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scottsmithuk · 5 years ago

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SEO Services Can Prove To Be A Game Changer

We live in a world dominated by technology. Whatever the business specialized activity, service, skill or talent, people use online platforms to reach the masses.

But there is so much competition these days that it is very difficult to obtain top page rankings in search engines. If a particular website or web page can gain better visibility then online success is almost guaranteed. SEO techniques have a very major role to play in such a situation.

What is the exact role of SEO?

SEO – Search Engine Optimization – is the methodology by which the online visibility of a web page or website can be improved in an effective manner. Once the web page’s ranking improves then more and more visitors will be attracted to it and the conversion rates will be much better.

Whether you have a business related to products and services or you are an individual promoting your talents or skills, you can gain much needed online recognition via SEO techniques.

Understanding SEO methodologies

SEO can be used to target different areas as per the custom requirements. Thus various kinds of search can be optimized like industry specific vertical search, video search, image search, academic search, news related search etc. SEO is a comprehensive internet marketing strategy that helps in boosting the online presence.

SEO techniques are a combination of on page and off page methods. Examples of on page SEO techniques include title tag, meta tag, meta description, anchor text, internal linking, site mapping, managing keyword density, creating informative content etc.

Off page seo methods may include RSS feeds, directory submissions, social bookmarking, extensive marketing through blogs, articles and press releases, forum commenting, forum posting, backlink creation and more.

Where to Get SEO Related Help?

SEO techniques are not everyone’s cup of tea. It is a specialized area and only an expert SEO Agency London has all the knowledge needed to succeed in this field. You may not be an expert with the SEO methods and that is why it is always a better idea to outsource such work to a trusted medium. An agency specializing in SEO will help your website or web page achieve those better rankings. Your customer base will expand and you will reap immense benefits in the future.

Some Helpful Suggestions

The market is flooded with digital marketing agencies claiming to provide the best SEO services. Not all of them are genuine. Do a little research before hiring any agency. Check the projects undertaken by the company, the techniques which are used, the time of project completion and the rates charged. If you are satisfied with all these aspects only then should you consider hiring them on. SEO work is best handled by specialists who have all the knowledge about latest techniques and methodologies. By choosing the right agency for SEO services you will see a massive jump in search engine’s rankings and your customer base will expand to an unimaginable level.

Original Source: https://www.miyabi-seo.com/seo-services-can-prove-to-be-a-game-changer.html

#best SEO services #best SEO company

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scottsmithuk · 5 years ago

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Points To Remember While Selecting a Lead Generation Agency

What is Lead Generation?

A B2B Lead Generation Agency focuses on B2B for enterprises and growing companies. They work with B2B enterprises wishing to scale their marketing efforts. They focus on sales qualified lead generation and prospect to lead conversion rates.

Why does an organization need a Lead Generation agency?

What sets lead generation companies apart is how they gather and update leads, combined with the kinds of access you can get to that data. Most of the lead generation companies are filled with the experts who specialize in the related subject matter. They work with your internal marketing team and increase the lead flow.

How to choose an agency?

There are top 5 points to be considered while selecting a lead generation agency –

The delivery of results and quality of lead sources

Technology use or ways follow to reach out the target clients.

Communication

Pricing packages and contract terms and conditions

Refund policy if the company fails to deliver the desirable results.

Before choosing a lead generation company, you should also do some research and interview a few different lead generation companies to see which one is the best fit for your needs. This includes understanding your company’s culture, your target market and your overall sales style. Every lead generation company needs to serve as a seamless extension of your organization — with all the professionalism, competence and customer service savvy that you would expect from your own in-house sales force.

There are two main types of lead generation companies –

Major account lead generation companies

Small sale lead generation companies

Major account lead generation companies target clients who sell “complex” B2B products or services. The target audiences used to generate business leads include upper management, VPs, and C-level contacts — the high-level “decision makers” in an organization. The sales cycle on these business leads are typically long and require multiple sales calls over several weeks and months. The style of selling is professional, “solution-oriented”, and usually focused on return on investment (ROI) and the potential value to the customer’s business. This target market purchases higher-priced items than the accounts served by the “small sale” lead generation companies, and the value of these major account B2B sales leads is significant. Small sale lead generation companies target smaller purchases. The target audience is still B2B but your sales cycle is much shorter. In fact, since the dollar figure is lower there could be little or no sales cycle at all because this type of commodity purchase requires an easier “yes” or “no” style of decision-making. Often your level of contact can make the buying decision because your product or service is not impacting multiple departments.

There are a number of techniques which can be applied to Sales Lead Generation by a company’s Marketing team;

Networking with sales consultants from a competitors company may not seem like a very wise idea but, if you can form a relationship with them, share leads and information concerning your target customers, it is possible to complement each other’s services and, hopefully, generate sales for both parties.

Cold calling is a rather unpopular technique but can work well if applied properly and with perseverance.

Content syndication: the lead gen company emails industry and interest-specific informative content to known contacts. Interactions with that content show potential interest, and companies can follow up with further content or sales calls.

Holding a seminar will need investment in room-hire, refreshments, rental of audio-visual equipment and promotional materials, but can generate excellent sales leads. The audience will be attending will be specifically looking for solutions to their business problems which, hopefully you can solve for them.

Trade Shows are really best left for a business with a large marketing budget whose prime objective is getting their name in the public sector. Attendees will generally consist of those who “recommend and influence” rather than the true decision-makers in an organization.Mail Shots and Advertisements can be successful if they are properly targeted and designed well. It is very easy to deplete a marketing budget through badly researched advert placements, or ineffective promotional material, so beware.

Advertising via the Internet can offer some advantages for small, independent businesses that need to find the most effective way of reaching a large, target audience. The advert needs to be well designed, and feature keywords which the prospective customer will be looking for via on the search engines, providing the appropriate link to the information.

We have started our own e-mail newsletters, targeting potential customers through sign-up generated from promotional events, seminars and trade shows. By sending a monthly communication with the latest industry news, product information or business tips, they can keep their profile high in the client’s consciousness.

Are there companies to do this for you?

For a business that who doesn’t have the time or the staff to apply these Sales Lead Generation techniques for themselves, we have our services to offer and experts who can do it for you. Each of our customers is assigned a dedicated marketing team who will work for that business with a passion to succeed in the acquisition and retention of new business, delivering the potential for growth from sales generation.

Original Source: https://medium.com/@atit.thepast/points-to-remember-while-selecting-a-lead-generation-agency-e6bfe71d4ab2

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scottsmithuk · 6 years ago

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How Content Marketing Can Help Your eCommerce Store [7 Proven Ways]

Are you running an eCommerce business?

Do you know how big is the eCommerce world? How many online stores there are in the world?

According to LEMONSTAND, there are 12-24 (and more) million eCommerce stores selling products online around the world.

It’s not easy to position yourself in front of your target audience.

Good news?

Content marketing can help you. Or you’ve heard this phrase, “Content is King.” Right?

I hear you ask what’s content marketing – it’s all about creating and distributing the quality and relevant information to communicate (or engage) with your audience.

Content is the soul of all forms of your marketing channels. Ian Lurie, CEO of Portent Inc. put it best:

“Content isn’t ‘stuff we write to rank higher or infographics or long-term articles.’ Content is anything that communicates a message to the audience.

Anything” Wondering how content marketing benefit your business?

Imagine the following conversation between two people (in your target audience):

John: “Hi, did you see that awesome post on the AWS blog?”

Kat: “No. What’s the AWS?”

John: “It’s a platform created by Amazon that provides cloud computing services. I’ll send you link…”

See content give people something to talk about. The best part?

To make your content marketing successful, you don’t need a big budget or a large team. In this article, you’ll find 7 proven content marketing tips to make it work for your business.

Tips to Make Content Marketing Work for Your eCommerce Store:

1. Understand your customers and market

To create solid content for your eCommerce business, you first must understand your targeted customers and market to tailor your content accordingly.

Can you create relevant content before you know who your targeted audience is?

Ask some questions to yourself: Who are my current customers? Who is my competitor? Does your product (or service) solve a problem? What your audience really wants to hear about?

Take a look at your Google analytics and Facebook insights to find out your audience taste.

Creating a buyer persona is a great way to understand your customers. Xtensio provides a free and easy-to-use buyer persona creator. Ecommerce SEO agency helps you if you don’t want to make any mistake.

To create solid content for your eCommerce business, you first must understand your targeted customers and market to tailor your content accordingly.

Can you create relevant content before you know who your targeted audience is?

Ask some questions to yourself: Who are my current customers? Who is my competitor? Does your product (or service) solve a problem? What your audience really wants to hear about?

Take a look at your Google analytics and Facebook insights to find out your audience taste.

Creating a buyer persona is a great way to understand your customers. Xtensio provides free and easy-to-use buyer persona creator. Ecommerce SEO agency helps you if you don’t want to make any mistake.

2. Create a Content Marketing Strategy:

You wouldn’t get in a car and drive without an end destination; you’d be wasting fuel.

Right?

Content marketing strategy provides a roadmap for your content. You need a definite plan and you need to be consistent with it.

How can you develop a content marketing strategy?

Set your marketing goals, Identify the buyer’s journey, come up with content ideas, content creation, and auditing.

3. Send Automated Personalized Email Campaigns:

No doubt, email is the most effective and popular channel for driving revenue for your eCommerce store today.

Why?

72% of consumers prefer email as their source of business communication.

Email allows you to send targeted and personalized messages to your prospects and customers.

When it comes to sending the right content to the right people at the right time, email automation always wins.

As an eCommerce store, you must send automated personalized emails to spike your conversion rate. Here are some automated emails to start:

Welcome email series.

Shopping cart abandonment emails

Post-purchase follow up email

Re-engagement emails to inactive subscribers

Product recommendations

Updates and information

Here you can see an example of an eCommerce welcome email from Brooklinen:

4. Visual Content:

“A picture is worth a thousand words”

Ever heard this phrase?

So true!

Visuals have the power of grab someone’s attention and educate them in a more interesting way.

youtube

Venngage surveyed over 300 online marketers and 41.5% marketers said that infographics and other original graphics had the highest engagement.

As an eCommerce business, you must use the power of visual content in your content marketing strategy. It makes a difference in how consumers shop. Visuals like videos, images, and infographics tell a story in a short time and in a more human way.

Watch this product description video from Kelty:

5. Build Relationship with Right Influencers:

Whether you’re a big brand or a small eCommerce store, building relationships with influencers in your industry can help you to build an online presence and drive customers to your store. People value the opinions of real people.

Nearly 40% of Twitter users say they’ve made a purchase as a direct result of a Tweet from an influencer.

Social media is a quick and effective way to connect with your industry leaders, share their content, show your love, and ask their opinions. Attending in-person meetups and conferences is also a great way to build a personal relationship.

Meetup is the great platform to find a meetup near you.

6. Make your sales page irresistible:

Probably you’ve seen some different sales page formulas on the Internet. I think no formula is good or bad. Different formulas give you different results – you just need to test what works best for your audience.

You just have to remember some important elements of an effective sales page.

An attention-grabbing headline which talks to your audience.

The promising first paragraph that generates curiosity.

Tell a story because people connected with them emotionally.

Make your sales copy easily readable.

An irresistible offer they can’t ignore.

Show some testimonials or proofs.

A solid call-to-action button that encourages them to buy.

Let’s take a look at Foodable Sugar Detox sales page:

7. Giveaways are quite attractive:

What inspires a person to buy?

Gifts, incentives, special discounts, and perks.

Giveaways make people feel special and encourage them to buy from you – It will improve your conversion rate.

Start sending irresistible offers to your customers and prospects. Check out this email from Modcloth:

I hope you find these ways helpful. Now it’s your turn – do you want to share something here? Or do you have any query?

Author Bio:

Kunjal Panchal is a former SEO Analyst turned digital marketing consultant with an exposure of more than a decade in the Internet marketing industry. She specializes in targeted traffic, conversions and lead generation. She uses her laser-focused knowledge to help start-ups and SMBs achieve online success by being more digital-focused. She has shared her inputs on high-end publications like Search Engine Journal, Entrepreneur and many more. Catch her on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Original Source: https://www.designfreelogoonline.com/how-content-marketing-can-help-your-ecommerce-store/

#Content Marketing #Content Marketing for eCommerce

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scottsmithuk · 6 years ago

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Points To Remember While Selecting a Lead Generation Agency

What is Lead Generation?

Lead Generation is the process of attracting and converting strangers and prospects into someone who has indicated interest in your company’s product or service. It is capturing interest in a product or service for the purpose of developing a sales pipeline. A Lead Generation Agency focuses on B2B for enterprises and growing companies. They work with B2B enterprises wishing to scale their marketing efforts. They focus on sales qualified lead generation and prospect to lead conversion rates.

Why does an organization need a Lead Generation agency?

Organically, attracting users to your site takes a lot of time and effort, and those lead generation tactics and flow with the customers demand and general brand awareness helps make up for good pipeline that has slowed to a trickle, many sales and marketing teams turn to lead generation companies or agencies to keep sales teams busy and expand their customer base. These agencies have plenty of databases and best ones are those with most up to date information. What sets lead generation companies apart is how they gather and update leads, combined with the kinds of access you can get to that data. Most of the lead generation companies are filled with the experts who specialize in the related subject matter. They work with your internal marketing team and increase the lead flow.

How to choose an agency?

There are top 5 points to be considered while selecting a lead generation agency –

The delivery of results and quality of lead sources

Technology use or ways follow to reach out the target clients.

Communication

Pricing packages and contract terms and conditions

Refund policy if the company fails to deliver the desirable results.

Also, take a look at the company’s of its existing clients and the campaigns that are running on daily, weekly and monthly basis. Does it have its own contact lists? Try to get confirmed answers of all these questions to understand the company better. Before choosing a lead generation company, you should also do some research and interview a few different lead generation companies to see which one is the best fit for your needs. This includes understanding your company’s culture, your target market and your overall sales style. Every lead generation company needs to serve as a seamless extension of your organization – with all the professionalism, competence and customer service savvy that you would expect from your own in-house sales force.

There are two main types of lead generation companies –

Major account lead generation companies

Small sale lead generation companies

This target market purchases higher-priced items than the accounts served by the “small sale” lead generation companies, and the value of these major account B2B sales leads is significant.

Small sale lead generation companies target smaller purchases. The target audience is still B2B but your sales cycle is much shorter. In fact, since the dollar figure is lower there could be little or no sales cycle at all because this type of commodity purchase requires an easier “yes” or “no” style of decision-making. Often your level of contact can make the buying decision because your product or service is not impacting multiple departments.

There are a number of techniques which can be applied to Sales Lead Generation by a company's Marketing team;

Networking with sales consultants from a competitors company may not seem like a very wise idea but, if you can form a relationship with them, share leads and information concerning your target customers, it is possible to complement each other's services and, hopefully, generate sales for both parties.

Cold calling is a rather unpopular technique but can work well if applied properly and with perseverance.

Trade Shows are really best left for a business with a large marketing budget whose prime objective is getting their name in the public sector. Attendees will generally consist of those who "recommend and influence" rather than the true decision-makers in an organization. Mail Shots and Advertisements can be successful if they are properly targeted and designed well.

It is very easy to deplete a marketing budget through badly researched advert placements, or ineffective promotional material, so beware. Advertising via the Internet can offer some advantages for small, independent businesses that need to find the most effective way of reaching a large, target audience.

The advert needs to be well designed, and feature keywords which the prospective customer will be looking for via on the search engines, providing the appropriate link to the information. We have started our own e-mail newsletters, targeting potential customers through sign-up generated from promotional events, seminars and trade shows. By sending a monthly communication with the latest industry news, product information or business tips, they can keep their profile high in the client's consciousness.

Are there companies to do this for you?

For a business that who doesn't have the time or the staff to apply these Sales Lead Generation techniques for themselves, we have our services to offer and experts who can do it for you. Each of our customers is assigned a dedicated marketing team who will work for that business with a passion to succeed in the acquisition and retention of new business, delivering the potential for growth from sales generation.

Original Source: https://article.wn.com/view/WNATe0c8ce1e06556c374bdcea1db3a3aa50/

#Lead Generation techniques #Lead Generation Agency

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scottsmithuk · 6 years ago

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How to Create and Use Infographics to Drive Traffic to Your Blog and Boost Your SEO

By now we have all done it. Seen an infographic so interesting that we have been compelled to immediately post it on Facebook, tweet it, forward it in an email or share it on LinkedIn. You may have also chosen to feature a particularly good one in your latest blog post.

Given that creating good infographics is not the easiest thing is it worth taking the time and attempting to do so? And if you do, how can you ensure it does what you expected it to?

The Basic Benefits of Infographics in Content Marketing and For SEO

A good infographic is a lot more than just a pretty picture. Here’s a look at some more compelling reasons infographics can make great content for almost any niche.

Addictive and Attractive

People love facts, figures and statistics. Add some compelling images and graphics and just like that, you have addictive content that will engage readers while also offering the kind of useful information Google expects good content to do every time

Easily Scanned and Viewed

Human beings are highly visual and because 90% of the information that comes to the brain is visual you need to tap into that “optic nerve” as quickly as possible with your content.

Eye-tracking studies have shown that internet readers pay close attention to information-carrying images. In fact, when the images are relevant, readers spend more time looking at the images than they do reading text on the page.

Better Recall

Have an important message you want to convey that people will actually remember? Add an infographic to it. Studies have shown that people can recall 65% of the visual content that they see almost three days later. Compared to about 10% of text only content three days after it’s read.

Big SEO Benefits

Not only can infographics, when shared, draw new and increased traffic to your website but they are also great link bait. If people use them on their site – which they will if they are interesting and informative – they will have to link back to you. This can be a great way to get links from sites much ‘bigger’ than your own that might never have considered linking to your site before.

Demonstrate an Expert Understanding of the Subject

The research and understanding required to create an infographic will display your knowledge and position you as an expert on your category or topic, even if the fact you make use of come from many other sources – which they often do.

Tips for Creating a Viral Infographic

As you can see, when they do ‘go viral’, infographics can be a hugely effective way to get a marketing message across, bring wider recognition to your brand or idea and boost your SEO. And while you can never be certain that your infographic will catch the attention of the masses – or at least your target audience – there are some things you can do to help its chances of doing so:

Identify a Real Goal

In order for it to be of use to you as a promotional tool, you need to define exactly what your goal is for your infographic. Do you want to build your ‘brand profile’ by educating and/or entertaining people or are you trying to acquire customers or sell a product? By answering these questions, you can determine just what kind of information and content to include.

Tell A Singular Story

Although an infographic contains a number of different pieces of information they should all relate to the same central idea and tell a cohesive story. Creating a great, shareable, infographic involves coming up with a way to impart facts, figures and information about a single idea in a new way, not just jumbling some random facts together and adding cartoon clip art.

Get Your Facts Straight

To avoid embarrassment, make sure that the facts you include come from a reliable, accurate and verifiable source. When you think the piece is finished, make sure that you go back and ensure that any numbers you have included are absolutely right as well, as an extra zero added or omitted by mistake can change everything!

Go for Good Design

The appeal of an infographic is also its design and visual appearance but that does not mean you should go so overboard with the visuals that the actual message gets lost. To create a good balance between the two elements try looking at some of the infographics that have personally appealed to you in the past for help and inspiration.

There are also an increasing number of softwares and web-based applications that can be utilized to great effect if graphic design is really not your ‘thing’. Good options include Visme, Easel.ly and Canva.

Make It Super Sharable

In order for an infographic to go viral people have to share it and so you do need to make it as easy to share as possible. Besides the very obvious links on major social channels, offer an embed code so that people can add it to their own websites or blogs with ease.

To make it even more sharable, offer a PDF that can be downloaded and printed off. And don’t forget that as it is an image after all to add it to a site like Pinterest, a place that you may not think of as a promotional site for information – but where actually more images are now shared from than any other single spot on the Internet!

A blog or website that is filled with nothing but infographics will not appeal to many, and won’t do much for your overall onsite SEO, so that is NOT what we are suggesting. However, the occasional well executed infographic included as a part of a structured content marketing plan has the potential to offer benefits far beyond what you ever imagined a simple image could.

The post How to Create and Use Infographics to Drive Traffic to Your Blog and Boost Your SEO appeared first on Pearl Lemon.

source https://pearllemon.com/how-to-create-and-use-infographics-to-drive-traffic-to-your-blog-and-boost-your-seo/ source https://pearllemon.blogspot.com/2019/04/how-to-create-and-use-infographics-to.html

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scottsmithuk · 6 years ago

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The post This is a test appeared first on Pearl Lemon.

source https://pearllemon.com/this-is-a-test/ source https://pearllemon.blogspot.com/2019/04/this-is-test.html

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scottsmithuk · 6 years ago

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Mastering Marketplace SEO – eBay, Amazon and Etsy

source https://pearllemon.blogspot.com/2019/04/mastering-marketplace-seo-ebay-amazon.html

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scottsmithuk · 6 years ago

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Are the Russians Coming for Your Website? How Hackers Can Wreck Your SEO

Russian hacking exploits have been all over the news again recently thanks to that Mueller Report causing so many waves and so many headlines all over the world – but what you may not have realized is that this is nothing new, it just so happens it has affected some ‘major players’ recently so has the issue

In fact, take a look at some of these eye-opening stats

About 30,000 websites are infected with some type of malware daily.

73% of Internet users fall victim to some type of cybercrime.

WordPress powers about 25% of all the world’s website. WordPress hacks are also the most common and, according to hackers, the easiest to execute.

It only takes about 10 minutes to crack a lowercase password that is 6 characters long.

In fact, the number of hackers from Russia, China, Eastern Europe, the US and even right here in good old Blighty, trying to get into business websites of all kinds has been increasing for some time. Not only can this be bad news for the security of a website in general, but it can also seriously damage a site’s ranking in the SERPs.

Are Hidden Hackers Wrecking Your Site’s SEO?

You may wonder why we are even suggesting you worry about your site being hacked. Yours is simply a small local business, what could the Russians possibly want from you?

According to Google, hackers are rarely specifically targeting a certain business at all. Instead they are making use of hundreds – sometimes even thousands of bots – that scurry around from site to site until they find one that can be exploited.

Even though the hacker’s bots may not be after your site specifically, they will ‘take it’ if they can and if they do, it can have a serious impact on your site’s SEO.

Why Do Small Websites Get Hacked?

Some hackers don’t really have too much of a plan behind their efforts, they are out to cause trouble for the sake of doing so. Often, once they take a site over they replace the content with offensive, or nonsensical copy and don’t do much else.

The biggest aim is to embarrass the website owner. They may not know who that is, but it’s often supposed to be a lesson to those who fail to pay enough attention to their site on a daily basis.

Ad injection attacks, as they are known, are also common. The concept is simple: you distribute your often malicious adverts on to someone else’s site to drive more traffic to your own. This can take the form of simply displaying the adverts on the site or in extreme cases, redirect all traffic to the hacker’s site. These adverts can then contain malicious code that leads to gaining control over a user’s machine or sensitive data.

Unfortunately, not all hacks are visible and some can be quite subtle and difficult to track. For instance, if you are using your WordPress site as an e-store, you might store your client’s credit card details or personal information. This is valuable to any hacker and they will not make their presence known so they can keep exploiting this information. In addition, there is now a new hacking wrinkle; websites hacked only to mine cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.

While a business owner may be too busy to notice what’s going on, Google – or rather their bots – certainly will and they will pick up that the site has been hacked. They will attempt to notify the website owner via Google Webmaster Tools, but obviously that message will only get through if the webmaster makes use, which far too many people do not.

In the meantime, in the interests of protecting the public, Google will slap a hacked site warning on the affected website. You may have seen these. They are big red screens that advise browsers not to proceed, as they may be headed into dangerous territory. Almost everyone complies with these warnings and so very quickly a once busy site can see its traffic decreased to zero and kicked out of the SERPs to boot.

The DDoS Attack That Isn’t

DDoS attacks–when so much traffic is deliberately aimed at a site that it chokes its servers and shuts it down–are better orchestrated affairs and these are usually aimed at specific sites. Most often you will hear about DDoS attacks that shut down the likes of Amazon, Sony and other multi-million-dollar concerns.

The chances that your business’ website will be deliberately targeted for a DDoS shut down are slim–unless you have an aggressive competitor with a taste for black hat SEO–but traffic surges caused by pesky spam commenters can mimic the effects.

Comments can be useful to a website. They can help drive engagement and to a certain extent Google will approve. However, by allowing them you are opening your site up to a potential hack. Besides leaving spam links that are terrible for your SEO, if too many bots arrive to comment on your site at once they can cause a bottleneck that causes a situation very like that caused by a deliberate DDoS.

How can you prevent all of this? With vigilance. Proper security should be maintained on the site at all times–there are plenty of tools available to help you–and if you do allow comments they should be properly monitored on a regular basis.

Finally, get into the habit of navigating to your own site once a day, not to the back-end, but to the front, in the same way your ‘regular’ visitors do, to make sure nothing looks odd or is failing to function correctly. Doing this will only take five minutes from your day but it could save you days–even weeks–of hassle trying to ‘cure’ a site that has been taken over by those odd foreign bots. And don’t forget to check those Google Webmaster messages. If your site is hackedthey will help you fix the issue – especially when it comes to any damage to your SEO and whenever Google is willing to help? Smart webmasters say yes please.

The post Are the Russians Coming for Your Website? How Hackers Can Wreck Your SEO appeared first on Pearl Lemon.

source https://pearllemon.com/are-the-russians-coming-for-your-website-how-hackers-can-wreck-your-seo/ source https://pearllemon.blogspot.com/2019/04/are-russians-coming-for-your-website.html

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scottsmithuk · 6 years ago

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Yelp vs Google Reviews: Why You Should Stick With The Big G

Every small business owner knows about Yelp reviews, but what about Google reviews?

In the battle of Yelp vs. Google reviews, there are a few big reasons that Google reviews are better for local business owners. Not only are they more visible in search and easier for customers to leave—there’s also less competition, more impact, and more opportunity. And they are FANTASTIC for local SEO as well.

Does that sound too good to be true? It’s not, and while we have little against Yelp! let’s look at all the reasons we think your focus should be on getting Google Reviews for your business.

Unlike Yelp, Google Wants You to Ask For Reviews

Yelp’s official policy is that they don’t even want you to ask for reviews.

Why?

Because Yelp knows that you will not ask for a review unless you think it will be a 5 star review.

Google’s policy makes a lot more sense: not only do they want you to ask for reviews, but they even give you a link to make it even easier.

If you’re in a high volume industry like hairdressing or the restaurant business, it makes sense to systemize your efforts and rely on your staff to remember to ask for reviews as they deal with customers.

If you’re in a lower volume industry like roofing or real estate sales, it might make more sense to chase down each customer with an individualized approach. But, however you do it (even if it’s just a note on a receipt) ask for Google Reviews, the big G won’t be mad.

Google Reviews are Vital for Local SEO

If you’re investing in SEO for your business (which you should be,) Google reviews can give you a strong advantage.

In 2017, Local SEO Guide looked at 200+ local ranking factors, such as “total number of words on page” and “number of photos,” to see which ones had the strongest effect on rankings in Google’s local pack.

Out of the top 10 most influential factors, nine of them involved Google reviews:

Total additional organic rankings Number of Google reviews that mention the target keyword Number of Google reviews that mention the target city Total number of Google reviews Percentage of Google reviews that mention the keyword Percentage of Google reviews that mention the city Average yearly Google reviews Number of Google reviews not responded to Number of new Google reviews in the last year Average weekly Google reviews

Google probably uses these reviews as ranking factors because they offer a direct way to gauge customer satisfaction.

If 100 people say you’re a 5-star business, Google would not be doing the job they claim to do – give their users the best information – if they did not show your business to shoppers prominently just because you don’t have enough words on your page or enough photos on your local listing.

Ultimately, Google wants to show users results that satisfy their needs, and reviews are one of the best ways they can judge user satisfaction.

So do Yelp reviews impact your SEO too?

Not really. Here’s why:

Since Google and Yelp aren’t exactly friends, Google can only guess how much Yelp works to prevent dirty tricks. If one person leaves ten reviews from ten different accounts on Google, Google should know about it, because Google can see things like their IP and if they’ve recently visited the business. But if someone sets up ten Yelp accounts to post fake reviews, Google can only hope that Yelp do something about it.

Ultimately, they can’t trust it.

That’s why Google should, and does, trust their own reviews more.

It’s Easier to Bury a Bad Review than Remove It

Removing a bad review from Google is tough. While anyone can report a fake review, getting Google to remove it can be much more complicated. Get ready to contact their support line, provide evidence, and argue your case. And to wait, for a long time.

The truth is that no one expects you to have a perfect record, and having a few bad reviews can be a good thing, if it helps you improve an aspect of your service you were not aware was lacking. All you need to do is earn a lot more good reviews than bad ones.

Google Reviews Don’t Get Filtered Like Yelp Reviews

If you leave a review on Yelp, there’s a good chance you’ll never see it again. Yelp loves filtering out reviews they don’t think are real, honest, and legitimate, but even they admit real reviews get chucked out too. So, all that effort you put into asking your customers to leave you a review could go to waste because it’s not something they have done much of before so Yelp decided they were suspect.

You won’t have that problem on Google. Google doesn’t remove a lot of reviews, for better or for worse. And if you’re worried about getting too many Google reviews at once, don’t be. Stick with Google and you’ll get to keep your happy customers and your reviews.

Yelp has Trust Issues

After polling more than a thousand users, Brightlocal found that 85% of people trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Meanwhile, 73% of consumers also said they trust a business more if they have positive reviews.

No matter what you personally think about online reviews, the people have spoken.

So why does Google get the edge here, even when their review platform has a lot of problems?

Because Yelp’s trust issues are much more public.

It’s easy to find fairly candid discussions about people writing fake Yelp review for cash, whether you can pay Yelp to remove bad reviews, and whether Yelp sued South Park for slander. Add in a borderline abusive sales staff – yes, no doubt you’ve had calls from them too, we have- a review filter that doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, and a troubled business model, and it’s a wonder that they’ve made it this far.

At least for now, we think a review on Google could carry more weight than a review on Yelp in the future. And Google won’t keep calling you to advertise with them every ten minutes.

You Can Leave a Google Review from Any Google Account

If someone wants to leave a review on Yelp, they’ll need a Yelp account. They’ll also need a few other friends and reviews if they don’t want it filtered out. Unfortunately, that rules out many people. Even if they really like your business it’s a lot of effort to ask them to go to just to leave you a few nice words.

Meanwhile, on Google, anyone with a Google account can leave a review. That means anyone who has ever logged into Gmail or YouTube is good to go, and most of the time Google already trusts them, so the review should ‘stick’

Need more help with your local SEO? Our team of local SEO experts are waiting, contact us to discuss what they can do for you.

The post Yelp vs Google Reviews: Why You Should Stick With The Big G appeared first on Pearl Lemon.

source https://pearllemon.com/yelp-vs-google-reviews-why-you-should-stick-with-the-big-g/ source https://pearllemon.blogspot.com/2019/04/yelp-vs-google-reviews-why-you-should.html

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scottsmithuk · 6 years ago

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What is the Google Local SEO 3 Pack and How Do You Get Your Business There?

If you type “pizza restaurant” (where you live)” into Google in 2019, you will get a list of such establishments in your area of town. Google wants to provide the information that is most relevant to you, so the restaurants most relevant to you will displayed — in other words your geographical location will determine which pizza place listings will be displayed.

These listings are at the top of the page in a special list accompanied by a map.

For example, this result is for the area around our London office:

And, for those of you across the pond, this result is for the area around one of our US satellite locations:

And these kinds of results will display for almost any location (that sells pizza) in the world. The same applies to almost any kind of local business. Hairdressers, plumbers, the list goes on. And there will always be a ‘top 3’, even though there are actually more red clickable markers on the map, so that really is the place you want to be.

Why Did Google Change to the Local SEO 3 Pack?

Before the 3 listings were displayed , Google showed seven local companies in a list form, known as the 7 pack. This meant that more local businesses had a chance to squeeze into the first search results page, even if their website did not perform well organically.

Google’s decision to show fewer listings appears to have been motivated by the huge rise in mobile search use. 3 Pack search results make desktop searches mirror those on mobile with additional space for map results and reviews, but the caveat is fewer contenders for the top rankings. However, as mentioned above search results are localised, meaning that the local SEO three pack changes considerably by dependent on searchers locations.

You can expand the “More Places” section below the local SEO 3 pack and these results appear to be unaffected in local search results. This leaves ample opportunity for businesses that don’t make the top three to still make it in the top search results. But the ideal is to get into that local 3 pack. So, the obvious question is what is the best way to go about trying to do that? Here are some basic tactics to consider:

Claim and Complete Your Google My Business Listing Properly

Most of the information for your local business as Google displays it (including your address, phone number, images, street view and so on.) is taken from your Google My Business page.

So if you have not done already, start by claiming your Google My Business listing and fill out as much as possible including a minimum of the following:

A long, unique description that’s formatted correctly, uses a keyword or two and includes links. The correct categories for your business. A high-resolution profile image and cover photo. Additional business photos, as many GOOD ones as possible. A working local phone number . A business address that’s consistent with the address on your website and local directories. If your staff do not mind, add images of them as well. A feeling of personal connection goes a long way when choosing a local company to do business with.

Work on Your Reviews

Google has removed phone numbers and exact addresses from search results, but starred reviews remain. Therefore, businesses hoping to both crack the top three and see traffic from that ranking need to make sure they’ve got a high volume of good reviews.

And these are not only Google reviews, – although those are hugely important – but also reviews on local directory pages like Yelp! and even Facebook, along with industry specific sites. So ask customers to leave reviews and do it often.

Make Sure Your Opening Hours Are Correct

Each local business listing’s snippet now includes the business’s working hours. Depending on the time a searcher begins to search, the searcher will see the following information:

‘Closes at ___ ‘

‘Closes soon’

‘Opens at ___’

‘Closed now’

Ensure you show your company’s correct opening hours on your Google My Business page. Best not to leave it at ‘open all hours’ if you have no intention to do so — because if a searcher calls your business and you do not respond you’ll damage your brand and they do also have the option to report the error to Google, who may penalise your page for displaying incorrect information.

Specialise your Brand

To ensure that you’re turning up in relevant local searches above your competitors, you should make search terms as specific as possible.

If you’re not in the top three results yet for the broader searches you have been aiming for, then reposition your brand as more specialist. Avoid trying to rank for “restaurant” — try for “Pizza restaurant”. Rather than “builder” — try for “residential builder.”

The aim is to be as specific as possible to match what locals search for — then it’ll be more likely you will appear in the local SEO 3 pack. This will call for some significant keyword research in many cases, but it’s time and effort well spent if you want to appear in that Top 3 spot

5# Improve Your Local On-page SEO

Another vital local SEO factor for listings is your website’s content, so try to maximise the most value out of it. Add your City/Region, plus a relevant keyword, within these elements of your landing page whenever possible.

– Title tag – H1 tag – H2 tag – Page URL – Page content – Image ALT attributes

Plus, embedding a Google map with your business marker into your landing page will also aid local SEO listings.

Build Local Backlinks

Link building within local SEO campaigns is important. Compared to standard SEO campaigns, local SEO relies much more on links from other local websites that are really relevant to your business.

For example, if you are a local plumber, listing on plumber web directories that display your address is a must — as this adds strength to the local search results.

The same with Yelp and Yellow page related directories. Meaning that besides focusing on driving search traffic to your website, you can earn additional visibility by building a solid business presence on leading local directories within your industry.

Google’s local SEO 3 pack is designed to be a better, more relevant browsing experience for searchers. It’s up to you and your local business to ensure that you apply to their search.

Need help with local SEO? The Pearl Lemon team have the experience and knowledge you need. Contact us today to learn more.

The post What is the Google Local SEO 3 Pack and How Do You Get Your Business There? appeared first on Pearl Lemon.

source https://pearllemon.com/what-is-the-google-local-seo-3-pack-and-how-do-you-get-your-business-there/ source https://pearllemon.blogspot.com/2019/04/what-is-google-local-seo-3-pack-and-how.html

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scottsmithuk · 6 years ago

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UK/US SEO Basics to Help You Do Business on Both Sides of The Atlantic

As the world opens up via the Internet, so does the scope for all kinds of businesses to make the leap from being a local or national business to that of an international business. And there are great examples of that everywhere, for businesses large and small.

It takes work but a growing number of companies are finding that adding an international element to their offerings is an excellent way to expand their reach and boost their bottom line. One of the keys to success in this arena, however, is understanding how your website needs to differ for users in each country and how the international SEO you make use of needs to differ as well.

People seem to understand this if there is an obvious language difference. If, for example, a US site is also translated into Spanish to better reach the South American market as well, or a UK site is translated in French, German, Spanish, etc. to appeal to other countries in the EU. Where we find people fall down is when you are dealing with two countries that technically speak the same language, as is the case for the subject matter we are going to cover here; the difference between SEO in the USA and the UK.

Why Do Business on Both Sides of the Atlantic?

The Brits and the Americans do have a lot in common, across every aspect of our lives, more so perhaps than ever before. Everyone watches Game of Thrones, and diehard UK fans have actually been staying up until 2 am to watch it live when it broadcasts at 9 pm EST in the States. The Americans have come to love football – even though they still insist on calling it soccer – and there are now some 40 million US residents tuning in on a Saturday to watch the Premier League just like their UK peers. And (almost) everyone loves that wee ginger angel Ed Sheeran, don’t they?

It’s not just across pop culture though. If a company creates a brilliant software, offers a great product, can provide an amazing online service (think life coaches, speakers, advisors of all kinds) they can probably do great business on both sides of the Atlantic. We do at Pearl Lemon, and we do it well. And most of it is down to a deep understanding of international SEO.

What are the differences between SEO in USA and UK? Let’s take a look at some of the most important.

Language Differences

One of the main differences between SEO USA and SEO UK is the language that is used in each country and therefore the language that is searched. Since optimizing a website is all about using the right words, you will need to consider the following aspects of language:

Spelling: Even if your users are searching the right words, they also need to have the correct spelling. This means that including “trending colors” will achieve a different ranking than “trending colours” for each site. the list of these words is actually rather large, but some of the most important include all of the following:

Terminology: UK English and US English are somewhat the same, but there are some vocabulary differences that come up often. As we mentioned, football. Search ‘football teams’ in Google. In the UK you’ll get tons of content returned about Man Utd, Man City, etc.

Search it in the US and you’ll get none of that. You’ll get the New England Patriots, the New York Giants and lots of stuff about Tom Brady.

And there are lots of examples like that. In the UK the rear of a car is a boot. So we call car boot sales car boot sales and get this SERP result.

Do that in the US and you get this:

Which is very different. Change it to ‘trunk’ and things will get better. Here are some more examples:

To succeed with SEO in both the UK and the US you will need to understand how the differences affect your business, even if it is only something as small as asking for a postcode on a contact form designed for UK visitors versus a zip code for those in the US.

The same goes for content marketing. You will often need to create pieces that differ to take into account these cultural differences.

Not Using a .co.uk Domain

Years ago it was a badge of honour to display your website as a .co.uk site. But if you want to do business on both sides of the Atlantic you need a .com. No US person is going to think that a .co.uk site is going to be able to serve them. And Google won’t like it either.

In fact, the best way to go is to offer two different versions of your site within the same basic main URL and that URL should be a .com. Lots of companies are doing it and it’s a lot easier to implement from a technical standpoint than you might imagine, no matter what CMS you use. This will not only prevent confusion from visitors but also demonstrate to the search engines a real commitment to catering effectively to both audiences, which is what they are looking for.

Backlink Strategies

Backlinks are still a major factor in SEO, but in international SEO you need to ensure they are coming from the right places in terms of geography, places that will make sense to Google. For example; if you sell sneakers/trainers and want to sell to both US and UK customers you’ll need links to the US side of your site from US web properties and from UK sites to the UK side.

Getting Help With UK/US SEO

International SEO is harder in many ways than standard SEO. And, as you can now see, even for countries that technically both speak English like the UK and the US. As we mentioned, however, Pearl Lemon has had excellent SEO results in working for companies in both the UK and the US.

This is because we have a team that is diverse and while we do have an advantage that physically some members are in the UK and some are in the US, each of them has taken the time to learn about the other country, and what they might not know they ensure that they run past those that do. That’s why working with them to develop your international UK/US strategies to boost your business’ bottom line is one of the best moves you can make.

The post UK/US SEO Basics to Help You Do Business on Both Sides of The Atlantic appeared first on Pearl Lemon.

source https://pearllemon.com/uk-us-seo-basics-to-help-you-do-business-on-both-sides-of-the-atlantic/ source https://pearllemon.blogspot.com/2019/04/ukus-seo-basics-to-help-you-do-business.html

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scottsmithuk · 6 years ago

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Pearl Lemon Recognised By Clutch For Providing A Top Email Marketing Service

source https://pearllemon.blogspot.com/2019/04/pearl-lemon-recognised-by-clutch-for.html

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scottsmithuk · 6 years ago

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Pearl Lemon’s Practical Guide to ASO – App Store Optimization

At most recent count, there were 2.0 million apps being offered for download in the Apple App Store and 2.1 million Android apps in the Google Play Store. Combined, these app repositories are used by almost two thirds of all smartphone owners globally every year, and as phones get even smarter, and offer a lot more storage space, that figure will only increase.

This all means that there is a huge market for a great app, but numbers this staggering all also rather scary if you are a developer hoping to get their app noticed. How do you stand out in what is effectively a sea of apps, app icons and app descriptions? In other words how do you get your app to rank high in an app store search?

The key is making use of the latest, and most effective App Store Optimization strategies for the Google Play and iOS App Store. Aka ASO.

What is App Store Optimization?

Internet marketers use Search Engine Optimization, SEO, to help their web pages rank as high as possible in relevant Google search results. App developers use App Store Optimization, or ASO, to get their app noticed – and highly placed – in app store search results. It’s sort of App Store SEO, except, as you’ll see, it’s a rather different beast.

The one thing that is true of both SEO and ASO is that no one, and we mean no-one, really knows what the real algorithms for ranking in the searches they are trying to become visible really are. Apple and Google Play are as secretive about the most important search ranking factors as Google and Bing are about their SERPS.

Like Google and Bing, the boffins behind app store algorithms do drop hints, and those interested in pursuing ASO do watch trends, patterns and numbers to determine that certain things will affect your App Store rankings more than others. This knowledge becomes ASO and by utilizing it your app could rank higher, be seen by more people, and get more downloads.

Not sure where to start? Here some important basic steps you need to take to take to improve your ASO in both the Apple App Store and Google Play.

Give Your App a Headstart With a Descriptive Title

So, what’s in an app name? A lot, especially when it comes to both user engagement and ASO. A good app name will not only identify what your app does to browsing searchers, but also improve your app store rankings.

Should you use keywords? If possible, yes. Including a keyword or two in your app’s title can help you rank at least 10% higher than if you didn’t include one. It’s a slight complication that both the Apple iOS App Store and Google Play handle titles and keywords a little differently, but in general a keyword certainly can’t hurt in either store.

Here’s how Google Trips includes their main keyword (“Travel Planner”) in their app title to improve rankings in the Google Play store (yes, it’s so competitive in there that even the Big G has to keep ASO in mind)

In both the Google Play store and the Apple App store all you are allowed is a measly 30 characters for your title, so you have to be very concise. However, because the Google Play description is rather different to that in the Apple App store title keywords are not as important, as we’ll explain next. But, the Apple Store allow one thing that Google does not: a subtitle. It’s therefore not a bad idea to create a short title and then add a subtitle with your keywords in the Apple Store. Doing so will help you both establish market share and improve your ranking, and as you’ll see next, still help your ASO.

Using ASO Keywords the Right Way

As is the case in SEO, keywords are an important factor in ASO. And just like is the case for app titles, how you handle app keywords will need to differ from the Apple App Store to Google Play.

Apple gives you 100 characters to add keywords, which is not a lot (less than a Tweet before the character cap increase) and so your keyword research needs to be good to make the most of what is very limited space.

The Google Play Store however is far more generous. They actually don’t cap you off at all, but then again there is no specific keyword field. Here you have up to 4,000 characters – all searchable – to play with. However, DO NOT be tempted to overdo things. Keyword stuffing in the Play Store will earn you the same penalties keyword stuffing in standard web search engines will.

Keyword Research

Before you actually publish your app with the keywords you have selected you will want to do some research to learn about the traffic, difficulty, and demand for those keywords, as well as how many apps are already using it.

Toi do this you should work with an app specific research tool. A standard SEO focused tool is not going to give you great results. Apptweak is a good one, as is AppAnnie.

Keywords with high traffic and a low to moderate number of apps will be best for your ASO. You will also need to take a look at what the top apps are for each keyword to get an idea of what people are looking for when they search for that term. If your app does something completely different than the top apps for that keyword, you may not have as much interest as you’d like. Tools like SensorTower can help you evaluate your keywords and much more.

Write a Great App Description

No matter which of the two app stores you are placing your app in its description is crucial to its overall success. It’s like a little landing page, so you need to treat it as such. If someone is interested enough to have clicked through this far then it’s crucial that the description can close the deal and convince the user to download your app.

In writing such a description you need to stop being its developer for the time being and start thinking like your end users. You know everything about your app, and no doubt have certain key cool things you want to point out. But most users will know very little about it, so you have to think like them.

The best app descriptions – for either store – should therefore answer all of the following questions:

What does your app do? What problem does it solve? How will it make the buyer’s life easier? Why is it worth downloading? (If it’s a paid app) Why is worth spending money on?

Be persuasive yet succinct. Save the more extensive write-up and how-to guide for your app’s website, or in-app onboarding process.

Visually, you’ll need to include useful visuals and screenshots that look good and are relevant to what your potential customers are looking for. These should showcase the key parts of your app, making it look enticing to encourage downloads and, in turn, boost ranking.

A good example of how to create visuals that represent the benefits of your app can be seen in Sleep as Android‘s app page:

See how they highlight the key benefits of using the app alongside screenshots of the app itself? This should help improve your conversion rate considerably.

Oh, and make sure those screenshots are HIGH QUALITY. People, on average, take 5-7 seconds to decide if they are actually going to download the app they just read about, so great imagery is almost always going to help sway that decision.

Consider Adding an App Preview Video

85% of the worldwide internet audience watches videos online at least sometimes, and close to half of that content is now consumed on mobile. You can harness the power of video for your app to give prospective users a better insight into what it can offer them.

When making such a video, some people will not have audio turned up. Therefore you need to add text overlays to explain the sections or features that you’re showcasing. And don’t bother with fancy little demonstrations of people using your app. That’s so 2009, no one cares anymore, they want to see what the app does, and that’s it. Here’s a good example of an app preview video that works really well, for a practical app that does not even have a lot of fancy imagery:

youtube

Put Your App in the Right Category

Placing your app in the proper category on both the Apple App Store and on Google Play is not only helpful for users who are browsing apps by category, but it is also best practice for helping your app to rank well.

If you feel like your app fits into more than one category, there are 3 ways to approach the problem:

First, and most obviously, you’ll want to pick the category that best describes your app.

Next, check just how many apps are in each category; choosing the least competitive category gives your app a better chance of ranking closer to the top.

Finally, look at the estimated app worth (EAW) of the apps near the top of those categories. Put your app in the one with the lower numbers may be to your advantage as well.

It’s also important to remember that putting your app in a category that’s wrong can lead to trouble. Apple reviews all submitted apps before publishing them to the App Store, and adding your app to the wrong category for App Store Optimization purposes will probably mean it gets rejected.

As for Google Play, users can report violations for review. If you have a major error, like adding sports app in the beauty category, because it seemed easier to rank for, it’s only a matter of time before someone points that out.

Your Icon is Everything

Knowing how to design an engaging app icon is hugely important. You only get one tiny little image to show app store audiences why your app is worth their time for consideration, so choose carefully!

If possible test several different icons before launch. Just because you love the icon that is first choice does not mean that your target audience will. And make sure that you own ALL the rights to any imagery you do use.

For example, if you have an app that relates to a licensed character – and there are a lot of those – don’t make the mistake of ‘borrowing’ any of the official imagery without permission. Even if it somehow slips past the approval process it’s likely to be discovered quickly and you’ll not only get the boot from the app stores but could end up looking at a lawsuit as well.

Why is the icon so important? You could argue the injustice of judging a book by its cover (or an app by its icon), but at the end of the day, that’s what most people do, so yours has to be good!

Get Those Reviews!

Great ratings and reviews, both in terms of quality and quantity, have a huge impact on your App Store Optimization efforts. It’s in your best interest to get as many as you can. There are a number of ways to do this; in app pop-ups, in app incentives (just be careful that they do not violate the review policies of either store) word of mouth, social media promotion and more. However you do it though, reviews are a very important ASO ranking factor so you need to put time and effort into getting them.

Got some bad reviews? Answer them, and in as positive a way as you can. Users do appreciate when developers are responsive and listen to their concerns, so a bad review can actually turn into a big plus. This video, from Apple themselves, features some successful developers who have made reviews, good and bad, their best friends.

Watch Your ASO Analytics

Yes, you should watch your ASO analytics as closely as you would SEO analytics for your website. There are some great tools out there for doing that, including all of the following:

APPlyzer AppAnnie Appfigures AppRankCorner Appstatics

You should also act on these analytics to help you reevaluate your ASO campaign on a regular basis. App users blow hot and cold. They are fickle and they often follow trends. Keep tweaking your ASO and you’ll give you app a much better chance of not only getting downloaded but also remaining on the user’s phone.

These are just the basics of ASO. Like SEO this is an ever changing discipline. Search algorithms change. Best practices change (especially as smartphones keep evolving) If you are serious about your app, making the investment in help with your App Store Optimization from ASO experts could be one of the best investments in it you make.

The post Pearl Lemon’s Practical Guide to ASO – App Store Optimization appeared first on Pearl Lemon.

source https://pearllemon.com/pearl-lemons-practical-guide-to-aso-app-store-optimization/ source https://pearllemon.blogspot.com/2019/04/pearl-lemons-practical-guide-to-aso-app.html

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scottsmithuk · 6 years ago

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The Big Pearl Lemon Guide to SEO for Restaurants

Would you like to get more diners into your restaurant simply by boosting your position in the Google SERPS – search engine results pages – via local SEO? Of course you would

With 60% of consumers searching for cafes and local restaurants online, it imperative that you make the most of your restaurant SEO strategy. But resturant SEO is a little different. You need to focus on local SEO, and that focus has to come from a structured strategy. But we are getting a little ahead of ourselves. First of all we should define just what SEO for restaurants is.

So, What is SEO for Restaurants?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is one of the best marketing strategies any eatery can undertake in 2019. What will a good restaurant SEO campaign consist of? All of the following and more:

Onsite website optimization, both technical and via backlinking Onsite content creation making use of relevant keywords Off site content distribution and promotion Creating a constient, accurate and extensive offsite presence in directories and industry listings.

But where should you get started if you have never even considered that SEO might be beneficial to your restaurant before? Let’s take it step by step:

Determine Your SEO for Restaurants Strategy And Keywords

When implementing a restaurant SEO strategy, the very first thing that needs to be determined is exactly what demographic audience and geographical location(s) you are targeting. By defining this you can begin to get into the minds of your potential customers and determine what they would type into Google when searching for your restaurant, and how to tailor your SEO strategy and content around those potential customers.

Once you determined your targeting, then you can research keywords that are centered around your potential customers to maximize your Google search results. For restaurants there are generally two different keyword gropings; broad and niche specific.

Broad Restaurant Keywords

An example of a broad keyword grouping for a restaurant would be simply “Restaurants near me” or “Restaurants in Birmingham”. Depending on the geographical location your restaurant is located in, you would have to take into consideration how competitive your broad keyword is.

There are hundreds of “Restaurants in Birmingham” as it is an big city, so by using a such a broad keyword in that city size you are facing huge competition, especially as, as you can see below, the top results for that search are all lists, rather than restaurants:

That then, would be a bad keyword to aim for (although a spot on one of those lists would be great, but more about those later.) In a smaller setting, a specific area of the city or small town, broad keywords may be of more use to you, as is the case below for a small area within Birmingham. Full keyword research will help you determine if that is indeed the case.

Restaurant Niche Keywords

An example of a niche-specific keyword grouping for a restaurant would be “Vegan Restaurant” or “Vegan Restaurant in Birmingham”. By targeting niche-specific keywords you will likely face less competition, even in a big city.

Niche keywords can be tricky though. Will people be searching for vegan restaurant only when searching for the kind of cuisine you offer or will they also be searching for vegetarian as well, at which point, given the population’s fondness for vegetarian eating at the moment may mean that is a keyword that is far more competitive. Again, only a complete keyword research project can truly help you determine that.

They also may be searching for a mood; what about romantic restaurants in Birmingham? Kid friendly restaurants in Birmingham? People search for those too, could you fit there? And wouldn’t you like to be featured in one of these cool carousels? You can’t pay your way in there with Google Ads, you have to SEO your way in.

By researching relevant keywords for your restaurant, you get first-hand information about your target audience, the search volume of the keywords, and the information they want to know. This will be crucial knowledge to have when you begin to optimize your restaurant website and to create content for it.

Optimizing Your Restaurant Website And Content For Conversions

Of course, what good is bringing traffic to your restaurant’s website if it is not optimized? It’s like going to a car dealership with no cars. As a restaurant you need to optimize your website. And those efforts begin with technical SEO for restaurants. What do you need to do? Here are some of the basics:

Optimize Your Title Tags

Title tags have a big impact on the performance and SERPS position of your restaurant’s website. You will need to ensure that all your title tags are descriptive, unique and include target keywords so that Google Bots have an easier time determining what you offer so that you can be placed correctly in search results.

However, avoid making use of same keywords and title tags over and over again as by doing so you may earn yourself a duplicate content penalty, something you DO NOT want at all.

Optimize Your Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions are what appear in a search result and this is where you will need to convince a searcher to click through to your site. A good meta description should explain in 160 characters what the page is all about.

Are you a Fine Dining Restaurant in Fulham that serves French cuisine? Your meta description for your homepage will need to convey that in those 160 characters, – as the one above does – along with why they should chose you over that place a street or so away that offers a seemingly similar dining experience.

Use Schema Markup (Structured Data Markup)

Schema markup is a form of micro-data that goes on your website that assists Google in understanding what your content is on a webpage. For example, if you have schema implemented on your menu page, your menu page may show up on Google search results.

The more optimized your structured data markup is, the more Google will reward you in driving traffic to your website. Schema gives users more relevant info in an organized manner. To implement the schema markup onto your restaurant’s website, use the Google Structured Data Markup Helper.

Make Sure Your Images are Optimized

People want to see pictures on a restaurant’s website, lots of them. They are not just looking for images of your food though, they want to see what the inside of the restaurant looks like and some even like to see what the staff looks like.

This means that it only makes sense for you to add these kinds of images to your website, but you have to do so carefully. Not only do the images have to be good – that’s almost a no brainer – they also have to be properly optimized for search bots and humans.

One thing some people do not realize is that search bots are image blind. They can’t ‘see’ what is in an image in the way that humans can. They have to be told with words, via the alt text attached to the image.

Alt text – literally alternative text – is used for two reasons. Screen readers that are employed by those with visual impairments use to describe the contents of an image and search bots ‘read it’ so that they can determine what is in the image as well. And as many people use Google Image Search – especially when they are hungry and not quite sure what to eat – if your alt text is good you’ll show up in those search results as well.

In addition to making sure that all of the images on your site have great, descriptive alt text that makes use of your keywords you also need to ensure that they load quickly. Slow websites are something that both users and Google Bots hate, as these figures demonstrate:

This means making use of image compression and similar techniques to reduce load time without sacrificing image quality. It is a delicate balance but there are a number of tools that can help you optimize images without having to deal with coding adjustments (they are actually a few that will do it for you automatically, which is always a plus)

Make Sure Your Restaurant Website Is Mobile Friendly

Most of your users will be searching for a restaurant on their mobile device. Thus, it is vital that you have a mobile responsive website for an enhanced user experience. Research shows more restaurant searches in the UK take place on mobile devices than desktops. Thus, it is crucial that your site looks great and functions well on any mobile device, whether it is a small iPhone or a large screen tablet.

Get the Basic Copy Right

Two of the most important things that your customers need to know? Your restaurant’s address and phone number. They’ll also want to see a menu and learn more about your establishment itself. These copy basics – all original and keyword optimized – should not only be present but very easy to find.

Start Creating MORE SEO Optimized Content

Contrary to what some believe, a restaurant that wants to rank well in the SERPs – and by now you should have realised that you would be crazy if you did not want to – needs to devote time and effort to content creation that goes beyond the menu. A blog can be a great way to do this and there are a number of good reasons why:

Pure Restaurant SEO – One of the best ways to keep your restaurant website appearing high in search results is with new and relevant content. This content tells search bots more about your site and your business and allows them to constantly review where your site belongs.

SERPs results are never static, they change all the time, but by constantly ‘proving’ where you belong you are means that you are more likely to get to the top of a search and stay there.

Update Your Customers Without Changing Your Site – A restaurant blog gives you a dynamic place to tell customers about upcoming events, menu changes, specials and more without having to make significant changes to your website itself, something that can be a real pain, especially when you have lots of other things to do (like cook!)

Collect Valuable Customer Data – Restaurant blogs are a great opportunity way to collect email addresses. Invite customers to sign up for a newsletter and then create a monthly recap of your blog top articles along with other important information – and special offers – that will help keep your restaurant top of mind when your subscribers start to get hungry!

Track and Monitor

Once your initial onsite SEO is complete you need to make sure that all what you are doing is working for you. There are lots of tools you can use to monitor and analyze your website’s SEO efforts but you should certainly choose one and make sure you keep an eye on it to determine what is and isn’t working, so that changes can be made where needed.

Offsite SEO for Restaurants

Offsite SEO for restaurants is a must as well, and this is where things that might not be as important for other types of businesses, but are crucial for restaurant SEO, come into play.

Take Control of All Your Listings

Ensure that all your online listings are consistent. Most search engines like Google don’t like inconsistent listings and negatively impact your Google search rankings. Thus, you’ll want to make sure that all your important information is updated and is the same everywhere.

Make sure that you use the same business name, contact information and address across the web, including on social media platforms, directories, and other business listings you may have. And, above all else, for SEO purposes, claiming and optimizing your Google My Business Listing is a MUST.

Listing your restaurant on “Google My Business” should be one of the first things your restaurant does to improve its Google search rankings. The first thing you will see on most local restaurant search results on Google will be the Google Maps with a restaurant location, as seen below.

But that is not all Google My Business allows you do to do. It offers all of the following functionality too:

Quick URLs

Google My Business allows you to add your own URLs for specific actions, such as viewing the menu or reserving a table. Quick links not only help your customers find the right information fast, but also give you more space in local search results.

Q And A

The Q and A feature enables you to ask and answer questions about your business. It is imperative you only ask and answer questions that might be useful to your users. More importantly, monitor your customer’s questions and be fast – and first – to answer them when they appear.

Google Posts

With Google Posts, you can add posts of up to 300 words with pictures and link to it with call to actions like “get offer”, “reserve”, and “learn more”. You can use these posts to advertise your specials, promote events or publish news about your restaurant.

Boost Your Restaurant’s Reviews And Ratings

Over 60% of customers trust peer reviews as a resource when choosing a restaurant. Encourage customers to leave a review. Be sure to respond to all your online reviews whether negative or positive. It is important that you showcase good reviews on your website as this will help you rank over competitors on local searches in Google.

Add Your Restaurant To The Top Relevant And Local Listings

Any reference of your restaurant on a local listing is called a citation. By adding your restaurant to local and relevant listings, you are increasing your credibility and trust with the search engines. The more citations that appear on the web, the higher authority your website will receive which will result in higher rankings especially in local search.

Start Local Link Building

Every website benefits in the SERPs from good, relevant backlinks. In the case of a restaurant, as many of those links as possible need to be local links, which calls for a rather different set of link building skills and tactics.

Original content is extremely helpful here. Careful distribution of your blog posts, of original guest posts, getting mentions on those local lists that rank so highly, and social media content can all be utilized together to help you build links as well as drive traffic.

Keep Going

SEO for restaurants is not a one and done process. Holding on to that coveted page one listing once you achieve it calls for consistent, ongoing effort, otherwise you will lose that spot to your competitors.

If you have made it this far, you have almost certainly realized that SEO for restaurants, in order to be successful, calls for a lot of work. More than you have the time to take on in all likelihood. That’s where we come in. Pearl Lemon’s local SEO team has all the expertise, personnel and resources required to execute successful SEO for restaurants that offers incredible ROI. Ready to learn more? Give us a call, we’re waiting to explain just what SEO for restaurants with Pearl Lemon can do for you.

The post The Big Pearl Lemon Guide to SEO for Restaurants appeared first on Pearl Lemon.

source https://pearllemon.com/the-big-pearl-lemon-guide-to-seo-for-restaurants/ source https://pearllemon.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-big-pearl-lemon-guide-to-seo-for.html

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scottsmithuk · 6 years ago

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Why is SEO important for eCommerce?

Approximately 90% of online business starts with a search conducted through a search engine. In order to capitalise on this vast number of hungry consumers, ensuring your eCommerce site has search-optimised content is essential. But what does this entail? Let’s take a look in more detail…

What is SEO?

SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, is a practice used by website owners and content creators to increase both the quality and quantity of traffic directed to your website through organic (rather than paid-for) search results.

Ensuring that you’re attracting visitors to your website for the right reasons is important and one way of doing that is optimising how you appear in search engines through SEO.

Why is SEO important for eCommerce?

Business owners who optimise their site for search engines increase the amount of organic traffic they receive. And, crucially, organic traffic is associated with engaged customers who have a genuine need for your product, which in turn means they could represent more repeat business.

Because of the increased emphasis placed on the importance of SEO, business owners no longer need a large marketing team behind them. By ensuring that you understand the basics of SEO, you can optimise your eCommerce website to be targeted towards specific keywords without difficulty.

How can I improve my eCommerce SEO and how will it benefit my business?

Establishing what your potential clients are looking for when they come across your website is key to understanding how best to use SEO within your eCommerce site.

Developing a strategy as far as keywords are concerned is particularly important. Thankfully, there are a number of generators such as Spyfu and Google Adwords Keyword Planner on the internet that help users to appropriately establish which keywords are worth targeting.

Websites such as these are there to give you insight into the types of things your potential customers are searching for. They can inform your keyword strategy to ensure that the time you spend optimising your website doesn’t ultimately go to waste.

Using only short tail keywords within the content of your website – that is, words that are single terms, such as ‘bags’ or ‘sunglasses’ – will prove more difficult to rank highly due to the increased competition.

More descriptive long tail keywords, specially formulated to target the ways in which potential customers search for results, typically convert much better. That’s because people who are looking to buy a very particular product are the ones making the search.

By discovering which search terms are used by your target audience, you are able to optimise your online store’s pages accordingly and ensure that your store is top of the results page.

At the same time, you need to avoid using terms that are too general or broad. Whilst ranking for a single keyword will give you some returns, targeting a whole field of keywords increases your chances of benefiting from increased organic traffic and ultimately increases the chance of your business making a sale.

Generally speaking, increased traffic correlates with an increase in sales so optimising your website to increase the number of people who access it can only have its benefits. In fact, some small businesses argue that by improving and optimising their SEO, they reduce the costs of other traditional marketing activities.

SEO consequently increases the bottom-line of a business, and because it is done simply by optimising existing website content with appropriate keywords, it requires minimal financial outlay. There is no cost per click or conversion, as is the case with PPC marketing, and ultimately you can attract large volumes of traffic without directly paying for the privilege – if it is put into practice successfully.

The effect that improving your eCommerce SEO has is a longstanding one, and you can see improvement in the rankings as time goes on. Focusing your attention elsewhere does not reduce its effectiveness, either, meaning that if you wanted to take a break from growing your website organically then it would carry on converting hits into business without intervention.

Once you have optimised your website to a significant degree, then you need to make sure that you’re watching the keywords that you use and measuring how successfully they are converting into sales. If a particular keyword is performing better than others, then producing additional content that uses this keyword within it can benefit you. That said, you should make sure that you don’t ‘stuff’ keywords onto a page as this can reduce its effectiveness and may cause the search engine to penalise your site.

You will also be able to establish which keywords don’t convert well and make sure that you aren’t wasting your time inserting these into your pages. All of the information you need to observe your optimisation and how well keywords are performing can be found using an analytics provider such as Google Analytics.

I don’t have time to invest in SEO… what should I do?

Often, as a business owner, time is of the essence and delegating smaller jobs can only benefit your growth. If you find that you’re quite short on time but know that your business could seriously benefit from professional SEO services, then getting in touch with a specialist SEO agency could be the answer.

If you’re looking for an SEO company London based then the team here at Pearl Lemon can help you ensure that your eCommerce store is optimised to put you at the top of the search engine rankings. Which, of course, is right where you deserve to be.

Photo: Aerial view of woman using computer laptop and a smartphone on wooden table by Rawpixel Ltd licensed under Creative commons 4

The post Why is SEO important for eCommerce? appeared first on Pearl Lemon.

source https://pearllemon.com/why-is-seo-important-for-ecommerce/ source https://pearllemon.blogspot.com/2019/03/why-is-seo-important-for-ecommerce.html

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scottsmithuk · 6 years ago

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Top 10 Essential SEO Tips for Small WordPress Sites

You’ve put a lot of time, effort and more than a bit of money into building your new WordPress site.

Even though it’s only small at the moment, you still want as many eyes on it as possible on your website — whether your goal is to entertain and inform readers, promote your work, sell your products and services, or simply share your opinions with the world while making a little cash from advertising services like Google Adwords.

Simply put, the more visitors you get, the easier it will be to build an audience you can count on. But where to begin?

There are a lot of ways to drive traffic to your site, but Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most effective.

SEO is a collection of strategies and techniques aimed at helping your pages rank higher in search engines results.

This increases your site’s visibility and can help it really take off.

What’s more, there are plenty of simple ways to improve your WordPress site’s SEO, even if it is very small. And we are going to take a look here at some of the best of them.

An Introduction to WordPress SEO (And Why It Matters)

Think about it. When you sit down to find something on the internet, there’s one place you turn: a search engine.

This means if you want to get your WordPress website noticed, you’ll need to make sure that it appears in searches on Google. More importantly, you’ll want your site to appear as close as possible to the top of the list.T

he best way to do this is through SEO, which is a wide range of strategies and activities based off what we know about how search engines determine their rankings.

When compiling this list of SEO strategies, we started with one assumption: you’re busy. So these techniques are ones that you can implement right now (long-term commitment not required). Obviously, there are plenty of other techniques, but this is a great place to start.

Also, we’ll be focusing on advice targeted at Google since it’s by far the most popular search engine and releases the most information about its algorithms. That said, many of these strategies should also help you on other sites, such as Yahoo Search or Bing.

1. Choose Your Hosting Provider Carefully

The one thing that many people just don’t take into account enough is the importance of having a good plan with a great web host. It’s vital, of course, to have a good one to try to ensure your site actually stays visible to the world but it’s important to SEO as well.

Since Google takes speed into account when ranking sites, a good host can help push you to the top of the SERPs. Your host also affects the amount of downtime your site experiences and the physical distance between servers and visitors — both of which are ranking factors.

Even if your WordPress website has been up and running for a while you may want to consider switching hosts if your current provider doesn’t meet these criteria.

2. Choose a WordPress Theme That’s SEO Friendly

Your theme is one of the most important choices you’ll make for your WordPress site. It determines your site’s appearance and layout, can provide extra functionality, and also plays a role in its SEO.

For example, your theme can affect your site’s speed — which (as we’ve already discussed) is vital. The way a theme was developed also matters since clean code gives your site the best chance in SERPs.

When picking a theme you’ll want to opt for one built with SEO in mind. These themes are often referred to as ‘SEO-friendly’. You may also want to look for a theme that offers features specifically designed to improve your SEO, such as new heading tag options. Fortunately, there are plenty of themes available that fit the bill.

Here’s an extra tip. Don’t go with a free theme UNLESS you get it via the WordPress theme marketplace. There are hundreds of these free themes available (do a quick Google search, you’ll see what we mean) but many are hiding a secret. Deep within the code of many free themes are hidden links to the developer’s interests, giving them an SEO boost but detracting from your own SEO efforts. Some of them even harbour viruses. So while yeah, free is nice if you can get it but not worth risking your entire site for.

3. Use a Dedicated SEO Plugin

If you’re new to WordPress, you may not yet be familiar with WordPress plugins. These are small pieces of add-on software you can install, which add new features and functionality to your site. There’s a plugin to help your site do just about anything — including rank higher in search engines. In fact, there are lots of plugins designed specifically to improve your site’s SEO.

These plugins provide small, targeted features such as creating a sitemap (we’ll talk more about that in a moment). For even better results, you can also opt for a comprehensive SEO plugin such as Yoast SEO, which will add a whole suite of optimization-focused features to your site.

A word of warning though. These plugins do not do anything automatically. They simply serve as a guide to remind you of the SEO best practices you should be following, it will still be up to you to ‘put in the work’.

4. Change Your ‘Permalink’ Structure

Permalinks are the permanent URLs that point to your site’s individual posts, pages, and other content. They’re what people will use to reference and link back to your site, and their appearance matters.

Clear, descriptive links that describe their content are easier for search engines to make sense of and tend to give your content a small ranking boost.

WordPress offers a number of automatic permalink options. The default settings are based on numbers which aren’t ideal since they convey little useful information to search engines. Instead, you’re probably best off with the Post Name structure since it communicates clearly what the linked content is about.

Some people prefer the Post Name and Date setting as it can help search engines and readers determine the age of the content. But not everyone likes the idea of their content being specifically dated, so that may be a choice to be made based on your unique content. Whatever you decide to do though, you can easily change your permalink structure in WordPress – or even create a custom one by visiting your site’s back-end and navigating to Settings > Permalink.

5. Create a ‘Sitemap’

A sitemap is a list of all the pages and other content on your website. It provides a quick way to see how your site is laid out and what it includes.

While these sitemaps were once designed to help users navigate websites, their primary purpose now is to communicate information to search engine bots.

While adding a sitemap to your website doesn’t directly boost its search engine rankings, it’s still a valuable SEO tool. It enables crawlers to see all of the pages on your site and understand how they relate to one another.

If you do create a sitemap, and you should, take a few minutes to submit it to Google and Bing. Although their bots will probably find there way to your site by themselves in the end, giving them a little nudge in this way should help get your site indexed faster.

6. Use Heading Tags Throughout Your Content

While a sitemap is useful for helping search engine crawlers see how your site is organized, it doesn’t help them make sense of the individual content. For that, you’ll need to use heading tags.

These are formatting options you can apply to section headings within pages and posts. You can see these settings in your WordPress WYSIWYG editor, listed as Heading 1, Heading 2, and so on.

Using these headings to structure your content does two important things. It provides a visual benefit for your readers, by breaking up your text and making it easier to read.

Also, crawlers pay a lot of attention to headings, using them to understand how your content is organized and what it’s about. So when creating posts and pages, don’t forget to use WordPress’ heading options often and consistently.

7. Build Your Content Around Keywords

Chances are you’ve encountered the concept of keywords before. These are short phrases that describe your content’s topic. For example, you might choose the keyword “easy recipes” for a blog post that shares simple recipe options for beginners. By doing this, you’re predicting that a lot of people will type the phrase into a search engine when looking for this type of post.

Choosing a keyword for each post or page and using it in various places — such as the title, the headings, and the content itself — is a simple but effective way to communicate your topic to search engine crawlers and increase the chances of your content showing up in relevant searches.

Of course, you need to be smart about the way you use this tactic. For example, it’s best to avoid ‘keyword stuffing’, or forcing your keyword into too many places so that it appears unnatural or spammy. Google hates that and actually, most humans do too.

8. Incorporate Useful Internal and External Links

Google and other search engines don’t usually ‘like’ sites that live in a vacuum. Instead, they prefer sites that are well connected, both internally and to other websites.

Using plenty of links throughout your posts and pages tells crawlers how they relate to similar content. It also encourages other people to link back to your site — which in turn communicates to search engines that your content is valuable!

As with keywords, this is a strategy you need to use carefully. If you add too many links to your content or use a lot of links that point to irrelevant pages or exist only to promote products, your search engine rankings will likely suffer. Instead, look to add links where they fit naturally, and to point readers towards high-quality websites that already rank well in SERPs.

The smart use of both internal links and external links is key to achieving the best SEO results possible and so even if it takes a little extra time the rewards you’ll reap will make that time very well spent.

9. Use Responsive Design on Your Site

More people than ever are using mobile devices to browse the internet. This means your site needs to look and perform as good on any type of device a visitor happens to be using. You can help ensure this by following the strategy of responsive design — in other words, designing your site so it reacts and adapts to each user’s device.

Responsive design also eliminates the need for a separate mobile site, something that was popular a few years ago but is rather redundant now. In fact, responsive design is now so important that it’s believed by most SEO experts that Google uses it as a ranking factor. If your site is responsive, its chances of appearing high on SERPs will be that much better.

10. Add and Update Your Posts Frequently

Along with length, Google’s algorithms consider the frequency of content when deciding how to rank your pages. Older, high-quality content will do well, of course, but a boost is given to newer, ‘fresh’ content that’s more likely to be relevant to searchers.

Therefore, if you want your site to do consistently well in SERPs over time, you’ll want to add new content regularly. Also, don’t neglect older posts and pages. Updating your existing content prompts crawlers to re-evaluate it and to give it higher prominence than pages that never change. And focus on quality.

One great blog post a week is always going to be better for your site’s SEO than terrible posts published on a daily basis.

SEO for WordPress sites covers a wide range of strategies and techniques, so it can be a little bit intimidating. That’s where Pearl Lemon can help. Our WordPress SEO experts have years of experience and understand all the ins and outs of WordPress SEO. Interested in learning more? Give us a call.

The post Top 10 Essential SEO Tips for Small WordPress Sites appeared first on Pearl Lemon.

source https://pearllemon.com/top-10-essential-seo-tips-for-small-wordpress-sites/ source https://pearllemon.blogspot.com/2019/03/top-10-essential-seo-tips-for-small.html

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scottsmithuk · 6 years ago

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The Big Pearl Lemon Guide to Getting More YouTube Views for Free

So, you create YouTube videos. Great idea. Done right YouTube videos can be one of the best ways to promote a product, build your brand, establish yourself as an authority on some of your favorite subjects or just make a little extra cash.

The opportunity to do all of the above is certainly there. Although YouTube is now nearly fifteen years old – and has more than a few almost viable competitors in the video space in 2019 – it is still the granddaddy of video sites and the place most people – from all over the world and across almost every popular dynamic – head when they are looking for something interesting to watch.

How big is it still? Here are some facts to consider (accurate as of the time of writing and the numbers are YouTube’s own)

Total Number of Monthly Active YouTube Users: 1.9 billion

Total Number of Daily Active YouTube Users: 30+ million

YouTube TV Paying Subscribers: 300,000

Number of Videos Shared to Date: 5+ billion

Number of Users Creating Content Shared to Date: 50 million

Average Viewing Session 40 minutes, up 50% year-over-year

Number of Videos Watched Per Day 5 billion

Number of mobile YouTube views per day: 500 million

Number of Videos uploaded per minute: 300 hours

There is, as you can see, a huge audience just waiting to be tapped. In theory that is. Knowing all of this is very frustrating if the views on your own videos struggle to make it past double digits. So naturally you want more views on YouTube. For free. But how? Here are some pointers to get you started.

Ask People to Subscribe

That sounds very simplistic doesn’t it? And yet you would be surprised by just how many content creators on YouTube don’t actually bother to do it. They create videos that have fantastic information, are really entertaining and informative but then forget to make it clear to the audience that there is more of the same to come and so they should subscribe to be notified as soon as it does.

Once people subscribe, they can choose to be notified every time you upload new content and this will bring you instant views every time you release a new video. Add a call to action at the end of your video asking users to subscribe to your channel. And include a link in your video description that makes it easy for them to do so.

Use Playlists To Keep Those Eyeballs on Your Videos

According to YouTube’s own numbers s “top-performing brands on YouTube build and promote twice as many playlists as the bottom 25%.”

That’s because those top-performing brands understand the magic of auto-play. It’s much harder to pull yourself out of the YouTube rabbit hole when the videos just keep playing. Users might not actually be motivated enough to keep watching if they have to click play every few minutes, but if the ‘hits keep coming’ the chances are very good that they will just keep going. When you have a little more time head to one of our favourite YouTube entertainment channels – Watch Mojo UK – and we can almost guarantee that you’ll be there for a while. As soon as one video stops the next one starts. And people are often there for hours.

So, how do you create a playlist? Here’s a video that explains it very simply:

youtube

TLDW? Here’s the quick explanation:

Navigate to the first video you want to include in the playlist.

Click Add to.

Select an existing playlist, or choose Create a new playlist (and then name that playlist).

Choose your playlist’s privacy setting. Since you’re aiming for YouTube views, you’ll likely want to keep it Public.

Click Create.

Ten minutes, tops, and provided you are creating good content this will almost certainly increase your views on YouTube.

Make Use of YouTube Cards and End Screens

The card and end screen functionalities on YouTube offer you another way to get your viewers watching more of your videos while also helping them get more familiar with your brand every time they do.

Cards are those pop ups you see in the body of the video itself. This video explains how to add them.

youtube

Since at this point your focus is getting more YouTube views for free, you will probably get most mileage out of a channel card that just links to the rest of your videos. However you could use a video or playlist card to point viewers to specific related videos that it would make sense for them to watch next.

Making end screens for your videos is almost as simple as adding cards. Here’s how it’s done:

From your YouTube account, click the Creator Studio link under your account icon.

Click Video Manager > Videos.

Click Edit on the video you want to add the end screen to, then click End screen.

Choose whether to copy an existing end screen, create one using a YouTube template, or create one from scratch using the Add element option.

When you’re happy with your selections, click Save.

Make Your Video Titles and Descriptions Search AND User Friendly

Before you can get new eyeballs on your videos they actually have to be able to find them, which means your YouTube SEO has to be on point. However, those efforts have to cover two slightly different ‘audiences’; YouTube’s search bots and actual human viewers.

YouTube SEO is actually a discipline all unto itself, and there’s a lot to learn (which is why you might want a YouTube SEO specialist to help you at first) But here are some of the basics:

When you are writing your descriptions and titles try out your potential keyword ideas in the YouTube search box itself. As the autocomplete populates you may get ideas for related terms you hadn’t thought of. Or even ideas for new videos (score) You can also click on a few of the videos that show up for keywords right now to get an idea of your current competition.

Where can you find high potential keywords? Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends are both potentially great sources of them, but do not include anything that isn’t relevant to your video’s content just because it’s a high volume keyword. YouTube knows that ‘trick’ and they will eventually penalise you for it.

As we mentioned, you have to keep your users in mind too. According to YouTube “Titles that perform best are often those that tell a story.” Search bots are not interested in stories but humans are, so you have to figure out a way to achieve this balance. Within 60 characters, to ensure that your full description is displayed in search.

Thumbnail Images Count

Most people just don’t read when they are online, they scan instead. And when they are scanning their way through the search results of a list of videos they might want to watch they are far more likely to click on the one that has an interesting/eye catching thumbnail image to draw them in.

YouTube will, of course, auto-generate a thumbnail but why let them? Take control of the first impression you want to make and upload a custom image. Make sure that image complements both the subject matter of your video and your brand.

Your custom thumbnail should be 1280 x 720 pixels and less than 2 MB in size, in JPG, .GIF, .BMP, or .PNG format. And you probably want to know how to add one, so here’s a video that explains that:

youtube

Optimize Your Channel

Almost as important as optimizing each video you create is optimizing your channel. Yet SO many people just do not bother to do that. YouTube’s top performing creators do though, and since your ambition is to get more views and actually become one of them it is something that you should be doing as well.

Visuals are important here of course. You need to take the time to create a great channel icon, one that helps accurately portray your brand and your content, especially as this icon will be used by both YouTube and Google Search. It also needs to be an 800X800 image that will also display well at 98×98 pixels. A tall order perhaps, but there are a lot of tools and tips in the YouTube Creator Academy that can help.

Then there is the channel description. You have up to 1,000 characters to create a compelling brand pitch for your YouTube channel, letting viewers know why they should care about the videos you’re posting, what you have to offer, and how often they can expect to see new content. It’s not much, but take the time to make it count.

If you are up for a little more work you can even choose to create a channel trailer. We’ll let this video explain this (and as you watch, learn, this lady has a lot of views and subscribers!)

youtube

Understand the Way the YouTube Algorithm Works

‘A search and discovery system’ is the way that YouTube officially describes its algorithm. This is what determines which videos are seen first in a user’s search results, in the suggested videos tabs and in those trending streams.

The algorithm has an awful lot to do with watch time. Primarily this refers to how much time someone spends watching your videos, measured in cumulative minutes watched. According to YouTube itself, “each video uploaded—as well as every channel on YouTube—is ‘ranked’ by watch time.”

But “watch time” is not as simple as it sounds. Yes, it includes the actual time people spend watching your videos. But channels also earn “watch time credits” for driving viewers to watch videos on other channels.

This means that YouTube is more likely to showcase your videos when people spend more time watching your videos, and when they spend more time watching videos by other users that you refer them to. It’s complex stuff sometimes, and working with a Youtube marketing specialist can help you, but getting a better grasp on what you have to do to please YouTube – versus pleasing Google – is something it pays to do.

Take the Time to Go Through Your YouTube Analytics

One of the biggest keys to the success of any marketing strategy – on or offline – is to continuously test, track and tweak according to watch you learn as you go. And this is where analytics come in.

YouTube itself offers a pretty robust analytics panel that will tell you a lot of what you need to know. It lets you know which of your videos performs the best, how engaged your viewers really are and, to a certain extent, just who those people actually are.

These are all things that you not only need to pay attention to in order to increase the views on your current videos but also to act as a guide when creating future content. Once you know who is watching, and what seems to be resonating with them the most you can make a point of creating even more of the same kinds of content to keep them coming back for more.

Promote Your YouTube Video to the Outside World

Finally, it’s important that you promote your YouTube videos to the outside world to draw them over to you channel to watch (and hopefully keep watching) your content. Embed them on your website, share them on your social channels, include them in your emails (even in your email signatures)

All of these tips should help you increase the number of views your YouTube videos get and, for the most part, are free. There is one thing that has to be noted here though. As is the case for anything else in the world of content creation all the tips, tricks and hacks in the world aren’t much use if the content isn’t good.

Take the time to learn from others, to test and tweak and invest what you need to to ensure that what you are creating is good, not just a thirty second filler you are using to try and ‘increase your visibility online’.

The post The Big Pearl Lemon Guide to Getting More YouTube Views for Free appeared first on Pearl Lemon.

source https://pearllemon.com/the-big-pearl-lemon-guide-to-getting-more-youtube-views-for-free/ source https://pearllemon.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-big-pearl-lemon-guide-to-getting.html

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