THE POWER OF VIDEO MARKETING

With so many marketing techniques and tools available for businesses, it can sometimes be difficult to decide whether you need to devote some or all of your marketing budget towards generating traffic from certain sources. In this era of online marketing, Video marketing is an important option to consider when trying to promote your business. It is important to understand the power of this service, especially when trying to get the most out of your marketing dollars.

Ability to Spread like Wildfire

Online videos have the potential to spread like a wildfire. Since they are extremely easy to share between users, often when a viewer sees a video they enjoy or find useful, they like and share it with other people that they think will benefit from what the video is about. This is especially true with Social Media networks that allow you to upload the videos through them and onto your public profile.

Search Engine Results

When customers are looking to solve a problem or are looking for information, they tend to go to the Internet to find what they are looking for. Videos are now frequently found in search engine results, and can often lead to high click-through rates. This also means that videos appear in search engine results with website based text, which can be customized to relay your company message. Many consumers find that viewing a short video is the easiest way to get the information you’re looking for over readable content pages.

Commitment

Videos tend to be more dynamic than text, which helps engage your visitors. If you have a video on the homepage of your website, a video can increase the “stickiness” of your website, which is the average amount of time visitors spend on your site. In essence, videos tend to capture and hold the attention of visitors for longer periods of time than text.

Branding Techniques

Videos can help brand you, your business and your product. Especially for service based businesses, videos allow companies to build a good relationship with their visitors without ever seeing them. As service providers tend to rely on the relationships they build with their clients, videos can help build and strengthen the connection and sales.

Video marketing works best when combined with other online advertising campaigns like organic seo and/or online media buying. Internet users tend to overlook online ads because they see many on a daily basis, at nearly every website they visit. This makes online ads less attractive, no matter how attractive they may seem. That’s why online videos are more effective because they add a more personal touch in attracting advertisers and potential customers.

A Cost-effective Marketing Strategy

When making an announcement, people usually seek high return on investment for each action they take. Video marketing is a great option because there is little cost involved in the marketing. There are a few criteria that the video must meet, and should be shared in a particular way, however as far as achieving rank for a video, if the quality is there and it is content that could be shared, the hard part has already been completed. Unlike PPC marketing services that take hefty budgets and can sometimes give a low return on investment, the cost to market a video is substantially lower, and can be more profitbabl.e

Better Targeting of a Particular Market

This is perhaps the most important of all the benefits of video marketing for any business. You can do this work, even in the comfort of your own home with no advanced technical skills. You do not have to learn any language or computer code to do video marketing. The hard work is in creating the video, then you just upload your video and publish it on the website you’d like to. You may need some help optimizing the video for search, building some quality links pointing to it and of course creating the video, but anyone is capable of uploading a video on YouTube or similar video sharing sites.

Videos have proven to be an effective marketing tool and are setting the standard for the rapidly growing online marketing industry. This trend is slowly replacing conventional marketing strategies that currently define the way we market in the digital age. If used properly, it results in gaining more customers, increased sales, and online visibility that contributes to success in business. If you would like to learn more about SEO or video marketing, then fill out our contact form and one of our experts will call you to discuss strategy.

HOW TO CREATE SEO-FOCUSED PAGES FOR IT COMPANIES

The demand for IT companies is growing, and industry growth is chasing after that demand. That means there are a lot of companies competing for the same pool of business. To be effective in securing that business, an IT company must stand out. This is best achieved by having a strong online presence, which means strong SEO tactics must be used so your website will rank well under relevant search terms on Google.

However, strong SEO starts with a good website. There are certain elements of a well-built website, such as:

• A relevant domain that isn’t too long
• Hosting that enables fast site speed
• A content management system that allows for easy and fast editing (i.e., WordPress)
• Testimonials and links to positive company reviews
• Social media buttons that allow visitors to share content
• A visually pleasing design that is easy to follow
• An open path to being able to sign up for services or make contact
• Fresh content that keeps visitors up-to-date on the business and industry
• Evidence that there are actual people behind the website because IT websites can seem very “mechanical”

If you have these key components in place, you have laid a good foundation for a site that can be properly optimized for search engines.

Getting Your IT Company Website to Rank Well

To make sure your great IT company website ranks well, you want to start with placing internal links throughout your content that link to other pages on the site. Navigation doesn’t begin and end with the menus on the website. You can map out how you want the pages to link and then go to the site pages and create the hyperlinks.

Basically, you want to think of your website as a filing cabinet. When you are creating pages, make sure your keyword is in your URL. For example: example.com/mykeyword/. The content management system you are using may automatically do this for you when you create the page title. That’s why it’s important to make sure keywords are in the page title. If you are using subdomains, don’t split content into subdomains when it can be split into sub-folders.

Also, add keywords to your meta title and meta description. Keywords have a lot of SEO juice when they are used properly throughout the website. Just make sure you don’t use them too much. One relevant keyword per page with semantic keywords naturally placed in the text will make Google happy.

Avoid Common SEO Issues

There are some things that can happen that can confuse search engines. If a search engine becomes confused, it can work against you. For instance, you don’t want orphaned content on your site that the search engine can’t find. You could have a magnificent piece of text, but no internal link leading to it could leave it hanging high and dry. You also want to avoid content that can only be found through a site search. This is because Google isn’t going to use the search function to find pieces of content that may not have any other doorway leading to it.

You also want to avoid overly flashy effects. Videos can be great, but not in excess. You don’t exactly want a video to be a focal point since not everyone wants to wait for a video to find out what they need to know. Video should be an optional supplement. The same applies to audio files.

If you’re a fan of frames, you want to avoid those as well. Frames can be problematic when a search engine crawls your website. It can be confusing because the frame contains information from another website. This could easily be interpreted as duplicate content.

Another thing to note: although Google has gotten better at reading AJAX pages, you want to use it sparingly. Content can become obscured if AJAX is everywhere.

Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly

Mobile-friendliness is key since more people are using their mobile devices to conduct searches. We are no longer in the computer-first age. When a site is optimized for search engines, the mobile layout needs to be equally considered. Search engine results for mobile can be different than the results shown to someone on a computer. This is because the search landscape is somewhat different for mobile users than it is for computer users. You want to rank well for both. Responsive web design is no longer enough, so you should pay extra attention to mobile design.

Grab Your Audience

Overall, you will rank well when everything is done well. Both humans and search engines should have a good idea of what your IT company’s website is about. If they’re confused, they will leave as soon as they arrive at the site. That is why you must think of the website as the foundation and the SEO as the beautiful house that attracts your target audience.

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HOW TO BUILD AN SEO STRATEGY THAT DOMINATES THE INSURANCE MARKET

Insurance companies have a unique set of goals to achieve through their websites. With so many companies out there, the competition is very stiff. The websites have quote tools, quote comparison options, and even package information. What you have to do is get the attention of your audience and convince them to ask you for a quote or use the tools on your site so you can convert them into customers. To get them there, you must have a strong SEO strategy, or they may not find your insurance website in the first place.

Preparing to Build a Strong Insurance Website SEO Strategy

SEO will give you a great edge when competing with other insurance companies. If your insurance SEO is done right, you can win the war for traffic and outperform your competitors. This means properly utilizing highly competitive insurance-related keywords on your website and even outside of it.

To prepare for building a strong SEO strategy, you must do the keyword research. This can be done using the Google Keyword Planner. You can also check out the related keywords in Google when you perform a relevant search to see what people are looking for.

Once you have your keywords, you need to map out your content so you know where it is going to go. Make sure there is no duplicate content and that the topics are as diverse as possible. Even a related topic can lead to accidental duplication. When determining what content is needed, think of the questions that customers frequently ask. Write blog posts and articles relating to those frequently asked questions. People come to insurance websites for answers, so give your visitors what they’re looking for.

Crafting an SEO Strategy for Your Insurance Website

Once you have mapped out the content, it’s time to write it and integrate it into your website. However, make sure that the content isn’t the only thing you lean on. An effective SEO strategy has many moving parts. Link to authoritative websites in some places throughout your content, but don’t do it too much. You must also make sure your pages are linked to each other. Internal linking is an important part of ensuring search engines index every nook and cranny of your website.

You can also use the following checklists to help you ensure your insurance website is competitive.

For on-page SEO:

• Have a keyword in your page title
• Make sure there are headings tags throughout (H1, H2, H3, etc.)
• Keep track of the website’s bounce rate to see what percentage of users are leaving quickly
• Create a sitemap and submit it to Google
• Necessary duplicate content should have canonical tags

In addition to your on-page SEO, get some high-ranking websites to link to you. Don’t create a bunch of links yourself because that can look spammy. People used to go to directories and create inbound links to their websites in order to add some “link juice.” Google catches on to tactics like this. If they see a tactic as spammy, it gets classified as a black hat SEO move that you just want to stay away from. Sure, there are times you are going to create links to your site, particularly when you list with sites like Yelp. However, you don’t want to go and create a hundred links in a week. It’s best if it happens naturally.

One way to encourage organic links is to create a blog. If you provide people with valuable content on a regular basis, they are more likely to share the website. The topics should be interesting because visitors won’t share boring content or content they’ve seen before.

The Power of Social Media

You also want to make sure you use social media. Put social media share buttons on your website so your pages and blog posts can be shared. You want your content shared on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and wherever else your visitors want to spread it around. It’s much easier for them when they have buttons, especially when accessing your website from their mobile devices.

In the meantime, make full use of your own social media accounts. When there’s an update, let your followers know about it. When a new blog post is posted, share it. Not only does posting updates, deals, valuable tidbits of information, and blog posts keep your audience informed, but you encourage your audience to share the information. This can grow your following over time. A larger following means more shares. More shares mean more business. Overall, everything you do on your website and off of it fits together like a puzzle. You just have to make sure you create a plan, document the plan, and follow it. Skipping a step or not doing everything in a specific order can have a negative impact on your SEO efforts.

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