How often should you revisit your social media strategy and why is it important?

The answer to the first question is simple: you should do it frequently. As to why your social media strategy needs to be revisited, here is a brief summary:

1. To better reflect the data you are collecting from your use of different platforms.
2. Because of the ever-changing nature of the social media platforms themselves.
3. New social media platforms are constantly emerging.
4. Because the attention span of an internet audience is short, always looking for the shiny new thing.
5. Your competition might be doing it better.

Alt. text: A tabletop with a laptop and folders and a woman’s hands holding a cup of coffee and a phone.

Revisit social media marketing strategies in response to past performance

Analyzing the data and feedback you gather from different platforms can be of great help when revisiting your strategy. Looking at the posts that fared best engagement-wise can point you in the right direction. A careful analysis of the content that didn’t do as well can help even more in adjusting your plan. What you should also take into account is the way in which the different algorithms deliver content. Algorithms differ slightly across platforms and this can inform any future posts you plan to make. In addition to this, you should also pay close attention to the makeup of your audience. Making sure your message is formed in the right way to reach your target audience is the key to a successful social media strategy.

The digital landscape is forever changing…

Here is another reason why your social media strategy needs to be revisited often. The platforms you use are always adding new options and changing the way they function in order to stay relevant. Not all of the new features digital platforms add to their repertoire will fit in with what you are trying to say. However, it is important to still find a way to tap into their potential. Of course, you should avoid using anything just because it is new and trendy. Particularly if it doesn’t fit into your overall message and tone. On the other hand, you should follow these new developments carefully. They are bound to come out with something that will surely be useable at some point. At the end of the day, these platforms are trying to cater to you as well. How well you can use them makes all the difference.

Best practice is to make sure you’re always up to date!

As with the new features of the platforms you are using, you should keep a close eye on the new digital platforms that are gaining traction online. Again, the point is not to just jump onto any new thing that appears. However, being present and finding a way to use these new platforms so it makes sense for your business can boost your overall visibility. Sometimes, it will seem impossible to do it right away. That said, they are bound to come up with some feature that will make it easier to make them a part of a typical social media strategy sooner or later.

Grab your audience’s attention!

This is one of the biggest reasons why a reevaluation of your social media strategy is important. The topic itself seeps into other areas we’ve already mentioned. Knowing who your audience is and who you are trying to reach is very important when crafting your message and creating your content. Hopefully, you are always managing to reach new people with your posts, but it is also important to be able to keep your core audience engaged with your posts.

Our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. In order to keep your audience’s eye on you, you need to take that into account. The algorithms make this even more difficult. In most cases, they require you to keep a constant presence on the platforms and to be very engaging. Analyzing your past content but also vigilantly taking note of how your new content is doing is the best way to know what works for your business as well as your audience.

The competition

Taking a peek into what the businesses you are in competition with are doing can’t hurt. Quite to the contrary, it can actually make your own marketing plan better. Obviously, you should steer clear of copying anything someone else does, but taking a look into what other similar businesses with a similar audience are doing can inspire you. Whether it’s the tone of their copy, or what visuals they are using, or how they are framing their content, it may help you in your own game.

Why revisit your social media strategy?

As you can see, reevaluating what you’re doing on different platforms can help you do it even more efficiently and effectively in the future. The reasons are numerous but they all point to the same conclusion. Taking into account all the variables of maintaining an effective presence on social media and revisiting what you are doing from time to time will make planning your marketing strategy easier and your content more potent with time.

The post Time To Update Your Social Media Marketing Strategy? appeared first on SEMA.

So, what is it that makes for a winning landing page and how can you ensure that your landing page fits into that mould?

The 5 elements of a winning landing page

You might think it difficult and complex to create the ideal landing page for your company. However, the truth is far from this, especially when you have the right support through it all. So, all you really need are the right team of a marketing specialist to back you up, with some additional support from a team of web developers. Once you ensure those two pillars, it’s just a matter of coordination and time before you get to an efficient promotional page. But, to give you a better idea of just what it takes, we’ll focus on the top five tips to making a winning landing page:

The construction of a winning landing page depends on 5 essential elements.

#1: You need a landing page with strong and high-converting content

You can hardly have a winning landing page without the right content to make it all work. This is the link that will bind all the elements that we will get to later on.

So, what’s the goal – you have to provide online visitors with content that is not only natural and easily readable but also useful to them. But, no worries, we won’t leave you high and dry. Here are some pointers you might wish to focus on:

1. Headlines with a clear message. You need to offer online visitors a clear topic of what it is that you are offering them with your winning landing page.
2. A clear menu of services or products. People prefer simplicity when it comes to landing pages. This means a clear and well-designed layout of what you offer as a company.
3. As few blank spaces as possible. This is not a novel – you need to pique the interest of online visitors as much as possible. This means as fewer blanks in design and content as possible.

Content plays an essential role in creating a winning landing page.

#2: Make sure your customers know what you’re selling!

That first tagline is what most online visitors will have the opportunity to see and read. This is why it is all the more important that it makes the right impression. You never know how much time someone will spend on your website, so you have to do all you can to ensure they have a reason to stay. This is an important step if you want to make your website visible online.

#3: Good optics are key!

You can hardly imagine reading the perfect content without a design to go alongside it. Professional digital marketing companies will always put a high price on the combination of content and design. So, take the time to consider just how you would like others to see your company. Consider the implementation of the following visual elements:

• Images of your business and what it offers
• Company logo
• The core values of your company

Poorly chosen or low-quality images can distract visitors from the message you wish to convey, whereas authentic images can add value to your winning landing page. So, make sure to explore competitive websites and well-designed landing pages in general before launching your own.

#4: Call to action (CTA) wherever possible!

A winning landing page is only as good as the traffic and revenue it brings. And you will hardly be able to accomplish that unless you have the right call to action. The CTA is an essential touch on a landing page, as it inspires your online visitors to act on the offer you are making. So, it is important to get it just right in terms of both length and wording.

You need to understand this – 20-30 seconds is the average time people tend to spend on a landing page. So, a CTA that is too complex or confusing will only dismay leads from converting. Another point to make here is the overall design of the contact form and the CTA itself. It needs to be just the right amount of direct, but not cross any borders or make customers lose focus. This is where a combination of a good background image and a well-chosen colour schematic does the trick.

#5: Trust is more important than ever!

Trust elements are the visual aids to help online visitors comprehend the foundation of your company from scrolling down a single page. The focus here is diversity, and it usually comes in the form of:

1. Company core values
2. Testimonials or user reviews
3. Customer logos
4. Affiliations and acknowledgments

You need to make sure that all trust elements are present.

A good example of this can be found with Movers Development. As a company dedicated to the digital development of the moving industry, the trust elements it presents readers with relates directly to moving companies and businesses. You have the professional affiliations, the objectives of their services, the portfolio to present their past projects, and the testimonials to provide proof of customer satisfaction. The important thing to remember with trust elements is to keep them up-to-date.

Conclusion

And there you have it – all the making of a winning landing page summed together into 5 steps. There are, of course, endless tips and tricks to experimenting with landing pages, most of which you will come across along the way. But this should cover you in terms of the basics and give your business space to grow from.

The post A Guide To Effective Landing Page Creation appeared first on SEMA.

As the number of clients looking for products and services online continually increases, small startups are getting a clear message – the future of marketing lies in SEO. There is no better way to promote business and reach the target audience. Those companies that fail to reach their potential clients usually collapse in the first year of operation. Starting a business is a risky venture.

That is why an increasing number of emerging companies resort to SEO, a marketing discipline aimed at increasing search engine visibility. The idea is simple – the higher you rank in search engines, the more clients you get. However, SEO for small businesses cannot entirely compare to SEO marketing of large companies. Even though the main idea remains the same – to reach as many potential clients as possible, the approach is somewhat different.

Target Unique Keywords

Keywording is one of the rare aspects of SEO that come easier to small businesses than to large multinational companies. Multinationals need to come up with a specific keyword that relates to their brand and clearly distinguishes them from the competition. As for small companies, the creative process of producing keywords is not demanding in such a way. However, this does not make it less complex. There are entire keyword research strategies aimed at increasing the visibility of emerging companies. There are many aspects to consider when creating high-value keywords.

Keywording is a crucial part of effective SEO for small businesses

A mobile phone with Google application and the word “analytics” typed in the search.

Small businesses are better off with longer and more natural phrases that are likely to be typed in search engines. In addition, as small enterprises usually focus on local clients, it is a good idea to add a location. For example, the phrase “best movers in Melbourne” sends a clear message to all prospective clients looking for professional moving companies in the mentioned area. Long descriptive phrases are more likely to attract local clients with specific requirements.

Understand Your Audience

Whereas large enterprises strive to attract people of different nationalities, generations and financial backgrounds, SEO for small businesses concentrates on a more or less specific audience. That is why it’s imperative to understand the needs of your potential clients before you optimize your website for search engines. If you understand the way these needs transfer to online search, you can create an effective SEO strategy. It is difficult to compete with established brands. As search engines favour brands, the only way to good rankings is through well-targeted marketing.

Social Media is Your (Best) Friend

One of the advantages of small businesses over large corporations lies in their use of social media. As local companies focus on a smaller number of people and a more narrow market, they can create closer ties with their clients.

Small businesses can use social media for a personalized approach

Mobile applications for Facebook, Twitter and other social media.

Social media are a powerful marketing tool. If you wish to become a better social media marketer, there are strategies you can resort to. However, one thing is for sure – social media are an important part of SEO for small businesses and one of the roadways to better visibility.

User-Friendly Web Design

Even though you are doing everything by the book, your website may not attract clients because of the lack of uniform design that attracts the eye. Needless to say, large corporations have the budget to employ a whole sector of web designers within the company, which means that they are fully covered as to their online presence. But the starting point of a small emerging company is nowhere near.

In addition to content optimization, small businesses need to invest in web design

However, this does not mean that you should give up on having an attractive optimized website for your business. Even though you do not dispose of a budget that allows you to have a team of web designers within the company, you can always resort to outsourcing.

There are numerous companies that provide full SEO marketing services for different lines of business. For example, if you’re a moving company in need of better online visibility, you can find out more about SEO solutions for your business on moversdev.com. Hiring a specialized company to conduct SEO for your business is absolutely cost-effective.

A Smaller Website Means Fewer Seed Keywords

We already mentioned that keywording is somewhat easier for small businesses. But only in terms of creativity. As smaller websites have fewer keywords they can target, these keywords need to be chosen carefully. The phrase that will act as a keyword has to be carefully weighed against clients’ needs. In other words, in order to create a phrase that will effectively direct the traffic to your website, you need to know which phrases potential clients most commonly use in search engines. For better results, hire professionals to do this part of the job for you.

Small Businesses Must Demonstrate Credibility

Large established brands need not prove the quality of their products and services. In consumers’ minds, a well-known name guarantees quality. However, if you are trying to establish a new brand on the market, you need to prove you are able to provide high-quality service. In addition to a well-structured website, you need to present testimonials and reviews. There is no better way to convince the target audience in the quality of your service than to present recommendations from a number of satisfied clients.

Small Companies CAN Rank Against Big Ones

SEO for small businesses may differ from a big business SEO approach, but this does not mean that they cannot compete in rankings. A good strategy aimed at increasing search engine visibility can be most rewarding in the long run. One thing is for sure – small companies have a greater need for SEO. As the future of their business largely depends on online visibility, they need to adapt to the ever-changing business environment. Investing in SEO is gradually becoming an imperative of successful marketing for small and medium enterprises.

The post The Ultimate Guide to SEO for Small Businesses appeared first on SEMA.

– Phil Frost

Your concerted efforts in refining your SEO technique would help you achieve increased conversion rates and a higher page rank. In this regard, any savvy and shrewd online marketer would know that being aware of the latest search engine optimization tactics, techniques and algorithm is paramount in conjunction with the regular optimization of pages.

Regardless of what your endeavour might be–if it is to increase your traffic, brand exposure and awareness or simply to know who your target audience is–knowing the ins and outs of SEO is vital. Remember, your efforts in curating relevant topics and creating compelling content would be all for naught if it is not paralleled with good SEO techniques.

Audiences online are constantly looking for excellent content just like the ones you are constantly producing. However, you need good SEO work in order to deliver them exactly right at your website’s doorstep. In essence, good SEO would enable your audiences to find your web pages and content better.

Unfortunately, good SEO only gets you so far and regardless of how remarkable your efforts for refining your technique might be, if you overlook the small technical things, it could significantly hurt your chances of ranking higher. In fact, these are the oversights that would contribute to a diminished page ranking. Some of these you might have overlooked, but if you continued to do so, you can be heavily penalized by Google.

Here is a list of some of the little and surprising things that might be hurting your search ranking:

Bad Blog Comments

We all know that we cannot reasonably expect every single comment on our blogs to be singing praises, but that is not the kind of bad comment we are talking about here. Instead, what we are referring to as bad blog comments are the spam comments which every blog has to deal with. Of course, some online marketers are still using black hat SEO tactics until today and one tactic would involve having automated bots posts spam comments across hundreds or even thousands of sites in just a single day. This is an effort to divert and increase traffic to other sites.

Unfortunately, apart from polluting your posts, spam comments hurt your website’s ability to rank regardless of whether the links found within the comments are followed or not. Google penalizes you because spam comments are an indication of the kind of website you are and just how qualified you would be to be the recipient of traffic. In the eyes of Google, you are just as bad as the spam commenter.

Having measures in place to counter spam is far easier than having to fix them after the fact so, setting your website user-generated comments to default a no-follow option is a great place to start and to add an anti-spam measure like RECAPTCHA plugins.

Sluggish site speed

Another factor utilized by Google to rank pages is site speed. With this in mind, your time to the first byte is actually an incredibly essential factor you must look into. Time to the first byte refers to the amount of time it would take a visitor to get the first byte of information from your server. Apart from playing an integral role in affecting your page rank, your page speed is imperative in giving your users an overall cohesive experience. The longer it takes for your page to load, the more likely your visitors would end up in other pages. Moreover, slower page speeds would also mean that search engines couldn’t crawl as many pages as it ought to with their crawl budget.

A good checklist to fix slow load time is to:

1. Utilise screaming frog to crawl your website and check the response times for each URL
2. Place in order the pages that are the slowest to have an order of priority to work through
3. Check the speed using Google PageSpeed Insights or GTMetrix
4. Optimise your image sizes (< and >100kb
5. Make use of CDB to scatter your requests across various geographical locations
6. Use CSS Sprites to combine images within single files to save server bandwidth
7. Switch off plugins you don’t use
8. Use third-party video hosting like YouTube or Vimeo

Broken links and images

Your content should not only be rich and informative, it should also be visually appealing as well. Broken internal and external links can cause a webpage to return an error status. In this regard, broken links and unavailable images may discourage users from visiting other pages of your website or create a negative user experience if they can’t find what they’re looking for. After all, when they follow links to or from your site, they expect content to be readily available once they do reach that page.

Apart from giving your users a negative experience, broken links prevent crawlers from indexing your site properly. Which in turn could mean that your website rank will be negatively impacted. This could happen due to the following reasons:

1. Incorrect Disallow enters in your robots.txt
2. DDoS protection system
3. Misconfigured or overloaded server

With this in mind, regularly check your links both internal and external to ensure that you are not redirecting your audiences to broken pages.

To fix these kinds of issues, if your website returns an error, either remove the link or replace it with another resource. If they are still working within some browsers, you may find an issue with your web hosting. As another option, you could utilise the ‘crawl delay’ directive in your robots.txt

The post Bad SEO; Three Factors That Could Be Hurting Your Rankings appeared first on SEMA.

Search Marketing Australia is officially opening up submissions to our blog. Dealing primarily with search marketing news, Google updates, and all things social media, we’re a one-stop resource for digital marketing professionals who want to keep up-to-date with industry trends, the latest tech, and all the tricks of the trade.

If you’re keen to get involved with the team at Search Marketing Australia and want to become a voice of authority within the industry, share your insights, or just let people know when something really cool has happened, you can share it right here!

All credit for submitted work goes directly to our contributors, and you’ll even get a neat little author bio and link back to your website or blog.

Want to know more? Check out our guest blogging guidelines here, and email us at contribute@searchmarketingaustralia.com.au. 

The post Become a Search Marketing Australia Guest Blogger! appeared first on SEMA.

Below are some of the main events worth attending in 2018.

January

Growth Hacking Strategies to Grow your Social Media Channels

When: January 17, 2018

Where: Academy Xi, 45 Exhibition Street, Melbourne, Vic 3000

Price: Free, register here!

Suitable for social media coordinators, marketing managers, business owners, account managers, or anyone working on a branded social platform will benefit from this course. Covering growth marketing strategies for Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook, an overview of the psychology behind social media, tips for starting viral trends, and how to draw more traffic to your site via social media, plus much more!

Intrigue Summit Melbourne

When: January 31, 2018

Where: The Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG)

Price: All Access Passes are $599 (increasing to $699 after January 10), while a VIP Pass costs $799 (increasing to $899 after January 10), and can be purchased here.

The Intrigue Summit offers digital marketers a chance to network with like-minded professionals and hear keynotes from the industry’s leading thought provokers. Covering everything from content generation, new technologies, the future of search engine algorithms and much more, this is a not-to-be-missed event.

March

ad:tech Sydney

When: March 22-23, 2018

Where: The Hilton, Sydney

Price: Starts at $399 to $1,299. You can register here.

ad:tech is the original industry authority for marketing and media technology, where marketing, technology and media communities assemble to share new ways of thinking, build strong partnerships, and define new strategies to compete in an ever-changing marketplace.

April

Big Digital Adelaide

When: April 18-20, 2018

Where: The Science Exchange, 55 Exchange Place, Adelaide, SA 5000

Price: Ticket prices range between $449 for a Big Pass and $549 for a Super Pass, plus a $4 booking fee. Purchase your tickets here.

With speakers from Microsoft and Yext, plus a number of the world’s leading digital marketing professionals, Big Digital will cover everything from AI to audience targeting.

May

B2B Marketing Leaders Forum APAC, Sydney

When: May 14-16

Where: Doltone House, Jones Bay Wharf, Sydney

Price: Prices start at $1,195

Targeted primarily at marketing departments, this forum focuses on increasing revenue building capabilities, as well sharing ideas, insights and actionable tips to help strengthen marketing efforts both in the traditional and digital marketing arena.

Search Marketing Summit Australia, Sydney

When: May 28-31, 2018

Where: TBA

Price: Prices start at $1,300

The Search Marketing Summit Australia is yet to release much information about the 2018 conference and workshops. But, if last year is anything to go by, there are bound to be some big names from Google and other major corporations discussing the future of the industry, and what search marketers need to be doing to dominate the rankings in 2018 and beyond.

October

Digital Marketing Innovation Summit, Sydney

When: October 4-5

Where: TBA

Price: Prices start at $600

With more than 25 industry speakers and 100 plus delegates, the Digital Marketing Innovation Summit is held annually in Sydney and brings together Australia’s leading marketing strategists. For two days, attendees can enjoy candid industry discussions, strategy sharing and networking.

Are there any other major conferences you know of? Let us know in the comments!

The post 7 Digital Marketing Conferences You Need to Attend in 2018 appeared first on SEMA.

We’re sure many search marketers will agree with us when we say that quality insight about the industry in Australia, rather than in overseas market, can be a little lacking. Individual search marketing agencies, SEOs and PPC operators have their own blogs, driving their own agenda, but we feel there is a need for a central resource to attract readers to great, Australia based content written by people in the industry here in Australia.

In the coming weeks and months we look forward to welcoming our first writers and readers. In the meantime, if you would like to contribute, please get in touch at contribute@searchmarketingaustralia.com.au. We can help interested writers with topic ideas, with some that have been brainstormed so far including:

• The state of play for Local Search in Australia
• Impacts of the recent (as at June 2017) ‘Possum’ and ‘Fred’ updates from Google in Australia
• Recent privacy legislation changes in Australia and impacts for business and marketers

The post A New Resource for Search Marketers in Australia appeared first on SEMA.