October 2016 - Saba Digital Marketing

5 Tips to Help You Write Awesome Web Copy

Posted on October 31, 2016 by admin@saba4321

Think about the average online customer. He or she is probably too distracted and pressed for time to read the 2000-word text you wrote for a brochure that is waxing eloquent about the miracle anti-aging cream your company has just formulated. To really get through to your customers and use online marketing to sell to them, you need to write web copy, keeping online culture and the psychology of the online customer in mind. Here are 5 proven tips to writing great web copy.

1. Get into Your Customer’s Skin

Go beyond demographics for a while and think about what it is your ideal customer wants. If you are selling anti-aging cream, your customer is likely a woman who wants to retain her looks and needs a product that fights wrinkles, irons out crow’s feet, and lifts sagging skin better than her current product. Write your copy in a way that appeals to her.

2. Plan Your Copy

Make a list of all the problems your product solves, then list all of its benefits and come up with a comprehensive list of objections potential customers might have. Use technical words in your copy because it lends authenticity and credibility to your product, and by all means, if your anti-aging cream contains Retinol and mineral water from a spring in Europe, make sure to mention it. However, if you explain how the Retinol will fight wrinkles while the customer sleeps and how the nutrition-rich mineral water will add glow to her skin and plump it up, it gives your copy an extra punch.

3. Repeat the Call to Action

Place frequent calls to action throughout the copy on your website. Ask for the customers to buy, but avoid putting them off by pushing your product too much. Understand and respect that readers may not be ready to buy right this second, so invite them to “find out more” about the product or “visit our online store” and redirect them to other pages on your website.

4. Keep It Short

Before you start writing copy, think about the content, then break it up and spread it around the website. Though 500 words on a piece of paper may not seem like much, online it is a completely different story. People are often distracted, too pressed for time, and there is usually too much information to absorb the moment they go online. Keep your copy short and sweet and spread your call to action around the website and embed frequent invites to navigate the site. Have links to your contact information on every page.

5. Tell a Story

Customers love hearing a good story. For instance, if you have a compelling story to tell about how your anti-aging cream was tested on a group of women in their 50s who started looking well rested after a week of use, and the women in the control group who used anti-gravity planks didn’t, make sure you tell it.

If you follow the above tips from Saba SEO, a trusted SEO agency in San Diego, you will be writing better web copy in no time. The bottom line for creating web copy is that it needs to be engaging and, most importantly, effective. You can get creative to hold your customers’ attention, but if they do not pull out their wallets to pay, the point of writing the copy is lost, so never lose sight of why you are writing the copy.

5 Easy Strategies that Will Help Turn Clients into Brand Ambassadors

Posted on October 24, 2016 by admin@saba4321

Brand ambassadors are people who are genuine advocates of your Company and will go out of their way to recommend and promote your products or services. They are customers who don’t tire of praising your product, just like the Apple fans who don’t tire of singing praises of the iPhone. In this article — brought to you by Saba SEO, a San Diego SEO Company, we will discuss 5 easy strategies that can help you turn customers to brand ambassadors.

While dazzling marketing campaigns with top celebrity brand ambassadors advocating a product will make people sit up and take notice, the most powerful driver of sales remains a recommendation from a brand ambassador who people can relate to. Nothing is more powerful than a recommendation from a friend or a person who is as real as you and whom you trust. Many companies are now realizing that these ‘voluntary’ brand ambassadors wield a lot of power and looking for ways to utilize them. Check out this great article on “Why Brand Ambassadors Are Important.” So how do you turn clients into brand ambassadors?

1. Respond to clients who talks about you

Separate the wheat from the chaff. Just because someone bought from you and likes your page on social media doesn’t mean he or she can be your brand ambassador. Find the clients who are engaging with others and willing to recommend your product. You can monitor social media to track the people who mention your product and respond to them. Listen to what they are saying and use that information to reach out to them and build a rapport.

2. Give Them Special Treatment

Take the clients who love your product and are willing to praise it and make them feel special. You can reward them in various ways, especially by making them feel like they are ‘insiders.’ Foster a group of brand ambassadors who get to test your products or who get a sneak peak of a new highly anticipated product and then let them tell everyone.

3. Surprise Your Clients

How do you do that? By giving them a discount on a product or by giving them a free dessert with their meal. By sending them a sample or even just by sending them a thank you note you will generate upbeat conversation around your product.

4. Declare and Let Them Share

If you are a happening brand with plenty of marketing action and a social media site that is updated frequently with product pictures, giveaways and contests, you make it easier for your brand ambassadors –who we all know love to talk about you –to share their love for your brand. Make sharing on Facebook or Twitter incredibly easy and hassle-free. Need help with Social Media Marketing? Consider hiring a professional firm.

5. Personalize Your Customer’s Experience

A personalized service will work more for product sales than a sales pitch. Train your salespeople to be polite and to add a personal touch to everything and you will gain customers who can vouch for you.

Of course, the upshot is to offer your customers such a fantastic product – one that screams quality – so they cannot help, but turn into brand ambassadors. While all of these strategies can help you turn clients to loyal brand ambassadors, don’t forget that nothing is more important than delivering a high quality product or service and backing it up by exceptional customer service. If you don’t have the right experience or resources needed to reach out to potential brand ambassadors, it’s highly recommended that you seek professional help such as a PR company.

7 Elements of a Successful Social Media Campaign

Posted on October 21, 2016 by admin@saba4321

Google processes 3.5 billion searches every single day. You can be sure that anyone who hears about your brand and wants to find out more about you or your company, checks you out on social media. The importance of creating a good impression on them cannot be overstated. So what works when you set out to market through social media?

Have a Clear Set of Expectations

While there are shopping groups on social media that are selling directly to people, the platform does not always result in direct sales. Use social media marketing to create a community around your brand. Most SEO professionals in San Diego know that social media is different from paid advertising and focuses more on building trust between your customer and you, which of course will result in sales or action at some point.

Establish Objectives

The goals should be aligned with your marketing strategy, and they should be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-based (S.M.A.R.T). A goal for your Facebook page could be to ‘Increase the number of likes by 25% in a three month period’, while a goal for Instagram could be to ‘Find and engage five brand influencers by May 2017.’

Know Your Target Audience

If you are a makeup artist and want to put up makeup tutorial, then Youtube and Pinterest are natural choices. If you are a cookie brand and want to advertise a contest or announce giveaways, you are better off focusing on Facebook. Knowing where to promote your business can help you reach the perfect audience, and if you are unsure of where to start check out this SMM 101 article from Search Engine Journal where you can learn what platform will be most productive to your brand.

Keep Track of Your Goals

Watch the stats. Keep an eye on what your target market finds engaging. Keep a close eye on what gets comments and which video gets watched. Then simply do more of what is working and less of what isn’t. You can always experiment to see if something will work, but also stick with what you know works.

Learn From Experience

When you have been working with social media for some time, you have a pretty good idea of what will work. Experts have learned that quote cards are perfect for Facebook. You can also view what’s trending on Twitter to see if there a possibility to promote your product or service. Furthermore, you can advertise infographics on Pinterest and animated gifs on Tumblr.

Share The Work of Others

Don’t just promote your product or yourself on social media. Use the platform to share interesting content that has been created by someone else, but is relevant to your audience. Put up video content and blogs frequently. It takes time to build up content, and it is worth taking the time to do it. You can blog or put up videos about the problems your product solves, and not necessarily about the product itself. People are more interested in hearing about how you can help them, rather than how brilliant your company is.

Engage With The Audience

Use social media to respond to your customers as quickly as you can as this is as close as you can get to building a personal relationship with them. Whether it is negative or positive feedback, learn from it and do respond.

Social media is a valuable tool that can help you reach potential customers across the globe. Our SEO firm in San Diego County can help you build a successful campaign. Call us at 858-277-1717, and one of our professionals will get you started in no time.

5 Tips For Selecting The Right Keywords For SEO

Posted on October 19, 2016 by admin@saba4321

Companies optimize their web pages for search by using certain keywords or key phrases on their pages. Thus picking the right keywords is crucial not just for paid searches, but also for organic searches. Ideally, you want to pick keywords that are not competitive but still get a lot of searches.

Keywords are the words or phrases that millions of customers type into Google every day. Some keywords such as ‘SEO’ get lots of searches every day. However, if you pick a key phrase such as ‘San Diego SEO’ the number of searches is still pretty high but lower than the generic keyword ‘SEO.’

If you are in the process of building a new website or redesigning an existing one, ensure that your San Diego web design company understands your most important keywords. Because in order to market your product or service effectively, your website should be properly optimized with the right keywords from the very beginning of your campaign. For instance, is the cereal you are selling ‘healthy’ or ‘delicious’? Are your clothes ‘trendy’ or ‘classic’? If you don’t know what your keywords or key phrases are, you will have difficulty driving traffic to your website, and if you are selling something, you will get low results because you don’t know what your customers are searching for online. So how do you pick the right keyword?

1. Think hard about what your customer is searching for. List down all the words that you think appeal to your customers, and this could serve as your preliminary list of keywords. For instance, if you are selling, ‘Brightly colored pillow covers’ your initial list could include some of the following words: colorful cushions and decorative pillows.

2. Use your list to search for the keywords you think your customers are searching for and see what Google comes up with. Next, scroll down to the bottom of the page to the ‘Searches related to Brightly colored pillow covers’ section and take a look at the other keywords people are looking for and see if you can pick any relevant keywords from there.

3. To find out if people are actually using your keywords to search for your niche, use a keyword tool. These are several online tools with which you can find out how many times those words or phrases were searched by people in a search engine each month. The Google Keyword Planner is a good tool to use and it is completely free. The Google Keyword Planner will show you how many times your keyword was searched. The idea is to pinpoint the keywords that get a decent number of searches but low competition. Define your criteria about the number of searches. Depending on your objectives you could look for keyword search volumes between 1000 to 10,000 per month.

4. Go for a less competitive niche. To find out how competitive it is, Google it and look at the number of results that turn up. The niche with few results is the one you should consider. On the other hand, if it has page after page of authoritative, high-quality websites, then you won’t get far because that niche is saturated. Choose one that has low competition and decent search volume.

5. Select broad keywords and key phrases if you want to target as many people as possible, but pick your keywords carefully. The problem with using general words is that your website ad could appear in unrelated searches which would get you irrelevant traffic. You will have to test general keywords and see which ones give you a better result.

Selecting the right keywords is perhaps the most important part of the SEO process. It’s important to take all the time necessary to conduct research in identifying the most lucrative and productive keywords for your business. If you are just starting an SEO or PPC campaign, ensure to discuss the details of your keywords with your Online marketing company. Need help with keyword research? Give us a call, and we will be happy to help.

Simple Off-Page SEO Technique for Better SEO Ranking

Posted on October 17, 2016 by admin@saba4321

Off-page SEO is the collective name for all activities that take place outside of your website which helps your site rank well in organic search results. Off-page SEO is all about promoting your site through a process of bloggers outreach, content marketing, and backlinks. Most San Diego SEO companies believe that off-page SEO is an integral and vital part of the overall SEO process. Here are some of the common off-page SEO strategies and techniques that many SEO experts use.

Links

The most obvious way your website will seem authoritative to the search engine is if other quality sites are linking to it. No matter how great your content is, if no links are pointing to it, you lose points in the ranking game. Links are also commonly referred to backlinks. Check out our free comprehensive link building guide.

Links from other relevant and quality websites act as an endorsement of your content, which helps search engines rank your website higher. Some other factors that search engines take into account while ranking are the reputation of the site linking to you (is the site authoritative?), why it is linking to you and whether the link is relevant and natural.

Online Directories

There are thousands of online directories and it’s important to ensure your website is listed in only those directories that are highly reputable and relevant to your industry. Stay away from services that offer bulk or massive directory listings as it can trigger a negative penalty from Google.

When you submit your website for registration to other directories, the final directory entry will carry a backlink to your website which helps users reach out to you. We recommend you to add a short description of your site in all directories.

Create a Community on Social Networking Sites

Create profiles of your business on all the popular social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn and use them to advertise your website. Social media can help you connect with your target market, by sharing the content of your website through posts. Post regularly on your social network sites to create a community of users that will share your content, thereby promoting your business.

Social Bookmarking

Increase awareness about your business by posting your website on social bookmarking websites. Social bookmarking websites such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Reddit help users connect and find online resources that they are interested in.

Answer Questions

Answer or post questions that are relevant to your business on sites like Yahoo Answers or Quora. For instance, if you sell smoothie machines and someone asks which smoothie blender is the best in the market, reply to the question and link your website in your answer. Be careful not to spam, though.

Blogging

Write an original blog about your product or service and promote it in blog directories. Find blog directories that share content that is similar to your business if the blog has a comment section make sure to add a reply along with a link to your website. Adding a comment and your site to a blog will help you create a backlink, furthermore, it will add valuable information to the topic that is being discussed.

Article submissions

Submit article on your area of interest on other websites. The article should be a unique and original piece of work. Avoid plagiarism at all costs and give references wherever you need to. You can also link your website to the article thus creating a backlink.

Photo and video sharing

Share pictures and videos of your business on sites such as Flickr and YouTube. Additionally, you should publicize your photos and videos on your social media networks to help you drive traffic to your website.

Discussion boards

Start a conversation on a discussion board that is related to your business and if possible add a link from your website. You can also reply to existing board. Either way, you are adding information that helps people resolve a matter. Moreover, you are creating a backlink.

Off-page SEO is as important as On-page SEO when it comes to ranking your website. If you build a good website with great content and back it up with strong off-page SEO, you are sure to see increased ranking, more visits and ultimately increased revenue.

If SEO is not something that interests you or fits your marketing goals, check out our San Diego PPC management services to see if paid ads might be a better alternative. We are happy to discuss our services and learn more about your marketing goals. Give us a call at 858-277-1717.

5 Main Differences Between Google & Bing Ads

Posted on October 14, 2016 by admin@saba4321

Google is the go-to search engine for most people. According to Comscore, It holds about 63% of the search market share. Bing is Microsoft’s search engine and was previously called Windows Live Search and MSN Search. Over the last several years, Bing has made a concerted advertising effort to position itself as a viable alternative to Google. Some studies put the combined market share for Bing and Yahoo.com at 30%. If you are currently utilizing Google Adwords and want to learn about Bing Ads, speak with a PPC Management Company in San Diego to explore all your options.

At first sight, Google and Bing look so similar that except for the logo and the font, it can be difficult to tell them apart. Yet there are marked differences when it comes to placing ads.

1. Google Adwords = More Potential Customers

There are more people using Google than Bing. Hence, Google AdWords is likely to get you more potential online traffic than Bing.

2. Bing Had More Ads on the Top

Bing has four ads at the top of the search results page, whereas, until very recently, Google had just three.

3. Google Offers More Ad Extensions

Online ads have very little space for ad text, which creates problems for copywriters. With little space to work with, it is difficult for advertisers to fit in everything they want to say. Ad extensions in Google allow advertisers to easily create more space to fit more information and promote their message more effectively.

4. Bing Ads Are Generally Cheaper

Both Google and Bing use a similar auction format for advertising. However since there is less competition on Bing, the bids are lower, making the average cost per click (CPC) cheaper. Advertisers with smaller budgets can get better placement for their ads.

5. Google AdWords Offers More Features

Google is not known as the most intuitive search engine for nothing. When placing search ads, Google offers a large number of features for optimization and settings. And in true Google tradition, the interface is more manageable and easy to understand for users.

We, at Saba SEO, believe that PPC advertisement is one of the most effective marketing channels. As a Premier Google Certified Agency, our PPC experts are highly experienced in assessing the effectiveness of Google, Bing and Social Media PPC platforms for businesses.

Despite being the smaller search engine, there are several reports that claim that the conversion rate on Bing is sometimes better compared to Google. Depending on marketing budgets and the type of business, it may be a good idea to utilize both Google and Bing ads to increase reach and enhance the effectiveness of a marketing campaign. If you are interested in learning more about our PPC services, please feel free to give us a call at 858-277-1717.

How Google’s Move to Put 4 Ads in the Top Will Affect SEO Traffic

Posted on October 12, 2016 by admin@saba4321

The world of SEO was dealt the equivalent of a seismic shock when Google moved the paid ads from the right hand side of search results to the top of the page. Google said that it made the change for ‘highly commercial queries” in order to provide “relevant results” for users and “better performance for advertisers”. With the new layout, four paid ads appear at the top of the page now compared to four ads prior to this change. As a result, this has pushed down the organic search results below the fold. Search results that are ‘below the fold’ are all the results that the user has to scroll down for. Scroll further down and another three paid ads appear at the bottom of the search results, severely contracting the space available to organic results.

Most SEO companies believe that this change will have a big impact on organic SEO results and in the absence of a highly effective PPC campaign management strategy; online traffic to most websites will see a significant decrease. In this post, we will the impact of this change on SEO traffic

Decrease in Click Through Rates for Organic Results

Earlier organic results were literally ruling the roost. They were assured a great click through rate, especially those that appeared in the first two positions. The click through rate for organic results is expected to decrease now that they have been pushed down by paid ads. In fact, on mobile phones, no organic listing appears above the fold. This means that more and more websites will be opting to put up paid search ads and leading to an increase in the average cost per click for most PPC advertisers.

Websites Will Opt for Both Paid Ads and Organic Search

Many websites will probably opt to integrate both paid ads and SEO and try and appear at the top for both. This will increase their visibility.

The New Layout Could Alter Search Behavior

It is wrong to assume that users will continue to search the way they always have without scrolling down. With paid results appearing at the top, it will be important to see (and interesting to watch) how many users will be skipping the paid ads to get to the organic search.

A Lot of SERPRS Won’t have 4 Ads at the Top

The number of ads that will appear at the top of the page is expected to increase. However, there are still plenty of search queries that display one or two or no ads at all. As a result, organic rankings will continue to remain important on those pages.

Local SEO will Become Even More Important

In the current layout of the SERP, the paid ads appear on top, under which there is a local pack with local results and finally there are the organic search results. The local pack has greater visibility than organic results, and so it has become extremely important for a local business to appear in the local pack.

Different Landing Pages for Paid Ads and Organic

Websites will probably have different landing pages for paid ads and organic results now. The landing page of the paid ads will probably be targeted at the customer who is in the final stages of buying a product. The landing page of those who reach there through organic results will probably be targeted at customers who are still deciding whether to buy.

More Important to Rank on Organic Search

With the first page organic results now fighting for very limited space, ranking in the first two results (and appearing on the first page) has become more important than ever before.

With Google continuing to look for ways to make results relevant for users, the only thing we know for sure is that the SERPs will change again pretty soon. For now the challenge is for brands, websites and SEO companies to take on the challenge and adapt their marketing strategy according to the new layout.

5 Reasons Why SEO is Still Relevant

Posted on October 10, 2016 by admin@saba4321

If you or your organization has an online presence, chances are that you have heard of SEO. SEO is the set of strategies that a website employs in order to rank high on Google or another major search engine. You may also have heard of people questioning the value of SEO and wondering whether it is dead and irrelevant. That probably stopped you in your tracks if you were thinking of investing in it.

The fact is SEO is not dead. The good news is that SEO provides strong support to your marketing efforts and is still very relevant. Here are a few reasons why it is still so important:

Google is still ranking

Google may not tell us exactly how its algorithms are ranking websites, or exactly what counts as ‘quality’, but it is still ranking. Just run a search and see for yourself. Google has a set of guidelines for websites on how to implement good practices that will increase their ranking.

Search engines are still relevant

This is for anyone who says SEO has lost relevance, because mobile apps are taking over. The question is how do users reach your mobile apps? Through your website of course! This brings us back to the importance of trying to achieve a high rank for your website on search engines so that users find you and are able to download your mobile app.

SEO cannot become irrelevant as long as search engines remain relevant.

Searching has grown exponentially

Google processes 3.5 billion searches a day and that figure is growing everyday now that so many people are using their mobile phones to access the internet. The world is literally in our hands.

The greater the number of people using the internet, the greater the number of people that will use a search engine to get to the information they need. It is a fact that the number of people who reach companies through organic searches is far greater than those who reach them through emails and social media marketing. So anyone looking to attract online traffic should invest in SEO.

Search engines need SEO

In a world where there has been an information explosion and the mass of information continues to explode every day, how does a search engine comb through millions of websites and decide what ranks high and what ranks low? If search engines are to stay on top of their game they need to dive in and fish out high quality information and offer it to their users. And with a good website that has solid content –which is what SEO is all about anyway –you will be helping the search engine to find and index you.

Good marketers will keep up

Whether it is a brick-and-mortar business or an online business, market conditions change all the time. Good marketers don’t give up. They adapt and the same is true for SEO. If search engines have moved beyond keywords and rank you on other factors such as longer blogs or the variety of content that you offer, you change with them. Just like you offer red velvet cupcakes, when they become the hottest selling item.

When someone says that SEO has become irrelevant, it usually means the old ways are not working any longer. What has changed (evolved rather) is the set of strategies that websites now ought to be utilizing in order to rank high.

SEO has had to change in order to keep up with the evolving parameters now used by search engines to rank websites and that is a good thing for both users and websites. Earlier website could get away with underhanded black hat SEO strategies such as keyword stuffing and indiscriminate link building, which didn’t help the website improve its content, nor the visitor who came away disappointed with a website that spoke to the search engine, but not to him.

Thankfully for users disappointed by bad or no content, search engines have upped the ante and websites now need to adapt and utilize a comprehensive list of strategies in order to rank high on search engine results. Need an SEO-friendly website? Call 858.277.1717 and learn more about our San Diego web design services.