by MYB Agency | Jul 27, 2021 | Digital Marketing, Lead Generation
Digital marketing isn’t just a buzzword or a trend. It’s a necessary investment in your success. This is because digital marketing offers you the opportunity to generate leads and gain new customers who are in need of your services. And while there are many ways to generate leads through digital marketing, here, are 5 simple tips that will get you started
5 Ways to lead Generation through digital marketing
1. Generate leads through social media
Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter make it easy to gather leads that are directly related to your business. This is because every platform you upload on social media is capable of posting ads which makes it easy for people to find out about your business and sign up for your services. Capture email addresses.
Another way to generate leads for your business is to track down people who are interested in your services. It doesn’t matter if it’s emails, texts, or even the numbers you get via calls, every email or call needs to be recorded. This is because you can use this information to create marketing materials while making use of them in your customer service department.
2. Generate leads through content marketing
Content marketing generates new leads from followers who are actually willing to buy. Content that is optimized for SEO includes Pictures Video and infographics When you promote your content on the right platform, you can attract new followers. When you attract followers, they will spread your content to their followers who may be looking for your service.
Now your content marketing strategy is complete. Use Paid search campaigns Another way to generate leads is through paid search. With paid search, your advertisements will be featured in search engines like Google. These advertisements give you the opportunity to acquire new followers. And when followers search for your services, you can convince them to purchase your products.
3. Generate leads through webinars
Creating a website is necessary for any business, but creating a blog that can attract leads to your website is essential. Webinars are one of the most effective methods for generating leads for a small business. For this method, you must choose the topics you want to cover and contact your lead generation expert or consultant to get a full list of topics you should cover.
After selecting the topics that you want to cover, you will need to develop a template of the first segment of the webinar. You can’t just create it, as you need to properly prepare and train your audience, in order for them to participate in your webinar.
4. Generate leads through email marketing
If you don’t have a list, you have no leads. Why? Think about it. If you can’t sell something to a business, how would you sell it to someone? Because you have no leads, you can’t get them to your website. You need leads before you can generate sales, and the best way to generate new leads is to create a list of potential customers. That is the only way that you will be able to send them marketing messages that you want them to see.
The best method of sending these messages is by email. Utilize lead-generating tactics At the same time that you are creating a list of people to send emails to, you will also want to make sure that you are using every possible digital tactic that you can to generate leads. Do you know what that means?
5. Generate leads with your website
There is no other way to generate leads than through your website. With proper web development, you can effectively use the internet to target your customer and generate leads. In fact, one of the fastest ways to build leads is through content marketing. You can share articles, videos, infographics, and so on that will allow customers to learn more about your products and services.
Adding popups with offers, posting deals on the website as well as email signup for news letters can all help generating leads.
by Jvalin Sonawala | Jul 13, 2021 | Digital Marketing
In Virtual Assistant Services business get a person as a virtual assistant who works from a remote location to provide various services to businesses or entrepreneurs. They have virtual access to tools, information, and other resources they need to accomplish their jobs, even if they aren’t physically present in the office.
This sector has developed in recent years. Virtual assistant firms now employ virtual assistants for various tasks such as administrative duties, customer service, social media marketing, accounting and bookkeeping, and more.
With this information, is it worth it to hire a virtual assistant for your business this year? In this article, we will go through five reasons why it is a great option to consider.
Below are the 5 ways that virtual assistant services can help you with
1. Less Cost
You may engage a virtual assistant to accomplish certain tasks for you instead of hiring full-time staff. You only have to pay them for work done because they generally charge by the hour or by task.
Moreover, you won’t have to pay for overheads like their internet connection, laptop, or other office-related expenditures because they work remotely. Hiring virtual specialists can also save you money on training fees because they can begin working right away.
2. Round-the-Clock Service
The majority of firms have clients all around the world. However, dealing with worldwide demands and conflicting time zones can be challenging when your company and employees are just in one location.
Because virtual assistants are working remotely, you may employ them anywhere in the world to accommodate different time zones. You and your on-site team won’t have to stress because, with your remote assistants, you’ll be able to serve clients 24 hours a day, seven days a week!
3. Increased Productivity
Virtual assistants may help you with administrative tasks such as sending emails and organising meetings.
These are essential responsibilities, but imposing them on your in-house workers wastes time. By delegating non-core work to a virtual assistant with the appropriate skill set, you can focus your time and resources on things that require your in-office team’s attention.
4. Scale Up Your Business
Swiftly scaling up your business operations is something that your virtual assistant can help you achieve.
As the demands increase, you can still handle a growing amount of work and cope with the changes without worrying about your recruitment process. You can simply hire a virtual assistant on a project-by-project basis. You may employ virtual assistants to deal with expansion tasks and gradually add full-time staff once your business processes have retained equilibrium.
5. Focus on Growth Strategy
You have more time to focus on expanding your business since virtual assistants can handle your non-core tasks.
Instead of worrying about day-to-day operations, you may use freed-up resources to strategise and build plans for your business’s long-term growth. This will enable you to create objectives that will lead to improved performance and long-term success for your organisation.
Conclusion
When choosing virtual assistant services, there are several factors to think about. And only you can decide whether or not this type of service is worthwhile. Nonetheless, the weight they can lift from your shoulders is still worth considering. As your company expands, you’ll be able to acquire the help you need more productively and cost-effectively.
Are you juggling multiple tasks for your business? Market Your Biz can help! You can hire one of our virtual assistants to do several jobs for you, like executive and administrative services, digital assistance, and customer support. Want to know how? Contact us today!
by Jvalin Sonawala | Jul 6, 2021 | Digital Marketing
How to Generate New Leads Through Organic Traffic
Modern businesses are made successful by efficient digital marketing strategies and branding. There are many ways to accomplish this, including social media marketing, web page promotion, and even live streaming events. Such online activities are designed for your companies to gather more leads, which basically means potential or future customers.
Think of the time when people got hooked on an online advertisement. This has likely led to countless comments on that brand’s social media page, mainly to inquire about new products or services.
If the brand’s social media managers answered the comments that they left behind, a conversation would initiate between the target audience and the latter. Once this continues, the company will have gained a lead. The only thing to do now is to further engage with them, which will eventually lead to a convert—a person who turned from a curious bystander to an avid supporter.
Lead Generation Through Organic Traffic
Let’s talk about organic traffic as a good source of your business leads. It refers to the people visiting your website and social media pages due to the prompt and motivation triggered by your advertising efforts. You didn’t need to pay for your ads to show up, as they willingly visited your pages out of curiosity—and not because of ad bombardment.
While attracting paid traffic to your pages would definitely yield quick results, they may not be a practical solution in the long run since you would have to keep on spending a portion of your company budget.
In short, organic traffic presents a good and sustainable way to raise your sales and gather new leads. Here’s how it works:
Tips to generate new leads
1. Update Your Online Content Regularly
One way of effectively attracting new leads to your website would be through consistently creating new content and updating your information online. Your website has to be interesting, and the same applies to your social media pages. Make sure to post new graphics, videos, and streams that would most likely convince your organic traffic to stay and listen to your ads well enough to convert them to leads.
2. Analyse Your Rival Company’s Strategies
To beat your competitors, you have to know what their next moves will be. You have to be way ahead of them in terms of marketing strategies and digital sales. Remember, the best way to gain more sales over them would be to present original ideas that your target audience has not seen before— be it events, print ads, or viral videos. Whatever your creative team can come up with has to be done by your brand first before your competitors beat you to the punch.
3. Optimise Your Web Pages
Organic traffic is best earned through a highly functional website, topped with exciting content and an interactive user interface. If your website takes a long time to load due to the lack of optimisation, your leads may close their current tab and proceed to visit another website instead. Captivate them on the first try by making your website more accessible and user friendly.
Conclusion
Acquiring new leads may be a daunting task, but just because it’s hard doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to do. You have digital marketing on your side to ensure that your website, social media pages, and digital marketing efforts can garner new leads for your brand. Make sure to keep this guide in mind!
Market Your Biz is your top source of digital, content, and video marketing services. So, if you’re looking for a trusted digital marketing agency in Australia that can provide all of the mentioned services, reach out to us today!
by MYB Agency | Jun 23, 2021 | Digital Marketing
Video SEO – Ranking your videos
What Is Video SEO?
Have you tried to make the videos on your website more appealing by minimizing your video’s length, adding catchy titles, and even hiring a professional for production? If yes, did it help you get more views and improve your ranking? If your answer is no, you have come to the right place.
Video SEO is different from regular SEO. It refers to the optimization of videos on your website to help get views from Google and increase your organic traffic. You achieve video optimization when your videos generate a return on investment (ROI).
The first thing you need to do is to decide on your goals for your videos.
Define Your Video SEO Goals
Videos are an effective and exciting way to get organic traffic to your website. However, you need to consider a video strategy that fits in with your regular SEO strategies. Why is it necessary to define your video goals, you ask? If you do not establish your goals, you might end up spending a large amount of money on a video that is not even appropriate for your website.
Some website owners experience what is known as FOMO (fear of missing out) when they see other websites including videos. They also start producing a video for their website without even considering what they require from the video.
You need to ask yourself: Do I want videos for high-quality traffic, conversion, or simple organic traffic? When you set your video goals accordingly, you are more likely to find the right audience for your videos.
If you look at your video goals from an SEO point of view, there are two goals you can have. It can either be to build links or increase conversions. Let us understand how building links and increasing social shares can be beneficial.
Building Links and Increasing Social Shares for video seo
High-quality videos can generate links like no other element. It can help you link to the top domains provided you have relevant videos.
It can be tough to get these links as there is so much video content online. You require an outstanding video with an exceptional outreach strategy that positions it for backlinking from other websites.
Relevance is again a crucial factor when it comes to choosing a website you want to link from.
What do you think is the defining factor of your video? How is it any different from the ones that are already out there? These are the questions you need to answer to help determine where your videos currently stand.
Your videos need content that engages the audience and compels them to share it through social media platforms.
Moz Whiteboard Friday
As mentioned above, you need an out-of-the-box element for your video. This element will help you attract high-quality links to your website.
Try making your videos educational. One of the examples of these videos is Moz Whiteboard Friday.
Popularly known as Moz Whiteboard Friday, Moz posts a whiteboard-style video every Friday. A whiteboard-style animation refers to the static images drawn on the board while a narrator speaks in the background explaining the drawing.
Moz Whiteboard Friday attracts numerous links and social shares which increases their organic traffic. Moz Whiteboard Friday is an excellent example of how building links is easier by releasing engaging video content.
I must remind you, however, that you need to be sure of your video goals first. Putting all your efforts into outreach strategies and paying zero attention to the value your video provides will not help you achieve your goal.
Pro Tip: Try posting videos directly on your website rather than using video platforms like YouTube or Vimeo. This will help drive traffic to your website since viewers will have to share your website’s link when they share your videos. If you plan on posting your videos on video platforms, remember to link them back to your main webpage.
Increase Conversions for video seo
The primary aim of any VIDEO SEO process is to improve your ranking which in turn helps with sales and conversions.
However, increasing conversions is more than a singular process. First of all, you need to attract people to your website. Secondly, you must optimize the website for people to be paying clients.
Videos are an excellent tool for conversion as they can help people stay engaged with your website. This element is especially beneficial when you add it to your website’s landing page.
Adding videos to your landing page is one of the primary ways to increase conversions. Another way to do this is through rich snippets.
But first, let us look at how videos on landing pages help with conversions.
Video SEO for Landing Page
You only have just a few seconds to engage a visitor through your website. This necessitates an optimized landing page. If you only optimize the written content on your landing page, it may not be enough for visitors. You require their attention, and videos are an engaging way to get that.
When you visit any website’s landing page and spend time looking at a video relevant to the business, you want to know more about it.
That is how video SEO works on a landing page. Once viewers see a convincing video about your brand, they are more likely to become paying clients. Product videos and explanatory videos are two ways to reel customers in.
Product Videos
If you are a retailer wanting to increase conversions, product videos are the ultimate solution. People buying products online feel a lot more confident if they watch the product video first.
Your product video should not contain unnecessary details. It should be concise and relevant.
Here is an example from Zappos and their product video for Levi’s jeans for women. Econsultancy reported that after Zappos introduced product videos, their sales increased from 6% to 30%.
Explanatory Videos
If your brand deals with services, you can use explanatory videos for your conversions. There is no exact formula to create these videos as it depends on what kind of services you provide.
However, if you produce an introductory video of your brand, your conversions are more likely to increase. This type of video can help describe why your services are top-notch while also providing a preview of your services.
Dropbox did just this by adding videos to their homepage which increased their conversion rate by 10%.
After having established the importance and potential of video SEO, let us look at other ways you can increase conversions with video SEO:
- Video SEO Through Rich Snippets
Google customarily provides a short description of your website below each search result. These are known as normal snippets. When Google provides additional information taken from structured data in your page’s HTML, these are rich snippets. Some common types of rich snippets include recipes, reviews, and events.
Sometimes, people refer to the rich snippets before they visit the landing page of a website. Google has recently increased the use of rich snippets in their search results. You can take a look below for a reference to a video that has a rich snippet in the SERP.
Google displays information about your video and helps the user know that they can watch the video once they click on the link. Since users can already see your video snippet, they are more likely to visit your website. This increased traffic can improve your conversions eventually.
The thumbnail of your video is visible to the users along with the duration. It is a good practice to optimize your thumbnail by ensuring that it matches your web page’s context.
A crucial question arises: How do you use rich snippets for Video SEO?
The fundamental rule in using rich snippets for video SEO is to host the video on your website. If you work on WordPress, you can use YouTube through the Yoast plugin.
Once you have posted the video on your website, you can inform Google by adding schema codes and submitting an XML sitemap on Google Search Console.
It might seem like a tedious task, but once you start doing it regularly, you will get the hang of it. If you are ranking for high-volume keywords already, these rich snippets work like a bonus.
By now, you know the basics of video SEO. Now let us look at how you can perform keyword research for your video.
Video SEO Keyword Research
Keyword research for video seo is different from the keyword research methods we have previously taught you for written content.
You’ll need to perform different keyword research for your videos since the views you get for your videos come from YouTube searches and not search engines. Though it is essential to optimize your videos for both YouTube and Google, YouTube has the upper hand.
Another reason why a separate search is necessary is that people use Google and YouTube differently. For instance, a keyword like “health insurance” may get millions of hits on Google, but it may only have a few hundred hits on YouTube.
The keyword phrase “adorable dogs” may get millions of hits on YouTube, but it may not have as many hits on Google. Hence, you’ll need to do separate keyword research for video SEO.
In the following section, we look at some research techniques for video keywords.
Using YouTube Suggestions for video seo
This is similar to Google’s suggestions. When you add a keyword on YouTube’s search bar, you get a list of options. These keywords are potential video keywords.
Using TubeBuddy Tags for your video SEO
If you want to know what video tags your competitors are using, this extension is your answer.
You need to install the extension on your Chrome browser and visit your competitor’s YouTube page.
Look at the tags tab. The numbers in green boxes indicate how specific keywords rank in YouTube.
Imagine this scenario: you come across a low-quality video (relevant to your brand) with a keyword that ranks on YouTube. Why not produce a high-quality fully-optimized video using the same keyword to outrank the previous one?
Using VidlQ Keyword Search for video seo
You can use this tool to search for keywords for free, but of course, premium paying members get additional benefits.
Within seconds of signing up, you get many keywords and phrases. Add your main keyword on an SEO search bar, and voila! You have all the relevant keywords and phrases for your video SEO.
VidlQ also shows the information on high-volume keywords that have low competition.
Using YT Cockpit for video seo
This tool works specifically for YouTube keyword research. You need to add your seed keyword into the search bar of this tool. The tool will then display a list of keywords and phrases with each keywords’ metrics.
If you come across the monthly searches column in YT Cockpit, it refers to Google searches, not YouTube searches.
An important element of this tool is the competitor analysis it provides.
This tool gives you a list of all the highly successful videos for the selected keyword. If there are many successful videos for a particular keyword, you can choose to work with another relevant keyword.
Using YouTube Studio Stats for video seo
Since this tool shows keywords that you have already ranked for, your channel needs to have at least some traction for this tool to be beneficial.
This tool offers you the best keywords for your videos. You can take a look at them via the YouTube Studio dashboard. You can find an analytics option that leads you to reach viewers.
Select the traffic source as YouTube searches and you can see your already ranked keyword list.
Once you see this list, you can use it in one of two ways:
- Optimize an existing video around those keywords
- Create a new video using those keywords
Now that you know how to look for keywords for your videos, let’s move on with learning how to create top-ranking, engaging videos.
Creating Engaging Videos
Have you ever started watching a YouTube video that you felt like turning off after the first few seconds? On the other hand, have you ever found yourself enjoying a video so much that you not only watched it to the last second, but watched it again, and shared it with your friends?
Both videos in the above scenario may have entailed a lot of hard work from their producers, but only one of those videos will have desirable results.
What makes one video better than the other? I’m glad you asked. There are several metrics that YouTube uses to rank your video:
Watch Time for your video SEO
The Total Watch Time is the most crucial ranking factor on YouTube. It refers to the complete duration of your video.
You can find this metric on YouTube studio.
You can optimize your watch time by creating long videos. Consider this scenario: You create two videos for your channel. The first video is 30 minutes long while the second video is ten minutes long. If people watch 40% of each of your videos, the first video will have three times the watch time that the second, shorter video will have.
This is the explanation behind the idea that longer videos are more likely to have a higher ranking on YouTube.
Increase Audience Retention
Audience retention is another ranking factor for YouTube videos and improves video SEO output. It refers to the total amount of time that audiences watch your video.
If you can improve your video’s audience retention, you can rank higher on YouTube.
- Pay attention to the first 10 to 15 seconds of your video. If you cannot engage someone within that 10 to 15-second timeframe, they will not watch the rest of the video.
- In your YouTube studio stats, check the audience retention reports for your videos. You can see at which points audience retention peaked and dropped in your video.
- Try adding pattern interrupts. Pattern interrupts refer to the moments in your video when you change things up a little. It is an element designed to help break the monotony and keep things interesting.
We will look at this metric in more detail in the YouTube SEO section.
Session Watch Time
Session watch time refers to how long a person spends on YouTube after watching your video. YouTube ranks videos with a higher session watch time. Unfortunately, there is no possible way to measure your session watch time.
There are, however, ways to optimize it:
- Create a playlist. If the audience selects a video from your playlist, your session watch time increases.
- Links at the end of the video give the viewers a chance to visit your channel and improve your session watch time. Try YouTube’s End Screen feature to add this feature to your videos.
User Engagement
If viewers watch your videos without liking, sharing, subscribing, or commenting on them, it does not help user engagement. YouTube uses the share, like, subscribe and comment functions to measure if viewers actively engage with your videos.
There are ways to improve your videos’ user engagement:
- Ask your viewers to comment on the video.
- Add a subscribe call-to-action to your video.
- Reply to the comments you receive on your video.
Now that you know how to create and determine what an engaging video is, let’s look at some ways you can optimize it for video SEO.
Ways to Optimize Your Videos for Search
The optimization of your videos is as important as optimizing your written content. The video optimization process also includes video keyword optimization.
Try these steps for optimization for video seo
Select the Correct Video Hosting Platform
Selecting the right video hosting platform for your video entails knowing the answer to the first question in this chapter: Why do you want video SEO? What are you trying to achieve? Once you can answer this question, you can proceed with choosing the right video hosting platform.
YouTube and Vimeo are good choices if your goal is brand awareness.
Include a Video Transcript
If you come across a video that has real-time captions, then it has a video transcript. When you add video transcripts to your videos, you make them accessible to a broader audience. It also helps bot crawlers find your videos more easily with the additional information provided by the transcript.
Create an Appealing Thumbnail Image
Whenever you browse through videos, you are scrolling through thumbnail images that represent them. This matters because they are the first encounters that potential viewers will have with your video. Thumbnail images are a big factor in helping visitors decide whether or not to click on your video file.
You should therefore strive for a thumbnail image that is appealing and relevant. If your video is about DIY face masks, your thumbnail picture should depict that. Any random out-of-place photograph will not compel users to click on your video.
Choose the Right Title and Description for Your Video
When you write a catchy title and a meta description for your video, you are more likely to get views. Remember to include the targeted keyword in your title.
You should also take the time to research how to make titles and descriptions clickable.
Other Content Should Be Relevant to Your Video
Your webpage is more than just your video. It has other elements too. Focus on optimizing other components. Use these elements to explain the relevance of your video.
Gaining organic traffic is a tedious process, but worth it if you optimize all the components of your website.
Put the Video You Want to Rank First
This step applies to a webpage that has multiple videos. Google usually indexes only the first video on a webpage. Bot crawlers stop indexing after the first video. Hence, you must put the video you want to rank first on your webpage.
Put Focus on Your Ranking Video
This step is an extension of the previous step. You should avoid adding lengthy information and adding other unnecessary elements to your video.
It’s worth repeating that you should place the video you want to rank towards the top of your website. People don’t like scrolling a lot just to find the main content.
Do Not Put the Same Video on Multiple Pages
Embedding the same video on different pages of your website only creates unnecessary competition for yourself.
It is likewise illogical to duplicate the same elements that you have on a ranking page to other pages on your website.
Do not do either of these things.
Explore Other Means of Promotion
You could try to promote your video on social media. You need to continue exploring other ways of creating viewership and engagement for your video. Depending on SEO alone is not enough.
For those of you interested in using YouTube as a platform for your videos, this next section is for you.
How to Rank #1 on YouTube?
Let’s say that you have an engaging video ready for YouTube. Let’s work on getting that video to rank higher.
YouTube Keyword Research
We discussed this earlier in this chapter. It is the first step towards ranking on YouTube.
Identify Search Intent
Search intent is a crucial factor in keyword research. It refers to the context and the reason behind a user’s query.
YouTube search results can help you identify this search intent.
Establish how your video addresses different users’ intent. If your video is a tutorial, YouTube likes step-by-step guides. If your video ranks different items in a specific category, use a listicle format.
High-Retention Videos
You are now familiar with the concept of audience retention.
Let’s look at the steps that help to optimize audience retention in more detail:
You may have decided what your video is about, but you still need to flesh out a proper plan before producing it. If it helps, write down the script for your narration. You can also create a storyboard for it.
You have come across this step before. The first 10 to 15 seconds of your video are crucial. These few seconds set the tone for your video and help viewers determine whether they will watch your video to the end or not.
To increase user engagement, ask people to comment, like, share, or subscribe to your channel in every video.
If your video is lengthy, you need to edit it strategically. People do not like to sit and watch monotonous videos. They want to watch videos that they find engaging.
These editing techniques can help you increase retention:
- Add jump cuts to quickly transition from one scene to another.
- Minimize gaps between key scenes.
- Guide your viewers to the video elements you want them to focus on.
- Use stories or narratives to share information.
- Feedback is important
Feedback is not limited to viewers leaving comments on your videos. The feedback process begins with your video SEO team. You should use them to:
- Get feedback on your script.
- Get feedback on your video edits.
An engaging video is a result of actively soliciting and getting feedback even before you release your video online.
On-Page Video Optimization
This step refers to all the tweaks and changes you need to make to your on-page video elements.
A few basic reminders:
- Craft an appropriate title and description.
- Choose or come up with an engaging and relevant thumbnail.
- Use tags whenever necessary.
Optimizing In-Video Elements
Your video has elements that need optimizing. For instance:
- Include video transcripts (This was previously mentioned in optimizing the search section).
YouTube cards are an interactive feature that is displayed towards the end of videos. It allows the video content producers to share clickable links to other content that they believe viewers might be interested in. By utilizing YouTube cards, you allow your viewers to:
- Watch other videos you’ve chosen for them
- Browse through another YouTube channel
- Donate to nonprofit organizations
- Answer a poll-type question
- Click on an external link
You can add these cards by linking them to your video timeline. When the viewer reaches that part of the video where you linked a Youtube card, it appears on their screen.
YouTube end screens are similar to YouTube cards. The only difference is that YouTube end screens only become visible towards the last 5 to 20 seconds of your video.
Publishing and Promoting Videos
The first 48 hours after publishing your video are important as they can tell you how well your video did. Of course, you should use these 48 hours to promote your work. Here are a few factors that you should consider during this crucial time frame:
- Determine the best time to publish your video.
What time are your targeted viewers on YouTube? When are they most likely to click on your video? Finding the best time to publish your video is one of the most crucial factors that will help you gain a higher viewership for your work.
Though there is no exact formula for the best time, you can try monitoring YouTube’s peak viewing hours.
Engaging with your audience is key to promoting your video. YouTube offers you a way to like comments, and reply to them. Use this feature to your benefit.
- Leverage your existing audience.
You can try to gain new viewers for your channel or videos, but don’t forget about the audience you already have. One way to boost views from people who have watched your videos before is to promote your video on social media.
You can send out newsletters whenever you have new content.
- Include links on your social media handles.
Make your video links more accessible on social media by publishing these links alongside your social media handle.
- Promote your videos to new audiences.
If you do not have an existing audience, promotion can be tricky, but there are ways to gain new audiences:
- Look for relevant discussion boards like Quora where you can share your video links.
- Try collaborating with other YouTube channels.
- Pay for YouTube ads based on your targeted keywords.
Optimizing New Videos
After publishing a video, you can no longer edit it, but you can use the data you have from your existing videos to optimize subsequent videos.
- Analyze your audience retention graph on YouTube to get to know what your viewers like.
- Find out if your video aligns with the search intent of your viewers. (You can do this through your YouTube studio dashboard)
Now that you know the steps you need to perform to rank on YouTube, let’s turn our attention to getting your videos to rank on Google.
Rank YouTube Videos on Google
There are several steps you can follow to get your YouTube videos to rank on Google.
Look for Potential Topics
As you read in an earlier chapter, topics that might rank on YouTube might not rank on Google. Your priority now should be topics that people search for on Google.
You can also focus on the video intent behind a topic. For instance, when looking for instructions on how to cut up certain fruits, people are more likely to watch an instructional video than try to read about it. Knowing this, you need to do some research on appropriate video keywords that are relevant to your chosen topic.
Optimizing Your Video for Suggested Clips
Google uses suggested clips to feature highlights from selected videos that it believes to be relevant to a search. They are embedded in SERPs and play directly from them. Users can therefore preview parts of a video through suggested clips.
To increase the chances of your video becoming one of these suggested clips, you need to make sure that your video is concise, helpful, and engaging.
How to do this? If your video is a step-by-step tutorial, you need simple action words for each step. For example, if your video is about making lemonade, your video’s instructions can be:
“Squeeze some lemon juice into a glass. Add sugar and salt according to taste. Mix it well using a spoon. Pour ice cubes into the glass. Fill the glass with water. Finally, add a mint leaf garnish.”
What we are trying to show in the above example is the significance of simple action words. Do not add unnecessary content to your video. Use a clear voice for narration.
Lastly, if you provide instructions for something, make sure that the accompanying video clearly illustrates your point. For example, if your video says pour ice cubes into the glass, show ice cubes being poured into a glass to support it.
These techniques will aid your video’s chances of becoming a suggested clip for a relevant query when performed successfully.
Take Control of Your Closed Captions
It is unattractive to have incorrectly closed captions in a video. YouTube adds these automatically to your video, and they can be full of errors sometimes.
Add in your captions to ensure that they are correct. This will help with user engagement and your Google ranking.
Use A Compelling Thumbnail
The thumbnail image you choose should make viewers want to open your video link. Make sure to use a thumbnail image relevant to your video so that people searching for the content you offer can easily find it. A compelling thumbnail needs to be:
- Customized based on content
- Appropriately sized. Your image should not appear stretched or pixellated. It should be the right aspect ratio. (Google’s aspect ratio is 16:9.)
- If your video content solves a problem, your image can show that problem being solved.
- The Thumbnail images are small. Make sure your audiences can easily see what they contain. If there is any text, it should be readable. Use contrasting colors to make any elements in your graphic easy to see and make out.
- Add descriptive text in the video description field to go with your thumbnail image.
Highlight Key Moments From Your Video
Google has a relatively new feature that allows users to survey important moments from your videos through time stamps. The feature is called Google Key Moments. It allows users to skip to a specific section of your video that they find relevant. Since it gives videos more chances to rank, you should consider taking advantage of this by adding timestamps to your videos.
Fundamentally, this entails creating an outline of your video based on timestamps in YouTube’s video description box.
The basic elements for creating Google Moments are:
- Timestamps – This is a link to a section of a YouTube video. It is usually in the following format: [hh] : [mm]:[ss].
- Labels – These are one-line descriptions of the clip.
Make the most out of your timestamps by doing the following:
- Use the video description box for your timestamps. Do not put them in a comment.
- Every timestamp should be entered on a new line. Do not enter them all in a single line as this looks cluttered and can be confusing for viewers.
- Aim for concise and descriptive one-line labels.
- Follow a chronological order for placing your timestamps.
- Avoid adding too many timestamps for one video.
Please note that the Google Key Moments feature only works with content from YouTube at the moment.
In these modern times, every smartphone is equipped with a video camera. Videos are as popular as ever. They have become more accessible and easier to make.
However, creating effective, relevant, and engaging videos is still an intangible skill that is hard to quantify. Despite the absence of a holy grail for creating the next viral video, we hope that you can use the ideas and techniques presented in this chapter to make video SEO work for you.
by MYB Agency | Jun 22, 2021 | Digital Marketing
Chapter 6 – International SEO
What Is International SEO?
In the previous chapter, you learned about local SEO and how it can uniquely benefit businesses whose potential customers are located within a certain vicinity or area. In this chapter, we shift our focus to international SEO. But wait, what does international SEO mean?
International SEO refers to the optimization process that helps Google or any other search engine recognize the countries you want to target through your business. It also helps the search engines identify the languages you utilize for your business. While local SEO might target certain neighbourhoods or even cities, international SEO is generally directed towards websites that wish to cover a much larger geographical scope such as certain countries or regions around the world.
Why Does Your Website Need To Go International?
If your business website deals with international visitors, you must optimize your website to anticipate the needs of the different audiences that you are targeting. For example, a company selling its products in both the United States and Spain will probably have significant differences in the way it presents itself depending on the location of the visitor. An American visitor may view the website in English while someone from Spain may see a version of the same website written in Spanish.
What elements for international visitors must you focus on? Language is just one of the many components that can be adjusted to make international SEO work for you.
If your website caters to different countries or regions around the world and you have decided that international SEO is for you, here are a few general guidelines to look into:
- Your website must state the countries you want to target (also known as country targeting). This requires URLs that are internationally friendly which entails adding country codes in your URL, e.g., “us” for the United States, “jp” for Japan, “uk” for the United Kingdom, etc.
- Your website must state the languages you want to target (also known as language targeting).
- You must remember to generate content using the targeted language as it not only helps you in your ranking, but also helps with user engagement.
Some websites deal with a particular country or a language. If you plan on something similar, your targeting goals are less. E.g., if you have an online book publishing company specifically for the Spanish language, Spain is not the only country for its sales. Hence, your target must be the language and not the region.
After outlining for you the three basic requirements for launching a website that employs international SEO, let us now move on to a more thorough checklist of considerations for you to use.
International SEO Checklist:
You can refer to this checklist to see where you rank on the international SEO process. Don’t worry if you don’t understand every item on this list. We will discuss them further in the section that follows.
Research Section – Check Your International SEO Potential
To determine if your website can develop a presence, look into your:
- Current website traffic
- From other countries
- From other languages
- Recent organic search visibility
- Keyword results in the shortlisted countries and languages
If your SEO meets the criteria in the Research Section, proceed to the next checklist.
Targeting Section – Target Your International Web Visitors
- What to target
- Country / language targeting
- Behavioral patterns / characteristics of international visitors
- International competitors
Once the first two sections are complete (i.e., Research Section and Targeting Section), you’re ready to move on to the next steps.
Optimize Section – Develop an Internationally Targeted Site
- Choose a web structure
- Localize your website
- Navigation through your chosen web structure
- Hreflang/ Canonical tags
- Promotion within international community
- Geolocation
- Local IP address
After finishing the Optimize Section, proceed to measure your progress.
Measure Your International SEO Process
- Did you track each web version independently?
- Did you perform a follow-up with international search visibility?
This checklist answers your questions regarding your international SEO process. Now let us see the fundamentals (Research, Target, and Optimize) in detail.
The Fundamentals of the International SEO Process
You must know the fundamental elements of the international SEO process. They help you prepare your plan of action.
There are three primary phases to begin your international SEO process: research, targeting, and optimization. Let’s get started.
Research
The international SEO process requires extensive research in the beginning. This research helps you identify areas you need to work on for complete optimization.
Before we begin, ask yourself: What is the status of your current international organic search?
To answer the above question, you need the answers from our Research Section – Check Your International SEO Potential.
To learn more about your website traffic, search visibility, and keyword results in your chosen countries and/or languages, you can use the Google Analytics Tool. Refer to Geo reports which is below the Audience section.
You can also utilize Google Webmaster Tools to filter by location.
Finding the answers to these questions helps you formulate your strategy for international SEO optimization. If you know what countries and languages provide you traffic, you can customize your site to give international visitors from the same country or who speak the same language content based on their local behaviors, preferences, and culture.
When you perform this research, you might find out that your website already receives a reasonable amount of organic traffic. You can then focus on the existing traffic you have based on country or language for the optimization process.
If, however, your organic search traffic is low, you must find other international markets for your SEO process. This will entail more resources from you as you begin your international SEO efforts.
The next question you must ask yourself is: How much potential does your international organic search entail?
It is assessment time! Evaluate the potential of your targeted countries and languages of your website to answer the above question.
You require keyword research to fulfill this step.
- Find out what the relevant keywords and phrases are from your international visitors. These queries should be related to your business, products, or services you provide.
- What is the organic search volume for these keywords and phrases per country?
- How competitive are the keywords per country?
- What current rank do you hold for these keywords in the targeted markets?
The keywords that are already bringing organic traffic to your website can help you find other relevant keywords. How? By using tools like Ubersuggest, an SEO and keyword discovery tool. We recommend this tool because of how simple it is to use. You only have to enter your keyword in the search bar to receive a list of keyword ideas.
In addition to providing you with related keywords, Ubersuggest also gives you relevant information surrounding the existing competition for the keywords you are considering. It gives you information about keyword difficulty (how hard it is to rank in Google), cost per click (CPC), and paid difficulty (the level of difficulty you’ll have to face if you were to run a campaign with that keyword).
Once you have all this information, you must find out how your web pages rank by country.
For the optimization, you need native language support. It is necessary for keyword research.
When you use Google Translate, it is not always accurate. Words and sentences can have different contexts, and the literal translation may change their meaning. Similarly, if you want to use Google’s Market Finder for easy translation, it may mislead you. Occasional usage is not entirely wrong, but it should be relevant.
Once you complete the steps of finding the relevant keywords and finding out their organic search volume, it is time for you to establish the ranking difficulty for each keyword.
Moz Keyword Explorer is beneficial in terms of finding the competitive level of the keywords. There are other tools like Authority Labs or Unamo SEO that work as rank checkers.
By now, your research is complete. Let’s proceed to the next step: targeting.
Targeting
Your priority should be targeting countries based on their ability to generate organic search traffic for your website using relevant keywords.
If targeting a country is not yielding results, you can always target a specific language.
You must ask yourself: What would yield better results, targeting countries or certain languages? Only you can determine the answer as it depends on your company’s core nature. For example, companies like Walmart need to target the United States because of where their physical stores are. On the other hand, software companies like Atlassian, the developer behind an English project management software, needs to target all English language users.
This process maximizes your chances of receiving organic traffic and desired conversion rate. Once you achieve that, you can gain relevant visitors to your website based on your targeted audience.
There are different types of structures depending on the characteristics and restraints of your website.
Below is an overview of the different ways you might decide to target specific countries or languages.
Country Targeting
Chances are, you’ve probably already experienced (and can probably already guess) how specific countries are targeted by different websites. You may have noticed that websites in your country have a common two-letter code. This is how webmasters use URLs to target different countries. There are, however, a few different ways to integrate them into URLs. They each affect how your website is structured and comes its own drawbacks and benefits:
- Country Code Top-Level Domain (ccTLDs)
This structure for country targeting is beneficial as it provides a specific country extension, but it requires more effort to increase the domain’s popularity as it starts out as new and independent. This is ideal for large multinational companies who have the resources to acquire a domain and build it up from scratch.
Example: https://comprehensiveseoguide.us
Google treats some ccTLDs as generic top-level domains (gTLDs) which are not associated with any country code. A generic top-level domain refers to the kind of website. For example, websites with “.org” in their URLs generally refer to nonprofit organizations, website URLs with “.info” are generally used for information-driven websites, etc.
ccTLD is a desirable web structure, and companies like Tripadvisor and Amazon use it.
Subdomains are a great option if you have gTLD, but do not want a complicated structure. When you need to index a large amount of content, you must separate different web versions into sub-directories.
Example: https://us.comprehensiveseoguide.com
On the down side, Google recognizes each URL as a different domain and you will need to build up SEO for each. Though it is much less complicated in structure, this option entails a lot of effort in increasing every individual subdomains’ popularity.
Companies like Shop and Beats by Dre use this structure for country targeting.
You can get profitable results if you use this structure along with gTLD. In terms of implementation, this is the easiest as it is just another folder on your site. You also have the advantage of inheriting all the ranking from your root domain
Example: https://comprehensiveseoguide.com/us
Companies like Spotify and Electronic Arts use this structure for country targeting.
Language Targeting
Language targeting relies on Google’s machine learning algorithm to detect the language/s a user knows. Similar to country targeting, it makes use of the URL structure to integrate language codes that determine the language in which a web page should be displayed.
The structure you choose to implement for language targeting is, in principle, the same as the one we just covered for country targeting. Different language websites separated by subdomains are interpreted by Google as individual domains for which you will need to build up optimization from scratch. Subdirectories, in contrast, will share the same SEO equity as your root site.
- Language targeting by subdirectories are used by companies like Skype and Atlassian. URLs that employ this structure typically look like this: https://www.comprehensiveseoguide.com/en
- Language targeting by subdomains are used by companies like Wix and WordPress. Sites that employ this method have URLs like this: https://www.en.comprehensiveseoguide.com
When you select one of the alternatives as your website structure, make sure you are consistent in the structure you choose. Overlapping these alternatives will result in complications.
Once you finish research and choose your targeting structure, it is time to optimize.
Optimization
Optimization is fundamental as it makes your website crawlable, indexable, and relevant. It also helps in sending out properly targeted signals to avoid any issues with search results.
Let us look at some general international web optimization elements:
Different web versions need to be crawlable and indexable. It requires independent URLs following the relevant web structure you choose. It is not wise to use scripts or cookies as they make indexing difficult for search engines. If you are using different web versions, make sure that they are linked together.
If you have many web versions, you can only link the main page to the most popular one and you should feature all the web versions on one internal page.
Translation or localization (by language or country respectively) of different components is crucial for every international web version. You can do it using the keywords and phrases you acquired in the research. The elements you can work on are:
URLs, Title and Meta Descriptions, Menu and Navigations, Headings, Images and Alt Descriptions, Core Content, Reviews, among others.
Some websites have titles and URLs in English, but other elements of the page are in another language. This inconsistency confuses users and makes your page irrelevant to search engines.
Your international visitors might have questions about your content. It is a good practice to answer them when translating other components. This practice increases the credibility of your website.
- Automatic Detection of Language or Country:
If you want to know the country from where your international user is visiting your website, you can check their IP address. If you want to know their language, there are options available on the browser. You can conduct this research to redirect the users to the correct web version.
When looking to introduce language or geographic customizations:
- Make sure not to use pop-ups to learn more about your audience as they can be too obtrusive.
- Be careful when asking for information from visitors or making suggestions in your site. Visitors may not always understand the context of your questions or may feel intruded upon by sudden and unwarranted suggestions.
- Ensure that all your web versions are crawlable.
You need to display the character encoding of your page, specifically when you handle non-ASCII characters. ASCII characters stand for the American Standard Code for Information Interchange. It refers to the characters you can find on a traditional English keyboard (Alphabets A-Z, Numbers 0-9, and punctuations). Non-ASCII characters are characters that are not in the English language.
You can specify the language in which your web page should be displayed in several ways:
- HTML Lang, Content-Language Meta Tags, and HTTP Headers
HTML language attributes and meta-tags are ways to identify language by search engines like Bing. You must set the right annotation within the html tag and add the correct language code.
Google does not utilize these attributes as it depends on its own algorithm in matching different target audiences with different versions of a website.
- Language Specification by Hreflang
Hreflang annotations are essential for search engines like Google. They identify the language used in your webpages and enable Google to serve that language version to users who are performing a search in that same language. Here are some things to remember about the hreflang attribute:
- The simplest way to use hreflang is by including it as an HTML link in each page header.
- Specify it as an HTTP header for non-HTML files.
- If there are many web versions, you can add them in the XML sitemaps. (An XML Sitemap refers to a file that contains the list of URLs for a website)
You can use Hreflang with canonical tags. Canonical tags tell search engines which URL is the official version of a page.
There are tools like flang that work as a validator for the implemented annotations. You can also use SEO crawler tools like Rob Hammond to check many pages at once.
If your plan includes targeting countries, you need to geo target your international web versions apart from specifying the language. To do this, you can use:
- Country Specification by Hreflang
Hreflang is not only useful for specifying the language version that search engines should serve to specific users, but is also useful in targeting specific countries. Hreflang gives you the ability to target people speaking a certain language in certain countries.
For example, the English language is used the world over, but by using the hreflang tag, you can target English speakers in the United States and the UK. There are also instances when you may be targeting English speakers, but would like to serve English speakers in the United States a different version of your web page than English speakers in the UK. Tweaking your hreflang attribute allows you to do either of these things.
In writing out your hreflang instructions, remember to include language codes as adding only country codes will not work.
- Geolocation through Webmaster Tools
Webmaster tools are particularly useful for websites that utilize sub-directories or subdomains in their website structure.
However, this is not the case for websites utilizing a country code top-level domain (ccTLD) structure. For ccTLDs, use instead the Google Webmaster Tools, Bing Webmaster Tools, or Yandex Webmaster Tools.
Maintaining a static IP location for your website used to be important for reasons of stability and simplicity. Websites with a static location were easier to find and more compatible with different operating systems. Times have changed, however, as search engines can now get more accurate geolocation signals by using ccTLDs or webmaster tools.
Now that you have a clear idea of the fundamentals of international SEO, let’s take a deeper look at how international SEO is different from regular SEO.
How Is International SEO Different from Regular SEO?
If your home country’s website is similar to the international web version of your website, it will not attract traffic. You need to localize the international web version to match the targeted country’s local audience to help improve user experience and make your international version more crawlable.
The fundamental difference between regular SEO and international SEO is regular SEO does not involve unique approaches or web versions for different countries. That is what changes in the international SEO process. Regular SEO focuses on a broader means of ranking, but an in-depth international SEO process focuses more on details like country and language targeting. International SEO is also more focused on helping a website rank in the targeted country using the appropriate web version of the website.
Let’s delve into the advantages of a multilingual website.
How Does a Multilingual Website Help?
If you want your international web versions to rank, you need to work on growing its multilingual features. Google tries to personalize user experience as much as it can, and in doing so, it not only answers queries based on your location but also your language.
There are websites like Kinsta who saw an 18 percent boost in organic traffic by translating their content into ten different languages.
Another reason why a multilingual website helps is it offers a better user experience. Your efforts in the multilingual website help your conversion rates.
But what do you prioritize in building a multilingual website? The answer is international keyword research. Let’s look at the steps involved.
International Keyword Research
By now, you know why a multilingual website helps your international SEO process.
It is important to note, however, that you need professional translators because they understand the culture and the background of the targeted language. Once you are clear about this, there are several steps to perform international keyword research:
Keywords List
You know how to do this step from the research part of the fundamentals of international SEO. Hence, keep this list of keywords ready.
Translation
It is time for you to translate these keywords into your targeted language. As a bonus, try translating all the relevant keywords and phrases which you believe are related to the original keywords.
Analyze
To maximize your efforts, try analyzing your keywords. As mentioned above, you can use Ubersuggest for analyzing which keywords will be beneficial for you.
There might be several keywords that may generate organic traffic, but do not help with conversion. Analyze them to avoid wasting your efforts on useless keywords.
Competitor’s Focus
Once you have your keyword list, you need to know what keywords your competitors are using to generate organic traffic for their sites.
Tools like SEMrush’s Domain VS Domain help you identify these keywords. Before you use these keywords, remember to analyze them.
Organizing Your Content
It is time to optimize your content. You have your keywords list, and now you need to use them in a proper context. This is where you employ professional translators to help you deal with other languages.
Track Your Keyword Success
Once you make your web version public with your keywords, you must track how each keyword performs. This step helps you to further the optimization process.
Now let us move on to the targeting signals you can use for international SEO.
What Are the Technical Signals for International SEO?
Technical signals help your website become more crawlable and indexable. The more technical signals you send, the easier it becomes for search engines to identify your targeted countries and languages.
Hreflang Tags
We mentioned hreflang tags before in the optimized part of the fundamentals of international SEO. To refresh your memory, an Hreflang tag works by optimizing your URL to help specify the language you want to target. By now, you also know that tools like flang Hreflang can help you generate these tags.
X Default Tag
xDefault tag is beneficial when you do not have the required language version of your user’s website, but you want to direct them to your preferred version.
Meta-Content Language Tags
Meta-content language tags help search engines identify your HTML content’s language, however, they are not as specific nor as customizable as hreflang tags.
Using Schema Markup
As mentioned in chapter 4, How to Rank: A Blueprint, schema helps search engines identify useful information for users. You can use schema as a technical signal for international SEO also.
You may use the Google Tag Manager to use schema as a technical signal. Since it is also a ranking factor for Google, it also works in optimizing your website.
Let us move on to geotargeting.
Geotargeting
Geotargeting is the process of delivering differentiated content to visitors based on their geolocation. This becomes your priority once you have put into place all the relevant technical signals for your site. You can assess your website’s performance using Google Analytics. Use Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to identify possible issues with your website as well as to learn its geotargeting potential.
Search Console:
You need to decide on your web structure before you begin the geotargeting process. For instance, if you decide to use ccTLD as your web structure, you can add them to the search console and use the relevant functions based on your ccTLD structure.
You also need to check that your hreflang tags are appropriate and working. Do this by:
- Ensuring that your country-targeting is correct (If you select ccTLDs as your web structure, it will automatically detect your targeted country).
- Performing the same steps on Bing Webmaster Tools.
Now that we have geotargeting in place, let’s learn more about how link-building works for international SEO.
Link-Building for International SEO
Building links is a crucial part of your international SEO process. If you are using ccTLDs or sub-domains as your web structure, you will need it all the more.
Why do you need link-building? Link building is essential as it builds the website’s domain authority and attracts relevant organic traffic. It also helps to improve the website’s searchability. For link building, you need to remember:
- You require a local citation builder.
- You need to do thorough research about your competitors. Once you have information about your competitors, look for websites and influencers you can build a relationship with to help promote your website.
- Utilize tools like BuzzSumo to find trending topics that are relevant to your website.
- You cannot have repetitive content as it does not help with your link-building process. If your content is optimized, you will earn quality links for your website.
- Employ unique strategies in planning for multiple countries. Do not oversimplify the process by using the same method for all regions.
Before we close this chapter, let us look at some tools you can use for the international SEO process.
Tools for International SEO
There are several tools that can help with international SEO. These tools have different functions and can be segregated into categories:
For Researching
- Google Webmaster Tools. Search Queries helps determine your visibility in international searches.
- Google Analytics. Its demographics section can help you understand your current traffic and conversion rate.
- SearchMetrics. It helps you identify your current position relative to your competitors.
- UberSuggest. It helps you identify keywords.
For Targeting
- Google Consumer Barometer. It helps you identify the characteristics of your targeted country or language.
- SimilarWeb. It helps you to understand your competitor’s characteristics and behaviors.
For Optimizing
- DejanSEO Hreflang Validator. It helps you implement the correct hreflang annotations.
- Google Webmaster Tools Geolocation Feature. It helps you geolocate your website if you are targeting a specific country.
- TwitterFall. It helps you follow up on your topics and also helps in geolocation.
For Promoting
- Open Site Explorer. It helps you understand your competitor’s strategies, sources, and popularity.
- Link Prospector. It helps you promote your website through various factors.
For Measuring
- I Search From. It allows you to simulate a Google search from a different location or device. You can also customize search settings.
- Moz Rank Tracker. It helps you monitor the ranking for each of your web versions.
If you are in charge of an enterprise that is seeking to gain ground in a region, country, set of countries, or perhaps people who speak a certain language, then you will need to make international SEO and its general principles work for you. We hope that this chapter provides you with the foundation you need to do just that.
by MYB Agency | Jun 17, 2021 | Digital Marketing
10 Ecommerce SEO Tips for Small Businesses
The rise of ecommerce has made it easier than ever for small businesses to make a name for themselves in the industry. In fact, it has also made it easier for stores of all sizes to compete with larger brands. However, ecommerce isn’t a game of luck – it’s about being smart. In this post, we’re going to look at 10 ecommerce SEO tips for small businesses.
Ecommerce SEO Tips
SEO for Ecommerce
The most important thing to remember when it comes to ecommerce is that it’s a tactic, not a strategy. What you’re doing to promote your ecommerce stores will always be different from what you’re doing to promote your brand. That’s because the type of content you promote in ecommerce will be different from the type of content you promote in your brand-specific ecommerce store.
So, here are some quick tips to help you SEO your ecommerce store and get more visitors: Use Keywords I know this sounds obvious, but do you know the big, dirty secret of SEO? Your first page (or main page) is all about keywords. While it may not be on there in the same way it is in your brand-specific site, it should be important enough that people spend time on it.
Keyword Research
Researching keywords is a crucial component of your ecommerce SEO strategy. It’s not only important to keep up to date with the most relevant and active keywords to optimize your site for, but also to keep an eye on the overall search terms. If you notice the search terms suddenly increasing, that’s something you need to keep an eye on. SEO Tools Because there’s so much data out there, having SEO tools to access is a must.
These tools let you check out what your competitors are ranking for in order to see where you can beat them. We use WordStream and SpyFu to monitor the quality of the content on our site and to make sure we’re providing the best possible experience to our visitors.
Optimized Product Titles
It can be difficult for a small business to dedicate time and resources to SEO. But doing so will help your ecommerce website become an essential part of your customer’s purchase experience. With that in mind, it’s vital that you use your product title to its full potential. Why? Well, it will help you rank your website in the SERPs. And that is absolutely vital. If you don’t have the tools, it’s not a simple task to do SEO on your website.
And that can be detrimental to the success of your business. But we’ll show you 10 easy SEO tricks that will transform your product title. Tell Efficient Stories Every shopping cart contains different types of information. For example, a shopping cart has the title, category, currency, and purchase amount information.
Optimized Product Content
No matter what kind of product you’re selling, you’ll want to do your best to appeal to your customers’ needs. The simple answer? You need to make sure your content is optimized. One of the most important parts of your ecommerce strategy is optimizing your product page, or product description.
You can achieve a lot by optimizing your product descriptions. For one, by optimizing your product descriptions, you make it much easier for buyers to understand what they’re getting. This is vital to increasing conversion rates and sales, as customers are more likely to make purchases if they have clear information on what you’re offering.
Optimized Product Images
One of the most important things a store has to offer is its products. This is why it’s vital that their images are clear and concise. They need to be visually appealing and striking. However, not all images are created equal. Here are some common mistakes that store owners make: Using an image that is too large or too small. Using an image that isn’t an actual product. Using an image that doesn’t fit on the page.
Don’t let these common mistakes scare you. With a little research, you can easily avoid them. Here are some tips for optimized images: Look for images with a high resolution. This is an important metric because it is used to determine how large the image will be when resized for use on a smaller, device-specific site.
Optimized Product Variations
Just because a lot of shoppers like your product, doesn’t mean they’ll buy it from you. To attract customers to your store, you need to find other ways to stand out from the competition. One way to do that is to offer highly specialized products that are tailored to different areas of the industry.
And although many of your customers may not know which parts of the industry need these products, it’s up to you to bring them to the forefront. For instance, if you sell gift items, consider offering a different gift choice for each occasion, whether that’s one day or year round. Try to offer several options to your customers and you’ll find that you’ll be able to help them out, even if they don’t know what they need.
Optimized Product Descriptions
There are so many ways to optimize a product description for customers. However, you want to make sure that your customers have a good experience, and that they’re directed to a purchase decision before they click through to your site. Because that’s what it’s all about. Offer Customer Reviews Customer reviews are one of the most important things to optimize when it comes to ecommerce.
As a small business, you can’t afford to take chances by ignoring what’s in front of your customers’ eyes. Make sure that you offer customers a convenient way to share their experiences and reviews. You can even allow customers to pay for reviews on your own website. How to Get Customer Reviews Small businesses that take the time to offer customer reviews are going to win out in the long-term.
Optimized Product Listings
The single most important thing you can do to increase conversion rates is make sure you’re adding the right keywords to your product descriptions. By doing this, you’re effectively boosting the potential of a sale. Google uses product descriptions to serve up search results, so make sure they’re adding the right search terms to them.
First of all, make sure you’re actually including the correct keywords. You can’t create a sentence, then make your keywords come out of that sentence. You have to actually type your keywords into the product description. Here are some tips to make sure you’re adding the correct keywords to your product descriptions.
Optimized Product Reviews
Reviews and testimonials are extremely important to an ecommerce site’s success. In fact, they can make or break a customer’s first impressions. To ensure a positive experience from the beginning, you need to make sure that your customers know that your products are of high quality.
This is easier said than done, of course, as brands often struggle to make their products stand out. To attract consumers, you need to provide positive, helpful reviews and content for them to find. Optimized product reviews are one of the best ways to create that content. To create them, try following a few tips. Create special product reviews pages for higher-end products. Create a clear content path for users to follow that highlights the main features of the product.
Conclusion
As online shopping continues to explode in popularity, it’s important for small business owners to know how to maximize their return on investment. With that in mind, the advice above should help you do just that.
