Business Development Archives | Digital Marketology

Search Engine Ranking and Business Goals Factors

Apr 16, 2018 | Business Development, Search Engine Optimization

When creating a website or blog, people tend to think about what they’re going to post and ignoring the aspect of search engine ranking. It is important to focus on SEO when making a blog. It is also challenging to get to the top for the category that you are posting about. Different search engines use a predefined formula in order to rank its content, and even though these formulas differed from website to website, all search engines took some common factors into account when ranking the website. Many people wish to get to the very top, but few of them truly manage to. Next, we’ll discuss 5 of the less known factors which can affect your search engine ranking:

Using the wrong keywords

If you do not use the same keywords that users enter when looking for a product, your content will never reach their search results page, and thus it will not be seen by the right people. Of course, you may assume that your website is already popular and therefore visitors access it in order to read its content, but truth is that if you do not take advantage of users coming from the search engines you’ll miss plenty of opportunities.

You never know when a user becomes interested in one of the products/services that you have to offer, and thus launch an internet search in order to get to it. But what happens if your website is listed only on the 4th page of Google? Research shows that 80% of the users never get past the first results page, so chances that a user will actually reach your website through that page are actually null.

Solution: It is advisable to use Google Trends for Search to compare various keywords and Google AdWords Keyword Tool to monitor searches for those terms. After you get informed in this way, you can use the right terminology in the titles and subtitles of your articles.

Not facilitating the content distribution

Since we live in the age of social media, it is important that your website visitors can easily distribute your content. Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks have become indispensable for an efficient communication with our clients, but they also help with search engine optimization. For once, by regularly posting content and article snippets on your social media accounts you increase your chances of visitors accessing your website.

However, when a user “likes” one of your articles, he instantly shares it with all his friends on the social network. This means an increased exposure for your brand, but also the chance to make more sales. Users are interested in quality and speed, they want everything to be available exactly when they need it, without having to research various sources. In this regard, facile content distribution is essential for a website’s high search engine ranking. The solution is that If you use excessive Rich Media content (Flash, AJAX), its distribution will be almost impossible. Therefore, you need to make sure that:

Each page on your site has its unique URL. When you copy/paste that URL you need to load that page, and not just another wizard or filter.
Do not load content in pop-ups that do not contain a URL
Integrate social media tools within your website

Not telling the search engines what kind of content your website offers

Search engines read HTML text, so if the entire content on your website is in the form of images or Flash, search engines will not know what kind of content your site offers. Also, when the content is in the form of HTML text, it is more accessible to mobile users and those who have poor internet connections. Did you know that websites with lots of eye candy and complex designs tend to rank lower than the ones which focus on quality articles?

This happens because search engines do not see websites in the way we do. They only see the code behind it, the text without any images, animations or add-ons. What this really means is that even if you have the most appealing website on Earth, without enhancing it with quality content you will not manage to do anything but scratch the surface. Users won’t still be able to find you. Solution: You need to provide quality and unique articles on your website, ones that were never released before and which can benefit your readers. In addition, avoid using lots of eye-candy and if you do have to use images within your articles make sure they’re optimized for the search engines as well (notice the “ALT” tags).

Not including a call-to-action

The purpose of a website should be higher than to have a good ranking which attracts plenty of visitors. The purpose of a website should be to turn those visitors into customers. In the absence of a high customer conversion ratio, your business will ultimately become too uncompetitive to run. The Internet is a highly diversified market, where every person makes effort to bring customers on their side and to get on top. Solution: If you sell products, include links to those products on your site’s pages. This will greatly boost your SEO ranking. In addition, make sure to provide a strong call-to-action at the end which points toward one of the services that you have to offer.

Believing that all your visitors are accessing your site’s home page at first

Each page of your website should be as a home page. Often, visitors do not come directly to the home page and then browse your site. Most visitors will conduct a search will be sent to a page on your website, and from there they will sail on other pages. Therefore, each part of your website is important for the user and for your search engine ranking and should be treated with maximum importance. When users arrive from a search engine they will usually arrive at one of the adjacent pages of your website, or more probably on your blog, if you have one. It is highly important for those web pages to be designed well, in order to capture users’ attention, but even more important is to provide them with something of value. They need to be guided toward the answer they were initially looking for. The solution is simple, make sure that all pages of your website include links to the home page and the page with information about your company, plus additional call-to-action statements where relevant

Increase Sales with Proper Web Design

Dec 15, 2017 | Business Development, Website Design

When designing a website for an organization needs to give prospective buyers an opportunity to read up on the company and get a feel for what it’s about. But only doing the bare minimum can be one huge, wasted opportunity. A professional website, which is designed around a strong lead generation strategy, can become one of the greatest sales assets a sales and marketing team has. To increase your B2B sales, you need one or more of the following:

More new leads
Better qualified leads
More conversions
Shorter sales cycles
Increased customer lifetime value

Best Practices to Help Improve the Results From Your Website

Design your website into a sales rep who generates leads

Lead generation is the name of the game and it’s something we know a lot about. We cover it regularly on this blog because it’s at the core of how our software helps B2B businesses improve their results. Online lead generation works like this:

You attract visitors to your website using various means and channels. You then offer them attractive information for free, along with something even more valuable in return for them giving up their anonymity. i.e. A piece of gated content they can only get hold of in exchange for giving you their name and email address. This is the first conversion.
Once your anonymous visitors have been turned into subscribers, your aim then is to build trust and likeability. To nurture the new contact you’ve made and work on turning them into a lead – someone who has the potential to become a client.
As they move along the buyer journey, you need to find out more about them (to qualify them) and vice versa they about you, before handing them over to sales at just the right moment.
All this can happen with the help of your website if it is designed and optimized to do so.

Have a solid qualifying and conversion mechanism in place

Qualifying and conversion – basically the B2B lead nurturing you are doing, is simply about having a system in place that allows you to get to know more about the people who visit your website.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to use our software. It’s the reason we created it in the first place, to help us with that part of the lead generation process.

Nurturing is a great way to build a relationship over time. Sending a contact relevant information via email at specific intervals is the most common method used for this kind of nurturing, qualifying and segmentation.

Sending out the same information to everyone in a database is pointless. People will just see it as spam, and that’s the last thing you want. The idea is instead to focus the information, so it reflects exactly what the person on the other end needs right now and will want in their inbox.

An added bonus of using a website for the nurturing part of B2B sales lead generation is that content marketing can also help to shorten long sales cycles. Particularly in industries where it takes a long time to educate and inform potential customers. Offering solid content and a website with lots of information can really help.

Look beyond the short-term results and build for the future

Creating a website with the sole aim of finding new customers is a very short-sighted approach. Your website also needs to offer something for existing and returning customers, as growing loyalty, increasing business from existing customers and encouraging referrals are all just as important.

In today’s world, businesses need to make the most of the ongoing and repeat business and your website can again play a crucial role.

It’s ok to keep the main website focused on generating new business. Just make sure it’s super easy for customers to find the pages relevant to them. For example, introduce a separate section such as a ‘knowledge base’ or ‘academy’ of some sort.

Many websites also go down the route of adding subdomains and developing websites specifically aimed at existing customers. As for us here at Lead Forensics, we offer a whole content universe to our existing clients which is available to them after login. That login is prominently displayed on our public facing website but a whole world of information lies behind it.

Also, think about your customer service and finding ways to make it super easy for clients to seek help and for your team to help each other. Gather and use any feedback that comes in, to help enhance your entire process with a 360-degree customer view in mind.

Proper Design For a Sales Website

Redesigning your website to help increase your B2B sales, by way of providing strategic offers and other lead generation mechanisms, means focusing on two key areas – design and functionality.

Strategy

The first step though is to pull together a strategy for how the website will work in helping you achieve your goals.

What paths will visitors take?
What kind of sales funnel are you creating on your website?
How will you take the visitor by the hand and lead them step by step to the next information/offer/conversion?

Figuring out how to strategically position your website and help navigate people through it, is really important. Engage the services of a seasoned online marketer, or inbound marketer, who will be able to help you make your website more attractive to visitors.

Content

Websites need great content and lots of it! This content can come in a variety of different forms, from text to images, video and other kinds of multimedia or interactive component. There will, of course, be a basic need for content to first build the website, but then you need to keep it alive and active. If you are hoping to attract business via organic search, you need to be updating the site regularly. This is best done weekly, at a minimum. Have a team of professional content producers on hand to help you, for whatever medium you need, be it text, visual, interactive, or any combination therein.

Style

The style and tone of a website is going to be key to its attractiveness for your target audience. Stuffy corporate talk is a big no-no, even in B2B circles. People want to engage with a website, whether they’re checking out the latest fashion trends, or researching new techniques to improve workbench fittings. Think about the tone of voice you want for your website. Your basic “this is us” type pages can get away with being a bit more formal (lawyers are a good example here), while your blog should liven things up a bit by showing some personality and even humor. It’s important to show your personable and approachable side. People want to do business with people after all, whether it’s buying office stationery or children’s furniture.

Producing a style guide may sound like a lot of work, but as your website grows it will be vital to have, to help you keep everything aligned. What you don’t want to end up with is a mishmash of all sorts of different styles, language, and tone. Overall, you want to keep it consistent and as simple and easy to navigate as possible. There’s a rule of thumb in modern web design – less is definitely more. Stick to only the most important information and cut out the fluff and any other distractions that may water down your offering.

Technical

When it comes to the technicalities of putting a B2B website together, you have plenty of options. One top tip is to have your web designer on retainer, so they can fix anything that needs attention once the newly designed site is live. Updating content moving forward should be easy for you to do yourself and modern web design platforms will allow you to do this. Make sure you keep it updated, backed up, maintained and secure. If you’re planning on using cookies and to collect data from visitors, then check you are acting in line with all relevant legislation for your area. The rules are different all over the world and you need to make the necessary provisions on your website.

It also goes without saying that your website must be responsive, so it automatically adjusts according to the size of screen it is being viewed on. Many websites today are being designed as ‘mobile first’ – i.e. for a mobile in the first instance. That is because the percentage of visitors coming through that channel continues to sharply increase. Whatever you decide to do, just keep it simple. Have a clean and appealing design, avoid clutter and jargon, and lead your visitors by the hand from start to finish. Offer them a step-by-step way to learn more about you, your company and how you can help solve their problems and the conversions will follow.

If you are looking for a Digital Marketing agency to help your business to increase sales Digital Marketology can work with you to develop a proper Website and promote your business online.

Contact Digital Marketology Today for Free Consultation.

Brand Marketing Tips for Business

Jul 31, 2017 | Branding, Business Development

Long gone is the time when a company could rely only on the quality of their product for success. Big companies are not going anywhere and start-ups are emerging at an unbelievable rate. Today, brand marketing is a key aspect of running a business, you should place your efforts into developing and maintaining a strong brand presence. Listed below are some proven strategies to can help you with branding your business.

Identity

A strong sense of identity lies at the core of every successful brand. When talking brand identity we’re talking visual identity for the better part. Having a great product means little if you don’t have a great way to represent it. The name you choose needs to be catchy and to evoke everything that your company stands for. The color scheme and logo are something that your company will be recognized for, so investing in a great design definitely, pays off. All the great companies in the world have logos that can stand by themselves even without the company name. That kind of identity is what you should be aiming for.

Stories

People love stories. Storytelling has always been the foundation of human society and something that we all share our genes. Global brands are very aware of that and know how to exploit our love for good stories. Successful marketing campaigns are brimming with brilliant examples of storytelling. But, what makes a great story? First, it should be fascinating, emotionally engaging and eventually, it should present a clear relation to your brand. Never underestimate the power of appealing to customers’ emotions. It can be more effective than other, more rational methods. A well-written branding story can become synonymous with your brand in the collective consciousness.

Community

A successful branding strategy cannot exist without a target audience that will help it develop its full potential. Still, once you have a target audience clearly defined, you need to start turning that audience into a community united around your brand. Capitalize on giving the people the fulfillment of the need to belong. This sense of togetherness can be achieved in a number of ways. You should strive to develop personal contacts with your customer base and what better place to do that than social media. An agency that specializes in email marketing for e-commerce can help you develop a one-to-one relationship with your customers.

Loyalty

Create an environment where customers will be encouraged to share their own stories and experiences. Apart from social giants like Facebook and Twitter, there are much smaller but specialized niche communities that have their forums and social networks. Use loyalty programs and rewards that can convert people from casual users to real promoters of your brand. However, your community strategy will only work if your employees are friendly and welcoming to the customers even if they are sharing negative experiences.

Values

Your target audience will ultimately decide on particular values that you would like your brand to be associated with. For some, it will be family values, of others adventure, femininity or friendship. Common, desirable values can be a strong uniting force that binds a brand to its customers. Two popular approaches in adding value to the brand are the “gluing” and the “golem” approach. The gluing attaches brand values and other desirable associations primarily to the name and the logo. The golem approach, on the other hand, creates a human-like entity with a personality that consumers can relate to.

Building a strong company from the start by just providing a quality product or service is getting harder. Although a great product is essential, a solid brand is like a battering ram, clearing the way to the markets.