What is Google Ads? Google Ads, AKA Google AdWords, is Google’s advertising system in which advertisers bid on certain keywords in order for their clickable ads to appear in Google’s search results.

Google Ads Keywords are the foundation of your Google Ads search campaign. They determine when and where your ads can appear on Google. Google Ads are a great way of generating traffic and leads while your organic SEO efforts are still maturing.

Get in front of customers when they’re searching for businesses like yours on Google Search and Maps. Only pay for results, like clicks to your website or calls to your business.

When someone types in words on Google which are similar to your keywords, your Google ads can show on the search results page. The more similarity between your keywords and the words used for the Google Ads Search and the more relevance your ads provide to searchers, the higher the chance that your ads will show.

Another aspect determining whether your ad shows up is the used match type. There are four match types for ads in Google: broad match, broad match modifier, phrase match and exact match.

Ad Types

Broad match: this is the most generic match type of google ads. Your ads can show up on searches that include misspellings, synonyms, related searches, and relevant variations to your keywords.

Broad match modifier: these settings are slightly less generic than broad match types. In order for your ads to show, the searches must include the keywords you added a plus sign (+) to or close variations of them.

Phrase match: your ads will show when people search for your phrase or close variations of it, even if they include words before or after it. In the event customers add a word at the middle of the search term, your ad won’t show.

Exact match: this is the most specific match type. Your ads will be triggered when people make a search that includes the exact term, or relevant variations of the exact term.

Google is where people search for what to do, where to go and what to buy. Your ad can appear on Google at the very moment someone is looking for products or services like yours. Well designed Google Ads are sure to get more calls to your business, visits to your website, or shoppers in your store. Online ads on Google can help you reach more customers and grow your business.

Free tools for a website tune-up

Google Keyword Planner

Keyword Planner is a free tool by Google. It is like a toolbox for creating new Search Network campaigns or expanding your existing ones. You can search for keyword and ad group ideas, find historical statistics, see how a list of keywords might perform, and even create a new keyword list by multiplying several lists of keywords together. It is an invaluable free tool for keyword research.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a freemium web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic over a lot of parameters. It is an enterprise-grade service that is offered for free as well as premium (paid). Simply install it on every page of your website that you want to track and turn customer insights into real gains. Google Analytics is also available for apps and enterprise businesses. You can associate analytics account with Google Search Console (below) to see Search Console data in your Google Analytics reports.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free SEO tool that helps you monitor and maintain your site’s presence in Google Search results. Search Console helps you review your website traffic, optimize your ranking, and make informed decisions about the appearance of your site’s search results. If associated, you can access Google Analytics reports directly from the Links to your site and Sitelinks pages in Search Console. Using this is must as this is one communication channel between your website and Google.

Google PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed Insights analyzes the content of a web page, then generates suggestions to make that page faster. PageSpeed tool is free and it checks your website for both mobile and web browsing. Use this free SEO tool regularly to find and rectify errors on your website.

Google Trends

Google trends work best when used in conjunction with the keyword planner. It is the best tool to generate content ideas that will attract high traffic and links. Use Google Trends tool to map real-time search data to help you gauge consumer search behaviours over time.

Structured Data Testing Tool

Including structured data markup in web content helps Google algorithms better index and understand the content. If you have structured data on your website, structured data testing tool lets you validate and test it. A simple tool to find and rectify out problems that could prevent your content from being usable.

Bing Webmaster Tools

This free SEO tool is Bing’s version of Google Search console. This lets your website communicate with the Bing universe. A lot of data is available here with some pieces of information being better than the Search Console.

GTmetrix

GTmetrix is a free SEO tool that gives you insight into how well your site loads and provides actionable recommendations on how to optimize it. It uses rulesets provided by Google PageSpeed and Yahoo! YSlow. It then displays your page’s performance relative to the average of all sites analyzed on the platform. It is a great way to get detailed information for a perfect website tune-up.

BROWSEO

BROWSEO is a free SEO tool that shows you what your web pages look like to search engines. This lets you optimize your pages so that the content is positioned in an appropriate manner for the search engine to read through.

Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a small desktop program you can install locally on your PC, Mac or Linux computer. This nifty little utility spiders websites’ links, images, CSS, script and apps from an SEO perspective. It also lets you generate XML sitemaps.

XML Sitemaps

This free SEO tool allows you to create an XML sitemap that can be submitted to Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines to help them crawl your website better. The online version is free for 500 pages.

If you would like us to add another free SEO tool for website tune-up to this article, do get in touch.

Use these tools regularly for your website tune-up. These free SEO tools can give you insights into your website’s content, aesthetics, usability and performance of your website. You can also connect with us and request a quote for a website tune-up, especially if you started on the DIY track and got stalled or your website’s original developer is unavailable to assist.

Social media marketing is an integral part of any marketing and branding strategy. This means every check-in, tweet, mention, reply, like and/or comment are not just goals. These social signals are a means to get your brand to a higher level. Social media marketing is not just a way to boost sales. It has multiple advantages. Let’s look at them.

Enhanced Brand Visibility and Recognition

Social media marketing is one of the most effective methods to build your brand visibility. A multi-platform presence targetted towards the right target audience can leverage your brand to newer heights. You also become more approachable for your customers.

Improved Brand Loyalty & Credibility

Being there for your audience or target market makes your brand more credible. Engaging with them socially instils a feeling of confidence in your customers. This, in turn, makes them loyal to you and your business. Loyal customers mean better brand ambassadors.

More Traffic to Your Website

Content that you share from your social channels has a great potential to direct more traffic to your website. The idea is to create curated and relevant content that is shared regularly on appropriate social channels. Good quality content is usually noticed and becomes a great customer acquisition tool similar to a good customer retention tool. Eyeballs on your content will create multiple gateways directing more traffic to your website.

Better Search Engine Rankings

Social signals are the new buzzword in the search engine optimization arena. Social signals are likes, shares, comments, tweets and mentions on social platforms. You can leverage on these by generating quality content on your website and blogs that people can interact with. Search engines like google give weight to such social signals thereby pushing up website rankings.

Higher Conversion Rates

Social mentions on multiple platforms create a magnetic pull of traffic to your blog or website. This creates an opportunity to convert a lead into a sale. Interaction with your followers on social media humanize your brand. Hence, a brand is treated like a person. This makes it easier to do business since people like to do business with people and not companies. This also creates stickiness with your followers and leads to your content going viral.

Better Return on Investment (RoI)

Social media presence is available to everyone for free on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest. Even paid social promotions on these platforms are cheaper than other traditional media. An investment in paid promotions on social channels hence give a better return on investment.  You can always start with a small budget and tweak it after your goals find success.

Stronger Customer Relationships

A humanized brand is responsive and engaging. Social platforms allow humanized brands to build their network and communicate effectively with their customers. This builds stronger customer relationships since customer know that their comments will receive an appropriate personalized response than canned answers.

Easy Content Distribution

Effective social media engagement needs a sound content strategy. If you have great content a marketing distribution plan needs to be devised. Today, the challenge for a business to reach out to their audience is simplified with the help of social media. What a business needs to do is to tailor the right content for the right audience via the right social media platform.

Better Customer Insights

By gathering information from social platforms you are able to understand your customers better. Insights like what people think about your brand and how do they react to it are valuable and help you in fine-tuning your products and services. These insights also go a long way in establishing a loyal customer base and generate repeat sales.

Influencer Status

Well crafted content that you share with your followers on social media establishes your expertise in that area. Good quality content elevates your authority and gains you more followers. However, take it to the next level. Engage & communicate with your followers and address their queries or concerns. This will catapult you to the influencer status and better place your brand.

Social media marketing is more than just a hype today. It is an essential tool that allows brands and all businesses big and small to engage and communicate with their target audience and customers. The advantages of integrating social media marketing are huge and involving. It is critical to build your social media marketing into your overall marketing plan.

A little more than a decade back one would not have heard about social media positions. Jobs like Social Media Manager, Pinterest Specialist, Instagram Influencer, Social Media Moderator, Insight & Listening Specialist were not known in corporate or even product based organograms. Things have changed with lightening speed.

Businesses have reshaped

Businesses have turned to newer functions, such as social media management. Some of them have Chief Social Officers. They have redefined processes to better integrate their advertising campaigns online with traditional media advertising. They have had to add staff with specialized web expertise. A new breed of social marketers has awakened to reshape business processes across industries.

Customer perceptions have changed

As things have reshaped, today’s customer does not separate marketing from the product – it is the product. They don’t separate marketing from their in-store or online experience – it is the experience. Today, marketing is the company.

Customers have changed their perception. They are more social. They are more aware. They don’t hesitate to ask questions or give an opinion. They turn to trusted online communities to satiate their thirst for objective advice about products. They consciously identify brands that seem to care about forming relationships with them and advocate them.

So who is responsible for marketing to such customers today? Everyone is.

Multiple roles have evolved – Social Marketers?

Social vehicles that once drove marketing and engagement have today also become channels for recording voice of the customer, offering customer service and achieving customer delight. The roles have evolved.

The changing customer perception, is leading companies to find more effective ways of engagement. Engaging customers today drives product endorsement. This stronger form of acceptance turns the customer into a brand ambassador for the business. In fact, reshaped customer roles, and those of your employees have turned almost everyone into social marketers.

Functional collaboration

Business functions were defined quite objectively till now. The game has changed. Siloed business functions for a company do not work out much for efficiency. Marketing function that creates touch points for “push marketing” and Customer Service function that manages such touchpoints to achieve “customer delight” have multiple overlaps. A comprehensive strategy is required that leads to functional collaboration. Of course metrics to measure performance have to be suitably deployed too.

Customer experience matters

The customer today is not interested in different functions or touchpoints that drive a company. Customer today is interested in products that define a company. This means that the marketing environment needs to change. Companies will operate better if they focus on the holistic customer experience and not on operability of individual touch points. The system of touch points needs to be integrated, owned and needs to have a consistent feedback loop to allow design improvements for the customer engagement strategy.

How does one do it?

The design of the new “customer’s organisation” had to be built around the consumers across all touch points. Analysis of consumer behaviour and their patterns needs to allow the business to respond quickly to signs of changing needs. Investments will be needed in terms of hiring specialized staff. Merging responsibilities, building a social-media network infrastructure, modifying customer care operations, and even altering reporting structures will need to be done. This is going to build the blueprint of the new, engaged customer focused organisation.

The way business is done has changed. The business today is equally social as its customer. Individual rigidly deployed functions will be the biggest stumbling blocks when it comes to running a successful business. Customers look at the product as a business, hence the business needs to be created around the customer. Collaborative models that make business functions complement each other will need to be deployed. The traditional business organisation will need to change, adapt and engage customers. Social media and networks will play an extremely important role on businesses work.

The message in being social is clear. We are all marketers and that includes our customers.

Last week Instagram blog announced that account switching was available for Instagram apps on both iOS & Android platforms. Writing on its blog, Instagram stated: “Starting this week, you can quickly and easily switch between multiple accounts”. Their blog also mentioned that “account switching will be available as part of Instagram version 7.15 for iOS and Android”.

This is a big deal if you like me, manage multiple Instagram accounts. I currently operate 2 Instagram accounts and there are two more on the way. In order to post to any one of them, I had to log out of the account I was logged into, and then login to the one I wanted to post from. The ability to switch accounts in Instagram has finally taken this serious pain away.

How to switch accounts in Instagram?

To be able to switch accounts in Instagram, go to your profile settings (look for the gear icon) in the app and scroll down till you see “Add Account“. To add an additional account, enter your username, password and hit login. Your current account will display its goodies.

From there, scroll up to the top of the screen and tap on your username. This is right at the top of your profile. It will give you a list of all accounts and allow you to switch accounts in Instagram. Once you have multiple accounts added, you’ll see your profile photo appear in places throughout the app so you can always tell which one you’re using at that moment.

You can add up to 5 accounts to a single app install as of now. Have fun instagramming. I am loving it more than ever.

Today, social media is not an option; it’s a necessity. This means every check-in, tweet, mention, reply, like and/or comment should be guided by a definite plan driving towards pre-established goals stemming out from the social media strategy. This means that your social media strategy needs to be specifically tailored to your business. It needs an effective design around it.

Design factors for an effective social media strategy

1. Define your goals

Any social media brand marketing strategy needs established goals & objectives that it hopes to achieve. These goals allow you to measure & react when social media campaigns are/or not meeting your expectations. Without established goals, you have no means of measuring success or calculating your return on investment.

2. Identify your customers & social channels

Social media is not just about promoting or selling a product; it is about relating, communicating and managing expectations of your customers. So think & profile your target customers. You can pull intelligent information from your customer data, research reports or through surveys. This profile information is valuable when it comes to predict where your target customers hang out. These are the social channels where you have to be.

3. Build a consistent brand voice

Your brand voice creates your customer’s perception. It involves using visuals, colours, words and tones to elicit an emotional response from your target audience. Your brand voice has to be consistent across channels so that it is easier for your customers to relate to it.

4. Deploy consistent content

Breakdown your social media strategy into campaigns tailored to your audience on different social media channels. Create content for these campaigns that your audience best relate to. Your content should cover the topics you wish to cover on social media as well as the kind of media you wish to post (status updates, links, quotes, photos, videos, etc.). Keep it consistent across the social channels.

5. Allocate budget and resources

Social media engagement doesn’t come cheap. It is definitely not free either as many think. It requires long term commitment involving both financial & human resources as well as patience. You can either deploy a team in-house or hire a competent social media marketing agency to handle the tasks for you. Allocating budget for social media marketing doesn’t always mean pulling more money out of your business’s pocket. You can think about reallocating some funds invested in low performing strategies towards social media.

6. Review metrics

Measuring results will define how engagement on social media relates directly to sales, and often, these conversations refer to where social media fits into the funnel of your customer’s journey. Every strategy needs to have measurable metrics that will determine your RoI of your social media efforts. Keep a close tab and review your metrics on a weekly basis. Analyse the data and find out better ways to engage with your customers.

The worst hit a social media strategy can get is by neglected social profiles. Social media strategy requires commitment and patience and does not yield results overnight. It requires creating campaigns tailored to the brand’s presence as well as regular engagement with the customers and prospects. Regular measurement and analysis and of metrics give valuable inputs on how to manage and tweak the social strategy for your business’ success.

Conducting an SEO audit is key for any business. With Google changing its search algorithm frequently, it is essential that your website complies with its requirements. This is where the SEO checklist comes in handy.

The Off-page SEO Checklist

Webmaster tools

Integration with webmaster tools is a must once your website is about to get launched. It is imperative that you connect with google search console and the bing webmaster tools. Webmaster tools give you a snapshot of the overall health of your website. They help getting traffic to your by being listed in the search results. They also help you understand what leads people to your website that can help you understand what to focus on to increase your traffic.

Evaluate your backlinks

This will tell you how many unique domains are linking back to you and if they can be trusted. In case you are using a link broker to build your backlinks, think again. This is going to detrimental to the health of your website in the longer run and downgrade its “domain authority“. Domain authority is dominated by three key influencers – quality incoming links, social signals and brand mentions.

Eliminate bad backlinks

Bad links are links that do not comply with quality guidelines of search engines. These may be low quality, bought links or spammy links. Links are supposed to be a “vote” for your website so be wise in selecting your link partners. Identify & disavow the bad links through the Google search console.

Build quality links

Quality link comes from a website of authority. For example, a quality link from a niche or a relevant website with a high pagerank (PR) is likely to benefit you more than and newly launched website. This is what is looked at as an editorial endorsement of your content by SEs.

Relevance of anchor text

Link building requires linking back to your website from a quality source with the right kind of “anchor text“. The anchor text needs to vary and not be repetitive. For example, we may take build a backlink to our website using the company name “Interactive World“. However, what works better is “Website Development Company“. You do, however, need to take care that anchor texts are used contextually for different pages on your website.

Deep linking

Deep linking means that your link building exercise links to other pages on your website contextually and not just the homepage. Deep linking just your homepage definitely increases your bounce rate since your visitors do not get to see something new. Deep linking also increases your website authority because the internal pages start contributing to the authority that the homepage already enjoys.

Link mentions

Link mentions depend upon how are you distributing your content throughout the web and how is being absorbed by your readers. Link mentions can come through myriad sources including press releases, the blogosphere, community website like forums, social bookmarking websites or even a website that runs classifieds. You can obtain more mentions via business directory listings and also by questions answered on Q&A websites like Quora. More natural link mentions you have for your website, the better it is for the health of your website.

Social signals

Social media is the buzzword today. All content that you post on social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest or even Instagram are recognised by SEs. If your business publishes video, it’s a great idea to run a YouTube channel and gather social mentions from there too. More interaction on such social media vehicles elevates not just your website’s score but also drives traffic to your website.

Off page SEO is more complicated than on page SEO hence needs more attention. Care needs to be taken to work with these factors organically and not get onto the link building bandwagon and generate a massive amount of links unscientifically. Link housekeeping needs to be done regularly so that bad links do not affect the health of the website in the longer term. This SEO checklist works well as a starter pack for your SEO efforts. If you have more to discuss, contact us for more information. If you have a question or a remark, simply drop a comment below and I’ll connect with you.

In today’s article, I’ll detail a 9 point checklist with major on-page search engine optimization factors that are instrumental in making your on-page SEO strategy a success. My next article will cover the SEO audit factors for off-page parameters relevant for that winning SEO strategy.

Here is the 9 point SEO audit checklist:

1. Are you using title tags?

A title tag tells your visitors as well as the search engines what the page is all about. You must have a unique title for every page or blog post. If your document appears in a search results page, the contents of the title tag will usually appear in the first line of the results. Your page title needs to be contextual and you should always avoid choosing a title that has no relation to the content on the page.

2. Is your description meta tag optimized?

A well-written meta description should inform both search engines and users with a summary of what your page is about. A better-worded meta description always helps generate more clicks from your Google rankings. It goes for title tags, meta tags also need to be unique and relevant to your page’s content.

3. How good is your URL structure?

Simple to understand URLs convey content information in a user-friendly manner. URLs are displayed in the search results by SEs. Descriptive categories and filenames for your products/ documents on your website help you keep your site better organized. It also leads to better crawling of your products/ documents by search engines. Try and use relevant & contextual words (keywords) in your URLs.

4. Is your site structure & navigation friendly?

Your website should be easy to navigate and user friendly. It helps people to find relevant information easily. Always plan out your navigation starting from your homepage. Ensure more convenience for users by using ‘breadcrumbs’. Ensure you have a separate page for the product/ service you want to rank for.

5. Are you using sitemaps?

One should always create two sitemaps – one for the user (HTML) and second for SEs (XML). Sitemaps are a great way of indexing information on any website especially if it carries a lot of content. It makes the process of finding relevant information easier for both users and search engines.

6. Do you create fresh, unique content?

Fresh and unique content should always be a priority. Avoid writing sloppy content or embedding text in images for textual content. This makes it difficult for users to copy and save it for future reference. It also makes it unreadable for search engines. Remember new content not only brings back your regular readers but also bring in new visitors. Write for your users and not search engines. Search engines automatically follow websites with fresh, rich content. If your business exists online, consider writing your blog.

7. Are you optimizing your images?

Use the “alt” tag to provide image-specific information. This component of SEO audit comes in handy when the image is not displayed for some reason or the user is accessing your page from a screen reader or a browser that doesn’t support images. Your image file name should also have the same image-specific information.

8. Are you using heading tags appropriately?

Heading tags (H1, H2, H3 etc.) are visual cues to your website visitors. They suggest the importance of that part of the text. This helps them understand something about the type of content underneath the heading text. Multiple heading sizes should be used in order to create a hierarchical structure for your content. This makes it easier for users to navigate through your document.

9. Is your website is responsive?

The world has gone mobile, with many people using mobile phones on a daily basis for accessing and searching via the internet. Responsive websites deliver a consistent, professional, and enjoyable user experience across devices with different screen resolutions. This encompasses all devices including desktop computers, tablets and smartphones. Google gives a lot of priority to websites that are responsive.

We, at Interactive World routinely conduct an SEO audit before taking on any SEO project. This audit is a key indicator of the factors holding your website back from achieving the organic search rankings it is capable of. Our SEO audit looks at your website holistically viz. different ranking factors, from your website’s loading speed to crawl errors, on-page optimisation and technical elements that you may not be aware of. Talk to us today for a free initial report.