Category Archives: Search Engine Optimization

Local Content Marketing to Grow Your Search Engine Rank

The proliferation of mobile devices has made people more dependent on the internet for local searches. According to Google, more than 76% of people who perform local searches on their phones end up visiting a physical store within 24 hours.

If your business has a local presence, it’s important you apply local SEO best practices to do well on local searches. Here are some tips to try:

1. Hunt for local keywords

People use keywords to look for what they need online and they localize! That’s why search engine optimization (SEO) exists in the first place. Your content needs to be optimized with relevant keywords so it can rank high on search engine results pages (SERPs). The same principle works for local SEO. To rank high on local SERPs, your content needs to be optimized with relevant keywords for the location you want to target. Google Adwords’ Keyword Planner is a good tool to use to look for high-volume keywords within a given niche and location. Example: “Eye Doctor Lancaster PA” is a localized search term that is common for users to enter in a search engine.

2. Produce local content for your site

After identifying the keywords to use for your local SEO, the next step is creating location-specific content. For a smarter strategy, don’t just insert the keywords in an otherwise generic article. Instead, customize it according to location. For example, let’s say you’re running an HVAC company, and you want to write about ways to save energy during the winter for a location. The best approach you can take is to write the suggestions to fit the kind of winter that location gets. After all, winters in Los Angeles are different from winters in Boulder.

3. Write for local websites

Guest posting has always been a proven way to improve SEO. But since you’re focusing on a location, publish content on local websites. The backlinks you get will improve your business’ standing on local SERPs. At the same time, if you produce high-quality content, you’ll quickly establish yourself as a local expert, which will give a boost to your brand. Of course, finding sites that will accept guest posts can be challenging. A good rule is to search for them using keywords like write for us + location or guest post + location.

4. Engage with local audiences

You can use social media to reach local audiences, especially now that most of them offer geotagging. This means you can assign a location to a post so that only people in that location can see it. The great thing about geotagging is you can share the same post multiple times. Geotag each post to a different location. Customize the accompanying text for each post, so one post can say “Heya, Atlanta” while the other can say “Howdy Dallas!”

5. Get involved in local activities

When you join a local activity – whether as a participant or a sponsor – get a backlink to your site from the organization facilitating the event. This improves your local SEO, especially if the organization’s site has a higher authority than your own. Also, taking part in local activities gives you writing material for content that appeals to the people in the location you want to target. You’re giving back to the community when you take an active role, and that earns trust and respect among its members.

These tips, when taken together, are guaranteed to be effective. But remember, whether you’re going for global or local SEO, quality content is still the most important element of content marketing. There’s no shortcut for that.

Keyword Research for Website SEO

Keyword research for SEO is where you research the terms people type into search engines when looking for resources similar to your site. Once you know what these keywords are, you can incorporate them into your website content. Do this consistently, and your site will rank for the keywords and keyword phrases on search engine result pages.

But if you’re using the wrong keywords, no matter how much you stuff your content you’ll still not reach your intended audience. This is why it’s necessary to do keyword research. All your subsequent efforts are useless if your keywords aren’t targeted enough.

Specific vs. General

General terms are more popular, which makes them more competitive and expensive. Let’s say you have a law firm in Newport, RI specializing in divorce, and you want its site rank better in the search engine results.

Type in divorce lawyer on Google and you’ll get almost 90 million hits. To get on the first page for that term will take considerable time, money, and effort. And even if you have the resources to get on the first page, how much good will it do? People looking for divorce lawyers in cities other than Newport will leave your site as soon as they realize it’s not what they need. And your site will have a higher bounce rate.

But type in divorce lawyers Newport RI free consultation and you’ll get less than 120,000 search results. With fewer competitors, you can focus on that specific term and get good results in shorter time on a smaller budget. Also, people who visit your site are part of your target market.

In SEO, these specific terms are called long tail keywords. These are targeted to people who are about to make a purchase, or who know more exactly what they want. When someone uses a very specific term, they’re no longer just looking around. There’s a huge chance they already know what they want and are ready to buy or are motivated to learn more.

Tools at Your Disposal

Luckily, you don’t have to guess which long tail keywords perform well. There are several tools I suggest, BuzzSumo, Übersuggest, Ahrefs, and Blog About by Impact.

On Buzzsumo, you can enter any topic, and the tool will analyze what content performs best for that. It displays links to content containing the keyword you supplied, then lists statistics on its Facebook engagement, and also LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+ shares.

For Übersuggest, you can type in a term and choose categories (web, images, etc.) and country. It then gives you an extensive list of longtail keyword based on the term you supplied.

If you’re looking for articles ideas based on the keywords you gathered from the first two tools, there’s Blog About, a blog title generator. Input any keyword, and the tool will display some suggested titles and email you the rest.

Put yourself in your targeted audience’s shoes. If you were in their place, what keywords would you use to find what you’re looking for? That’s a very good place to start.

Save

New Website Checklist: Make Sure Your SEO is Done Before You Launch

You want to make sure your new website looks good and works well. That means no dead links, no blank pages, and no overlooked bugs. But beyond the form and function, there’s another element you need to look at, and that’s SEO.

And in light of Google’s move to prioritize mobile websites, it’s all the more reason for you to assess your website’s SEO-readiness against this checklist:

Domain and host

Does your host web host have a record of major downtimes? A web hosting server with a negative history will hurt your website’s future reputation.

An unreliable host will affect your website’s availability. It’s advisable to use a unique and never-used by someone else domain name, along with a dependable web host known for excellent uptime.
Keyword list

Good copy will make your site rank well on search engines, but it’ll perform much better if you incorporate the right keywords relevant to your industry or niche.

For a new website, it’s wise to go after long-tail keywords because they’re less competitive. In addition, these keywords will help you target specific audiences who are looking for exactly what you’re offering. A great source to look at keywords is www.buzzsumo.com.
Design Theme

Themes are not just about aesthetics. Some design themes are SEO-friendly, some aren’t. To ensure your design is SEO-friendly, it should have clean code on the developer’s side and a modern flow on the user’s side. It should also be responsive for mobile and tablet devices, and quick to load; otherwise, your bounce rate will go up.

Most importantly overall, it should work well on mobile devices. Many people prefer to use their tablets and smartphones as their primary computing tool. Make the browsing experience on smaller screens pleasant and easy. Google cares, so you need to as well!
SEO Tools and Plugins

SEO plugins are simple to add and use, so take advantage of their power in your site. Different SEO tools have different functions, such as LinkPatrol to track and clean up links, and Keyword Tool to find out what keywords your target audience is using to find you. If your site is WordPress add Yoast SEO because it handles both technical and content optimization.
Content

Content is still king, but only if it’s presented right. Gone are the days when you can post short, fluffy content and expect your website to rank. Now, long-form content is a better option because it leads to higher conversions and better page rank. Of course, you don’t have to fill every page with detailed content. Just focus on pages you want to rank and don’t exhaust all your efforts. Some pages aren’t designed to rank anyway, like landing pages.
Photos

You can help your photos appear in the image search results by filling in the metadata fields with relevant alt text. If you already have a focus keyword, add that as well as long as it ties in with the photos. Then set a suitable featured image for every page so that if someone shares it on social media, the thumbnail on the preview will look engaging enough to warrant a click.

These are just some of the things on your SEO checklist, but they’re enough to get you started on the right path. And remember, SEO is an ongoing process. You have to continue working on it long after your website has launched.

Save

Recent SEO Updates

With Google constantly changing what it wants and expects from website owners, it’s hard to keep up to help your site rank well in searches. Google is also extremely secretive about its updates (to help prevent Black Hat SEOs from gaming the system), which makes it even more challenging to know what to do to please the Google beast.

Regardless of if you realize it or not, Google is constantly updating its search algorithm. In fact, this happens 500 to 600 times each year. While most changes are minor, Google occasionally rolls out “significant” updates, such as the famous Google Penguin and Google Panda that affects SERPs (search engine results page) in serious ways. As a search marketer, website owner, or entrepreneur, understanding these Google updates is essential to keep a current ranking intact.

Google’s New Possum Update

According to some experts, the Possum update is the most significant change for local search results since 2014, when Pigeon was rolled out. Initially introduced in the first part of September, this update honed in on the importance of location with the 3-pack and Local Finder.

Once unleashed, the update caused businesses, particularly ones outside of the city limits, to see a spike in their SERP (search engine result page) rankings. In the past, these companies found it difficult to appear in the local search results. Google ignored addresses noted in a different census-designated area.

Another change that came along with Possum was better filtering capabilities. For example, some legal offices may try to create profiles for each lawyer at their location, thinking they can get individual listings on the local search results. With this update, this is no longer possible. Google recognizes duplicate addresses, phone numbers, and links to the same website.
Additional changes that occurred with Possum include:

The searcher’s physical location is more important than in the past.

Search results vary based on even slight changes in keyword phrases. For example, lawyer in San Francisco and San Francisco lawyer now may produce different results.

The local filter now works more independently from the organic search results.

Google’s Penguin 4.0

The Penguin filter was designed to find sites spamming Google search results in ways the regular spam system may not detect. The original Penguin update was released in 2012, the 4th and most recent release, rolled out on September 23rd.

This update to Penguin resulted in an end to long delays. Now, Penguin is real-time, and as Google recrawls and reindexes pages, they are assessed by the filter. As a result, new pages are caught and freed by the Penguin filter all the time.

Penguin is also more granular than in the past. The filter devalues spam and adjusts ranking based on spam signals, rather than affecting the whole site ranking. In the past, Penguin assessed a site-wide penalty.

Another big announcement from Google related to the Penguin 4.0 update. Google will no longer announce additional changes since it’s a real-time, consistent process.

Google’s AMP Update

The AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) project was designed to make the mobile web experience faster. AMP originally launched in February of 2016, which allowed Google Search to deliver news in a reliable and fast way. In August, AMP showed up as a preview on all mobile search results pages. This latest update provides faster experiences for users across the globe.

When using a mobile device, you can now see a label that indicates the page is AMP’d. While this doesn’t change the actual search results or impact a site’s ranking, it does show the pages that can load as fast as lightning.

At the time of the update, an AMP page from a Google Search took less than a second to load. In addition to saving users time, AMP also helps minimize data usage. In fact, pages labeled as AMP’d use 10 times less data than the equivalent non-AMP’d page.

While most Google updates aren’t much to worry about, the ones listed here have a larger impact on search engine rankings. If you have a website that is currently doing pretty well in rankings, keeping up with these updates is a must. It helps ensure you can continue on this path of search engine visibility. In most cases, common sense applies to SEO methods. But for those who want to know the specifics, getting to know algorithm changes is often beneficial.

In case this is all a foreign language for you, Digital Hill can help! Get in touch.

Simple Marketing Tips For Small And Medium Scale Entrepreneurs

Gone are the days when only big players ruled the industry; today small and medium scale enterprises have been giving some pretty serious competition to all the top brands. And all high tech marketing tools and promotional platforms have only made it easier for local businesses to venture out into the global market. Armed with extensive information and competent technology, local businesses are thriving wonderfully. Here are some simple yet effective marketing solutions for newbies who want to make it big.

Social media marketing platforms

Social media is no longer confined to making friends and chatting, it now offers a pretty lucrative marketing option for online business ventures and websites that want to market their product.

Some of these tools are:

Google+ goes local

It is likely that you already have an account on Google +, all your Google accounts, right from Gmail to Google Play and Google Drive guarantee a place on the Google Plus local platform. Ensure that profile information is accurate, and your page actually has some relevant and engaging content. You can even merge the Google + business page with your local business website thereby implementing more competent and diverse marketing.

Twitter for crisp and concise advertising

With its innovative interface and limited character usage, Twitter is the talk of the town! Post crisp, concise and relevant content. Also take a more indirect and informal approach rather than aggressively marketing your product. Don’t aim at selling your product, rather focus on building contacts. Comment and post on the trending topics as well to engage your followers.

Find friends and potential customers on Facebook

Facebook is a great place to connect with your audience and build a loyal customer base. Make use of the technology and market friendly tools available on Facebook. From offering tempting discounts to posting promotional events, you can do it all here! Although don’t suffocate your audience but engage them.

Instagram, a visual treat to customers

Instagram, a platform that focuses solely on visual content offers some innovative promotional ideas to marketers who want to break free from the conventions of the written word. Infographics are the new trend, the aesthetic appeal, and clear-cut representation of data impacts the audience harder than paragraphs of written content.

Pinterest and Tumblr- the rising stars!

For entrepreneurs who want to present their ideas in a more creative and unconventional way, there are always Pinterest and Tumblr to cater to almost all preferences. A great platform for local businesses Pinterest even offers a diverse range of customisable tools.

Marketing tactics for local entrepreneurs

Local enterprises and small-scale businesses are popping up everywhere! All you need is some capital and an idea, but it doesn’t end there. Most local enterprises do well in the initial stages but gradually dwindle into obscurity. Here are some practical marketing tactics that will boost your online credibility,

SEO improvement

SEO or search engine optimisation is one term every web entrepreneur must be familiar with. And as small-scale businesspeople, it is important to stay on top of things so as to not get lost in the sea of other similar offerings. Because no matter how good your content is, weak SEO can ruin it all for you! Increase your website’s visibility on the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. Google gives special preference to local enterprises, so ensure that you apply all SEO optimisation tactics such as keyword usage, location and infographics.

Reviews are important

Surveys and studies have repeatedly proven how most consumers go through reviews and reports on major review sites before they make a purchase. Listing your website on the major review sites improves your online credibility considerably. Platforms such as Yelp, Amazon, TripAdvisor, Consumer Reports are quite popular. Customer reviews are also a valuable source of feedback for local enterprises to identify their problem areas.

Build partnerships and collaborations

Local businesses have the advantage of limited competition. However building collaborations with your peers might help you get some valuable insights into the market. Also, partnerships help you share your field of expertise with your contemporaries. Everything is interdependent, for instance, a web development company could use the services of an auditing firm and vice versa. And the recommendations from the competitors can brighten your prospects in the market tenfold!

Actively participate in the local events

Getting involved in local events in and around your community is a smart way to improve your market standing. Sponsor local events, donate or fund charities and social causes to build a good reputation. Post pictures and information about these events on your website and other social media accounts to build a strong impression.

Local Content Marketing strategies that guarantee success

Content is the foundation of your website; you cannot compromise on quality. However there are some things you should consider before you implement these conquest strategies, Let us look at some of the most effective and reliable content marketing strategies designed for your local business,

Target specific market groups

There was a time when local and small scale firms were suffocated with limited market reach. Thanks to virtual platforms local entrepreneurs can now reach out to the global audience as well. Start slow, target a limited consumer group before you venture out to more markets. Identify your audience and take effective marketing steps to target them. Check out the tools used for this purpose

Facebook insights

Facebook is a good place to start; you can set the location and specify the preferences for finding the ideal customers who’d like and might buy your product. You can even share interests on Facebook and check out what your potential customers like. Such valuable insights and statistical information from Facebook come in very handy in identifying your audience.

Neilson Prizm

With this tool, you can conduct extensive local area searches and surveys to know exactly what appeals to your customers. Neilson Prizm is a free and practical platform where entrepreneurs can use the zip code lookup feature to identify the set consumer groups and customer types. You can access their income level, preferences, location, buying traits on Neilson Prizm.

Google Keyword Planner Tool

Searching customers through keyword usage is another smart way of identifying your desired market. The Google keyword tool helps you analyse the most used keywords in a specific area. Matching the insights from Facebook with the results accumulated from the keyword tools can give you some great market prospects.

Track and analyse the content you post

Content management and analysis are perhaps even more important than marketing. Establish certain ground rules and strategies on which your local business shall be built. Then analyse the content posted across the different social media platforms to see if it matches your set goals. Check out these tools that’ll help you track your page’s progress

BuzzSumo

With BuzzSumo you can identify the specific areas receive special marketing campaigns. This prevents a lopsided development and balances the reach of your business equally to all regions; you even get to know the loopholes in your marketing policies. Other than that BuzzSumo also offers access to your peers and what they’re doing.

urlProfiler

This tool is great for local businesses that want to associate with the big players in the market. urlProfiler helps you get the top URL links and domain names online. It collects and monitors all your pages, from the word count to page reach you can manage it all.

The bottom line:

With such lucrative market conditions and top notch tools, small-scale businesses now have profitable opportunities that weren’t available to them before.

SEO Basics [infographic]

Are you overwhelmed by SEO? To correctly optimize a page for SEO takes time and persistence but it can be learned.

Keywords

Keywords make SEO work. They’re what people use when searching online and what search engines look for when scanning websites. The keyword should always be included in the title, URL, and headings. The keyword should also be in the first paragraph and last sentence and makeup between 3-5% of the text.

Post Title

A post title is how you describe what your topic. It should be an H1 heading, and contain the keyword(s). Ideally, it will be between 50-60 characters. That’s the character limit for search results.

URL

The URL is the address of your post and should mirror the title of the post, including the keyword, and be between 50-60 characters.

Images

Images add impact to a page and help with SEO. Use a jpeg to ensure quality and include the keyword in the name, and alt-text. Also, compress the image to help it load quickly.

Meta Description

The meta description appears in search results under the title post and should include the keyword and be between 135-160 characters. Make them intriguing with a call to action to encourage the reader to click.

Links

Use one link for every 120 words with internal links going to relevant pages within your site. External links should go to large, authoritative sites.

Digging Into Google Analytics Workshop @ The Goshen Chamber

Join Mike Gingerich and Joe Mehl at the Goshen Chamber of Commerce University Workshop…

“DIGGING INTO GOOGLE ANALYTICS WORKSHOP”

Together we’ll cover the in’s and out’s of Google Analytics and how it can be used by businesses to help understand your website traffic and how understanding that traffic can help grow your business!

At the Google Analytics Workshop hosted by the Goshen Chamber of Commerce, we will cover the following:

10 must-knows about Google Analytics
How to generate a monthly website traffic report
How to break down and understand the data
One-on-One workshop (if time allows)

We’ll take a look at the basics that everyone using Google Analytics needs to know and then dig into a few more advanced tools that can help your business with everyday operations.

Google Analytics is an incredibly robust, free tool for measuring web traffic data but it can be very daunting when you see all of the data! At our Digging into Google Analytics Workshop, with Mike Gingerich and Joe Mehl of Digital Hill will dive in and explore ways of using Google Analytics to gather and evaluate performance data, to make your website work for you! Beginning with learning basic definitions and metrics, you’ll walk away with a fundamental understanding of how to use Google Analytics.

Goshen Chamber University – Digging into Google Analytics Workshop

When: Thursday August 4th, 2016, 8 – 9:30 am

Where: Goshen Chamber of Commerce Building, 232 South Main Street, Goshen, IN 46526

Fees/Admission: $25/person

We encourage attendees to bring their own laptops to access your Google Analytics’ account.

To register online, click the “Click Here to Register” button below or, email nkieffer@goshen.org or call Nick Kieffer at (574) 533-2102.

Improve Your Website Traffic Using Google Analytics

Do you understand your website traffic?

Have a website? Do you know how much traffic it gets?

If you said YES, … Awesome! But have you mastered it? More on that point coming soon in Master Your Google Analytics.

If you said NO, then why not? Your website is the face of your business in today’s digitally advanced world. If your mother was anything like mine, then I bet, more than once, you were told,

“You only get 1 chance to make a good first impression” – Mom

If you have to make a quick decision on who you want to operate on you, what’s the first impression leave you with as to who you want operating? It may or may not be factual, but the first impression counts! It counts on the web for sure!

Why wouldn’t want to know how your website is performing? Even if you don’t make a great first impression, you still may be able to win over your potential customer by building trust.

Does your website make a good first impression or are visitors scared and running away!? To answer this question, you need to know how to read and understand your Google Analytic data.

Let’s make sense of that data

Let’s take a look at your Google Analytics Dashboard; it will look similar to the image below:

Google Analytics is a FREE service that provides comprehensive statistics regarding website visitors. Data available through this service consists of site visits, page views, bounce rate, average time on site, pages per visit and percentage of new visits.

Google Analytics can track referral traffic including search engine, direct visits, website referrals and marketing campaigns (Pay Per Click, Banner advertising, e-mail marketing, etc.)

Now let’s dig into understanding the Dashboard:

Sessions:

A session is a group of interactions that take place on your website within a given time frame. For example, a single session can contain multiple screens or page views, events, social interactions, and/or e-commerce transactions.

Users:

Users are viewers that have had at least 1 session within the selected date range. This includes both new and returning users.

Pageviews:

Pageviews is the total number of pages viewed. Repeated views of a single page are counted.

Pages/Sessions:

Pages/Session (Average Page Depth) is the average number of pages viewed during a session. Repeated views of a single page are counted.

Avg. Session Duration:

Avg. Session Duration is the average length of a Session (a session is 1 visit to the website).

Bounce Rate:

Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page). Lower bounce rates are desired!

Most website analysts consider a Bounce Rate of 40% or lower ideal! So if your website is within the 40% rule, you know it’s performing well. If your website is above the 40% bounce rate, here are a few things you can do to improve your site:

Make sure your site is Mobile Friendly. As of May 2015, more online searches are done from a mobile device than a desktop. Source: (http://searchengineland.com/its-official-google-says-more-searches-now-on-mobile-than-on-desktop-220369)
Make sure your information or products can be accessed with no more than 2 to 3 clicks. Make your website easy to navigate.
Make sure to include images, today’s digital audience is very visual and image driven.

A month after your website is mobile friendly, easy to navigate (user-friendly), and has images, check your Google Analytics to see if your bounce rate has improved.

% New Sessions:

The % new sessions is a measure of new visitors. (It doesn’t count a person who comes back more than 1x.)

Use this information to improve your website by understanding its traffic!

Understanding the basic metrics of Google Analytics is key to understanding how your website is performing. Because, like I said earlier, you only get one chance to make a good first impression. Make sure you take advantage of Google Analytics to develop your digital presence!

If you’d like to learn more and go into advanced uses of Google Analytics or even schedule a workshop on Google Analytics, please let me know by emailing joe@digitalhill.com.

STOP! Don’t Purchase Fans or Email Lists

Do you know why it’s not okay to purchase your email list, fans or social audiences?

We all want our websites to appear on the front page of the search engines. We also want to have a huge customer base that assures sales.

Scammers have used these desires to lure business owners to buy social media fans, page likes or purchase email lists of people interested in their services. Scammers ask for small cash amounts for websites to appear on the first page of Google with little to no work on the part of the site owner.

Are these offers legitimate?

If they were, everyone would use them.

Purchased email addresses, fans, and likes are not as real as they seem. An email list isn’t a guarantee the email address owner is a potential customer. To make matters worse there is no guarantee that these email addresses are owned by real people.

Building a Fanbase Takes Effort

Earning a huge fan base or growing likes on social media is not a free ride in the park. It takes time and money to develop content that fans love and share. But paying for audiences is the easiest way to get your account or website shut down by a social media network and lose your hard-earned money. Did you know Facebook has a way of vetting the fans a Page has? Did you know that email companies can shut down your entire service if you upload a list with bad addresses on it?

Earning audiences organically and with social media ads guarantees you of an audience that is actually interested in what you have to say and your product. People with a natural interest have a much better chance of going to the store and making a purchase. They’re also likely to refer your business and products to their friends and relatives.

When you have a huge number of likes without a proportionate number of customers, you’re looking for trouble. You may buy fans only to lose them when they’re flagged as spam accounts. It also looks bad if someone local looks at your Page fans and sees hundreds of fans from India and Pakistan, places where you would not likely have huge followings! By purchasing fans instead of earning them, you’ll lose the trust of your real fans when your like numbers drastically drop in a short period of time. Besides, Google will not hesitate to blacklist your website if you’re found to be participating in these shady activities.

How can you grow your fan base legitimately?

Online marketing is indispensable when it accelerates a company’s growth. To get your website to the top of the search engine, you’ll need quality, SEO-rich, consistent content. People love being informed. Encourage people to subscribe to monthly newsletters by providing free downloadable resources to website visitors in exchange for an email address. These free resources should offer more value than the usual blog posts. This way, you can keep visitors informed about new offers or product improvements.

Once you’ve created meaningful and relevant content related to your products, share it across all your social media platforms. Push your content to as many people as you can. Respond quickly to comments and feedback. Always view critiques as a stepping stone to achieving your business goals. Quick interactions with social media users can help create a huge fan base.

Here’s the full blab with Jessika and I. Enjoy!
Join Jessika Phillips and I live on Blab every Tuesday afternoon at 4pm for our 30 minute Magnet Marketer live videocast online.

Two Critical Keys for your Business Website Today

Key #1: Blogging is here to Stay, Make Sure Your Business is too

In today’s consumer and information-based economy, a blog is a necessity for any successful business website. Blogs are an effective way to communicate about a product or a service or provide the viewer with important information regarding your industry. When presented with clear, informative content, potential customers can easily make an informed decision to spend their money on the goods you’re aiming to provide them with.

Blogging is a prime choice for multiple reasons including:

Tell the viewer more about your company and effectively begin to “sell yourself.”;
Provide potential customers or clients the intellectual knowledge you’ll want them to know about your industry or services;
Share your expertise with the viewer making them more comfortable and trusting of your brand;
Engage the customer in personal interaction via feedback through comments;
Tastefully place your contact info in more places than one;
Maintain a cost-effective PR campaign;
Allow you to maintain complete control over the promotion of your brand.

Blogs are becoming one of the most widespread platforms for news and information, and it can put your company at a disadvantage not to have one. An intuitive and well-informed blog on your website is one of the most powerful forms of self-promotion.

Key #2: In 2016, Mobile Devices Are Now the Majority

There are now more mobile devices browsing the web than desktop web surfers, so not only should your website be compatible with desktop users, mobile browsing should be given the same priority. Mobile access accounts for over half of web browsing in 2016.

On the same token, it’s more efficient to have a mobile responsive website, one that “responds” to the device the viewer is on such as smartphone or tablet, for the following reasons;

Google analytics prefers it, and in fact, tracks website responsiveness. A responsive web page with one URL is much more likely to rank higher than a non-responsive site;
Customers searching for a product who have to switch between a mobile and desktop site on their smartphones are likely to become frustrated and leave the site;
It’s far easier to manage content on one website that is responsive on both desktop and mobile devices than to manage separate website and mobile sites;
The implementation of SEO tactics also becomes much more manageable on one website rather than two.

It’s a simple fact that your business website needs to cater to the mobile visitor, giving them a high-quality experience on your site.

Responsiveness and Blogging Create the Perfect Harmony

If you pair an informative, resource-rich business blog with a responsive, mobile-friendly web page, your website is more likely to yield sales. Not only will you be able to proactively market your brand, you can do so on any platform. In unison, these two practices will rank your page higher. You’ll have the ability to market your services to virtually all users on the internet.