Did you know that there are 30.2 million small businesses in the U.S. alone?

This number is only likely to increase in the coming years.

As a small business owner, you may struggle to get the word out about your company in such a competitive field. What’s more, you may simply lack the financial resources needed to launch massive advertising campaigns.

Luckily, there are plenty of tools at your disposal for boosting your organic visibility. Small business SEO services, in particular, can get you noticed without breaking the bank!

Keep reading to learn more about SEO services and how they can help your business today. Whether you want to learn and implement on your own, or invest in small business SEO packages, this article will get you started in the right direction.

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Google processes over 40,000 searches every single second. This equates to over 3.5 billion queries a day!

Businesses everywhere can take advantage of this incredible search traffic with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is a digital marketing strategy that can improve a business’s visibility.

Think about a basic Google search. A user types a keyword into Google that best approximates what they’re looking for.

Examples include “effective remedies for sunburn” or “best restaurants in London.”

Google then ranks websites based off of which ones best match these searches. The better the match, the higher the ranking.

For this reason, most users will stick to the first page of Google results when searching. They will most likely click on one of the top ten listings.

What does this mean? If your web content is appearing in the second or third page of search results, you’re missing out on potential traffic. What’s more, you could be missing out on brand visibility–period.

Enter SEO. This digital marketing tool is available to anyone with a website! And it is ultimately designed to boost your organic visibility by optimizing your content for keywords your customers are likely to enter into Google.

What is Organic Visibility?

Organic visibility refers to how “visible” you are as a brand.

In general, the more visible you are, the better. More customers will notice your brand and–hopefully!–walk through your doors or engage your website to make a purchase.

In fact, that’s what marketing is all about. Most advertising campaigns are designed to get the word out about your brand.

Organic visibility, however, is the best kind of visibility. “Organic” in the marketing world refers to something that happens naturally. Organic searches refer to Google searches that lead a visitor to your site.

This has a lot to do with inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is all about letting the customer come to you (rather than the other way around). It can be far more powerful than outbound marketing, and far less taxing!

SEO is all about helping you achieve that organic visibility. When your content is optimized for the right keywords, it will surface at the top of search results, and your organic “click-through rate” (how many people click on your link as they scroll through search results) will rise.

The higher your click-through rate, the greater your visibility. This can only lead to more conversions, sales, and long-term customers.

What Are SEO Services?

It’s possible to implement SEO on your own or with the help of professionals. In fact, you can optimize your content for search terms without spending a penny.

If you are interested in tackling SEO yourself, we recommend beginning with Google’s SEO Starter Guide.

Even if you eventually invest in SEO services, it’s important to know the rules of the game. SEO involves so much more than cramming some great keywords into your content!

SEO services research, implement, and track SEO campaigns for small businesses. Instead of you having to do all of that work, the experts handle it for you. Many businesses have discovered the value of organic SEO, so while you can get started on your own if you lack the budget, over time the SEO grind gets taxing and it makes sense to bring in the pros.

Every SEO package varies, but small business SEO services focus specifically on finding lucrative keyword opportunities that are attainable with your website and your budget.

Marketing professionals will help you get there through content marketing, monthly reporting, keyword optimization, and effective link-building.

The Financial Benefit of SEO Services

What are the benefits of SEO services as opposed to DIY SEO campaigns? More importantly, how can agency SEO services help budget-conscious small businesses?

As a small business owner, you may be wary of outsourcing anything beyond the essentials. This is totally understandable, especially if you are in the first few years of your business.

After all, most small businesses start out at a mere $3,000 to $5,000. The majority of entrepreneurs seek outside financing, such as business loans, to get things going.

Marketing’s ultimate aim is to “get things going,” though–by getting you noticed! For this reason, investing in professional advertising services may be exactly what you need to get off the ground.

Here are some other reasons why SEO services may be what you need.

The Many Elements of Winning SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) sounds simple at first glance. How complicated could it be?

Sure, SEO involves playing a bit of a matching game. Marketers choose search terms and knit these into existing content.

But it is so much more than this! If the only rule for SEO involved keyword integration, Google would have no way to assess authority and rank pages appropriately.

Google takes into consideration plenty of other factors when assigning rankings. For example, it looks very, very closely at content quality.

After all, Google has to maintain its own reputation as a search engine. If it fails to deliver good matches for searches, users will navigate elsewhere!

In its guidelines to a Google-friendly site, Google emphasizes the value of high-quality content. It urges marketers to give searchers the information they’re looking for. This content should be well-written and authoritative. It should not be misleading in any way.

Yes, it should be optimized appropriately for relevant keywords. But this is only part of the SEO pie.

Google also inspects link quality and number, especially the number of links to your site found on other sites. These “backlinks” can be valuable for assessing your domain’s authority and its likelihood of ranking highly.

If your site loads too slowly, this could also hurt your Google ranking. Google prioritizes fast-loading, mobile-friendly sites.

If you are new to marketing and SEO, all of these factors can be hard to keep track of! When you invest in SEO services, you entrust your campaign to experts well-versed in everything that influences rankings. What’s more, you can rest assured that they will be optimizing everything to ensure your organic visibility.

SEO Takes Time–And Effort!

SEO is a time-consuming, ongoing digital marketing process. It is not something you do in a day. Nor is it something that can be implemented and then left to its own devices.

In fact, the best SEO campaigns come from solid industry research. Professional SEO marketers will spend time analyzing your target market and industry niche. They will perform intensive keyword research to come up with the exact search terms your clients are likely to type into Google.

Then, they will optimize your content accordingly. Sometimes this involves fresh web design and actual content development. Some SEO services will incorporate link-building as well.

Once a campaign is launched, marketers will track it constantly, identifying areas for improvement and generating monthly reports.

As a small business owner, you’ve got enough on your plate as it is. Plus, your time is money. The more time you have to devote to SEO, the fewer dollars in your pocket.

SEO services can actually save you money by generating an effective campaign the first time–without costing you your time. The return on your investment will always be higher, especially if you are not well-versed in SEO already.

Like any relationship, building a strong relationship between your website and Google takes time. In the long run though, having a steady stream of organic leads for your business is an undeniable asset that leads to massive growth.

Results Happen Fast When You Outsource

Our customers have said it time and again. Outsourcing SEO generates fast, effective results. With SEO services, small businesses can get onto the first page of Google within a matter of months.

Tackling SEO on your own, however, can have variable results. It may take longer to boost those rankings organically without the aid of professionals.

Plus, it can be hard to identify areas for improvement if you don’t know what to track.

Don’t Get a Google Penalty

Yes, it is possible to make an SEO misstep. If you violate any of Google’s SEO rules, you are at risk of a penalty. Google penalties can tank your organic visibility. They can also take a long time to recover from.

DIY SEO marketers are at greater risk of these penalties than professionals. When you outsource, you eliminate this risk.

Any organic visibility acquired through SEO services you get to keep. End of story.

Final Thoughts: Small Business SEO Services

SEO can be a powerful tool for small businesses everywhere. Because it is a form of digital marketing, it is particularly ideal for budget-conscious businesses.

Small business SEO services can be especially valuable for boosting organic visibility. These are designed to get your brand on the first page of Google so that you can enjoy greater traffic, conversions, and sales!

While businesses do have to invest in SEO services, this investment is likely to save money in the long run. Every SEO campaign is time-intensive and unique and requires professional attention.

Are you ready to boost your visibility now? Start a conversation with us to learn more!

The post Small Business SEO Services: Improving Rankings on a Budget appeared first on Midas Marketing.

Working with SEO Analyst: Introduction

Search engine optimization is something that is well-known to web specialists but just breaking the into popular consciousness. The need to have a bonafide SEO analyst on your team is growing year over year. People are starting to take note of the power that SEO has, and for good reason.

For whatever reason, most businesses haven’t yet taken the time to optimize their websites for search engines. In fact, very few small businesses are investing in SEO.

We’ll go into some detail about why that is a mistake, in addition to why it may be good for you that your competition is slacking. Most importantly, though, we’re looking to show you why an SEO analyst is a good investment for your business.

Let’s get to it.

If You Don’t Know SEO…

An integral part of understanding the value of an SEO specialist is knowing precisely what search engine optimization is. It’s different than marketing, although the two are often confused.

It’s a fairly straightforward idea with a lot of ins and outs. It gets more complicated as you look closer, but the fact of the matter is that you have to look closer in order to see results.

So, here’s the basic stuff:

How the Search Engine Operates

Search engines are so intertwined with the web that most people have only experienced the internet through the use of sites like Google or Bing. That’s because these sites tend to provide us with all of the information that is immediately relevant to us.

At the same time, the data archived in search engines is just that: archived. Search engines scour the web in search for sites that they haven’t yet indexed. They do this with the use of bots called “spiders” or “crawlers.”

These can be likened to little messengers that bounce from site to site through links, documenting relevant information so that it can be searched at the front end of the search engine. These bots make note of a number of things.

Their first mission is to index the site and make note of the content. Having the content noted allows the engine to pull up sites based on the keywords that a page has. The second mission of the bot is to rank the pages based on over 200 factors that determine where the site will land when it’s searched.

That’s a basic overview of how Google indexes all of its 30 trillion pages. Surprisingly, that is less than 1 percent of the internet.

Where Search Engine Optimization Comes in

Search engines use algorithms to determine which sites will be most relevant to the keywords that a user searches with. Imagine it: whenever a person makes one Google search, their keywords are run against 30 trillion websites. Somehow, the site always pulls up pages that are pretty much exactly what we wanted.

This means a couple of things. First, the algorithm Google uses is sophisticated. Second, because there’s a smart algorithm, we have the opportunity to use it to our advantage.

How Sophisticated Is the Algorithm?

The whole process starts with looking at the words in the search. The system looks at your spelling to check for possible errors, uses language models to cross-reference synonyms, and get an understanding of what you’re looking to find.

This is essential because many people will search for the same thing but use different language to do it. Further, the system determines how specific of results you’d like based on language cues.

Once they’ve got a basic idea of what you want, search engines run through the pages that could be relevant. The keywords in the search are referenced against other pages that contain those words, deciding which of those sites has the keywords in the most significant places.

The titles and headings of pages are common spots for essential keywords. This process on the search-end of things is only possible because the search engine has already ranked the usefulness of pages.

How An SEO Analyst Helps You Use the Algorithm to Your Advantage

The back end of the search engine, the ranking process, is based on hundreds of factors. We know of a number of those factors, but it’s in Google’s best interest to keep their cards close to their chest.

If everyone knew precisely how the algorithm worked, irrelevant sites could optimize to reach the top of searches without being useful to users. If that happened to a search engine, that engine would cease to be useful.

Sites like Google want to remain the most useful so as not to lose their users to other search engines. As a result, we have to guess at some of the finer points of search engine optimization.

There are some general areas that we know the ranking factors fall into, though. Things like freshness, keyword relevance, user experience, reviews, backlinking, and quality are all taken into account. It’s likely that each of those terms has subcategories of ranking within them.

Going with what we know, SEO analysts dig into those categories and fine-tune them to the needs of the search engine.

The Work of Optimization

Each area that requires optimization is a challenge in itself. That said, the difficulty of ranking well is dependent on your competition.

If your local competition has entirely failed to optimize, you’ll have to do a lot less work than you would if your neighbors were spending all their time on fine-tuning their sites.

People are bound to catch on, though, and it’s important to have a well-optimized site, especially for local searches. Most people pull out their phones and search “tacos near me” when they’re hungry for tacos.

They search “gas station near me” when they’re out of town and need to find gas. They search “flower shop near me” when they forgot their partner’s birthday.

That’s the way of the world now. Word of mouth and print advertising are slightly effective, but the primary visibility of our time comes when you rank within the top three results on a search engine. In order to get to that coveted spot, you have to work on the following things:

1. Creating Quality Content

It’s essential that your site produces web pages on a regular basis. The ranking your site gets will be dependent on the “freshness” of your content. This is why you don’t normally see any posts in SERPS (search engine results pages) that were created before 2013.

The fresher the better. While you’re creating fresh content, you need to make sure that it’s actually relevant to what users want. This requires that you base content off of keyword research.

2. Keyword Optimization and Research

Trends in what users are searching should inform the content that you’re creating. When you make blog posts that answer common user questions, you can be sure that there will be users to look at your site.

This means that you should do research to find trends in keywords and use those specific words and phrases to optimize your content. Optimizing your content for keywords typically means placing one in the introduction, the header, a few in the body of the content, and the conclusion.

It’s important that the placement of these terms is natural, but it’s generally good to have a few keywords scattered throughout the writing.

3. Links

The more connected a page is, the more relevant it seems to Google. It’s important to link out to different sites, but it’s far more important to have sites link to you.

The process of accumulating links to your site is called “backlinking.” This means that you reach out to other websites that might have a connection to some of your content.

Once your site picks up enough steam, you’ll find that sites should link to you without you asking them to. In fact, you might be the site that they ask for backlinks if you’re popular enough.

4. Reviews

Search engines also value customer reviews and customer experience very highly. Achieving positive reviews starts with you and your physical business, of course.

There is, however, a wealth of options for incentivizing customers to give reviews.

Hiring an SEO Analyst

The information above might seem a little daunting. To be honest, we’ve only scratched the surface. Each of the general SEO categories listed above requires significant amounts of work and a lot of attention to detail.

Handling the work of optimizing your site correctly could take up dozens of hours a week. It’s almost as if optimization should be a job of its own.

That’s why SEO analysts exist. These are people who are skilled in understanding the nature of the search engine and how sites can tailor themselves to rank well. The investment of hiring someone to work on your site is an extremely valuable one.

Especially in a time of ‘near me’ searches and excessive reliance on search engines, having your site rise the ranks and reach the top will result in increased sales.

Think You Need Some Help?

It’s a good idea to think about working with an SEO analyst. It’s also smart to take a peek at your site and see if there are any longstanding issues with it.

If you’re interested in generating a presence online and improving sales, contact us to learn more about what you can do.

The post Working with an SEO Analyst to Improve Your Organic Visibility appeared first on Midas Marketing.

Choosing a Portland SEO Expert: Introduction

The last time you needed to build or redesign the website for your Oregon-based business, did you hire a company to get the job done right? If you answered “yes,” that’s great!

You saved time letting professionals do what they do so you could focus on what’s important to you: managing and growing your business.

You may have taken the same approach for your SEO, social media, and other online marketing components. If you didn’t, you have probably considered it more heavily by now, as online marketing strategies and execution are often more than meets the eye.

SEO is much more than identifying a few keywords your customers are using, and implementing them into your website. Google has tons of signals they use to determine page rankings.

And why do we care what Google thinks? Because they handle 92% of the search queries throughout the world. What they say (and how they rank pages!) matters.

Good news Oregonians – is it’s not too late. Hiring a local Portland SEO expert will get your website and organic search marketing strategy on track. You just need to make sure you work with an expert or team of experts who are capable, affordable, and fun to work with (this is Portland after all).

Read on for a few reasons it pays to hire in Portland, as well as the key components that define and drive a winning SEO campaign!

Why Hire a Portland SEO Expert?

Before we get into the most important elements of SEO, let’s talk about why you specifically want an SEO company from Portland.

You’ve heard of Silicon Valley. That’s the area of California that houses some big names in the tech game.

Well, have you heard of Silicon Forest? That’s the name given to the Portland metro area because of its own surge as a tech capital. In fact, Forbes named Portland the best place in the U.S. for businesses and careers.

Portland is a city chock-full of bright, talented, and creative people looking to make their way in the industry. Because of the high salaries folks in Silicon Valley demand, companies look to California’s northern neighbor for their workforce.

In other words, startups and other growing businesses are choosing Portland to lay down their roots. One, because of the talent in the area and two, economically it’s a slam dunk.

Convinced that Portland is where you need to look for your SEO expert? Now, let’s discuss the Google ranking factors.

What Is Google Ranking For?

Since the advent of the Internet, keywords have been an integral part of how search engines work. But are they as important as they were a decade ago?

After all, Google changes their algorithm what seems like every month. Can keywords still be as important as they once were? In a nutshell, yes. They’re just important in a different way.

So, where do keywords fit in Google’s grand scheme of things? And what else should a company focus on in search engine optimization ranking?

Rumors have swirled for more than a decade that Google uses 200 signals to rank sites. But, don’t get stuck on that number. It’s not possible to focus on every single rumored factor.

What you can focus on are the most important signals. Take a look at 10 factors that determine Google SEO ranking the most…

1. Crawlable and Indexable

Your site must use a crawlable, indexable URL. This means that when Google’s spiderbots go to work, they can find and understand your page.

They do this by crawling and indexing.

In simple terms, crawling is how Google discovers pages. It’s not a paid service, it’s Google’s bots searching and scanning over and over.

You can improve this in two ways. The first is to submit a request for Google to re-crawl your page. The second is by getting your page linked from another site Google already knows.

We’ll get to that a little later.

Indexing is what Google does after it finds your site. The short version is Google tries to understand what’s going on on your page.

It analyzes and catalogs text, images, videos, etc. It stores what it finds in its index. This is a fancy term for saying “Google’s massive database.”

You can improve both by having smart, simple URLs. You do this with subdirectories.

For example, say your company sells coffee. You have a blog that covers beans, brewing, and flavors. You’ll want each post to fall into one of those subcategories.

Your URLs will look like: https://www.yourcoffeesite.com/beans/where-beans-come-from. This makes it easier for Google to crawl and index you. Google will understand how your website relates to the various components of your URL structure.

2. Keywords: Research and Intent

Your site should solve a problem. But, what problem is it solving? That’s where keyword research and intent comes in.

Many years ago, keyword stuffing was a thing. People would jam the keyword “coffee” as many times as they could on their sites and in their blogs.

That’s because Google used to care about how many times a site used a particular keyword. Now, they care much more about the intent of the keyword.

This means you need to have a primary keyword (or keyphrase) along with a set of related keywords. These are secondary keywords. They’re words that are similar or even synonyms to the primary keyword.

The point is no matter if someone searches for coffee, java, joe — they are more likely to find your site than they were in the past (although proper keyword focus and emphasis is still important).

You can use a keyword finder to this, or you can do it yourself. All you need is a little SERP investigating!

Open up Google, start a search for words related to your business. Does a drop-down appear with a bunch of already finished queries?

That’s Google’s search suggest drop down list. It’s pretty much exactly how it sounds. Google uses its algorithm to suggest the most popular searches for a particular keyword.

They’re assisting you with looking for relevant intent. Go ahead and check it out and see what it suggests is relevant for your targeted keyword. It may give you some fun ideas for blog posts, too.

3. Domain Security

Domain security is becoming more and more important these days. How do you get it? By using HTTPS in front of your URL.

HTTP stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol. This is the process of transferring your site’s information to a viewer’s browser.

HTTPS is HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure. This tells Google it’s safe to index this information.

All you need to do to secure your domain is get an SSL certificate. If you have a WordPress site — and chances are pretty good you do — it’s free and easy to do.

If you’re part of the 40-50% of the Internet that doesn’t use WordPress, you may have to pay for yours. Ask the company that built your site about getting an SSL certificate if you’re unsure.

4. Build Relevant Backlinks

We mentioned having your page linked from another site is important for SEO. It’s even more important that you’re getting linked from pages Google already knows.

Why?

Even though you’re not getting all your traffic from these referrals, it tells Google you’re trustworthy. Trust is a key component in Google’s algorithm.

This also makes up a big part of the difference between white hat vs. black hat SEO. Black hat focuses on aggressive strategies to get you ranked, attempting to take advantages of the non-human elements of the search algorithm. It’s keyword stuffing, invisible keywords, and using backlinks that are irrelevant, among many other things.

White hat SEO uses trustworthy link building techniques. They use appropriate keywords, site structure, and content to generate traffic.

Black hat may be an easy way to get SEO results but it’s also an easy way to get yourself banned, too. Both Google and Bing have denounced using these practices in their webmaster guidelines.

5. Topic Authority

This is an easy one. The more you post on a topic, the higher each post will rank over time.

So, if you have a coffee shop, go ahead and blog about beans and flavors. Link internally to relevant service pages on your site to build a healthy link structure.

Don’t blog about irrelevant or unnecessary topics. This isn’t doing anything to help your authority.

6. Content

If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a million times by now. Content is king.

But not only the content itself, how you structure it. Yes, you must have smart, readable content. But you have to structure it in a way that Google likes.

For instance, Google considers “good content structure” blogs that include:

• Headers
• Subheaders
• Bulleted lists
• Numbered lists
• Supported images
• Cited information
• Short, readable paragraphs

All these points keep readers engaged. Google likes engagement.

7. Loading Speed

Loading speed is all about user experience. Google’s pretty big on UX, too.

If your site takes forever to load, people just give up – if Google hasn’t already.

You know those “timeout” errors you get when you try to load a webpage? If Google deems it takes too long it basically tells you to move on.

But, loading speed is even more important as you’re about to see…

A good Portland SEO expert will help you optimize your website for high speed and performance.

8. Mobile-Friendliness

Mobile-friendliness is becoming more important year over year for SEO. There are several reasons having a site optimized for mobile use is important for SEO.

Here are the two biggest: use and speed.

More than 53% of all searches are now done on a smartphone. That means the UX of your mobile site must be at the top of its game.

But, 53% of users will give up on a page if it takes longer than three seconds to load. Ouch.

If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, make it mobile-friendly. Yesterday.

9. Responsive Web Design

Google also rewards websites who constructed their site through use of responsive web design services. In a way, this piggybacks off of having a site optimized for mobile use. But, the two are actually quite different.

“Responsive design” describes web development done in a way that considers which device the site is getting viewed on. In other words, mobile devices, tablets, laptops, and large screens — all at once. Regardless of what device someone uses to view your site, your site automatically adjusts to fit their screen.

This is important because it focuses heavily on UX. Since Google seems to be moving more and more toward actual human experience, this could be an even bigger factor in years ahead.

10. Meta Tags

You might hear that Google doesn’t care about meta tags anymore. While certain meta tags have become less useful for SEO (as engines have gotten better at figuring out what a page is about by its content), other meta information is still crucial.

They may often get forgotten but they’re still an important part of your SEO. Make sure you’re filling in:

• Title tag
• Image alt text
• Meta description

The meta description is the snippet that appears in SERPs. It should be persuasive, the right character length, and include your focus keyword(s).

Ready to Hire a Portland SEO Expert?

Hiring a Portland SEO expert gives you an advantage over your competition. While they’re struggling to figure out what SEO is, you’ll reap the rewards of having a professional handle it for you as your climb your way to page 1.

Are you ready to get the best and brightest to optimize your site and turn you into a rock star? Great! Click here to get started and set up your free consultation.

The post Choosing the Right Portland SEO Expert for Your Oregon Business appeared first on Midas Marketing.

By now you probably have figured out if you want to improve awareness around your brand, you will need to have a social media presence. Whether you have a brick and mortar business or an e-commerce site, there is a lot of competition out there, and social media offers a great way to differentiate and establish your own brand identity.

Small business owners have a lot to deal with, and social media may be the last thing on their list–if it is on there at all. Employees can contribute by making a post here and there, sharing a post or asking friends to follow your business pages. But will this be enough to grow your online presence?

If you simply don’t have the time or the skills to properly promote your business via social media, you may want to consider looking into hiring a company that specializes in social media management. But how do you do that?

Read on to learn more about how to pick the right social media packages for your business!

1. Evaluate Your Business Needs

Consultations for social media management packages need to come with an evaluation of your business to determine your needs. Not every social media platform is right for every business. Having a business page on a platform that does not appeal to your target audience is a waste of time and resources.

A quality social media manager will be familiar with all primary platforms. Too often people specialize in Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest, without having the understand of how and when to pursue each platform. It is important that your social media team is able to gauge the social media habits of your current customer base.

2. Are There Multi-Level Platforms for Social Media Packages?

Pricing is always at the forefront of any business transaction. Don’t let the fear of how much it will cost scare you. Hiring someone to handle your business social media marketing may not cost as much as you think.

Having the flexibility to tailor your package to the specific needs of your business is important. Social media marketing is not a one size fits all situation. You want to ensure that you are not paying for services you do not need.

The option to choose which platforms, posting frequency and more is key to choosing the right social media strategy. There will also be specific tasks that should be considered to get the best bang for your buck.

Social media management packages should also come with the option to pick and choose the services you want to create the experience you desire.

3. Posting, Sharing, and Interaction

The basis of social media marketing services is to take the brunt of social media interactions from the plate of business owners. When looking to outsource these services it is necessary to be clear on your expectations.

As mentioned, outlining posting frequency and strategy is key. Make sure you this is well defined before engaging with any social media management company.

When it comes to interactions, you will need to be extremely clear as to what this should look like. Interactions include liking a comment, responding to a comment and answering specific questions.

The person running your accounts needs to be personable to facilitate engagement with your audience.

Make sure your social media package includes campaign monitoring and engagement, unless you would prefer to manage that yourself.

4. Customer Service

More and more we are seeing consumers turn to social media pages in search of answers to their questions or to find a solution to a problem. Part of this surge is the integration of new interactive capabilities for social media business channels.

Will you want the social media management provider to offer customer service duties or will these questions or posts be directed to someone on your staff?

It is one thing for someone to send a direct message to a company and have someone internally monitor the messages and respond to the customer. It is a different ballgame when people are posting negative reviews or posing questions in the comments field.

Knowing how these will be handled ahead of time is crucial to your business online presence. It also allows you to have prepared responses available.

5. Analytics

Any social media site that offers business platforms most likely has some form of analytics and insights reporting. It is important to know if the person handling your social media can retrieve the data and decipher the information.

You will want someone who can understand what the numbers mean and how to use it to plan for future marketing strategies. It is also a good thing for you to understand it as well. This way you know if the work being done is useful.

Analytics can tell you a lot about your social media presence on particular sites. Having Google Analytics will be a greater measurement of whether the strategy is driving traffic back to your company website or crossing over to other platforms. For example, are users sharing your Facebook content on Twitter and vice versa?

Your analytics will also be able to narrow down the demographics of your users and the range of your audience.

6. SEO Services

Do social media marketing services packages include SEO services? If not, they should. A big part of having social media channels is to drive traffic back to your website for lead conversion.

If the ultimate goal isn’t to close the deal on your product or service, then you should be questioning why you’re spending the money.

SEO services and social media marketing are able to intertwine to the power of your website. The company you use should understand SEO in addition to being social media experts.

They should understand that keywords are at the heart of all algorithms. Certain topics will always garner organic traffic, and people are drawn to photos and images. All of this should be considered as part of a strong social media marketing strategy.

A social media marketing firm may not include SEO within their social media packages, but they may offer SEO services. Don’t be afraid to ask about multiple service discounts.

7. Social Media Ads

The ability to promote your business, products or services is vital to the success of your social media presence as a business. Unless you are a big brand with name recognition, you will need a little help in the beginning.

Social ads are often included as part of a good marketing plan, so make sure you discuss this as part of your social media marketing package. You also will want to discuss who will be responsible for creating the ads and developing the rules for when and how they will run.

Payments for ads are drawn from a banking method associated with the social media account. Setting a monthly budget will be wise.

Also understand, each social media platform comes with its own set up, pricing, analytics and guidelines. The secret to successful social media ads is to know what you’re doing or hire someone who does. If not, you can waste a lot of money in a hurry by purchasing ads.

8. Social Media Content Creation

By now you know there is a lot to consider when shopping for social media marketing services packages. But it doesn’t stop with the previous tips. If hiring a social media specialist to manage your channels, you have to be mindful of the content that will be going out under your brand.

With the popularity of sites like Instagram and Pinterest, images and video have become must-haves for every social media marketing campaign. You will have to decide if you are okay with stock images or if you want a personal touch that reflects the true essence of your business.

To provide authentic engagement, you will want a true representation of your brand. Let your social media specialist know your desires and together work to make it happen.

9. Brand Awareness

At the center of all online marketing is your brand. Your brand is how people see your business and what is associated with it. For this reason alone, selecting a social media marketing package that speaks to your core beliefs is needed.

Attracting the right followers who are interested in your product or service is your goal for expanding your reach. You want a provider that is committed to getting those followers to your platforms. You don’t want a company that will tarnish your brand by buying followers or engaging in other gimmicky behavior.

You are paying for professionalism, quality service, and their expertise. A successful social media management package will give you all of this. The return on your investment will be seen in a rise in your brand awareness.

If your company does not see any tangible proof that your brand identity has grown, you may be using the wrong provider.

Ready to Step Up Your Social Media Marketing Game?

Not all social media packages are created equal. Anyone can claim to be a social media specialist. But without proof of proven success, they can’t be taken seriously.

If you’re looking for the perfect social media package for your business, reach out to our team of social media experts.

Click here to contact us for more information on how we can go to work for you!

The post Social Media Packages: How to Choose the Right One appeared first on Midas Marketing.

As a dental office, you will always face stiff competition. It is up to you as a service provider to gain a competitive advantage in your field. For essential services like dentistry, you may not get as much walk-in traffic as you will from web searches.

It is therefore essential to invest in quality dental SEO services. Dental SEO services are meant to position your practice as a visible authority in your field. They are also intended to help you turn prospective customers into paying patients at your practice.

According to research, most web users are likely to turn to search engines when searching for a service. The reason is that searches can yield quick results for local businesses. Still, unless you have a robust SEO strategy in place, it is likely that you will get outranked and your competition will enjoy those leads.

Ranking poorly will keep your practice from reaching its potential. Start with these tips to improve your dental SEO strategy.

Hiring a dental SEO expert will help position your practice to be discovered by younger, online searchers.

1. Have a Great Website

Before you even think of a dental SEO strategy, you need to have a website in place. A great dental website design gives you a strong presence on the market. With the immense number of online searches conducted per day, having an accessible site places your practice in a prime position.

Web users usually trust businesses with websites more than the ones unavailable on the internet. Your site needs to be intuitive and informative. A professional website gives you an edge in making you a business leader in your field. It can also be a lead generation machine for you when designed properly.

You can achieve the full potential of a website by incorporating tools that make it more accessible. Such mechanisms may include mobile accessibility and fast load times. Having a site makes your clients more confident with your practice from the very beginning.

2. Work on Your Website’s Accessibility

Making sure your website runs smoothly on any device is a strategy that could help your dental practice’s rank. Google is keen to reward websites whose content is accessible via mobile. With a large section of web users who use portable devices, you should highly prioritize mobile access.

A mobile-friendly website means you can maximize on opportunities to serve potential patients who would like quick services, local services or emergency services. It could also translate to making your website shareable.

Users can locate you using tools such as maps. They can also share information about your platform in other apps primarily found on mobile devices.

3. Enlist Reputable SEO Companies

Search engine optimization extends further than keyword placement. As a professional dentist, however, you might not know all the intricacies of dental SEO ranking. It is important to engage the services of a reputable SEO company on a monthly basis to build your website’s authority in the eyes of Google and others. A good SEO company will help you come up with a strategy that gets you to the top of search engine results.

Due to the competitive nature of your field, a reliable SEO company can help you pick out the most effective strategies for best returns. SEO can be an investment, with plans generally falling in the $500 to $3000+ depending on your market. However, when you consider the lifetime value of a new patient, every dentist looking to grow will see the value of ranking high in search engines.

4. Keep Your Content Fresh

Regular content keeps visitors coming to your site. Your content does not need to focus on selling your practice every time. Creating fresh and relevant content makes Google evaluate your site often and give your content precedence if it is deemed valuable.

Additionally, users trust a site that gives them valuable information about a particular field. Even if they were not looking for immediate services, reading dental content on your website gives your business a better standing among competitors and establishes you as a thought leader.

More content opens your site to more opportunities to utilize on-site SEO strategies. These strategies translate into organic traffic for your website and strong search engine placement.

5. Invest in Social Media

Social media channels are a complimentary resource for dental SEO. Social media platforms can bring you targeted traffic. By interacting with your followers, you can analyze your data to make even better choices for your practice.

Social media provides an opportunity to gain insights into your patients’ preferences. You can then revamp your practice to cater to a wide range of potential clients. Social platforms are also useful in marketing.

Keeping an active social media portfolio means you maintain a grasp across diverse groups. This helps you develop future strategies that target specific groups. It also assists in improving the visibility and authority of your practice.

An active social media strategy can improve your website authority, give you channels for sharing your blog content, and provide insight about your customer’s key pain points (and how you may want to adopt your SEO plan to reflect them!).

6. Use Review Sites

It’s been proven for a while now that web users will trust a business based on feedback from previous users. If a first time user wanted to use your dental practice, they’d look up what other visitors have said about it. Having your dental practice in high-level review sites such as Yelp could bring in more traffic to your business.

It also helps potential clients settle on your business. A keyword chain like ‘dentist reviews + city’ leads potential clients to review sites which mention your practice.

You can use this strategy by asking clients to leave a review about your business. Even a handful of 5-star reviews boosts your reputation in a sea of competing services.

7. Use Local Listings

To reap maximum benefits, it would be great if you optimize your keywords for local search results. Potential clients are more likely to seek out the nearest practice for essential services for dentistry. Using resources such as Google Local, you can position your business as the go-to choice in your area.

You can include contact information and physical address details of your practice. Prospective clients can find you online or walk into the business premises directly to schedule an appointment.

Local listings also give you a higher ranking due to less keyword competition. For instance, using a keyword chain which includes your locality will bring clients to your page if you have optimized your site for local results.

8. Embrace Video

YouTube racks up billions of video views every day. In fact, it is the second largest search engine behind Google. While you can spend hours writing up new content, you can direct some effort to video production.

Social media platforms are increasingly giving videos preference. By creating short, informative videos, you are developing a strong presence in a low competition environment. You can even use videos to market your practice by showing procedures.

Users too are showing an inclination towards video over traditional reading. You can package your message in easy-to-grasp graphics. Once potential clients see the business, they feel like they can trust the services you offer.

Making exciting educational videos also encourages users to share the content they find. The videos must be of good quality and in a format suitable for sharing.

9. Utilize Online Forums

Forums are an often overlooked, yet valuable assets in SEO ranking. Constant engagement in discussions gives you and your practice more visibility on search results.

Forum engagement can range from Q&A boards to commenting on blogs. It is also an opportunity to place your practice in service-specific platforms. The result is garnering more organic traffic to your site.

You stand better chances of appearing on the top of search engines if you offer helpful commentary on forum boards. It is even better if your input in these forums gets upvoted or rehashed by other users. New users and potential clients can correlate your presence with being a trusted resource for dental services.

10. Focus on Customer Service

Customer service has the potential to make or break your website and your reputation. For your dental practice, it is crucial to ensure that your patients experience stellar customer service every time.

Poor customer service can lower your ranking due to negative reviews and reports. If clients are continually complaining about your website, you might start experiencing lower return visits to your site.

When you’re investing in SEO, it only follows that your website and staff need to deliver on their end once potential patients discover your practice online! Excellent customer service will help you understand the diverse needs of your clientele so you can offer better dental services.

Dental SEO – Wrap Up

SEO is a vital resource that you can implement to help your practice achieve its full potential. You need to use other strategies to make sure you are getting the most out of your SEO campaign. As a professional brand, these tips will only bring you as much success as the consistency you put behind them.

A strategic dental SEO plan will strengthen your brand profile and keep you at the top of search results. Your audience will consider you a valuable resource for dental services.

To position your business as a reputable resource for top-class dental work, you need to consider hiring SEO experts. Forward-thinking dentists should embrace the mass shift of audience from traditional walk-in models of business. If you’re not entirely sure who is the right fit for your dental SEO needs, consult local listings.

If you want help in SEO, copywriting, web design, and digital marketing, the team at Midas Marketing is here for you. Just reach out to us whenever you’re ready!

The post Top 10 Dental SEO Tips to Grow Your Practice appeared first on Midas Marketing.

Selling homes is your thing. Showing up on the first page of Google? Not so much. Is that a good reason to neglect your organic leads? Not at all. With digital marketing, you can easily put your agency on the map and earn yourself more leads.

The key to getting qualified traffic is to use real estate SEO services as part of an integrated marketing strategy. With search engine optimization (SEO), you can take your website from the 5th page on Google to the first in a matter of months.

Why is this important? Because 44% of home buyers begin their search for a house online. This is why you should invest heavily in optimizing your site and its content for search engines.

Of course, it’ll require some research, commitment, and know how. If you’d like to learn more about how SEO can help your real estate business, then continue reading!

Let’s review some of the ways you can streamline your real estate SEO efforts.

Make Use of Those Local Keywords

Chances are, you’re only selling properties in very specific areas. And while this may seem to limit to your business (especially for non-popular destinations), it’s a goldmine in the world of SEO.

This is because local keywords help drive specific traffic to your site (but only if you optimize for them). For instance, if you’re selling residential properties in Portland, OR, then you should include terms like “Portland OR homes for sale,” in your site.

But don’t just guess as to what search terms your leads are using. Use tools to research which keywords get the most searches every month. You’ll need to find keywords that are relevant to your prospects and don’t have a lot of competition. If too many other businesses are ranking for those words, then it’ll be a lot harder to make it to page 1.

As a rule of thumb, you should use your target keywords throughout your site. For instance, you can create a page called “Why Hire a Portland, OR Real Estate Agent?”

The primary keyword here is “Portland OR real estate agent.” Include the keywords of your choice in the title, first paragraph, a subheading, and in the conclusion.

Keep in mind though: Google is getting smarter and more human every day. Don’t ever stuff your keywords into your page over and over, and make sure to keep everything natural. The example above is great as it sounds fairly natural yet still hits the localized target keyword. More on this later!

Boost Business with Your Blog

In today’s consumer-centric world, it’s all about content. While ads can still be helpful in getting leads, it won’t offer the consistent traffic flow like SEO can. And the best way to streamline your SEO efforts is with a content strategy.

If you don’t already have a blog, it’s time to build one. You can do this easily with WordPress. They offer a variety of templates to choose from. Or you can hire a web designer to implement one on your existing site.

As for the content you put on your blog, you want to write pieces that will attract your audience. What better way to do this than to blog about the properties you have available? You can create an engaging piece with lots of details, photos, and maybe even walk-through videos.

Make sure to include your keywords inside your title and throughout the page. It’s also recommended that you put your target keyword in the meta description, alt tag for photos, title tag, and file name of photos.

Make Use of Images and Videos

There’s nothing more engaging on the web than images and video. In real estate, these two tools are your best friend. As you’d imagine, home buyers are looking for actual footage of the houses they’re interested in.

Besides placing this type of media in your blog posts, you can also feature them on their own section of your website. For example, you can have a page of available properties that prospects can browse through.

In fact, you can use your blog posts to promote the listings on that page to drive traffic and get folks looking around. Of course, you’ll need to optimize these photos and videos using your target keywords.

Just make sure that all of your videos are shot professionally (or at least with a steady hand). If your videos are low quality and have poor production, then you’ll only run prospects away. Capture tours of your properties, as well as testimonials from your past clients.

All of this can help convert more leads.

Everyone loves looking at pictures of well-presented homes. Use this to your advantage in your SEO marketing efforts!

Ensure Your Site is Mobile-Friendly

Google and other search engines are very keen about sites that are mobile-optimized. In other words, if your real estate site isn’t quick-loading and easy to use on a mobile device, then it’s going to lose ranking.

On that note, it’s very important to ensure that your website is responsive to any device visitors are using. The best way to do that is to adopt a responsive web design. You can hire a web designer to build one from scratch or you can buy a template.

The reason this is important for your real estate SEO is because it’ll negatively impact your ranking in Google if you ignore it. It’s also important to point out that most home shoppers are using mobile devices to find property listings.

So it makes sense to make your site easy to find and use by your mobile visitors. Also, when mobile users conduct searches on Google, guess what pops up first: local listings.

By targeting local keywords, it’ll help your website show up first in their search results.

Claim and Create Business Directories

Here’s another great example of the power of search engine optimization. When local search results pop up, business directories are among the top. It makes sense to claim all of your listings in these directories or create them if there are none.

This includes directories like Google My Business, Yelp, Zillow, Trulia, and RedFin. The more directories you’re on, the better. Just make sure all of the information you provide is accurate and identical across all listings.

Your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) should be consistent with what’s on your website as well. If there are discrepancies, it can alert the search engine that your data is out of date and will hurt your organic visibility

Make Sure Your Bio’s Optimized

Home buyers aren’t just looking for homes to buy, they’re looking for an agent that’ll help them find the house of their dreams. That’s you!

While an incredible bio detailing all your achievements and client satisfaction rates is great, it won’t account for much if it’s not found. Optimizing your bio not only brings traffic to your bio page, but to your website.

Every page of your site is a tool in your SEO arsenal. If your name is your brand, then make sure to optimize it with that.

If you don’t already have a name for yourself and your business (meaning popularity), then this next tip may help.

Grow Visibility Using Social Media

Social media platforms are another clever way of driving organic traffic to your business. You can use them to gain a following and grow your visibility as a personal or business brand. It’s also an incredible method for starting and building relationships, both with prospects and influencers.

Your social media pages are the perfect place to advertise your blog posts and home listings. It’ll drive traffic to these locations and tell Google these pages are relevant and good quality (further boosting your SEO ranking).

A social media strategy is important to have and is often included as a recommended strategy alongside real estate SEO services. If you decide to do it on your own, ensure to add photos and videos in your posts to increase engagement and shares.

Get involved in the conversations on your posts to show you’re human and that you care. Answer questions in a timely fashion, especially your direct messages. Facebook showcases your responsiveness, so if your score is good, more people are likely to reach out to you via social media.

Don’t Overstuff Pages with Keywords

Now that you understand the importance of keywords (especially local key phrases), it’s essential to point out density limits. In this case, it’s not “the more, the merrier,” it’s “the more natural, the better.”

Google and other search engines care about the quality and readability of your content. And if you’re stuffing your pages with search terms with the hopes of getting a higher ranking, you’re sadly mistaken.

In fact, this will drop your site to the back of the bus and you may even get penalized. Bouncing back from a Google penalty is no joke so avoid it at all costs.

So what is a good amount of keywords to use? Well, as a rule of thumb, the bare minimum is to have the keyword in your title, intro, subheading, and conclusion. You can sprinkle it throughout the content wherever it fits naturally.

It’s also a good idea to use related secondary keywords so you don’t feel compelled to keep using the same version of the key phrase. For example, you can have Los Angeles realtor as your primary, then your secondaries can be: LA realtor, Los Angeles real estate agent, and LA home seller.

Hiring Real Estate SEO Services

Now that you have a hefty list of real estate SEO tips, it’s time to start putting it to use. But if you’re a busy realtor (which is always good news), you may need a little help.

In this case, it’s a good idea to invest in real estate SEO services. There’s a lot to SEO, which you may not have the time to learn about. By hiring an SEO expert, you can get the traffic you need for your business to excel.

At Midas, we have professional digital marketing experts that can help build you a solid strategy. We offer SEO, copywriting, web design, and other services. Get in touch with us today to learn more!

The post Getting More Organic Leads with Real Estate SEO Services appeared first on Midas Marketing.

Introduction

There’s an old adage that goes, “There’s only two jobs in the world. Sales and sales support.”

Marketing is the engine that drives the world forward, whether we like it or not. And at its roots, marketing is simply communication.

Why then, can be so difficult to grow a business? Why can it be so challenging to communicate effectively with your prospects and even existing customers?

It’s because marketing is one of those things that’s simple, but not easy.

A good marketing agency can come alongside a business, not to offer a magic bullet for success, but to ask the hard questions and provide the detailed roadmap for finding more customers and connecting with them in a more meaningful way.

Chapter 1: Know Your Business, Know Your Customer

One of the first things a good marketing agency will do to help a business grow is learn about the business (gasp!). Marketing agencies have built a reputation in the past for acting like an egotistical knight in shining armor, thinking they will come in and save the day just because they have a ping-pong table in their office lounge. Not surprisingly though, that’s not how success usually happens.

Understanding Your Customer

The first component of a successful marketing effort is understanding your ideal customer. While this may seem pretty straightforward, it can actually be quite difficult. You may have some idea of demographics, but your marketing agency should encourage you to dig deeper and ask questions like:

Why did they choose you over your competitors?

What emotional connection do they share with your brand?

What are they interested in outside of work?

Putting together a customer psychographic is generally much harder than putting together a demographic, but if you stay committed to this idea day-in and day-out, you’ll start to develop a sound understanding of your ideal customer over time. There are also consultants, worksheets, and other resources that can help guide you to success.

Top Takeaway: Want to learn more about your customer persona? Talk to your best customers! It’s sounds pretty obvious, but few actually take the time and effort to talk to their best customers to learn why they enjoy doing business with you, and why they hired you in the first place.

Knowing what your customer enjoys outside of working hours can actually go a long way in helping you understand how they make decisions from 9-5.

Dial in Your Business Metrics

Another key element of successful marketing is, well, knowing what success looks like in the first place. We’re always surprised at the limited granularity that many business owners and marketing managers have surrounding their business and its overall operation. While business intuition and instinct are usually very high, we find room for improvement when working to understand the “itemized” opportunities within the business.

If you’re considering hiring a marketing agency to help your business grow, make sure they ask you some of the following questions:

What is the LTV (lifetime value) of a customer?

Which products/services can you scale most effectively as more orders/leads come in?

Which products/services are your most profitable?

What is your acquisition budget for a new sale? If you spent 10% of gross revenue on advertising to acquire the sale/customer, is that worth it?

What is your conversion rate for new leads that contact your business?

Our goal is to get as specific as we can on every component of a business’ operation. We may not be able to figure everything out, but the more numbers we have, the easier it will be to construct successful campaign and understand where the lowest-hanging fruit is.

Top Takeaway: At the very least, a good marketing agency should understand the value of a customer to your business, and how much you can spend to acquire that customer for sustainable growth.

The better you understand your business’ key metrics, the easier it will be to run successful marketing campaigns.

Chapter 2: Is Your Website Working?

For 95% of businesses, a winning website is the foundation of any successful marketing campaign. Here at Midas, our most successful marketing campaigns usually follow behind websites we design. This works because we understand the importance of a website, and how it needs to be structured, designed and executed in order to avoid any friction for potential customers.

The Importance of Your Website

Sometimes businesses compartmentalize various online marketing elements, thinking that social media or search engine marketing will grow their business in isolation. However, this is like a retail business thinking that as long as it distributes catchy promotional flyers, their storefront can be messy, outdated and unorganized. Silly right? The online world works the same way. Social media, search and other marketing channels may offer your business opportunities to connect with customers and bring them to your website, but if your site isn’t built to communicate clearly, add value, and convert, your honestly wasting your time and money.

Top Takeaway: Marketing to a bad website is just as detrimental as a retail business mailing out beautiful flyers only to have a messy, unorganized storefront. Take your website seriously!

Many hear that a specific marketing strategy, such as Facebook Ads, is crucial for business success. While this may be part of the equation, a poor website will immediately turn away all your Facebook visitors – even if they are responding very well (high click-through rate) to your ad on the Facebook platform.

Benchmarking Your Website

Wondering if your website is “good enough” to put the foot on the gas with a marketing campaign? Here are a few questions you can ask:

-Has it been more than 4 years since you’ve redesigned your site?

-Is your website fully mobile-responsive, looking just as good on a phone as it does on a computer?

-Does your site clearly guide potential customers to your primary website goal, like requesting a quote?

-Is your site updated actively with new products, staff members, blog posts, and other content?

-Do you know how well your website is performing currently?

It may be tempting to want to just rush into a marketing campaign, but considering your website first and foremost is almost always a must for a successful campaign.

Top Takeaway: Download our checklist and work through it with your team to determine how you’re doing. After you’re done, contact us and we’ll be happy to take a look ourselves and offer any tips and pointers we might see!

Chapter 3: Building a Funnel

Once your website is built (or rebuilt), and you have a deep, well-defined knowledge of your customer, your ready to start filling your pipeline with leads. There’s a few different ways to do this, but almost all strategies incorporate three elements: an invitation, an offer, and the initial email sequence.

The Invitation

The invitation is how you present your offer, which will get into next. While the offer is important, its presentation goes a long way in determining how well it attracts customers. Having an opt-in box or chat window pop up on your website is an example of an invitation. However, if this is set to immediately pop up as soon as a visitor gets to your site, you’d better have a killer offer for your prospect or else they will likely be annoyed by this intrusion and bounce from your site.

A better strategy may be to offer to email a discount coupon for a specific service based on certain pages on your website. For example, a painting company may offer an exterior painting discount for new customers, and set the promotion to only pop up when a visitor is on their exterior painting services page.

In summary, the invitation is your presentation of your initial offer, whether its a PDF download, discount, case study, or a direct link to a certain landing page on your website. Be strategic about how you present your offer, giving special consideration to your ideal customer persona.

Top Takeaway: Getting in the mind of your customer is crucial to proper presentation of your offer. Do it right, and you’ll build trust and rapport before they even contact you. Be too aggressive or unfocused and you may actually leave a bad brand impression.

The Offer

Everyone loves a discount, a freebie, or other valuable resource. This is especially true for new prospects who may need a little more nudging than your existing customers. Offers are usually presented via an invitation either through a landing page, opt-in window or something similar.

The idea here is to offer something of value in exchange for an email address and permission to market to that email. Seth Godin dubbed this permission-based marketing. Here are a few examples of what business offer their customers:

-An online retailer may offer 15% off a new customer’s first order

-A painting company may offer $250 off an exterior repaint

-A SaaS company may offer a 30-day free trial of their software

-A technology company may offer an in-depth case study of its product

Be strategic about both your offer and invitation, and let your prospects know that they’ll get instant access to the offer by signing up for your email list. Once they sign up, they’ll receive their offer and your funnel is now starting to grow!

Top Takeaway: Look to other competitors in your industry if you aren’t sure what to offer your customer. Try to solve a pain point or give them something of value that doesn’t take too much away from your bottom line.

Whether you want to capture email leads as discussed in this article, or drive traffic to a specific webpage as shown here, you have to be intentional about the goals of your website in order to effectively generate leads and close more deals.

The Email Sequence

Once a potential customer opts in to your list and claims your offer, you have to deliver! The problem here, is it takes a lot of effort and attention to constantly be monitoring your website and prospect activity. What’s the answer? Email automation!

Email automation is basically setting up a sequence of emails to go out to your new prospects after their get on your email list. An example of an email sequence would be sending new contacts three emails over the course of the first week after their claim your offer. Email sequences can be as simple or complex as you make them, but one example might look like this:

Invitation: A pop-up box offers a free trial for a software company once a visitor navigates to the pricing page.

Offer: Potential customers are able to use the software for 30 days for free.

Email sequence: The first email is sent immediately after a subscriber claims the offer, giving the prospect a code to use the software for free for thirty day. A handful of other emails may go out over the duration of the trial, offering customer testimonials, case studies, and opportunities to schedule a demo to learn more about using the software. As the trial period comes to an end, a few emails may be scheduled to offer a discount for the first few months of becoming a paid customer of the software.

Top Takeaway: Email sequences, and building funnels in general, is no easy task. While it is possible to manage it on your own, usually hiring a marketing agency to help guide this process will position your company for success in the long run.

Your lead magnet delivery email should always include a soft call-to-action for the prospect to take the next step closer to becoming a customer, such as booking a consultation or scheduling a demo.

Chapter 4: Marketing Campaign Components

Once your website is ready to go and your funnel is in place, you’re ready to put together a marketing campaign to effectively grow your business. Different strategies work for different businesses, but all good digital marketing campaigns will include some, if not all, of the components below.

SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of positioning your website to be seen by Google as an authority in your industry for your businesses key products and services. Doing this well is rewarded by Page 1 rankings for your top keywords. SEO is a combination of website optimization, content marketing, and linkbuilding. SEO campaigns often need a longer runway for success, but once your website starts ranking well, your business will benefit for months and sometimes years down the road.

To learn more about SEO, visit our SEO services page.

Paid Advertising

Paid advertising is directly paying for clicks to your website (or another form of immediate engagement). Google Adwords and Facebook Ads are two common forms of paid advertising in the digital marketing realm. Unlike SEO, it’s possible to see immediate success with your paid advertising campaigns. However, once you stop paying, your traffic will stop coming in as well.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is often considered part of SEO (and rightly so), but it deserves its own distinction. Content marketing, simply put, is building trust, thought leadership, and visibility in your industry by producing and sharing valuable content. While an active and strategic blogging effort drives a content marketing campaign, other elements such as social sharing tactics can reinforce your content, leading to a full-on inbound marketing program. As both search and social shift more towards “meaningful marketing,” producing interesting content is now a must for just about every business’ marketing strategy.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the most preferred and profitable marketing channels for many businesses. Why is this? Because people on your email list already have some sort of relationship with your brand, meaning there are less obstacles to overcome to move your prospects down your funnel. As you already “own” the audience, your only fees for email marketing are the cost of using your email platform (usually pretty nominal), and the time it takes to manage your email marketing effort. In an age of shifting social networks and anticipating the trends of search, email remains the one constant to nurture your prospects and reinforce value with existing customers.

Social Media

Social media means a lot of different things to a lot of different business. It’s an ever-changing jungle filled with plenty of opportunities for the businesses that can keep up. From a high-level, social media is often a place to start new relationships with prospects and reinforce value with your existing “tribe.” It’s usually not smart to push your products and services too hard on social media as people are on social networks to “hang out.” However, social does provide great opportunities to build brand equity and grow your tribe when it’s managed effectively.

Print Marketing

Print marketing has taken a backseat to digital over the last decade, but as the online world gets more crowded, print is finding opportunities to make a comeback. Having winning business cards, brochures, and direct mail pieces can now be way to separate yourself from your competition and leave a lasting impression in the mind of your prospects and customers.

Top Takeaway: Developing an understanding of your customer is critical to properly know which marketing channels to pursue. If your business is sells apparel to young adults, a channel like Instagram is a must. If you are a B2B company selling specific, niche products, you would want to consider a good SEO plan to make sure your products show up in online search engines.

Once you’re confident you have a website that will inspire action from your ideal customer, only then does it make sense to fuel up your business with a marketing budget.

Chapter 5: Understanding Your Marketing Performance

You might be tracking with us so far, but at the end of the day you need to know that partnering with a marketing agency to grow your business is actually going to work. And unless you are super familiar with Facebook Ads, Google Analytics and the code to your website, evaluating digital marketing performance can feel a bit like an overwhelming mystery.

While this is certainly understandable, here are four things to review and you determine how well your marketing efforts are paying off.

ROI: Analyzing you conversion rates, customer lifetime values, and other metrics to determine your actual return on your marketing investment.

Equivalent Value: Comparing your digital marketing spending to more traditional forms of advertising as well as cross-checking against your various digital channels.

Brand Equity: Monitoring your overall reach and engagement to grow your brand value for the long run.

Overall Business Growth: How your business is doing when all the dust settles.

Let’s look at each of these a little bit closer.

Return on Investment (ROI)

This is the holy grail of most digital marketing campaigns, and can be calculated once you answer the questions above in our “business metrics” section of this article. For campaigns we run, we set up goals within your website analytics to track performance as closely as possible.

Equivalent Value (EV)

ROI can be harder for some businesses to track than others, depending on how many offline components are involved in your sales process, or how valuable brand equity (tough to measure online) is for your business. Equivalent Value (EV) is a way of comparing your marketing against other marketing channels, so you at least know if you are spending your dollars wisely. Valuing organic traffic is often used as a way of calculating EV vs. something like Google Adwords. If your website is getting 1,000 clicks per month from online search engines, and the average cost-per-click with Google Adwords if you were paying for those clicks directly is $2.00 per click, you know your organic traffic has an EV of $2,000/month. Over time you can compare that with your SEO budget to make sure you are spending in the most effective way possible.

Brand Equity

One of the harder metrics to grasp, at least for most small and mid-size businesses, are intangible concepts like audience reach and brand impressions. We all know that every single time a prospect sees your ad, you’re business is better off – even if they don’t take action right away. In fact, it may take years of this before a prospect reaches out and connects with your company. So while it’s hard to measure, it’s very important. Our goal with campaigns that we run is to always be ROI positive, knowing that the reach and impressions from the campaign is icing on the cake and will pay dividends over time for our client.

Overall Business Growth

The bottom line when running a campaign is of course, overall business growth. In many cases, this is where the added benefit with things like brand impressions and top-of-mind awareness come into play. Unless there is a significant outside factor (losing a big source of revenue unrelated to marketing, etc.), evaluating your overall business growth is a good way to see how well your marketing agency is guiding your business forward.

Top Takeaway: A victorious marketing effort starts at the very beginning. If you know your customer well and understand your business inside and out, marketing starts to turn into a plan to execute rather than a mystery to be solved.

While marketing will always have its creative, “colorful” side, good marketing is based just as much, if not more, off strong analytical understanding.

Summary: Partnering with a Marketing Agency

Congrats! You made it through an extensive but hopefully informative article on how a marketing agency can help your business grow!.

The TL;DR version goes like this:

Know your customer like you know a friend, and develop a good grasp on your business’ key metrics.

Then…

Build a great website that will serve as an effective salesperson working 24/7 on your behalf.

Then…

Create an irresistible offer to generate new top-of-funnel leads for your business.

Then…

Once you have built a profitable, lucrative offer in place, turn on the marketing jets to drive traffic to your site and watch that traffic turn into new leads!

Then…

Take time to review and evaluate your marketing performance to make sure everything is working.

There’s no magic bullet to marketing, but there are proven & timeless marketing elements that are ready to be put to work for your business’ success.

Are you considering hiring a marketing agency? We know someone, who knows someone, who knows someone….OK just kidding, it’s us. Contact us to get started!

The post How a Marketing Agency Helps Your Business Grow appeared first on Midas Marketing.

Introduction

The world of wholesaling is vastly different than the retail industry. Fancy marketing tactics, like creative advertising and a website with all the bells and whistle are usually reserved for retail-oriented brands.

This has left many owners, managers and other influencers in wholesaling industries to focus more on running an efficient business operation for their success, while giving limited consideration to marketing their goods and services.

We’re here to make a case against that line of thinking. While we won’t dismiss the fact that certain marketing elements are better reserved for consumer-facing industries, that doesn’t mean we should neglect opportunities. In fact, the 57% of B2B customers now want access to their account and orders online, meaning that they are starting their searches online as well.

Instead of ignoring marketing, wholesalers should just take a different approach. Even in B2B sales, people still buy from people. And people won’t buy from people they can’t find or can’t easily get the information they need to make an informed decision.

That’s where an effective wholesale B2B web design layout comes into play. This will be the foundation of your business’ online presence and marketing strategy, so we’ll start here!

Why Do You Need a Great Website?

Many wholesale businesses see their website as an “online brochure” that is a nice-to-have but not a need-to-have. Let’s look at a few reasons this way of thinking may be a bit misguided.

Product & Resource Organization

If you’re like most wholesalers, you are working with a large variety of SKUs and inventory management is a large part of running a successful business. Having an effective website can do wonders for your overall organization of all your products and resources.

A well-organized website can easily keep all of your products sorted by various categories, with stock management, pricing discounts, and all sorts of other valuable functionality built into the website itself. Your customers will love being able to easily find what they are looking for, and your internal team will be able to keep track of things too.

Including a search functionality in your website will also enable you and your customers to easily look up various SKUs & product numbers without having to flip through catalogs or make a bunch of phone calls.

Sales are important, but using your website to stay organized can be just as, if not more, valuable!

Streamlines Your Sales Process

While a website is often thought of as a tool for existing and potential customers, good wholesale B2B web design can also support your sales team. Being easily able to access your most updated digital catalog, see customer order history, and review real-time inventory levels are just a few of the ways a website can not just offer value to your customers but improve your sales performance internally as well.

Additionally, having a website enables you to set up gated pages and products, meaning your team can be prepared to offer password-protected pricing and services, without fear of having everything open and visible to the public.

CRM & ERP Integration

Keeping track of your customers and resources is a full-time job, many times over. The good news a well-designer wholesaler website can integrate with your existing CRM and ERP programs. This means that your website won’t add another disconnected system that manually requires tracking and updating, but will actually reduce data redundancy and keep your business running smoothly.

Customer Support

Being reachable by phone is crucial for any business, but especially wholesalers. However, many don’t have effective systems built out for support outside of normal working hours. Your wholesale B2B website design can and should include both an email support platform as well as a FAQ section. This will enable potential customers to solve their own problems faster as well as be able to reach out to you via email if they prefer. The more options you have available, the more confidence your lead will be that you can deliver on your promises.

On-The-Go Functionality

Any good website design these days should be fully mobile-responsive. That means your website will look good on any screen size, from a smartphone to a desktop computer. By having a well-designed and organized website, both your internal team and your customers will be able to get the information they need, 24/7.

Wholesale B2B Web Design to Grow Your Business

Hopefully you’re starting to see how a well-designed wholesaler website can streamline your operations and reinforce value with existing customers. But can your website help your company grow by bringing in new business?

Absolutely.

Attract New Customers through Online Search

One advantage B2B companies have, especially wholesale companies, is that they are essentially built for maximum search engine visibility. Here’s why:

1. Generally less competition compared to retail brands
2. Large product and/or service catalog makes it possible to target and rank for a plethora of keywords
3. Specific niche searches are usually made with high purchase intent.

It’s pretty obvious why there are less wholesalers in the world than retailers. This means your company generally has an easier climb to the top of the mountain. Assuming your product and category pages are well optimized, ranking is not just easier for your primary search terms, but all your individual products as well. Lastly, somebody searching for a very specific style of wholesale neon fabric is much more likely to take action once they find it than someone searching for basketball shoes.

High Customer Value

To sweeten the pot even more, new leads and/or orders that come in from a strong wholesale B2B website design are usually substantially higher, justifying any website and marketing costs much more quickly than retail marketing campaigns, which often involve years of brand awareness before the scales start to tip towards significant profitability.

So while there may be more search volume for “basketball shoes” than “wholesale neon fabric,” the latter may lead to a 4, 5 or even 6-figure purchase. Even getting a handful of good new leads online each month for your wholesale company can justify an entire year’s worth of marketing spend.

Build Your Email List

Let’s imagine your new website, perfectly built for your ideal customer, convenient for staff, and wonderfully optimized for search engines. Where do you go from here? Well, usually you’ll start seeing a good uptick of new business considering what has already been discussed. But it doesn’t stop there. You can give your leads an opportunity to develop a relationship with your company even if they aren’t ready to buy immediately. How do you do this?

Give ‘em a deal!

First Time Customer Offer

Creating a (non-intrusive) pop-up or chat box on your website that showcases a special deal for new customers in exchange for their email address is the perfect way to start a new relationship. This offer could be for a free sample, a first order discount, or some other “lead magnet” (such as a PDF ebook). The lead enters their email, and they automatically receive their discount coupon or special instructions on how to activate their promotion. After this point, they are “in your tribe,” and nurturing the relationship with a monthly newsletter or other email marketing strategy is cost effective and leads to great results.

Mind Your Analytics

At this point, the fun really starts. Your website should be  set up with analytics (we use Google Analytics) and you can start measuring the actual ROI for your website and marketing. Here’s how it works:

1. You run your numbers to figure out the average lifetime value (or annual revenue) of a customer to your business.
2. Review your website analytics to determine how many website visitors you get, how many sign up for your new customer offer, and then how many actually turn into customers.
3. Determine your target “acquisition budget” for getting a new customer.

At that point you can figure out how well your website and marketing is performing. It looks like this:

• Company A’s average customer spends $20,000 per year with them, for a minimum of 5 years ($100,000+ LTV)
• Company A’s (new and improved!) website is now getting 1,000 visitors per month. 50 of them are claiming the offer, and 5 of them are redeeming it and turning into new customers.
• Company A budgets 5% of gross revenue for marketing and advertising.

5 new customers equates to $500,000 of lifetime revenue for company A. 5% of $500,000 is $25,000. So theoretically, Company A could sustainably spend $25,000 per month on their website and online marketing each month and easily justify it assuming these numbers keep working out. Considering most SEO campaigns for wholesale companies would run in the $1,000 to $5,000 / mo range, you can hopefully start to see the opportunity this holds for many wholesalers.

Deploy Other Marketing Strategies

Once you have your new website set up, know your numbers, and have a profitable funnel (website > offer > new customer), then you can start exploring other advertising channels, such as Google Adwords or Facebook Ads, and understand with confidence if you are spending in a sustainable way.

Managing Your Wholesale Website & Marketing Efforts

Even if you are fully on board with us at this point, you may be wondering how to put all of this into motion. Many wholesale companies keep themselves very busy and always have a million things going on.

Others may be busy but are also fearful of getting “tied” to a web design or marketing company forever, and are fearful of losing control and endlessly being at the mercy of their marketing partner.

Before you engage an any website development or marketing efforts, make sure you approach this question beforehand with the agency you are considering. Here at Midas, we offer three different approaches depending on what suits your business best.

Full Service

You’re busy and need a trustworthy, transparent marketing partner to go full throttle on your behalf. If this option is the most expensive, but it saves you the headspace, management, overhead and everything else that goes with successful outsourcing. When running a campaign like this, we will set budgets and goals at the beginning and execute on your behalf, working in the background while also “owning” the campaign or website process as if we were a part of your internal team.

Semi-Managed

Semi-Managed websites and/or marketing campaigns are often a good mix for a business that has some bandwidth and expertise in house, but not a lot. Maybe one of your internal staff has a few hours each week to help with marketing and updating the website. In this case (for us), we would assist with some of the more complex or time consuming tasks, but still be able to save you a bit of cash considering what you’re able to fulfill in house on the marketing and web development side of things.

Complete Handoff

For those that have staff bandwidth or other resources to manage the website and marketing efforts in house, we recommend a complete handoff. The website is built and screenshare tutorials are created so your team knows exactly how to do everything they’ll need to do. As the videos are lasting assets, you can even keep your website and marketing going strong through staff turnover or other transitions. And of course, we’d only be a call or email away if we were the ones working with you!

Final Thoughts

We hope you have enjoyed this fairly deep dive into wholesale B2B web design and marketing!

While marketing opportunities in this space may be different than the retail world, there is no shortage of ways to win with high customer lifetime values, extensive SEO opportunities and less competition for visibility and market share.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below. If you are ready to learn more about what it would take to revamp your own wholesale company’s website, click here!

The post Wholesale B2B Web Design: A Roadmap to Success appeared first on Midas Marketing.

Just because you run a successful business doesn’t mean the search engines will automatically pick up all your products and services when potential customers are searching.

While these search engines algorhithms can seem confusing, but there is a method to the madness. Figure out that method, and you’ll end up with quality results.

Luckily, there are people who can optimize your website and manage marketing campaigns to make your business more visible online. This person is called an SEO expert. Search engine optimization is key for generating traffic on your site, which is the first step in growing your business using online marketing.

Do you need an SEO expert on your team? Let’s take a look.

What is an SEO Expert?

An SEO expert is someone who’s skilled in the art of building online traffic. It gets complicated, and it’s important to know what you’re doing because a wrong move could send you to the bottom of the barrel.

Search engines operate by reading your website and determining how much it can be trusted for your target keywords, which should reflect your primary products and services.

A good way to determine trust is to look at how many other websites are linking back to your site. If a popular website links to your website’s blog post or service pages, it’s a way of acknowledging your credibility for whatever that article or service may be. It’s kind of like the search engine algorithm’s version of a referral.

Typically, the more links to your site, the better. This gets tricky though, because not all links are created equally.

Think of search engines as crusaders for quality content in a never-ending battle against spam. Research shows that nearly 60 percent of the links on the internet are spam. Nobody likes spam.

The more spam that is associated with your site, the less likely you are to come up on a search. Alternatively, the more trusted sites that you’re associated with, the more likely you’ll be at the top.

That’s called link value, and we’ll get to that soon.

The process of acquiring links to your website is often known as linkbuilding, and is a critical part of improving your online presence. Linkbuilding is fairly technical and time-consuming, which is why many businesses prefer to hire an SEO expert to help guide their business to the top of the online search mountain.

With a few hours of research, you may be able to grasp and even execute a few basic linkbuilding ideas on your own. But you could also work on your own engine, build your own home, or defend yourself in court.

If you really want to dominate the search engine results, the most efficient route for many business is to hire an SEO expert.

The Link Almighty

So, why are links so important? How do they work?

The idea is pretty intuitive, but it can be helpful to get a run-through on the specifics. We mentioned a link is like a referral, but you can think of links as references on a job application.

The more references the better, right? That depends. You wouldn’t want to put a known drug dealer down as a reference on a job application.

You would, however, want to put Bill Gates down. That would immediately bump your resume to the top of the pile.

The concept is the same with links. The less trusted the links in your network are, the less likely a search engine is to trust you. If your site is frequently linked to websites like popular news sites or universities, you’ll be more trusted.

So the question is, “How do I get associated with the most trusted links?” The job search analogy applies here as well.

In order to be qualified for a high ranking job position, you need to have relevant experience, quality references, and the people skills to land the interview in the first place.

Thankfully link building is a bit more straightforward than job hunting, and unlike a job interview, it can be contracted out to the experts!

Just like with a job interview, if your website has strong references from other popular websites, it will be seen with more authority.

Types of Links

In the early days of the internet, search engines determined your spot by examining the material on your website. The status quo is now focused on how many people have linked to you.

We’ve established that having more links means having more SEO traffic. That’s a general rule, but as mentioned not all links give you the same pull in the eyes of the search engine.

Popular Sites

Links from popular sites will hold more weight in a search engine. Popular sites tend to have more links, so they are seen as more important. Getting links from popular sites will make you a more popular site.

However popular sites also know their worth, and it takes a skilled SEO expert to land those links for your business.

Niche Sites

Getting links from sites in your niche is also a huge plus. This means that you should try and buddy up with similar sites to your own, even if that means competitors.

Think of it this way: if you were a musician and you had links on the pages of every artist in the top 40, you’d get more traffic than if you had links from the 10 greatest plumbers in the world.

A good SEO expert will work to build relevant links from authoritative sites in your industry.

Link Neighborhood

You will want to link to other sites as well, and by doing so you enter into new “link neighborhoods.” A link neighborhood is the nexus of links that you are connected with in a sort of link exchange.

Because of this, you’ll want to make sure that you aren’t linking to sites that aren’t trusted. Your best bet would be to link to popular websites that get a lot of traffic (but that doesn’t mean that you should avoid the chance to promote a friend, or local artist’s website).

Low-Ranking Links

When you comment on a social website, or post frequently on social media, you are also generating links. These don’t hold nearly as much weight as a link from The New York Times, but hey, it’s still something.

You may be thinking, “I could just post a million comments in every video I watch on Youtube!” Don’t think that.

If you throw an inhuman amount of low-ranking links into the internet, the internet will associate you with those low-ranking links. You would then be spamming. You would become the Internet’s enemy.

Time Frame

The internet has been around for a long time. Ever notice that you never see websites from before 2005? That’s because links lose value as they age if the website is not updated with fresh content and design.

You’ll want to keep your website current and maintain an active SEO linkbuilding strategy, even if you are already ranking well for your search terms.

Search engines do this to keep their searches up-to-date because some things just aren’t relevant anymore.

How Do I Improve My Link Value?

An SEO expert can help you, but you may already have access to some low-hanging fruit.

Just like anything else, you’re going to have to start small. Ask around to people that you know who have websites or blogs. If they’re in your niche, even better.

Build relationships with other people in your niche by commenting or messaging with them. The comments will add a little value to your site in the search engine, while the simple act of reaching out greatly improves your odds of getting links on this person’s site.

Another way to boost your site’s ranking is to start a blog that falls into your site’s niche. You’ll want to maintain it and write consistently. Many SEO experts can help you manage this as content and linkbuilding go hand-in-hand in a good SEO campaign.

Developing quality content on your blog will reinforce your linkbuilding campaign, as the search engines will see that not only do you have good links pointing to your site, but you are consistently producing relevant content related to your keywords as well.

It can be difficult to do all of the things listed above on your own. Hiring an SEO expert, as mentioned, can save you time and grow your business when done right.

What Should I Look for in an SEO Expert?

Just like links, not every SEO expert holds the same value. It may seem like a simple job at first glance, but there is a lot of detail and work that goes into optimizing your site.

Make sure to have an open discussion with the person or team you choose before they begin taking the internet by storm. A storm can be good and bad.

The person managing your site holds a lot of power, and they can do some damage to your reputation if they aren’t careful. That’s why you need to ask them a few things before you begin doing business:

Set clear expectations as to what you would like to see. Discuss a result that you would like to see in a certain time frame, and hold them accountable to that. They should be able to look at your keywords ahead of time and make recommendations to match your budget and timeline.

Next, make sure that their practices are going to be beneficial to you. Ensure that they aren’t going to turn your site into one that’s registered as spam, or link you to unfavorable sites. This is what happens when many “budget” SEO experts start running a campaign

Lastly, look for reviews and references. If your SEO expert can’t point to specific examples of successful work, your company probably isn’t going to be their first home run.

Start Doing the Work

Developing an effective and successfully-ranked website is not always easy. You can hire an SEO expert, but you’ll want to begin laying the groundwork as soon as you can with some of the tips in this blog.

Regardless of whether you go the DIY-route or contract a professional SEO company, make sure you have a good understanding of your business metrics and customers before you start.

Ready to go? Start brainstorming ways to generate high-quality links to your site that won’t damage you in the long run. If you’d like to talk to us about SEO for your business you can get in contact with an SEO expert.

The post How an SEO Expert Can Help You Grow Your Business appeared first on Midas Marketing.