November 2016 - Page 2 of 2 - Saba Digital Marketing

The Do’s and Don’ts of Social Media Marketing

Posted on November 7, 2016 by admin@saba4321

When it comes to social media marketing, there are certain rules to abide by. Consider these important do’s and don’ts while adding content to your social media accounts.

DO

1. Complete your business’ social media profile.

2. Share useful content.

3. Use images and videos.

4. Remember that the content you share represents you, so pick carefully.

5. Be consistent about your brand identity across all social media platforms.

6. Interact with your followers. Reply, ask, share and connect just as you would in person.

7. Be transparent. If your business is criticized online, respond to it the best you can.

8. Follow the 80/20 rule. Entertain or inform in 80 percent of your posts. Sell in 20 percent of your posts.

9. Tweet thank you notes to those who mention you or retweet you.

10. Ask for permission before tagging anyone.

11. Research. Find out which social media platforms your audience likes and what they like to read. Post accordingly.

12. Add a personal touch to your social media posts. Post fun profiles of your team or spontaneous pictures from around the office.

13. Experiment with different types of media. Use video and infographics to present media in fresh and interesting ways.

14. Repurpose the same content. A blog can appear as an infographic or a video.

15. Experiment. Try news ideas, stay abreast of new trends and post different kinds of content.

DON’T

1. Do not have multiple profiles of your business on the same social media platform.

2. Don’t try to get onto every social media platform that comes up. You will spread your efforts too thin.

3. Don’t beg people to “like” or “retweet”. Share great content instead.

4. Don’t post too much or too little. You can Tweet often, but aim for about two Facebook posts on the average day.

5. Don’t get defensive or delete comments in the face of controversy. Don’t ignore crises either.

6. Avoid poor grammar and incorrect spelling.

7. Don’t share the same message over and over again.

8. Don’t write in all caps. It makes you look angry.

9. Don’t overdo the hashtags in your post, unless it’s on Instagram.

10. Don’t worry about quantity (i.e. number of followers or fans) and instead focus on the quality of these relationships.

11. Avoid multichannel messages. Adapt the same content to match the platform.

12. Don’t ignore a social media account. Once you have created an account, make sure you use it. Ignored accounts look unprofessional.

Learn more about social media marketing strategies from the leading experts of internet marketing agencies in San Diego. Call Saba SEO at (858) 277-1717 today for a free consultation.

When Should You Use Duplicate Content for SEO?

Posted on November 4, 2016 by admin@saba4321

When the same content appears on multiple pages online it is called duplicate content. Google defines duplicate content as “substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar.” When a user searches for something, Google tries to return unique and distinct content. If there is duplicate content on several websites, Google will filter out the websites and try to show just one page with the information. Most of the time Google is fairly understanding of duplicate content, especially because much of the information floating around the Internet is duplicate content. Intent is everything, and search engines know San Diego SEO companies and other businesses use duplications for valid reasons, such as those given in the examples below.

Shared Content

Sometimes you find great content on another site and want to share it on your website, which ultimately helps bring traffic to your page as well as the site you sourced the original content from.

Duplicated Product Information

This usually happens on e-commerce sites because manufacturers often provide the same product information and images to several different sites selling their goods.

Printer and Normal Version

Some blogs might have printer versions and regular versions of their web pages, which may be counted as duplicate content.

Duplicate Information on Sorted Product Lists

Sometime e-commerce sites have the option of sorting product lists according to price, category, or even alphabetically. When these separate lists are generated, you can end up with multiple pages carrying the same content.

Duplicate content is very common on the Internet and is not the most effective online marketing strategy. According to Google, duplicate content is only problematic if it is considered to be spam. If the same content appears on several different websites, it will get ranked down or even banned if it is spam or if Google thinks an attempt to manipulate the system has been made. Therefore, it is important to take steps to ensure you give credit where it is due. Let Google know through various solutions such as canonicalization, which involves letting the search engine know which is the preferred page you want users to see. You can take care of this problem by using links to take users back to the website where the content originally appeared, or you can also avoid using duplicate content altogether.

What Are Accelerated Mobile Pages and How Can They Help with SEO?

Posted on November 2, 2016 by admin@saba4321

Much has been said about how online searching has shortened people’s attention spans. Enter mobile phones, which not only revolutionized the way we access the Internet, but also further reduced attention spans. According to Google, 40 percent of users lose patience with any website that takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Usually Internet connections are slower on mobile phones than other digital devices.

Because Google is a search engine that takes great pride in speed, it’s not surprising to learn they were quick on the uptake and introduced the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project. Now, when people in certain countries search for something on Google on their mobile phones, the search results highlight the pages that are AMP-enabled. AMP loads 4 times faster and uses 8 times less data than traditional pages optimized for mobile phones and tabs. In addition, the traffic on AMP can be measured and analyzed.

You may have seen the AMPs, which appear with tiny blue lightning symbols next to search results on Google. When you click on the results with those symbols, you will open a streamlined version of the page that will load almost instantly on your mobile device. An AMP is basically an HTML version of the page. It strips away elements such as JavaScript and third-party scripts that cause web pages to load slowly on mobile devices, which can make the AMP load up to 85 percent faster.

This is bad news for pages that are not optimized for mobile searches and can take up to 8 seconds to load on a mobile device. With a loading time of about a half second, AMP is also a step ahead of pages that are optimized for mobile devices and take 3 seconds to load. When you see an AMP version of a page, it is literally the bare bones of the page and is low on design and graphics, which is what makes it faster.Saving 2.5 minutes may not seem like much when you are rushing for an office meeting, but it makes all the difference when it comes to engagement on a mobile device.

AMP is set to have a significant impact on SEO and mobile app marketing, even though Google has said it is not a ranking factor. However, it won’t be long before a search engine that proudly announces “about 5,650,000,000 results (0.51 seconds),” rewards web pages that load quickly.

Let’s take a look at how AMP is likely to affect SEO.

AMP Has Appeared on the Carousel

When you search in certain categories in certain countries, it triggers a carousel result. These are the results that appear on the horizontal “merry-go-round.” The carousel appears at the top of the search engine results page and AMP-enabled websites or web pages that have been appearing high on the carousel push down all other organic search results, which makes AMP an ideal choice for SEO. If you want your website to be seen high up on the SERPs on a carousel, you will need to be an AMP.

Bounce Rates Are Reduced

Google monitors the time users spend on different sites, which helps rank each site. If too many people come to a website and push the back button because of boring content, slow loading pages, or irrelevant content, it can sound the death knell for the website in terms of ranking. A faster loading AMP is likely to hold a user’s attention and keep him or her from pressing the back button too soon. Accelerated Mobile Pages promise to load so quickly that they will decrease the bounce rate and keep readers engaged, all of which is good for San Diego SEO.

Google Is Penalizing Sites That Are Not Mobile-Enabled

Websites have to be mobile-friendly to be seen. Mobile search has grown exponentially, and with this quantum leap in the number of people using their phones to access the Internet, Google has also been penalizing sites that are not mobile-friendly. Google says it is constantly seeking to improve a user’s experience, and AMP is a step toward making this a reality. In this day and age, if you don’t have a mobile-friendly website, Google can even stop ranking you altogether.

AMP Can Help Your Website Make Money

Ads placed on a website increase its load time. Ironically, while the ads are loading, the people meant to read the content tend to leave because the page takes too long to load. At the same time, websites need ads so they can continue to provide free content. In an indirect way, AMP enables advertisers to generate more money. It allows pages to load very quickly and makes better sense for advertisers because their ads no longer sabotage the speed of the page. The bad news for advertisers is that AMP HTML removes a lot of the infrastructure ads use, which will require a new approach to advertising. With AMP, you may even be able to say goodbye to ad blockers.

Faster Pages Lead to Better Conversion

SOASTA, a privately held American technology company, conducted research that shows websites that load fast have a better conversion rate than those that are slow. The same study found that when the load time is faster by just one second, the website has a better conversion record than a slower site. Anything that is good for conversion is good for SEO.

AMP works when you create two versions of your website: the original website and the other hosted on the AMP network. AMP may have significant implications for the mobile web and for San Diego SEO Internet marketing, but it remains to be seen whether publishers widely adopt the project.

Month: November 2016