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Digital Marketing: The Key to Unlocking Business Success in the Digital Age

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In the fast-paced and ever-evolving landscape of the digital age, businesses are continually challenged to adapt and innovate to stay ahead. 

Traditional marketing strategies are no longer enough to stay competitive in the ever-evolving landscape. The tactics that helped grow your business last year or the year before are more than likely outdated for this fast-paced digital world that we’re living in.

Unfortunately, if your brand isn’t growing, it’s dying. That is why digital marketing has become the key to unlocking business growth and success in the digital age.

This article explores the power of effective marketing in the digital age, understanding different aspects of digital marketing, and how businesses can develop a winning digital marketing strategy to thrive in the digital realm.

I. The Evolution of Marketing in the Digital Age

The foundations of marketing have undergone a profound transformation with the advent of the digital age. 

In the not-so-distant past, traditional methods such as print ads, TV commercials, and billboards were the go-to strategies for reaching consumers. 

However, the rise of the internet and the expansion of digital technologies have reshaped the marketing landscape. Digital marketing has emerged as the linchpin for businesses seeking to navigate the complexities of the modern era and connect with an increasingly tech-savvy audience.

II. Understanding the Importance of Digital Marketing

A. Global Reach and Targeted Advertising

The paradigm shift from traditional to digital marketing is fueled by the unparalleled global reach it offers. 

Businesses can now transcend geographical boundaries, reaching a diverse and expansive audience with a well-crafted digital strategy. Moreover, the ability to engage in targeted advertising has become a game-changer. 

By tailoring messages to specific demographics, interests, and behaviors, businesses can significantly enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of their marketing efforts.

B. Cost-Effectiveness and Measurable ROI

In the realm of digital marketing, cost-effectiveness is a key advantage. 

Unlike traditional methods that require substantial budgets, digital channels allow businesses to maximize their marketing spend. 

This efficiency is further complemented by the ability to track and measure Return on Investment (ROI) through analytics tools. 

From social media campaigns to content marketing efforts, businesses can optimize their strategies based on real-time data, ensuring a more informed and impactful approach.

C. Real-Time Engagement and Customer Interaction

The advancement of digital platforms allows a brand to facilitate real-time engagement with customers, which is a crucial factor in today’s fast-paced business environment. 

Social media platforms, chatbots, and instant messaging services offer direct channels for businesses to interact with their audience promptly.

This real-time feedback loop enhances customer satisfaction and enables businesses to adapt swiftly to changing market trends and consumer preferences.

III. Components of an Effective Digital Marketing Strategy

A. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

In the competitive online landscape, getting noticed is crucial for businesses, and that’s where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes into play. 

It’s like a behind-the-scenes hero that helps websites show up on search engine results. SEO involves tweaking website content, using relevant keywords, and building good-quality links to improve search engine rankings. 

As your website boosts the search results, it naturally attracts more visitors, enhancing credibility and trust. This increased visibility can lead to more user engagement, thanks to a smoother website experience and valuable content. 

Ultimately, it sets the stage for potential conversions. SEO is a continuous journey of staying adaptable to changes in search engine algorithms, ensuring a steady online presence and a marketing channel that we’ve used to generate hundreds of millions of dollars for our clients.

B. Content Marketing

Content marketing remains a vital part of effective digital strategies.

Creating valuable and engaging content helps establish a brand’s authority in its industry. 

Whether through blog posts, videos, podcasts, or infographics, content marketing is a valuable tool for building brand awareness, fostering customer trust, and generating leads. 

By consistently providing content that resonates with the target audience, businesses can become reliable sources of information and build lasting relationships. 

The strategic use of content across different channels also helps attract potential customers who find value in the brand’s expertise and offerings. 

Content marketing is more than just promotion; it’s about creating connections and driving business growth.

C. Social Media Marketing

In today’s digital landscape, social media marketing has become a crucial part of the toolkit for businesses, given the widespread use of platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and LinkedIn. 

Successful social media campaigns go beyond boosting brand visibility; they offer a direct way for businesses to connect with their audience, fostering community and promoting products or services. 

These platforms provide a space for real-time interactions, allowing brands to engage authentically with their audience and respond promptly to inquiries or feedback. 

At its core, social media marketing is about building relationships and engaging customers within the dynamic and ever-evolving digital space.

Not to mention, there are 4.95 billion social media users globally who are glued to their phones throughout the day.

D. Email Marketing

Email marketing remains a potent tool for businesses despite the rise of new communication channels. 

Personalized and targeted email campaigns allow businesses to nurture leads, communicate with existing customers, and drive conversions.

Automation tools further streamline the process, ensuring timely and relevant communication.

Email marketing also plays a vital role when combining it with lead generation and moving the buyer through the sales journey.

E. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

For businesses looking for quick results, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is a great option.  

Platforms such as Google Ads and various social media advertising channels enable businesses to strategically bid on keywords and showcase ads to a precisely targeted audience. 

The flexibility of PPC campaigns allows for a fine-tuned approach, where careful planning and ongoing optimization contribute to their efficacy. 

By aligning ads with specific keywords and demographics, businesses can maximize their visibility among users actively seeking relevant products or services. 

The dynamic nature of PPC, combined with real-time analytics, empowers businesses to assess campaign performance promptly and make data-driven adjustments. 

When executed with precision, PPC campaigns have the potential to yield a high return on investment, making them a valuable tool for businesses aiming to generate quick and measurable results in the digital advertising landscape.

F: Facebook Advertising

Facebook advertising offers businesses a valuable tool to connect with a specific audience.

The platform’s advertising features allow for precise demographic targeting, ensuring that your message reaches individuals most likely interested in your products or services. 

With user data covering factors like age, location, interests, and online behavior, businesses can tailor their approach to connect with the right audience. 

With Facebook advertising, you can engage and reach specific audience segments in various geographical locations that are interested in your products or services. Amongst many other reasons, this is one of the reasons why Facebook Advertising yields one of the highest returns on investments out of any marketing channel.

IV. The Role of Data and Analytics

Data-driven decision-making is fundamental to the success of digital marketing efforts. 

Analyzing user behavior, engagement metrics, and conversion rates provides valuable insights into the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. 

Businesses can leverage these insights to refine their strategies, allocate resources more efficiently, and stay ahead of market trends.

A. Marketing Analytics Tools

In the digital marketing world, businesses have various analytics tools at their disposal to track and measure their online efforts. 

From widely used tools like Google Analytics to insights provided by different social media platforms, these tools offer valuable data for understanding user behavior, preferences, and overall campaign performance. 

Google Analytics, for example, provides detailed information about website traffic, user interactions, and conversions. 

Social media analytics tools give insights into engagement levels, audience demographics, and content effectiveness. 

With the information gathered, businesses can analyze user behavior, identify preferences, and assess how well their marketing campaigns are performing. 

This data-driven approach aids in strategic decision-making and allows businesses to adjust their digital strategies for better results in the ever-changing online landscape.

B. A/B Testing

A/B testing is a vital component when optimizing digital marketing campaigns. 

Our digital marketing agency uses A/B testing on almost every digital marketing campaign that we run. A/B testing allows us to tweak and refine campaigns to find the winning formula.

Proper testing involves creating two versions of a specific element, like an email subject line or a landing page, and comparing how they perform to see which one connects better with the audience. 

Businesses get valuable insights into what works best by presenting these versions to a sample audience and analyzing their responses. 

This then provides a practical and data-driven way to assess the impact of changes, helping marketers make informed decisions about which elements are more effective. 

This ongoing process fine-tunes specific elements and contributes to improving marketing strategies. 

A/B testing allows businesses to stay adaptable to changing audience preferences and industry trends in the ever-evolving digital marketing landscape.

C. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is a systematic process that makes a website more user-friendly to encourage visitors to take a specific action, known as a “conversion.” 

Depending on the business goals, these actions could range from purchasing to signing up for a trial or downloading a resource. 

The idea behind CRO is to tweak and improve the elements influencing how users behave on the website. 

This involves looking at aspects like the website design, call-to-action buttons, and landing pages to create a smoother and more intuitive experience. 

By making these adjustments, businesses aim to increase the chances of turning website visitors into customers, aligning the user experience with the business’s overall objectives.

V. Overcoming Challenges in the Digital Marketing Landscape

While digital marketing brings numerous advantages, it also comes with its fair share of challenges for business owners. 

Common hurdles include dealing with information overload, staying updated with the ever-evolving technology, and the demand for skilled professionals who know what they’re doing.

These challenges can be particularly daunting for business owners who may feel uncertain about the right marketing strategies or finding reliable sources. 

The struggle to navigate through options and identify trustworthy experts adds to the complexity. 

However, there are a few ways to navigate through these challenges. By staying informed, embracing innovation, and investing in training, businesses can overcome these obstacles and remain competitive in the ever-changing digital landscape. 

If you’re like most businesses, though, and you’d instead find a trusted digital marketing agency partner with a proven track record, you can always reach out to our team, and we’d like to help your brand grow to all-new heights.

VI. Case Studies: Success Stories in Digital Marketing

Real-world examples demonstrate the transformative power of digital marketing. 

From small startups to established enterprises, these success stories highlight the diverse ways in which businesses can leverage digital marketing to achieve remarkable results.

A. Airbnb: Disrupting the Hospitality Industry

Airbnb’s success is a testament to the transformative power of digital marketing. 

By leveraging a user-friendly platform, compelling content, and targeted social media campaigns, Airbnb disrupted traditional accommodation models and rapidly gained global recognition.

B. Dollar Shave Club: Building a Brand with Viral Content

Dollar Shave Club, a subscription-based razor company, gained widespread attention through a humorous and viral video. 

By utilizing social media platforms and creating shareable content, the company quickly built a loyal customer base and challenged established competitors in the grooming industry. They also quickly grew to a $1 billion evaluation.

C. Nike: Creating an Iconic Brand through Digital Channels

Nike’s digital marketing prowess extends beyond traditional advertising. 

The company strategically uses social media, influencer partnerships, and interactive campaigns to engage its audience. 

By connecting with consumers on a personal level, Nike has solidified its status as a global athletic brand.

VII. The Future of Digital Marketing: Emerging Trends and Technologies

As technology continues to advance, the digital marketing landscape is evolving rapidly. 

Several trends and technologies are shaping the future of digital marketing, offering new opportunities for businesses to connect with their audience in innovative ways.

A. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning

AI is revolutionizing marketing by enabling businesses to create more personalized and targeted customer experiences. 

Through sophisticated algorithms, AI analyzes vast datasets to understand individual preferences and behaviors, allowing for the delivery of highly tailored content and recommendations. 

AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants streamline customer interactions, providing immediate and personalized support. 

Predictive analytics forecasts future trends guiding marketers to make data-driven decisions, and helps optimize campaigns. 

AI also plays a role in content creation, marketing automation, and enhanced customer insights, improving efficiency and customer satisfaction. 

B. Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR)

Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) technologies are at the forefront of creating immersive experiences for consumers, offering businesses innovative ways to connect with their audience. 

AR overlays digital elements in the real world, while VR provides an entirely immersive, computer-generated environment. 

By leveraging AR and VR technologies, businesses can offer interactive product demonstrations that allow consumers to explore and visualize products in their own space. 

Virtual try-ons enable customers to experience products like clothing or accessories before purchasing, enhancing the online shopping experience. 

Moreover, AR and VR can be powerful tools for storytelling, transporting consumers to virtual worlds that evoke emotions and create memorable brand experiences. 

By incorporating these technologies, businesses differentiate themselves in the market and foster deeper engagement and connections with their audience, ultimately contributing to a more immersive and interactive brand-consumer relationship.

C. Voice Search Optimization

With the rise of voice-activated devices, more people are using voice searches. 

Optimizing digital content for voice search is essential for businesses to stay visible in this changing landscape. 

Tweaking keywords to match how people naturally talk and creating content that sounds conversational and addresses common questions is an easy way to optimize for voice search. 

Focusing on local SEO is also crucial since many voice searches involve location-based queries. 

By making these adjustments, businesses can adapt to the growing use of voice-activated technology, ensuring they remain visible and relevant to users in this evolving digital environment.

D. Sustainability and Social Responsibility

As consumers become more aware of sustainability and social responsibility, businesses have an opportunity to connect with a conscious audience. 

By aligning digital marketing strategies with environmental and social initiatives, companies can build a positive brand image that resonates with socially aware consumers. 

This alignment involves integrating sustainable practices into various aspects of digital marketing, from product sourcing to marketing messages. 

Sharing transparent insights into eco-friendly practices and community engagement through social media can amplify the impact. 

Embracing sustainability in digital marketing builds trust with socially conscious consumers and positions businesses as contributors to positive societal and environmental change. 

This approach goes beyond profits, creating a narrative that connects with consumers who prioritize ethical considerations in their purchasing decisions.

Conclusion

Digital marketing stands as the linchpin for unlocking success in the digital age. 

From global reach and targeted advertising to real-time engagement and data-driven decision-making, the benefits are vast. 

By embracing the various components of an effective digital marketing strategy and staying abreast of emerging trends, businesses can navigate the evolving landscape and position themselves for sustained success in the dynamic world of digital commerce. 

The transformative power of digital marketing is not just a luxury but a necessity for any business aspiring to thrive in the competitive and ever-evolving digital era. 

With over 12+ years of experience successfully building and growing 400+ brands, we possess the expertise and know-how to create winning digital marketing strategies that could unlock a flood of growth for your brand. If you’re looking to grow to all new heights and be forced to increase your goals, feel free to reach out to one of our strategists. We’d love to see how we can help you achieve more growth. 

After all, brands choose to partner with AVINTIV when they want to do one thing: GROW!

Marketing 101: A Comprehensive Guide for Business Owners

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101: A Step-by-Step Guide for Business Owners

Introduction to Marketing 101

Marketing plays a crucial role in the success of any business. It is the process of promoting and selling products or services to customers. Mastering marketing fundamentals has become even more critical in today’s digital age. This guide will provide business owners with a step-by-step approach to understanding and implementing effective marketing strategies. By the end of this article, you will have a solid foundation in marketing principles and be equipped with the knowledge to take your business to new heights.

Understanding the Basics of Digital Marketing

In the digital era, understanding the basics of digital marketing is essential for any business owner. Digital marketing refers to the use of digital channels such as websites, search engines, social media, email, and mobile apps to reach and engage with potential customers. It offers many opportunities to target specific audiences, measure results, and optimize campaigns for maximum impact. To see success in digital marketing, you’ll want to have a good understanding of the various components and strategies involved.

Benefits of Digital Marketing for Businesses

Digital marketing offers numerous benefits for businesses of all sizes. 

Firstly, it provides a cost-effective way to reach a large audience compared to traditional marketing methods. With digital marketing, you can target specific demographics and measure the effectiveness of your campaigns in real time. 

Secondly, it allows for personalized and targeted marketing messages, which can result in higher conversion rates. 

Additionally, digital marketing provides an opportunity to engage with customers through social media and build brand loyalty. Digital marketing can help businesses increase visibility, generate leads, and drive sales.

Exploring Different Types of Digital Marketing

Digital marketing encompasses a wide range of tactics and strategies. It is essential to explore these different types to find the ones that align with your business goals and target audience. 

Some common types of digital marketing include search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, and paid advertising. 

SEO focuses on improving a website’s visibility in search engine results, while content marketing involves creating and sharing valuable content to attract and engage customers. 

Social media marketing leverages social media platforms to build brand awareness and engage customers. 

Email marketing is an effective way to nurture leads and drive conversions. 

Paid advertising involves placing ads on various digital platforms to reach a wider audience.

Industry titans are great at utilizing all of the mentioned digital marketing channels and utilizing the strengths and weaknesses of each to craft a winning strategy for their brand.

Building an Effective Digital Marketing Strategy

Building an effective digital marketing strategy is one of the most critical steps to see positive results from your digital marketing efforts. 

You can view your marketing strategy similar to Maps on your phone, showing you how to reach your destination and what to expect.

The alternative is what most business owners do now: not use navigation and aimlessly drive, hoping they get to their destination. Those days are long behind us, and it’s time to catch up with the times.

A digital marketing strategy outlines your goals, target audience, key messages, and the tactics you will use to achieve your objectives. 

It is crucial to conduct thorough market research to understand your target audience and their preferences. These initial steps will help you tailor your marketing messages and choose the most effective channels to reach them. 

Performing extensive market research and identifying your target audience will also teach you how to position your brand in the marketplace against your competitors properly.

Your strategy should also include a budget and a timeline for implementation. Regularly monitoring and evaluating your strategy will allow you to make necessary adjustments and optimize your marketing campaigns for better results.

The Role of Email Marketing in Your Strategy

Email marketing continues to be a powerful tool in the digital marketing landscape. It allows businesses to communicate with their customers and nurture leads directly. 

Email marketing can also build relationships, promote products or services, share valuable content, and drive conversions.

Building a quality email list is essential to fully leveraging the power of email marketing, which is why incentivizing visitors to subscribe is a great strategy.

Segmenting your email list based on customer preferences and behavior will allow for more personalized and targeted campaigns. Once you know your customer, you can craft compelling subject lines and engaging content to increase open and click-through rates. 

Like any marketing channel, you’ll want to regularly analyze the performance of your email campaigns and make adjustments to optimize your results.

The Power of Content Marketing in Driving Results

Content marketing is a strategic approach focusing on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience. 

It is a long-term strategy aiming to build customer trust and credibility and one of the best strategies to incorporate to help with your SEO and organic efforts. 

Content marketing can take many forms, including blog posts, articles, videos, infographics, and podcasts. 

The key to successful content marketing is understanding your target audience and creating content that addresses their pain points and interests. 

By consistently delivering valuable content, you can position your brand as an industry authority and drive organic traffic to your website. 

An easy way to get more eyes on your content is to promote it through social media, email marketing, and other channels to maximize its reach and impact.

Leveraging SEO Marketing for Increased Visibility

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website to rank higher in search engine results pages. 

When done correctly, SEO can significantly increase your website’s visibility and drive organic traffic. 

We have witnessed the power of SEO for our agency, AVINTIV, and all the SEO clients we’ve worked with.

We helped a plastics manufacturing company triple its business in under 24 months and generated a 4,000% ROI.

We also helped a cannabis brand grow to 9 figures through SEO and content marketing, which resulted in 5,400% growth over five years.

Now, these are not typical returns, but we wanted to share the importance of SEO and how impactful it can be to add it to your marketing strategy.

Once you know who your target audience and customers are, you’re able to dive into what their needs, pain points, and goals are.

Once you have your target audience data, you can leverage the power of SEO by conducting keyword research to identify the terms and phrases your audience is searching for.

Then, you can start incorporating these keywords into your website’s content, meta tags, and URLs. On-page SEO is one of the most crucial components of SEO, simply because it’s easy enough for anyone to be dangerous with it. But, just like anything, there is a specific science on performing proper on-page SEO, and each industry is different.

Another critical component of SEO is technical SEO and ensuring that your website’s loading speed is as quick as can be while also giving a great UI/UX experience to the website visitor.

Once the above has been completed, your off-page SEO is the next big item to tackle. Building high-quality backlinks from reputable websites can also boost your SEO efforts and domain authority score. 

Regularly monitor your website’s performance using analytics tools and make necessary adjustments to improve your SEO strategy.

Leveraging Social Media Marketing for Brand Awareness

Social media marketing is a powerful tool for building brand awareness and engaging with your target audience. 

With billions of active users on various social media platforms, businesses have the opportunity to reach a large audience and build meaningful connections. 

To leverage social media marketing effectively, start by identifying the most relevant platforms for your target audience. 

Create a compelling social media profile and consistently share valuable content that resonates with your audience. 

Engaging with your followers and promptly responding to comments and messages will give you an edge over your competition. 

Social media advertising is a great way to reach your target audience and drive traffic to your website. Facebook and Instagram ads are one of the quickest ways to increase your revenue drastically.

Regularly analyze your social media performance and adjust your strategy to optimize your results.

How to Choose the Right Digital Marketing Agency

Choosing the right digital marketing agency can make a significant difference in the success of your marketing efforts. 

When selecting an agency, consider their expertise and experience in providing the services you’re looking to invest in. 

You want to work with a digital marketing agency that has been in the trenches with its clients and has years of experience not only providing agency services but also building and growing brands in a variety of industries. 

Working with a marketing agency whose leadership team understands business exceptionally well is a much-added bonus that we recommend looking for.

Look for portfolios, case studies, and client testimonials to gauge their track record.

We wouldn’t recommend working with a niche marketing agency, as we have seen countless niche agencies using the same cookie-cutter templates for every client. Be very cautious of this.

Also, consider their communication style and responsiveness, as effective communication is crucial in any agency-client relationship. 

Finally, discuss pricing and contracts to ensure they align with your budget and objectives. Working with an agency that shows value versus just providing a product or service is an agency that can become a great partner.

By choosing the right digital marketing agency, you can access specialized skills, resources, and industry insights to help you achieve your marketing goals.

Tracking and Analyzing Your Marketing Efforts

Tracking and analyzing your marketing efforts is essential to measure the success of your campaigns and make data-driven decisions by utilizing web analytics tools to monitor key metrics such as website traffic, conversion rates, and engagement. 

Make sure to set up conversion tracking to understand which channels are driving the most conversions. 

Regularly review your marketing analytics to identify trends, strengths, and areas for improvement. 

A/B testing can help you optimize your campaigns by comparing different versions of your marketing materials and measuring their performance. 

By regularly tracking and analyzing your marketing efforts, you can identify what works and what doesn’t, allowing you to refine your strategies for better results.

Conclusion

Mastering marketing is crucial for any business owner who wants to thrive in today’s competitive landscape. 

By understanding the basics of digital marketing, exploring different types of digital marketing, building an effective digital marketing strategy, and leveraging key tactics such as email marketing, content marketing, SEO marketing, and social media marketing, business owners can drive results and achieve their marketing goals. 

Choosing the right digital marketing agency and tracking and analyzing marketing efforts are also essential steps in the journey to marketing mastery. 

Following the step-by-step guide outlined in this article, business owners like you can take their marketing efforts to new heights and achieve long-term success.

With over 12+ years of experience successfully building and growing 400+ brands, we possess the expertise and know-how to unlock a flood of growth for your brand. If you’re looking to grow to all new heights and be forced to increase your goals, feel free to reach out to one of our strategists. We’d love to see how we can help you achieve more growth. 

After all, brands choose to partner with AVINTIV when they want to do one thing: GROW!

AI Google Search – Staying Ahead of the Curve

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In the digital age, staying ahead of the technology innovation curve is crucial for any business. With technology evolving rapidly, embracing innovative solutions is essential to give your business a competitive edge. One groundbreaking tool released to a small testing group in May of this year is AI Google Search. This intelligent search engine is powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and aims to transform how users find and consume information. This article will explore the features of AI Google Search, what this could mean for businesses, and how AVINTIV is prepared to meet the oncoming changes.

Features of AI Google Search

AI Google Search utilizes advanced language processing capabilities to analyze queries and provide the best answer to user questions. It goes beyond the traditional keyword-based search and compiles information from across the web to deliver more accurate and relevant results, providing a better user experience. Some of these new features are:

Search Generative Experience

With AI Google Search, users can expect more than just a list of website links. Search Generative Experience (SGE) analyzes a query and compiles information from across the web into one concise answer at the top of the screen. This feature offers users a quick summary that reduces the need to click through multiple search results. Users also have the ability to see where the information was sourced from, allowing them to learn more and corroborate the AI-compiled information.

Enhanced Shopping

If you type a question into Google, such as “What to look for in a mountain bike,” AI Search will compile a short excerpt of information about the best traits of mountain bikes. The search engine will then provide links to purchase bikes that fit the bill. You will also see up-to-date product photos, customer reviews, and pricing, saving time and allowing for a quicker and more efficient shopping experience.

What Businesses Should Consider

Because of the change in how Google approaches content and information curation for users, there are certain marketing practices that companies should consider.

Importance of Content

Valuable content has always been important for businesses to generate organic traffic and user interest for their website, but now that is more important than ever. AI Google Search prioritizes high-quality, relevant content in its search results. By creating valuable and optimized content that aligns with user intent, your brand is more likely to show up in AI-generated results and be seen as a thought leader within your industry.

Organic Traffic May Decrease

Because SGE will answer user questions within the search engine, there is a decreased incentive to click on a website unless you need to learn more. This will most likely lead to a decrease in organic search traffic for websites. However, business owners should consider that this may not be entirely bad, as it will naturally filter out low-quality traffic from your analytics, and you can still benefit from SGE shopping and brand exposure.

Advertising Changes

SGE will alter the future of advertisement. With a large portion of the page dedicated to generative search information, it leaves less high-quality real estate for paid ads. However, advertisers shouldn’t panic. With more than 80% of Alphabet’s revenues in 2021 coming from Google ads, the company has an incentive to continue to offer value to its advertisers.

How AVINTIV Can Help Clients Get Ready for AI Search

Currently, Search Engine Generation is only available in SearchLabs, Google’s proving ground for experiments relating to search, and only in English within the United States. However, once it has been tested through this small group of users and optimized, it will likely expand worldwide.

As a marketing agency with decades of combined history of search engine optimization (SEO) strategies and content creation expertise, we are well-positioned to help our clients adapt to AI Search. Our content team can deliver you a robust content schedule, and our SEO team can optimize your website for maximum exposure in AI-generated results.

Additionally, our agency operates with a client focus, working as a dedicated business partner that cares about delivering rockstar campaigns that dominate the competition. To that end, we frequently research new technologies and innovative marketing tactics. Our team at AVINTIV will continue to monitor the updates surrounding AI Google Search, including when it may launch for a wider audience and how it could affect advertisers and content creators.

To learn more about how AVINTIV can help your business with its marketing needs now and into the future of AI search, reach out to our team to set up a time when we can discuss your unique business needs.

SEMRush’s New Backlink Audit System: How Does it Affect You? 

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A high-quality backlink strategy is essential to improving your website’s search engine rankings. For years, SEMRush, the comprehensive SEO tool, has audited domains and provided them with an Authority Score (AS) to make it easier for users to benchmark a site’s reputation. SEMRush recently updated how they measure Authority Scores, and marketers and content managers should be aware of how these changes impact their use and understanding of the tool.

What is in the New Domain Authority Score?

Domain Authority Score is a proprietary metric developed by SEMRush that evaluates the quality and authority of a website by assigning it a numerical score between 1 and 100. A lower score indicates that the website has a weak profile, while a score closer to 100 indicates that the website is reputable and has a high level of authority.

According to SEMRush, the previous version of Authority Score relied on “two complex algorithms that used organic search data, traffic data, and backlink data to grade a website’s overall quality.” However, this system did not account for organic web traffic and was susceptible to influence by dubious linking strategies.

After the update on January 31, three key factors now determine a domain’s Authority Score:

  1. Link Power
  2. Organic Traffic
  3. Spam Factors

 

Link Power

Link power is the least changed of the three factors. This factor includes the number of backlinks a domain has and the quality of those backlinks, such as the number of backlinks of each referring domain.

The newest part of Link Power is the inclusion of the Network Graph. The Network Graph is a visualization of a domain’s backlinks and the links to those backlinks three tiers deep. If these linked domains are primarily related to the same niche, Semrush may include a notice in the Authority Score label.

Organic Traffic

The second factor of the Authority Score is organic traffic to the domain. This is an important addition that will add credibility to certain websites that may not receive many backlinks but still receive high organic traffic. Semrush argues that if the site generates high volumes of organic traffic, it likely has some authority.

Spam Factors

Spam factors are red flags that could indicate dubious linking strategies or strategies with the express intent of fooling search engines and tools like Semrush into thinking they are more reputable than they are. These spam factors increase the accuracy of Semrush’s calculations and reduce the likelihood that a domain can artificially inflate its Authority Score.

How is Each Factor Weighted?

After reviewing each parameter, Semrush calculates the domain’s Authority Score with each factor weighted in the following order:

  1. Link power
  2. Organic traffic
  3. No organic rankings on SERPs
  4. Unnaturally high % of dofollow domains
  5. An imbalance between links and organic traffic
  6. Too many referring domains with the same IP address
  7. Too many referring domains with the same IP network
  8. Presence of another domain with an identical backlink profile

 

Items 3-7 in this list fall under the umbrella term spam factors. You can read the full report by SEMRush on the recent update for more specificity on each factor.

Why Did it Change?

While the previous version of the Authority Score was powerful, SEMRush redesigned its system to provide a more accurate tool that adds spam to its list of considerations. In December, Google released an update to their Search Evaluator guidelines that focuses on content quality and reputability, including an increased emphasis on neutralizing the impact of spam on search results.

To be consistent with Google’s updates and follow the lead of the industry and their clients, Semrush updated how they calculate their authority score.

How Can You Use Authority Score?

Authority Score is a powerful tool for website and content management. It provides an easy and convenient way to assess the overall strength and authority of a website and is useful when conducting a competitor analysis or evaluating potential link-building opportunities.

Additionally, Authority Score can be used to identify areas where a website’s backlink profile is weak so that you can create a targeted link-building strategy to improve its authority. You can then monitor the impact of your link-building efforts over time by tracking changes to see how your link-building affects the overall reputation of your domain.

As specialists in local, national, and e-commerce SEO, the AVINTIV team can answer any questions about the new Semrush Authority Score and how this tool can elevate your domain authority. Reach out to our team of SEO experts to discuss how Semrush and a powerful backlink strategy can help you meet your goals.

The Next Step for Analytics: GA4

Posted on by avintivmstg

If you have ever worked on a marketing or web design team, you have likely heard of Google Analytics. For years, Google Analytics has been a staple for website owners and digital marketers looking to track and analyze their website traffic. 

Now, the technology giant has introduced a new version of the platform, GA4, which will replace the previous version, Universal Analytics, later this year. This new version focuses on AI and machine learning to provide more insights and recommendations for website owners and digital marketers. 

So, what sets GA4 apart from the previous version, and what does this mean for those who use Google Analytics daily? Let’s take a closer look.

What is GA4?

GA4 began development in 2017, with a beta version of the tool released in 2019 under the name “App + Web Properties.” While available for a few years now, Google provided a long transition period to allow customers to get used to the new platform while they worked out any potential bugs. That transition period will end on July 1st of this year, meaning Universal Analytics will no longer be available from that point onward. 

How does GA4 differ from Universal Analytics?

GA4 is an analytics platform designed for a more intuitive and user-friendly experience for website owners and digital marketers. It focuses on machine learning and artificial intelligence to provide insights and recommendations to help users grow their businesses. While Universal Analytics served as a powerful tool for users for years, its structure and method of analyzing traffic no longer meet current analytics needs.

The most notable difference between GA4 and Universal Analytics is the method used to collect data. GA4 uses an event-based data collection system that tracks user interactions across website and mobile, while Universal Analytics relies on a pageview-based system that tracks each website page a user visits. Under GA4, pageviews, e-commerce purchases, social visits, app usage, and more will be considered events.

Why is Google Ending Universal Analytics?

When Universal Analytics first launched, it provided new insights for marketers and the ability to track what mattered at the time, like pageviews, session duration, and bounce rate. 

Now, marketers are interested in different metrics, and UA cannot accurately track user activity across social media and mobile apps, which is where many users are now accessing content and engaging in conversation.

GA4 makes it easier for marketers to track how customers interact with their entire brand rather than just their website. This depth of information is readily available in one place, allowing marketers to make more insightful and well-informed decisions. Additionally, GA4 uses a more user-friendly interface that will allow its users to generate custom reports and track unique metrics much more easily than in the complex architecture of Universal Analytics.

Another difference between GA4 and Universal Analytics is an increased focus on privacy and data protection. GA4 is designed to provide more robust privacy controls, allowing users to control what data is collected and how it is used, which will make it slightly harder for marketers. This is particularly important given the growing concern over privacy and data protection, and the increasing number of government regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union.

One of the steps toward this goal of data privacy is the elimination of cookies. Universal Analytics relies on cookies to track activity accurately, which is also functionally problematic as more companies remove cookies from their website. The event-based tracking method in GA4 does not require cookies to track activity and does not store the IP addresses of customers who engage with the brand.

What Should Companies Do to Prepare for the Transition?

If you’re currently using Universal Analytics, it’s crucial to transition to GA4 as soon as possible. As we approach the end of Universal Analytics, companies will lose access to their historical data stored in the application.

One thing to be aware of during GA4 adoption is that event-based tracking is a different way of collecting data; you cannot directly compare numbers apples-to-apples across the two versions of Google Analytics. As a result, when your team implements GA4, you may see a noticeably different number of page views or other website metrics than you have seen in legacy systems. For this reason, the sooner you can implement the transition, the sooner you can access up-to-date information and make informed decisions on growing your online presence.

Need help analyzing your marketing data? 

AVINTIV is an award-winning digital marketing agency with a consulting background with over 12+ years of experience building 400 successful brands. As specialists in local, national, and e-commerce SEO, our skilled team is available to answer any questions about GA4 integration and how this tool provides a major step forward in generating actionable insights for your marketing and branding efforts. Contact Us today to learn more.

Steps to a Google-friendly site: Your SEO Checklist

Posted on by avintivmstg

Search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t a marketing buzzphrase anymore. It’s one of the most important pieces to ensuring that you have a Google-friendly site. 

It’s the strategy required to connect your brand’s online presence with your intended audience, and it drives your site’s design choices as well as its content development.

There is no off-the-shelf solution to SEO; your strategy must adapt to your industry, market segments, and brand. Here’s what you need to know to put search engine optimization into context. 

What is SEO?

SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization.” SEO is the action of optimizing your website and its pages to make them rank higher within search results of Google or other search engines. Optimizing your website and its pages with SEO in mind will help you get more traffic and convert more sales. SEO is a very important piece of your marketing plan.

In our other blogs, you’ll learn about on-page SEO, off-page SEO, backlinks, and how to write content that boosts SEO.

How Does SEO Work?

One thing you need to understand about Google and other search engines is that they want their users to have the best customer experience possible. This can mean many things. For one, Google wants you to have a well-built site that abides by their rules and criteria on how they crawl your site. In seeing how well your site is built and how much authority you are in your space, they want to deliver results on the search engine page that are relevant to what the searcher is looking for. Once the user clicks on your link, Google wants your website to be of the utmost quality and delivers a great experience.

Google and other search engines will scan or crawl your site to understand what your site is all about. It mainly reads lines of code, which is why it’s very important to make sure your website is up to par, and your SEO is updated to Google’s standards. Those same crawlers bring all of that data back to the search engine to build an index. The index is then put through an algorithm that data with the query.

This will help Google and other search engines deliver more relevant results when users are searching for certain topics, keywords, or phrases. Google rewards those who have a user-friendly website that is optimized for a user’s experience.

Here are Some Actionable Steps to Make Your site Google-friendly

Provide Quality Content

No matter your industry or business model, content will always be king. If you’re like us and you don’t want your revenue stream contingent on a social media platform, then we highly recommend writing quality content.

You have to understand that most people that are going online are either searching to buy something specific or wanting to learn about a topic to eventually buy something. If you’re just focused on the sale and not providing people with value, it’s going to be very hard for you to outrank your competition.

Google and other search engines want relevant pages coming in the SERPs when a user is searching for something. The more quality and niche-focused content pieces that you have on your site, the likelier your site is to rank higher on the search engine results page. This will also create a relationship of trust and relatability with the visitors engaging with your content. This could result in that visitor making a purchase down the road.

When creating content, you want to keep two things in mind. Write your content for humans reading it, but also make sure it’s optimized properly for SEO. A good way of doing this is by providing many different types of content.

  • Blog posts and articles
  • Whitepapers
  • eBooks
  • How-to-guides
  • Infographics
  • Videos or Podcasts

You want to make sure you’re constantly updating new and fresh content. Google doesn’t want to rank a site that has 10-year-old articles that don’t have any relevance to the current date. You can also go through old posts and update the content to make it current.

One of the most important things when writing content is understanding SEO keywords and phrases. Now that you have quality content that you know someone will want to read, you must make sure that the content has relevant words and phrases so that a search engine will pick it up. You should start the article with your keywords and phrases in mind, so you can write the content around them. This will result in a higher chance of ranking higher in the SERPs.

Site Easily Accessible

Google recently stated, “build your site with logical link structure.” Every page on your website should be reachable from at least one other link.

Google also wants your site to be built for everyone. Your website should be able to be accessed and learned by literally anyone. It’s important that users who may experience some type of impairment or disability can still access your site.

Quality On-page SEO

Title Tags

Title tags are extremely important for your on-page SEO. These tags have a drastic impact on your search rankings and are visible to the average user searching Google and other search engines. The words will appear at the top of each tab in your browser for both organic results and paid ads.

Title tags explain what the page is about. Google and other search engines look at the title tag and compare that to the rest of the content on the page.

On-page SEO, Meta Title, Google

If you’re working inside WordPress, we highly recommend the Yoast SEO plugin. The SEO plugin allows you to create a custom title tag within each page very easily. Make sure to keep your title tags descriptive and short.

Think of this as you standing outside next to your competitors with billboards in your hands. What would you say about your webpage versus your competition? Make sure to add in your relevant keywords and location if you’re a local business.

Meta Descriptions

Google and other search engines determine the page’s topic and the audience that will find value through your meta description. The meta descriptions also explain what users will find on the page, which is very important when you only have a split second of their time.

When writing meta descriptions, keep in mind quality is still king (or queen). A very well-written meta description can generate higher rankings in the search results, which will create a higher click-through rate for the user.

We recommend keeping your description between 165 and 175 characters long.

On-page SEO, Meta Description, Google

Add in your brand’s name, a keyword or two, and what users will find on the page. This could be the first interaction visitors will have with your brand. Make it a great experience.

Heading Tags

Heading tags are important for on-page SEO success. Your landing pages and blog pages should include multiple heading tags, ranging from H1 to H6. The most important heading tag is the H1.

The H1 heading is usually the page title or name of the page or post, which should be used only once per page. On a category page, your H1 would be the name of that category. On a product page, your H1 would be the name of that product.

SEO, On-page SEO, Google

As you write your content, you can also use the H2 and H3 headings to introduce different sections of your page or content. An H2 heading is like a chapter in a book. The section you’re reading now is an H3 heading since it’s a sub-section of a chapter (H2).

It’s rare for typical content to get ‘deep’ enough to need the use of H4 tags and beyond unless you’re writing extremely long or really technical content.

Internal Links & External Links

Links are extremely important to the success of your overall SEO. Earning high-quality links from authoritative domains will strengthen your SEO greatly. We’ll go into more detail when we talk about off-page SEO.

Internal links throughout your site and blogs will deliver a better user experience for your visitors and will also enhance your SEO.

Internal linking to other pages of your site will strengthen the keywords and have Google and other search engines determine where to rank a particular keyword. The crawlability of your site will improve drastically when you internally link your pages, products, categories, and blogs. This will result in Google and other search engines showing the site’s most important pages.

When you add a new link to your homepage, it becomes easier for Google to see that you’ve updated your site with new content instead of crawling the entire site again. The more you do this, the more Google realizes that you care about the user’s experience.

Internal links also provide a higher chance of your visitors staying on your website longer. Google takes notice when there is more engagement across your site and relevant pages.

When doing internal links to other pages on your website, we recommend staying between 4-6 links. You want to make sure that these links open in the same tab so the user can see the flow.

While doing internal links to external websites, we recommend staying between 2-5 links depending on the size of your content. When these links go to external websites, you want to make sure they open up in a new tab, so the user doesn’t leave your site.

Make sure you’re using anchor text that relates to the URL that it’s pointing to so you don’t get penalized by Google.

Optimize Images (Alt Tags)

Make sure you don’t spend all of your juice on writing the content and then slack on providing high-quality images. When choosing what images to use with your website or post, make sure they are unique and page relevant. Users are much more likely to engage with an image before they begin reading a post.

With how popular Instagram is, our society is trained to look at images first and content second.

Same as social media, when using images on your site, make sure you’re using the highest quality images possible. Google and other search engines prefer higher-resolution images.

You always want to keep page speed in the back of your mind when adding images. Scale down your images below a 150KB file size to ensure that it doesn’t affect your website speed in a negative way.

When adding an image, you want to make sure that you always add in the image alt-text. An optimized alt-text gives Google another clue about what your page is about. The alt tag should be used to describe what the image is about so it’s visible to Google’s crawlers.

Page Speed

Google now expects every website that wants to rank higher to have its website built properly with an amazing customer experience with quicker page speed.

Over 47% of users expect a website page to load in two seconds or less. Even worse, over 40% of users won’t wait more than three seconds before leaving the site. Everything is customer-centric, and to win in a competitive market, you must focus on the customer and not the competition.

You can always get a FREE SEO Audit from our team to see what needs to be done to speed up your site.

Quality off-page SEO

Links and Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO is extremely important for any brand that wants to dominate its industry.

One of the most important aspects of off-page SEO is building backlinks. Google and other search engines use backlinks to indicate the quality of the content that’s linked. A site with many high-quality backlinks will usually rank higher than the same site with fewer high-quality backlinks. 

There are three main types of links for off-page SEO:

  • Natural links are given from no action being done on your part. Once a brand or site has authority, other sites will want to link their content and pages to the brand or site. Example: Entrepreneur.com is writing an article about an entrepreneur, and they reference your company in their article, backlinking it to your site.
  • Self-created links are created by the business owner or marketing team when adding backlinks from sites like online directories,  forums, blog comments, press releases, etc. Just make sure you stay away from black hat SEO techniques.
  • Manual links are acquired through planned link-building initiatives. This can be done through a variety of third-party outlets. One major one is content syndication.

Links that have the most value are the ones that Google and other search engines will be ranking the highest in the SERPs. There are quite a few variables that define “value” to Google and other search engines. Some of those variables are:

  • The authority of the linking site
  • The relevance of the linking site’s topic to the topic of the site that created the link
  • The “freshness” of the link
  • The number of other links on the linking page
  • The trustworthiness of the linking site

In Conclusion

There is a lot of information to go over when thinking about the perfect SEO strategy or campaign to launch. Don’t get overwhelmed, as there are a lot of great SEO agencies that can help you accomplish everything that we’ve gone over in this article. If you have any questions or would like to schedule an SEO audit, feel free to contact us.

Why Local SEO Is Important for Your Marketing Strategy

Posted on by avintivmstg

March and April 2020 have been a whirlwind of uncertainty, confusion, fear, confidence, and a mixture of everything in-between. Every person and business in the world has been affected by COVID-19. It’s how we allow COVID-19 to affect our business that dictates our future journey. We’re writing an article on why local SEO is important for your 2020 marketing strategy because we chose to be the positive light helping businesses get through this difficult time.

You have a choice as a business owner. You can fold your arms, play the victim, and wonder why this has happened to your business and you. Or, you can take a step back, breathe, and plan how you’re not just going to survive, but figure out how your business can thrive. What can you do right now to bounce back 10x stronger than before?

We work with a variety of different industries, both online and local businesses, and thankfully they’re all doing well. We’ve helped every one of our clients pivot their business during these uncertain times, and it’s paying off for them. We’ve also had an influx of companies reach out to us to rebuild their branding, websites, and SEO as before COVID-19, they didn’t have the time to start these types of projects.

We have great sympathy for the entire world right now, especially business owners as this is not an easy time. If you haven’t already optimized your business for COVID-19, start with this article on What Your Business Should be Doing to Fight the Impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19).

Businesses Affected by COVID-19

Businesses all over have been drastically affected by COVID-19. Right now is the time for smaller companies to go head to head against their much larger competitor. If you own a local medspa with 3-4 employees and a 3,000sq ft office space, you have an amazing chance of surviving COVID-19 as you may not have the same challenges as the medspa with 20 employees, 10,000 sq ft office space and a $30,000 per month marketing expense.

We can speak on this topic as we have medical clients in that space right now who are planning on even financially helping or buying the other medspas that can’t weather the storm as it’s a smart play right now.

Now, before we go too far off track, we wanted to give you an example of businesses that are getting hurt from being closed, yet still keeping a positive outlook on life and doing whatever they can to grow their business during COVID-19.

Local SEO and Why It’s Important During and After COVID-19

We are going to go over why local SEO is so important now more than ever for businesses in the following industries: salons, spas, health and wellness, plastic surgery, medical, restaurants, massage, and cleaning services. It’s April 14th, 2020, as we write this article, and the State of Arizona, along with the rest of the country, is in complete lockdown.

Right now, most cities and shopping centers look like ghost towns, and that’s okay. Do you know how busy it’s going to be when everyone can leave the house and resume their normal lifestyle? We’re afraid most businesses won’t even know how to deal with the increase in demand for their restaurant, salon, spa, or shopping center.

Think about it. Everyone has been cooped up at home for two to three months with their spouse, pets, kids, etc. They want out, and they want to get back to their normal life of eating out, going to the gym, watching a movie, etc.

This exact reason is why local SEO is so essential for your business. You should want your business popping up on the first page of Google and #1 in the local 3-pack Google map when searching for your type of business. We are going to go over what local SEO is and five reasons why local SEO is important for your business right now.

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO (search engine optimization) is a way to optimize your business and its website to be visible and populate for location-based searches on Google. Local SEO is a strategy that can be incorporated into your marketing campaign to drive more organic traffic to your website, to give the user directions, and for the ability to call your phone number to visit you or set an appointment.

When a user is searching for specific keywords with the city, state, zip code, or near me searches added, your business should populate. Local search optimization is one of the best marketing tactics and strategies to grow your local business.

Below is an example of searches 

  • Restaurants near me
  • Bars near me
  • Scottsdale Medspas
  • Medical clinics in Phoenix

Avintiv Media has our proprietary process on how we get our local clients ranking on the first page of Google and in the 3-pack map. Some standard strategies can include content creation, on-page optimization, and off-page optimization with an emphasis on local directory listings.

5 Reasons Why Local SEO Is Important and Should be Your Main Marketing Focus for 2020

 

1. When COVID-19 is over, traveling, eating out, and shopping will be busier than ever.

One of the biggest misconceptions when wanting to grow your business is building your marketing around current events. That is slightly true but mostly false. True SEO campaigns and strategies take 60-90 days before Google fully processes all of the changes and starts sending you more organic traffic. If you started local SEO today, you would start to see results around June 14th, 2020. June 14th, 2020, which would be weeks after the U.S. has lifted its lockdown policies, and people would slowly going back out and looking at places to eat and shop.

Not only that, I can attest to this, but most of us do not look like our best selves right now, whether it’s from nails or hair not being done or gyms being closed down. Gyms, medspas, hair salons, and any type of medical or health enhancement company are going to be booming with customers wanting to enhance their look. Is your medspa going to pop up #1 on Google when a user searches, or will your competitor take that spot?

A lot of your competitors are probably doing worse than you due to their company being larger with much more expenses. They are more than likely taking their foot off the gas, which is the perfect time to catch up to them before they even notice. We love working with the Davids of the world as we take down the Goliaths of the world. We genuinely want everyone to win, so we say that half kidding, but the other half being dead serious.

2. Local SEO stats you should know.

We can sit here and tell you why local SEO is so important for your business right now and in the near future, but we’d much rather you see real research and data. 

These stats can be found on our recent blog 5 Need to Know SEO Tips for Dentists and Periodontists for 2020.

3. Getting Your Business Listed on the Google 3-Pack Map

You, along with everyone else, have searched for something on Google and have clicked a business listed in Google’s 3-pack map. Most people never even go past the 3-pack map since Google launched it. 

Ironically, Moz completed a study where over 44% of the people who performed a local search, then clicked on the 3-pack listing. Only 8% of those people chose to press “load more” to see the rest of the results. Do you want to be a part of the 8% group of businesses?

The Google 3-pack map has made it extremely easy for people to find a business’s website, address, or phone number with just a few clicks. If you’re using a new smartphone, which is highly likely, your phone will give you turn-by-turn directions to that business within seconds.

Below is an example of one of our clients, who is a local dentist and periodontist. We’ve been grateful to have been working with them for almost two years now. We rebuilt their brand, website, and completed local SEO with ongoing SEO support. Within just a few short months, her business was on page one of Google and the Google 3-pack map for competitive keywords within her industry.

Local SEO, SEO, Dental SEO, Search results

4. Tourists and people that are traveling are going to use Google to find businesses near them.

Although it’s hard to imagine people traveling right now with everything going on with COVID-19, there will be a time in the near future when the world resumes back to how it was. When tourists travel to different places, they search Google for what’s around them. Odds are if you haven’t invested in optimizing your business for local SEO, they will not be finding your business.

As you can see in the image below, search engines (SEO) is the number one online used source for travel planning by leisure travelers and the second source for business travelers.

Make sure that you have a nicely designed website that will give your visitors a phenomenal experience; otherwise, Google won’t want to rank you towards the top.

 

Local SEO, SEO, Travel and vacation search results

5. Local SEO has the highest conversion rates out of all local advertising channels.

This reason is probably one of the most important because as a fellow business owner, we all understand ROI and revenue is much more important than analytics in a monthly report. There are many parts of SEO, but the two most significant elements are: getting your website more organic traffic and then having that organic traffic convert into paying customers.

There was a recent study done that showed an astounding 78% conversion of offline sales through local SEO, with almost 90% of those purchases being a physical store or location. Out of those local searches, 76% of the offline sales happened the same day, and 63% within just a few hours. I don’t know about you, but those are some pretty fantastic conversion rates.

When people are searching on Google through their mobile devices, chances are they are ready to buy something or come to your business within the next 24 hours. 

In Conclusion

With the addition of Local SEO, you’ll also be one of those businesses that can proudly say we not only survived COVID-19, but we also set our business up for future success and it’s now doing better than ever. Are you going to be that person? If so, schedule a FREE SEO audit with us today to see how well your local SEO is performing.

What Your Business Should be Doing to Fight the Impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Posted on by avintivmstg

 

With everything that’s going on in the world, having to think about you and your family’s safety is terrible enough, but to then have to worry about how your business will survive COVID-19 adds to the stress. Just know, I am writing to you as a fellow entrepreneur and business owner that has clients, team members, and a future to protect as well.

During times of crisis or significant change, no matter what happens, it changes things. Change is out of your hands. It’s how you react to the change that matters. Do you want your business to just “survive” COVID-19, or do you want your business to “thrive?”

Now is the best chance you’ll have to take a step back, take a full deep dive into your business, and audit everything. Audits are usually scary, but look at the world we live in today, everything is a bit scary right now.

Today, we’re going to go over advice on how to manage the impact that Coronavirus, COVID-19, has on your business and how to come out ahead.

Top 10 Tips For Your Business to Survive Coronavirus (COVID-19)

 

Keep Your Team and Your Clients Safe

No matter what, your priority should be keeping your team and clients safe. I understand that most businesses need to stay open to keep food on the table for their families. Your team and clients are what has gotten you to this point and trust you to do the right thing. Here is a full list from the CDC for Interim Guidance for Businesses and Employers to Plan and Respond to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19).

 

 

Cut Your Costs

Before you go slashing every cost in your business, take a deep breath, and read this through before making any type of action. I’ll be the first one to admit that when business is going well, we tend to let costs slide or continue to spend money that we wouldn’t have spent the first week we launched our business. Now is the time to make your business as lean as can be.

Below is a list of items that we recommend cutting or working with:

  • Software that you don’t need at the moment
  • Programs that your company sometimes use and sometimes don’t
  • Advertising costs (Unless you have a business that is still positive ROI on your ad spend during this time, I would shift your marketing strategy and build your organic channels up, like SEO and content creation)
  • Rent – Contact your landlord and let them know what type of position you’re experiencing. Ask for an extension or some kind of help to get you past this difficult time. Do you have an online business? Is it time to go remote for 60-90 days and skip the office space?
  • Office expenses – You can momentarily pause or cancel phone, internet, wifi, water, food delivery, etc.
  • Accounting – Are you able to contact your bookkeeper and have them pause services for 60-90 days?
  • Hired contractors that are on retainer (not in-house team) – Are you able to lower your monthly retainer or renegotiate during this time?

These are just some of the examples that you can do to eliminate costs to your business immediately. I wouldn’t recommend cutting costs so low that it changes your flow of current business, though, as we don’t know how long COVID-19 will last. If it only lasts 30 days, you’re going to wish you didn’t cut certain costs. If it lasts longer than 90 days, then you might want to pivot your company a bit more.

A great way to track your company costs for FREE is by using MINT.

 

Go 100% Remote For The Time Being

Allowing employees to work from home is the best possible way to keep your business, your clients, and the entire community safe. We’re all in this together, and it’s our job to stay home to get in front of COVID-19. Avintiv went 100% remote starting March 13th, 2020. Here are the results:

  • Our team has daily standup meetings in Slack and we’ve been even closer to each other during this time.
  • Our team can be comfortable at home while working even more hours due to boredom or not being able to go outside (If you have a great culture, you won’t have to worry about your team being lazy at home and not working).
  • We have daily Zoom meetings, which has been a total lifesaver. Our team and clients are enjoying how much facetime they get with us now since it’s not back to back meetings.
  • Our team has become more healthy from eating at home, drinking more water, and taking care of their bodies more.
  • Grateful – our entire team has become super grateful during this whole COVID-19 experience as you never know how truly good you have something until it’s gone.
  • Work productivity has increased due to our team, not leaving for appointments, the gym, traveling, etc. – Everything they need is in their home, so they are much more focused.
  • We were able to cut office expenses that we paid monthly for since we won’t be using them for another 30 to 60 days.

 

Buy Your Raw Materials or Goods in the United States

I know this won’t apply to everyone. Still, if you’re a company that gets its manufacturing or white-label products or goods in China or outside of the United States, we recommend searching for local manufacturers that will be able to work with you. Costs are usually much higher in the United States than in China but do you should be able to negotiate with them now in this time of need. You might find a wholesaler in the United States that has a lot of inventory of that same item you were getting overseas.

If you’re in manufacturing, clothing, eCommerce, skincare, or anything in-between, look for a company that can supply you locally for the time being.

 

Read These Books ASAP

Some of you have already read these books, but they are incredibly vital for the future success of your company. Since you have extra time on your hands, it’s best to strategize for the future of your company versus just worrying in the present. I would read these in order from top to bottom.

 

Make Sure Your Business Can Be Found Online

Right now, online website traffic moves up and down from week to week. We’ve heard of record-high numbers and then record low numbers. Just think, the majority of the world is at home for the next 30 to 60 days. What are they going to be doing? They’re going to be searching online for things. The majority of the population is already going crazy stuck at home. That means that once the world can go back outside and resume life, they are going to be shopping, eating at restaurants, drinking at bars, traveling, and going about life as it did before COVID-19.

If your business isn’t ranking in the 3-Pack Google Map or on the first page of Google, you’re losing TONS of business to your competitors that are. If you’re a business owner who has faith in their business and wants to double down while others pause, you should be using search engine optimization (SEO) strategies. These SEO strategies will allow you to pop up first on Google when consumers are out and about again. Correct white-hat SEO strategies take 30-90 days to implement anyway, so you have nothing but time right now. Below are some examples of how well just a few of our SEO clients are doing against their competition in competitive industries.

 

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Although times are scary for everyone right now, especially entrepreneurs, there is still a way to capitalize on this instead of just taking a huge loss. By getting your business to rank first on Google and in search results, you are providing value to customers who have just gone through what you went through. Then it’s up to you to give that customer a phenomenal experience when they find your business through Google.

Contact us if you’d like a FREE SEO audit or consultation on how to get your business to rank on Google.

 

Customer Experience

Just remember, with the whole world at home, and much more time on their hands, they are paying very close attention to everything right now. How you handle your business in times of crisis says a lot about your business and you as an owner. With that said, make sure you have a calm manner if you are posting on social media or in person. Don’t freak out. I repeat, don’t freak out. Right now, people want to find motivation, comfort and know that everything is going to be okay. Be the light that shines through this dark time.

When it comes to politics and emergencies like this, it is best not to take sides or post any type of fearful content on social media either. It’s best to create content that is positive, funny, and caring. Even if your business has lost customers or can’t be open right now, be the light on social media for your customers and your followers.

Now is not the time to show everyone your political beliefs or how you could run the country so much better. BE POSITIVE ON SOCIAL MEDIA!

Once COVID-19 is behind us, you must remain calm. If customers shop at your business and you’re running around like crazy to make up for lost revenue, then they won’t be coming back anytime soon. Just remember, customers want to support businesses during tough times, and if you give them a phenomenal experience, they will tell so many friends about it.

 

Pivot Your Business to Online Sales

We have been coaching business owners for the last three years to take their business online due to how much quicker an online business can scale. Do you have a business that can be transitioned online?

If you’re a personal trainer or gym, you should be developing at-home workouts and getting them to your customer base as quickly as possible. Utilize technology like Trainerize.

If you’re a local restaurant/bar, take your ordering online immediately by adding functionality on your website for both takeout and ordering online. I would also recommend adding free delivery with no personal interaction with someone.

If you don’t have a website, now is the time to invest in one and get your customers shopping online.

Now is the time to totally think outside the box and ask yourself how you can provide tons of value to people that are stuck at home right now. Maybe you’re a local restaurant and bar, and you want to start a private Facebook Group where the community can still engage with each other.

No matter your type of business model, most of you will be able to pivot and do something online to keep your current customer base.


If you need help with this, contact us and we can assist you in pivoting.

 

Hire a Business Coach or Consultant

If you’ve done everything in your power to get to where you currently are and you’ve tried everything, then reach out to a business coach or consultant. Hiring a business coach or consultant can help you take your business to the next level by paying to save the time of trial and error. Make sure when you hire someone, that they have experience building companies and that they have strategies on how to get you through a crisis such as COVID -19. I’ve personally been a consultant to over 250 businesses over the last ten years, and I can assure you that most of you are not at your full breaking point, you just need help getting over this little hump.

If you’d like a free consultation call, feel free to contact us. Right now, our goal at Avintiv is to help as many businesses get through this troubling time as possible because it’s scary and not comfortable. We’ve been in situations of fear for over a decade and are used to fighting for our client’s lives (clients with competitive industries).

 

If Worst Come to Worsts, Take Out an SBA Loan

SBA Loan, Small business loan, COVID-19 loan

I would usually never recommend a business going into debt unless it was a strategy to leverage debt to grow quicker. In this case, some companies will most definitely need to take out some form of a small business loan to get through these troubling times. Lower your ego and know that it’s okay if you need to take out a loan. There is no time for you to feel sorry for yourself because you have a business to run and grow.

Below are some options for the best options for small business loans during Coronavirus (COVID-19).

 

Conclusion

What we’re going through right now with COVID-19 is scary. There’s no lie in saying that. When you created your LLC or corporation, you made a silent promise to yourself that you would do everything in your power to protect your business at all costs. Nothing has changed. Maybe COVID-19 is a huge wake-up call to a lot of companies out there that haven’t changed much up over the years. All I know is that everything in life happens for a reason and it’s not about what happens to us, it’s about we reacted to the situation and handled it. I don’t know about you, but I took a much deeper dive into my business and noticed there is still much work to be done to hit my full vision. If you need any help or even a little advice, feel free to contact us, and we’ll set up a time to chat with you. Keep your head up and stay positive!

5 Need to Know SEO Tips for Dentists and Periodontists for 2020

Posted on by avintivmstg

If you’re a dentist or periodontist, it’s no secret that there seems to be a new dental office that opens up on every street corner now. Do you know the actual numbers, though?

In 2012, an article by Dental Economics stated, “In the last five years, competition has increased in dentistry. Seventy-five percent of dental practices have experienced production declines since the Great Recession. Many offices are in danger of continuing this trend if they do not come to terms with what it takes to grow a practice in the new dental economy.

In 2015, the United States had 195,722 practicing dentists. That’s the equivalent of having 60.9 dentists per 100,000 population.

Now that you understand the dentistry industry across the board is becoming extremely competitive let’s switch over and go over statistics from the lovely customers in the United States that use local dental services.

Marketing Stats for Dental Practices

Spectrio has provided the below stats.

“77% of patients use online reviews when finding a new healthcare provider.”

It doesn’t matter what type of business you’re in; customers are looking to see reviews from other real customers. It shows social proof on the level of care and quality that your business has to offer. With something as important as finding a new local dentist, you better believe that the potential customer is researching your business and your reviews before making a call.

“75% of customers expect companies to provide a consistent experience across multiple touchpoints.”

In 2020, the majority of the potential customers that are looking to bring their business to you are researching you on multiple platforms. They’re looking at your Google reviews, Yelp reviews, website, and social media handles. They want to make sure that you’re the real deal before they bring you their business. Switching dentists or periodontists isn’t as easy as changing which restaurant you want to eat tonight.

Your online experience has to match across the board. Now is the time to tighten up all aspects of your brand, or your competition who do that well will continue to grow.

“70% of customers say technology makes it easier for them to take their business elsewhere.”

As we’ve mentioned above, with the amount of competition and level of technology we all have at our fingertips, finding a new dentist has never been easier for a potential customer. They aren’t just looking at your business; they’re researching 2-3 dentists and periodontists at the same time to find the right fit for what they’re looking for.

 

What is SEO?

For those of you who are reading this blog and don’t know or understand what SEO is, fear not, we’ll explain it.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is the process of increasing the quality and quantity of website traffic by increasing the visibility of your website through organic search engine results.

For instance, anytime you type something into Google, the SERPs (search engine results pages) are showing you the closest information that you were looking for. Although there are a lot of variables on how Google shows its results, the majority of the search results on page one or two of Google have heavily optimized their SEO to be seen over their competition.

Example: You’re a Scottsdale, AZ, dentist, and your website pops up on page 40 when someone types in “Scottsdale Dentist” into Google. You decided to hire an agency to improve your SEO, and after a few months, your business now pops up on the first page of Google for “Scottsdale Dentist.” You can see how much value that would be for you. Thousands of people in Scottsdale will now know what your business is and where you’re located, which will increase website traffic and grow your top-line revenue.

 

Why is SEO important for dentists and periodontists in 2020?

Back in the day, customers would look in the yellow pages to look up local dentists. I’m sure you remember those days. Now, Google and SEO are the new yellow pages. If your business isn’t adequately listed or you haven’t optimized your SEO for dentists, it’s highly likely that not many new customers are finding your business online.

Referral businesses are not scalable. There will be a time when the referrals stop coming in.

When you optimize your website with SEO for dentists, and your website is popping up on the first page of Google, you’re essentially getting free traffic. If your site is optimized correctly, then a percentage of that traffic will convert into paying customers.

Local SEO Stats, you should know: 

Over the last 20 years, our SEO team has been accumulating the knowledge and knowhow to develop SEO campaigns that have disrupted entire industries and grown clients over 2000%.

In this article, we’ll be going over five need to know tips on SEO for dentists and periodontists for 2020. 

 

1. Determining the right keywords

Before beginning SEO, you want to research and learn the right keywords for your business to rank for. We would start by listing the services that you offer and follow that by the general location (city, state, local) search terms. A couple of examples would look like: Teeth Whitening, Crowns, Braces, fillings, local Scottsdale dentist, etc.

You want to make sure that you’re focusing on keywords that have the intention of working with a dentist. For instance, “at-home teeth whitening” is still teeth whitening, but that person doesn’t plan on going to a dentist. You would want to use the phrase “dentist teeth whitening near me.” You have to remember that Google’s primary goal is to provide solutions that match what the user is searching for; otherwise, it doesn’t give the user the best experience. Picking the right keywords is extremely important.

Ideally, you’ll want to have a mixture of keywords that have high search volume but also long-tail keywords that will be easier to rank for. If you try to search for “dentist” when there are 823,000 search volume, that will be much more difficult.

 

Dentist SEO, SEO for dentists, Local SEO agency, Avintiv Media, keywords, Google Search Marketing

 

If you don’t know how to do proper keyword research, you can always contact us for assistance. Every successful SEO campaign should have very in-depth keyword research and planning done behind the scenes. The research dives into your brand, your competition, your customers, and carefully decide keywords and key phrases that people are searching for based on the research. The research will be able to tell what your competitors are ranking for and how much traffic is going to their sites based on each keyword. Successful campaigns will ensure that the research is utilized in both the on-page and off-page campaigns to ensure that your website will be on page one of Google for many of your selected keywords.

2. Having a well-built website with user experience in mind

One of the most important aspects of running a successful company in 2020 is having an up-to-date website with the basics that every consumer expects you to have. If you’re a dentist or periodontist with a 5+-year-old website that hasn’t been updated, you are losing thousands of dollars every single week.

Unique Website Design

In 2020, you need to stand out from all of the other dentist or periodontist websites that are out there. You have a one in one hundred chance of having each new potential customer choosing you. If your website doesn’t have a unique design or stand out, you won’t be among their top three choices.

With how many choices are out there right now, your website design, structure, colors, and layout need to match the flow and experience that your potential customers are looking for. If it doesn’t meet their needs, they’re right onto the next competitor of yours.

 

Dentist SEO, SEO for dentists, Local SEO agency, Avintiv Media, Web Design Agency, responsive website, Scottsdale web design agency, Phoenix Web Design Agency

 

Avintiv Media has been named top Web Design Agency in the United States for the past two years in a row, and that comes from us understanding what customers are looking for on a website.

 

Responsive Design & Development

In 2018, over 58% of site visits were from mobile phones. If that alone doesn’t show you the need to have a mobile-friendly (responsive design), we go into more detail why its a necessity for 2020.

Google stated that 61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site they had trouble accessing, and 40% visit a competitor’s site instead. That’s a pretty significant number.

Back in July 2019, Google switched its search engine to mobile-first indexing. Mobile-first indexing means Google predominantly uses the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking. If your website isn’t developed for mobile, then you can expect to take a hit with your rankings while your mobile-friendly competitors start moving up the rankings.

Dentist SEO, SEO for dentists, Local SEO agency, Avintiv Media, Web Design Agency, responsive website, Scottsdale web design agency, Phoenix Web Design Agency

If you’d like to find out how mobile-friendly your website is or isn’t, contact us today.

 

Website Speed, Performance, and Usability

The world we live in has become more and more impatient. We are all used to being able to access everything with a button press of a phone now. You can order a car, food, and anything else you’d like from your mobile phone.

If your website speed doesn’t meet the standards of what a potential customer is looking for, then they will leave your site and go to your competitor.

Google started using site speed and performance as a search ranking factor for their algorithm starting back in 2010. That means, if your website is slower than Google would like, they are going to move you lower in the rankings as they feel it will give the person searching a lousy experience. Google is a business, and they aren’t going to show off websites on page one that aren’t optimized properly as it shows the business owner doesn’t care that much.

One of our client’s Google rankings started to drastically climb up towards page one after we made significant updates to the speed of their website. The example below is after just one round of updates.

Dentist SEO, SEO for dentists, Local SEO agency, Avintiv Media, Glendale Dentist, Scottsdale SEO Agency, Phoenix SEO Agency, Speed Report

Dentist SEO, SEO for dentists, Local SEO agency, Avintiv Media, Glendale Dentist, Scottsdale SEO Agency, Phoenix SEO Agency, Speed Report

Content, Content, Content – Content is still king

Content on your website is one of the most critical aspects of your website and SEO campaign that you can do. Having the right type of content on your dentist website or periodontist website is crucial. Your website visitors want to learn more about the services that you offer and also know that you’re legit and an authority figure in your industry.

The more optimized pages of content on your website allow you to rank for even more keywords on Google. You can’t rank on page one for “Dentist in Scottsdale” unless you have content on your website or SEO campaigns that matches that description.

The majority of the dentists that we’ve been able to get on page one of Google for over 30+ keywords have over 30 pages on their website.

Each one of your services needs to have its page and go into detail explaining what you offer with that service.

For a great example of one of the service pages, we’ve built for our client, check out Malek Periodontics.

 

3. Enhancing On-Page SEO for Dentist Website

Before today you have probably heard the term SEO before, but a lot of you want to know, “What is on-page SEO?”

On-page SEO is the SEO work that’s done on your website and individual pages to rank higher in search engines, earning more traffic and an increase in revenue.

One of the most significant factors that Google makes as it becomes more sophisticated is relevance. How relevant is your page or content to the search query? Google doesn’t want to give its users a bad experience by showing a page that has nothing to do with what they were wanting.

Think of it like you’re at a restaurant (Google), you order a hamburger (search for local hamburger restaurant), and the server (search engine) delivers a taco (local taco restaurant). Tacos are still delicious, but it’s not what you ordered. Get the point.

Below are the areas that we would focus on for any beginners with on-page SEO.

Meta Tags

One of the most important things to consider for on-page SEO is your meta tags. Meta tags are snippets of text that describe a page’s content to Google search engines and crawlers. 

Meta tags provide more relevance syncing between your content and a search query searching for similar content. You will get higher rankings if the relevance of your meta tag matches what the user is searching for, along with their satisfaction.

Meta Titles

One of the most critical meta tags we’ll be discussing is your title tags. Meta Titles have a drastic impact on your search rankings and are visible to the regular user who’s searching Google. The words will appear at the top of each tab in their browser for both organic results and paid ads.

The title tag explains to the user what the page is about before they click on it. Google and other search engines look at the title tag and compare that to the rest of the content on the page.

Dentist SEO, SEO for dentists, Local SEO agency, Avintiv Media, Glendale Dentist, Scottsdale SEO Agency, Phoenix SEO Agency

If you’re working inside of WordPress, we highly recommend the Yoast SEO plugin. The Yoast SEO plugin allows you to create a custom title tag within each page very quickly. Make sure to keep your title tags descriptive and short. It will show “green” when it’s the correct length.

Think of this as you standing outside next to your competitors with billboards in your hands. What would you say about your webpage versus your competition? Be sure to add in your relevant keywords and location to help with rankings.

Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions help search engines determine the page’s topic and the audience that will find value. More importantly, the meta descriptions explain what users will find on the page if they click on the link.

When writing meta descriptions, keep in mind quality is still king (or queen). A very well written meta description can generate higher rankings in the search results, along with a higher click-through rate with users.

We recommend keeping your description between 165 and 175 characters long. See an example of one of our local periodontist clients below.

Dentist SEO, SEO for dentists, Local SEO agency, Avintiv Media, Glendale Dentist, Scottsdale SEO Agency, Phoenix SEO Agency

Heading Tags

If you want to have any success with on-page SEO, heading tags are a necessity. Your website and every page should include multiple heading tags, ranging from the H1 to the H6. The most important heading tag is the H1.

The H1 heading is usually the page title or name of the page or post. On a category page, your H1 would be the name of that category. On a product page, your H1 would be the name of that product. You can only use one H1 heading per page. Otherwise, you will get docked for SEO.

Dentist SEO, SEO for dentists, Local SEO agency, Avintiv Media, Glendale Dentist, Scottsdale SEO Agency, Phoenix SEO Agency, H heading

As you write your page content, you can also use the H2 and H3 headings to introduce different sections of your page or content. An H2 heading is just like a chapter in a book. The section you’re reading now is an H4 heading since a section of a subsection. This will help Google and other search engines be able to read the structure of each page and rank them accordingly.

Internal Linking

Getting your website content to rank correctly is going to need links. Google begins to rank your pages and posts better when they’re linked to somewhere else on the web.

Internal links are also important in connecting your content to give Google a better understanding of how your website is structured. This will also allow link juice to pass through your site better.

Internal linking can get broken up into two categories: internal and external.

Internal links throughout your site and blogs will deliver a better user experience for your visitors and will also enhance your SEO. An example of this can be seen below.

Dentist SEO, SEO for dentists, Local SEO agency, Avintiv Media, Glendale Dentist, Scottsdale SEO Agency, Phoenix SEO Agency

An internal link is a hyperlink that goes from a word or phrase on your website page to another website page or blog within your website. An external link is a hyperlink that goes from a word or phrase on your website page, which goes to an external website page away from your website. 

You want to make sure that the internal links open in the same web browser tab so the user can see the flow. When doing internal links to external websites, you want to make sure they open up in a new web browser tab, so the user doesn’t leave your site.

When doing internal links, make sure you’re using anchor text (the word or phrase that is being linked) that relates to the URL that it’s pointing to so you don’t get penalized by Google.

Optimize Your Images

When you’re deciding what images to use on your website, make sure they are unique and relevant to that page. Users are much more likely to react to an image before they begin reading a post.

With how popular Instagram and social media, in general, has grown to be, our society is trained to react to images first.

When using images on your site, make sure you’re using the highest quality images possible. Google and other search engines prefer higher resolution images.

You always want to keep page speed in the back of your mind when adding in images. Resize your images below a 150KB file size to ensure that it doesn’t negatively affect your website speed.

When adding in an image, make sure that you always add in the image alt-text. An optimized alt-text gives Google another clue on what your page is about. The alt tag should be used to describe what the image is about, so it’s visible by Google’s crawlers.

If you’d like help with your on-page SEO, contact us today.

4. Enhancing Off-Page SEO for Dentist Website

We’ve already gone over what SEO is and also what on-page SEO is. Your head may or may not be spinning already. Either way, fear not, we’re here to help you.

Off-page SEO (or off-site SEO) refers to actions that happen outside of your website that have an impact on how your website ranks within search engine result pages (SERPs).

If you haven’t started with working on your on-page SEO, make sure you start that before diving into your off-page portion of your SEO campaign.

True off-page SEO is one of the most challenging but essential aspects of your SEO campaign. There are a lot of variables that come into play when perfecting your off-page SEO campaigns. 

You want to make sure you stay clear from companies that promise you “x” amount of links for $200 per month. The majority of those companies perform black-hat SEO and will eventually get your website banned from Google. Don’t take shortcuts when it comes to your SEO.

Building quality backlinks is one of the most important aspects of off-page SEO. Google and other search engines use backlinks to indicate the quality of the content that’s linked. A site with more high-quality backlinks will usually rank much better than the same site with fewer backlinks. 

For today’s article, we’re going to keep our recommendations simple and geared towards dentists and periodontists.

Citations and Directory Listings

Citations and directory listings are the first and easiest step for you to get more links to your website. Citations are mentions of your practice name, address, and phone number (NAP). You first start with having that information listed on your website, mainly on your contact page and also in the footer of your website. 

Citations are a significant factor in how Google ranks businesses in its local listings. The more your business is mentioned online also plays into how high you rank in the listings.

Once you’ve made sure that your citation matches across the board, you can then get it listed in relevant directories.

You will then want to get your business listed in all local directories that apply to your type of business.

Make sure that your actual business name is listed in all of your directory listings, and it’s not a combination of the business name and the dentist’s name. This causes a lot of confusion for customers trying to find your business.

There are a lot of industry-specific directory listings. If you search for “dentist directory listings,” there should be a ton that pops up. Otherwise, you can always hire a company to submit your information to every listing that has to do with your business and industry.

The top three directory listings are General Business Directories, Industry Specific Directories, and Local Directories.

Google My Business

Your Google My Business page will be one of the most important aspects when completing your citations and directories check-list.

Google My Business page is one of the fastest ways of seeing results for SEO. Setting up your account is extremely easy.

  1. Sign up for Google My Business
  2. Enter your business name
  3. Enter the address of your business location
  4. Specify the services your business offers
  5. Choose your business category
  6. Add a contact phone number and URL
  7. Complete your Google My Business verification

Once your Google My Business page has been verified, you can then add photos and add more content to describe your business better.

5. Reviews

Online reviews are critical for many reasons, so don’t bypass this thinking that it’s not a big deal. Over 90% of people searching online look at reviews before visiting the business. That’s a considerable number.

Online reviews are also another way to increase your SEO rankings since Google uses reviews as another way of deciding how to rank your website. If you’re a local business with 10x the amount of 5-star reviews, the chances are that your business is going to be at the top of Google’s local 3-pack.

Dentist SEO, SEO for dentists, Local SEO agency, Avintiv Media, Google My Business, Google Search

As you can see, our SEO client, Malek Periodontics, has 38 reviews with a 4.6-star rating, and they are #1 in the Google 3-pack listings. This has drastically changed the amount of traffic they have gotten.

The more 5 star reviews you get on Google, the more Google will want to show your Google My Business page off in the Google local 3-pack and will result in moving up the rankings in the SERPs.

You should always have a patient leave a review as they’re leaving an appointment or in a follow-up email with a small gift or incentive.

In Conclusion

As you can see, we went over a lot of information regarding SEO tips for dentists and periodontists. We showed you the data on how many people search online, how they decide on what company they buy from, and how you can be seen by more of your ideal customers. If you follow the above tips and strategies, you should get a lot more website traffic and, in turn, a lot more patients coming through your door. If you have any questions or want a quality SEO agency to assist you with all of this, feel free to contact us today.

What is Link Building?: What You Need to Know

Posted on by avintivmstg

Whether you’re brand new to link building or you’ve been doing it for a while, you will find value in this article. We will go over why link building is important, what to look for and what to stay away from when kicking off a link building campaign.

The SEO landscape is always evolving especially link building. The importance of building high-quality links has never been greater. If you don’t know what you’re doing, building poor-quality links can actually hurt you more than helping you.

The need to understand and fully implement a white-hat strategy has never been more important. If you want to thrive online for many years to come, it is definitely worth slowing down and fully understanding what link building is and how it can benefit your business.

Don’t get overwhelmed by all of this information. We’ve broken it up in bite-size chunks for you to easily understand everything there is to know about link building.

 

What is Link Building?

Link building is an action that happens offsite when another website links back to your website. Link building is a form of off-page SEO. A link is another way for users to navigate between pages and sites on the internet.

All business owners should be very interested in building links back to their websites as it drives referral traffic and increases the authority of the site. If you ask any SEO specialist, mastering the art of building high-quality links is one of the hardest parts of their job.

 

Why is link building important?

Link building is extremely important as Google uses it as a major factor in how it ranks web pages. Google stated: “In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.”

Building high-quality links are one of the hardest aspects of SEO for any SEO specialist or SEO agency. With that said, to do high-quality links in volume, the costs associated are going to be much higher than what your competitors might be spending on SEO. When building links the correct way, it separates you from your competition in Google’s eyes.

There are many other benefits to link building that you will see later in this article.

 

The importance of links to Google and other search engines

There are ways in which Google and other search engines use links:

  1. To discover web pages
  2. To help determine how well a page should or shouldn’t rank in their search results

Google can extract the content of your pages and add it to their indexes once their search engines have crawled your site’s pages on the web. Once that is completed, Google will decide if they feel a page is of high enough quality to be ranked for relevant keywords. Google even made a short video to explain the process, called ‘How Search Works.’

As you’ll start to learn, Google and other search engines don’t just look at the content of each page, they look at the number of quality links pointing to that specific page from external websites. They also factor in the quality and authority of those external websites. The higher quality websites that link to yours, the more likely you are to rank well in search results.

In the late 1990s, one of Google’s founders, Larry Page, invented a way to measure the quality of a page based in part on the number of links pointing to it. PageRank took off and what a metric used as part of the overall ranking algorithm Google used.

The theory of a link being seen as a vote of confidence or authority was a huge hit. It wasn’t much longer before people discovered how to manipulate PageRank and certain search results for the keywords of their choice. Google was forced to continue updating its algorithm much more regularly to actively try to fight what was happening. They focused on filtering out websites that truly didn’t deserve to rank.

In turn, this is what led Google to begin to discredit a number of link building techniques that were previously accepted. One example is the Penguin update, which decreased the search engine rankings of websites that violated Google’s Webmaster Guidelines or the use of black-hat SEO.

Google continues to enhance its algorithm to make it fair game to the over 1.94 billion websites there are in 2019.

What is a follow link?

As we’ve previously discussed, getting inbound links from authority websites provides an SEO boost. These links are hyperlinks that are pointing to a specific page on your website. The more links the better in Google’s eyes, as long as they are high-quality links.

Google looks at your website like you’re throwing a party. Is it 100 random strangers showing up that aren’t well-known or is it 300 well-known celebrities showing up to the party? Google watches your inbound links the same way.

As we previously mentioned, Google created a metric called PageRank to calculate the link points. In other words, link points are known as “link juice.” Hyperlinks allow link juice to flow through your site. The bigger and more reputable the site, the bigger SEO boost you get.

Follow links are links that Google counts as points or “link juice.” This boosts the page rank of the linked-to sites which helps increase the search results.

 

What are No-follow Links?

A no-follow link is a link tells Google to not count it as a point, so it doesn’t boost the PageRank.

A no-follow link is created with the no-follow link HTML tag, which looks like this:

<a href=”https://www.website.com/” rel=”nofollow”>Link Text</a>

A no-follow tag is a way that allows your site to tell search engines “Don’t follow links on this page” or to not follow this specific link. A link can have more than one relationship (rel attributes). These two attributes help Google define the relationship a link has with a page that it points to.

Here are a couple of examples:

  • Forum posts
  • Blog comments
  • Certain blog sites
  • Wiki Pages
  • Paid links
  • Comments
  • Anything involving what Google calls “untrusted content”

The importance of links for your business

As you’ve read through this article, link building is very important to grow your business online. Every day, Google gets smarter and SEO begins to get harder. It is important to begin building high-quality backlinks so you’re not getting left in the dust from your competition.

Online Authority

The more link juice that you have, the higher your website will rank for the keywords of your choice. When your website ranks higher int he SERPs, you have a much higher chance of turning much higher traffic into paying customers.

Brand Building

High-quality link building can help grow your brand online and as more people see your logo pop up, you will start to be seen as an authority in your niche. You can dive into content creation, which will help build your brand as an authority for the topics that you’re discussing. Those articles can then be used in a link building outreach campaign that should help bring high-quality links to your website.

More Visibility

The higher your website ranks in the SERPs, the more visibility your website has. The majority of visitors don’t go past the first page of Google, which shows the importance of ranking as high as you can for select keywords. More visibility equals more traffic which will equal more conversions as long as your website follows the standard UI & UX guidelines.

White-hat Strategies vs Black-hat Strategies 

Black hat SEO refers to strategies and techniques that are used to get higher search rankings by doing short cuts that go against search engine rules. Black hat SEO focuses solely on search engines with no human element. 

What hat SEO refers to strategies and techniques that target a human audience as opposed to just a search engine, which is what Google wants you to do.

What is a bad link?

Google has majorly cracked down over the years ever since people started to manipulate PageRank and certain search results for the keywords of their choice. Google actually created a list of poor link building tactics that they won’t tolerate anymore. 

Google won’t tolerate manipulative links that provide a site zero value, just to try to trick Google’s algorithms. Don’t get tricked into buying links that have nothing to do with your site or industry. As long as you stay away from links that are purposely meant for manipulation, you should be in the clear.

What is a good link?

Google and other search engines want to see links that provide value to the internet. The last thing Google wants to do is send you to a site or a page that you weren’t wanting to go to and end up giving you a poor experience. Create links that are relevant and trustworthy. The Search Engine Journal released an article that detailed characteristics of a quality link.

10 Tips for Link Building

  1. Build quality relationships
  2. Ask for backlinks
  3. Create quality content on your blog
  4. Write good guest posts for other companies
  5. Discover your competitor’s backlinks
  6. Create and launch infographics
  7. Make your way on a “top” or “best of” list for your industry
  8. Hire a PR firm to get you more local press
  9. Look for pages that mention your competitors but not you
  10. Mention influencers or other companies in your posts 

 

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