Tag Archive for: Search Engine Optimization

What You Should Know About New Google Maps Local Search Ads

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In response to the recent Google Performance Summit, Google made several announcements on how their services will be changing in the months to come. One of the most important announcements included the introduction of new local search advertisements through Google Maps.

What’s The Difference?

Google already provides location based advertisement options in addition to the Google My Business platform, so what exactly is so special about these new local search ads? Well, these new ads will be available in several new formats including:

  • Promoted Pins
  • In-Store Promotions
  • Customizable Business Pages
  • Local Inventory Search

All of these options are meant to drive foot traffic to a physical location. Now, you may be wondering why businesses would be interested in brick-and-mortar stores when e-commerce is on the rise.

Google revealed during their summit that 75% of people who conduct a location based search on their mobile device will then visit that location within 24 hours with 28% of these visits resulting in a purchase.

Bridging The Gap

Clearly, mobile is not be the only concern. What advertisers should focus on is utilizing mobile in order to drive physical visits and purchases. To do this, the business must first be visible in every form possible across the Internet.

These new local search ads will facilitate this need of visibility by providing another dynamic platform on which consumers can find your business. While this new form of local search ads will not make all of your advertising dreams come true, it is certainly a useful tool to have in your arsenal of digital marketing services.

Process Pending

These new ads are only available in a beta form, and are not available to all advertisers. As such, there is little information currently available about these new ads, but one thing that we do know is how Google chooses which local search ads do and do not show through Google Maps.

Google has provided the following factors in regard to what will affect new ad rankings:

  • Location
  • Interests
  • Query Text
  • Search/Browsing History
  • Behaviors
  • Time of Day
  • Demographics

More From Onimod Global

For more information on the industry of digital marketing, please visit the Onimod Global News Page. Our content creation specialists are constantly producing new and engaging articles that keep you informed of the latest and greatest trends within the digital marketing world. Enjoy!

How to Digitally Optimize Your Campaign for the Hotel Industry

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One of the most inspiring aspects of digital marketing is that it can be useful across an incredible number of different industries. Each industry comes with its own unique strengths and caveats, and the industry of hospitality is no different.

Step One: Strategize

Of course, digital marketing success cannot be achieved by simply setting up a campaign through Bing or Google. This action does not make you a search engine marketing expert. In order for any marketing campaign to be successful, there needs to be a certain amount of effort put into formulating a strategy.

This basic and primary phase is so often understated or ignored, and unfortunately this ignorance can cause serious problems down the road. It is not enough to just generate leads. Instead, you should be focused on gaining quality conversions. What is the use in having thousands of respondents who will never actually book a stay in your hotel?

Step Two: Make Use of Your Resources

When it comes to advertising for your hotel, there are many different digital tools that you can utilize. A major advantage to digital marketing is that it gives you the ability to generate quality leads for a relatively low price.

In the world of digital advertising, two major brands dominate; Google and Facebook. These will be your go-to ad platforms as you begin to construct a digital marketing campaign for your hotel.

These two platforms possess several strengths such as:

  • Low cost per conversion.
  • Localized ads to target consumers currently located near you.
  • Mobile ads that appeal to the preferences of consumers today who are looking for ease and convenience in their purchases.
  • Native advertising throughout the regularly used social media and search engines that consumers use in their every day routine.

The list goes on, but these four reasons alone are enough to peak the interest of any hotel brand. There are also many other platforms that your brand can utilize, but these two advertising platforms should serve as a good baseline for your first steps in digital marketing.

Step 3: Review and Revise

It is always important to review a campaign before it is launched. This final step helps to rid the campaign of any minute errors that may not have been noticed the first time around. Taking a second look also provides the marketer with the chance to make sure that all ads align directly with the campaign’s mission. It can be fairly easy for a digital campaign to split off into a slightly different direction as it is making its way through the construction process.

This stage also provides a period in which you can review your other marketing sources and make sure that they are up to date. For example, many brands neglect their website and the incredible impact it has upon their brand. Brilliant and engaging ads will do little to convince a consumer of quality when all ads lead back to a broken and outdated website.

More From Onimod Global

As always, the digital marketing experts from Onimod Global are here to make sure that you receive the best information possible regarding the digital marketing industry. Our content specialists frequently publish new content pertaining directly to industry news and trends.

To access our full compilation of news articles, please click here. Thank you, and we look forward to providing you with more digital marketing insights soon!

How to Build Customer Loyalty That Drives Local Search Traffic

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When dreaming up ways to improve search engine results, few SEO specialists consider customer loyalty. However, customer loyalty plays a very crucial role in marketing for a company.

Lessons From Amazon

Amazon never set out to become a brand driven by customer satisfaction. Their primary concern has always been to fulfill orders as efficiently as possible, but along the way they were able to gain valuable insights of customers. All reviews on Amazon are 100% due to the efforts of verified customers. By allowing consumers to share their own experiences, Amazon was quickly able to build an incredibly trustworthy service.

High customer satisfaction translates directly to customer loyalty. Any time a customer is dissatisfied with an Amazon product, they receive a full refund, and typically also gain a complimentary service from the company to incentivize the customer to come back. Customers love to have a voice, and Amazon is more than happy to provide them with a way to be heard by other target customers. Companies with a customer focus certainly have a thing or two to learn from Amazon regarding their customer loyalty methods.

6 Additional Components

It is no simple task to replicate the efforts of Amazon. For this reason, the search engine optimization specialists from Onimod Global are here to offer several simple ways in which you can develop better customer loyalty within your own organization. The following 6 tips are based off of Wesley Young’s article that was recently published through Search Engine Land:

  1. Social Loyalty: Social media has grown to wield an impressive amount of influence over any given company. Recently, Facebook began appealing to users looking for recommendations regarding any number of products or services. This feature allows other users to weigh in on the topic and recommend businesses that they find relevant to their friend’s search. This word-of-mouth by proxy through Facebook is significant because it disrupts typical search engine procedures.
  2. Narrative Control: As mentioned with the example of Amazon, online reviews carry an incredible amount of power. Make sure that you are giving customers a way to express their loyalty via online platforms such as Facebook and Yelp. You can even use this information as a testimonial to the benefits that your company offers.
  3. Forever Loyal: Truly loyal customers will seek out a preferred business no matter what the odds. Young used the example of Chick-Fil-A to represent this ideal. He noted that no matter where he goes, he can find a line out the door of Chick-Fil-A, even when other area fast food restaurants have no wait at all.
  4. Loyalty Economics: It can be difficult to track down truly loyal customers. Typically, a company’s marketing efforts toward new clients are much more expensive than if the company were to simply continue marketing toward dissatisfied customers. For this reason, it may be worth considering ways in which you can better the experience of existing customers rather than solely focusing on new customer leads.
  5. Loyalty Database: Data is an invaluable resource for any business. Data regarding repeat customers is even more essential to promoting growth and prosperity. Once you are able to gain information about current loyal customers, you will be more easily able to locate new ones, which cuts out a lot of wasted ad dollar being used in search engine marketing.
  6. Determining Improvements: Even if a company’s customer satisfaction ratings are high, there is usually significant room for improvement. This issue points back to the loyalty database and what insights it can provide to your business. By going back over the numbers you can begin to paint a much clearer picture for both current and potential customers about your business and why it is the right choice for them to purchase goods and services from.

 

Yahoo Sues Mozilla for Replacement of Firefox’s Default Search to Google

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It was announced earlier this week that Yahoo’s parent company (Oath) has decided to sue Mozilla for “breach of contract.” Oath claims that Mozilla “terminated a long term strategic agreement with Yahoo” in November. Mozilla recently launched their upgraded Firefox Quantum browser and has implemented Google as their new default search tool. It was approximately 3 years ago when Yahoo and Mozilla signed an agreement that Yahoo would be the default search engine on Firefox.

According to Greg Sterling in an article from Search Engine Land, the lawsuit “seeks unspecified money damages and interest from Mozilla, but Mozilla claims they have the right to terminate the relationship under the contract.” Mozilla’s Firefox browser lost market share to Chrome during the 3 year period with Yahoo. Mozilla blames this lose in market share largely on Yahoo search. Yahoo/Oath argue that “issues with the browser experience (speed and performance)” were to blame instead. Sterling points out that “the truth probably lies somewhere in between.”

Implications Moving Forward
Mozilla switching from Yahoo to Google as their new default search tool is huge. As if Google’s market share in search engine providers wasn’t large enough, this move will expand their share even more. The article states that “Firefox’s market share is about 13 percent to Chrome’s nearly 59 percent. Yahoo search market share is roughly 12 percent to Google’s 63 percent.” Ultimately, it will be interesting to see where Firefox’s market share goes from here, as the reactions to the upgraded “Firefox Quantum” browser appear to be positive thus far.

Contact Us: For more information regarding digital marketing expertise and news, visit the Onimod Global Website. We look forward to hearing from you!

How To Maximize Your Company Blog To Improve Overall SEO Results

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It’s evident that blogging is important in a digitally dominated space, yet many organizations don’t fully understand the SEO implications that effective blogging can have. It seems every company has implemented a blog to their site at this point. However, many fail to take advantage of blog content to increase overall organic search rankings. Listed below are some ways in which companies can maximize their blog content to enhance overall search engine optimization (SEO) results.

Always Optimize Content
Continually generating new content is usually a good practice, but that doesn’t mean existing blog posts should be ignored. Going back to previous posts and reviewing keyword phrases, media, tags, and other parts of a post to help rank better for desired search queries is an effective method. Paying attention to basic “on page” SEO components is another aspect that can’t be ignored. Header tags, meta descriptions, image titles, alt text, internal link building, and having an SSL certificate are all important when it comes to ranking well.

Define Audiences
Blog content should never be randomly created with no specific audiences in mind. Each post should always be produced with intentions to reach segments of your target audience. This means content should be filled with meaningful keyword phrases related to what your consumer base is searching for. For instance, if you’re in the sports bar industry you want to blog about content related to big upcoming games/events geared toward sports fans to draw in as much traffic as possible. Ultimately, creating content for specific target audiences is a key aspect to blogging and will contribute to increased SEO rankings.

Blog Title
The importance of having a creative and appealing blog title a lot of times gets overlooked. Many organizations use titles like “Blog” or “News” for their company blog, which isn’t the best practice for optimization. Creativity and being descriptive are two solutions to better blog optimization. “What audiences am I trying to reach?” and “What are important keyword phrases related to my industry?” are a couple of critical questions to use as a basis for the title of a blog. Moreover, it seems like a minor detail, but coming up with a good title for your company blog is something that should never be ignored.

Social Media Engagement
Sharing blog content on multiple social media platforms is a simple method to increase overall visibility. Utilizing channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, and Google My Business to share content should always be one of the final steps in the process. Be sure to include keyword rich descriptions with social posts as well that way your content has a better chance of ranking. Additional benefits to sharing blog content on social media include the ability to reach new audiences, keeping social media platforms relevant, and the chance of increasing referral traffic.

Contact Us: At Onimod Global we specialize in SEO, content creation, and every other aspect of digital marketing. Check out Our Work to see what digital marketing solutions we have to offer!

4 Common SEO Myths That Marketers Should Reject

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When it comes to the best search engine optimization (SEO) practices, it can be difficult to know what methods are currently working and what is not. Search engine algorithms on Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others are frequently changing and this factor makes it challenging for marketers to adapt. There are numerous myths floating around about what a “good” SEO strategy consists of. Listed below are four common SEO myths that all marketers should be aware of.

1. Stuffing keywords is the way to go
The method of stuffing keywords is both outdated and falls into the “black hat” side of SEO practices. Search engines these days (Google especially) are more focused on rewarding legitimate organizations trying to drive real traffic to their sites. Don’t confuse implementing rich keywords in good content development compared to “stuffing.” An article from Entrepreneur describes keyword stuffing as “having too many keywords stuffed into your domain, this will be viewed as a spammy tactic that Google can pick up on.” Ultimately, the practice of keyword stuffing not only destroys credibility, but can ban sites from being shown on search engines at all.

2. The security of a site doesn’t affect rankings 
Regardless of the other benefits a secure site offers, many marketers and organizations either don’t believe or realize how important having an SSL certificate is for optimization purposes. According to an article in 2014 from Google’s Security Blog, “security is a top priority at Google, so we’re starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal.” Other search engines like Bing and Yahoo have adapted this practice as well. In general, secure sites (SSL installed) are starting to become the norm online and do have important implications when it comes to optimization and higher organic rankings on search engines.

3. Blogging isn’t that important for SEO
This is one myth that appears to be going away soon, but is still present among organizations who aren’t in touch with today’s digital environment. Maintaining a well kept blog in general will only increase online visibility and fuel your SEO. Google and Bing’s algorithms reward valuable and fresh content for specific search queries. The major SEO factors of blogging consist of relevant content production, attracting internal/external linking, expanding of keywords, and many more. Regardless of the industry, maintaining a well written blog is one way to increase your organization’s SEO presence and appear ahead of competitors in the search engine results.

4. “Having a contact at Google will get me on the first page”
Some organizations actually believe having a contact at Google will help their site rank better for relevant searches. Although knowing a Google representative is very beneficial in regards to the Google Partners Program and latest information, Google doesn’t staff employees to help businesses with their SEO. According to the Entrepreneur article, “this is the fascinating component about Google; you have to follow the latest trends to make sure your SEO strategy aligns with Google’s constant algorithm updates.” Moreover, if an agency or marketing professional claims to have a contact at Google relating to SEO and first page rankings, they are lying.

Contact Us: At Onimod Global we know that organic search engine optimization or SEO, is absolutely vital to achieve long term search engine visibility for your website. Years of experience in SEO is the core of our strategies. We develop organic search engine optimization campaigns that deliver increases in organic traffic and natural rankings on major search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. Check out Our Work to see what SEO solutions Onimod Global has to offer!

The Impact “Black Hat” SEO Practices Can Have On Reputation

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In today’s digital world, ensuring that your company’s website is highly optimized for search engines and ranks well organically for relevant search queries is a high priority. According to Search Engine Journal, “70% of the links search users click on are organic.” Another intriguing statistic they mention is that “75% of all users never scroll past the first page of search results.” The importance of effective SEO practices is invaluable and cutting corners can have a lasting effect on a company’s reputation. This post will explore what “black hat” SEO practices are, the importance of “white hat” SEO, and the impact unethical SEO practices can have on any organization.

SEO Basics
Search engine optimization (SEO) in essence are a combination of techniques used to increase search engine visibility for relevant search queries with the ultimate purpose of driving traffic to a website. There are many components of SEO that involve “on page” optimization like paying attention to title tags, content, meta descriptions, keywords, and internal link building. There are also “off page” optimization tactics like blogging and utilizing local directory sites. Ultimately, increases in online visibility and website traffic are two of the most important functions that effective SEO strategies provide.

What is “Black Hat” SEO?
The term “black hat” SEO refers to finding loopholes in search engine algorithms to climb organic rankings as quickly as possible. According to Webopedia, black hat SEO is “the use of aggressive SEO strategies, techniques, and tactics that focus only on search engines and not human audiences, and usually does not obey search engine guidelines.” Organizations that participate in black hat SEO use practices such as duplicate content, excessive keyword stuffing, hidden content, link farming, page swapping, and the creation of doorway pages. Use of these black hat SEO practices can lead to an organization’s website becoming banned from search engines. It should be pointed out that most black hat SEO users are typically seeking quick financial returns, therefore being banned from search engines over time isn’t a huge concern. Ultimately, when seeking an increase in online visibility and a highly optimized website for search engines, “black hat” SEO techniques should be avoided at all costs as the reputation of your organization can become destroyed.

“White Hat” SEO
Opposite of black hat SEO, “white hat” SEO refers to optimization practices that comply with search engine guidelines and are referred as ethical strategies. Webopedia defines white hat SEO as “strategies, techniques, and tactics that focus on a human audience opposed to search engines and completely follows search engine rules and policies.” Organizations that implement white hat SEO practices involve human generated content, internal/external link building, using quality and keyword rich content (not stuffing), and back linking. In general, the use of white hat SEO techniques is what every organization/agency should be implementing to ensure the best and most effective optimization for search engines.

“Negative SEO” and Impact on Reputation
It’s no surprise that the use of malicious SEO techniques can have a detrimental impact on an organization’s reputation. The need for high organic rankings on search engines (Google in particular) is critical in a digitally dominated marketing world. Some organizations will even implement malicious “negative SEO” practices on their competitors with the intentions of destroying search engine rankings. According to an article from Entrepreneur, “negative SEO practices usually consist of flooded duplicate content, creation of fake social profiles, and pointing spammy and low quality links to a site.” It’s almost sad to think that some organizations would use these tactics to hurt their competitor’s rankings, yet Google mentioned that “negative SEO” practices aren’t unheard of. In the end, although search engines are constantly evolving and countering “negative SEO” practices, it’s essential as an organization to frequently monitor your website and seek assistance from experts.

Contact Us
At Onimod Global we know that organic search engine optimization or SEO, is absolutely vital to achieve long term search engine visibility for your website. Years of experience in SEO is the core of our strategies. We develop organic search engine optimization campaigns that deliver increases in organic traffic and natural rankings on major search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. Check out Our Work to see what SEO solutions Onimod Global has to offer!

The 5 Most Important Things About Your Brand

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First Impressions

No one gets a second first impression. This is true in all kinds of different relationships, but especially in business. With only a few seconds to connect with users, companies need to deliver a clear and concise message to consumers.

Start by asking what a potential customer might think the very first time that they interact with your brand. In every aspect of your company from a Facebook post to the website home page, you need to ensure that you are communicating your brand effectively.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization is a very serious topic when it comes to how customers are reaching you. Not only does enhanced SEO help drive traffic and awareness, but it can also heavily impact the user’s overall experience with your brand.

For instance, if a potential client goes to your website but can’t figure out how to navigate through the pages, then you have a problem. This kind of issue can prevent them from learning more about your company or even reaching out through phone or email.

Social Media

10 years ago it is unlikely that anyone could have predicted that there would be a need for such a thing as a “social media manager”. Times have certainly changed. In today’s digitally driven environment, social media plays a very important role in brand recognition.

According to Statista, 70% of the population in the U.S. has at least one active social media account. That means that if your brand is not utilizing Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other major platforms, then it is severely limiting itself.

Content

Content is the incredible piece of the puzzle that brings everything else together. It shows what you have to offer and how you can help your customers across all kinds of digital mediums.

The best way to utilize your brand’s content is to link it all together. Drive every click, tweet, and post back to your website. This allows users browsing Facebook to easily pop over to your website and take a look at your amazing products and services.

Data Measurement and Analysis

No matter how well your business is doing, it is near impossible to realize just how well things are going without some type of measurement. Simple tools like Google Analytics can go a long way in helping your brand succeed.

By taking a look behind the scenes, you can start to get some real answers. Have a sudden uptick in conversions? Try taking a look at how much content you generated, or how well your company ranks on the first few pages of Google search results. Once you can solve the mystery as to why good or bad things are happening, you can take action to make better choices for your brand.

Run a Free Scan of Your Business Today

Get started on improving your company with a brand audit from Onimod Global. See just how well your business ranks on search engines, important local directories, and the top review sites. To see your brand’s overall visibility on the internet CLICK HERE.

5 Reasons Your Business Marketing Is Incomplete Without SEO

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Search Engine Optimization is a tool to increase your visibility in the digital space. Organic Search Engine Optimization or SEO, is absolutely vital to achieve long term search engine visibility for your website. It is treated with high regard in the online marketing sphere because it increases your chances of reaching relevant prospects and proves to be an efficient marketing strategy by targeting the user intent. If you delve deeper into the science of SEO, you will surely find it to be very effective and proficient tool which brings good results in no time if implemented well.

When we compare both outbound and inbound marketing services, we get to the conclusion that inbound marketing tends to bring in interested parties who are looking for information based on your business. This is exactly what SEO tends to do. If your business is looking for more ROI with minimal investment, ensure that SEO forms the part of your marketing initiatives. Rather than embracing outbound techniques that are interruptive in nature, SEO is customer-centric and the message is only presented to the prospects when they need them.

Here are 5 reasons that will prove why your business needs the best SEO services:

1. SEO Brings Traffic

Within 3 months of consistent and high-quality search engine optimization efforts, your business could see an unbelievable difference in the way your online visibility gets positively affected. The main aim for any SEO initiative is to help you in gaining valuable rankings on search engines that could result into more click-through-rates and more traffic.

SEO also focuses on on-site optimization that brings greater visibility on search engines. It is beneficial to have optimized tags and web pages to help you in increasing the click-through-rate for your website. More relevant traffic to your website means more conversions and revenue.

2. Measurable ROI

SEO offers quantifiable results for all kinds of business’ sites. So, you don’t have to worry about measuring the ROI of your SEO. The agencies providing search engine optimization services are capable of scaling almost all the aspects of their SEO campaigns, such as traffic, conversion rate, revenue and more.

Detailed analytics report helps in getting accurate information of all the visitors of your site and their journey in the conversion funnel.

In the case of e-commerce websites, SEO agencies helps by short-listing people who used a particular keyword that you are targeting.

3. SEO is Cost effective

SEO has earned the reputation of being one of the most reliable and cost-effective marketing strategies due to the simple fact that it only targets relevant visitors who are searching for the goods and services or any information that you are providing.

In complete contrast to outbound marketing, where you target several people you don’t even know whether they are interested in your brand, SEO methodology only targets interested audience and that’s why it is cost effective as it saves you from spending hugely on outbound such as newspaper ads, tele-commercials, billboards, cold-calling and more.

The traffic generated by SEO is more qualified than other marketing strategies.

4. Increased Site Usability with SEO

When you implement the various factors of SEO into your website, it will make your website user-friendly and the focus would be on making it more navigable. Not only does the user will find it easy surfing through your website, but it will also help you in getting a better ranking on search engines.

The principles of SEO tend to rearrange the website’s links and architecture and this will make your website user-friendly. The users find it easy to find out more information on your website, which boosts the engagement rate of your website, lessens the bounce rate, and could increase conversion rates for your website.

5. Brand Awareness

SEO is the most cost effective way to enhance your brand awareness. Undoubtedly, SEO will help you in gaining more exposure and click-through-rates, but the best things that SEO could do is to redefine your brand with some great content. You could definitely try and get better rankings with extensive SEO, but what will retain the visitors on your website is your content.

Search engines factor the quality of your content in their SERPs and have released some strict algorithms that help them in considering only those websites that fulfill the user intent. Every search request is an opportunity; each action on a social site is an opportunity. Having the correct brand, product or service positioning is essential.

For further expert advice and services in SEO contact Onimod Global today.

 

Ref:  Lifehacker  Onimod Global