by Francois Muscat | Oct 2, 2020 | SEO, Link-building
Building good links is not easy, but definitely still worthwhile. We all remember the days before Google started to clamp down on link building in 2012, when generating traffic off other websites could be done without too much effort. But being in an era where customers are sensitive to brand endorsement, link building is now more vital than ever before and certainly not dead.
Why link building still matters
Link building is still crucial to any SEO strategy. If you want to create valuable backlinks, white hat SEO is the way to go. You will rank higher on SERPs if you curate backlinks from sites that are considered to be credible, as domain authority is vital to ranking in Google’s algorithm.
Social media marketing has become a mecca for link building, as one influential person sharing your content could lead to thousands of impressions and traffic. But you’ll strike the jackpot if you’re getting that content published or mentioned in other articles – because just like that, you have the potential of creating a valuable backlink to your site. If you’re generating highly engaging content or speaking to your identified audience, thousands of people could be sharing your links, and in turn, be doing the link building for you.
When it comes to content marketing, always ask yourself what you can do to be different or better. Hundreds of people could already have created content on your topic, so look at theirs and improve on it. By being better and different in your approach, your content will be considered to be fresh and more likely to be picked up when pitching your ideas. You can create and achieve backlinks through simple (albeit somewhat time-consuming) tactics, such as manual outreach to others in your industry to see whether they would want to feature your content, or by being a guest on a podcast, or even by getting in touch with website owners with broken links.
If you want more advice from a digital marketing agency on effective link building strategies, contact WSI OMS today.
by Francois Muscat | Sep 23, 2020 | PPC
If you want to benefit from pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, you need to have clarity and intent when integrating it as a digital marketing tool. The most challenging aspect of PPC advertising is that it is by no means an exact science. There is a lot of experimenting involved in getting the correct formula for your business and budget. The rewards, however, can be substantial with Google reporting up to double revenue for the budget spent in some cases. Let’s take a closer look.
5 mistakes to avoid to fast-track success in PPC advertising
If you’re set on success in PPC advertising, here are the most common mistakes that business owners tend to make (and suggestions to help you fix them).
1. Neglecting the data
Before making any hard and fast decisions about how your campaign is doing, and which ads and keywords to target, carefully analyse all the available data. You may find that you are doing well overall, with plenty of clicks and conversions, and so you might decide to keep your current spread of ads as it is. However, parts of your campaign may be working well, while others are not working at all. One or two of your ads may be carrying your entire campaign. Analysing the data allows you to shift your strategy and spending to maximise your results.
2. Avoiding negative keywords
Many marketers either forget, neglect, or choose to ignore negative keywords. This can be a big mistake. While it may seem counterintuitive to target keywords that are meant to keep people away from your website, it is actually one of the best ways to establish your niche and make sure that you attract only visitors who are most likely to become paying clients. You would be doing both yourself and internet users a favour by establishing these limits at the very beginning. Yes, negative keywords will lead to less traffic, but they will eliminate only the non-converting visitors and ensure that you get the right traffic.
3. Forgetting about ad extensions
Ad extensions can increase your click-through-rate by 10-20% – and they don’t cost any extra – yet many people forget to include them in their campaigns. Ad extensions can increase your ad’s reach, they can provide better value for money, and they offer more ways to reach you while increasing your online visibility. They may include contact details, site links, invitations to download an app (if you have one) or testimonials from your customers, among other things. Be sure to include as many of them as you can.
4. Not bidding on your own brand’s keywords
You should always run at least one campaign that is dedicated to your own brand keywords. The main advantages of doing so are that brand keywords are generally much cheaper, yield higher search scores and convert much better than generic keywords. By neglecting to set up brand keyword PPC campaigns, you miss out on opportunities to capture your market.
5. Incorrect keyword targeting
Sub-optimum keyword selection is a mistake that many companies make in their search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts. It can be particularly costly when it comes to PPC, as choosing the wrong keywords can result in either no hits at all or hits that don’t convert to sales, but which you still have to pay for. One of the best ways to target your PPC ads is with long-tail keywords. The main characteristic that distinguishes long-tail keywords from short-tail ones is that they usually consist of two or more words that resemble detailed queries. In contrast, short-tail keywords generally consist of single words or phrases without context. Using long-tail keywords will narrow your traffic considerably and help ensure that your PPC costs are worthwhile.
As with SEO marketing and content marketing, your PPC advertising strategy can command a large part of your budget, and you need to be sure that you’re getting an optimal ROI. If you want to ensure the best results, connect with WSI OMS for professional assistance. We will help you to improve your PPC strategy and get the best return for your budget.
by Francois Muscat | Sep 16, 2020 | Digital Media Marketing, LinkedIn, Social Media Marketing
LinkedIn recently published an incredibly helpful guide for the marketing industry. It aims to help businesses create growth in this challenging time and prove their ROI from marketing spend. There are six key areas in the guide, and each area contains strategies, tips, and information that could help your business get on track post-COVID-19. This post will focus on the first three areas, so be sure to subscribe to our blog so you don’t miss part 2.
LinkedIn’s key steps to showing the impact of your marketing activities: Part 1
1. Understand the role of marketing in the organisation
Marketing covers a range of aspects within the organisation. As a business owner, you need to be well versed in the role that marketing plays and the impact it can make in building the brand, creating a strategic plan, and managing change in the organisation, as well as the media and message planning that needs to be undertaken in the business.
The LinkedIn guide has a run-down of each of these aspects that were just mentioned. If you want to learn more about activities you should be paying attention to (such as creating human connections through your brand) and potential pitfalls you need to be aware of (such as restructuring without losing key employees in your department), it would be a good exercise to work through the guide. It will help you to understand how to use data for brand building and strategic planning. There are actionable tips for the immediate changes you can implement to protect your business, and explain how to apply the latest media findings to tailor your media strategy for the current circumstances.
Understanding the current market situation (through the findings mentioned in the guide) can help you to pivot your digital strategy to be more effective, especially if you have been neglecting your strategy recently.
2. Assess your business position
If you’re creating a strategy for the way forward, you need to be fully informed about the current state of the business before heading off in a specific direction. Whether your budget has been eliminated, reduced, or maintained, there are steps you should be taking to move your marketing activities forward as best as possible.
The guide has recommendations based on each of these scenarios (eliminated, reduced, or maintained budgets) that will help you to aim your post-COVID-19 planning in the right direction for your organisation. The recommendations are aimed at understanding how to strengthen your organic strategy by posting organic content consistently; how to follow best practices for paid campaigns (especially in lead-building,) and how to effectively create new brand campaigns if your budget has not shrunk over the last few months.
Implementing drastic changes may not even be necessary, but it is important to understand the data from your operations and to use this information to make accurate decisions that are suited to your current business position. Being flexible and proactive is key in surviving the COVID-19 era in business and learning from previous recessions may help business owners to prepare for the possible financial hardships that could be down the road.
3. Assess your customer base
As business owners who want to connect with our target audiences and grow our brands online, we believe in studying your customers continuously. If you have neglected this, you need to find out what your customers want and how the market has changed. Shifting priorities might provide you with new opportunities to serve your market, but you need to understand any new tendencies and assess if there are viable opportunities to pursue.
Check out the eBook now to start refocusing your digital strategy, and remember to keep an eye out for part two of this post, where we will unpack more of LinkedIn’s marketing strategy for post-COVID-19 recovery.
If you need help with your marketing, digital marketing strategy, or LinkedIn content, contact WSI OMS for assistance during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
by Francois Muscat | Sep 11, 2020 | Digital Media Marketing, Content Marketing
The idea that influencer marketing only works on the younger generation is being disproved, with baby boomers increasingly becoming more of a target.
The perception that social media marketing should be aimed exclusively at young people is one that has been challenged, particularly given that Americans over 55 contribute 41.6% of consumer spending.
Influencer marketing during a pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced those in the digital marketing space to reassess their strategies, given the changes to our daily routines and ways of engaging with brands. People are using more data at home, and 80% of consumers in the U.S. and UK say they consume more content than they did before the pandemic.
Baby boomers had embraced social media before the pandemic; since 2012, there has been a 17% increase in the number of baby boomers who use Facebook and a 43% increase in the number who own smartphones. Those who have them are on their smartphones five hours a day, which is almost as much as millennials.
Given that the older generation is more vulnerable to COVID-19, their resulting isolation has also caused certain changes in their behaviour online. More baby boomers are using online shopping or communication tools such as Zoom or FaceTime to stay in touch with loved ones.
This means that brands have a unique opportunity to reach this generation, which has more money and time on their hands than younger people, through strategic content marketing.
A great way to achieve this is through influencer marketing, although the selection of the right influencer is key. The right ambassador with the right message, which resonates with either the baby boomer generation or their children, has the potential to reap major digital marketing rewards given the resources at their disposal and increased time spent engaging with technology.
Contact WSI for more insights into how influencer marketing for baby boomers can help your brand grow.
by Francois Muscat | Sep 8, 2020 | PPC
Pay per click advertising should form part of any inbound marketing strategy to maximise the reach of the content being promoted. The two should work together to complement and enhance one another. Once pay per click and inbound marketing strategies are pushing in the same direction with the same goals, your business will reap significant rewards.
Aligning PPC and inbound marketing
While it is common to think of pay per click advertising and inbound marketing as separate strategies, the two can complement one another if used correctly. Paid advertising increases the prominence of your content and sends more people to your website where they can engage further with your inbound marketing content.
In order to run an effective pay per click advertising campaign, you should know who you are targeting, which keywords you would like to focus on and make use of data from testing and analytics to back those decisions up.
Rather than running general ads promoting your brand visibility in a pay per click campaign, use it to promote your strongest content instead, so that consumers are more likely to engage with it. This works best on social media where people are looking for interesting content rather than just information.
Paid adverts have been proven to work even once the customer knows what they are looking for, as long as the content is linked directly to a commercial opportunity. Make sure that your pay per click landing page is aligned to the content of the advert.
Any good digital marketing strategy should look to integrate pay per click and inbound marketing devices to make the most of the money you are investing in paid advertising and the organic SEO content you are creating to represent your brand.
Get in touch with WSI OMS today to get more insights into how to integrate PPC with your inbound marketing strategy.
