty is enhanced, by making it easier for the customers to interact with the company through apps. People find it convenient to use it and by adding some interesting features in the app, generates interests and fetches more clients, it is also a new way to generate revenue for the business, investing lesser and ROI in greater.

Therefore, Mobile Apps development is a good strategy to get business from the world that is now surrounded by technology. It helps a business to promote it to a wide range of audiences and at the same time it helps a business to generate revenue.  

Things to consider while covering logo rationales

A logo of an organization plays an important role. It acts as a mirror and reflects back what the organization deals with. While planning a logo for a company, different-different ideas strike the mind which is based on strong concepts and imaginations. While presenting the logo concepts to the client, it is preferable to present it in written rationales so that the ideas and concepts could be accompanied together and very well explained and clarified to the client. It becomes convenient for the one who added logic to the logo, the designer to better explain the concepts and express it in front of the clients as well as to reach a final decision when it comes to selecting a final logo. Written rationales help to defend and explain the concerns and questions that may arise from the client during the process of logo revision.

 Some topics to be considered while writing the logo rationales:

• Symbolism: A strong explanation and clarification is required while expressing for what reasons a logo has been chosen. Explain it as much as it is important and that is easy for the client to understand and see the reflection of the whole organization within the selected logo.

• Relationship: Relationship has to be established while selecting a logo. Viewers should relate the company’s personality, goals, the area that they deal, vision, values within that particular logo. Therefore, it is necessary to decide a logo that very well compliments the organization and its goals.

• Style: The client has to be very well explained why the style for the logo has been chosen. Clarification should be provided about why the style has been chosen and how does it resemble the personality and image of the business.

• Colour: Explain the colour choices, in what way, the colour relates the business, how does it represent the business and so on. Selecting the colour for a logo is a necessary part and has to be discussed and chosen carefully.

• Typography: Explain, why the typefaces used in a logo has been chosen and how does it represent the company and other elements present in the logo. How dies it relate the design and the company itself.  

However, a written rationale is a good tool for communication but the client preferences, requirements and opinions are more important. The clients better know about what they want, who are their target audiences, therefore the logo should be from the client’s point of view rather than generating own ideas. 

How to cope up with Google’s 2014 Algorithm Updates

The year 2013 had been an incredible year in terms of Google updates featuring Humming Bird algorithm, further releases of Penguin and Panda and so on. Due to such major updates, many SEO strategies were ruined and played no role in improvement in the Search Engine platforms. SEO industry faced a major problem and was a doubtful issue whether they will be able to cope up in the market or not after such major changes in the updates and strategies of the search engine giants Google. The future can never be predicted and so is 2014. No one has any idea of what the search engine giant is planning for 2014 and what changes it shall bring it in the search and keyword strategies. But nothing is impossible, monitoring the behaviour of the search engine giants and other techniques may give an idea about what’s coming next! Research and development is a necessary part to predict what changes might come. Therefore, after a research, here are some suggestions for SEO companies and professionals who want to get prepared for changes that might come in the year 2014.

·         2013 updates carried forward, only the volume and details will be added

All that happened in 2013 will be carried forward in 2014, but some micro adjustments might be done to Panda and Penguin that will target both link and content quality.   Read more.....

Components of a Good Web Development Company

Webdevelopment world is misunderstood by a majority of people. Generally people posses no idea related to web development. All they know is developing a website and it is done. When it comes to designing a high quality website or web application, it becomes necessary to identify which web Development Company shall be hired. Below are the key points, how to identify a good web development company.

A good web development company has following qualities:

·         Able to do both front-end and back-end development

A good web developer posses the understanding of full development cycle and the ability to deal with a project from start till the end and achieve a target successfully. Therefore, it is a must, that a developer shall understand the importance of both front end and back end development and shall deal with both.

·         Should follow best practices

A good developer is the one who use healthy and best practices and not the technologies that he uses. Technologies keep on changing, but the best practices with remain be best and will evolve. He shall make use of techniques such as writing semantic HTML, follow web standards for all front end coding, use of a MVC frameworks and so on. Such practices will not only make a website healthy, but will remain the best.

·         To understand the project and the strategies that surrounds it

It is necessary to understand the strategies and elements that are associated with the project. It is generally because, to understand the needs and give the perfect advise to the clients and provide them with best possible solutions, therefore making their business reaching zenith.

·         Investing and taking enough time for research and development

As the web industry is one of the fastest, it is necessary to allocate time each week for research and development and find out new evolving trends and techniques. For a developer, R&D is important, each week and use it in to make wonders. 

Why your Digital Marketing Strategy is failing?

 DigitalMarketing helps to fetch leads and increase sales for a business. It worries a lot when there is a decline in the sales and no leads are being fetched. However, it may be the result of poor Digital Marketing strategy. Let’s discuss the 3 must haves that will help boosting and increase sales and leads.

 1.       Conversion of more visitors should be the first priority

The first and foremost priority of the Administrator is to increase the number of visitors to respective website. The visitors should find it really friendly to access the website, keeping the website simple yet full of information and other products and accessibilities that generally a user is in need. Being clear, open and honest about what exactly being served, not wasting the time of visitors by unnecessary form filling procedures, which usually many visitors find it frustrating and is considered to be a bad impression on the website and most importantly, updating with new products and information to the users, who visits website. These tips help creating a good impression further leading to a long term relationships with the customers creating goodwill and influences the users to visit again.

2.       Adopting SEO Strategy for the Website

Google has been updating its search engine with its major updates such as Hummingbird, it is time for a website to tackle the SEO strategy to create its online presence, and also keep a check whether the SEO strategy is done according to the Hummingbird updates or not. Ensure that the search engines have a purpose as each pages on a website that have been allowed, should get optimized according to the search engine. Analyze each keyword that matches to a particular field of a website, have enough content to support a particular keyword, which may drive relevant traffic. Do a deep dive analysis of backlinks and be updated. Keep a check on what the rivals are doing with their SEO techniques and strategies.

3.       Don’t be scared of making wrong decisions

Visitors like to feel and experience changes. Keep testing a website with few interesting changes and coming up with exclusive features, which other websites do not have. There is nothing to worry about being wrong in changing the look and feel of a website, or with the creativity, simply get the website live. Data analyzed shows whether the changes achieved the targeted goals or not, if not then the website can be updated very quickly and for testing other ideas.

Digital Marketing strategies can never be perfect, but understanding and adapting the technology and the changes can advantage in the future of businesses.

Creating content in response to Hummingbird Algorithm

After the announcement of Google’s Hummingbird search algorithm, it left a lot of questions and confusions in developing the content strategy. The first and foremost step in development of a healthy content is to understand what the audience want and what are their interests, and how the analytics can be boosted and understanding the trends to be followed. The second step is to maximize the visibility of the content in both organic as well as social media channels by developing and structuring the content.

According to the Google’s search algorithm Hummingbird, the following two concepts may help structuring an appropriate content:

Understanding the changing search trends and behaviour and developing content accordingly

Hummingbird update was introduced to understand the behaviour of users while searching on web. Queries are day by day becoming long tail and conversational; users tend to ask questions instead of searching for keywords to find exactly what their requirements are. Such queries are true with voice based search which is still in its infancy.

While going through the trends for question-based searches over last 7 years, a distinct rise in such queries had been found in 2009 and continuing today.

It is really very important to understand the search patterns of the users while developing a fresh content for a site. Due to the increase in the question based search trends and the motive of Hummingbird search algorithm to provide quick results, it’s important to create content in an informational manner to address the needs of the audiences.

Giving appropriate title to the content

The title of the content plays a vital role as it is necessary to achieve success and exposure, whether it is a blog posts or infographics. The title has to be decided carefully to catch the attention of several online users to share it on a social platform or on the RSS feeds, therefore, a matter of seconds matter to grab the attention of online users. Try to make the content go viral from the following techniques:

Include numbers:

Lists of numbers perform extremely well, especially when the number is a large one and closer to the beginning. A larger number may attract the users influencing to them to think about the number of options available with the content and learn from, which will encourage them to click the post as well as to share it. Preferably actual numbers should be used instead of words.

Prefer using attractive words

Titles should be decided in such a way that it grabs the attention of the users. Try using words like “Dead” or “Bleed” that performs extremely good. Such types of words catch the attention of the users immediately and create a level of anxiety and curiosity that the users don’t afford to ignore. 

By: Search Infomedia

Search Engine Marketing or Social Media?

Everyone likes the new shining objects. So does the marketers, who started switching from, search engine marketing to social media, and such trend followed by other marketers. Of lately, there has been a shift or thinking to shift their Digital Marketing focus from Search Engine Marketing to Social Media. Switching search to social was a smart move? Can marketers rely completely on Social Media instead of Search Engine?

Few years back, the companies that shifted their Digital marketing focus from search engine to social media are now bringing back the search engine marketing as the strategy that is the part of Digital Marketing. The major question is, why did the search engine was chosen again? It is because; the marketers didn't receive the kind of performance that they were hoping to get out of the social media campaigns.

A research showed that, only 1 per cent of online transaction could be generated through social media. At the same time, there was a great contribution of Search Engine Marketing for e-commerce sites for lead generation, sales and representing 31.43 percent of sales traffic. E-mail marketing had 2.82 percent and social media just had 1.55 percent of all e-commerce traffic.

It doesn't mean that social media failed those businesses, but the marketers failed to understand how to use and optimize social media in their respective businesses. If a business makes use of social media, it should generate genuine people who’d get engaged in the activities and trends put by the business. Social media is not about adopting give-away campaigns like “Win iPad” and converting people who want to win, follow the brand using social media such as Twitter and Facebook. This will not bring in genuine fans or leads. The business will face a decline in the engagement due to not implementing a perfect strategy that suits social media which will lead to generating the leads and actually the genuine ones.

Another trend flowed in Asia is to put Paid Ads (PPC) to be focused of the search engine marketing and not concentrating on the SEO. It might be because of the assumption made by the people of SEO getting too harder. But if a website is healthy and well optimized, more than half of website traffic can be fetched through organic search results. One can easily get traffic to a website if SEO strategies shall be implemented properly and following rules and regulations of search engines and rather focusing on paid ads.

Social media, Paid ads and SEO have their own different roles in the digital marketing field and despite of adopting these techniques one over another, try bringing all together and implementing it in the business which results in bringing business goals closer.

To collaborate the above 3 techniques, a business shall make use of the following 6 steps:

·         Behavior of Audience in Search and Social Media

It is really necessary to understand how people behave on search engines and social media, such as what people search for, in search engine and social media. For that, a marketer has to look and analyze own website so that relevant audiences can b targeted according to their needs and purposes.

·         Setting up goals for search engines and social media

Set up the search and social media goals, once a marketer have well understood the audience and adjusting it according to the digital marketing projects.

·         Using maximum advantage of social media on SEO

The social activities that is being performed by social media has a greater impact on search engine and a marketer should take maximum advantage of social media on search engine optimization, so that improvement can be brought in the organic search performance.

·         Combine search and social media

A marketer goes wrong as far as they consider search and social media to be different. A marketer shall create a cross-functional process between the search and social so that you can integrate the search learning into social media, and the social media learning into search.

·         Implement the best practice and influence people to follow it

Give a shape to the findings, research, goals and process and implement it and enforce the people across the world to follow it.

By: Search Infomedia