Tools to Help You Monitor Your SEO Services
Don’t be fooled into thinking that you can play fast and loose with SEO services. You need to monitor your performance if you really want to get a grasp on what is working and what is a waste of time and money. There are a variety of tools that can help you to optimise the process, and the good news is that many of these tools are free and easy to use. Here are three of our favourite tools that are also available to you and your organization, as well as the reasons why you should be using them to your advantage. 1. Track Backlinks With Open Site Explorer This tool is your go-to when it comes to keeping track of your website’s backlinks, which is an imperative part of SEO. Every business should have a decent mixture of follow and no-follow links, as well as anchor texts and links to your website from other websites in order to make a difference in your rankings. Open Site Explorer provides information regarding your website’s domain authority, along with the number of backlinks that your website has accumulated and where they come from. It also offers advice regarding link building opportunities going forward. 2. Keep an Eye on Your Bounce Rate With Crazy Egg Did you know that your bounce rate has a tremendous effect on the way in which Google recognizes your page? A website with a high bounce rate will notice a knock in its rankings over time. Crazy Egg has been designed to help you keep track of this bounce rate and user behavior on your site in general. It is essentially a heat-mapping tool which shows you exactly how far people are scrolling down on a page, how long they are spending reading what content and where they are clicking. This gives you a good idea of where to spend most of your time making improvements in order to maximize user experience and, ultimately, boost SEO optimization. 3. Identify Poor Performance With Screaming Frog When it comes to the technical elements of your website, such as response codes and missing image alt text, Screaming Frog is your best friend. With this tool in your corner, you’ll know exactly how well (or how poorly) your site is performing from a technical SEO perspective. The tool will also provide helpful advice in terms of how to go about fixing various issues. Feeling out of sorts when it comes to SEO? Contact WSI OMS today for SEO services that deliver measurable and understandable results for your website...
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Simplify Your Engagement With Marketing Automation
Client engagement is an important aspect of digital marketing. However, there is just not enough time to interact personally with every customer. So, to be not only effective in your client-engagement strategy, but also cost-effective, marketing automation would seem to be the logical answer. However, a couple of common reservations are that marketing automation is impersonal and takes away from your personal interactions with clients. Yet, if done right, marketing automation can include all the touch points and interactions that allow people to know you, trust you and ultimately build your brand. In other words, if you want to boost your bottom line, then you need to invest in marketing. You can’t sit back and hope that people will magically find your business. Fortunately, marketing automation makes it easy to engage with clients in a meaningful way without losing precious time needed elsewhere in the business. Here are some easy ways to incorporate marketing automation into your engagement strategy. Personalised Emails Can Nurture Valuable Relationships You can set up your email marketing to blast out quick and simple emails, or you can create a complex set of emails that need to be delivered to recipients in a specific sequence based on pre-defined triggers and behaviours. The better you get with email marketing, the more personalisation you can add to them. Consider the impact of sending personalised promotions or following up with customers who have abandoned their shopping carts. It can work wonders for your business. Go Mobile You can create a consistent experience with your brand through mobile apps and mobile marketing. Everything from push notifications to delivering the right message at the right time can be used to create a seamless experience with your business. Schedule Content and Make it Shareable You can automate all of the following: Schedule posts in advance, Create polls and other content that people like to engage with, and Include share buttons on all your website content to allow your website visitors to share their content with friends effortlessly. Need professional help? Contact WSI OMS for assistance on marketing...
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Social Media Marketing: LinkedIn Sponsored Content
Sponsored content on LinkedIn is a sure-fire way of getting your social media marketing aimed at the correct audience. Use this guide to help you create LinkedIn sponsored content. Get Picky With Your Promoted Content The first step is to choose what content you want to promote. It may be a blog post or a web page featuring a promotion. Copy the URL, go to your company page on LinkedIn and paste the URL into the update box where it reads: “Share an article or photo” and post the article, photo or link. The post will now appear in your timeline. Above the post, you will see a grey arrow with the words “Sponsor now”. When you click on the link, you will be taken to your LinkedIn campaign manager. Work the LinkedIn Campaign Manager Once you are in your LinkedIn campaign manager, you can go through all the processes you need to in order to promote your content. LinkedIn’s campaign manager is very similar to Facebook’s campaign manager. Click on the article link that you want to promote and click on “create a campaign” in the top right corner. You can choose whether you want to promote your content with targeted native advertising, drive traffic from the desktop with ads, or send targeted messages directly to people. If you want to sponsor the content, click on the top option that reads: “Promote your content with targeted native advertising”. Next, you will name your campaign, choose your objectives, select your audiences, the location you want to target, and how you want to target them. You can target people by fields of study, member groups, job titles, job function, years of experience, and a host of other options that aren’t available to you with Facebook ads. If you’re looking for ways to improve your social media marketing strategy and online reputation management, contact WSI OMS today for a...
read more7 KPIs to Track on Your Email Marketing Campaign
If you have an email marketing strategy, then you’re already ahead of many businesses. However, if you don’t use KPIs, it’s nearly impossible to sustainably create successful email marketing campaigns. The best KPIs to include in your email marketing strategy 1. Emails delivered You could have 10,000 email addresses on your email list, but if only 1,000 emails get delivered, your strategy isn’t very effective. Alternatively, keeping an eye on your email delivery rate can tell you whether a certain server- such as gmail- develops a problem with your email address. 2. Emails opened If your emails aren’t being opened, then no one is reading your content and- more importantly- no one is responding to your brand. 3. Click-to-open rate This metric compares how many people opened your email to how many people clicked on a link in said email. The CTO rate can tell you if both your subject link and your link were effective. 4. Unsubscribe rate If you notice significant changes to your unsubscribe rate, it means that some change you made to your email marketing strategy didn’t go over well with your audience. 5. Conversion rate This metric is often hailed as the most valuable KPI. It measures how many people open your email, click on a link and take a specific action. The action is typically related to your CTA, such as downloading a resource, “liking” your social media page or making a purchase. 6. List growth rate When your email list is growing at a healthy rate, you know that part of your email marketing campaign is working. 7. Sharing rate When email recipients hit “share,” it means you’re producing quality content. Having an effective email marketing strategy is crucial to the success of your inbound marketing efforts. If you don’t know how to create a successful strategy and track key KPIs, don’t worry. That’s what digital marketing agencies are here for! Contact us today to learn how we can...
read morePPC Campaign Not Converting? Here Are Three Key Reasons Why!
Pay per click campaigns are an important part of your digital marketing strategy. So, if your campaigns are not converting, you need to understand why. Here are three key reasons why your campaign might be getting a low click to convert ratio. Your Campaign Manager’s Experience As a digital marketing agency that manages everything from retargeting strategies to Facebook ads, we have found the most common reasons why PPC campaigns do not work is because the person managing the campaign doesn’t always know what they are doing. It’s true that Google AdWords has a lot of resources and that it is easy to set up a campaign yourself, but inexperienced people often miss big opportunities that could make a significant change in their PPC results. Your Bidding Strategy Is Failing Your bidding strategy may be off, meaning: That you might not be using native keywords, You are bidding too much, Your budget is too much, Your goals aren’t set or defined, and so on. The people who manage the most successful campaigns are those who sit at a desk and work on PPC campaigns all day. They aren’t social media people, bloggers, strategists or involved in other aspects. PPC campaign management is a craft that is perfected over years. Your Budget Is Too Small Another reason why PPC campaigns don’t convert is that the budget isn’t big enough. If your competitor is spending R15 000-00 and you are spending R1 500-00, you might get a few of the leads, but not enough to make a difference. PPC is an auction system. It’s like eBay. If you bid R1-00 on an item and another person bids R5-00, eBay is going to give the item to the person who bid R5-00. At WSI OMS we run PPC campaigns for clients in almost every industry you can imagine. For help with your PPC campaigns that convert, contact us for a consultation...
read moreSEO Services: Key Focus Areas for SEO Campaigns
If you want to improve your SEO services, you need to understand what makes Google tick. And, the answer is amazing user experiences. In essence, Google is a service provider, and it wants to remain at the top of the industry by providing its users with the best experience possible. The main takeaway is that Google values the user’s experience. So, how do you go about improving the user experience on your website? It all starts with technical SEO. There are two parts to technical SEO that you need to understand: There are high-impact technical issues, and There are low-impact technical issues. According to HubSpot, a 1-second delay in website loading speed can reduce conversions by 7%. Increasing your website loading speed can increase conversions. Mozilla Firefox reduced their average loading time by 2,2 seconds, which increased their downloads by 15,4%. That is a massive increase for a website like Firefox, which gets a ton of downloads already. At the very minimum, you should get your website’s loading speed to 3 seconds or less. The first thing you should do is benchmark your site’s loading speed. You can go to tools.pingdom.com and enter your URL. It is a good idea to run your site through Pingdom from at least three different locations so that you can get an average loading speed. There are countless resources online on how to improve your website’s loading speed. But, if there is one thing that determines how quickly your website loads, it is your web hosting. You can make all kinds of micro-changes to try to improve your website’s loading speed, but nothing will make a bigger difference than your web host. You might be familiar with areas of SEO such as responsive website design, optimisation and link-building. But, did you know you can improve on your business marketing strategy by focusing on the experience your website users have. For more information on improving the user experience and other areas of SEO services, follow our blog...
read more5 Link Building Tips and Tricks for Every Industry
Google’s algorithm reviews over 200 factors when ranking a page. Link building is one of the quickest and most effective ways to help your website rank on Google. Top 5 tips to create a link building strategy 1. Build relationships People are more likely to link to your website if they have a relationship with you. Before asking anyone for backlinks, start building relationships with businesses, bloggers and influencers in your industry. 2. Create a blog The benefits of blogging can be an entire article on its own. However, when it comes to link building, posting frequent high quality content with backlinks to your site can work wonders. 3. Write a guest post Craft an article about a common problem faced in your industry, offer a solution and include a backlink to your website. By posting this article on a credible website, you not only build a link, but you build a high quality one. 4. Give a testimonial Write a testimonial for a client or company you’ve worked with and post it to either their website or a website relevant to your industry. Be sure to include a link to your website! 5. List your company website in an online directory If you can find a credible, industry-specific online directory, be sure to list your website. Not only will this drive traffic to your website, but it will also help you rank on Google with your link. At WSI OMS, we are experts at developing cutting edge link building strategies that improve SEO. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you develop a link building strategy that will have you on the first page of Google in no...
read moreHow to Use TikTok to Market Your Business
Seemingly overnight, TikTok, the Chinese-owned video sharing social media app, has exploded to world-wide acclaim. The rapid rise of the video-themed social app has got even social media behemoths like Facebook and Instagram concerned, and fading upstarts like Snapchat scrambling for new ways to stay relevant. For marketers, however, the TikTok explosion should only cause excitement. It presents a trendy new channel for your brand to connect with your customers and prospects. Here are a few TikTok statistics that show why the social app must catch your full attention as a marketer: Over 1 billion downloads, More monthly installs than Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat, and 500+ million global active monthly users. As you can see, you should be leveraging the TikTok opportunity to market your business. Here are three tips to make your task easier. 3 Tips for Marketing Your Brand on TikTok 1. Create Videos That Are Relevant to Your Business It sounds straightforward enough, but some creativity is needed if your videos are going to attract the attention of your audience on a platform that also has thousands of other trending videos. If your product requires some assembly, a good idea will be to produce an assembly demo video. For their #GuacDance challenge, Mexican food-themed American restaurant chain, Chipotle leveraged the popularity of Dr. John’s ‘Guacamole Song’ by encouraging their customers to record and post videos of their avocado-themed dance moves. 2. Partner With Influencer As you grow your own following on TikTok, leverage the popularity of influencers to market your brand. Again the advice here is to do your research and create relevant content. Importantly, make sure the influencer is a fit for your brand or product. If yours is a food business like Chipotle, then a popular chef will be a great influencer to partner with. Similarly, if you’re a sports apparel brand, then a sports star will be a perfect partner. 3. Be Consistent As with content marketing where you must aim to produce and share quality content on a regular basis, success on TikTok also depends on your consistency. Be consistent with the regularity with which you post videos as well as with the quality of the videos themselves. Ensuring you post high-quality videos regularly obviously raises questions of cost. But, you’re not going to do your brand any good by producing a good video that goes viral and then following up with a dud when your audience is all excited and ready to engage more. Establish a posting schedule and then stick to it. Keen on adding TikTok to your suite of social media marketing channels? WSI OMS has a team of social media marketing experts ready to use their global insights, expertise and experience to help you make the most of the TikTok marketing opportunity. Contact us today for more information on our social media...
read moreDigital Marketing Guide: Google Indexing
If you want to improve your digital marketing strategy, you will need to optimise your website for mobile. With the number of searches done on mobile increasing rapidly, Google is giving priority to websites that play well with mobile devices. The two short and easy tips below will help you to understand Google’s Mobile-First Indexing principle. Load Speed Speed is more important than ever, especially when it comes to mobile searching. Google knows that people aren’t as patient as they used to be, which is why they want your site to load within two seconds. This may seem ridiculously fast, but everyone expects things to be instant. So, what can you do to make your website load faster? Optimise your images so that they are small and easy to load. There are a number of great WordPress plugins that can do this for you. If you don’t have a WordPress site, then you will need to edit your photos so that they are small for your website. A good rule of thumb is to compress the image to 400 pixels. Other things that you can do is minify your code for faster loading (this also makes it easier for search engine crawlers to index your pages) and make use of website caching. What website caching does is store the website. If a person has visited your website before, then some of the files will be stored, making it easier and faster to load when they visit your website again. Avoid Page Redirects If you have a lot of redirecting pages on your website, then you need to remove them. Search engine crawlers and servers have to work extra hard to understand where all the content on your site is, so a high number of redirects can harm your SEO efforts. With these two simple principles, you can improve the way Google indexes your website which will be incredibly beneficial to your digital marketing efforts. If you want to learn more about digital marketing, be sure to follow our blog for tips on small business marketing, email marketing, SEO and social media...
read moreWeb Design: How to Create a Punchy “About Us” Page
Your web design relies on great content, and your “about us” page should be the knock out! Here are 6 tips to master your “about us” page. 1. Let the Purpose Lead Your About Us page should be used to build trust and tell your brand’s story. So, use that as a basis to guide your writing. 2. Make Your Mission Known People like to buy from people and companies who they trust. People will trust you if you have a good reason for them to trust you. What was the big, overarching goal of your company when you started it? Craft this into a well-worded mission statement that will enthral your website visitors. 3. Mind Your Approach Some companies prefer to write their About Us page in the first person, while others prefer a more formal, third-person approach. Neither is right nor wrong, but you need to be consistent throughout the content on your website. 4. Get Visual People relate to images, especially if there are people in the images. Take a company photo, or if the company is too big, a photo of the executive board. Show the people behind the brand. 5. Show Your Credibility If you belong to industry organisations, list them on this page. If your business has won awards in the past, then include a logo of the award you won here as well. 6. Minimise Your Content You don’t have to write a novel. Few website visitors will be interested in a back story that spans decades. Make the content easy to digest by keeping it short. Looking for a digital marketing agency that does it all? We specialise in web design, search engine optimisation and content marketing. So, get in touch to find out more about our...
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