Do we still need the aid of an SEO agency?
Could an ad agency earn itself back now we can do so much ourselves on social media? Does it have to be the best SEO company in Orange County for that?
Like everything in life, there are advantages and disadvantages when hiring an ad agency. What people often think of ad agencies, that they are way too expensive and that you are too small for running a campaign. And that’s definitely not a fair thought. Most ad agencies make money by running small ad campaigns. The big campaigns are for the bigger agencies. And yes, those big agencies you should avoid when you have a small business.
Not only because of the costs but also because the benefit you might get. When you are running a small online business and you would do a huge ad campaign, you would drown. You don’t have the tools and knowledge to handle all that. Orders, messages, etc would be delayed and people run away.
We all want to have success in a very short period of time but take the time to learn. Be patient. Build a solid fundament.
With this in mind, back to the advantage or disadvantage of using an ad agency.
A big agency will have access to researchers, media buyers, artists, movie makers and all another kind of specialists they need for their campaign.
A small agency will have their own expertise. They’re most of the time only specialized in one particular area. Online advertising for example.
So it is important that you know for yourself what kind of ad campaign you want before choosing an agency.
When you are going to buy a television you also compare the televisions but also the shops. The price in that shop, do they have good service, do they have knowledge about the product.
Why wouldn’t you compare agencies? If you buy a television nobody likes, who cares! It’s in your home.
But a lot of people will see your campaign. When it is not clear what the message of the campaign is then it will not bring you any profit.
Using an ad agency can save you a lot of time. Especially when you haven’t done anything with marketing so far. Marketing is a psychological game.
How come you bought the more expensive television over the one you actually wanted? How come we buy 5 products to get that free present which we give away because it’s not useful to us? How come you will click that annoying ad finally which is showed for more than a week?
All marketing.
An agency knows how to apply those tricks. Running a small online business you do not have the time to dive into the world called marketing. You learn tips and tricks during your way up and how to apply this in messages and posts but running a campaign is really different.
Doing campaigns yourself can also be more expensive. An agency often is given a discount by publishers, radio, TV. While you have to pay the full price.
Agencies can also easily redesign your campaign to be more effective.
What about a logo. Are you creative enough to develop one?
Choosing between SEO services and email marketing
Email marketing, something entrepreneurs forget to do, don’t know how to do or don’t succeed.
Some say that email marketing is out. Probably based on the spam filters. Emails aren’t delivered in the inbox but in the spam box or people unsubscribe.
If you’re still launching big email campaigns without fine-tuning your strategy, you will always have the same disappointing result.
The intention is to get people to your website who buy your product, not only visitors. When you notice that you get a lot of visitors but not the buyers, you have to change your emails.
A customer is a lazy person. A customer wants that you take him by the hand and lead you through the process. No matter how many high-quality backlinks you have, you can have success online with email marketing. If you don’t believe me, you can ask the best SEO Agency in Orange County.
Take a close look at your efforts why they’re not working in today’s environment. Perhaps next suggestion might help on fixing them.
# Do you know what your customers do? Most of the autoresponders can show you an overview of which you can see how customers are interacting with your emails. Making notes on how they behave, you get to learn your customer better.
# Personalize your email. Not by mentioning your customer by name but to use segmentation and retargeting to gather information. What have they bought before and when? Then they might be interested in your product you’re launching next month. Send them a mail.
To accomplish this you need a tool that helps you measure results and also sending out emails with those results.
# Times where you could use a simple word in your subject line has already gone for a while. People scroll through their inbox and only read what catches their eye at that moment. You need to grab their attention. Have a creative subject line. Humor can work also, but not everyone can do that. If it doesn’t sound natural, people will not read it.
Find a way here.
# Monitor your results. You can run a lot of campaigns but if you don’t watch the statistics you’re missing a big opportunity. Pay attention to what your customers do, every new campaign.
Use split testing. Use a different subject line. Change the picture. Change the color. Change the text. Long text, short text.
So much you can test with modern tools which make testing campaigns a breeze.
Marketing is fun!
# Update your database on a regular base. Many people change email or delete an email. Invest in lead generation software. This software automatic checks your list for outdated information and recommends you to update.
# Avoid spamming. What do you do when you get too much mail to a company or mail with products that don’t have your attention at all? You probably unsubscribe.
That’s the same people will do when you send them many emails a week. Don’t think for the customer.
Email marketing is still a relevant part of reaching customers. With the right tools, you can really create successful campaigns and increase conversions. As long as you keep listening to your customers, you will make it in email marketing. Email marketing out? Definitely not.
How to better rank your website
Now that you finally started your internet business, you only need to challenge the lack of traffic.
If you don’t have web traffic you are not generating sales of that platform, so you might need some website advertising. It’s great that there are many tools available to see your statistics but having no traffic means nothing to test for your sales process. And if you roll out a large traffic campaign before you’ve tested your website (much!), your attempt to great sales and a lot of new customers is probably gone. They might see you as the unprofessional. Make this failure up is pretty tough.
But having no sales and traffic it’s pretty difficult to do some tests on your sales process. At least, that’s what everyone would say except for the computer heroes.
They found out that you can test the key elements of your sales process tomorrow. And within two weeks you can roll off your traffic campaign for yourself! You can actually generate organic traffic.
There are a lot of things you can test to help you increase sales. There are a lot of combinations (layout, copy, design) that may improve your conversion rate. But when you do it for the first time then you might not have any idea what elements to focus on testing before rolling out your traffic campaign.
The best advice here is to stick to the base. Focus on testing:
– Your Sales copy, very important is your headline, benefits, the guarantee and the CTA.
– Your order process. Is it simple enough to place an order.
– Your opt-in offer. Make sure your capture page works well. That you get peoples email address.
– Your site navigation. Check how many clicks it takes before you have bought the product. Best is lest then three clicks.
These 4 steps can and need to be tested before you start driving traffic. Later, when you have a rather steady email list, you can start testing other parts of your website.
If you want to test but you have no traffic, buy traffic through pay-per-click. Search engines allow you to bid for top rankings positions choosing keywords you want. You bid on a keyword. When a visitor searches for that keyword and then click through to your website, you pay what your bid is on that keyword. Popular keywords are more expensive as keywords which are not popular. This can vary of five cents to a few dollars per click.
Getting traffic through PPC not only give you visitors but it also helps your site to get ranked. Traffic to your website makes Google think that you must have an interesting website and rank you.
Two PPC search engines to start with are Yahoo Search Marketing and MIVA.
Start with PPC advertising for another rather cheap boost of traffic. Some PPC engines here to consider are: Kanoodle, Enhance Interactive and LookSmart.
In combination with Google AdWords. Getting instant traffic without waiting. You pay for your keyword, your ad increases and starts working with you.
Rank your website in an intelligent way
Does it scare you to do or to start an online business when you hear the words SEO and keywords?
When you are a very newbie you probably think what SEO and using a keyword have to do with your business. You want people to buy your offer, right? You have several options to let people know that you have that one and only product they were looking for since ages.
One is taking a horn and a megaphone and yell it off the roofs. Another one is handing out flyers.
Doing it this way, you only reach the people in your nearest area.
Using social media already brings you so much further. Now you have possibilities to show the world your product. Doing it this way you can earn a lot.
Earning, even more, can be done by using a website with good SEO. Having a good website takes time.
Text like setting up your website in thirty minutes are true but then you have a total empty website which needs to be filled. Most people start with an online internet marketing business and don’t have content ready. And I was one of them. No worries.
If you put content, a page, on your website every day, then see how fast you have a ‘thick’ website.
A thick website is important for Google to rank. Don’t have the illusion of starting a website today and being number one on Google tomorrow.
Why do you need a competitive keyword? A keyword or keywords are words people type in on the search engine to find what they’re looking for. It’s the most simple explanation I guess.
An example. You have a website about real estate in Spain. Your keywords may be ‘real estate Spain’. Better is ‘real estate Spain Costa de Sol’. The location of the house is now included.
By using more specific keywords you attract more people who are interested in your product.
For finding and using keywords research tools and analyzers, Google has (free) tools available. Google AdWords. Just like with everything unknown: play with it and you’ll find out. Look at the statistics and you have your answer where you need to change something.
Google ain’t a bad guy with all their rules. They only want to offer their customers, you included, the best searching results on the fastest way.
Comparing to a few years ago, Google has done a real good job. Where you needed to be very specific and using ‘+’ to find something on Google, it now already has enough to a few words.
That’s why it is so important that you use the right keyword, combined with great content. If your keyword is about apples and your text about bananas then Google is totally confused and will not rank you.
Using a picture, change the name in the thing that’s in the picture and has to do with your niche. Having your website about apples, your picture is an apple, the name of the picture is 123456.jpg, you have a confusing Google again.
Dive into the world of using a keyword and SEO and I see you at the top!
To your success!
Make the search engine optimization a priority
The best way to get visitors to your website is via the search engines.
Perhaps you experienced it yourself but without SEO the right way, you won’t get the number of visitors you like. Ranking high in Google will not automatically guarantee you an increase in sales.
Your website needs to have mobile-friendly tools in place to maximize conversions. Traffic and conversions are 2 important things that make whether your online business will succeed or not.
As your organic rankings are impacted by the quality of your website you may need a specialist to do your SEO.
They make a strategy plan and know the algorithm. Now I don’t want to advertise for them, but I use the best SEO company in Orange County. A company with an agency near you. Despite that Orange County is a real big company, they never lose their eye for you.
Besides the services an SEO company gives, you can (and must) also do things yourself. Some tips here.
Keywords are still important. You will not rank while using a keyword only. For some years ago people used the keyword in an appropriate way so Google stopped ranking on a keyword only.
When you’re total new in searching for a keyword then you can use Google Adwords. But when you are used to finding keywords already then you might find them another way. There are other ways to find a keyword which might give you fewer visitors but more conversions. Do research on a form for students. How do they talk, what do they need, what do they like, and so on. Don’t play the expert on such a form.
A vague keyword can also help you to positive results only the effectiveness associated with them is extremely low.
The content you have on your website is important. Not only for SEO but also for your customer. You can have the best SEO but if your content is boring, no one will read it. The duration a customer stays on your website makes you rank or not. You write for your customer, not for SEO, do you?
Ask a child to write a story with the word ‘ZOO’ in it and ask a child something to write about the ‘ZOO’. Which story will be longer and more interesting to read you think? Probably the second.
Always write your content for your customer. After that, you change the things so it is to SEO norms and values.
These days minimalism is hot. It is allowed to have some white on your website again. Your picture or your ad you put now on that page has become more visible. It becomes also less heavy to download. On your desktop and on your mobile.
Optimize the navigation of your website. Don’t use too many buttons in the main menu. 5 Will be enough. Put the menu on every page so your customer can go back to the menu very easily. People, ourselves included, are lazy. 1 back too many are too much and we’ll leave the website.
How to better optimize your website
Doing SEO for your website so you will rank in the search engines is a pretty tough thing for those who are not technically savvy.
I can imagine that. Doing SEO the real good way, most people need someone with who can do the search engine optimization for them. However, it’s not always a guarantee that you will become number one in the search engines. There are many more websites who want to be in that place.
But behind all those technical stuff, there are things you can do yourself to rank. And if you don’t want to hire some specialist then you need to dive into the world called SEO. A better SEO means a wider audience and so more customers.
Doing it yourself or hiring an agency, figure it out well so you will have the results in the long run.
Content is the most important thing. What is it that you do when the content doesn’t interest you enough? Probably you leave. So you want your customers to stay on your website.
Times that only the keyword was important to have gone for a longer time. This doesn’t mean that the keyword isn’t important anymore. It still is. But the keyword needs other things also.
If you get stressed by the words ‘metrics’ and ‘algorithms’ then leave that to someone who made a study or a passion of it so you can focus on other things. Stay alerted of SEO changes and welcome them with the best SEO services. Don’t see them as a warrior. You will never win that battle.
Do research for what your audience is looking for. Find their pain, their needs. ‘If I have that product, that service, that opportunity, then my live would be much easier. That is the thing I’ve always wanted’. Don’t offer them apples when they ask for bananas.
If you want an audience, offer them what they want. This makes it a lot easier for users they can find the content they are looking for. Change your marketing where needed to get a better visibility.
Google offers a lot of tools which make it possible to show you where you need to change things.
Do you need other marketing tools to improve the visibility of the content? Use them and gain some trust. The more trust the more engagement.
If you have a mobile phone of a specific brand and it appears that that phone doesn’t meet your expectations, will you buy that brand again? Probably not. Even worse, not ever again. Not even when they updated everything and you hear many people they’re very satisfied with the phone.
Same goes for your website.
Create your content in such a way that it is easy to read for your target audience. If your target audience already has experience with the difficult words, speak in their language. The more people like your page, the more they will use your link on their website. Add visual elements to make it easy to share.
Realize that customers have not any patience to find things out. If they can’t find immediately what they are looking for, they leave your website.
Let an SEO pro do your engine optimization
What search engine do you like to use? Is your website AMP pages compliant? Should you contact the best SEO agency in your area to learn about what’s best for your online business?
Most of the people use Google. Simply because they give the best results. Google does it’s very best to be the best. And that may be rewarded.
Google invents a lot of tools for you as an online entrepreneur. These tools make it simple to view the statistics of your web activity. This could be your website or your social media platforms.
Google ranking will only take place if your algorithm is friendly with Google.
Ranking literally means: putting in sequence. Concerning the internet, we mean that we need to putt the results of the searching in sequence. The place your website takes is counted on top of. The lower the number, the better your ranking. The ranking can be influenced by ensuring that the SEO on your website is as good as possible. Ranking can be influenced on-paged optimization (visible and invisible) on your own page as well as the off-page optimization by, for example, link building and social media.
Some things you can do to rank higher:
Use one product as a focus. It might be that your business has a lot of stuff revolving around your business. For good SEO results just select one main topic. One main topic that tells people where your business is about. This step is really important. Have research for the right keyword. Also, Google has tools for doing this. Even better is to do the research yourself. What group of people do have my interest and do I want to achieve. How old are they? What is the tone of their voice? Etc. Use forums where your audience is to find this out. Doing it this way you’ll probably have less traffic but the traffic that comes will be more inclined to buy. If not now then a next time. They will keep on following you because you speak their language. You understand their pain and needs.
Using keywords those are hardly searched for, is a big waste of time. Plus, you have no traffic to your website.
You can see that on your statistics but Google also records the number of times that users did not choose your listing. But Google also records the number of times the users selected another website by returning to search results.
Always write impressive content. If you can’t do it then let somebody else do it for you. Write in such a way that people want to share or link your information. If other pages make a link to your website then Google things that you’re really having an interesting website and will rank you.
Don’t forget the share buttons.
Update your page frequently. If it is not your main content to update then perhaps adding a page. The best way to update is to write blogs. When you use links in your blog to another website then most likely that you will be shared also. Be competitive but don’t be each other’s, competitors. If you want to rank then you need each other. The more people share your information, the more people get to know your name. And that you share other’s information makes you a nice person in eyes of another person.
To your success.
Should you contact an SEO agency?
Just the thought of website advertising or an ad agency, scare the young entrepreneurs because they already see the dollar signs in the word ad agency and even think that they are too small for that also. I wouldn’t dare to mention SEO services either.
Thinking of advertising agencies they see it as managing large and expensive campaigns for big brands only.
Why is it that entrepreneurs often think they have to be McDonald’s otherwise the campaign is useless. How to become small businesses big. Luck? Nope. Being a great entrepreneur and using marketing the right way.
Most advertising agencies make their money of having small campaigns. Big companies probably run their own campaigns but when they don’t, it is not likely that they will go to a small advertising agency. Simply because they don’t have the recourses to carry very large campaigns. And with huge I mean the McDonalds here.
Most agencies make money by running small campaigns and using the local media for advertising.
Agencies can benefit any size of business. Just keep in mind that you use them in the best way and to use the advertising for your particular business.
The expertise of what kind of campaign you want to apply. The big agencies will have access to all kind of resources like media buyers, filmmakers, artists and other experts. Small agencies can’t afford all of this. But once, even the big agencies started as a small agency. So what makes you think you are too small for using an ad agency.
The small agencies are often specialized in a particular area. If you find out for yourself what kind of campaign you would like to run then you know what kind of agency to call. Most of the time they will advise you and how you can have better results by changing this or that. Online advertising is something else as doing the billboard advertising.
It is likely that you need a budget for running a campaign and that the agencies ask money for that. But how many time would you be busy working on your campaign? Finding things out, not being creative enough and ask friends to help. This friend thinks this is better, that friend thinks that’s better. You have a problem extra, what do you choose. Finding answers to this, and so on.
The time you spend on doing your campaign instead of focusing on running your business. Even SEO needs your attention. Giving it in hands of an agency saves you a lot of time (and stress).
Saving you time is also money. An ad agency can do it so much faster and better for you because of their experience.
They can also save you money because they have connections with all kind of publishers or local radio stations and get a discount. The discount you probably won’t get when you call those stations yourself.
Agencies can also redesign your campaign way more effective. They don’t have to ask your friends again and they know what they need to do to get your campaign more effective.
To your success!
My tips for a better online reputation management
Doing something on the internet means to be alert on what you say, all the time. Warren Buffet once said that building a great online reputation takes 20 years, while for destroying it you only need 5 minutes. Regardless of your search engine optimization that will help you increase your visibility, you also need to pay attention to how you do it.
Here are the secrets of several entrepreneurs who have built impeccable reputations but they all learned it the hard way. By following their advice you can save yourself a lot of time building a good reputation.
# Grant Cardone, best-selling author of Be Obsessed or Be Average, and founder of 10X Growth Con 2017.
Starting your online business means that you will get attention. It’s only a matter of time that you will face a bad post about you. This might result in lost opportunities or damage to your business. Be wise and do not react publicly online. The best way to solve it is via direct message or a call. A dissatisfied customer might become a fan if you solve his problem to his convenience.
# Manny Khoshbin, president of The Khoshbin Company.
This guy arrived in America at the age of 14 and nearly homeless. Now he has a 9-figure net worth. Respect! When you follow him on Instagram you see a lot of luxury but you also see a guy like you and me.
Often disputes arise from misunderstandings and/ or lack of disclosure. Honest people rarely have something to hide. Be transparent in doing business. When a business deal looks too good to be true and the feeling isn’t right, then don’t get into it. When it fails then you will always be the person of that deal.
Stay away from friends and family in doing business. They’ll expect more from you and they’re more emotionally involved. That causes the disputes. And when the deal will not go as they want, then you’ll lose a good friend.
#Tai Lopez. Investor and advisor to multimillion dollar businesses.
Nowadays everybody is doing something on social media and also say everything on social media. So when you are the person who finally found the key to success then there always be people who are jealous and try to get you down by negative publicity. Bear those people.
Look at Justin Bieber and Kim Kardashian when they had their breakthrough. They were disliked now they are adored.
# Com Mirza, CEO of Mirza Holdings. Failed and fought back, now runs a 9-figure empire.
Once a person tried to ruin his reputation because he rejected the person’s request. Mirza chose success as a response. An incredible reputation is built on serving those who love you.
# Chris Plough, entrepreneur advisor, and serial entrepreneur.
Chris was hurt by a person he trusted. The person made damaging accusations about him. Fortunately, a friend came to aid.
His lesson was that integrity is the currency of your reputation. Make daily deposits. Surround yourself with people of equal integrity. Never attack a person who harms you but tries to hold the other party up to the same standards.
Organic ranking is possible
With the money you make money, but spending it the wrong way doesn’t make you money. To save money, the organic traffic should be higher on your priorities list than paid traffic.
Organic traffic is traffic you get for free without any direct action on your side. It might take a bit longer to see results in organic ranking but it’s just something you get for free! Of course that you can also try to build some high-quality backlinks or to hire an SEO specialist to do it for you.
What do you prefer when you Google something: do you click the ads also or do you only click the organic rankings? Probably you leave the ads for what they are. Ads do a lot of times not confirm what you are looking for.
Under the ads, there are the organic rankings. The investigation turned out that 83% of only click the first four results.
Now the challenge for you is to lay your foundations well in advance for the traffic you want so you will rank and stand between the first four. Do you ever check page 2 or 3 if you can’t find it on page 1?
How can you have an organic ranking?
Understand that the content you put on your website is king. Google ain’t a bad guy. Google only wants the best results for their clients, the internet user. That’s why the content marketing is so important.
Only using social media will help you to create money but not for the long term. Therefore you need to build a content strategy via your website. Your website will always be there. On social media people come and people go. And what when your platform says goodbye. Then you have nothing.
So valuable content is very important on your website.
Keyword. Keywords only ain’t that important. It’s the whole package what makes that the keyword is important. Find the right keyword for your content so Google can categorize your website well.
Use keywords that offer enough visibility and not being too competitive the same time.
Use content of at least 500 words. Make your website ‘thicker’ without using too much ‘main buttons’ on the home page. Have about 5 buttons on your homepage and make categories beneath it. Keep it clear! People have a little patience. If they can’t find something as quickly, they’re gone. Keeping your customers on your page indicates to Google that you must have a good website and rank you.
Is it very clear for you customer what you expect them to do when they open your website? Do you want them to opt-in for your newsletter, do you want them to buy your product, do you want them to come to your webinar, etc. You can’t expect an action of your customer while you don’t have it clear.
It is like going to sit in your car but not knowing where to go.
Use images. Not ones which are too heavy. Only web pages with text only, are boring. They are vital for breaking up the monotony.
Also for using a video, don’t use the heavy ones. Your website delays and people will leave.
People are always in a hurry! Have that website that slows them down.