Author: Nancy Boisvert

Local Business Alert! Local Search Results Will Give More Results

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get found on local search

Can you be found in local search?

On-the-go mobile users who are near you and who are searching for a product or service on Google at this very moment should find your business. But are they?

Are you visible in Google’s ‘Local Pack’ and expanded results?

Increased foot traffic, phone calls, or visits to your website should mean more customers for local business owners like you. That is why optimizing for local search results should be important.

Businesses listed in the Local Pack vary from the searcher’s location. If you are nearest to the searcher at the time of the search, then your business listing should appear there.

However, being closest to a potential customer searching isn’t a guarantee that you will come up in the search results. Your listing and your website must be optimized for local search.

Here are some of the important ranking factors based on a study by Moz:

Google My Business Listing Signals
Link Signals
On-page Signals
Citation Signals
Review Signals
Behavioral Signals
Personalization
Social Signals

https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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Grow your Potential Customers With As Little As $200

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boosted posts

Spend a little, gain a lot!

Did you know you can extend your marketing messages beyond your existing followers and connections on Facebook, LinkedIn, and other channels through boosted and sponsored updates?

We recommend performing a test either on Facebook or LinkedIn.

The first step is to get a Facebook Business Page or a LinkedIn Company Page created for you, compose and publish a post, then ‘boost’ that post.

We advise that the post be linked to a landing page on your website where they can sign up for more information so you can capture their email addresses.

For Facebook, we can select your boosted post audience to target by country, age, gender, and interests. For LinkedIn, we can choose the characteristics of your audience you want to target by country and title or job function.

With a test budget of $200, you can reach at least 30 to 50 thousand people seeing your message and brand (impressions) on Facebook, while on LinkedIn, you can reach approximately 7 to 9 thousand decision makers.

Now that’s powerful!

Imagine reaching out to a huge number of people who might be interested in your products or services with specific demographics without having to know who they are, their email addresses, and phone numbers!

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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Is Your Website Fully Optimized for the User Experience?

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user behavior

User experience is more important than ever.

If your company or business website hasn’t been updated, or there are no plans to update it, you should change that strategy.

User behavior is continuously evolving, and one of the most significant changes is that more people are using their smartphone devices every day.

If you have ever used your phone to browse websites online, you may have noticed that some websites are nearly impossible to read or navigate. The reason for this is because most websites are built from a perspective that someone on a computer will visit the site. The way users access a website has already changed drastically.

But design evolution isn’t only about having your website viewable on a mobile device. User optimization encompasses a lot of different factors. Some changes that have happened over the past couple of years include websites having fewer menu options, getting rid of the menu grid or ‘hamburger’ as it’s come to be known, getting rid of bad stock images, and moving the website to a more minimalistic design.

The majority of these changes came from designers and developers constantly redesigning and changing UX (user experience) elements to see how those new designs and changes worked. Big companies such as IKEA have moved to a more minimal design with fewer menu options making it easier for their visitors to quickly find what they need. But this optimization shouldn’t end there.

The future will likely bring more design trends making it easier for visitors to get what they are looking for quickly. After all, a good user experience drives conversions.

Want us to take a look at your website to see if it’s optimized for a great user experience no matter what device your visitors are using?

Contact us now for an evaluation.

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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Promote Your Business in 140 Characters or Less Using These 12 Tips

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280 characters or less

Or should we say, 280 characters or less?

Over 2 billion people in the world are connected through social media, with 20% of the world’s internet users having an active Twitter account.

Twitter is a great platform to boost your business.

Here are 12 ways to get started in promoting your business on Twitter today!

1. Implement Twitter Cards
You want every tweet to be unique and attractive, Twitter cards are a great way to do this!

2. Build Your Twitter Followers
If your Twitter followers are engaged and well targeted, increasing their number can benefit your business.

3. Identify Influencers and Engage with Them
When you engage with influencers — you’re creating the opportunity to gain more followers, more engagement, and more traffic to your website.

4. Use Twitter Lists to Manage Your Contacts
As you follow and connect with higher numbers of people, you need to organize them by categories.

5. Use Twitter Ads to Grow Your Email List
Use Twitter ads for lead generation by directing them to sign-up to your email list.

6. Use the Right Hashtags
Be careful with the hashtags you choose. It may seem that cramming as many as possible is the way to go, but studies show that posts with 1 – 2 hashtags have higher engagement than those with 3 or more.

7. Research Your Competitors’ Audiences
Find out who your competitors are interacting with.

8. Monitor Twitter for Keyword Mentions
Use tools that let users set up search columns so any mention of a particular word or phrase is immediately highlighted.

9. Setup UTM Tracking
UTM tracking adds additional info to links you share in order to track where people clicked on them and what happened after they clicked.

10. Use Your Pinned Tweet
Twitter allows you to pin one tweet at the top of your timeline. When anybody looks at their profile, they see that tweet first.

11. Use Great Headlines
Create clever headlines that stand out.

12. Use Twitter Analytics to Analyze and Optimize
Twitter Analytics let you see how many views and how much engagement your tweets get.

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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Boom Your Business And Beat Bigger Brands

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compete with bigger businesses

Are you a Small Local Business?

Size doesn’t matter when you are offering bigger value and personalized services. What you need is to create more visibility online for the people who are looking for what you provide.

What are the advantages of being a small, local business that will enable you to compete with bigger businesses?

Here’s a short list:

Technology Tools

In no other time has technology made it easier for us to do business, communicate, promote, and expand our businesses on such a far-reaching scale. The Web, SEO, and Social Media Marketing allow us to market our businesses in the same way that bigger brands do.

Flexibility with Changing Conditions

Small business owners have way more flexibility to make immediate and necessary changes that are essential to dealing with changing local market conditions. For big businesses, recommendations go through many levels bureaucracy before decisions are made at the top. Execution suffers the same delays down to the personnel on the ground.

Personalized Customer Service

You have the opportunity to deliver personalized, unexpected and exceptional customer service.

How does it feel when you are served by the owner of a restaurant that you often dine at, and get asked if the food is good and what can they do to improve their menu?

There is something very warm and fuzzy feeling about local interactions for both owners and customers.

Access to Digital Marketing Expertise

There are no longer barriers to accessing digital marketing expertise when you can hire an expert by the hour to oversee your marketing strategy and activities.

Contact us if you want to seize the opportunities that digital marketing can offer and reclaim your domination in your own territory.

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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Stop Wasting Money! What is Your Customer Acquisition Cost?

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customer acquisition cost CAC

Are you spending your money wisely?

Your Customer Acquisition Cost or CAC is the total cost spent on acquiring new customers (marketing/sales expense) divided by the number of new customers acquired during that particular period.

If you invested $1000 in marketing/sales in a one month period and acquired 10 new customers as a direct result of that marketing and promotion, then your acquisition cost is $100 per new client.

All successful businesses measure their customer acquisition costs. Luckily, promotional activity on the web can be measured very accurately.

Make sure that the pricing of your products and services cover you CAC.

Want to know more? Contact us today.

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

If you like the information you are receiving, please share this post.

An SEO Audit is a Must

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seo audit

When did you last do an SEO audit?

So, you’re excited to get your business back into the SEO arena… that’s great! However, don’t let that excitement make you miss a crucial step before launching an SEO campaign — complete an SEO Audit first.

Forty-seven percent said in a survey that a full  audit should be conducted every six months. How often do you have an  audit done?

It is of extreme importance for you to gain an understanding of your SEO performance through an independent, objective, and unbiased audit.

Is your SEO performing well or not? Were benchmarks and goals set before the SEO campaign started?

Without an SEO sudit, you will not have a sound SEO strategy. Without a sound strategy, your SEO campaign will likely fall through, resulting in a complete waste of money.

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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Benefit from Business Blogging

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business blogging

Does your website have a blog?

Are you blogging?

If not, here are some compelling reasons why you should!

1. Companies that use blogs receive 67% more leads than companies who don’t!
2. Twenty-three percent of Internet time is spent on blogs and social networks, so you need to be blogging!
3. Businesses that blog get more visitors to their website (average of 55% more website visitors)
4. Almost half of the companies in the US use blogs to marketing their product/services because it works!
5. If you blog 16 to 20 times in a 30-day period, you will generate nearly 3 times as many leads as those businesses who do not blog.

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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Monitoring Your Online Reputation Using Google Alerts

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have you set up google alerts

Have you set up Google Alerts yet?

Promote your brand along with its good reputation on social media and other platforms. However, things get a bit complicated when you have to deal with bad reviews.

First, keep a good reputation by being honest, transparent, setting clear expectations for your customer, and by being in business because you genuinely want to help people around you. It goes without saying that shady practices are a no-no.

Second, you have to prevent any dissatisfaction by a customer from escalating by addressing every complaint you get. It has to be fixed at this level immediately while the customer is still trying to reach out to you. Because once they have felt frustrated and think they have to warn others about your practice, things can get messy.

Nonetheless, you have to set your radar for negative reviews. One good way to do this is to set up Google alerts for your brand terms and name.

What else can you do to safeguard your brand?

Claim your brand name
Build a consistent identity

Whether your brand is your name itself, your business name or your product name, you need to make sure that no one else can misrepresent you online by owning a piece of your brand. Make sure that you own domain names and usernames associated with your brand.

Build a consistent identity on major channels:

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
YouTube
Pinterest
Tumblr
Quora

Publish content regularly:

The content you publish will define and reinforce who you are, what you stand for, and what your business is all about. This will make up the values associated with your brand. Anything inconsistent with these values will not be immediately convincing to your customers who know you.

Let me know if you need more information. We’d be glad to help.

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

If you like the information you are receiving, please share this post.

Important Design Elements That Every Website Should Have

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Important Design Elements That Every Website Should Have

Every website can benefit from these important design elements.

There has been a lot of testing and research done over the past couple of years, and it’s no surprise that more people are using mobile devices to find products or services. The one thing that may or may not come as a surprise is that many businesses haven’t adapted to these changes, or even tested their website. Prioritizing user experience should be the first thing you or your website designer should do.

Any website needs to have design elements that make the website easily seen, and also make it easy to navigate should be on the top of this list. Many websites are starting to get rid of images because they take too long for mobile devices to load, if too many are used. However, if you do use images, they should be scaled down, and the images should use text, such as a card menu seen on Microsoft homepage. This one easy design element shows people what they are looking for quickly, and describes it easily.

And if you’re doing to use video or animation, then fast-loading cinemagraphs are the way to go for mobile devices. These small half-photo, half-animated clips, are quite popular, and load quickly. Make sure that your copy is relevant to the visitor quickly depending on their query, and what got them to your website in the first place. Give a quick big picture of what your site is all about, and what you offer the minute the customer gets there. Realize they may be on a mobile device, and test it, or have your website designer continually test and improve the experience.

Make your site easy to navigate, create different designs for the different sections, but use a consistent theme. Use eye-catching transitions from section to section to keep the user interested. And make sure the font for your copy can be easily seen. Visitors still do the quick scan, so if they quickly scan, make sure you grab their attention quickly. Use custom visual and iconography, or images and symbols, that tells your brand story and shows some personality of who and what your business is about.

All of these design trends are based on statistics. And with the statistics comes the realization that effective website design that makes life easier for users when they visit your site, should be the main goal of you and your website designer. Your competitors are optimizing their websites, if you don’t optimize your site, then you will be left behind.

If you would like to learn more about optimizing and using the latest design trends to improve customer experience, contact us today. We will be happy to help you deliver a great user experience.

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

If you like the information you are receiving, please share this post.

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