SEO Trends In 2019

Every year, there are new trends and best practices that change the digital marketing landscape. This year is no different, especially when it comes to SEO. Here are three SEO trends to kick your organic rank up a notch and prepare you for a successful 2019.

1) Voice Search Is Growing: Voice capabilities are no longer just an idea. Thanks to Google Home, Amazon Echo, Microsoft Cortana, Apple Siri and more, people are using voice commands more and more to search online. You’ll even find voice search capabilities in many new cars. As a result it’s becoming more important to optimize your Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaigns for voice searches rather than typed search terms alone. Is your website content phrased in a way to answer questions that people ask with voice? Are your answers short and simple? Do they answer questions in a way that is selfless and of true value to those who are searching? These are just a few ways to check if your content is optimized for voice search.

2) Shift From keywords To Topics: Just as search is getting smarter with voice commands, search engines are getting smarter by recognizing topics of searches instead of individual keywords. This creates opportunities for marketers to reach audiences who are interested in topics and optimize for those searches instead of relying on hyper specific keywords to trigger ads. By creating content that is smart, well thought out, informative, and answers questions that are topic related, smart marketers will be able to rank higher in search results than competitors who may be simply stuffing keywords into their web-pages or blog posts. This ties into content marketing which will continue to grow this year as well.

3) Long-term Mindset: This may not exactly be a new trend, but it is essential whenever discussing SEO. Optimizing your website for search is an ongoing process and like nearly any marketing activity, great results take time and effort. Creating informative and valuable content consistently, and answering questions typically asked online will slowly increase your website traffic. And this will improve your brand equity as an industry leader. Building valuable and relevant content on your website and other online assets will establish your business as the “go to” in your industry and will eventually build your organic rank. As the internet gets more crowded, the key to SEO success will be to generate forward-thinking content. Keep these trends in mind when creating your SEO strategy and your business is more likely to stay “on top” in 2019 and beyond.

If you would like to learn about how SEO can help your business generate more online traffic schedule a free consultation or visit www.adedgemarketing.com for more information.

Google Plus Will Shut Down April 2nd

Say goodbye to Google Plus! Google has officially announced that they will be shutting down the Google+ social network on April 2nd.

Why this decision? Google is well known for being one of the giants in the online world, so where did they go wrong with Google+? They gave several reasons for the shutdown including the network’s low usage, and struggling to live up to expectations; however the main reason is rooted in a security issue they encountered which left a large number of users exposed online to third party app developers. Google has decided that due to the poor performance and security issues, Google+ was simply no longer worth keeping around.

So, what does this mean for you? If you use Google+, now would be a great time to save all of the photos and content on your page, if you haven’t already. Also, you’ll obviously want to invite any of your Google+ users to one or more of your other social media accounts. Google will soon begin deleting pages and disabling new posts. All images will be backed up to Google Photos but you may want to record/archive the posts you’ve made in the past. The deletion does not affect other Google services. Your Google account, which is linked to services such as Gmail, YouTube and Maps, will continue to operate unchanged.

At AdEdge, we do our best to stay on top of the latest trends, technologies and digital marketing best practices. If you would like to learn more about other digital trends or talk about the best digital marketing strategy for your industry, please schedule a free consultation or visit www.adedgemarketing.com for more information.

 

Social Media Targeting: How To Reach The Right Audience

Businesses spend billions of dollars every year on Facebook and Instagram advertising. This year, social media spending is expected to increase to $17.34 billion in the United States alone. The main reason why social media is getting so much attention is because of it’s targeting capabilities. Better targeting allows businesses to control exactly who sees their ads. This drives more engagement with content, more relevant website visits and ultimately, better ROI. Here are four tips on how to use advanced social media targeting.

How To Reach Your Ideal Audience:

1) Create Personas: As with any marketing effort, the first step is understanding who your various ideal customers are. Categorize groups of customers into those who share distinct attributes. How are they different by demographics, lifestyle and/or location? What benefits appeal to them uniquely? Which products or services of yours do they tend to buy? With personas in place, you can now figure out where they spend time online, what they are likely to be searching for and what they care about when making a purchase decision. By targeting each persona with marketing messages that appeal specifically to them, lead and sales conversions increase. Social networks allow you to target your ads based on location, demographics and lifestyles.

2) Understand How Each Social Network Is Different: Each social network offers some level of unique targeting capabilities and you’ll want to think about what types of targeting are going to deliver the best performance. A business owner searching for prospective employees on LinkedIn is in a very different mindset than an individual who is scrolling through cool videos on Instagram so make sure you are advertising on the right platform to the right audience with the right message. Instagram and Facebook offer targeting by birthday and anniversary while LinkedIn and Twitter can be targeted by hashtags and keywords. There are dozens of other targeting options on these platforms. The deeper you dig, the more likely you are to appeal to the perfect audience.

3) Excluding Audiences: Finding the right audience is extremely important for the success of your social media ad campaign, and excluding audiences can impact on your campaign as well. Assuming you don’t want to waste PPC dollars sending deadbeats to your site, use analytics to identify non-performing groups. Use your social media ad accounts to exclude these audiences. Reducing costs is just as important in maximizing ROI as increasing revenues so make sure to consider both. Audiences can be identified and excluded by location, gender, age, income, and several other attributes.

4) Use Existing Data For Future Campaigns: Once you’ve seen success (or failure) with various campaigns, groups, ads and other campaign attributes, save or delete specific target audiences. Keep the winners alive and dump the losers in an ongoing effort such that performance continues to improve over time. Another way to use data from existing campaigns is re-marketing or re-targeting. Re-targeting serves ads to prospects who have interacted with your website recently and it performs great when run in conjunction with other paid advertising. Use paid search, banner advertising or social media advertising to get them to your site once, then serve re-targeting ads (in an appropriate volume) to the same audience for the next 30 days. Re-marketing works especially well for products and services that have a long sales cycle. In addition to re-marketing, Look-alike audiences are a great way to generate more engagement on social networks from (you guessed it) prospects who share many of the same attributes of your targeted groups. You can build Lookalike audiences based on conversion data, customer/prospect lists, social media fans, engagement activity and/or pixel (cookie) data. Using lookalike audiences has two main benefits. First, it allows you to reach new people beyond your current customer list and fan base, and second, it ensures your ad is shown to people who are likely to engage with your brand.

We are recognized as a top social media marketing company on DesignRush. As we continue to grow it’s vital for us to continue utilizing the most effective marketing channels for our clients that will bring them results. Social media targeting has come a long way, and it’s just going to keep getting better. If you have any questions about social media marketing, or any other digital marketing tactics, visit AdEdge Digital Marketing or reach out to one of our experts directly.

How To Grow Your Business

Building a business can be one of the most exciting and fulfilling experiences of your professional life. But success doesn’t come easy. Ask any business owner and most will tell you that their greatest challenge is sales growth. Here are five digital marketing tactics that can help attract customers and grow sales.

5 Tips For Business Growth:

1) Talk With Your Customers: Whether in person, by phone, chat or social media, this basic first step helps you understand their questions, concerns and needs. Use this to create content in your marketing materials and website that takes away buyer barriers. By answer common questions, alleviating concerns and focusing on customer benefits, your products or services will be fully appealing.

2) Build Positive Reviews: Prospective customers who use search engines to find products or services that you offer are really performing a two part search. The first part is finding a set of companies who offers a solution to their need. The second part is finding who’s the best. Having great online reviews gives customers confidence that you’re the best choice. With great reviews, you’re more likely to get the click or call and you can actually shorten the sales process. Even if they don’t buy at the moment, good reviews solidify in customer’s minds that you’re among the best choices and that reputation can travel. To build positive online reviews, ask your happy customers to share their experience. There’s been increasing concern about fake reviews. For those who may be tempted about leaving fake reviews, it’s a bad idea. Fake reviews are considered a “grey hat” tactic, an unethical SEM practice that Google has not yet addressed. But once they do (and they will) it will become “black hat” and in an instant, companies posting fake reviews could find themselves banned from Google my Business/Google+ and/or listings removed from Google Maps.

3) Attend Networking Events: One of the best ways to grow your business is to meet prospective clients in person. Putting a face behind the company name, shaking someone’s hand and looking them in the eye is more impactful than any channel of digital marketing. After a business networking event, follow up with those you have met, put them on your email drip campaign (if they’ve agreed to get your emails) and set up one-one-one coffee meetings with those who hold the most promise, either as potential clients or partners.

4) Host Events: If meeting people at networking events is effective, hosting your own event is even more so. Running events effectively introduces you to all attendees rather than just the few that you meet as an attendee at a networking event. You can potentially reach more people with your emails and if you speak on a subject involving your business, it builds your perceived leadership status regarding the subject matter you speak about – the products or services you sell. Running an event also allows you to bring clients and prospects together in the same room. In this situation, it’s likely that your current clients will talk to your prospects and recommend you.

5) Measure Your Marketing Efforts: Knowing whats working and what isn’t is key to directing and optimizing your marketing efforts. Utilize Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager to evaluate the source, volume and quality of all website visits or have an expert do this for you. Simple reports will tell you where your websites are coming from and exactly which channel of marketing is driving the most and best leads and sales. For example, if you’re invested in social media and paid search campaigns, it’s important to evaluate the performance of each – not just simple volume of leads or sales. Match the cost and effort it is taking to generate a certain level of leads and sales. The results will allow you to modify your marketing strategy and refine your approach as you go. Growing a business can be one of the most difficult, most rewarding things you do. Testing and investing in marketing channels that perform is a process that will lead to growth.

If you have any questions about how AdEdge can help you market your business online, you can schedule a free consultation and we will create a solid marketing strategy to help you achieve your goals.

 

Digital Marketing Predictions for 2019

Here are our top five digital marketing predictions that will perform well over the next year and beyond. As technology and user behavior evolves, we expect that digital marketing will adapt and find more efficient ways of reaching targeted audiences.

1) Mobile: With more and more people using smartphones for everything in their lives, expect to see continued growth and performance of search engine and social media activity on mobile devices. Long story short, mobile marketing and mobile websites are going to become increasingly important in the new year. Mobile websites should be optimized and have user flows that allows visitors to easily navigate and quickly find exactly what they are looking for without much effort. User behavior studies on mobile devices indicates that people who cannot find what they are looking quickly will exit the site immediately. Digital advertising campaigns should be optimized to specifically target mobile devices. These campaigns should have ads designed to render appropriately on a wide range of devices, in addition to tablets and desktops which are obviously larger in size and resolution. Mobile searches have less area, leaving less room for the sponsored ads to appear above the fold. The tight space on mobile devices can make for a higher Cost Per Click. Campaigns are based on a supply and demand system, competing for space among the 2-4 positions available for paid search ads. Compare this to desktop and tablet searches where we typically see eight sponsored ad positions.

2) Content: Original content is becoming an increasingly important component of digital marketing, as traditional digital marketing methods are becoming less effective. Content marketing , a newer tactic in digital marketing defined as a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience – and ultimately, driving profitable customer action. To do this, start by creating original content for your website in the form of copy, images and videos relating to your business and the products and services you sell. Post links to your new content on blogs and social media to build and nurture an audience that is interested in your business offerings. Utilize best practices in paid and organic social media marketing to build a solid audience of prospective clients. Utilize ongoing communications to nurture leads and build the perception of your business as a leader – this is especially in products or services involving lengthy sales cycles. Studies show that quality, original content can increase sales and create a more loyal customer base.

3) Smart home assistants: As more smart home assistants such as Amazon Echo and Google Home are becoming increasingly popular, we anticipate that Google will introduce campaigns specifically for voice-assisted devices. These campaigns will be specifically for voice searches on Google and eventually Bing. Depending on screen formats, they could be dramatically different than the ads we see now on Google, possibly with images as well. Over the next few years, expect to see continued increases in the number of searches from voice. In the near future, Google Analytics will be able to track searches to identify if the source was type or voice. With voices searches, comes a new set of keywords so now is a good time to begin discussing plans for new voice-based campaigns.

4) Automated Intelligence Search Suggestions: The technology that drives smart home assistants is going to change how we optimize websites for Search Engine Optimization. We will start seeing more search activity for question and answer related searches. We are already starting to see this on Google with the new position zero. Position Zero is a box that appears at the top of Google with an answer to a question that was posed in the search. Google provides the most relevant answer to the question, typically an excerpt from a website. Instead of simply ranking for search terms, it will become increasingly important to optimize for answers to common questions involving your industry, products or services.

5) Video Marketing and Live Video: YouTube is still the #2 search engine in the world, and we do not except that to change anytime soon. Over 1.3 billion people use YouTube on a daily basis to watch over 5 billion videos on average. As more people continue to use YouTube those users spend more time viewing videos and searching for videos, it will become more important to showcase ads on YouTube for searches related to your business. With live video streaming now an option on Facebook and other social media platforms, early adapters will enjoy better performance of organic and sponsored videos. Live videos are now also an option and we expect to see better performance from live videos.

At AdEdge , we stay on top of emerging trends and technologies in digital marketing. We are constantly testing for new and efficient ways of reaching targeted audiences in with the ultimate goal of improving our clients’ performance. If you have any questions about these tactics or would like to discuss digital marketing channels that work well in your particular industry, please reach out to one of our digital marketing experts for a free consultation.

Inbound: A Driving Force in Digital Marketing

Whether you’re an experienced content marketer who is seasoned in all things inbound, or a rookie trying to figure out where to begin, the goal of inbound marketing remains the same: create value for your customers by solving a problem for them. So how can you do that through your content, and how can you give those customers a great experience when they come into contact with your brand? We’re here to give you some tips to take your inbound strategy to the next level and show you how to attract, convert, close, and delight your customers.

Inbound Marketing 101

1) Blogging: No matter what type of industry you are in, blogging is a great way to establish yourself as an industry leader and showcase your expertise. Use your website as a resource for customers who may have questions about your products or services, or broader questions about your industry. The more specific your blog posts are, the more likely it is that you’ll bring value to someone who is looking for a solution to a specific problem or an answer to a question. Google loves fresh content and while posting blogs on a regular basis can be time consuming, it will be well worth it. Over time, Google will reward you with higher ranking for frequent posts that are relevant to your business. Even if you go back to old posts and breathe some new life into them, Google will still reward you with higher ranking and it will benefit your customers as well. Think about new editions of a book. Times change and with an updated blog post, the content is fully relevant, fresh and back on top where customers can find it. So how often should you post to your blog? Once week is ideal but the key is to post as often as you have interesting, relevant content. If you’re just starting out, don’t force yourself to blog more frequently if the content is dull or thin. Shoot for between one and four times per month. In inbound marketing, content is king, so the more content you post over time the better.

2) Social Media is another important tool for any inbound marketer. If you spend a good amount of time posting great content on your blog, don’t you want to share it with the world and get more people to see it? The best way to get more visitors to your blog posts is by leveraging social media to tease them with a piece of your blog content. Creating a social media plan that works for you and using a calendar to update your posts is a great way to manage the effort in a way that will help you stick to the plan and gain traction. Social media is just like blogging, if you post frequently with interesting, relevant, interesting content, your will gain fans and friends, encourage engagement, build your leadership position and attract a regular source of website visitors.

3) Forms: You’ve probably seen pop-up forms on certain websites. In fact, if you’ve been to adedgemarketing.com, you probably saw one there too. Why? Because they work. Pop ups are a great way to encourage interaction with your customers and let them know about special promotions you may have or inform them about an event that is coming up. Forms are most commonly used to capture lead information like name, email and phone number of the person who is requesting information about your products or service. Another benefit of forms is, when used in conjunction with SEM, they give you an opportunity to “grab” the lead before they hit the [back] button to check out other resources. If you post valuable content frequently, use forms to encourage prospects to sign up for your newsletter or subscribe to your YouTube channel. Once you’ve got a curious prospect on your site, use your content to share your unique selling proposition and show them that you’re the best in your industry.

4) Landing pages: This is probably the most overlooked part of the process when it comes to inbound marketing. Where you send your visitors can either make or break their experience on your website. Where they land on your website is going to be their all important “first impression”. If you want to impress and keep them on your website, provide value and make it easy. It’s all about relevance. Let’s take real estate for example. Prospects who come to your website from a social media post about new homes for sale should be directed to a page about new homes for sale, not listing homes for sale, and not finding a realtor. Directing visitors to relevant landing pages on your website will help engage and close customers.

5) Newsletters: Once you’ve created a substantial list of prospects or clients/customers, a great way to keep in touch with them is through monthly or even weekly newsletters. A happy customer is a loyal customer, so whether it’s through a newsletter, annual event, or featuring them on social media posts, it’s important to keep in contact and delight those already established customers. With the right tactics and the right content, inbound marketing will attract customers to you naturally without any old-school sales or advertising techniques.

If you have any questions about inbound marketing or need help with strategy or building a plan, schedule a call with one of our experts today.

Target LinkedIn Users on the Bing Ads Network

Bing Ads is expanding to reach LinkedIn users for searches on Bing, MSN and Yahoo with their sponsored ads. Targeting for Search on the Bing Network and owned/operated sites will start in January 2019 to all accounts serving the United States. There are many segments on LinkedIn that are available for targeting. The latest figures for LinkedIn include 145 industries, 80,000 companies and 26 job functions. Microsoft bought LinkedIn for $26 billion in 2016, so this is not surprising that the two ad networks would share resources at some point. LinkedIn currently has over 575 million users, and Microsoft wants to take advantage of user insights and profile data to increase revenue for Bing Ads.

The ability to target LinkedIn audiences for search engines will only be available for Bing Ads, not Google’s Ad Network. Since Microsoft and Google are competitors, it’s unlikely that Google will ever be able to target LinkedIn users. This gives the Bing Ads Network a new advantage over Google Ads, who currently controls about two thirds of the search engine market. The new targeting will allow bid modifiers that can be set for the specific LinkedIn profile targeting, for example, increase bids by 15 percent to reach United Health Care employees when searching on Bing, MSN or Yahoo. This is going to be an excellent tactic to utilize for advertising to B2B audiences, a group that can be very difficult to target directly online. This will not only help B2B campaigns but B2C as well, especially if the campaign can benefit from targeting people who work for a specific company or in a specific industry. After all, the campaign will be primary targeting people who search for a specific keyword term. LinkedIn’s targeting will allow campaigns to reduce wasted clicks on irrelevant searches and help narrow the audience to specific targets. These capabilities can be combined with targeting by age group, gender, location and device to put ads in front of the most relevant audience to achieve the campaign goals. Campaigns and ad groups can have unique messages for LinkedIn targeting only, compared to a traditional search campaign targeted only by keyword.

AdEdge Digital Marketing was the first company in Connecticut to earn advanced certifications in both Google Ads and Bing Advertising. If you have any questions about this new tactic, or questions or concerns about your current digital marketing strategy in general, please feel free to reach out to us for a free consultation or digital marketing evaluation.

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Happy New Year!

Six Tips For An Effective Content Marketing Strategy

Have you ever heard the expression, “Content is King”? In the marketing world, it’s equally important for mass media as it is for digital marketing. Whatever the medium or industry, content provides for the ideal way to connect with people by adding value, expertise or entertainment. In an online environment that is flooded with information, it’s easy to get lost in the noise, even if you are a top tier company who does amazing work in your industry. The key to content marketing is to make your website, blog, podcast or YouTube channel a resource for your targeted clients and customers. So how can you produce content that brings your customers to you?

Here are six tips to help you create a great content marketing strategy

1) Create Value: The first step is to create value for your target audience. One way to do this is by answering questions that you know your customers want answers to. Finding solutions to pain-points for businesses/individuals is a great way to bring value to them. One simple example that you’ve probably found yourself doing at some point is looking up a how-to video on YouTube. By creating a simple how-to video, some YouTubers have generated millions of views, simply because they are offering a quick solution to their audience’s question. Another way value can be created is through blogging. Most travel bloggers share their experiences with their audience through photos, videos and writing on their blog. Avid travelers are naturally drawn to this hub of content and interested in learning about new places the travelers have been. Although these are simple examples, the concept of creating value for a target audience is consistent in both situations.

2) Use Social Media: Once you’ve found a way to create value for your target audience, how should your share it with the world? The quickest way to do so is through social media. By sharing brief pieces of your content, whether its video, a great photo, or an announcement of a new blog post, you will be able to link those posts back to your page where the real value is. Social media is a great way to generate awareness of your brand and to increase your reach so you can connect with more and more people as you grow.

3) Put Your Expertise On Display: It’s obvious that in order to create value, you need to be great at what you do. Whether it’s Digital Marketing, Finance, Real Estate, Education, Law or whatever your business is, you need to showcase your expertise and provide value. Just make sure you’re an expert in the subject matter you’re writing about and if you’re not, get help from a content professional.

4) Use Video: This can’t be stressed enough. New studies show that in 2019, 80% of online traffic will be through video. So why is video so much more effective than everything else? For starters, it’s more entertaining, it provides for more detail, more information and it helps customers put a face to your brand. Understanding who you’re going to be working with or who you’re taking advice from is a huge part of building a relationship for your audience. By creating personalized videos and talking to your audience, you are developing trust and taking ownership of the content you are putting out there. If you haven’t used video in the past, give it a shot. You can do a video series, testimonials from clients, or post a clip from an industry event you attended. A short video can go a long way.

5) Create High Quality Content: Not only does your content have to be valuable, professional and engaging, but it also has to be done right. This doesn’t mean investing in an expensive camera or photographer. It means that each piece of content you produce has to meet your standard of work. In other words you need to practice what you preach. If you’re an amazing graphic designer, the graphics in your content better be outstanding; or if you’re a professional copywriter, the content you write better be extremely engaging; or in our case, if you’re a digital marketing company, make sure to create content on a regular basis regarding top trends in our industry. (Hint, Hint, content marketing is a top trend that’s growing!) So whatever high quality content translates to in your industry, make it the standard to hold yourself to with any content you put out there.

6) Be Consistent: It’s easy to say you are going to do all of these things, but what it comes down to is doing them consistently and being patient. Are you willing to invest your time to produce great blog posts? Are you ready to step in front of a camera and create a video series? Will you put in the effort to create a social media calendar and stick to it on a consistent basis? We get it, not everyone has the time to do this when they are focusing on their business. However, investing in a content marketing strategy can be extremely beneficial if done correctly.

By following these six tips consistently, you will see how much content marketing can help your business. Whether you’re trying to establish yourself as an industry leader or growing your business through a new source of leads, the results are waiting. If you have any questions about content marketing, or would like to learn about other effective digital marketing tactics, please sign up for our monthly newsletter or schedule a call with one of our experts for a free consultation.

Tech Talk: How Costly Is That Free Email Service Provider You’re Using?

By: Andrea Wagner, President, Wagner Web Designs, Inc.

Examples of free email services are Yahoo!, Gmail, Hotmail, sbcglobal.net, etc. In the event of a problem with your account, there is NO support or customer service for free accounts. (The last line of the troubleshooting guide states “ If these steps have not resolved the issue, feel free to set up a new email account.”) Lost data is lost permanently, and there is no one to turn to for help.

Have you ever wondered how these companies are able to offer you a free email account? Once you sign up and begin sending and receiving email messages, you have become a target in the company’s sales and marketing sights, sharing your interests, your connections, your customers’ information, and even what your personal finances look like. Computer programs search and catalog every message you send, and every message you receive (no matter where the incoming messages originate), picking out words and phrases which are then used in targeted ad campaigns. You can see the result in the ads which appear on the side of the email screen, and are sometimes embedded within your email messages themselves.

Your Company Image – Using a free email service in place of your company domain name can raise a red flag to consumers, resulting in them deleting your email messages without reading them, or even reporting them as spam. This can stall your small business’ growth and hurt your reputation.

Another Domain Name Scam  – Many of my customers have been sending me this notice they receive via email.

“Dear Domain owner,

Don’t miss out on this offer which includes search engine submissions for yourdomain.com…” It appears to be an invoice for renewing their domain name. But keep reading! “There is no obligation to pay for this order unless you complete your payment by xx/xx/xx. Our services provide submission and search engine ranking for domain owners. Failure to complete your search engine registration may result in the cancellation of this order (making it difficult for your customers to locate you using search engines on the web). You are under no obligation to pay the amount stated above unless you accept this offer.”

This is an advertisement made to look like an invoice. Many customers pay it out of fear of losing their domain. Just ignore. And finally, if you receive an invoice that you don’t expect from someone you don’t know, delete it!

Andrea is president of Wagner Web Designs, Inc, specializing in optimized small business websites. Have a question? Feel free to contact: (914) 245 2626.