The Questions and Answers feature is a new venture of Google, which was introduced in August 2017. But this very important feature has been actively ignored by small business owners and marketers alike in the digital marketing field. It is a crucial part of your business listing to answer every asked question. There are various reasons as to why this is an important feature.
Connect With Potential Customers
Your future customers could already be ahead of you and using this particular feature. This is a great platform to connect with them. Both large and small business corporations should make this feature a part of their life and aim to answer questions asked by different people. One of the main characteristics of online marketing is to connect itself to the customer and this feature could act as a great bond maker between you and your client. Google search reveals that Australia is one of the foremost countries who turn to the Google Q&A feature to ask about anything and everything.
Lack Of Notifications On Google My Business Dashboard
Like any other new feature, even this has a drawback, which is the lack of notification in the dashboard when a new question is asked. This becomes very hard for you as a business owner to track any new incoming question. What you can do to avoid this problem is first to download the Google Maps app and log in to the account and turn on the notifications. This will send you a push notification every time you receive a new question.
Customers Answer Questions Presented For You
Even though this platform helps you to connect with potential customers, it can also be a negative feature for you as customers can answer any question that has been asked of you. Some of these customers may be ones who have had a bad experience with you. This could put a negative image in the minds of the future prospects.
Incorrect Answers May Be Received
Since this is a public platform where anyone can answer any question presented, it may be possible that many of those answers are wrong. It may so happen that some people provide incorrect information and you have to do a lot of research before you receive the right result. Local guides are the few ones who are very prompt to answer any questions since they receive three points for every answer barring the fact whether they are right or wrong.
Eliminate Questions That Violate the Guidelines
Google makes sure to remove questions that are asked by the customers, which violate the guidelines set by them on internet marketing platform. You might receive those questions but they may soon be flagged by Google. Google has a very strict policy against such questions, which can prove to be a danger to the mandated policy prescribed by them.
Semantic search came in 2013 with the release of Hummingbird update and created huge noise in the SEO industry. Semantic search was focused on the intent of the searchers queries with the goal to deliver more relevant results.
How does semantic search work?
Earlier Google used to find and show the result to the searcher based on the keyword interpretation, it used to count the no. of sequence for the keyword and word used in the context. But the introduction of semantic search brought a change to it as it was an attempt to provide most appropriate SERP results to the language of the Searchers, taking things ahead by not just considering the keywords but the context of the search query, even if it is expressed implicitly.
With the enable of voice search feature in the smartphone , the air was once again blown in the SEO community for “voice search” with the improved ability of Google to fully understand the searcher’s natural language Like “ where can I find the best hotel in Sydney”. But Google didn’t stop here, With Rankbrain update that work on Artificial intelligence(AI), it brought more advancement in understanding of the complex queries that searches uses today and in turn brought more sophistication to semantic searches.
What It Brought For Searchers As A Benefit:
Effective Search – We are able to find our answers even if we are not using right terminology, or not spelling our query in right words, Google will still give us right answer because of it’s intuitive search function. Search function used to be based on more specific search to give effective answers. So the problem was we were not able to get what we were looking for as a query.
Effective SERP results – Now Google as a search engine shows more results due to it has been loaded with high quality content due to this we get direct answers to our queries. This utility of semantic search and its faster growth encourages users and search use in more effective way on daily basis.
User friendly content encouragement – This semantic search has encouraged optimisers to get more effective content for users and spend more time in researching the content on topics which will eventually help search user to find their results.
What it brought for optimisers as a benefit:
Less focus on exact keywords – Exact keyword has always been very important part of content for optimisers to get focused on main keywords. Now as an optimizer we need to cover keywords with key phrases and synonyms that covers the meaning of keyword for search result and user understand it clearly as an answer to their query. There is no need for many pages with keywords based content rather there can be more informative content for user and search friendly which explains the meaning of term in simpler way.
User Perspective optimisation – content should be rightly optimized rather keywords based so need to spend more time in optimizing content for user perspective. So semantic content search has become harder in a way to track how keywords have been searched and predicted. Best is to spend more time and high efforts on user consumable content.
Synonyms Search Based Content – Now because of semantic search there is more flexibility in content due to synonyms and other wordings in content. Now we can even optimize our long tail phrases which give exact user search results.
Conclusion: In result with semantic search now SEO community is more focused on user friendly content rather keyword specific based. So content marketing strategy has improved content marketing and enhanced it to a level that now content is more important and gives clear message to users. We highly believe in content optimisation strategy as per semantic search and recommend to everyone!
Have you noticed your website recently on a smartphone, is it well optimized? Is the text coming in small format?Is it providing the readability to the users? How is your graphics doing?Is it looking enticing? Is your site is up-to-date with the latest trends? Is your website content receiving the user’sattention? If you have just answered NO to the questions then, its time for you to sit and think about redesigning your website.
The redesigning of the website sounds a bit scary as you majorly worry about:
- What will happen to the authorities of the web pages that you have achieved so far?
- How it is going to impact the SEO of your website?
We will be discussing here the checklist of the measures that you should take before and while redesigning of the website which not just helps you to retain your SEO ranking on the search engines and the authorities your old site has but also help you to gain more visitors with the new design of the site.
1.) Keeping up with the current updates: It is very essential to know what is moving currently in the SEO related to keyword ranking, Topic ranking, voice searches, and many others. This will help you in creating a plan to decide what thought the process you should keep while building the new site.
2.) Impact of Redesign: As we mentioned that often we hesitant about going through the process of redesigning because we are scared of losing the user traffic we gained with the immense effort in the past years.
So, It is mandatory to focus on:
- Retaining the rankings and traffic with the new design
- Generating more traffic and improvement in the ranking
The best way to attain these is keeping the old site live but not letting the sites accessed by the crawlers. Having the old crawl data will help in matching the new site URLs with the old site. This will assist you in creating the smooth transition and avoiding complications with the URL structure error in the future.
3.) Minimize changes In the URL structure: It is always better keeping the URL structure and Page title, meta descriptions, headers and so forth the same, as this way the chances of going wrong will be minimized.
4.) 301 Redirect: It is first, and the foremost thing you should take care of when designing a new site. Create a sheet of old URL structure and ensure the smooth 301 redirections of all the URLs to the new website. 301 redirection minimises the loss of page authority.
5.) Internal and backlinks Report: Use the crawl data of the old website to diagnose the internal links of the webpages. Understand whether all the internal links have been achieved on the new pages or not as this will create a direct impact on the ranking of the page. Using webmaster tool and crawl data of the old website, get the analytics on the update of the backlinks to the new site so to get it indexed and rank quickly in the Google and Bing search engines.
6.) Google Search Console: Using Google search console you can diagnose 301 redirect and 404 pages, It will guide you through the details of what is working and what’s not, and later you can make the required changes and updates as per the report. The search analytics will also help you inmeasuring the traffic, impressions, CTR and average position.
7.) Content: If your old content is doing well and have been receiving a generous amount of traffic, don’t touch it for changes rather keep it as it is. But if this doesn’t makethe case then try to create more user engagement SEO content about your products, services to the site, write about latest topics focussing on your industry (take the assistance of Google Trends). This will help in generating more traffic to the website.
8.) XML Sitemap: As we want the search engines to understand our new sites changes quickly with the 301 redirects, site structure, and navigation,so submit your website sitemap to the search engines, i.,e Google and Bing.
9.) Monitor Site Traffic: While redesigning of the site, you can expect fluctuations in the page ranking. Run the analysis and find the changes in the web pages performance in the first month itself so you can work on the URL structure and keywords which will minimize the complication in the future.
10.) Technical Audit: Use the technical audit tools like Screaming frog, Deep crawl, Moz and other tools available online to run the audit of the new site to find the issues and resolve them before they start creating problems.
These are some of the points you should consider and put your eye on while redesigning your site. To make your redesign successful take the assistance of the professional and trusted agencies, who will not just ensure that your new website meets the latest trends in terms of design and performance but also retain and shower more traffic and revenue than before.
Google has officially announced the Video upload feature on Google My Business (GMB) Dashboard. The businesses can now view and upload the videos on the GMB page for the customer views. It is currently available for the video length of 30secs.
How to access Video in Google My business dashboard:
- 1. Go to the GMB dashboard and click on the photo tab.
- 2. The photos panel will appear, and on the right-hand side of the screen, you will see the + sign.
- 3. Click on the “+” and another window will pop-up saying “ select photos and videos from the computer”. Using the selection upload the video.
- 4. Once you have submitted the video, it will take 24 hours for the video to appear.
- 5. The videos will appear in the overview section of the dashboard.
- 6. You can select “By owner” or “By customer” tabs to find the videos uploaded by the owner or the customer.
- 7. Just like the photo tab, Video tab is available to see all the videos in one place.
- 8. You can find the live video in the local panel, same like the photos.
It is possible that all the uploaded videos might now be suitable for the business listing and you want to stop its appearance for your customers. So, what can we do? Besides the video upload feature, GMB also allows you to raise the flag against such videos to stop showing it in the local panel.
Web Design City create Google Map Listings of SEO customers. Team very well maintain it and promote it on search engine to bring on top. Google My Business can be updated with full contact details, address, profile photos of the services and now video as well.
“Content is King” the most overused line that we all have been hearing for a couple of years and many experts’ time, on time are imposing lights on how content can be leveraged for business success. Content is a massive tool that allows you to build a strong relationship with your audience. But, If your content has not reached the target audience, and has not been able to make his presence felt on the internet and then it is doing no good. No matter how great, informative and innovative that content is. To present your content online your strategy should be using both free and paid channels, under this, you pick those channels which are working best for you and helping you in achieving your business goals.
Most important that we emphasize is presenting content in different forms to grab the attention of the audience of each category, the ones who like reading, like watching videos for information, or don’t prefer complicated post instead appealed by graphics.
While creating content, it is essential to define your buyer persona, who are they? Students, or executives, shoppers? Are they a prospect or an existing customer? Ask yourself, other questions like whether it is just the information you want to present? Or Want to generate leads? Or want users to sign up for ebooks? There could many goals depending on the industry and the time needs. And last but not the least is speak the language that your customer speaks. This makes the customer more comfortable with the content and makes him consume more. These pre-assessments provide us the path to create the impactful content that will directly connect us with the readers.
As we said earlier, Not just writing an impressive content is going to help, but we should find the best channels to distribute it. Here we are mentioning some prominent ways of reaching the consumer on multiple channels.
1.) Video Marketing: If you haven’t started promoting video content yet, then better gear up now. Videos are the best way of putting your thoughts and engaging the viewers. There are great tools available online like Lumen5 and Content Samurai, where you can convert your blog post into videos, you can add images, add narrations and once you’re ready with the video start promoting on YouTube channels and other channels like Vimeo.
2.) Infographics: It is a way of representing the complex content most appealingly and straightforwardly to your audience. Business who uses Infographics grows their viewer traffic by 12% more than the firms who are not. As there are many tools available online, I would like to share the name which I have used myself and loved the most, Piktochart and Canva are among them. Here you can be as creative as possible with the content, and ensure to make it shareable by adding social sites to it.
3.) E-books: It will excite you to know that you can now create e-books of your blog post yourself. Yes, you don’t have to run behind the designers and agencies anymore. There are various tools available online like the Blogbooker, Designrr, Fastpencil etc. where you convert the post into e-books in a few simple steps. We would also stress to add the social site to your e-books which will allow people to share it with their friends and colleagues.
4.) The Power of Email: Email has been a great medium of reaching to the prospects, and every big brand like Amazon, and Flipkart, are using this medium to promote their products and offering to drive more customer engagement. Using an email is a no-brainer, we just have to use some strategies to multiply the outcomes. You can use email to let the brands know that you are talking about them on your blogs or you ask them generously if they can share links to your post which will help you to create inbound links. Also, in your day to day activities whenever you’re communicating with emails try to add the content or post link in your signature. Using these techniques, you will be able to earn more traffic to your post.
5.) Reddit: You must have heard of Reddit if you’re a digital Marketer and if not, then Reddit is a social news sharing and discussion website and is a great way of promoting and telling your audience that you are online. In Reddit you have to create a link post to let the user read and see your content in the most appropriate subreddit (category). Posting your content on such sites can help in indexing and ranking of the post.
Page speed Insight is one of the known, and the best free tool made available by Google that provides real-time performance analysis of the web page along with the improvement ideas.
Google’s new update says that now, Page Speed Insight is using the data of Chrome User perform report to provide the detailed analysis of the page performance represented as Speed Score.
Chrome user performance report is about chrome user experiences on the web destinations currently only focused on loading performance. Out of all the metrics provided by Chrome user performance report, Page Speed Insight only reports two metrics i.e. First Contentful Paint (FCP) and DOM Content Loaded (DCL).
First Contentful paint (FCP): This is time calculated by the browser when the first time a text or an image appears on the page. It’s the time when a user can start consuming the data.
DOMContentLoaded (DCL): This is the time calculated by the browser when a page gets completely loaded without waiting for any image or a sheet to get downloaded.
PSI (Page Speed Insight) then categories each of these metrics based on where they fall into Distribution:
- Fast: The median value of the metric is in the fastest third of all page loads.
- Slow: The median value of the metric is in the slowest third of all page loads.
- Average: The median value of the metric is in the middle third of all page loads.
Now, the Speed Score is calculated based on the categories of each metrics:
- Fast: If every metrics of the page is fast.
- Slow: If any metrics of the page is slow
- Average: When they fall in between
Google consider loading speed of the web pages as one of the ranking factors. As a website or a web Page with a good loading speed provides excellent user experience and it also directly impacts the traffic of the web page and eventually ranking on the search engine. So, monitoring and maintaining the website speed is also essential along with the others ranking parameters.
The most content attractive and engaging websites tend to receive more potential customers, and Google also rank those sites well in search engines being more viewers friendly. Building a website most of the times look expensive and tedious and the question that appears is How much budget should I allocate to the website designing?
We have been seeing how website designing has advanced in the last couple of years from being just limited to desktops to becoming responsive (which runs on any devices and remains device friendly).
A website is a face of your business, and if you have not created or updated your website yet, then you will be left behind by your competitions. Here we are sharing some tips which will help you in deciding you’re spent on the website design.
1.) Type of Website you need:
First and foremost, you have to decide what type of website you need, and typically the kind depends on what you want your website to do, it could be an e-commerce website or could be brochure website.
Types of websites broadly fall into below category:
- Non-editable brochure website or a static website: this is a most basic type of website and as the name suggests these websites have fixed content and are most comfortable to create.
- Editable brochure website requires CMS (content management system) to makes changes in the content.
- Dynamic website: A dynamic website is self-managed through a content management system. In these websites, you can create more user engagement tabs (like logins, forms etc.), here the website information changes depending on the viewer’s native language, time zone, and other factors.
- E-commerce site supports the sell and purchase of online goods and is integrated with payment gateways like Paypal and banks like Barclays or HSBC or HDFC. Again under e-commerce website there categorization like, B2B, B2C B2A etc.
2.) Domain Name purchase:
Now that you have decided the website type and now, you have to choose and buy a domain name which will be your business address. You can purchase your domain name from WordPress, go daddy and from any other domain name provider websites. You have to very careful while buying your domain name as it will directly impact your brand.
You can purchase your domain name based on the domain name extensions, like .com, .net, .org depending on your business type and reach. If you try to buy the common domain names, you will find that they might be taken or expensive. You can also use domain name generators tools available online to generate cheaper ones. The domain name will cost from 12 dollars to 1000 Dollars, and you have to renew them every year to continue the services.
3.) Deciding On The Hosting Fees:
Website hosting is understood as you are buying a space on the server to launch your website on the internet. When a user wants to see your website he can just type your domain name in the search and then the computer will reach out to the dedicated server and fetch your site and present in front of the user.
You can buy hosting services from websites like Bluehost, HostGator, Godaddy and other hosting sites. These websites provide you with multiple package options available from single hosting to multiple hosting per month or yearly basis, which can cost you from 16 dollars to hundred dollars. Again, here also you have to renew the plans depending your medium of purchase could be a month or year basis to continue using the services.
4.) Choosing A Template:
Here comes most exciting part of the website design, where you have to choose a template to showcase your product and services. Either you can select a template which is available for free on sites like WordPress, or in case you want a template with better functionalities then you have to purchase one.
The purchasing of the templates will vary from provider to provider, and some might cost for $49 and others for $1,000 (or more). So, if you’re going with the sophisticated design templates, then it might ask you to shed extra dollar from your pocket.
5.) Support and Maintenance:
Some owners feel that if you have created a website you work is done, but it doesn’t work that way. Now as we discussed above that to continue your website services you would require to renew the domain and hosting plans. Additionally, keeping your website up to date with engaging content and design you would need to pay for the support and maintenance services.
You can either invest in hiring people or agency to will create and maintain your website design.
Now that you have the clear idea of factors where the money needs to spend, So now you can allocate your budget accordingly. Your website will not just require money but your time too. You have to keep on eye on your target potential user to find what services and answers they are looking for and then optimizing your website as per their needs will boost your ranking on the search engine results. Improvement in ranking will eventually bring more traffic to your website, leading to leads and later conversions.
As now Year 2018 has arrived and each SEO in every business is thinking about which new campaign strategy to embed in their approach to maximize the results on Google search engine in terms of Google #1 rank, Traffic on website, Leads, Conversions etc.
Being an SEO, we always work towards making the campaigns and activities success, but not every time we able to achieve even though we work hard. Our goal should be clear and reachable, and each one should be SMART (S- Specific, M- Measurable, A- Achievable, R- Relevant, T- Time-bound) to ensure that our SEO campaigns and activities are yielding results. We will now see how we can use the SMART approach in SEO to achieve the aggressive businesses goals without being unrealistic.
S- Specific: Your goal has to be significant and specific otherwise you work will be clumsy. Digital Marketing can help the business to achieve the Google Page# 1, but precisely what we want to yield out of it whether we are looking for more traffic or signups or leads. If we are clear on these perspectives, then it becomes easy to strategies your campaigns and works towards to it.
M- Measurable: It is essential to measure and track your progress. As rightly said anything which is measurable is achievable. We embed Google analytics on the website to monitor websites performance but is that enough? No, we need to know specific Goal dependent parameters to track to ensure we are moving on the right path.
Instance, if you want to see the conversions for your informational website, then we should especially track the number of sign-ups, e-book downloads; visitors time spent for the website.
A-Achievable: Your goal has to be attainable and realistic at the same time. Setting the realistic goal will require the great understanding of search engine and target keywords. A pre-analysis should be done on target keywords to understand its SEO feasibility also, whether available resources are enough to achieve the goal or not.
R- Relevant: When you are creating content and targeting keyword it has to website specific. As we understand that Content relevancy plays vital role in Google page ranking factors. If we keep on writing the content without receiving any views on them, then we might not reach the desired outcome. In case of blog the content should be in-line with the topic.
T – Time-bound: In SEO, results are derived organically which takes more extended period as compared to PPC (Pay Per Click) where we achieve results instantly. So it becomes vital to know your timelines and though it is not easy to determine the specific time to complete your set goal in SEO, because your campaign keeps on changing depending on the kind of efforts required to achieve the goal. So we can only estimate the timelines based on the target keyword searches, website analysis and by tracking the KPIs and the progress for the set goal.
The SMART does not end here, to make your website compete in the Year 2018, we should also focus on the Great user experience which increases the chances of user engagement for the pages that user has visited. This helps search engines understand how relevant the page is and which page to give more priority over others. In the year 2018, the Google will be keeping a close watch on the natural link building also, as more users are making voice searches with long tails keywords your website has to be optimized to make it Voice search friendly. SMART SEO can help you to continue your position in Google #page 1 and to bring more traffic to the website.
