If you are owning a business and want it to grow fast, if you are dreaming of becoming a leader in your vertical, your most sensible approach would be to have a strong online presence and adopt a suitable branding strategy.
Experts say your branding strategy should include methods for engaging your audience and developing a distinct brand identity. You have two options when it comes to internet or digital marketing, namely organic marketing and paid marketing. While each type has a variety of ways to employ, marketers weigh criteria like budget, timeline, and product/service type to determine the best mix.
But whatever may be your strategy, the success of your branding and marketing primarily depends upon content. Content is the most important matter in digital marketing because, in a virtual world where buyers and sellers are not meeting in person, it’s the content that bridges them. Nothing can make a better bridge than sensible and powerful content.
So then, what is content, and what is the concept of content marketing?
In the realm of digital marketing, content is the communication of information, which comes in a large variety of forms and formats, such as articles, blogs, infographics, videos, and more.
And content marketing is about creating bespoke content and presenting them to the right audience. It’s a part of your overall marketing strategy that uses high-quality, relevant, and authoritative content to create a positive, favourable impression.
But content creation has a cost, and if you still wonder whether it’s worth spending an extra amount, we have put together the benefits of content marketing that can build a brand for your small business.
Builds trust It’s critical for businesses to work to develop trust with their leads and consumers in today’s dynamic digital marketplace. Building trust can aid in the development of a positive brand image for your company. Great content may aid in the development of trust among your leads and consumers. When customers read your material, they begin to form opinions about your company.
Builds reputation as a Thought Leader Why should customers select your company over a competitor’s? One reason is because you are an industry expert. This is why businesses have blogs, entrepreneurs guest post for major news outlets, and CEOs seek speaking engagements. All of these factors contribute to the person or firm being perceived as an expert, which leads to trust. Content marketing is an excellent technique to educate people while also demonstrating your expertise and ability to be trusted.
Helps create new leads Think of your content as a gigantic magnet that attracts new leads. It will begin to attract potential clients if it is written correctly. The relevance of your material is a crucial consideration. You’re wasting your time if your content is attracting the wrong leads.
Helps achieve a high rate of conversion If conversion becomes your marketing goal, following stats speak of the value of content marketing to increase website conversions:
Conversion rates for content marketing are around 6 times greater than for other digital marketing approaches. (Source: ABG Essentials)
61% of online shoppers in the United States made a purchase after reading blog recommendations. The Content Marketing Institute (CMI)
According to 74% of organisations polled, content marketing has enhanced the quantity of marketing leads. (Curata)
72% of organisations polled opine that video content gives a fantastic ROI and considerably enhances conversions. (CrazyEgg)
Because of their content marketing efforts, inbound marketers have been able to double the typical site conversion rate (from 6 to 12 percent). (HubSpot)
Make sure to include a clear call-to-action (CTA) in your content to increase conversions. Your CTA instructs the reader on what to do next, directing them to the next step of the conversion process, such as making a purchase, obtaining additional information, or contacting your sales team.
Increase followers on social media Social media and content marketing actually complement each other. You create your material and then disseminate it over social media. Hopefully, the prospects you generate through your content will start following you on social media. The advantage is obvious: when you submit new information to social media, people will continue to view it.
Improves your SEO Without a doubt, search engines play a significant part in your company’s online visibility. The technique of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s unpaid results is known as search engine optimization (SEO). When it comes to SEO, content marketing is crucial. By providing quality content pertinent to your industry, you boost your chance of getting promoted by the search engine, and attracting more traffic to your website.
Tips for the success of your content marketing strategy
Understand your customers’ needs and address them in your writing: Present your product or service as a solution to improve your customers’ lives. Focus on crisp and clear writing. Research for appropriate keywords. Use keywords as much as possible but not at the cost of quality.
Repurposing content: If you are short on new and engaging content, try repurposing some of the old ones into new formats. It takes much less time and cost to repurpose a content and it works fine.
Find out which format works best: Experiment with different sorts of content to find what your audience responds to best. Though we encourage sharing a variety of content kinds (blogs, videos, photographs, and so on), it’s a good idea to figure out which format works best and produce 70% of your material in that format.
Try to get content created by your followers: Nothing works better than a piece of positive content from a customer on your product or service. Happy customers are the best medium of marketing. As a firm, you should encourage your consumers to tell others about their experiences with your product/service.
Source- Fluidscapes We are one of the best digital marketing companies in India that provides online reputation management services to all types of organizations. We assist businesses to stay on top of the game by leveraging the latest technologies and breakthroughs in marketing strategies and business processes. Want to grow your business, even more, get in touch with us and we’ll tell you how.
The Internet brought in a new period to rewrite the history of the world with its colossal effects on human lives and all other aspects, so much so that the proliferation of the Internet has become a new yardstick for growth and development.
Although started relatively late, India has become the third largest Internet user base in the world. This is a significant achievement that has opened the floodgate for e-commerce and other forms of digital marketing practices to achieve fast-track prosperity for the country.
Digital marketing, also known as Internet marketing, is the lifeline of modern business and by all indications, will remain so in the future as well. Seeing the immense power of digital marketing channels like search engines, social media, etc. all traditional marketing methods are changing to digital either completely or partially to have a much higher reach, and to become more efficient and economical. Even our cable and satellite TVs are also changing fast to Internet TV aka OTT, making TV advertising a form of digital marketing only.
Currently, India is a stable economy with a confident business class and a growing number of startup unicorns. The country is witnessing great enthusiasm and entrepreneurial drive among the youngsters. New ideas and products are shaping up, breaking many barriers. Without the surge of the Internet and digital marketing, this air of confidence would never be possible. But where did it all begin? How did the evolution of digital marketing take shape?
The phrase “digital marketing” came to our attention in 1990 for the first time following the introduction of the internet and the Web 1.0 platform. The Web 1.0 platform allowed users to search and read information, but it did not allow them to distribute it across the internet. Marketers all around the world were still apprehensive about the digital platform during that time. They weren’t sure if their plans would work because the internet hadn’t been widely adopted yet.
The first clickable banner was launched in 1993, initiating the start of the digital marketing era and ushering in new technologies to enrich the digital marketplace. In 1994, Yahoo was founded.
The Indian Digital Marketing story
The Internet services launched in India on August 15, 1995, by the VSNL. It didn’t take long for the Indian business community to explore the potential of Internet marketing in India. The very next year i.e.1996 saw the launch of IndiaMart B2B marketplace, and with that started the history of digital marketing in India.
In the midst of this dot-com hysteria we saw the birth of Google search engine in 1998, which many experts consider as the prime mover of digital marketing. Yahoo web search and MSN from Microsoft also appeared around the same time. Two years later, the dot-com bubble burst, crashing the stock market and pulling the stock values of most of the dot-com entities to the ground. All the smaller search engines shut shop, leaving behind a vacuum only to be filled by the giant companies.
The dot-com bubble burst created a long term down turn of confidence of the people on the Internet based commerce. Like in other countries, it caused fear and scepticism among common people in India about e-commerce. Although, Amazon.com started its operation in India in 2013 as an online store for books, movies, etc. and Bazee.com (later acquired by ebay.com), Indiatimes.com, Yahoo, Rediff, Sify and a few others had taken cautious steps into online shopping, it wasn’t before 2007 that the whole of India got a taste of e-commerce when Flipcart emerged with a bigbang to surprise India with wide varieties of products at the most competitive prices and rock solid software for hasslefree ordering and safe payment gateways.
As a result, there came a huge surge in the use of smartphones, online purchasing, at-home delivery, and online brand promotions, which experienced a steady growth over many years now. Numerous logistics companies came up to ensure credible supply-chains that saw exponential growth of e-commerce in the country.
Another thing that contributed to the growth of digital marketing significantly is the rapid increase in the digital payment gateways. There are multiple options of digital payment available with the people, which ensure that the majority of payment transactions are now done digitally.
Other key reasons that jacked up digital marketing in India
#1. Web 2.0
Version of the web plays the most important role in determining the success of an Internet based service. While web 1.0 was a read-only web that allowed us to search for information and read it, Web 2.0 is a read-write web, which presents the power of interaction and creates the backbone of digital marketing by enabling us to contribute content and interact with other web users. Look at YouTube and the social media channels that thrive on users’ submissions. Since the time it was introduced, web 2.0 has caused dramatic improvement in e-commerce and other forms of digital marketing in India in a short time.
#2. Digital India initiatives
In 2015, The Government of India launched the Digital India campaign to encourage citizens to avail various Government services over the Internet. To achieve this objective, the Government improved the online infrastructure and strengthened internet services. Quality of mobile data constantly improved through upgradation to the latest generation of technology. As a result, the bulk of rural India got digitally connected and empowered to communicate and transact digitally, creating millions of new customers for e-commerce and digital marketing as a whole.
#3. More online hours
Digital marketing is all about influencing the audience online through various content mediums in order to boost a brand’s influence. The more time consumers spend on the Internet, the easier it will be for marketers to influence consumer behavior. The expanding market for gadgets such as smartphones, computers, tablets, and other similar devices has caused the average Indian to spend 4-5 hours everyday reading through social media, emails, and websites.
With already about 70-80% of the Internet users in India making purchases online, e-commerce is fast becoming the default medium of purchase, and businesses are religiously making strong online presences, there is no room for doubt that as the infrastructure scales up to make more and more population have access to the Internet, digital marketing in India will continue to reach new and new heights of transaction volumes.
Source- Fluidscapes We are one of the best digital marketing companies in India that provides online reputation management services to all types of organizations. We assist businesses to stay on top of the game by leveraging the latest technologies and breakthroughs in marketing strategies and business processes. Want to grow your business, even more, get in touch with us and we’ll tell you how.
Businesses are built by ideas but sustained by good financial management. Because every step in business has a financial implication, business intelligence in today’s world has got a lot to do with financial insights and skills.
Over the last 1-2 decades, aided by new technologies and widespread penetration of the Internet and social media, the business has gone through a lot of changes in its perspective and techniques. Old concepts and mindsets can hardly match today’s highly informed and competitive world of business.
Many bottlenecks of the past are giving way to opportunities. The two principal requirements for starting a business–the source of capital and market for the finished product are within the reach of a business aspirant. The ecosystem is ready with the raw materials and logistics. But the stark reality behind this widespread optimism presents a picture of intense competition with an increasing number of failures.
Look at the following heart-wrenching statistics on startups:
9 out of 10 startups fail,
7.5 out of 10 venture-backed startups fail,
2 out of 10 new businesses fail in the 1st year of operation.
There can be a variety of reasons why early-stage businesses might fail, but the most common ones as identified by the top business leaders are:
Failure to develop a profitable business model,
Lack of adequate financial planning,
Lack of compliance and company administration
Poor cash flow.
Therefore, addressing the compliance issues and getting the financial side of things right from the start is critical. Hiring a virtual CFO service can be your best bet to ensure the same and good cash flow management in the most cost-effective manner. Cash flow is an organization’s lifeblood, and it’s vital to have a steady supply of capital flowing through the business.
What can you expect from a virtual CFO service?
The term virtual CFO or “virtual chief financial officer” refers to an outsourced service provider who provides a complete range of financial services to a business, similar to what a chief financial officer (CFO) does for major corporations.
The difference between a CFO and a virtual CFO lies in the fact that while the former is a senior position in the management that attracts a high pay package and other benefits, the latter is an outsourced person or agency that offers high-quality services and consultancy at much lower charges.
Understanding the role of a CFO will help us realize why virtual CFO service is so important to a company before it can hire a full-time CFO.
The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is the person who controls A-Z of your company’s finance and related matters that range from bookkeeping to compliance, and from financial planning and corporate investments to corporate governance and strategic requirements.
When you think about virtual CFO, you should expect all the above services performed with equally high expertise. It’s like outsourcing the head of your finance department. Virtual CFOs are especially advantageous for small organizations that may not have the financial resources to engage a full-time CFO but would benefit from having an experienced financial professional in charge of their finance department.
As an owner of a small business or a startup, you have got many challenges, such as managing finances, financial planning, financial reports, compliances, corporate governance, addressing strategic requirements, so on and so forth. Some contribute directly or indirectly to the company’s earnings, some protect the organization from compliance issues, fines, etc., and the rest are for creating new opportunities.
But if you can’t manage them on your own and hiring an experienced CFO is also not a viable option for you, a virtual CFO may be the right solution for you. Virtual CFO agencies offer customized packages that include the services required by you. This makes the offer flexible and cost-effective. Unlike recruiting a CFO, which is a fixed cost to the company, a virtual CFO package may be a one-time or a variable cost.
Besides helping the smaller companies gain from professional financial management, that’s usually reserved for major corporations, virtual CFOs particularly benefits the startups and small businesses in the following areas:
Financial Forecasting:
An organization’s future performance can be forecasted using financial forecasting, which entails processing, estimating, or predicting a business’s future performance.
Predicting a company’s revenue is a common example of financial forecasting. An organization’s performance is determined by its sales figures. So forecasting is considered critical to the success of an organization’s goals. In addition, financial forecasting involves estimating future revenue as well as future fixed and variable costs, and also capital requirements. Another crucial role financial forecasts can play is in terms of winning investment to your company and taking the next step up the funding ladder.
To have a control over spending:
When your firm is just getting started, expenses can quickly spiral out of control. With increased visibility and understanding of your incoming funds and outgoing costs, you’ll be able to make more informed decisions. Don’t forget that if you’re spending too much money on unnecessary items, your budget will be slashed, and you may not have enough money to make actual, business-critical expenditures in the near future. If you hire a virtual CFO, he or she will make sure that these systems are in place, allowing your staff to make essential purchases for your organization.
To scale up the process of money control:
As you grow in size, your finances will become more complex. There will be many avenues through which money will flow in and out of your company. Without an expert to scale your processes, you may not be able to keep up with the demands.. A bookkeeper or accountant won’t suffice for this type of duty; you’ll need a virtual CFO.
Virtual CFOs are driving the organization’s success and using financial data to influence operational decision-making. It has become a grand success in the USA (the land of most startup ventures). Most of today’s giant tech firms in the USA started as startups and were powered by virtual CFOs.
Source- Fluidscapes We are one of the best digital marketing companies in India that provides online reputation management services to all types of organizations. We assist businesses to stay on top of the game by leveraging the latest technologies and breakthroughs in marketing strategies and business processes. Want to grow your business, even more, get in touch with us and we’ll tell you how.
Post-COVID, as virtuals are becoming mainstream and businesses are racing to shift their activities to online, ORM or the online reputation management practices are gaining a lot of steam as an essential part of the branding process. More so because the public relations (PR) activities are also turning online and getting merged with the ORM.
Unlike the earlier days, when most consumers would weigh the reputation of a brand based on the inputs through words of mouth from friends and family, today their opinions are mainly influenced by the information they get from the social media channels or the search engine results.
Therefore, a strong, pleasant online presence is a virtue for a firm in today’s competitive business environment. The trends show that an overwhelming number of buyers conduct online research before purchasing a product. That makes a positive online reputation the #1 necessity for companies of any size.
However, it is easier said than done, given the possibility of instant spreading of negative news through the online media that might create a landslide in the company’s business before the measures are taken to jack up the reputation. Here are some potential risk factors that can create a significant negative impact on the online reputation of a business.
Not responding to Online Reviews on time-
Customer reviews are a significant criterion for judging the quality of a brand’s services or products. According to surveys, more than 75% of shoppers prefer to buy from a local business with excellent online evaluations. While a company can’t really control what its consumers say online, it should make an attempt to acknowledge both positive and negative feedback.
This demonstrates that your company values customer’s gratitude and takes their comments seriously enough to improve your products and services. Leaving online reviews unaddressed might make clients feel as if their opinions are unimportant to you. This could stimulate their unhappiness and result in a loss of business.
Minimal Social Media Presence-
Ignoring social networks in today’s socially proactive digital world might drastically impair your chances of having a positive online reputation. Despite the fact that social media is one of the most promising channels for businesses to communicate with clients, 24% of small businesses still do not use social media at all!
A company’s reputation management strategy can’t produce results if it does not have an active social media presence. When potential customers search for a brand on the internet, they expect to learn more about it from its Facebook page or Twitter engagements. A lackluster social media presence reveals a brand’s indifference to interact with or engage its customers.
Dull website-
A website acts as a company’s online storefront. For that matter, a website, like a storefront, should be appealing, meaningful, and capable of attracting customers. Your website’s content and graphic design are responsible for that. Poorly written copies make a buyer suspicious of a company’s capabilities and sincerity.
If your potential customers don’t find your website interesting and informative, they’ll switch to your competitors. This will lead to a loss of sales opportunities in addition to lowering your site rankings (indirectly).
Negative Public Relations Coverage on the Internet-
Negative PR, like a bad review, has a direct impact on a company’s reputation. If a potential customer reads an article that paints your company in a negative light, they will immediately reconsider doing business with you.Therefore, you must pay close attention to what people are saying about your company online. We can do this through tools like Google Alerts that’ll keep you informed about new reviews, blogs, and publications with mentions of your name.
A negative review by a big media creates a long-term detrimental effect on your brand’s online reputation, and you can’t afford to ignore it. Even big names such as Samsung had been the target of a harsh web press soon after its launch of Curved TV, which caused it a lot of harm in sales.
Employee Profiles That Aren’t Quite Right-
Your employees might be responsible for the bad reputation of your company. They act as digital ambassadors for your company. Whatever they do and say online is interpreted as the brand’s word. Your potential consumers may come across your staff’s online profiles, behaviors, or publications and identify them with the ideology of your company.
Customers will lose faith in a brand if they notice a disconnect between what it offers and how its people behave. Even if your employees aren’t providing contradictory information, their lack of brand devotion may create a red flag in the minds of your viewers.
Besides, paying attention not to commit the aforesaid mistakes, your online reputation management efforts should focus on maximizing positive experiences and minimizing the negative experiences of your customers. Furthermore, a positive customer experience encourages them to write a positive review about your brand and service that offsets the negative and fake reviews and helps in reputation repair.
Source- Fluidscapes We are one of the best digital marketing companies in India that provides online reputation management services to all types of organizations. We assist businesses to stay on top of the game by leveraging the latest technologies and breakthroughs in marketing strategies and business processes. Want to grow your business, even more, get in touch with us and we’ll tell you how.
Link building is deemed the best among the SEO or Search Engine optimization strategies. SEO is the heart of digital marketing, as a strong SEO benefits your website on two vital counts–a high ranking on the SERP and a high influx of organic traffic.
Just how important link building is in the success of SEO is very well demonstrated by a study conducted by MOZ where 150 top SEO experts in the world were asked to score the SEO ranking factors that influence Google’s core search algorithm on a scale of 1 (least influential) to 10 (highest influential), here is what it reveals:
Now that we are convinced that a major part of our SEO strategy should revolve around link building, the question remains how effectively we can go about it. We’ll try to seek the answer in the rest of this article. But first, let’s understand what are links and why they are important in SEO.
Digital marketing is all about making good use of networks and allies. Links or backlinks (to be precise) are references to the source sites as attribution and acknowledgement for using their digital assets. In a nutshell, the advantages of backlinks can be listed as:
Recognition for your website as a source of authentic information.
Recognition for your website as the creator of a popular infographic, video, or other digital assets.
Incorporating your content or website in a link roundup.
Recognition for you or your company as a source of critical information
Link building refers to this mission-critical exercise of earning backlinks from other websites to your own.
When another site refers to your site with a link, it adds up to the credibility of your site. More links, especially from websites with high domain authority, translate into a high ranking of your site. High-quality links indicate to Google that your site is a valuable resource that should be cited. As a result, sites with more backlinks rank higher on SERP.
Building links should be a priority for all marketers and business owners who want to boost their site’s authority and drive referral traffic. However, common methods of link-building activities involve leaving comments on related sites or writing guest posts to simply gloat about where our content has been published.
But if you want to boost your site’s authority and rank higher on search engine result pages (SERPs), you’ll need to establish authoritative backlinks on a regular basis. To put it another way, you must employ successful link-building techniques that yield results. The 15 proven techniques explained below will help you get high-quality backlinks and stay ahead of the competition with a high rank in the SERP.
#1. Identify the sites with high domain authority:
Because a single quality link from a website with a high domain authority can boost all of your content in the rankings. It’s more about quality than quantity when it comes to link building. Google uses a 100 point scoring system to grade a website based on the inbound link profile of that site. The point scale is logarithmic, which means a site with domain authority point 60 is ten times stronger than a site with domain authority level 50.
You should target websites with a domain authority of at least 30. A link from a low-domain-authority website will have little or no effect on your Google results.
#2. Try for the editorial links:
Look out for the relevant content in other media and try to establish contacts with reporters/ writers in your domain and share your profile for getting editorial links. Editorial links result in high search engine rankings because they come from authoritative websites that have pretty impressive metrics. For example, a mention or backlink from the Times of India can give your site a big push.
#3. Publish Guest post:
Guest posting or guest blogging is about creating valuable backlinks on your own by publishing articles on authoritative sites. There are some authority sites who invite high-quality content on a variety of topics. Select the ones that publish blog posts pertaining to your domain and get registered. This is an effective SEO strategy provided your guest posting has high content quality with contextual links directed to your website.
#4. Create link-worthy Infographics
Infographics are used by big marketing agencies as the #1 link building tools. It’s one of the most popular techniques to attract readers attention and receive qualified traffic to your website using backlinks. Combination of great graphics and texts produce link-worthy content.
Here are some Infographics best practices to attract links:
Stick to quality
No need to mention dates
Post your infographics to key communities
#5. Publish evergreen posts that earn backlinks through the passage of time:
Contrary to posts and news articles that relate to the trending topics such as Fortnite, Pokemon Go, etc., evergreen posts remain relevant to the readers even after a long time since the content was originally published. Over time these evergreen posts gain high link equity, which not only help them rank high on the SERP , but also attract number of backlinks and editorial links.
Another fact about evergreen posts is that they they are tough to be outranked.
#6. Earn contextual backlink through image search:
If your site has a lot of visual information (infographics, screenshots, charts, etc. ), there’s a good chance that some websites are using them without giving proper credit to you.
You can take the below steps to address this problem and also gain backlinks.
Make a list of your original image assets with their URLs.
Then use Google image search to pick out the websites that are using those images without attribution. Make a list of their email addresses.
Write emails to the owners of those sites pointing that they are using your linkable assets without mentioning the source URL (put the URL of your site as the source). In all likelihood, this will work because otherwise they might get punished by Google. And this way you will earn some backlinks that might get you some qualified traffic.
#7. Allow bloggers to review your product for free:
This is particularly effective with women’s physical items. There are hundreds of women bloggers make a living by reviewing things. Give your product to them free of cost and request reviews in their blogs. Here’s how to get backlinks using product reviews in four easy steps:
Select the blogs that write and review products in your category
Make a list of the bloggers’ email addresses
Write to them about your intention, and for their physical address to send the product.
Get your products nicely packed and courier to them with a hand note thanking them in advance for reviewing your product.
#8. Get your blog featured on the “Best Of” posts:
“Best Of” posts, published by several blog owners, enlist their favorite blog posts on a certain subject. If you can manage to get a good article of yours included in a “Best of” post it will garner contextual links. The following is a step-by-step guide to getting your post listed.
Identify Your Most Linkable Post – Take a look at your most popular posts and pick the one that is fairly large and is of high quality.
Use Google to find your target sites – Use Google to obtain a list of high-authority websites that publish “Best of” posts related to your niche (Google search = best of post + your topic).
Message the Authors of Each “Best of” Article – Ask each post’s author via email, if they can add your post to their list of favorites.
Before requesting a backlink from a well-known blogger, you should establish a relationship with them. This can be accomplished by leaving comments on their blog, emailing them a question, or following them on Twitter.
#9. Use interactive content on your site:
Interactive content like quizzes, games, polls, and calculators are creating high degree of engagement these days on the Internet. Due to their rising popularity, interactive content generate a lot of authority backlinks. Several web based tools such as Outgrow, Uberflip, etc. are available to help you generate such interactive content.
#10. Have a podcast of your own:
This will definitely boost your ranking in search results. Podcasts have high popularity and engagement quotient and can be used effectively in your link building strategy.
You’ll have more creative control over your content if you have your own podcast; you won’t have to waste time sending outreach emails to podcasters in your niche and waiting for a response; and, most importantly, podcasting is fun and allows you to build your own personal brand and showcase your expertise.
Other influencers in your niche will approach you to be a part of your podcast once it becomes famous. Not to mention the invitations you’ll get to be a guest on other podcasters’ shows.
#11. Sign up for Product Hunt:
This especially helps those who deal in tech products like apps, software, website, hardware projects , and other tech creations and expect to receive backlinks from authority sites. Product hunt is a site with domain authority of 86 and growing, where you’ll come to know about cool new applications or products, both upcoming or current. But what makes it unique is its forum of online discussion where product loving enthusiasts and tech experts have thoughtful discussions
To acquire a backlink from Product Hunt, you must first register an account on the site, link your website, and be active on the forum. This can be accomplished by posting product reviews, providing comments on freshly released products, and, of course, regularly upvoting and downvoting products.
#12. Be on the Startup Directory:
If you are a startup, getting registered with one or more startup directories helps you receive quality reviews and backlinks. There are many startup directories to which you can submit your website.
For example, BetaList is a leading startup directory dedicated to early-stage online firms. The submission is free, but you will need to pay a nominal charge to expedite the process and ensure that your startup is featured. You can observe how they evaluate startups by looking at their submission criteria.
#13. Create your public profile and get a backlink:
Users sign up for sites where they may construct a public profile and submit a link to their website as part of the profile link development process. The link will help transfer of link juice from the profile creation site to yours.
The main idea is if the profile link building site is good, you should be able to get a quality backlink.
Gravatar, a WordPress-owned avatar site, is an example of a high-quality site where you can include a link in your profile. Other websites like Kickstarter, Moz, Semrush, and Triberr that value active communities allow you to build a public profile with links to your website and social media outlets.
#14. Create list posts with images and videos on a regular basis:
In a study to identify the sites that garner the most inbound links, it was discovered that blog entries that included both images and videos in a list format earned the most backlinks.
It’s not difficult to conduct research and create a fantastic list post. However, most inexperienced bloggers fall short, when it comes to using videos and graphics to generate backlinks. Here are a few tricks that skilled bloggers employ to make their blogs visually appealing.
Use Graphs and Charts for better visualization of key stats
Embed Proven YouTube Videos in the post
Embed images in the Tweets that is relevant to the content
#15. Share your site with the Blog Aggregators
Blog aggregators are websites (dedicated to one or more niches) that compile a list of blogs in those industries. Their specialty is that people visit their sites for good pieces of content in specific field(s). So if you tie up with a few blog aggregators in your industry you are likely to get good numbers of relevant backlinks. AllTop, Blogarama, and BlogEngage are some examples of blog aggregators.
Even though they don’t have as much link juice as they used to, you can still obtain a significant amount of referral traffic from these blogs. Most blog aggregators will provide you with high-quality dofollow backlinks for free if you follow these three simple steps:
Submit the RSS feed of your blog for consideration
To confirm your site’s ownership, add a specific HTML code to it.
Get your blog reviewed by a blog aggregator.
Despite constant changes in Google’s algorithm to refine the digital marketing results, which see many old concepts giving way to new ones, building backlinks remains to be a pivotal factor in the success of SEO. While these 15 link-building strategies will give you rich insights into link building, research and innovation will help you discover more.
Source- Fluidscapes We are one of the best digital marketing companies in India that provides online reputation management services to all types of organizations. We assist businesses to stay on top of the game by leveraging the latest technologies and breakthroughs in marketing strategies and business processes. Want to grow your business, even more, get in touch with us and we’ll tell you how.
Videos are ruling the world now. Millions of videos are being produced and devoured every day, which underscores people’s craziness of this dominant medium of communication. From mere fun to tutorials to branding, there is no field left that does not have an abundance of YouTube videos. But is it enough to just create and upload the videos? After all, videos are made to be viewed. Will they get their audience just like that?
Those with some knowledge of content marketing will shake their heads in disagreement. It doesn’t work like that. Thousands of videos will jostle with each other. There must be some SEO techniques to optimize YouTube videos. That brings up the topic of this blog – how to reach a greater audience with higher YouTube SEO ranking. A look at SEO or search Engine Optimization will be an ideal starting point.
What is SEO?
SEO is the heart of digital marketing. In a nutshell, SEO is what you do to get your content to occupy high rank on Google search pages. The ease with which a search engine can interpret the contents of your website and link them to what your target audience is looking for is referred to as SEO or search engine optimization. Ranking of content on the search page is a desired result of Google’s SEO exercise, which depends on a variety of factors, and marketers are continuously seeking strategies to increase their Google ranks.
What is YouTube SEO?
If Google SEO is for content marketing, YouTube SEO is for video marketing. With their immense popularity, YouTube videos are contributing significantly to the growth of digital marketing and made YouTube the second largest search engine, right behind Google, but with a different algorithm. Here, the users search for a keyword, and instead of text content, the result surfaces videos. The ranking continues to be the desired outcome for YouTube SEO as well. The YouTube algorithm determines which videos appear based on a variety of ranking parameters.
How to achieve a high ranking on YouTube search page?
The simple tip is to make it easier for YouTube to figure out what your video is about. This will help you get a high rank. Another factor is the relevance of your content. To rank on the first page of YouTube, the most relevant video content with the maximum engagement is sought. However, there are some other factors, as given below, that play crucial roles in determining how high your video will rank on YouTube:
Use of a target Keyword
Retention of audience’s interest
High subscription & engagement
Use of target keywords
Ideally your video narrative should be built around a single keyword or phrase that you have to choose wisely. After you’ve chosen the keyword, make sure that each content of your video uses them. The title, description, tags, and actual video material are the individual content of your video. This way, you’ll add your keyword throughout the video to make it easier for YouTube to comprehend what the video is about and as a result rank it higher.
Optimize your video title
The title of your video should have the keyword or phrase placed as far to the left as possible, because YouTube reads from left to right. For example, if you have made a food video and want that to appear when people search for “healthy breakfast” a YouTube-optimized video title might be “Healthy Breakfast to improve fitness.” A compelling title with the right keyword boosts interest level and viewability.
Optimize your video description
Include variations of your keyword throughout the video description, in addition to the title optimization, so that YouTube is able to tell what the video is about, just by looking at the title and description.
Use tags intelligently
Tags help videos to get discovered by the viewers. Tags are embedded in the source code that help videos surface when viewers search YouTube. Use the chosen keyword or phrase as the first tag and the variations of the same keyword for the rest of your tags. This helps YouTube comprehend the video in a better way. You may take the guide below for choosing other tags:
Any LSI keywords.
Any words that describe the content of the video.
Brand-related and channel tags.
Retention of audience’s interest
The length of time your viewers are engaged with your video is referred to as audience retention. Long view rates for videos will rank higher in YouTube’s algorithm since they demonstrate that your video is engaging, relevant, and produces excellent user experience.
To maintain excellent viewers’ retention, keep your video focused on the topic from beginning to end. This will prevent viewers from clicking away after the video has begun and will improve your YouTube ranking as a result of this.
High subscription & engagement
Your video’s ranking on YouTube is also determined by how users interact with it – how many likes, comments, shares, and subscriptions you have. The more engagement your video generates, the higher it will rank on YouTube. So, it’s important to encourage viewers to like, comment, and subscribe to your videos. An effective way to boost your YouTube video engagement is by sharing your video on other platforms, such as social media and blog posts. With greater engagement, YouTube will recognize that your video is more relevant to the viewers and will give it a higher ranking.
Conclusion-
There you are – all tricks and tips to boost your YouTube video ranking. It may seem like a lot to consider for each piece of YouTube content you create, but once you’ve identified your main keyword and phrase, the process will be much easier. These approaches can help you improve the viewability of your YouTube channel and individual videos with practice.
Source- Fluidscapes We are one of the best digital marketing companies in India that provides online reputation management services to all types of organizations. We assist businesses to stay on top of the game by leveraging the latest technologies and breakthroughs in marketing strategies and business processes. Want to grow your business, even more, get in touch with us and we’ll tell you how.
Forecasting is an important task to predict the outcome of a process. It takes into account the historical data, the current position, and some variables as inputs to some mathematical tools to derive the result.
Forecasting plays a crucial role in marketing as the result reflects demand, competition, trends, drawbacks, and improvements needed about a product or service. Since the result drives a company to undertake the right measures, it should have a high degree of accuracy. However, accuracy in forecasting may vary widely as it is a factor of the purity of data and the number of variables.
SEO Forecasting, and why it Is Important.
SEO forecasting maintains a similar purpose and conditions. It allows you to generate forecasts such as future traffic levels and traffic values. It works by assuming that historical trends will probably repeat themselves and accordingly suggests that you manage resources, prioritize SEO efforts, and make modifications before it’s too late.
SEO forecasting can help with sales or predict the future impact of business. It clearly shows that there is a direct connection between SEO goals (ranking, etc.) and organizational goals. Google is the single most important source of the traffic to websites. For the average site, Google contributes 57.8% of overall referral traffic (10x the traffic that Facebook drives to the average site).
For people new to digital marketing, here is a brief understanding of SEO.
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a combination of multiple methods for organic traffic growth to the website of a business to boost sales. Following are the methods to highlight how SEO efforts are linked with the tangible sales results:
Ranking improvement
Traffic improvement
Increased conversations
Increased sales
SEO Forecasting helps businesses save money
The use of a reliable forecasting model can ensure higher organic search and SEO traffic at a cheaper price than paid search.
Only two pieces of information are required. The average CPC is the first. This is a useful metric because businesses usually know how much they’re spending on paid search. The second metric is Potential Search Visibility, which is the demand for your product/service based on your current ranking.
How does SEO Forecasting work?
Marketers commonly use tools such as Google Analytics or Google Search Console to estimate SEO potential of a website. Then, using that information, they create a formula to predict traffic volume for the next year or another time period.
Marketers can run scripts that anticipate monthly traffic increase for their website and their competitors’ websites using tools like Ahrefs or Moz. There are other scripts as well that can forecast future traffic value, and indicate the amount of money a company would save by ranking for keywords organically rather than paying for traffic.
SEO data forecasting strategy
For firms wishing to concentrate on their SEO efforts, Google Ads is a wise investment. Search engine optimization is a long-term investment that can result in exponential growth. The return on investment of search engine optimization (SEO ROI) is calculated using the below formula.
ROI from SEO = (Gain from Investment – Cost of Investment) / Cost of Investment.
Following are the steps of SEO strategies
Step 1: Estimate the search volume for top keywords or phrases
Step 2: Find your current ranking positions
Step 3: Estimate Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
Step 4: Estimate how competitive the keywords you chose are
Step 5: Calculate potential traffic
Step 6: Estimate profits and timing
An SEO strategy can provide you an indication of the possible SEO ROI. Companies look at search engine rankings, organic website traffic, and target completions when measuring SEO’s return on investment.
SEO Forecasting is never a set-it-and-forget-it function due to many changeable factors. You should update forecasts at short intervals to include the effects of the recent changes. That way, you can assure higher SEO potential with more accuracy.
Source- Fluidscapes We are one of the best digital marketing companies in India that provides online reputation management services to all types of organizations. We assist businesses to stay on top of the game by leveraging the latest technologies and breakthroughs in marketing strategies and business processes. Want to grow your business, even more, get in touch with us and we’ll tell you how.
Marketing is all about trust-building. Also, trust gets developed through integrity. So marketing is a function of integrity. Experienced marketers know that, which is why they want to make sure that a multifaceted marketing campaign speaks in the same voice and tone.
Trust, confidence, loyalty – they take time to build but take no or little time to break. Your big-budget advertising may not yield the preferred result if you don’t have control over all channels. People’s perception of a brand may take a hit if the brand story isn’t consistent with different media.
When it comes to digital marketing the risk is more, as new platforms keep coming frequently and people express their minds readily and freely. Average people have presences on multiple platforms and can pick up some elements of doubts from some source, only to disseminate them across different channels.
This is a concern for marketers. These ambushes harm the brand equity and gift opportunities to the competitors. What’s the solution?
Here comes the need for Integrated Digital Marketing that tells the same compelling story across the platforms in their specific formats to ensure unwavering branding. This works well to eliminate chances of doubts from the minds of potential customers.
What is Integrated Digital Marketing?
The whole of digital marketing can be broken down into three categories – paid, owned, and earned media strategies. Each method or tactic belongs to any one of these three categories. An integrated digital marketing campaign presents a holistic approach that essentially combines the paid, owned, and earned digital marketing strategies to ensure a seamless 360 degree branding.
What are paid, owned, and earned digital strategies?
While paid, owned, and earned digital channels differ from each other in nature and tactics, their end goal is the same – to meet the business objectives (branding and sales promotion) through rendering digital business transformation.
Paid channels
Paid digital channels are the digital marketing channels that promote inbound marketing, which is payable to businesses. There are multiple types of paid media such as PPC, display ads, social media ads, Search Engine marketing, offline ads, etc.
Paid campaigns are aided by Google ads to find the right platforms (third-party platforms) to target potential customers.
Owned channels
Owned digital channels are all digital marketing activities that are fully under the control of the business enterprises. Examples of owned channels are company websites, content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, remarketing, etc.
Most owned channels are big facilitators for inbound marketing through organic search. Thanks to the power of social media platforms and content marketing, there is always a flow of inbound traffic to the company websites.
Earned channels
Earned channels in digital marketing include activities that lead to word-of-mouth marketing through mention of your brand during the conversations among other people. This is a powerful process of brand promotion that occurs naturally and gets traction by press releases, search engines results, social media marketing, review sites, new model or feature announcement, etc. that leads to inbound marketing.
Benefits of Integrated Digital Marketing
Greater visibility of the brand – Integrated digital marketing strategies by a good digital agency that fit perfectly with all channels enhance brand visibility and awareness.
Brand familiarity across the channels – People often access digital media through multiple touchpoints. It’s a big positive if they find a brand at every channel they visit using different devices, but it’s also very very important to maintain consistency in voice and tone. Changes may occur from time to time but it’s not recommended to revamp your brand’s voice and tone too often. A good digital marketing agency with an integrated digital marketing approach will advise you to be consistent with the voice and tone of your brand.
Less cost and increased efficiency – Instead of creating a different marketing mix for different channels you can simply repurpose the content. This saves you money and also maintains the same voice and tone across channels.
Source- Fluidscapes We are one of the best digital marketing companies in India that provides online reputation management services to all types of organizations. We assist businesses to stay on top of the game by leveraging the latest technologies and breakthroughs in marketing strategies and business processes. Want to grow your business, even more, get in touch with us and we’ll tell you how.
Too many choices sometimes create confusion and leave one undecided without the help of a guide. With the pouring of new techniques, digital marketing strategies might seem a little too many for small business owners. As a proponent of using digital marketing for sustainable business growth, we take it upon ourselves to simplify the matter and show the road ahead.
All methods or techniques of digital marketing belong to either of the two broad categories – organic marketing and paid marketing. Having a clear concept about organic marketing vs. paid marketing helps you to formulate the right marketing strategy for your product or service that realizes your overall marketing goals that also fits your budget.
What is Organic Digital Marketing?
Organic is what is done or produced naturally. So, organic digital marketing is all those online marketing methods that employ natural, authentic, and value based tactics to promote brands and develop business over a period of time.
Organic marketing, mainly results in inbound marketing, has no cost for advertisement or for publishing. You just have to register your website with Google search console or sign up for Bing or Yahoo indexing, totally free of cost. This is done because the online searches that form the main source for organic search traffic happen mainly on these leading search engines. Another source for organic traffic is social media; there are many social media channels and completely free of cost.
What is Paid Marketing?
Online paid marketing (we may also call it inorganic marketing) refers to paid ads and paid messages that are usually meant for targeted audiences. This is in sharp contrast to organic marketing, which are not targeted to specific groups.
Paid ads usually come with CTA (call to action) buttons, urging audiences, potential customers to act as desired by the advertisers such as order for the product or buying a virtual training contract, etc. Paid posts on Facebook or Twitter also have latent CTA prompts in the wordings.
You can’t compare the efficacy of organic marketing with that of paid marketing because the purposes of the two are different. While the paid digital marketing campaigns are designed to drive quick sales, organic marketing aims at creating awareness and developing brand equity over a period of time. Therefore, if budget permits it makes more sense to include both types in your overall marketing strategy.
Organic marketing is a big friend of startups
Most startups have to deal with two types of pressure in the initial period – the lack of funds and creating the right buzz about their venture. The two problems are actually interlinked and can be addressed successfully by taking a calibrated approach to organic marketing practices as follows:
Social Media Marketing:
This is the easiest, cheapest, but very effective marketing strategy for the startups that requires nothing but creating a page for their business on various social media platforms and inviting their friends and relatives.
As the company grows, start-ups can keep posting information about the company and the products and services it offers, examples being events, celebrations, achievements, new help desk numbers, etc. There’s a strong chance that organic reach will grow as friends and family spread the word within their circles, helping businesses gain more exposure and word-of-mouth promotion. We provide social media services for our clients, check out in detail.
Search engine optimization
Searching for information about businesses, products, and services is the most common and accurate means of finding the information. This implies that startups must maintain correct information on their website and ensure that there are sufficient hyperlinks linking to Google search results.
Organic keywords, keyword analysis, backlinking, link building, and link popularity are just a few of the main parts of SEO that every start-up should be aware of in order to organically position their businesses at the top of search engines like Google and Bing. Let our SEO experts take care of your search engine optimization.
Quality Link Building
The acquisition of backlinks from third-party websites, which deliver quality traffic to the website, is an important SEO practise. It also helps to raise the ranking of the website as a reliable and trustworthy source of information. Link building is a crucial SEO technique that necessitates a great deal of knowledge.
Online advertisement for free
There are numerous web portals that allow users to submit classifieds and advertisements for free. These portals are generally packed, so getting excellent reach may be difficult; but, given that they are free, it is always worth a shot. Many complementary firms would search these portals when they post their ads, and this may lead to them learning about your start-up, giving you a marketing advantage.
Complementary business
Startups can also make use of free advertisement sites for their businesses by following complementary businesses on social media. This can happen if a startup creates a Twitter or Facebook account and follows other businesses in the same category actively by liking their posts and interacting with them. This would make the startup visible to its followers and generate interest in them about itself.
Remarketing
You shouldn’t expect that all visitors to your website will readily buy your product, contract offer, or whatever. But they definitely leave an opportunity for future business through this organic marketing practice called remarketing. Remarketing entails acquiring the cookie ID of your visitors (with their consent) to communicate to them about new products or offers, value or feature additions, etc. This is considered to be an effective method to increase sales conversion rate against no customer acquisition cost.
What should be your best approach?
Organic marketing is very profitable over a long trajectory, starting from the very beginning or even before the launch of a startup. Although the processes involved incur minimum or no cost, there is an operational cost in terms of 24×7 monitoring of the online media, analysis of data through multiple tools, creating marketing mix, and proper management of the whole exercise. This itself is a full-time occupation of a team of experts. Initially, you may start with your social media account as said above, but if you really want to establish fast as a brand without spending high amounts towards advertising, it makes sense to let your organic marketing be handled by a specialist organic digital marketing agency unless you are an expert yourself.
Source- Fluidscapes We are one of the best digital marketing companies in India that provides online reputation management services to all types of organizations. We assist businesses to stay on top of the game by leveraging the latest technologies and breakthroughs in marketing strategies and business processes. Want to grow your business, even more, get in touch with us and we’ll tell you how.
COVID-19 has pushed us to the edge. Consumption has hit an all-time low. The atmosphere is pressing down on the small businesses to fight for survival. A very grim situation, no doubt, but there is a ray of hope – the experts are forecasting a turnaround.
And the vehicle of the turnaround will be digital technology. India is in an advantageous position due to its drive for digitization, which is manifested in the rise of digital payment and digital marketing. During the lockdown when everything was stopped, most of the households ran on digital marketing and digital payment systems, to a large extent.
In the US, data shows that 87 percent of consumers search online to buy something. That’s a huge online shopping trend. I haven’t got similar statistics from an Indian perspective, but definitely, that should be a goal setter for us here. Small & medium business owners, if you are still not convinced, here are some compelling reasons why you should invest more in digital marketing in order to recuperate from this dire situation.
#1. Online is the biggest marketplace. Every day it’s getting bigger.
More people are online these days than ever before. That makes unlimited visibility and unlimited scope for your business. With sensible campaigning, you’ll be in the reckoning pretty fast.
Being where your clients and your current customers are is one of the most important tenets of doing business. Everyone’s customers are online right now. Why lose out on grabbing this opportunity to reach out to them through digital marketing channels?
#2. It’s so affordable!
It’s affordable, but that doesn’t mean its efficacy and conversion rate is low. Traditional marketing channels such as TV, radio, print media ads, direct emails, etc. have high value outlays, but their outputs may not be as high. In comparison, the cost of digital marketing is much lower (a fraction of the cost of TV or newspaper ads) but its output is high and measurable. Investing more in digital marketing during the crisis time makes better business sense and a good return on investment.
#3. Establish quickly as a brand
There is a subtle difference between being known and becoming a brand. The advanced analytics says Ad campaigns can make you well-known, but unless you muster a sufficient amount of user experience, you are not a brand. Digital marketing scores much higher than traditional marketing to make your new product well-known as well as generate discussions, comments, reviews, etc. to convert it into a brand.
#4. Stay competitive and gain market share
The power of digital marketing is ever-increasing and provides you with unexpected opportunities. For example, it brings you useful information about your competitors and your position in the market, which helps you to stay competitive and increase your market share. However, this may require you to adopt some cost cutting strategies to inject some extra funds into operation without taking out a loan.
#5. Ability to build a brand affinity
Brand affinity is the bonding or loyalty of customers for a brand. It’s created when the customers feel that the brand shares common values with them. Several digital marketing strategies are built around trust and affinity building around the brand. You can identify potential loyal customers, say on social media, and start building friendship through honest and useful messaging and sharing common values. Building brand affinity helps spread brand awareness through words of mouth and personal networking to the wider audience.
#6. A level playing field for the small businesses
Many large enterprises run on high brand name, lack of competition, and lack of awareness of people. They also become slow in reacting to changes in the market situations. Small businesses can utilize digital marketing to find and exploit the weaknesses of large brands through creating a suitable marketing mix. Good knowledge of the product and the target audience can help them eat into the shares of larger companies.
#7. You get a measurable ROI
Digital marketing involves specific and targeted strategies that provide reliable metrics to determine what is working, how well it’s working, and what is not working. This makes a small business easily measure the result of its web marketing strategy and make changes time-to-time for more specific outcomes.
The numerous opportunities in digital marketing are making it an integral part of any business. Although the MSMEs and startups reap the maximum benefits from it, even the large conglomerates are using digital marketing platforms for a variety of purposes.
The best part of digital marketing is that you can begin with a small budget, say by creating a dedicated landing page. The purpose is to gather inbound internet traffic from a certain campaign.
Then after, keep an eye on how many individuals are arriving at the landing page. You can also see how many people bounced (and at what point on the page), how many people engaged with the full page, and how many people became purchasers – all of these are ROI indicators that Google Analytics can measure.
A/B tests can also be applied to determine which online marketing strategies, copy, calls-to-action, and page layouts are the most effective based on real-world customer interactions.
The exams might help you figure out if you need to narrow your focus. Or if it’s preferable to make your landing page online content shorter in order to increase conversions. Or whether putting extra call-to-action buttons above the fold can assist increase conversions.
Source- Fluidscapes We are one of the best digital marketing companies in India that provides online reputation management services to all types of organizations. We assist businesses to stay on top of the game by leveraging the latest technologies and breakthroughs in marketing strategies and business processes. Want to grow your business, even more, get in touch with us and we’ll tell you how.
