September 2015 - Saba Digital Marketing

3 Ways to Use Smartphone Marketing for an In-Store Advantage

Posted on September 30, 2015 by admin@saba4321

The proliferation of smartphones has created new challenges for retailers. Customers want to know that they’re getting a good deal on products and will not hesitate to Google items as they stand in front of the store model. Moreover, their ability to read reviews and detailed information can make them, at times, even more knowledgeable than any salesman working the floor.

Despite these and other challenges, online marketers working today can use smartphones to their advantage. Here are 3 creative ideas that are beginning to take hold worldwide from San Diego search engine optimization company, Saba, Inc.

1. In-Store Alerts

The ability to utilize GPS marketing–say a text message coupon when a customer passes the store–is still limited, but remains an evolving marketing field for the future. For now, storeowners should consider creating an app and advertising it in-store. Deals are the number one reason shoppers use store apps. Once they install said app, the owner has untold potential for future marketing opportunities.

2. Loyalty Programs

Store apps can be further utilized for loyalty programs. Offering small discounts or free item promotions on a regular basis for loyal customers will encourage users to keep the app rather than deleting it as soon as they leave the store. Like loyalty programs that rely on cards, app loyalty programs can track user data and purchasing habits. The app’s utility can be extended further through the use of advanced metrics for tracking.

3. Encourage Googling

Many storeowners wring their hands when not-quite-convinced customers Google the product before buying. Instead of fighting this, it’s time to embrace in-store Googling. Let the customer find the product online, but make sure the online description notes the benefits of the in-store purchase (warranty, price-matching, returns, etc.).

Smartphones can be a huge boon to sales if the retailer knows the strengths. Instead of focusing on the negatives, storeowners can rest easier knowing they’ve fully implemented all the positives.

Need help implementing a new marketing strategy? Turn to Saba, Inc. We specialized in search engine marketing, including SEO, social media, and San Diego PPC management services. Give us a call today at (858) 277-1717 for more information!

6 Things About SEO Everyone Thinks Are True, But Aren’t

Posted on September 28, 2015 by admin@saba4321

If you’re the owner of a website, you probably have heard of many different ways to improve your SEO and overall search engine marketing efforts. While there are many great recommendations concerning SEO on the web, some of the information is false. Here are six SEO myths that you should keep an eye out for, from the industry experts at Saba SEO.

Myth 1: Google XML Sitemaps Generator Will Improve Your Search Rankings

Contrary to what many SEO professionals and bloggers suggest, the Google XML Sitemaps generator will not improve your search rankings. This is a myth that was started by the enthusiastic marketing efforts of SEO professionals who were eager to sell their services to business people. Even though XML sitemaps will not improve your search rankings, they will make it easier for Google to access your website and gain new information. This allows Google to quickly index your website’s pages and make them available on search engines.

Myth 2: Meta Tags Are No Longer Important

Although meta tags are no longer important for keywords, they still serve a purpose. Meta tags will not improve your website’s search ranking, but they can provide valuable information about the content of your pages. In many ways, meta tags are similar to restaurant menus. If you are trying to choose between two restaurants, you will check the menus to see what kind of dishes each establishment offers. If one of the restaurants does not have an accessible menu, you probably won’t dine there. This same principle applies to webpages with meta tags–they are considered more reliable because of the available information.

Myth 3: Uncommon Extensions Improve Search Rankings

Since many websites use the standard .com website extension, some SEO professionals have suggested that using extensions like .biz will improve SEO results. In most cases, switching to these less common website extensions will not help your SEO efforts.

Myth 4: You No Longer Need to Include Keywords in Anchor Text

Some SEO professionals have suggested that keywords no longer have to be included in anchor text, or the text of a hyperlink. At best, this advice is misguided. Anchor text should have keywords, but they should also be diversified. This will increase the credibility and unique nature of your website.

Myth 5: Guest Blogging Isn’t Important

In 2014, many SEO professionals began to recommend that people should stop guest blogging to get links for their websites. This is a poor suggestion. As long as the guest authors on your website are posting top-quality content, guest blogging is an excellent way to build links and diversify your site content.

Myth 6: Paid Search Will Improve Organic Search Results

AdWords PPC will not improve your search ranking within Google’s organic results. Organic results come from Google’s index database and paid search is based on bids. Because of this, organic results and paid search are not directly related to each other.

There is a large amount of information about search engine optimization floating around the Web. Be sure to analyze all of the advice that you find to see if it will truly improve your SEO efforts. You can also reach out to Saba, Inc., a San Diego SEO agency with a proven track record of success. Give us a call today at (858) 277-1717. We offer free website audits and consultations!

Top Tips for Communicating More Effectively with Your Clients

Posted on September 25, 2015 by admin@saba4321

As a trusted SEO agency in San Diego, we understand that effective communication with clients is the hallmark of successful businesses. Business owners who consistently connect in a positive manner with their customers have increased sales and a stronger customer base. With the multitude of mediums available today such as email, texting, instant messaging, and good ol’ fashioned calling, the key to staying connected on a personal level is following a few simple tips to make each and every client feel valued.

1. Develop Active Listening Skills

Effectual communication starts with active listening skills. Focusing on what the client is saying instead of formulating your response. Short phrases such as “I understand” and affirmative body language, like nodding your head, goes a long way in showing you’re paying attention.

2. Learn to Stay Silent

In addition to limiting background noise when face-to-face, don’t interrupt your client and wait to speak until he or she is finished. Interrupting people, even in agreement or excitement is a sign of disrespect and can make clients feel like what they’re saying isn’t important.

3. Choose Words Wisely

Use positive words instead of negative words and phrases when speaking to create an inviting atmosphere, and use their language when explaining a product or service. This doesn’t mean talk down to them, it just means use clear and concise language they’ll understand if they’re not a San Diego AdWords pro (and why would they be if they’re using your services?).

4. Be a Gracious Host

Asking the customer their preferred way of communication sends the message that they are important to you. Although some may prefer text messaging or email, others may prefer speaking on the telephone or face-to-face.

5. Take Notes

When speaking on the phone, Skype or even one-on-one, the likelihood of you forgetting something important is relatively high. Jotting down a few notes shows that you have a genuine interest with whom you are speaking, reinforcing your desire to make each client feel like a person and not a dollar sign.

Wondering what else you can do to connect with client? San Diego search engine marketing company Saba, Inc. can help. We believe in full transparency, quality work, and a content-is-ling strategy that helps our clients connect, maintain, and convert customers. Give us a call today at (858) 277-1717 today!

Best LinkedIn Tools for Your Small Business

Posted on September 23, 2015 by admin@saba4321

LinkedIn is a social media platform that is renowned for its ability to connect people with their colleagues and industry leaders. While many people use LinkedIn to further their individual careers, the platform is also an excellent resource for small businesses. There are many tools that small businesses and startup companies can use to advance their goals and connect with the right resources. Here are a few of the best LinkedIn Tools for small businesses.

Apply with LinkedIn Plugin

If your business is in need of some fresh talent, LinkedIn is a great place to find competent workers. The Apply with LinkedIn Plugin will allow people that visit your LinkedIn profile to apply for jobs. The plugin can be fully customized, and you can provide job descriptions, expectations, and requirements in a single place.

Recommend Button

The Recommend Button is an excellent tool for sharing your products and services with people on the Internet. If you install the Recommend Button on your business website, a new feature will appear next to your product and service descriptions. If your website’s visitors click on the feature, they will be prompted to recommend your product or service to their LinkedIn network. The Recommend Button can assist you with branding efforts and marketing.

LinkedIn’s WordPress

If your company has a blog that provides insightful information about your products, you may have considered sharing your posts on LinkedIn. With LinkedIn’s WordPress tool, your WordPress posts will be synced to your LinkedIn profile. This will save you valuable time that you can spend on other marketing efforts.

Company Insider Plugin

The Company Insider Plugin allows you to showcase the talents of your business’ employees. With this plugin, you will be able to personalize the profiles of the people who make your company great. This is an excellent way to demonstrate your company’s credibility to potential customers and business partners.

With these tools, you will be able to use LinkedIn to aid the online and social media marketing efforts of your small business or startup company.

Looking for more ways to get your company’s name out there and build both your team and your following? Give Saba, Inc. a call at (858) 277-1717. As a local SEO company San Diego businesses and businesses around the country trust, you can count on us to help you meet your marketing goals, connect with your audience, and grow your business.

Understanding Native Advertising

Posted on September 21, 2015 by admin@saba4321

If you’re familiar with online marketing, you’ve probably heard of something called native advertising. Native advertising is a form of online advertising that uses the format and function of a particular platform.

Using Platforms for Advertising

Native advertising uses media platforms on the internet to promote a product or build brand recognition. Traditionally, online advertisements are banner images or overt promotions that do not necessarily appear within the main content of a webpage. In many ways, native advertising is the opposite of this kind of online marketing. Instead of being limited to margins and headers, native advertisements appear directly within the primary content of a webpage. Native advertisements also take on a form that is quite different from traditional online advertisements. They appear as posts or images that blend in with existing content. It is common to see examples of native advertising in social media news feeds and in online newspapers.

Where Does Native Advertising Appear?

Native advertising appears on every major media platform that is accessible on the internet, Facebook being one of the largest. On Facebook, businesses and websites use their page to create posts that promote their product or brand. If these businesses and websites choose to promote their content by paying money to Facebook, their posts will appear in the news feeds of other Facebook users. At a glance, these promoted posts do not appear to be advertisements. Instead, they look like typical posts created by a Facebook user. Because of this, native advertising is a very effective way to engage individuals who may be skeptical of obvious marketing efforts and a good alternative to other social media marketing efforts. Native advertising is also used on Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google, and many other media platforms.

Native advertising is a form of online marketing that appears to people within the context of the platform that they are using. It can be a useful tool for businesses and websites who want engage with a large group of people on the internet in a more organic way that typically offered through traditional marketing efforts.

Want to learn more? Maybe you’d like to find out if Native Advertising can supplement your current marketing strategy? Call (858) 277-1717 and find out! Our local San Diego SEO company offers a variety of internet marketing services and can help you find the right combo to reach your target audience and grow your business!

Is Facebook Marketing Still Worth Your Time?

Posted on September 20, 2015 by admin@saba4321

Facebook has long been the dominant social media platform, becoming a staple of our everyday lives and our preferred method of staying in touch with friends, family members and like-minded individuals. However, does all of this necessarily mean that Facebook is still a viable marketing platform?

Answering this aforementioned question ultimately depends upon your business, your market, and the types of customers you sell to. For instance, in a business-to-consumer (B2C) market, where consumers often make decisions based upon brand recognition, Facebook is actually becoming a more important internet marketing influence. Here is a small list of reasons why.

Facebook Is Self-Reliant

While Google’s share of the search engine market has yet to be challenged, that doesn’t necessarily mean there aren’t any threats. Facebook itself is testing its own search engine and it will soon have the capability to provide around-the-clock content to over one billion subscribers. This makes it an ideal solution for marketers looking to instantly connect with consumers.

Facebook Has Its Own Publishing Platform

Facebook recently launched its direct-to-Facebook publishing platform called “Instant Articles”. This venture into online publishing means users will spend more time getting their favorite news and stories directly on Facebook.

Advertising Has Improved

At one time, the click through rates (CTR) on Facebook digital advertisements were less than impressive. However, those CTR percentages have steadily improved and they now rival any pay-per-click option available to online marketers.

In the end, Facebook is still a viable means of reaching a company’s target audience. However, it really does depend upon the type of customers your company is pursuing. If you operate in a consumer market, then Facebook is a valid option. However, if you operate in a business-to-business (B2B) market, then professional social sites like LinkedIn are more ideal for your customer base.

Interested in learning more about the best marketing strategy for your company? We can help! Saba, Inc. is a local SEO company in San Diego and has been around for more than a decade, helping businesses just like yours improve marketing efforts to connect with your target audience and improve conversions. Give us a call at (858) 277-1717. We look forward to hearing from you!

Automated Bidding, to Use It or Not to Use It

Posted on September 18, 2015 by admin@saba4321

If you’re involved with the search engine marketing industry, you’ll probably need to decide whether or not you want to use automated pay-per-click bidding methods. Automated bidding allows you to use a tool like Google’s Conversion Optimizer to determine the amount of money you should use for advertisement campaigns. Check out the pros and cons of automated bidding to see if this methodology is right for your goals.

Pros

Organization

Unlike many manual bidding tools, automated bidding tools like Conversion Optimizer and Marin allow you to divide your advertising campaign into categories based on ad groups. You can use this information to judge the progress of certain marketing efforts.

Automatic

While it may seem redundant, the automated bidding method’s largest advantage is the fact that it is automatic. This allows you to receive information about your advertising campaigns even when you do not have access to a computer. This makes the automated bidding method excellent for individuals who are busy or travel frequently.

Large Volume of Keywords

If you’re managing very large advertising campaigns, you’re likely dealing with thousands of different keywords and ad groups. Managing this large volume of information can seem like an impossible task for even the most competent individuals. An automated bidding system will use its algorithms to condense this massive amount of information into summaries that you can use to make decisions.

Cons

Delays

Automated bidding tools do not always present you information in real-time. If you’re a pay-per-click manager who needs search engine marketing data available at all hours of the day, a manual bidding method may be a better option.

Not Ideal for Small Websites

The automated bidding method requires a large amount of keyword data and statistics to function properly. Many bidding tools will use this data to offer you strategies and suggestions. If your site does not have a large amount of traffic and keywords, the automated bidding may not be able to operate effectively.

The automated pay-per-click bidding method is a useful tool, but it certainly has a few minor drawbacks.

If you don’t want to automate bidding but it’s too much for you to handle on your own, consider help from a third party like Saba, Inc. We’ve got a decade of experience managing PPC campaigns, SEO, and social media efforts for companies just like yours. And, we offer a free website analysis. Give us a call today at (858) 277-1717.

Why a Content Marketing Strategy Is So Important

Posted on September 16, 2015 by admin@saba4321

Content marketing is not the same as a traditional marketing campaign. In some ways, it’s easy to create content and publish it. But is that content effective? A strategic mindset is fundamentally different from a 9-to-5 mindset. Here are a few reasons it’s crucial to have a content marketing strategy for your business, brought to you by local San Diego SEO pros.

Clarify Purpose

Attracting, getting, and keeping customers is the most basic goal of any business. But, it’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day activities that are supposedly meant to meet that goal. Bottom line demands can be overwhelming. At those times, it can seem counterproductive to take a long-term approach.

A strategic mindset asks big questions. The answers to those questions can give clarity to every other activity.

Build an Audience

The biggest question is: Who are our customers? Then, there are other questions:
– How do we find them?

– What do they need?
– Why would they choose us?
– How do we convince them to choose us?

Building an audience can feel different than making profits. In the short term, it is. But in the long term, this is the essence of attracting, getting, and keeping customers.

Establish Authority

People trust those who are in authority. Strategic thinking will put you back in the mind of your ideal customer so that you can remind yourself and them why they should choose you over anyone else.

Determine an Ideal Customer

In order to attract customers, you need to know them better than they know themselves. But “a customer” is not “every customer”. A customer is a single person. An effective piece of marketing content requires a strategy that can make a person feel that it was written specifically for him or her.

Every piece of marketing content will become more effective, will create more return on investment, and will better serve your customers and your business when you’ve created a strong content strategy.

Have questions? We’ve got answers! Give us a call at (858) 277-1717. We’re a San Diego-based search engine marketing company with a content-is-king attitude, always willing to answer questions or provide a complimentary website audit!

Most Valuable AdWords Tools for PPC Managers

Posted on September 14, 2015 by admin@saba4321

If you are a PPC manager, you are probably using AdWords, Google’s pay-per-click advertising service, to analyze statistics and make decisions. AdWords is useful with its most basic features, but many of its tools can greatly assist your PPC management efforts. Here are five of the most valuable AdWords tools for campaign managers.

Keyword Basket

Keyword Basket is an excellent tool for PPC managers that need to do some research about keywords and their effectiveness in the search engine marketing industry. When you use Keyword Basket, you will be able to find a large variety of keywords for your topic. This tool also allows you to find the keywords that are being used on your competitors’ websites. Keyword Basket is a resource that will help you to discover ways to get ahead of your competition.

Competition Tool

The Competition Tool will enable you to scout out the effectiveness of your rivals’ advertisements. Through a well-organized list, Competition Tool presents the web address and statistics of advertisements on the internet. You can use this information to determine which marketing strategies are effective and which ones fail. You can also use this tool to track keyword trends within your niche.

Top Bids Tool

The Top Bids Tool will show you a list of keywords based on how expensive they are. It will also show you how many clicks each keyword receives on a daily basis. You may use this information to find keyword options that are effective and inexpensive.

Keyword Generator Tool

Keyword Generator is a tool that will create a list of keywords that are similar to a single term or phrase. This is an ideal resource when you are searching for new keywords to use.

Campaigns Tool

The Campaigns Tool will allow you to organize your advertising campaigns by keeping track of your ad groups and keywords. You can use the Campaigns Tool to create targeted text advertisements that can be easily updated through a single interface. This allows you to micromanage your advertising campaign progress through manageable methods.

With some of these valuable AdWords tools, you may be able to take your online marketing efforts to the next level.

Managing numerous campaigns can be tricky, especially across multiple verticals. If you could use a little help, don’t be shy, call Saba, Inc. at (858) 277-1717. We are a trusted internet marketing company in San Diego, offer SEM, SEO, PPC, and social media services to companies across the U.S. and in Canada!

Overused Web Design Trends to Ditch, Now

Posted on September 13, 2015 by admin@saba4321

If you manage a blog or website, you probably know that implementing some of the latest design trends can make your site attractive and functional. Unfortunately, some of the most popular trends become so overused that they harm the originality of your website. This can also undermine the message you’re trying to send to your site’s visitors. Here are four overused web design trends that you should avoid.

1. Overcrowded or Overly Colorful Pages

Many websites, particularly those oriented around art and photography, are filled with images and graphic designs. In some cases, these visuals are overused to the point that there is very little empty space on the page. When this happens, any information on the page becomes difficult to find. You can prevent this problem from occurring by using images and visual effects sparingly.

2. Stock Photos

If you’re familiar with SEO basics, you likely know that Google awards original webpages with high search engine ranks. Aside from creating original content, you should be using unique features and original photos. Many people do not do this. Instead, they use stock photos that can be found in many locations across the web. Consider replacing stock photos with custom photography, graphs, and other images.

3. Image Sliders

Image sliders are another design feature that have been overused in recent years. Image sliders are useful because they compress image content into a fairly small area of a webpage. However, multiple studies show slider kill conversions. An alternative to image sliders will make your site more original and engaging.

4. Homepages Driven by Flash

Homepages that are driven by Flash player may drive some visitors away from your site. Visitors without the most recent version of Flash player may not be able to view your content. Most of these people will not take the time to install the appropriate version of the software. Instead, they will leave your site and spend their time on another website. This can also harm your brand and online reputation.

By replacing these overused web design trends with original features, you can leave a great impression on your visitors! For more tips and design ideas, call Saba, Inc. at (858) 277-1717. We specialize in SEO, social media, and website development and design. Give us a call today!