Google has dropped Google Instant Search

Several years after Google launched Google Instant, they are killing the default search feature to bring search more inline with mobile devices.

After launching Google Instant — Google’s method of showing search results as you type them — several years ago, Google has removed the feature from search effective today.
Google Instant launched in 2010 under the leadership of Marissa Mayer. Mayer called this change a “fundamental shift in search” and the news was covered across all major media when it launched.
Now with the changes in how searchers use mobile — and over 50% of all Google searches being on mobile — Google decided to do away with this feature. A Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land:

We launched Google Instant back in 2010 with the goal to provide users with the information they need as quickly as possible, even as they typed their searches on desktop devices. Since then, many more of our searches happen on mobile, with very different input and interaction and screen constraints. With this in mind, we have decided to remove Google Instant, so we can focus on ways to make Search even faster and more fluid on all devices.

Now as you type, you will only see search suggestions and then be able to click on those suggestions to see the results. The search results will not load any result pages without clicking on a search suggestion or clicking enter.

Building ROI-focused SEO strategies: A framework

How can we, as SEOs, do better for our clients? Columnist Chris Liversidge has his own framework for mapping SEO strategy down to hard-dollar impact.

Running into my tenth year at the helm of an independent performance-focused digital marketing agency, I still — when discussing pain points with prospective clients — see a remarkable number of SEO strategies that are, at best, decoupled from business performance, and, at worst, totally unengaged with wider business performance.
Google’s Avinash Kaushik writes excellently on a customer-centric framework for thinking about how individual digital marketing channels can feed into a unified strategy that ultimately drives new customer growth: surely the key goal of any business.
Failing to employ a framework such as Avinash’s “See Think Do Care” (STDC) framework — or indeed, Google’s Micro-moment mobile variation, which explicitly uses the STDC framework for KPI measurement — is surely not planning for success in 2017.
So how can we, as marketers, do better for our clients? I have my own framework for mapping SEO strategy down to hard £ (or $) impact.

Start with growth: Kill brand!

Before thinking about attribution or STDC, let’s consider SEO fundamentals. If we include brand terms in our assessment of performance, we are looping in all sorts of other marketing activities which we should not be taking credit for. So: filter out brand.
How do we achieve that in practical terms? Google Search Console allows you to quickly and simply filter based on terms or partial terms, like a simple REGEX function. So, great! We can simply run exclusions based on the simplest version of our brand term, and we are done.
Or, not quite.
We only have 90 days data from Google right now. So, either we use a handy TARDIS to go back in time and collect the last year’s worth of data to do a year-on-year comparison to smooth out growth variation due to market seasonality… or, we accept we can’t run year-on-year with brand filtering until this time next year (or more precisely, in 360-90=270 days time). Of course, this is assuming we consistently export and stash Search Console data for our own analysis.
By the way, if you need a hand with that part, I’ve written about exporting Search Console data before.
Even with no TARDIS-delivered historic data, we can at least take the last 90 days percentage brand rate and remove an equivalent percentage from the organic traffic coming into our website as a starting point for the current generic performance delivery.
From there, we can measure the improvement in total click volume from generics over time and apportion that across ongoing organic traffic performance. This will essentially measure incremental improvement from our start date that is delivered by generic term performance improvement.
Step one, complete. We have objective measurement of overall improvement in organic performance excluding brand. That means any remaining performance improvement comes from activity you would expect to find in a solid SEO strategy: content adjustment, ranking improvement, SERP click-through rate improvement, etc.

Take it to the bridge revenue

Now that we have a moving objective view on organic performance, we can map back to revenue in our analytics package of choice. I’d like to assume all sites have well set up, fully tagged, e-commerce enabled (or revenue-attributed) event tracking in place. If that’s not the case, take an action and get on it!
Mapping to revenue should then be easy. Next, we should take into account any costs you are incurring with your agency. A simple ROAS — (Revenue – Cost) / Cost) — approach is to take our generic-only tracked uplift and compare it back to your agency cost at whatever rate you wish. Typically, it’s worth assessing this weekly or monthly. Higher frequencies are useful for higher spends.
More useful, however, is to move beyond ROAS to true ROI. To achieve that, you need to know your average profit margin for revenue sold. Doing this to the category level is usually enough to start focusing your keyphrase strategy in the right areas — where ROAS looks good, but low margins means ROI is negative.
So in simple terms, think of your ROI calculation as (Profit – Cost) / Cost, a subtle but important difference required to ensure you are driving profitable growth.

Finally: Build in attribution

At this stage, you are exporting web analytics data that is showing incremental organic improvement mapped to generic growth, and you are looking at reporting that maps from keyphrases to their revenue delivered with an ROI calculation on top to show if you are picking the right battles.
Now it’s time to improve our accuracy by removing our SEO silo and allowing ourselves to fit into the full, multi-channel, customer conversion path.
In simple terms, the aim now is to pick an attribution model that most closely matches your typical customer conversion path, and apply it. You can get a sense for that by looking at the MCF report in Google Analytics (or using API export and analysis in Adobe). You can tweak the session analysis period to reflect if your product typically enjoys a fast STDC process, or a multi-month STDC path.
A typical model that works well is a blend of time decay and position-based, which you can mock up as a custom model.
And of course, if you are on the Google stack, you can also take advantage of their newly announced free AI attribution analysis tool.
If you are serious about attribution accuracy, there are limitations to Google’s approach: It doesn’t easily ingest non-digital marketing data silos to reflect the true attribution picture, and of course Google Analytics (not to mention Omniture) are built on sessions rather than customers. So there is an approximation there.
If you want to get serious about AI analysis that is truly granular to individual customers, then you have just shown interest in my favorite topic, and I’d be glad to chat about the latest tech in that area — and indeed, that seems like a good subject for future columns!

Final thoughts

The above approach, which doesn’t require cost-prohibitive solutions, is a very solid framework for achieving objective SEO performance measurement, mapping that measurement to insight, and integrating the wider customer journey using sensible attribution choices. It’s fit for all but the largest businesses and will give you insight that’s leading edge about where to focus your SEO efforts.

Reference:http://searchengineland.com/building-roi-focused-seo-strategies-framework-278783

How Social Media Is Changing the Way Businesses Conduct Customer Service

Social media has become more than just a networking platform. They’ve become an ecosystem where friends, family, consumers, and brands interact with one another at lightning speed. In this age of hyper connectivity, brands are slowly realizing the potential of social media when it comes to providing customer service.
According to a study by Lithium Technologies, 70% of Twitter users expect a response from brands they interact with online. The same study also revealed that 50% of those users expect the response within the first hour. The need for a prompt response to customer inquiries has skyrocketed over the past few years and brands need to step up their game.
Today, consumers are quick to share their sentiments—whether it be negative or positive—on social media. Brands need to develop a more agile strategy that allows them to moderate these comments without damaging their reputation.

Because customer support through social media is still an emerging trend, not a lot of brands have expertise on the topic. Consumers, however, understand the power of social media and they use public posts as leverage in order to get the response they deserve.
Once unanswered questions and unaddressed concerns queue up on a brand’s social media page, their reputation is sure to take a hit. This shows the explicit need for brands to quickly allocate energy and resources in improving how they provide customer support through various social media channels.
Negative consumer sentiments shared online can hurt a brand’s online credibility. What makes them even more dangerous is their viral element. Each post has the ability to reach millions of existing and potential customers, giving brands often undeserved bad publicity.
For brands to come across as more responsive and approachable to consumers, they need to have a community manager who can focus on providing prompt and adequate responses to customer inquiries.
Aside from responding to messages being sent in by customers, community managers also play a key role in establishing a better relationship between brands and their target audience. They are also responsible for developing a more relevant tone that resonates with customers.
Once a brand figures out the right tone to use on social media, they can easily communicate with their audience in a more organic way. This tone helps brands stay consistent to the image they want to project to their target audience.
Staying on top of customer support requests are made easier by automation tools that can be integrated into social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Chatbots can perform basic inquiry ticketing to help community managers address the most urgent inquiries first. Both social media sites are already conducting experiments and studies that can further improve the reliability of chatbots.

Using sophisticated machine learning and AI technology, these chatbots are also being trained to engage in more natural-sounding conversations with customers. The better these chatbots perform, the more they’ll be able to help brands increase customer satisfaction.
Given the cutting-edge tools and accessibility of websites like Facebook and Twitter, providing customer support through social media has never been easier. The rising trend in customer support through these platforms is bound to change the way brands establish a relationship with their customers and target audience. When used properly, social media can help brands give customers a more pleasurable experience with their products or services.
Social media is becoming one of the most accessible channels for conversations between brands and consumers. Whether brands are ready for it or not, social media will become a place where consumers will express their thoughts and grievances regarding their experience.

Reference:http://www.webpronews.com/social-media-changing-way-businesses-conduct-customer-service-2017-07/

How to Create a Digital Marketing Strategy for Your Startup

 

 

Launching a startup is exciting for entrepreneurs, especially in this day and age where technology has made doing business easier and more efficient than ever before. Technology has opened up a ton of marketing methods that allow you to sell your products and services and build your brand. These days, a startup may be able to bypass traditional marketing tactics via print and TV but most will need to utilize a digital marketing strategy to reel in and retain customers.
If you have noticed the term “digital marketing” being used more often recently, it's because this is the engine that drives today’s businesses, big and small. Digital marketing uses digital technologies, mainly on the Internet, but also mobile phones and other digital mediums to reach customers. According to Google, companies that use digital marketing strategies have 2.8 times better revenue growth expectancy than those that don't. This is because customers rely heavily on the internet when it comes to making purchasing decisions.
With all the opportunities that exist online, startups should be asking the following questions: what are the digital marketing activities that require low investment but let you reap maximum benefits, and how can you create a digital marketing plan for your startup? Here are some useful insights to help you in creating a digital marketing strategy that will bring you closer to your goals.  

Establish Brand & Web Presence

In creating a digital marketing plan, it is crucial to define a category for your product or service and map out its key benefits. Ask yourself this, “who is my customer and what exactly should they buy from me?” This is a necessary step in order to structure the right look and feel for your brand, from the name, logo, URL address, and others. You can then apply it to your digital marketing strategies.
Next is to establish your web presence. At least 80 percent of consumers use the internet to make their search for information more convenient. Create not just a functional website for your brand but also one that is accessible in multiple platforms including smartphones, tablets, and Smart devices.

Blog, Digital PR & SEO Marketing

Part of digital marketing is promoting brands and services through one or more forms of electronic media. This means you will need a rich blog site, a Facebook fan page, and a Twitter account at a minimum. Some businesses even create an Instagram account. These channels allow you to regularly communicate with your customers. Whatever it is you share on your profile, your followers will see, increasing brand visibility and retention.
Blogging should also be part of your plan. Around 53% of marketers say that blog content creation is their top inbound marketing priority. Why not, when it is one of the best ways to increase traffic to your site. To further support your web presence and social media activities, you will need to plan out your digital public relation efforts, which include techniques like crowdsourcing. This will allow you to monitor your online reputation.
Digital marketing won’t be complete without incorporating search-engine optimization (SEO) and link building strategies. The main goal is to top the rankings in the search results when a customer types in keywords associated to your business. Early-stage companies should start with the on-page optimization of their site. Combine it with a strong social media presence, an engaging company blog, and strategic keywords and you’re looking at a plan that has a high potential for success.

Online Advertising for Greater Exposure

Lastly, your digital marketing plan should include the development of an effective online advertising program. Startups can take advantage of Google AdWords since it’s cost effective, flexible, and results-oriented. It is also highly-scalable, as it allows you to measure traffic to your site. You will know in real time what is or is not working for your online business. Thus, you will be able to find immediate solutions to improve your results.
Technological advancement has enabled more consumers to rely on handheld devices, web searches, and other online tools to make purchasing decisions. In today’s startup industry, you need to be competitive for your brand to be a hit. Get into the trend with digital marketing solutions. If you are not the strongest marketer, you can hire a professional outside of your organization.

Reference:http://www.webpronews.com/create-digital-marketing-strategy-startup-2017-07/

6 Ways to Increase Brand Loyalty on Social Media

 

 

If you want your social media marketing to be effective, you need active, engaged, and loyal followers.
Social media follower counts are a distraction. Don’t focus on this.
Brand loyalty is what really matters. This will naturally ensure long-term engagement on social media.
Fortunately, there are several strategies that can help you build customer loyalty and enhance your brand’s online image.

Why Brand Loyalty Matters

Loyalty matters more than follower numbers. Here are a few reasons why:

1. Resistance to competition. In today’s highly competitive market, brand loyalty is incredibly hard to come by. Consumers have multiple options accessible, making it easy for you to lose them to competitors. Follower numbers may increase new followers’ perception of your brand, but it’s the loyal followers who add real value eventually.
2. Enthusiasm and engagement. A thousand loyal followers are worth far more than 10,000 indifferent followers. Loyal followers are more likely to interact with your posts and create meaningful conversations. Real engagement is more valuable to your online image and SEO than follower count.
3. Advocacy – Loyal social media followers are high potential brand advocates. They’re very likely to talk about your brand positively, even without persuasion. The right social media campaign can turn several loyal fans into invaluable messengers spreading awareness about your brand.

How to Increase Brand Loyalty on Social Media

If your aim is to aggressively cultivate loyal social media followers who will advocate your brand on your behalf, the first thing to consider is your content and social media management strategy.

1. Create a Smart Social Media Strategy

You can’t rely only on your advertising, marketing, and sales strategies to carry you through social media because each platform comes with its unique opportunities and intricacies.
Social media marketing has moved beyond the simple acts of posting and interaction to include advertising, marketing, lead generation, selling, and support combined.
It’s essential to create a social media strategy that includes a cohesive plan for PR, SEO, and link building and prospect mining to keep up with your competition.
When focusing on brand loyalty, ask what value you can create for your fans on social media. The answer you come up with needs to be powerful enough to inspire your fans to be loyal. It’s a good idea to research your competition when creating your social media strategy.

2. Share Quality Content

To inspire brand loyalty on social media, you need to share valuable content or useful content with your followers.
The way you present your content and the formats you choose also matter. In terms of metrics, quality content is what will give you the most ROI – shares, likes, comments, and click-throughs.
Visual content gets noticed and shared more via social networks, so it’s important to factor them in when planning your social media content. Use infographics, videos, screenshots, graphs and visual aids where possible, to make your content more striking and memorable.
Also, ensure that your content is branded, with your logo, colors and chosen typography consistently used on everything you share.

3. Find Your Voice

Followers want to interact with real people, not bots or automated content. Ensure that you don’t sideline personal interactions as something to do when you have time.
Prioritize personal interactions and use them to show fans your personality. The warmth will keep your followers coming back for more interactions with you.
Some brands use common values and interests to connect with people. For instance, if you enjoy baseball, you can make the occasional baseball reference on your social posts, or talk about current events, news related to it.
Cause based social campaigns are another way to connect with your audience and their values.

Join us at the US Search Party 2017 enter today!
US Search Awards are always a major hit & last year's winners have realised significant benefits through their wins! Enter to see the same results!

4. Be Consistent

People associate others with their strongest personality traits. That’s what you remember about people and that’s what lingers on your mind. As a brand, it’s important to create and consistently display favorable personality traits to build familiarity among people.
These traits can be expressed through content sharing and conversations you have with people. If your routine includes blog content promotion, answering questions related to your industry and commenting on other people’s shares, each of those tasks should be completed in the same voice.
For instance, ‘Life Is A Game’ blogger Oliver Emberton, rose to fame through his Quora answers, his distinct style of answering questions, with great visuals.

5. Answer and Acknowledge

People want to be acknowledged. If you consistently respond to their queries with useful, detailed answers, you can earn their respect. This is probably what you will notice if you look at the historic footprint left by any social media influencer.
You don’t have to limit answers to your fans. You can expand your exposure by finding questions asked by anyone, and answering them.
Use keywords related to your industry as search queries to find questions and respond to them with precise and concise answers. Remember to acknowledge any responses you receive and see the conversations through.
Narrow is one Twitter automation tool you can use to find the right people to interact with.

6. Quid Pro Quo

Your followers are most certainly creating content of their own and participating in conversations, possibly related to your industry. You can use social media monitoring to find them and share them, if they are share-worthy. By doing this, you not only earn the loyalty of those followers but encourage other followers to share content related to your brand.
Another great way of managing relationships with followers is through Twitter lists. Add followers who have similar levels of engagement with your brand in Twitter lists, and visit your lists once a week to interact with them.
Finally, don’t forget rewards. The right rewards for the best of your followers can be powerful in earning their loyalty. Many brands have loyalty programs to extend to the best of their fans.

Reference:https://www.searchenginejournal.com/increase-brand-loyalty-social-media/206998/?ver=206998X2

How to Use Whatsapp to Generate More Sales

Since launching in 2009, WhatsApp has become one of the most popular ways for people to communicate with each other across the globe. Today, the mobile app's active user base is second only to its parent company, Facebook, with over 1.2 billion people using it to send messages and share data every month.

Social network sites ranked by number of active users (in millions) as of April 2017

For most users, WhatsApp is a chatting application for casual conversations between friends and family. However, the app also has a lot of potential for doing business.
Here are a few reasons Whatsapp makes a great business tool:

• Easily send brochures, catalogs, e-books, images, and videos.
• Get customer feedback by using WhatsApp as a survey tool.
• Send alerts and notifications about sales and events.
• Accept sales inquiries
• Receive payment from purchases instantly.
•  Direct engagement via phone calls.

Getting Started With Whatsapp

Perhaps one of the reasons behind WhatsApp’s popularity is its advertisement free experience. However, the lack of advertisement opportunities has caused business people to believe that there is no revenue to gain in WhatsApp.
The thing is there are no media to invest in or ad space to purchase, and you most certainly can’t get away with spamming people you don’t know.  Fortunately, there are still a number of ways to make the app a useful business tool. Here's how to get started:

1. Build a Phone Database

The one thing that can stand between your messages and your target audience in WhatsApp is their phone number. Without a phone number, you cannot send messages to prospective customers which means you'll have to earn their contact invitation.  You can do this by offering something of value to catch their interest, such as a special promo, a free service, or a free item.

2. Establish User Loyalty

Take advantage of WhatsApp’s extremely loyal users. The group lists on Whatsapp have shown more brand loyalty than any other social media groups. Couple this with a friendly and personal brand persona, and you will be able to develop a great reputation with your target audience.

3. Be Quick on Your Feet

WhatsApp has an amazing 70 percent open rate, which means that more often than not, your target audience is online and will see your messages. If you receive an inquiry, you must respond promptly. The worst thing you can do is establish a massive phone list and fail to reply to your customers.

4. Create Quality Content

You'll have to stop thinking of WhatsApp as a mere chatting application. That being said, you must ensure that you deliver top notch quality content. Similar to how you would advertise on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, your WhatsApp ads must adhere to your brand’s style and format.
WhatsApp is a very direct and personal app, so it pays to make sure that your brand is represented by a friendly persona to engage with customers. Like any other social media platforms, you'll have to prioritize your target audience to get the most out of it.


Reference :http://www.webpronews.com/use-whatsapp-generate-sales-2017-07/

Why WordPress is the Last CMS You Should Opt For

WordPress is one of the most, or even the most hyped content management systems ever. It is favored by many people and there are some really good reasons for it to be so well-liked. There is no doubt that a lot of clients opt for WordPress because one can work with WordPress for free. This is surely a very strong ‘pro’ WordPress argument. Moreover, WordPress offers its clients a number of interesting possibilities due to the elaborate system of plugins. So, with WordPress, you can create a lot of things ranging from a simple blogging site to a unique website or sophisticated online store.
However, when you are about to launch your own site and are looking for the best solution, you should be aware of the problems you may face if you start working with WordPress.

1.  First and Foremost WordPress is a Blogging Platform

The first thing to know about WordPress is that it was created as a blogging platform. The company doesn’t like to admit this fact but it is true. So, you should understand that WordPress is not a full featured CMS. To make your WordPress website perform some complicated CMS functions you are supposed to add various plugins. There are a number of them but there is no pre-built all-in-one solution here.

2. Plugin System

WordPress has a plugin system they are proud of. It means that you can create a site of your own and make it functional by adding different plugins. You can do whatever you want; there are more than 40, 000 plugins to choose from at the moment.
The plugins are created by a wide range of WordPress developers. The problem is that the entry barrier is extremely low.  It means that the professional level of a person who adds his/her plugin may be not high enough.  As a result, plugin conflicts are common within WordPress. So, one has to be extremely careful with adding plugins because they are developed by different developers with different level of coding knowledge. You may face a serious problem resulting in malfunctioning of your website.
The only alternative to using plugins means programming the functionality yourself, which means, at the very least, you need a reasonable knowledge of php.

3. Сoding Knowledge is Necessary

There is one more detail you should take into consideration. If you are a newcomer in the world of web development, you are certainly searching for an easy variant with little or no coding knowledge involved. In this case, WordPress is definitely not the way to go. You do need to know what it takes to get a site online with this platform. Of course, it may be even interesting to learn something new, but only if you have time for it. If there is no time you’d better find all-in-one website builder with a ready-made template. The market is full of vendors that offer the solutions, requiring no coding.

4. Never Ending Updates Story

The plugins used to run your WordPress website need constant updating. Of course, the digital world can’t go on without updating, it is absolutely necessary. But in the case of WordPress, updating becomes a constant source of irritation. Each time you login there is a probability you need to update something. The worst thing about updating is that there is no guarantee your site will be working properly after the next upgrading session. If you don’t have a website administrator and you are doing all the work yourself you will have a lot to do.

5. WordPress Sites are Slow

If you want your site to have more than the default functionality, you have to add a lot of different plugins to perform multiple tasks. But do not forget that the more plugins you add, the more the site is slowed down.
Besides that, if you need a lot of images for your site the problem is aggravated, as they make it even slower. To add to this, if you are not experienced enough to pick a template with no extra functions, you risk ending up with a disastrously slow website. Your prospective clients are not likely to be very happy with this situation.

6. WordPress is Not Really User-Friendly

As a beginner, you may find the learning curve for WordPress rather steep.  It will take you a good while to figure out how the things work here. Unfortunately, they are far from being intuitive. Previous experience of web development will be quite helpful in this situation. But if this is your first attempt to become more intimate with web building, it could be hard work.

7. Not All WordPress Themes are Responsive

In the contemporary world full of digital devices you automatically expect that your visitors will be able to access your website using any kind of screen. This is not always the case with WordPress. Regrettably, not all WP themes are mobile-friendly. So, you should be careful and make sure you find a responsive theme. The same is true about plugins. Not all of them are responsive.

8. Lack of Security

Unfortunately WordPress sites are an easy prey for hacking. The security system used by WordPress is not sufficient, so it is too simple to hack your page. If you are concerned about the secure future of your website you should give give this a lot of consideration. There are things you can do to protect a WordPress site, but, again, they require some coding knowledge.

9. No Real Technical Support

WordPress does not provide any direct technical support to their clients. There are community support forums where you can ask for help from other WordPress developers, but there is no guarantee you will get a solution to an issue. There is also a WordPress Development StackExchange forum, but again there is no guarantee of an answer. You will probably find yourself spending a lot of time searching the web for answers.

10. SEO Problems

WordPress is able to help you a lot with staying visible to other Internet users. But to achieve this result you need to deal with more plugins. So, you depend on the plugins again. Moreover, be aware of the inconvenience of duplicates and confusing sitemaps created by the WordPress tagging and category system. It may lead to the situation when you will have multiple versions of the same content.  You can cope with the problem easily if you have some idea of coding. But if do not, it is something to look into.

Conclusion

There is no doubt, WordPress is a good solution for an experienced web designer. But if you are trying to create your first website yourself, you may find this platform somewhat confusing and troublesome. The plugin system makes the things even more complicated for a beginner. Moreover, though most basic themes and plugins are free, you are still supposed to pay to get high-quality plugins and support. Taking into consideration all these facts, you might want to think twice before opting for WordPress.

Reference:http://www.developerdrive.com/2017/04/why-wordpress-is-the-last-cms-you-should-opt-for/

5 Tools That Will Make Your SEO Life Much Easier

 

This post was sponsored by SE Ranking.
Working with hundreds of clients and projects on a daily basis, digital agencies and SEO professionals with a lot of projects spend an enormous amount of time estimating, developing strategies, analyzing, and reporting.
Simultaneously, the business has to grow, generate leads, and develop customer loyalty. And, of course, make more money.
How in the world can you make all of these things happen while making your clients and teams happy at the same time?
Certainly, there are many ways for agencies and SEO pros to increase their revenue and customer loyalty regardless of whether it’s generated through new technologies or via enhanced internal processes.
Working close with agencies, though, we’ve identified five of the most common pain points they are struggling with:

• Finding solutions on how to personalize and enhance relationships with their clients,
• Finding new ways to generate leads.
• Building better value proposition.
• Accelerating strategy execution.
• Creating more accurate forecasting.

Automation, new widgets, and tools are often the cure for the problems.
Below is a collection of tools and options that can help with reaching these objectives to the best satisfaction of all parties involved.

1. Generate More Qualified Leads Using Lead Generator Widget

Lead generator is a great tool that helps attract qualified leads using instant SEO audit as an attraction.
It’s a widget (or a webform, if you will) installed on your website that provides your potential clients with a detailed report on how well their webpage is optimized for a certain search query.
In exchange, you are getting their contact information along with their report ending up with a “hot” lead and a list of their problems at hand to start the conversation going.
There are some widgets on the market to choose from.
SE Ranking offers this option within their top plans. It looks very sleek and can be customized to reflect your unique brand styling.

The popped-out form:

Here is how easily (as simple as 1-2-3) you can customize and install the webform and start generating leads today:
Step 1: Select the widget type and install it: choose the form, the color, the budget, the text and where you want to place it on a site.

Step 2: Add a small piece of the HTML code to your website pages.

Step 3: Get alerts on new leads and convert them into your potential clients.
That’s it!

2. Build Trust & Personalize a Client-Agency Relationship

White Label is quite a popular option in SEO platforms as it is aimed at presenting your SEO services as your own technology. Not all of the SEO platforms offer White Label as part of the subscription. So, look for services like SE Ranking that has this option within their pricing plans.
The value of White Label in building trust and credibility with your clients is indisputable. With minimum development work, you can use your domain or subdomain to provide personalized SEO services to your clients. Let’s look inside the system to see how it works, using SE Ranking as an illustration.
By employing White Label option, you can customize the system to reflect your own interface and login page, change the header and footer of your own domain and adapt the look of email templates to fit your agency styling.
The reports you’ll be sending to your clients will look like they’ve been generated via your own SEO technology. Moreover, all your SEO reports can be sent via your own SMTP server.

It is easy to add and manage users with custom access to other SEO features like rank tracking, backlink monitoring, website audit, etc. There is never a hint of connection between your agency and SE Ranking and since the platform is cloud-based, there are no hosting or maintenance issues.

3. Use Marketing Plan to Speed up Estimation & Enhance Accuracy

Regardless of how many times you’ve provided the estimation and developed a strategy for your clients, more often than not it takes an arm and a leg to create a document that’s both impressive and accurate.
What if you could automate this process and come up with a personalized plan built based on the best practices in the field – with the simple click of a mouse?
Tools like Marketing Plan from SE Ranking do just that.

Automating the estimation and preliminary strategy within the initial stages of your sales cycle effectively cuts the time it takes to execute while ensuring accuracy.
Also, the beauty of it is in how easily you can customize the plan, add your points, get a complete list of tasks, and disperse these tasks among your team members. It’s like a mini project management tool at your fingertips with an SEO twist.

4.  Develop Ambassadors Using Top-Notch Reporting

Beautiful, detailed and comprehensive reports are the base of making your customers happy and thus, loyal. It’s also the most painful part for agencies since reports take so much time to develop.
Using reporting tools in an SEO platform makes this tedious task so much easier.
For example, the Report Builder from SE Ranking helps create professional reports and impress even the most demanding clients. You can add a personalized look to your reports by adding your logo and contact info in the header.
Additionally, make them easily accessible with the option to download them in different formats: .pdf, .xls, .html, .csv. You can send and get reports automatically to selected e-mails on a regular basis.


The tool works in a manual, automatic, or scheduled mode. A nice touch is the Drag and Drop. These modules help make your SEO reports look comprehensive and elegant.

5. Budgeting Is a Science – Treat It Accordingly

Forecasting and the estimation of your SEO potential is a crucial puzzle piece for generating greater revenue while simultaneously making your clients happy.
You can still use Excel files and guess how much return on investment you might get from your SEO efforts. Or, you can use tools such as SEO Potential from SE Ranking to forecast and justify your budgeting.
This feature uses a sophisticated formula to predict the results of your SEO investments.
For example, by using this tool, you can easily predict how many clicks your client can get based on their search rankings. Alternatively, assess the expected traffic volume, quantity of clients and traffic cost via Google AdWords. You can then generate the reports and export them into different formats to present them in detail to your clients.

In the modern business environment, making more money is not just about increasing your rates or advertising budget. It’s also about value proposition, business processes, and technologies. These are the factors that really affect the bottom of the funnel in the long run, as well as the overall health and business efficiency of your organization.
Using platforms such as SE Ranking, which offers basically everything that you need to successfully operate your digital agency or provide freelance services, might help eliminate unnecessary clutter and complexity while helping you grow a prosperous business and long-term client relationships in the tough field of digital marketing.

Reference:https://www.searchenginejournal.com/se-ranking/204000/

The Simple Way to Manually Deactivate WordPress plugins

Plugins and themes on WordPress can occasionally interfere with each other and prevent your login page from loading, which will prevent you from accessing your website’s backend. In most cases you might even get nothing but a white screen. The solution in this case is to access the database associated with your WordPress site using phpMyAdmin and deactivate the plugins manually.

1. Access to the Database

To start troubleshooting first we need to login to our cPanel and click on the phpMyAdmin icon in the Database Tab. Enter your administration user name and password if required.

2. Access your WordPress Database

After you are logged into your database, click on your database name from the menu on the left side. (Please note, for this tutorial we are using theGem as our database name. Yours will be different, in most cases it is your site or business name.)
Click on theGem (your database name) and then wp_options.

From the wp_options table, you will need to search for your theme, files and plugins to temporarily deactivate them to troubleshoot the issue.

3. Searching for Various WordPress Options

The first search needs to be for an option_name. You will enter template in the search bar for option name. This should retrieve the template entry in the database.

From here, you will delete the text field and enter your original default theme.

The second search should be for the stylesheet. In this search, you will enter stylesheet in the option_name section and press enter. This will show the results of your stylesheet. Enter the default theme name in the option_value textboxt to reset to default.

The third and final search is for installed plugins. This time the value to search for is active_plugins. A long threaded bunch of letters, numbers, and symbols should show in the value field for active_plugins.

Erase this command and press enter. The option_value for the plugins should now be empty. This makes all the plugins disabled on the WordPress site.

4. Checking the WordPress site

After completing the first three steps, your WordPress site should load. You might need to refresh the page in order to see it. From this point, you will be able to go into the plugins sessions of your WordPress site and find where the conflict is. This will allow you to adjust the plugins and themes and make sure that the site loads properly.
This solution works well whenever you cannot get your WordPress site to load at all. It could either show as a blank page or simply load continuously. Make sure to complete all three of the searches within phpMyAdmin to reset all of the possible conflicts. The first two searches help to reset the theme and the third helps to deactivate the plugins.

Reference:http://www.developerdrive.com/2017/07/the-simple-way-to-manually-deactivate-wordpress-plugins/

7 Reasons You Should Redesign Your Small Business Website in WordPress

Your website serves as the digital storefront for your business. If it doesn’t look appealing, load quickly or even have a mobile version, customers are going to keep walking. Many small business owners rely on their website to bring in a steady stream of leads and educate potential customers on what they offer.
Related: 5 Steps to Take to Start Your Small Business Blog Today 
However, when it comes to designing and developing a website, most of those same small business owners think they can’t have all the bells and whistles that larger businesses have. But that’s not true. Why? Meet WordPress.
WordPress is a free platform that powers the back end of your website. It’s commonly referred to as a “content management system” because of its ability to let you easily create and organize all of the pages and media you upload to your site.
Interested in learning why it’s the best option for your small business’ website? Keep reading . . .

1. You’ll be able to start using your website as a blog.

If you’re using a separate website to host your blog or, worse, have no blog at all (at least yet), switching your site over to WordPress will quickly solve that problem. Not only is the software incredibly easy to operate (adding new pages/posts literally takes seconds), but it’s the perfect platform for blogging about your small business.
Simply set up a page on your site dedicated to your blog (just call it “blog” or some catchy name that plays off your brand). Then you can start adding posts to that page. A blog is your easiest and most effective way to continuously add new content to your site and keep customers up-to-date with your business.

 2. WordPress constantly updates itself for safety and security.

Instant updates mean you can be confident your website’s security is always up to date and aligned with the best, most current policies. While some other content management systems might require you to manually check for updates or may be slack on performing maintenance, WordPress does the work for you.
You can sleep soundly knowing that your site will automatically update, and knowing, too, that WordPress will keep working to better its system and make things more secure for users and visitors.

3. WordPress is open source.

"Open source" simply means that developers are able to contribute to WordPress’ software in the form of plugins, themes and updates. How does that benefit you? The system is constantly improving and getting better, and a new addition doesn’t cost you a cent. You can reap all the benefits of these improvements without paying for them.
Related: With Open-Source Software, You Don't Have to Start From Scratch

 

4. WordPress is SEO friendly.

SEO, or search engine optimization, refers to the idea of making your website more searchable by engines like Google and Yahoo. While mastering SEO can take some investment of time WordPress offers ways for business owners to optimize their site in the easiest ways possible. Check out the free Yoast SEO plugin, which shows you step-by-step how your content ranks and where there’s room to improve.
Related: Top 7 Things You Don't Know About SEO

 

5. WordPress is no newbie.

This CMS is swimming in familiar water. It’s been around for more than ten years so it’s safe to say it’s a sure thing. While WordPress (like any CMS) isn’t perfect, it’s pretty much problem-free. Over the years, its engineers have had time to work out those little kinks and improve, aging the system into a timeless CMS that all levels of web developers have come to love.

6. Coding for WordPress is standard for any web developer.

A lot of small business owners hire a web developer who then builds a complicated website that no one else can manage. That’s all well and good if you never need to change your website again -- but that’s rare.
One of the reasons WordPress is so great is that it’s become such a popular choice any web developer knows how to code for it. Whenever a problem pops up that you can’t fix, or you decide to redesign your website's look, any developer will be able to get the job done.

 

7. Having a WordPress website puts you in good company.

Yes, WordPress is “every guy’s CMS.” That being said, its capabilities extend far beyond the basic ones; and some of the biggest companies in the world use WordPress to power their sites. How big is “big”? The New York Times, Mashable, TechCrunch, and Inc. (to name a few).
WordPress is great for small businesses because it has everything you need to create a visually pleasing, fully functional, scalable website, and it also offers endless possibilities if your business or budget grows down the road.

Reference:https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/271710

SEO Vs. PPC: How to Make the Right Choice

Most successful online businesses typically aim to make maximum profits. To reach this goal, these businesses greatly rely on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PPC (Pay Per Click) to drive traffic. The more people that visit your site, the better your chances of making sales.
Both SEO and PPC advertising offer profitable result. However, there are many notable differences between the two, thus choosing the right one for your campaign is vital.
In order to choose, you need to first understand what they are and why they are different.

Why Choose SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and as its name suggests, it targets organic search engine results. Before choosing to market your business with SEO, here are a few things to factor into your decision:

•  It’s free
•  80% of website traffic comes from search engines
•  Getting to the first page of search engines mean sustained traffic.

Keep in mind that since SEO is a free strategy, the competition will be extremely fierce. You won’t be the only one utilizing SEO, so you'll need to up your game. Improve your website’s functionality and aesthetics, as well as be consistent with your posts.

When to Choose SEO

The right marketing tool to use strongly depends on what kind of company you run and what goals you’ve set for the future. Below are more scenarios wherein SEO will be the better choice:

• You’d rather invest time and effort to get results in the long run, instead of paying money for quick results.
• When you want to increase your website’s value.
•  Reaching the first page of a search engine means that you get sustained traffic.

Why Choose PPC

To use PPC, you'll need to dish out some cash to get results.

Unlike SEO that depends on consistently posting new content, PPC is a method that will get your website on the first page of a search engine through bidding. Here are a few handy things to know about PPC.

• You need to bid a certain amount for your ads to appear in the “sponsored results” section of search engines.
• You pay for every person who clicks on your promoted campaign.
• Examples of PPC tools include Google AdWords, Yahoo Advertising, and Facebook Promotions.

When to Choose PPC

If you are willing to spend money to generate traffic to your website, PPC is the way to go. Here are more circumstances wherein PPC will be the better marketing tool.

•  You want immediate results.
•  You want to target a specific age group, income bracket, and other demographics.
•  If you're aiming for keyword domination since the top 3 sponsored links on a search engine results page receives 50% of the traffic.
• When you are promoting an event or limited-time offer.

Choosing the right marketing method for your company may seem like a big and heavy decision to make on your part. However, don’t think of PPC and SEO as competitors since they are actually complimentary. If you are able to do both, then you are certain to get way better results compared to what you will get by choosing only one.

Reference:http://www.webpronews.com/seo-vs-ppc-make-right-choice-2017-07/

15 Simple Tips For Improving Local SEO

While global search engine optimization is important, the importance of local SEO can't be ignored. According to one source, 50% of consumers who conduct a local search on their smartphone visit a store that same day. And if your business's visiblity is not ranking highly in your area, your brick and mortar location could be losing out to competitors.
While improving SEO takes time, there are some relatively simple steps you take to begin improving your company's local SEO. Here's what 15 Forbes Agency Council members advise you start with.

All photos courtesy of individual Forbes Agency Council members.

Fifteen Forbes Agency Council members share advice for how you can improve your website's local SEO.

1. Insert Keywords Across Multiple Listings 
Making your brand visible through a variety of local listings is important to local SEO. Insert your local keywords into unique descriptions across multiple listings, make sure that your photos are current, and always include your business category. Once you compile a list, promote it: Reviews are essential not only to boost rankings but also to encourage viewers to take action.   - Ahmad Kareh, Twistlab Marketing
2. Get Local Coverage 
The best way to improve your SEO is to appear in major publications since these are indexed high on Google. If you'd like to improve your local SEO, target top local publications for coverage and create and foster relationships with local journalists who will cover your news on an on-going business. Once you get that coverage, you'll notice these links will help improve your local SEO immensely.   - Ayelet Noff, Blonde 2.0
3. Get New, High-Quality Links 
The quantity and quality of links directed to your website have an increasingly impactful effect on its local search engine rankings. Consider giving a presentation to business students at a local university, lead a discussion at regional business organization meetings or publish an article online, and use those opportunities to have the associated organizations link to the company’s website.   - Jody Resnick, Trighton Interactive
4. Improve Internal Linking Structure 
Most local businesses have poor website architecture, often with important pages only being linked to from the main navigation or footer. Add internal links where relevant from within your pages' content, including blog posts, informational pages and key service pages. We consistently see lifts in rankings (maps and organic) after improving websites' internal linking structure.   - Kyle Sanders, CWR SEO
5. Optimize Title Tags With Local Keyword 
To help specific pages rank locally, optimize your title tags with the local keyword. For example, your title tag could be "basement renovations Chicago." This signals to search engines that this page is directly tied to Chicago, and will thus be more likely to show up in searches from your geographic area and explicit searches for the local term.   - Brock Murray, seoplus+
6. Claim And Optimize Your Google My Business Profile 
One of the simplest things you can do to improve your local SEO is claiming your Google My Business profile. This is a business listing that shows up for local searches. You need to have a physical location and street address (not a P.O. box) to set up or claim a listing. Optimizing this profile with category, contact information, images and business hours gives a big boost in local search.   - Chris Dreyer, Rankings.io
7. Create Local Business Profiles 
Make it easier for searchers to find you by establishing a presence on popular review sites for your industry such as Google+, Yelp and Yellow Pages. Each local profile you create acts like another “platform” for local visitors to land on. It’s an incredible opportunity to improve local SEO and demonstrate social proof, which will help drive people back to your website.   - Solomon Thimothy, OneIMS
8. Multi-Local Brands Should Build Hyper-Localized Content 
For multi-local brands, focus on developing hyper-local content. Many brands have the same location page content for all locations. Instead, make every location page unique. Don't just find and replace the city name. Do some research. Make it useful, relevant and engaging to each location's neighborhood.   - Dan Golden, Be Found Online

9. Associate Your Business With An Area 
Start with Google Maps and finish with your website, citations and local listings. Make sure (without being spammy) to make it clear to search engines the area that your business wishes to dominate, and the full extent of your service area. This isn't a simple answer, but it is the one that will work. Simple doesn't get you ranking: quality, comprehensive hard work does.   - David Kley, Web Design and Company
10. Be As Authentic As Possible 
It's crucial to be as authentic as possible when listing your business on sites like Google, Bing or Yelp. Fill in and regularly update your business's description and upload photos that are current and high quality. But remember that images that appear photoshopped can hurt your SEO ranking. If anyone reviews your business, positively or negatively, you should respond with constructive feedback.   - Mike Skeehan, Salted Stone, Inc.
11. Don't Ignore The Little Details 
It can be easy to overlook small details when posting a blog or uploading a new image, but crossing your T's and dotting your I's can make all the difference. HTML elements such as meta description tags and titles are just as critical as the image or content itself. These are the details included in search results, so it's essential that the verbiage is concise and relevant to the local market.   - Goran Paunovic, ArtVersion Interactive Agency

Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?

12. Offer A Google Virtual Tour 
A new tool for businesses concerned with local SEO is Google Virtual Tour. You can now add a 3-D photo tour of your business to your Google profile, which will show up in searches on Google maps. Search results with photos are not only twice as likely to generate interest but Google gives preferential treatment to any profile that has added this feature through its search algorithms.   - Kelli Corney, Mightily
13. Prioritize Reputation Management 
Businesses must be proactive about their online reputation management to optimize local SEO. There are several tool options you can use to track, manage and proactively garner reviews, but the focus should definitely be on reviews on the Google My Business page. Google’s noted that high-quality reviews improve business visibility, clearly indicating the importance of local rankings.   - Matthew Jonas, TopFire Media
14. B2B Marketers Need To Address Customer Needs 
Most B2B buyers don't start by searching for your brand, product or service (and if they are, they're already finding you). They use search phrases that are problem- or need-oriented. Brainstorm with your customer-facing colleagues about common questions and information requests. Identify three to five key customer pain points you help solve and organize your navigation and content around those.   - Nolin LeChasseur, Brainrider
15. Manage Citations Effectively 
After you claim your Google My Business, Yelp, Bing Places and other listings, claim your business with data giants like Infogroup, Acxiom, Neustar Localeze and Factual. Make sure your name, address and phone number are correct. They are the main data providers for a large swath of online business information. If your information is not accurate with them, the incorrect information could trickle out into other citations.   - Sarah Mannone, Trekk

Reference:https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/07/11/15-simple-tips-for-improving-local-seo/#7fe2edd51466

Realigning Your SEO Strategy When Business Needs Change

Working as an SEO, it’s crucial that you’re ready to embrace changes in the SEO landscape, keep your finger on the pulse of Google's updates, integrate and evaluate changes through on-site and off-site testing, build outreach campaigns, and all the other required tasks we love so much.
Implementing all of this successfully, though, is easier said than done. How exactly can you make sure that you’re focusing on quality traffic? And how do you even know that this traffic will help your brand grow? In this blog post, I’m going to show you how to pivot your SEO strategy according to the business' needs.

1. Align your SEO strategy with the business strategy

SimilarWeb, the company I work for, decided to change their go-to-market strategy. Instead of targeting their current audience, their new vision was to target their enterprise audience.
This meant that, instead of targeting a broad audience, the goal is now a specific audience — complete with higher competition and less volume. In other words, it's quality vs. quantity.
Thus, because our SEO efforts will now be focused on targeting those enterprise users, I need to adjust our SEO strategy accordingly to achieve the required conversions.

2. Work with the strategy/product marketing manager in your organization

Working closely with the product manager will help you generate a list of action items that need to be evaluated to better understand your organization’s long-term goals. Ideally, you should be concentrating on driving factors such as the vision of your company, the competitive landscape, the targeted audience, etc.
In particular, you should focus your marketing energy on researching and analyzing a few different things:

• Geo – Understand which countries and languages are the most valuable to the product. This can be determined by analyzing the amount of sales, leads, and revenue potential.
• Industries – The second step will be to define which industries you should focus on; it can be any industry, from e-commerce to insurance and beyond.
• Audience/persona – Drill deep down into the marketplace to discover who your target audience is and exactly what it is they’re looking for.
• Come up with a list of keyword groups/themes that you would like to target.
• Update your knowledge of your competitors, and build a new competitive intelligence report that will not only include your main competitors, but also industry content leaders. This will offer new ideas and help you develop new strategies; there's a great post by Aleyda about competitive analysis workflows that can help you develop your own.

3. Build new keyword research

After you’ve gathered all this information and you’re aligned with the new strategy of the company, it’s time to come up with a new keyword research strategy.
I would recommend starting with your updated list of competitors. Analyze how much traffic they’re getting and which keywords will be relevant in your new strategy.
My favorite tools for this:

• SEMrush
• Moz Keyword Explorer
• Sistrix
• SimilarWeb

Here's example of what that looks like in SimilarWeb Pro; you can see how much traffic the actual websites are getting per keyword, the ratio between organic and paid, the ranking position, and more:

Once you have the list of keywords your competitors are using, it’s vital that you use another keyword tool to generate additional ideas.
Moz Keyword Explorer is my favorite for this; not only does it unearth new angles for your keyword strategies, but it also helps you group these keywords into relevant groups to enhance their accessibility:

Grouping keywords by high lexical similarity

Next, filter all the relevant keywords from the list based on topic, relevancy, and volume.
Segment the keywords based on their probability of getting ranked. In the case of Keyword Explorer, you can do this by analyzing the Opportunity score. Additionally, you can examine the volume of the keywords and see what their current ranking in the SERP is.
Now you have that big, exciting list of keywords organized by groups, volume, and opportunity, it’s time to start keyword mapping to get those keywords into your site pages. Make sure that all your site pages integrate the new keywords into titles, descriptions, H1s, H2s, etc. If you need help with building the keyword/content mapping, you should watch this Whiteboard Friday from Rand.

4. Focus on relevant traffic

In the past, there have been many assumptions made about SEO rankings. The most common assumption: get more traffic to your site and you’ll improve your rankings. However, as I’ll now discuss, good SEO shows us that this is far from the truth.

Improving the quality of your traffic will help improve your rankings

At SimilarWeb, we decided to remove most of the irrelevant traffic to our site (around 40%) from the total SEO traffic.
Here are some reasons that led us to remove low-quality traffic from the index. Irrelevant traffic...

1. Provides 0% value to the business in terms of leads/sales
2. Has a high bounce rate
3. Results in low pageviews per user
4. Indicates content that's not relevant to the business. Google's purpose is to complete the searcher's task and provide the best result for their query, so if you have content on your site that's not performing well in terms of ranking, CTR, bounce rate, time on the page, and so on, you should consider rewriting it or removing it from the index.

You can see our own results here, which clearly show a significant increase in all the engagement stats:

• Bounce rate was reduced by 42%
• Pageviews per session increased by 34%
• Time on site increased by 65%

Final thoughts

Changes in a company's strategy can present a fantastic opportunity for SEO managers to review the current status of their SEO efforts. And, by identifying what is and isn’t working, you’ll arm yourself with the knowledge required to build a new strategy which will attract not just traffic, but relevant users who have a higher probability to convert.

Reference:https://moz.com/blog/seo-strategy-when-business-needs-change

How much does SEO cost?

How much should you be paying for search engine optimization (SEO)? Columnist Marcus Miller breaks down what factors go into SEO pricing.

How much does SEO cost? It’s the proverbial, “How long is a piece of string?” question. And if you think about it, this is not without good reason. SEO is not as easy to nail down as, say, sending out a direct mail campaign to 100 recipients. In some ways, it is not always as easy to measure, as many marketing activities may impact organic search traffic.
The cost of SEO is also directly related to the potential rewards. Ranking nationally for a highly prized keyword that may be £10 per click in AdWords will have far more costs associated with it than ranking for a locally oriented keyword. But even on a local level, there can be huge variability — and whether you want to rank in a state, county, city, town or micro-area like a borough or village will influence how difficult this will be. This, of course, influences the price of SEO for your unique situation.
In this post, I am going to look briefly at the benefits of organic search via SEO to better frame the question, how much does SEO cost? My goal here is to help you make an educated decision regarding how much you should be investing and how you measure results.
Whether you are a local business, small business, national business or even international business, I hope this guide will help you determine what your investment should look in organic search.

SEO prices: What determines cost?

SEO pricing has to consider the following variables:

• Situation. Where are you currently?
• Objectives. Where do you want to be?
• Timeline. How fast do you want to improve?

Only by looking at these three elements can any agency calculate how much SEO should cost for your business.
Let’s consider the following example:

• A local business site currently ranks in the 12th position for their main target keyword (and variations thereof).
• Competitors on first page have more links and higher authority metrics.
• Competitors have invested more in local SEO.

With this information, some metrics can be determined:

• An approximate amount of links
• An idea of how much work is needed on the local SEO front
• A rough timeline to achieve this

By analyzing a client’s current situation, understanding their objectives and determining the required timeline, we can calculate a price. There are lots of variables here, and we don’t always know what our competitors are doing, but an attempt should be made to calculate the level of work required and subsequent price.
And of course, the industry will in part determine costs. If you make $100 from a new customer, you can expect to pay less than if a customer is worth several thousand dollars. The marketplace, to some extent, regulates price (assuming the work is done properly). It is all about return on investment.


Reference:http://marketingland.com/much-seo-cost-219165

Tips for Building the Perfect Chatbot for Your Business

Chatbots are becoming more sophisticated and are changing the way people communicate on the internet. Although relatively new, chatbots hold a lot of promise and are bound to change the way business owners conduct online marketing.
Building the perfect chatbot for your business requires proper research and flawless execution for a seamless user experience.

Learn how you can build the perfect chatbot that will take your business to a whole new level below.

Define Your Purpose

The perfect chatbot is designed with a purpose to serve your business in the best way possible. Right now, there are two main types of chatbots that are being used by brands: utility and conversational chatbots.
Utility chatbots are designed to help users complete simple tasks such as taking an order or making a reservation. Conversational bots are bots that simulate communication with the user and are far more complex compared to the former.
Before designing a chatbot for your business, you must first identify what your requirements are. A chatbot can be designed to carry out a variety of functions, but in order for it to execute its task, its objectives must be clear from the beginning.

Develop a Personality

A chatbot's purpose is to simulate human interaction in the closest way possible. You should make sure that your chatbot embodies your brand image and has the ability to engage with its users in a naturally flowing manner.  
Developing a personality will help you provide a better user experience. You can use machine learning and advanced natural language processing (NLP) to help your chatbot build a more human-like vocabulary.
Through advanced data labeling, you can help your chatbot discern colloquial and conversational nuances to come up with the best possible response to the user. Think of your chatbot as a perfect brand ambassador. That way you can easily picture how they should speak and interact with your customers.

Make it Experimental

A chatbot can only be beneficial to your business if it manages to give its users exceptional interaction. Your goal is to create a chatbot that will raise customer satisfaction. The key in making chatbot interactions more experiential lies on execution.
You should make sure your chatbot has the ability to mimic a flowing conversation and can share insights with the user. Chatbots are supplemental marketing assets that should add value to the services you offer your customers, both existing and potential.

Invest in Development

Because chatbots are still in their early stages, you can safely assume that building one might require a hefty amount of investment. If you want to create a chatbot that can represent your brand and provide users with excellent experience, you must be willing to invest in development.
Building and maintaining a chatbot will require time, money, and manpower. It also involves continuous experimentation. As a business owner, you should expect that there are major learning curves that come with integrating them into your current marketing strategy.

Reference:http://www.webpronews.com/tips-building-perfect-chatbot-business-2017-07/