You create a beautiful website for your business, optimize it for search engines, market it through social media, and start receiving visitors. But wait! Do you even know where your visitors are coming from? Are they interested in what you have to offer, or are they just passing their time? How many of them are actually going to purchase your product or service?

Answering such questions might seem difficult, but it won’t be once you set up a tracking tool within your website. A tracking tool will enable you to track your visitors, their sources, the number of clicks, the number of conversions, etc. Analytics are crucial because they will help you understand why something in your digital marketing strategy works or why something doesn’t.

For example, you can determine how engaging your latest Twitter or Facebook post was, which landing page is working the best, etc. Since you have invested time and money on your website, it’s important to define goals and use them when measuring web analytics. You can use this valuable information to improve your website and make the necessary changes to correct the particular problem.

What Will You Determine?

Website analytics will help you determine five essential pieces of information:

• The type of people visiting your website - do they belong to your target audience?
• Their physical location. 
• The pages they visit and the kind of action they take on pages.
• The time when your visitors are using your website.
• The channel through which they reached your website.

Why Is Analytics Important?

Website analytics are important because they will provide you with the following capabilities:

• Set Specific Goals: The goal of having a website is not to just receive visitors, but to have those visitors take specific actions. With analytics, you can set up particular goals and determine how close you are to achieving them. For example, you might want your visitors to go to a booking form, online store, inquiry page or a particular landing page.
• Improve Your Website and Marketing Campaign: With analytics, you will understand both your website’s and your marketing campaign’s shortcomings. With this information, you can improve upon them. You will get to know how your visitors interact with your website and how they navigate through it. Then you can adjust your website to better guide your visitors. For example, you can place calls-to-action on pages with the most traffic to guide users to a specific page.
• Enhance Your Visitor’s Experience: Through analytics, you can see what devices visitors are using to access your site. Are they browsing your website using a tablet or smartphone? If so, you may need to optimize your website for mobile devices and make other adjustments to improve your visitors’ experience.
• Improve Your Marketing Strategy: Since marketing is a critical component of a business, analytics will aid you in determining the weaknesses and strong points of your marketing strategy. For example, you can modify the keywords that visitors use to reach your website, improving your SEO or paid advertising. Or, you can develop tailored content depending upon the visitors’ geographical location.

Analytics Tools

There are a number of free tools available to track your website traffic. Two of the most popular are:

Google Analytics- sign up at https://www.google.com/analytics/

Statcounter- sign up at http://statcounter.com/

In most cases, you will simply add a code to your website to enable traffic. Full instructions are provided after you set up a website analytics account.

Sources
http://www.professionalacademy.com/blogs-and-advice/why-are-web-analytics-so-important-to-marketers-and-businesses-alike-
http://lazcreative.com/blog/business/web-analytics-the-importance-of-measurement/
https://www.yola.com/blog/how-to-use-analytics-and-why-theyre-important/
https://www.smartdatacollective.com/4-top-advanced-web-analytics-tools-to-get-more-out-of-your-website/

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Once you develop your website, you need to point traffic to the new website. In order to receive visitors and potential leads, you will have to market or advertise your website. One of the best ways to do that is through social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Linkedin.

If you’re just starting to look at using social media to market your website, here are the benefits of doing so:

Your Website Will Receive Exposure

Social media is highly effective in generating mass exposure for a website and the associated business’s products or services. This is because billions of people use social media on a daily basis. For example, you can create a business page on Facebook and promote it through paid advertising.

You Can Acquire International Visitors

If your website is intended for an international audience, social media will definitely help. Since people across the globe use social media platforms, your website will become visible to them as well.

It’s Cost-Effective

Using social media marketing is much cheaper as compared to traditional forms of marketing like radio, print ads, and television. It can be a better fit for a new business' marketing budget. At its most basic, social media marketing can even be done at no cost by simply using the free tools available that allow you to post and engage with customers on your business’s behalf. All you need to do is create an account for your business, and you can begin using these features on most social media platforms for free!

Boost Your Revenue

Even if your website is acquiring visitors from other sources, using social media marketing will raise the number of visitors. Therefore, you will be able to obtain more leads and more customers.

While social media is one of the most effective tools in marketing and promoting your website, there are things you need to do to use social media in an effective manner.

Determine The Correct Platform

There are many social media platforms out there such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, Pinterest, Twitter, etc. In order to establish a brand, think strategically and decide which platform would be appropriate for your business. This depends on your target audience and the type of product or service your website is offering. Different social media platforms have different user demographics, so it's important to know your target audience.

You may also want to consider developing different types of content for the various social media platforms that suit your business. After all, each social media site has its own unique purpose, layout, and functionality. What works well on Facebook may flop on YouTube, TikTok, or Linkedin.

Build Better Content

Social media platforms rely heavily on content like articles, blogs, videos, podcasts, webinars, etc. You need to create content that is highly engaging and attention-capturing. One great way to do this is by providing free information to your visitors in the form of how-to and DIY articles. This will also build trust and reputation for your website.

Listen To The Needs Of Your Audience

When building social media marketing, you have to be patient. Success doesn’t happen overnight. What you need to do is listen to the needs and problems of your intended audience and offer them solutions through your products or services. Once that is achieved, your social media campaign will start producing exponential results.

Optimizing Your Website For Social Media

Before you start sending social media traffic to your website, make sure that your site is set up and optimized to allow users to easily share your content.

In order to get the most from Facebook, be sure to implement Open Graph tags on your website. If you are using a content management system (CMS) like WordPress or Joomla, there are a number of plugins that you can use to easily add these Facebook tags. For Twitter, you'll want to make sure that your website can use Twitter Cards effectively. See the developer documentation at https://dev.twitter.com/cards/overview, and look for an appropriate plugin if using a CMS.

These are just two examples, but other social media platforms may have their own ways to link with your website and optimize it for the traffic generated on their site. Make sure to check for these tools with each platform you decide to use. 

If your website does not use a CMS, you might need your website developer to help with setting it up to allow social sharing. Let us know if you need any help.

Sources

https://blog.hootsuite.com/how-to-create-a-social-media-marketing-plan/

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/7-steps-for-a-successful-social-media-strategy/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2014/08/11/the-top-10-benefits-of-social-media-marketing/

http://www.business2community.com/social-media/benefits-social-media-marketing-01140985

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Business analytics technology has opened a host of opportunities and benefits for small and medium-sized businesses to level the playing field with their larger well-established rivals. Through the use of analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, businesses can have up-to-date information about customer preferences and use it to fine-tune their marketing strategies to ensure high sales revenue and growth.

Google Analytics has been the first choice of many businesses for taking advantage of analytics because it is free and very comprehensive. However, there is a much more comprehensive premium version called Google Analytics 360 that is out of reach for most small business entities, with an annual cost of $150,000.00. That may make it worthwhile to look for cheaper but still more comprehensive paid alternatives.

This can be crucial for cross-checking data from various points of information to utilize a more robust and comprehensive decision-making process. In this post, we will explore various other analytics alternatives that you may use for your business.

Clicky

This is a web analytics tool that provides excellent analytics features for your business. The tool lays out all essential details of customer visits and other analytics-related information in a clear and user-friendly report format, allowing you to have access to all crucial information under one format, unlike in the case of its Google rival.

Furthermore, Clicky provides updates about customer information in real-time that allows you to be up-to-date with the latest developments and improve your decision-making. Another plus side to this feature is that you can easily use it from the comfort of your phones or tablets and monitor analytics insights on the go.

Open Web Analytics

As an open-source analytics tool, Open Web Analytics gives you the advantage of obtaining key insights for multiple websites. The tool provides you both detailed and individual snippets pertaining to each customer visiting your website in terms of referral source, pages viewed, browser type, and location.

Kissmetrics

Kissmetrics offers unlimited report samples for analytics information, which means that you can view insights across a wider range of data. Unlike other analytical tools, Kissmetrics is unparalleled in segmenting customers based on the information obtained. This can be helpful for building different marketing communications to appeal to specific customer groups to achieve higher profitability and market penetration.

FoxMetrics

FoxMetrics provides you with the benefit of helping you monitor metrics that are unique to your business. Through its API settings, you can configure analytics to respond to specific details that can provide considerable insights about what your customers are doing and gauge how they respond to your marketing campaigns and messages.

Sources

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/7-alternatives-to-google-analytics/38764/

https://www.woorank.com/en/blog/analytical-tools-other-than-google-analytics

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How Yelp Can Improve Your Restaurant’s Business

The success of a business depends upon its clients and customers; as long as they are satisfied, the business will boom. But if they are not, the business will likely fail. This is true especially for small and medium-sized businesses like restaurants. Since a restaurant provides an important service, it is at the forefront of consumers, and they can expect many reviews on review sites, including map listings.

Reviews can essentially make or break a restaurant’s business; they can either be negative or positive, and that depends on the level and quality of service you are able to provide as a restaurateur. Online review sites have changed the way businesses are conducted. One of the most popular review sites is Yelp.

Yelp was founded in October 2004 by Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons. It is an online review website that publishes crowd-sourced reviews about different types of local businesses. 

A study carried out by two economists at the University of California showed that there was a link between how people made buying decisions at restaurants and the online ratings of the particular restaurant. For example, Yelp uses a 5-star rating system for businesses, including restaurants; those whose ratings were improved by half a star were the ones that were booked fully during dining hours.

They concluded that restaurants with good reviews had more customers, while those with poorer reviews didn’t do well. Whether it is Yelp or another site, reviews play a vital role in driving customer growth and sales for a restaurant. Here’s how positive reviews on sites like Yelp can help restaurants attract more consumers.

• According to a survey conducted in 2012, nearly 72 percent of customers trust and hold online reviews in high regard as much as they do personal referrals and recommendations. Hence, restaurants can acquire more customers by asking their existing ones to write honest reviews about their food.
• Social media is the best tool for promoting your restaurant and its food. When positive reviews are generated on Yelp, they eventually find their way on social media and, thus, are shared by people belonging to different demographics. Food lovers will definitely flock to your restaurant after they read amazing reviews about a specific dish offered at your restaurant.
• Before people head out to eat, they usually check out the menu of the restaurant online and decide whether it’s worth it or not. Having reviews placed on the menu is an excellent way to increase your reputation and credibility. A restaurant with high credibility will automatically see an increase in customers.

Your business will automatically be added to most online directories and review sites over time, but you can also manually add your business listing. If your listing is already present, you should claim it so that you have better control over the accuracy of information. You will also receive notifications when users post a review if you are the listing owner.

Here are the URLs used to create or claim your listing at some popular directories:

Yelp- https://biz.yelp.com/

Google My Business- https://www.google.com/business/ 

Bing Places- https://www.bingplaces.com/

When you add your business listing, be sure that the name, address, and phone number (NAP) match exactly on all sites. This is important to improving your position in local search results.

Sources

http://performancing.com/3-benefits-of-testimonials-on-your-restaurant-site/

http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2011/03/25/20-user-review-websites-critical-to-small-business.aspx

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/sep/02/ratings-boost-restaurants

http://www.reviewtrackers.com/ultimate-guide-restaurant-reviews-ratings-sites-business/

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Despite the fact that the internet has revolutionized everything, including the advertising and marketing industry, the first thing that comes to our mind when we think of advertising is traditional media. Traditional media is a tool that is still an important means of communication to users.   

Traditional Media

Traditional media has been the key element of marketing plans and strategies for decades because of its wide accessibility. Traditional media is essentially media that existed before the rise of the internet and social media. Newspaper, magazines, television, radio, and billboards are all considered traditional media sources for advertising.

Digital Media

Digital media ad spending in 2020 topped $150 billion and accounted for over 58% of media buying. Just a couple of years ago, traditional media still held the majority share of spending, but as consumer habits have changed, marketers have shifted their budgets to reach customers where they are spending most of their time. Social media advertising, streaming service ads, and online advertising are examples of digital marketing.

Traditional Media Or Digital Media: Which Is Better For Advertising?

Digital media does hold some big advantages for advertisers. With research on services and products largely centered around search engines, you can target ads to prospective customers that fit your demographic profiles and increasingly those that also fit your psychographic profile.

Both traditional and digital media have their pros and cons. People still take time out of their daily routines to use traditional media; most of us watch television for one purpose or the other, and many people listen to the radio while driving. We still see billboards as we drive and come across ads in printed media.

This leads us to the conclusion that both traditional and digital media play an important role in our lives, and a company that can budget for both will enjoy the full benefits of marketing. But the reality is that many small companies that can benefit from increased marketing efforts cannot afford to do both, and digital is likely the best alternative.

Is Traditional Media A Wise Choice For Website Advertising?

This may sound weird to some, but traditional media can serve as a platform to promote your website. However, you need to think outside of the box and come up with interesting and integrated advertising campaigns. For example, a radio ad mentioning a promo code for online shopping will increase traffic to your website.

In order to make sure that people remember your website address, use simple or catchy words. Also, developing a user-friendly website is important to make people stay on it for longer and tempt them to visit it regularly.

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a comprehensive and complex task. It can be difficult for those that do not work in the field to follow and keep track of all the requirements and algorithms of Search Engines to improve their website's rating. 

For one, this process requires knowledge about both the technical and creative aspects of website ranking. Secondly, it can take a lot of time. And thirdly, it is an ongoing process. This means that you constantly need to update your website to ensure that it maintains its position in search results. If you do not do this, your website may lose its position, no matter how high it ranks.

Due to these reasons and many others, Search Engine Optimization is not a job that everyone can perform well. Just like we leave web development, graphic design and other such tasks to specialists, it is better to leave Search Engine Optimization to the professionals. 

There are many people and companies who can do effective Search Engine Optimization for your website. In addition to knowing all the techniques and tips of the process, they are also aware of the most recent changes any Search Engine has made to its algorithm, and make sure your website always ranks high in search results pages.

What To Look For When Hiring An SEO Company

So, you have decided to get help from an SEO company to boost your business. Keep reading in order to avoid wasting money and getting no return on investment:

• Discuss The Methods That The Company Will Use

Whenever you consult an SEO company, ask about the methods and strategies they will use to improve your website's ranking. A company that does not discuss its process and methods in detail or does not give you a timeframe for getting the work done should be avoided. A professional and reliable SEO company not only identifies the problems and glitches in your website but also discusses them with you in detail, along with the measures needed to be taken to get rid of them.

• Stay Away From Companies Promising Fast Results

Achieving a high ranking on search result pages is a long and continuous process. If a company is making huge claims of bringing your website among the top ranks within a short span of time, consider it as a warning sign and stay away from their false promises. SEO companies that make too-good-to-be-true promises usually make use of ‘Black Hat’ techniques, such as buying links, cloaking, hidden links and text, and keyword stuffing. While this may provide quick results, you are most likely to end up facing a penalty by Google. Search Engines have strict rules and policies against those who do not follow their guidelines and are involved in illegal processes to improve their website ranking.

• Inquire About Their Strategy For Link Building

Many SEO companies buy links to improve your Search Engine ranking. However, this is not the right way to go about it. Search Engines have become smart. Spam links no longer provide results. A reliable and professional SEO company is one that takes measures for earning links rather than buying them, such as developing relationships with authoritative websites. 

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Adding your business to popular maps like Google Maps is not difficult and can yield great results for your company. Having map listings for your business enables you to reach a wider audience and allows them to quickly locate you whenever they are in need of your products or services. For local searches, Google displays map listings above the organic search results, as we wrote about in this post.

If you have a retail location like a restaurant or store, Google Maps listings are very important for mobile search. They'll appear when a user searches terms like "restaurant near me" on their phone, and the user can easily call or get directions to your business.

What happens if your business is not listed on directory maps? Not only will your customers have a hard time locating you, but there will also be a loss in potential customers and sales.

If you are wondering how to add your business to Google Maps, here’s how.

Adding A Listing To Google Maps

Google provides the functionality to add your business location to its maps. It is done through an online tool known as Google My Business, which is a platform for managing your presence on Google Maps.

• Access the tool by navigating to Google My Business.
• Click on the tab ‘Manage Now.’
• Follow the instructions to create your business listing.
• In some cases, your business might already be listed, and you will just need to claim it. However, if it is not, you can add it to the map by clicking on ‘Add Your Business.’
• Supply basic information like your business’s name, address, phone number, and website. Remember to choose the correct category for the type of business you own. You'll want to answer as many questions as possible, like your hours. If you have images, upload those too. The goal is to make your listing as complete as possible.
• As the final step, you will have to verify your business through a PIN code. If your business address is not already verified, Google will mail a postcard with the PIN, and you'll receive that in 1 to 2 weeks. If your address is already verified, you should be able to get the PIN by phone.

Benefits Of Adding Your Listing

There are many advantages of adding your business to Google Maps. Some of them are:

• It enhances your online presence and could increase your main business website’s ranking in Google’s search results. A higher ranking in search results means more traffic for your website.
• Your customers and potential customers will be able to find you easily and reach your premises, as well as getting important information like your business hours.
• It improves customer satisfaction by providing all the important information about your business on a single platform.
• Your product or services can be reviewed by customers, and potential customers can read them as well. Whenever someone leaves a new review, you'll get an email notification.
• Google Maps is used heavily on Android and iOS devices, so mobile users will be able to search for your business and its products or services 24/7.

Sources

 http://www.business2community.com/social-business/add-business-google-maps-01094521

https://www.google.com/business/benefits/

https://support.google.com/partners/answer/143059?hl=en

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Advertising your products or services is the key to business growth and development. Until people know what you are offering and how that can help them, your business will not grow. This is the purpose an advertisement serves.

Previously, businesses relied on traditional media sources to market their products. But the advent of the internet has changed the face of advertising. The internet is not just a source of information; people widely use it for shopping too. Shopping is not only consumer-driven but also business-to-business (B2B) as well. This has resulted in the evolution and spread of online advertising.

Companies invest huge amounts of money in advertising their products and/or services online as part of an effort to get more traffic to their websites that will ultimately result in the growth of their businesses. Online advertising has become a multi-billion dollar industry that accounts for over half of the total media spending.

Different Kinds Of Paid Online Advertisements

You can increase your online visibility and get more visitors to your website in many different ways. One of the most effective methods is paid online advertising. But if it is not done properly, you may end up wasting a huge amount of money. Selecting the right way to advertise your business online is important. Having a clear idea of what your goals are, and who your target audience is, will help assure that you make good decisions.

Here, we are highlighting some major methods of paid online advertising to help you select the right kind of advertising according to your needs:

Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

Pay Per Click advertisements (PPC) are those in which you pay money to the publisher only when a person clicks on your ads. These ads can be triggered by doing a search at Google or other search engines.

Paying for performance is contrary to traditional advertising methods in which you pay for exposure with no guarantee that anyone will take action based on seeing your ads. This creates a big advantage because you can target specific users that take specific actions. For example, you can target users in a specific area searching for products or services similar to those you offer. This makes your advertising more effective and allows you to get the best return on investment.

Display Advertising

Banner advertisements are one of the oldest and most common forms of paid online advertisements. They are image-based and appear in different sections (top, bottom, sides) of a website. These kinds of advertisements take users directly to the advertiser’s website whenever a user clicks on them. 

Banner ads can be purchased as pay-per-click, or like traditional advertising, can be purchased based on expected or actual impressions. An impression is the number of times that a user sees your banner ad.

One important type of display advertising is called retargeting. These ads are triggered to users that have visited your website and keep your brand in front of visitors for several weeks after their visit. 

Influencer Marketing

Social media has created new opportunities to get your product in front of many people. An influencer is a prominent social media user that has many fans that follow their updates. Like a celebrity, having a social media influencer use or endorse your products can cause other people to buy from you.

As you can see, there are many ways to get the word out about your services. You should consider getting some help from an experienced digital marketer before you get started with online advertising in order to assure the best results.

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SEO stands for ‘Search Engine Optimization.’ It is the process of using different techniques to get more traffic to your website by making it rank high in search results. Search Engine Optimization is an essential component of business marketing that consists of both creative and technical elements and is needed for improving your website’s ranking and getting more visitors.

The world today is connected through complex information technology, and people have been using the internet in every discipline in order to perform all their tasks. This has also increased the reach of businesses as they can now connect with millions of people to sell their products or services. But, they need to take certain measures to ensure people can easily find them, visit their websites and buy their products or services. 

Since most people use search engines to find goods and services, search engines control the majority of web traffic. Therefore, businesses need to make sure that their websites appear high in search results on all major search engines. This process of attracting a large number of people to your website is called ‘Search Engine Optimization.’

Search Engine Optimization has become one of the major priorities of businesses today as it aids in growth by directing the right people to your website.

How To Rank Your Page High In Search Engine Results

Two major factors that contribute to improving your website’s search engine ranking are:

• Updated, Quality Content

Search Engines show only those pages that they consider relevant and authoritative in search results. This means that your website should contain useful, updated and quality content that contains words and phrases people generally use to search for the products and services you offer. These are also known as ‘keywords.’

• Links From Other Web Pages

Another important factor that contributes to better SEO ranking is the number of links a website has from other pages. However, the quality of those links also matter a lot. So, focusing only on getting more and more links is not the key to rank high in search results; rather, the quality of those links is what matters. Building high-quality links can be achieved by making your website user-friendly and updating it regularly to include information that users find relevant and useful. 

Types Of SEO

There are two major types of Search Engine Optimization:

• White Hat SEO

White Hat SEO is the one that makes use of methods and techniques in accordance with Search Engine guidelines such as developing high-quality and useful content, quality links and HTML optimization of websites. Businesses that use this type of SEO are the ones who achieve long-term and sustainable digital marketing goals.

• Black Hat SEO

Black Hat SEO is exactly the opposite of White Hat SEO. This type of search engine optimization finds weaknesses in algorithms of search engines and then exploits those weaknesses to get a high ranking for websites. This type of SEO does not follow, and even conflicts with, the guidelines of search engines. Black Hat SEO includes keyword stuffing, spam links, hidden links and text cloaking. This type of SEO might have produced short-term gains at one point, but in the modern world, Search Engine algorithms are too smart to be fooled like this.

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Participating on social media platforms for your business is no longer a question of “if” but “when.” Whether you have a large marketing budget or a small one — there’s not much that has the reach of social media.

When you jump into social media marketing, it’s important to know how much time to invest in it. Too little, and nothing will come of your efforts. Too much, and its counter-productive. You must also know which platform is right for your brand and marketing strategy. If you’re doubting its power, consider that according to Social Media Examiner, 90% of marketers say social media is important for their business.

With so many questions, it’s easy to dismiss social media marketing. It seems complicated, and, when you do get involved, you must choose a platform, then learn how to use it for business.

Most social media networks are free, but most offer some paid perks for businesses. With some time, a bit of money and dedicated resources, you can turn your social media campaign into a win.