Although responsive web design has been around for several years, it has only recently gained a surge in popularity in the drive for mobile-ready sites and effective UX design.
It is predicted that over the next few years, responsive web design will continue to dominate the web design market, with brands globally jumping on the bandwagon.
This method has been gaining momentum, especially after Google’s mobile-friendly update in April 2016, which prioritizes websites in its ranking system with optimized content for mobile devices and their users.
So, if you’re looking for effective ways to quickly develop a dependable and responsive website, check out the guidelines below to examine the common web design trends, both old and new, which are having an impact on this industry.
Last year, we witnessed some fine examples of designers’ utilizing bold and creative typography to make their message pop off the screen. That trend is still raging as we enter 2018, with designers determined to push the creative boundaries of typography.
Most websites feature creative typefaces that occupy more space on the screen to serve as the main feature of the site.
Attention is also paid towards the resizing of a font to fit smaller screen devices, without compromizing the UX.
The best part about this trend that this step doesn’t require a ton of extra effort in terms of coding, due to the use of media queries to progressively resize font to fit smaller screens.
Ultimately, things may reach the point where it will be more suitable to change the placing of the menu to a more desirable position, all the while maintaining the list elements in a corresponding alignment as well.
On a small screened device, a long, horizontally stretched menu can be more challenging to navigate and appears aesthetically unappealing. Perhaps the most effective way to counteract this problem is to display the menu in a well-spaced, vertical manner to better fit the small responsive screen size. This makes the complete list falling under the menu available to the user in a more formal and readable manner. The menu items are also easier to browse through and click on.
However, it is not necessary to display the vertical menu in list form. For example, a tabular structure can be equally beneficial given that the menu elements are not that long. Mobile screens already have a restricted viewport that naturally leads to the movement of text in a downwards direction, so this method is bound to give a more pleasurable user experience. This essentially means that you don’t need to worry too much about the vertical menu making your page appear longer.
An on-screen toggle can give your site a cleaner look and save space; especially if used for the menu. Additionally, if the font and colors used for the menu are similar to the overall site design scheme, it will give the responsive navigation a more natural and functional feel.
This UX technique also comes in handy for secondary menu items that can be toggled from the same page. For instance, a site can feature a fixed menu on a downward scroll and, a secondary menu item that can be toggled directly from the same page to access deeper links. This method of complementing text content with responsive navigation provides for a smooth user experience – as the user will be able to browse several site pages while saving time on the HTTP requests sent to the server.
Although the hidden toggle menu (otherwise also known as the 3-bar menu, hamburger menu and sliding drawer menu) is a controversial UI pattern that many people just love to hate, its widespread use makes the layout easily recognizable and hence functional for the average user.
The hidden toggle menu first broke out in the mobile IOS app market, which included complex sliding animation relying on the native Cocoa libraries. The concept has spread to other platforms since then, and now it is a common feature in most responsive site designs.
A great plus of the hidden toggle menu is that it draws the user’s attention towards the links, saves screen space, as well as nicely bringing together the main links and the sub-menu links. Typically, once the menu is toggled it dominates the screen and pushes the on-page content out of focus. This can also be achieved by casting darkness on the on-page content when the menu is toggled, so as to bring greater focus to the latter.
However, there’s a downside to the hidden menu toggle as well, since it is known to be ineffective for browsers that do not support JavaScript.
Where to begin?
There are far too many design options available right now and that number will continue growing in the future as well. Due to this, selectively putting together suitable site design elements may initially seem overwhelming. But this same flexibility of responsive web design also promises boundless creativity in a constantly evolving web development scene.
To start, browse through your favorite websites, or templates and themes, and try to identify how they assist in responsive navigation and adapt to user behaviors to create a custom experience. With any luck and proper research, you’ll be able to relate the most effective techniques for your project and build a usable interface that translates to your own take on the trend of responsive web design.
Guest Author: Simon Walker is a professional eCommerce Consultant with over 7 years of experience. He is currently working for FME Extensions, a premium Dubai Web Design Company. He is also consulting businesses to help increase their online exposure and conversions.
Your team has developed audience personas and knows which topics and keywords resonate with your audience. The content promotion plan is done and the KPIs are set.
You begin assigning the content marketing work.
And then you hit a wall: You can’t find enough quality content creators to join the team.
I hit that wall, then figured out a solution – a process to build content teams in a short time with relative ease.
To avoid the wall – or to break through it – consider these tricks and tools.
Vervoe is an interview-automation tool my company used to craft an interview process and workflow for hiring.
Use tools @VervoeHQ, @typeform, or @zapier to craft an interview process & workflow for #hiring. @zorzini Click To Tweet
Applicants use Vervoe to go through each step, responding to pre-set questions we selected through a drag-and-drop function. The program also creates a dashboard so we can see where each candidate is in the process.
If you don’t want to go through all the applicants’ answers manually, you can have Vervoe grade the answers based on preferred answers you provided earlier. Candidates making the grade (whatever you determine that to be) are advanced to the next stage in the interview process.
As an alternate to Vervoe, you can use a tool like Typeform (free) to create slick full-screen forms such as this one we created for one of our searches:
With both Vervoe and Typeform, once a candidate completes the interview, you receive an email notification.
And the automation-assisted process doesn’t have to stop there.
To streamline the output of results entered through the Typeform application, you can integrate it with Zapier, an automated workflow service, and connect it to your Google account. The output is a Google Sheets document, which makes the review process of completed interviews easier.
After you set up the “Zap,” all new Typeform entries from applicants are automatically populated to the Google Sheet.
We first send applicants an initial questionnaire link (from Vervoe or Typeform) to quickly ascertain whether they’re qualified for the role.
TIP: We eliminate any applicant (rows on the Google Sheet) who hasn’t included samples – that’s a red flag.
If they pass that step with convincing answers, we send a link to a final questionnaire to see how passionate the applicants are about writing in our target niche, and to get an idea on how well they can write by asking them to provide links to their best content.
Test final candidates’ passion for your #content niche with a custom questionnaire. @zorzini Click To Tweet
For example, here’s a question we ask writers to ascertain their domain expertise in growth hacking:
Vervoe makes setting up interview questionnaires super easy with publicly available scripts. This screenshot shows prepopulated script options that exist for freelance writers, content writers (general, entry level, and mid-level), and copywriters.
You can plug and play whichever scripts are most relevant to the position you want someone to fill.
Vervoe also offers an optional step, which is particularly helpful if the applicant doesn’t have experience in your particular niche. The system can require the applicant to spot-write a 500-word piece on a niche topic that warrants actionable content and submit it via the form. This is crucial because it helps us easily get an idea of how well applicants who don’t have a good portfolio can write.
In the automated interview process, we assign tasks to see how well they follow processes and provide our standard operating procedure (SOP) document as a resource. For example, we will ask them to optimize for a target keyword. When reviewing their responses, we will see whether they followed the on-page optimization checklist provided within the SOP.
Candidates who pass the automated rounds of interviews receive an email inviting them to an in-person interview or call.
By automating the initial steps in vetting candidates, we have reduced our hiring time by about 70%.
Automated vetting of #contentmarketing candidates reduced #hiring time by 70%, says @zorzini. Click To Tweet
Now that you have an automated process for hiring quality content creators on your team, your search for short-term or per-project content team members can be shortened too.
It’s a problem many content marketing teams have – finding freelance or contract writers who can write well and whose fees fit within the available budget.
Many companies or agencies frequently use platforms like Upwork, Freelancer, Fiverr, or others when they have project-specific content writing needs. But that process often falls apart. While they may be able to find good writers with time, it takes a lot of time to weed through the volume of the applicants pitching for the opportunity.
If that’s your predicament, you should be looking in a place that’s less crowded – and using the automated interview system described earlier.
This is what we do: We hire students.
Students usually will be native language speakers with considerable academic writing experience and they charge reasonable rates. They are attracted to the opportunity because they can build their portfolios and often are paid more than they can earn in a traditional on-campus job.
We created a templated approach to the first steps of the process, reaching out to marketing and public relations professors at local universities.
TIP: Don’t expect a single email to work. Professors usually will vet external companies before recommending them to their students.
Interested students are asked to follow a similar automated process through the Vervoe or Typeform interview forms we use to do full-time hiring.
We’ve hired students for a number of client projects quickly this way. Because the students have great research skills, they helped create some of our best guides and comparison posts.
Happy hiring!
If you’ve got your own unique hiring hack, let’s chat in the comments.
Automating the initial interview process is just one way to scale your content marketing. Discover how to scale (through automation and other tools) your entire content marketing program at the Intelligent Content Conference March 20-22 in Las Vegas.Registertoday.
Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
Please note: All tools included in our blog posts are suggested by authors, not the CMI editorial team. No one post can provide all relevant tools in the space. Feel free to include additional tools in the comments (from your company or ones that you have used).
Below is a list of the most frequently asked questions about search engine optimization, along with answers, recommendations, and best practices, logically organized into chapters and subchapters. The result is one of the easiest-to-follow guides to SEO basics for beginners.
SEO is an abbreviation for the term search engine optimization. Search engine optimization (SEO) is what you do to increase the traffic to your website from organic search results on platforms such as Google and Bing.
What is website traffic?
Website traffic is anything that visits your website. This includes both, actual human visitors and automated programs (called bots).
What are organic search results?
Whenever a person types something into a search engine, they are presented with a page containing search results for the term they were searching for.
Each search results page contains two types of results: paid and organic.
Organic search results are listings on search engine results pages that appear because of their relevance to the searched term.
In contrast, paid search results are advertisements where an advertiser pays to have their ad displayed whenever someone runs a search query matching the advertiser’s criteria.
How is website traffic measured?
Website traffic is measured through a specialized website analytics service by adding a short piece of computer code to your webpages. This code is normally generated by the service you are using to measure website traffic.
Depending on what service you use, the code may track all kinds of things, including, for example: the number of visitors to your website, how long they stay, which pages they visit, what browsers they use, where are they located, etc.
Currently, Google Analytics is perhaps the most popular website analytics service out there. Also, it’s free.
What is SEO in digital marketing?
SEO is an integral part of any digital marketing strategy that includes driving website traffic from organic search results. SEO is what makes that part of your digital marketing strategy happen.
What is the use of SEO?
If done correctly, SEO will benefit you in four ways. It will:
Allow your website to come up in search results for the most profitable search queries (also called keywords);
Improve your search engine rankings – that is, the position at which a page from your website appears in the search engine results;
Ensure that the best page from your website appears in the results for each individual search query; and
Improve the clickthrough rate to your website – that is, the ratio of users who click on your result as opposed to all others.
Why do you need SEO?
You need SEO to increase your share of free website traffic from search engines. According to some estimates, a total of 6.5 billion searches are performed each day. Because the top-ranked search results get almost all of this traffic, you need SEO to get your website to the top of the search result pages.
Why is SEO so important?
Performing SEO is the only way for your website to rank higher in the search results without paying for advertising. SEO helps you maximize the benefits of search engines as a marketing channel.
Search engines are web-based services that look for and identify items on the Internet – usually, web pages, images or videos – that best correspond to queries typed by the user.
What is the best search engine?
The best search engine is one that provides the most relevant results (you are actually interested in), in the fastest way possible, via an uncluttered, easy to use interface and offers additional options to broaden or tighten your search.
What is the most popular search engine?
With 79% share of the search market, Google is the most popular search engine, by far. In fact, one can claim it’s a monopoly. Other popular search engines include Bing, Baidu, and Yahoo.
Google became the most popular search engine because they came around with the right product at the right time.
First, Google developed a revolutionary technology that offered truly relevant search results. This, in the absence of any significant innovation from the then search leader Yahoo, allowed them to quickly overtake Yahoo and become the de facto search engine of choice.
Another factor that played into Google’s hands was that they came around during the same time as mainstream consumers were getting better Internet connectivity and becoming regular Internet users. By being the only search engine that delivered relevant results, Google built a massively loyal user base.
Finally, by successfully creating a very profitable source of revenue in offering pay-per-click advertising, Google was able to attract the best talent, keep innovating and also to create a massive war chest for future acquisitions, all of which they used quite effectively to cement their leadership position and protect themselves against competition.
How does Google work?
In order to figure out what to show in your search results out of the thousands, even millions of webpages with potentially relevant information, Google focuses on three things:
Crawling and indexing – First, long before any search query is typed in, Google web page crawlers work relentlessly to discover and process information contained in web pages and other publicly available content. Once discovered, it stores and organizes that information in its own database, called the Search index.
Search algorithms – When a search query is typed into Google, its ranking systems sort through hundreds of billions of webpages in the Search index to give you useful and relevant results in a fraction of a second.
Useful responses – At the same time, Google makes sure to offer search results in a range of rich formats to help you find the information you’re looking for quickly.
What is web crawling?
Web crawling is the process of discovering new content on the Internet performed by a web crawler. A web crawler, sometimes called a spider, is an Internet bot used by search engines that systematically browses the Internet, looking for publicly available information.
How does Google web crawler work?
Google web crawler, called Googlebot, is a program designed to discover new and updated pages for inclusion in the Search index. Because of the enormity of the Internet, Google uses a huge set of computers to perform this task.
Google’s crawl process begins with a list of web page URLs, generated from previous crawl processes, and augmented with Sitemap data provided by webmasters.
As Googlebot visits each of these websites, it detects links on each page, and adds them to its list of pages to crawl. New sites, changes to existing sites, and dead links are noted and used to update the Search index.
What is the meaning of web crawling in SEO?
Making sure that web crawlers, and specifically Googlebot, can and will access your website, is one of the cornerstones of any search engine optimization.
Put simply, until Googlebot crawls and indexes your web pages, there is no chance of you generating any free traffic from Google.
How do I get Google to crawl my website?
Googlebot uses an algorithmic (automated) process to determine which sites to crawl, how often to crawl them, and how many pages to fetch from each site.
There is no way to impact this process, as Google doesn’t accept payment to crawl a site more frequently.
However, one thing you can do is to ensure Googlebot knows about you. Here’s how:
Make sure Googlebot isn’t blocked.
Use the Submit URL option in Google Search Console.
Create a Sitemap and submit it to Google Search Console.
If you’ve recently added or made changes to a page on your site, you can ask Google to (re)index it using the Fetch as Google tool.
How to make sure Googlebot isn’t blocked
Blocking Googlebot from accessing a site makes Googlebot unable to crawl and index your website’s content. It can also lead to a loss of ranking in Google’s search results for previously indexed web pages.
If you suspect Googlebot may be blocked from accessing your site, log in to your Google Search Console account and check the following:
Messages – Google usually displays a prominent message if you are blocking Googlebot from crawling your site.
Crawl Errors – Review the list of crawl errors and look for any pages that you believe should be indexed. If there are such pages reported on the Crawl Errors list, it means Googlebot encountered a problem when it tried to crawl that URL.
Fetch as Google – when you find a problematic URL, use the Fetch as Google function for more detailed information as to what the problem might be.
What is indexing in Google Search?
Google indexing is the process of adding your website’s information into the Search index.
Googlebot processes each web page it crawls and compiles a massive index of all the words it sees and their location on each page. In addition, Google processes information included in key content tags and attributes, such as Title tags and ALT attributes.
How long does it take for Google to index a new site?
On average, it could take anywhere from 2 days to 3-4 weeks for Google to index a brand new site. A lot depends on the quality of your website and work that was done optimizing it for search engines.
How do Google search algorithms work?
In order to analyze what it is you are looking for and what information to return to you, Google has to sort through hundreds of billions of web pages in their Search index in a fraction of a second. To do this, Google ranking systems use a series of algorithms that do the following:
Analyze words – Google tries to understand the meaning of your search and decide what strings of words to look up in the Search index. This also involves interpreting spelling mistakes, understanding synonyms and applying some of the latest research on natural language understanding.
Match a query – At the most basic level, Google analyzes how often and where keywords relevant to your query appear on a page. They also analyze whether the pages include relevant content or if they are written in the same language as your question.
Rank pages – Using hundreds of factors, Google tries to identify the best web pages that match your search query. These include the freshness of the content, good user experience, website’s trustworthiness and authority, etc. Google also identifies and removes sites that violate their webmaster guidelines.
Consider context – Information such as user’s location, past search history, and Search settings all help Google personalize results to what is most useful and relevant for that particular user in that given moment.
Return best results – Before serving the search results, Google evaluates how all the relevant information fits together and then strives to provide a diverse set of information in formats that are most helpful for a given type of search.
How many factors does Google use to rank web pages?
When a user enters a query, the Google algorithm searches the index for matching web pages and returns the results they believe are the most relevant to the user. Relevancy is determined by over 200 factors.
What search engine ranking factors are the most important?
Google doesn’t release a list of their ranking factors to the public. Therefore, SEO experts have to rely on their own testing and (sometimes) guessing. According to a 2015 Expert Survey by MOZ, the most important search engine ranking factors were:
1. Domain-Level, Link Authority Features (importance: 8.22 out of 10) – these are factors related to incoming links (backlinks) for the entire website:
Quantity of unique linking domains
Topical relevance of linking domains
Raw popularity of the domain as measured by PageRank, etc.
Trust of the domain as measured by TrustRank, etc.
Distribution of linking domains’ authorities/relative importance/popularity
Backlinks from sites of your own geo-targeted area or language
Percentage of links with brand terms in the anchor text
Velocity of link acquisition to the domain
Sentiment of the external links pointing to the site
2. Page-Level Link Metrics (importance: 8.19 out of 10) – these are factors related to incoming links (backlinks) for the page you want to rank:
Raw quantity of links from high-authority sites
Topical relevance of linking pages
Topical relevance of linking domains
Diversity of link anchor text to the page
Raw quantity of links from known brands/entities to page
Raw quantity of unique linking domains to the page
Trust as measured by the distance from a trusted seed set of pages/sites
Position/context of inbound link
Popularity of the page as measured by algorithms like PageRank, etc.
Link velocity of the page
Raw quantity of links that employ the keyword as partial-match anchor text
Raw quantity of links that employ the keyword as the exact-match anchor text
Sentiment of the external links pointing to the page
3. Page-Level Keyword & Content-Based Metrics (importance: 7.87 out of 10) – these are factors that evaluate the quality and relevance of the web page’s content:
Uniqueness of the content on the page
Freshness of the content on the page
Length of content on the page
Page contains Schema.org or other structured data
Reading level of the content on the page
Use of images on the page
Use of rich media (video, slides, etc.)
Page contains Open Graph data and/or Twitter cards
4. Page-Level, Keyword-Agnostic Features (importance: 6.57 out of 10) – these factors assess other aspects of the web page that are not specifically related to the search query:
Page is mobile friendly (for mobile rankings)
Page Load Speed
The age of the page
Quality of supplemental content on page
Page supports HTTPS / SSL
Author authority of page
Page is mobile-friendly (for desktop rankings)
5. User Usage & Traffic/Query (importance: 6.55 out of 10) – these factors evaluate the user experience, both on the domain and page level:
Click-through rate from Google search results pages
Quantity of searches for the keyword, brand name, URL, or domain name
Pure bounce rate of the page
Return visits to this page after initial query/click
Overall design and/or user experience
Dwell time or long click metrics
Average browse rate
6. Domain-Level Brand Metrics (importance: 5.88 out of 10) – these are factors that assess the importance of the brand and its relations to the keyword:
Search volume for the brand/domain
Existence/quality of verified real-world business info
Quantity of citations for the domain name across the web
Quantity of co-occurrence keyword + brand across web
Quantity of mentions of the brand/domain on social sites
Popularity of business’s official social media profiles
7. Domain-Level Keyword Usage (importance: 4.97 out of 10) – these are factors that assess the presence and position of the keyword in the domain name:
Keyword is the exact match root domain name
Keyword is present in root domain name
Keyword is closely related to domain name through entity association
Keyword is the subdomain name
Keyword is the domain extension
8. Domain-Level, Keyword-Agnostic Features (importance: 4.09 out of 10) – these factors evaluate the quality of content for the entire website, as a whole:
Uniqueness of content across the whole site
Use of responsive design and/or mobile-optimized
Aggregated click-through-rate from Google SERPs for the domain
Freshness of content on the site
Aggregated page load speed for pages of domain
Aggregated dwell time or long click metrics for domain
Quantity of error pages crawled on the site
Age of domain
Domain is associated with high-authority authors
Domain contains trust signal pages
Domain lists contact information
Quality of other sites hosted on the same block of IP addresses
Character length of domain name
Presence of hyphens used in domain name
Length of time until domain name expires
9. Page-Level Social Metrics (importance: 3.98 out of 10) – these are factors that assess the web page’s performance on social media:
Engagement with content/URL on social networks
Raw count of Google+ shares and +1s associated with URL
Raw count of Tweets associated with URL
Raw count of Facebook likes and shares associated with URL
Comments about the page on social sites
Sentiment of social links and citations referring to the page
Raw count of Pinterest pins associated with URL
Upvotes for the page on social sites
What are negative ranking factors?
Negative search ranking factors will cause your web page or even an entire website to drop in the search results. The negative ranking factors are:
Total number of unnatural links to a page/subdomain
Page is duplicate content
Page content is thin
Amount of over-optimized anchor text on page
Non-mobile friendly (for mobile SERPs)
Keyword stuffing in document
Page links to spam
Page has relatively poor searcher satisfaction
Slow page speed
Page has relatively poor engagement/usage metrics
Total amount of advertising on page
Page links to high number of 404 pages
Page assets (CSS/JS) are blocked by robots.txt
Total number of times links from page and/or subdomain have been disavowed
Here are the best practices for search engine optimization as recommended by Google (PDF document). They apply to all websites, regardless of their topic, size, language, etc.
1. Improving Site Structure
1.1. Improve the structure of your URLs
Simple-to-understand URLs can lead to better crawling of your pages by Googlebot. It also makes it easier for those who want to link to or visit your content. Finally, a page’s URL is displayed as part of a search result in Google, right below the page’s title.
Do:
Use words in URLs.
Use a directory structure that makes it easy for visitors to know where they’re at on your site.
Provide a single version of a URL to reach a given document.
Don’t:
Use lengthy URLs with unnecessary parameters and session IDs.
Choose generic page names like “page1.html”.
Use excessive and/or repetitive keywords.
Have deep nesting of subdirectories like “…/dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/dir5/dir6/page.html”.
Use directory names that have no relation to the content in them.
Have multiple URLs that access the same content.
Use odd capitalization of URLs.
1.2. Make your site easier to navigate
The navigation of a website is important in helping Google understand what content is important.
Do:
Make it as easy as possible for users to go from general content to the more specific content. Add navigation pages when it makes sense.
Use mostly text for navigation links and menus.
Create an HTML sitemap, and use an XML Sitemap file.
Have a custom 404 page that guides users back to a working page on your site.
Don’t:
Create complex navigation menus or link every page on your site to every other page.
Make users click through too many tiers to access a particular page.
Have a navigation based entirely on drop-down menus, images, or animations.
Allow your 404 pages to be indexed in search engines.
2. Optimizing Content
2.1. Create unique, accurate page titles
Besides being an important element of SEO, the title tag will usually also appear in the first line of the search results. If the words in the title tag match the words in the search query, those words are bolded. This helps users recognize that a page is relevant to their search.
Do:
Choose a title that effectively communicates the topic of the page’s content.
Create unique title tags for each page.
Use brief, but descriptive titles.
Don’t:
Choose a title that has no relation to the content on the page.
Use default or vague titles like “Untitled” or “New Page”.
Use a single title tag across all of your site’s pages or a large group of pages.
Use extremely lengthy titles that are unhelpful to users.
Stuff unneeded keywords into your title tags.
2.2. Make use of the “description” meta tag
Description meta tags are important because Google might use them as snippets for your pages in the search results. Just as with the title tag, words in the snippet are bolded when they match the user’s query.
Do:
Write a description that would both inform and interest users if they saw your description meta tag as a snippet in a search result.
Use unique descriptions for each page.
Don’t:
Write a description meta tag that has no relation to the content on the page.
Use generic descriptions like “This is a web page”.
Fill the description with only keywords.
Copy and paste the entire content of the document into the description meta tag.
Use a single description meta tag across all of your site’s pages or a large group of pages.
2.3. Offer quality content and services
Compelling and useful content will positively influence your website more than any other SEO factor, because satisfied users will likely want to direct other users to it through blog posts, social media, email, forums, etc.
Do:
Write easy-to-read text.
Stay on topic.
Break your content up into logical chunks.
Create fresh, unique content.
Create content primarily for your users, not search engines.
Don’t:
Write sloppy text with many spelling and grammatical mistakes.
Embed text in images.
Dump large amounts of text on varying topics onto a page without paragraph, subheading, or layout separation.
Rehash or copy existing content that will bring little extra value to users.
Have duplicate or near-duplicate versions of your content across your site.
Insert numerous unnecessary keywords aimed at search engines.
Deceptively hide text from users, but display it to search engines.
2.4. Write better anchor text
Anchor text – the clickable text that users will see as a link – is used by Google to judge what the destination page is about. It is an important SEO factor.
Do:
Choose descriptive text.
Write concise text.
Format links so they’re easy to spot.
Think about anchor text for internal links too.
Don’t:
Write generic anchor text like “click here”.
Use text that has no relation to the content of the page linked to.
Link a lengthy sentence or a paragraph of text.
Use styling that make links look like regular text.
Use excessively keyword-filled anchor text just for search engines.
Create unnecessary links that don’t help with the user’s navigation of the site.
2.5 Optimize your use of images
Using optimized images can help improve web page’s rankings and also bring extra traffic from the image search.
Do:
Use brief, but descriptive file names and alt text.
Supply alt text when using images as links.
Supply an Image Sitemap file.
Don’t:
Use generic filenames like “image1.jpg”.
Write extremely lengthy filenames.
Stuff keywords into alt text or copy and paste entire sentences.
2.6. Use heading tags appropriately
Headings create a hierarchical structure for your content, making it easier for users to navigate through your page.
Do:
Use headings to communicate the page’s outline and hierarchy.
Use heading tags where it makes sense.
Don’t:
Place unhelpful text in heading tags.
Use heading tags where other tags like <em> and <strong> may be more appropriate.
Erratically switch from one heading tag size to another.
Excessively use heading tags throughout the page.
Put all of the page’s text into a heading tag.
Use heading tags for purposes other than presenting structure.
3. Dealing with Crawlers
3.1. Make effective use of robots.txt
You can decide whether you want Google to crawl and index all of your pages or just some. A “robots.txt” file is one way to tell search engines whether they can access and therefore crawl parts of your site.
Do:
Use more secure methods for sensitive content.
Don’t:
Allow search result-like pages to be crawled.
Allow URLs created as a result of proxy services to be crawled.
3.2. Be aware of rel=”nofollow” for links
Using the rel=”nofollow” attribute tells Google that certain links on your site shouldn’t be followed or pass reputation to the pages linked to. This is particularly useful for sites that have user-generated content, such as message boards or blog comments.
Do:
Automatically add “nofollow” to comment columns and message boards.
Use “nofollow” when you wish to reference a website, but don’t want to pass your reputation on to it.
Don’t:
Accidentally “nofollow” all of your internal links.
4. SEO for Mobile Phones
4.1. Notify Google of mobile sites
Mobile sites not only use a different format from normal desktop sites, but the management methods and expertise required are also quite different.
Do:
Verify that your mobile site is indexed by Google.
Create a mobile Sitemap and submit it to Google.
Allow “Googlebot-Mobile” user-agent to access your site.
Check that your mobile URLs’ DTD declaration is in an appropriate mobile format such as XHTML Mobile or Compact HTML.
Don’t:
Disallow “Googlebot-Mobile” user-agent from accessing your site.
4.2. Guide mobile users accurately
One of the most common problems for webmasters who run both mobile and desktop versions of a site is that the mobile version of the site appears for users on a desktop computer, or that the desktop version of the site appears when someone accesses it on a mobile device.
Do:
Redirect mobile users to the correct version or switch content based on user-agent.
Make sure that the content on the corresponding mobile/desktop URL matches as closely as possible.
Serve the same content to Googlebot as a typical desktop user would see, and the same content to Googlebot-Mobile as you would to the browser on a typical mobile device.
Don’t:
Serve different content to Googlebot from what a typical desktop user would see, and different content to Googlebot-Mobile from what a typical mobile user would see.
5. Promotions and Analysis
5.1. Promote your website in the right ways
Effective promotion will lead to faster discovery by those who are interested in the same subject.
Do:
Master making announcements via blogs and being recognized online.
Make use of social media.
Reach out to those in your site’s related community.
Don’t:
Promote each new, small piece of content you create.
Involve your site in schemes where your content is artificially promoted.
Spam others with link requests.
Purchase links from another site with the aim of getting PageRank instead of traffic.
5.2. Make use of free webmaster tools
Google’s Search Console helps webmasters better control how Google interacts with their websites and get useful information from Google about their site. It allows you to:
See which parts of a site the Googlebot had problems crawling.
Notify Google of an XML Sitemap file.
Analyze and generate robots.txt files.
Remove URLs already crawled by Googlebot.
Specify your preferred domain.
Identify issues with title and description meta tags.
Understand the top searches used to reach a site.
Get a glimpse at how Googlebot sees pages.
Remove unwanted sitelinks that Google may use in results.
Receive notifications of quality guideline violations and request a site reconsideration.
Web analytics programs like Google Analytics are a valuable source of insight for traffic analysis. You can use it to:
Get insight into how users reach and behave on your site.
Discover the most popular content on your site.
Measure the impact of optimizations you make to your site.
There is a lot more to SEO than what is covered in this guide, but if you do only part of what is recommended, you will be well ahead of most of your competition. Good luck!
Guest Author: Miroslav Chodak is a digital marketing expert with more than 20 years of experience. If you would like to know how SEO-ready your site is, learn how to do an SEO audit, or ask Miroslav to do one for you.
Visa commissioned research in 2015 that uncovered an idea so wholly new that it gained widespread attention, even landing a front-page spot in The New York Times. It showed women were choosing to travel solo in historic numbers. Higher spending power, a feeling of greater safety abroad, and the popularity of Instagram travel diaries created the right conditions for a boon in solo travel.
Visa corporate communications brought the findings to its agency, Click2View, and the parties immediately got to work figuring out how to relay the story of solo women travelers in an engaging way.
Research showing rise in women traveling solo led to award-winning #video series. @Visa @click2view Read more… Click To Tweet
The story takes flight
From these early conversations was born a video series called Solo Traveller. The series followed the travels of three women through Japan, Korea, Philippines, Taiwan, and Singapore … then seeded those videos through Visa’s social channels as well as the women’s social networks. Each journey was released as a three-part video.
Simon Kearney, founder of Click2View, says the success of the Visa project was due in large part to the travelers chosen by the production team:
Angela Kan is from Hong Kong; her extensive travel and writing experience meant she could collaborate with the team, brainstorming the best spots and conditions for recording her travelogue.
As a leading travel blogger in Thailand, Chutima Treearayapong had a devoted following before joining the Visa series.
Filipino blogger Vern Enciso is passionate about fashion, food, and music; her interests brought new ideas to the video series, as well as a distinct audience.
Now, Simon delves deeper into how you can translate what Visa and Click2View learned about video into your own visual storytelling. (The series was a Content Marketing Awards finalist for strategy – best content marketing program in financial services.)
Simon and his colleagues recommend considering the following factors when casting real people (not influencers) in any factual video-based storytelling:
Look at authenticity, not reach
“The people we chose were not influencers in the traditional sense because they didn’t have a large number of followers,” says Simon. Instead, casting focused on true-to-life qualities that aligned well with the larger story. “These women had to be solo travelers in their own right. We wanted real, independent women who were travel savvy, excited to try new things, and not afraid of the challenges of filming.”
In its bid to be authentic, the team sought women who spoke naturally on camera and truly shared a passion for travel. Producer/director Fraser Morton at Click2View explains, “It was my job to find millennial talent who embodied the solo traveler. We did not want anyone who had a ‘showbiz’ persona on camera – that would defeat the purpose of creating a real-life series of travel micro-docs.”
Choose people who speak naturally, not showbiz personas, for authenticity in #video, says @Fraser_Morton. Click To Tweet
Fraser says each woman was considered primarily for her enthusiasm and sense of adventure about travel, but creativity is also a big plus. He explains, “Angela Kan, our Hong Kong talent, was selected because she had extensive travel and writing experience, and we felt she could help come up with ideas and spontaneous travel moments to capture on film.”
Seek adaptable people
They put considerable effort into creating a roving video team that could adapt to changing conditions – that includes both the camera crew and director, as well as the women profiled. Fraser explains: “We needed each featured traveler to relish the unexpected, which they all did.”
Think in terms of a talent portfolio
The Solo Traveller team understood that no one individual would cater to all its audience. Instead, the group chose three people with different styles – from outdoor adventurers to those with a penchant for urban fashion and food – in a bid to attract a wide segment of the female solo traveler market.
When you’re capturing reality-based stories – whether a documentary feature film or a short-form video for Instagram – protecting the story’s authenticity is critical. The team at Visa and Click2View says these guidelines can ensure that videos don’t feel staged:
Don’t rely on scripts
The best way to kill a story, says Simon, is to rigidly plan a storyline and script, and stick to it no matter what: “We took a journalistic approach, going on assignment with a clear idea of what we wanted … But with the clear expectation we would throw the script out at the first opportunity to tell a better story. That’s when the magic happens.”
Limit the size of your video crew
Each shoot had a maximum of five people (or a group that could reasonably fit inside one van). Those five included the traveler, a director, a cameraman (who also played the role of a producer, sound assistant, and gaffer), a local fixer/translator, and a content director from Visa. A smaller crew makes it nimble and less intrusive on the road, which translates to a higher probability of spontaneous, unscripted moments.
Stay open to chance
“Often a story that you think might be promising when you’re doing research is very different on the road,” explains Simon. “Some of our best segments included people we didn’t plan to profile. In the Philippines, we met a surf instructor and a mountain guide who were not in our original plans; those random meetings gave us two episodes with great characters in a single day.”
Invest in pre-production
Fraser says that while the team was able to change plans on the go it was still critical to spend time in pre-production, mapping routes and tentative shoots. “While we want to be all laissez-faire about dropping everything to chase a great story, great pre-production and planning gives you the freedom to change on the road,” he says. “A more recent innovation is having an editor traveling with us, so we can turn around episodes even faster.”
Great #video pre-production gives you freedom to change on the road, says @Fraser_Morton. Click To Tweet
What made the project particularly interesting, however, was what happened after the first video series was released into the social media wild. Given the quality of the content, a wide world of native advertising and licensing opened up – opportunities that were not in the original plans.
In Korea, the Visa country manager executed a content deal with HuffPost Korea. Singapore Airlines picked up the series to run on its in-flight entertainment channel. And, based on the success of the original videos, Visa asked the agency to produce follow-on series, including a four-episode fashion edition in Japan and a series around the 2018 Winter Olympics in Korea.
In a sign of just how successful the video series has been for Visa, one of the Solo Traveller episodes featured on HuffPost Korea as paid content is among the top five most-shared videos on the site since 2014.
For Visa, the Solo Traveller story is just beginning. Follow-on stories are in development in different markets with novel distribution strategies. Simon explains that the lesson from the original series is the power of good storytelling to find an enthusiastic audience and bear fruit: “When we began this project, we never imagined it would be going three years later, let alone going strong.”
This article originally appeared in the November issue of CCO magazine. Subscribe for your free print copy today.
Video is a hot topic in content marketing today. Get more tips and insight into it and other topics at Content Marketing World 2018. Registration is open – sign up today.
Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
I decided to look at some direct evidence for social media and its positive effects with eCommerce online businesses both for “Business to Consumer” (B2C) companies as well as “Business to Business” (B2B) companies and I came across these rather diverse examples where social media was very evidential in producing results.
Firstly Mark Logan from BarkleyUS provides us with some insights from a presentation
Why is Zappos so successful at Social Media? .. What is their strategic approach? ..It comes down to two things..Service and Culture and they believe they are one and the same thing and because their culture is unique and offers the company a competitive advantage, they use Social media to project that culture out into the world..
So what are some of the elements of this approach
Service
They have a Twitter account dedicated to Service Issues
To uncover service opportunities
Initiate response
Amplify praise
Reinforce Service reputation
Culture
The companies 400 employees all have Twitter accounts
Who they hire is consistent with this culture of service
Most of their social media initiatives are about exposing the people at Zappos, who through their actions reinforce the companys competitive advantage.. It makes the company real.
The CEO leads by example he communicates about his passions.. he is personally invested in Social Media
They do measure social media but don’t calculate it’s ROI on Sales as they don’t consider it a traditional marketing channel
The primary purpose of their blogs and twitter is so that outsiders can get a glimpse of their company’s culture
“Quote from Twitter while I am typing here from a Zappos Employee…… “Good morning Zappos Fans! My name is Danika, and I am here to answer any questions you have about Zappos/Canada! “
Case Study Two: Dell (not telling you what they do)
They are very strong on Social Media .. they have a “Conversations and Communities” team of 40 and they have several blogs, including a direct to consumer blog and several special interest blogs and engage in almost every major social media channel
Some other Highlights
Over 65 corporate twitter accounts
More than 400,000 followers
They do promote on Twitter eg “15% off any Dell Outlet Inspiron 15 – 1545 laptop. Enter code at checkout: S2?70S6LK1VWVS – only athttp://bit.ly/SM28A– exp 8/315:05 AM Aug 28thfrom CoTweet”
They are an online E-Commerce store that sells Teen Clothing For Girls
They launched a community section of their site where fans can design their own ensembles and publish them to the community for reviews.What does this achieve?
It leverages wisdom and creativity of the crowds
It provides social validation of fashion choices to enhance selling
It is user generated merchandising
Result: Immediately After Using Social Media : 10% increase of sales as well as a 10% increase in the average dollar value of the sale (Net benefit.. 21% increase in revenue)
Challenge this one …..as it is an “Experience Retailer” (How Do You Create an In Store Experience and create it Online?) and ..How do you take your brand online, without losing your experience and commoditizing your product.
Well…They created a kids virtual world where
Kids could interact and chat
Play games
Earn virtual currency
Spend virtual currency on items in the virtual world, like clothes or furniture for your condo
What the game did was create fundamental changes to the buying experience and value proposition that
Extended the instore experience to online
Increased frequency from occasional to daily or weekly
Influenced 10% of sales
Result: Since being initiated last year sales of “60,000 units” in virtual goods and nearly “half a million dollars in real revenue”.
(Business: Online services to businesses for generating inbound leads.. Permission Marketing)..
This is what Mike Volpe The VP of Marketing revealed about some of the elements and successes of Hubspots Inbound marketing strategies
“With our WebsiteGrader.com tool, we marketed it through social networks and it brought us 450,000 leads,” says Marketing VP Mike Volpe at HubSpot
“Those leads are one of the most important channels for us as far as sales; 2 to 4 percent of the qualified leads convert to HubSpot customers.”
Volpe’s firm hired an intern to post its software tutorial videos on YouTube, one of hundreds of content-sharing sites. After uploading a video, YouTube provides a code that anyone can use to add it to their blog or Webpage. “We didn’t promote them at all, and we started to get over 10,000 views a month of those videos up on YouTube,” Volpe says. “We’ve since discovered that in-bound marketing–a combination of social media, search-engine optimization and blogging–is by far the highest ROI of any marketing out there.” Those views turned into leads that generated sales
In summary he said “a combination of social media, search-engine optimization and blogging–is by far the highest ROI of any marketing out there.
There’s a good chance that you’re not investing enough of your marketing budget into live events. And your brand may be missing out on a significant amount of growth because of it.
Let me explain why.
At my company Bizzabo, we recently surveyed over 400 mid-to-senior level marketers about the current state of event marketing and where they see it heading. In the resulting report, Event Marketing 2018: Benchmarks and Trends, we found that the overwhelming majority of marketers (80%) believe that live events are critical to their organization’s success, and that the most successful organizations plan on investing more into live events in the coming years.
I’ve already written about why you should invest in live events on this platform before. In this post, I will outline why you need to be investing more than you think.
Live events are the most effective marketing channel
Between your website, blog, digital ads, print ads and all of the other marketing channels that you may be managing at any given time, it’s understandable that you might not be focusing on your events strategy. But here’s the thing: you really should be.
Most marketers (31%) believe that event marketing is the single most effective channel for marketing. It wins over digital advertising, email marketing, and any other channel.
After all, it’s one thing to engage with prospects, customers, and partners over the internet, but it’s another thing entirely to interact with them face-to-face. Not only does it provide a unique opportunity for building rapport, it also provides a tailored opportunity to learn about your customers.
This belief carries to the top of the organizational hierarchy. An overwhelming majority of C-Suite executives (87%) believe in the power of live events and plan on investing in them more in the future. The same percentage of C-Suite executives believe that their leadership team is supportive of their live events strategy.
When it comes to your marketing channels, live events may very well be your most valuable asset.
The most successful brands plan on investing more in live events
With the effectiveness of live events in mind, it may come as little surprise that the majority (63%) of event marketers plan on investing more in live events in the future – both in terms of budget and volume of events.
If you are not investing much in live events, chances are your competitors are outspending you. However, it’s more than just a matter of keeping up with your competitors, it’s also about outpacing and outlasting them. In fact, the majority (91%) of overperforming businesses place a greater emphasis on live events as a marketing channel than other under-performing businesses or businesses that are just performing as expected.
Take a look at the world’s most successful brands – Forbes, Salesforce, Airbnb, Apple, Target, HBO – and you’ll see that, aside from incredible success and brand recognition, each of these organizations also invest significantly in live events.
Forbes holds events for CIOs, healthcare professionals and more; Salesforce produces what is arguably the largest user conference in the world; Airbnb organizes events for both guests who use their platform and the hosts that accomodate them; Apple has earned international recognition for its Worldwide Developers Conference; Target is known for its annual employee events; and HBO has effectively employed experiential and event marketing campaigns to promote their most popular programs.
You can see that the most successful brands care about live events, and the majority of them (80%) also plan on investing more into them in the future. Not only is that the case, but they also plan on growing their event marketing budgets by more than the rest ($4,500 more).
If your organization aspires to greatness, at some point you are going to need to invest more in live events.
Leveraging event technology improves event ROI
One of the biggest obstacles to live event campaigns in the past was proving ROI. People purchased a pass, attended an event, interacted with a brand, and then went home. Aside from event revenue generated and any deals closed on the showroom floor, proving event ROI can be a challenge for even the most meticulous of event marketers.
The evolution of modern event technology in the last couple of decades has provided a solution. In fact, Frost and Sullivan report that the event management software industry is valued at $28 billion and is projected to have a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 3.3% moving forward. According to the Event Software Buyer’s Guide, $50 million alone was invested in new modern management software solutions like Bizzabo, Social Tables, and Slido.
This market demand is reflected in the adoption of new event technologies.
An overwhelming majority of event marketers (86%) believe that technology can have a major positive impact on the success of their events.
Overperforming companies said that they would increase event technology spend by $4,500 more than event professionals from the performing as expected or underperforming categories.
Almost 60% of event management software users are able to measure ROI better than those who do not use software.
Event marketing is growing, and it’s the overperforming organizations that are leading the charge in investment. It’s dual investment both in events and event technology that has empowered the most successful organizations to prove the ROI of their event strategy.
Wrapping up
While digital marketing will without a doubt remain a valuable channel for communicating with prospects, customers, and partners, event marketing is the new go-to channel for advancing business goals.
Those who invest in live events stand to gain a marked competitive advantage over their competitors, and in doing so, set themselves up for long-term success. Look at any of the leading brands and you will find that they are investing considerably in their live events strategy – and they are most likely also investing in event technology.
Of course, it’s not just a matter of investing, it’s a matter of investing wisely. In pursuing your live events strategy the first step is determining the objective of your events: whether that be lead engagement, customer retention or something entirely different.
From there, secure alignment across your organization, employ the other marketing channels in your arsenal to promote your event, and leverage available technology to get the most out of it.
Otherwise, you are just missing out.
Guest Author: Alon Alroy is the Co-Founder and CMO of Bizzabo, the world’s fastest-growing event software company. The Bizzabo Events Cloud is used by thousands upon thousand of event organizers from around the world, and was selected by the Event Technology Awards over two consecutive years as The People Choice’s Award for the Favorite Event Technology Solution.
Your team has developed audience personas and knows which topics and keywords resonate with your audience. The content promotion plan is done and the KPIs are set.
I decided to look at some direct evidence for social media and its positive effects with eCommerce online businesses both for “Business to Consumer” (B2C) companies as well as “Business to Business” (B2B) companies and I came across these rather diverse examples where social media was very evidential in producing results.
