Dos and don’ts of PPC advertising for universities

If you’re a marketing manager of a post-secondary education institution (or a PPC agency working on its behalf), then you already know that universities SEO services Miami, colleges and similar organizations present specific challenges (and opportunities) for online advertisers SEO Services Miami.

I don’t know where we go from here, but I fear more sites will test the algorithmic waters and add those popups back. And it’s hard to blame them.Over the years, my advertising agency has had the pleasure of working with a number of these institutions, and we’ve learned (sometimes the hard way!) some important lessons SEO Services Miami.

This is in response to Google mislabeling pages as not mobile-friendly over the past 24- hours in the mobile search results. Even AMP pages were labeled as not being mobile-friendly. John Mueller said that “this is a bug on our side” and Google is working on fixing it. Here are a few dos and don’ts of running PPC advertising for the education vertical market SEO Services Miami: So, we have a situation where an algorithm that should impact URLs employing mobile popups is not living up to expectations, and a marketing tactic that drives conversion was removed from many sites. 

1. Do advertise year-round

At most universities and colleges SEO Services Miami, admission activity peaks and falls at predictable times of the year. Accordingly, most educational institutions bump up Instead, your goal is to start a conversation and develop a relationship. Direct the student to relevant information. Give him or her the opportunity to engage with your school and learn more about your programs SEO Services Miami their online advertising when application deadlines grow near. And that makes sense SEO company Miami.

Below, I’ll cover the impact, the non-impact, the natural side effects of a preannounced Google algorithm update, examples of popups and interstitials, and other interesting notes. So join me on a ride through mobile popup land. But that doesn’t mean SEO company Miami you should shutter your advertising during less busy periods, for several reasons:

• Lead time. The lead time for acquiring new students is long, and students can start researching their options at any time of year SEO company Miami My research took me across many sites, both large and small, across many categories and locations. It was fascinating to see which sites raised the white flag and stopped using popups or interstitials and which ones stood their ground and kept them. It was also eye-opening to analyze the various ways websites employed popups and interstitials in this new world (if they kept them). It was enlightening, to say the least. Therefore, you want your online advertising to be active year-round, whether it’s a month to application deadline, six months SEO company Miami or more.
• Differences between undergraduate and graduate programs. Building on the prior point, we’ve seen some differences in application activity between undergraduate and graduate programs SEO company Miami. Undergraduate programs seem to follow more regular ebbs and flows for example, many publishers removed mobile popups and interstitials as January 10, 2017, approached. They simply didn’t want to get hit or test the algorithmic waters. I saw this a lot as I was collecting sites that were employing mobile popups., while graduate programs are less SEO company Miami predictable.
• Branding and remarketing. For the purposes of branding and remarketing, it’s never wise to completely drop SEO services Miami off the radar by pausing these types of PPC campaigns entirely In this respect, the education vertical is much like B2B marketing. The sales process is long and multi-faceted, and the goal is to build trust, prove expertise and provide information — not to make an immediate sale. If you do, it can be a steep climb to get back to where you were SEO service Miami.

2. Do bid on brand

Some clients still resist bidding on brand terms because they think SEO will take care of brand marketing for them.

Of course, SEO is important for brand marketing. But it’s not a complete solution. Bidding on brand terms not only gives you SEO service Miami greater control over your messaging, but it also allows you to precisely control location targeting and landing pages.

Further, even if you choose not to bid on your brand, there’s no guarantee your competitors won’t SEO services Miami As a result, competitor ads could display above your organic listings.

Given that brand clicks are usually cheaper than non-branded clicks (often substantially), bidding on brand for SEO services Miami universities and colleges is a no-brainer.

3. Do use sitelinks wisely

When you have clearly professional SEO Miami defined degrees and programs (e.g., B.A. in Economics, M.A. of Commerce, B.A. in Communications), it’s tempting to use these degree and program titles in professional SEO Miami sitelinks.

Unfortunately, this approach isn’t very helpful to your audience professional SEO Miami.

Think about the above ad professional SEO Miami. If a student is searching for “B.A. in Communications,” then how likely are they to be interested in degrees on January 12, I noticed what I believed were the first signs of impact, and I wrote a post to document my findings. My plan was to keep adding findings to that post as I came across more and more impact.

Well, that didn’t turn out very well. After some initial movement, there seemed to be very little impact (if any at all) political science SEO company New York, business admin, operations management or accounting and finance? Not very, I suspect SEO company New York.

As you can see, these sitelinks are much more relevant to students searching for communications.

These sitelinks SEO services New York are all directly relevant to the “BA in Communications” search. They direct the student to information about internships, open houses, the industry and more info SEO services New York.

4. Do bid on the ‘wrong’ terms

Most prospective university and SEO services New York college students don’t know exactly what degree or program they “should” be searching for. They may know the area in which they want to focus, but they have no idea whether it’s a bachelor’s degree, masters degree, arts program, science program, specialization within a broader program or something else entirely.

Consequently, you might need to use the “wrong” keywords to lead students in the right direction. So you might bid on “creative writing,” even if “creative” isn’t in the title of your writing program. Or you might use “marketing communications degree,” even if the title of your degree is “marketing” and “marketing communications” is a sub-specialization professional SEO New York.

As of today, I’m still not seeing widespread impact. Again, many of the URLs across the domains I’m tracking are ranking exactly where they did prior to the rollout of the mobile popup algorithm. Therefore, I’m officially calling the mobile popup algorithm a dud. Sure, that can change if Google strengthens the algorithm or refines it, but for now, it’s not doing very much. You have to give yourself the latitude to get creative with keywords, while being careful to not mislead via your ad message Professional SEO New York.

5. Don’t put buildings in display ads

When you have a beautiful tree-lined campus, historic (or iconic) buildings and flashy, high-tech research centers, it’s tempting to feature these images in your display ads. But no matter professional SEO New York how gorgeous the image, we find we get better results by as a result, we saw a 17 percent lift in conversions!

At the end of the day, people relate to people more than professional SEO New York buildings.

6. Don’t leave landing pages unfocused

For some reason, it’s easier to get excited about pre-click ad components (e.g., copy, offers, keywords) than post-click components (e.g., landing pages). But for a successful PPC campaign, you need both.

Perhaps that’s why it’s not uncommon to SEO company New York see poorly designed landing pages in the education vertical.

As you can see, this page has multiple calls to action and lots of distractions.

(I’ll let you in on a secret. In fact, this isn’t a landing page at all. It’s a web page. A web page our client had to use while waiting for their landing pages to be developed. If you’re in the industry, you’ll know how this can happen!)

This landing page has all the hallmarks of a good landing page. It’s clear, concise, contains a relevant image and a simple path to conversion. Most importantly, it also contains one call to action.

7. Don’t run the same campaign everywhere

Most universities have clear data about where they draw their students from. For example, one of our university clients is located in New York, and most of their students come from the Tri-State Area. They draw a lower number of students from nearby surrounding states, and the remaining are widely spread across the US.

Therefore, we run the bulk of our campaigns in the Tri-State Area and expand to other states and regions as supported by the school’s data. But in each case, we carefully adapt our messaging. Because, as you might expect, messaging that works in the Tri-State Area may not work as well in California, for example.

8. Don’t build your program around student application submissions

It’s tempting to make application submissions the focus of your PPC campaigns. This is understandable — after all, applications are the end goal.

But no student is going to be persuaded to fill out an application by a single PPC ad.

Final thoughts

Keep these dos and don’ts in mind the next time you pick up a PPC account in the education vertical. You may avoid some of the lessons of the school of hard knocks.

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Google has confirmed that they have temporarily disabled the ‘not mobile-friendly’ label in the mobile search results due to a bug. John Mueller of Google said that Google has turned “the label off for now” but it “should be ok soon.”

It’s not often that Google announces an algorithm update in advance. But when they do, not only can webmasters prepare for that update, we can also track its rollout once Google pulls the trigger. That provides a rare opportunity to gauge the impact of the algorithm update and determine what its effects are.

That’s exactly what I’ve been doing since January 10, 2017.

In August of 2016, Google announced that they would be rolling out an update on January 10, 2017, that could impact URLs employing intrusive mobile popups or interstitials. For example, if a URL presented an interstitial that covered a substantial part of the content, then that URL could be demoted in the mobile search results. The web as a whole cheered, as many users were extremely frustrated by aggressive mobile popups.

So, as January approached, many SEOs, webmasters and business owners wondered what the actual impact would be. Would there be mass casualties, minor bumps in the algorithmic road or something in between? Based on Google’s announcement, you would think that sites employing intrusive popups or interstitials would have gotten smoked by the algorithm. That would make sense, but when you’re dealing in an algorithmic world, the devil is in the details.

Preparing for the mobile popup algorithm

As the rollout neared, I had many questions. Would the update actually work? How extreme would it be? Would there be loopholes? How would it impact branded versus non-branded queries? Would large-scale sites be impacted as much as smaller sites? And so on and so forth.

That’s why I prepared for the update by collecting as many sites using mobile popups or interstitials as possible. My goal was to benchmark those sites and then gauge the impact as the mobile popup algorithm rolled out. I’m now tracking close to 70 domains on my mobile popup list — and those sites are across verticals, including news publishers, entertainment, sports, e-commerce retailers, bloggers, music and more.

Starting on January 10, I began checking my list twice per day to see which sites were still breaking the rules and which ones weren’t. And for the ones breaking the new Google mobile popup law, how much negative impact would they see? Would they see any impact at all?

My travels along the popup algorithm trail

And of course, I was able to see many different types of ads and interstitials, including benign newsletter signups, aggressive ads that take over your screen, autoplay video in popups, broken ads in popups, and even malware and malicious downloads from ads in popups. There were times I felt like I needed battle armor while visiting some sites.

January 10, 2017: The rollout begins

When the rollout began, I was excited to check my list and determine if there was any impact. As you can guess, there wasn’t much to report on the first day. The algorithm had to fully roll out, so I began checking my list twice per day to gauge the impact. And as I was checking the mobile SERPs, I ended up finding even more sites using mobile popups and interstitials. So my list was naturally growing as time went on.

I kept updating my post with disclaimers about the lack of impact I was seeing. I was floored. I thought for sure the domains I was tracking would see some movement, but I was wrong. I checked twice per day, only to see many of the URLs from those domains ranking exactly where they did prior to the rollout.

Examples of popups and interstitials still in use

You might be wondering what I’m seeing when checking sites. Well, I’ve seen it all since January 10: newsletter signups, popups on scroll, delayed popups, multi-ad interstitials, autoplay video, broken popups, malware, malicious downloads, multiple popups on one page, and so on.

Without revealing the sites, here is a potpourri of popups and interstitials I have come across during my travels. These are all from URLs that currently rank highly for competitive keywords — and ranked there before the algorithm update rolled out. Also, the desktop and mobile rankings are equivalent. In other words, I’m not seeing a drop in the mobile SERPs when compared to desktop, which would happen if the mobile popup algorithm were impacting rankings.

I’ll see you on the other side. That’s where I’ll cover the true impact of the mobile popup algorithm — and it might not be what you’re thinking.

The true impact of the mobile popup algorithm

Well, the true impact has nothing to do with mobile rankings being impacted, a slide in mobile traffic or anything related to SEO. Instead, it has everything to do with the reaction of publishers to the news that the algorithm was going to roll out.

This also included sites removing the popups after January 10. Not every company knew about the algorithm update, so some were late to the game. My guess is that the algorithm got on their radar based on news of the rollout, so those publishers had a knee-jerk reaction and simply removed their popups without gauging the actual impact. They basically trusted that the mobile popup algorithm was working without evidence of it actually working.

And I get that. If you’re not neck-deep in SEO, you might not be familiar with the gray area of algorithms, and you might not know that some algorithm updates simply don’t work as expected. For those people, they just knew it was rolling out, that it could potentially negatively impact their rankings and traffic, and they pulled the popups and interstitials from their sites.

But like I said earlier, the devil is in the details. Again, I’m not seeing any widespread impact from the mobile popup algorithm as I write this post.

High risk, high reward: Will Google turn up the dial?

And here’s the rub. The publishers I mentioned earlier that stood their ground and refused to remove their mobile popups and interstitials have braved the mighty tsunami that never arrived. They stood on the beach facing a powerful surge of water that would surely suck the mobile life out of their sites… and nothing happened.

But that’s for now.

Google can absolutely turn up the dial and strengthen the mobile popup algorithm at any time. And if they do, then those sites using mobile popups or interstitials could get smoked. But that’s a big could.

Now, I’m not saying mobile popups are a good thing. I actually can’t stand most of them, and users overall hate them. That should be enough to rid them from the web, but they do work conversion-wise (unfortunately). So, based on what I explained in this post, I’ll provide some closing points below.

Key points

• Although there hasn’t been widespread impact yet, Google can turn up the dial at any time. I know many people are still hoping that happens; and if it does, sites using mobile popups or interstitials can get hit. Remember, high risk, high reward.
• Publishers are still figuring out ways to push the envelope with mobile popups in order to determine which formats and techniques will get hit and which ones won’t. But based on my research, there’s very little negative impact overall so far. I recommend watching my initial post for more updates.
• Never simply take Google’s word for it. Track and test updates for yourself. I’m glad I decided to gather close to 70 sites using mobile popups and interstitials. That enabled me to test how strong the algorithm was and if it was doing what it was supposed to do.
• Mobile popups and interstitials are horrible user experience-wise, but they perform well conversion-wise. Based on the lack of impact from the mobile popup algorithm, I fear we will see more sites testing the waters and adding them back. It pains me to say that… but the lack of impact is clear.

Summary: The waiting continues

When January 10 arrived, I was eager to gauge the impact of the mobile popup algorithm. But what I wasn’t prepared for was to see very little happen. And that’s exactly what occurred while checking many sites still using mobile popups and interstitials.

Moving forward, keep an eye on my Twitter feed and my original findings post. I will keep checking my list, and checking it twice, in order to see if the mobile popup algorithm is being naughty or nice.

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Donald Trump Just Gave the 7 Biggest Banks a $35.4 Billion Boost In Value

As promised, President Donald Trump took his first step toward pulling back the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform act after just 13 days in office. And bank investors cheered Harvard SEO consulting.

Trump signed the executive order Friday, which calls for the Treasury secretary to review SEO services Miami the sweeping set of reforms created after the 2008-9 financial crisis. The news helped send shares of the seven biggest banks by market capitalization best SEO company on the S&P 500 up by $35.4 billion. That's a 3% jump from the seven companies' combined market cap of $1.23 trillion, with Morgan Stanley leading the pack on a 5.6% jump SEO service New York.

Other big banks benefitting from the order include Wells Fargo, which gained 2.2%; Bank of America professional SEO, 2.5%; Citigroup, 3%; Goldman Sachs, 4.3%; and U.S. Bancorp, 1.2%.

Investors are expecting banks to benefit from Trump's lower corporate taxes and looser bank regulations, while Trump's fiscal stimulus package is also expected to push interest rates up higher — another boon for bank stocks. The Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund SEO company, an exchange-traded fund tracking the industry, has risen 18.6% since Trump won the election professional SEO.

Other financial services stocks such as Visa SEO services Miami, Invesco, and Synchrony Financial all ranked on the top 10 performing S&P 500 stocks Friday SEO service New York.

As of 3 p.m. Friday, all of the seven bank stocks, aside from Bank of America, have erased its losses from a week earlier, when Trump's ban on professional SEO immigration from seven Muslim-majority nations weighed on markets.

Still, while banks cheer potential changes to Dodd-Frank, they (and certainly Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein) are less optimistic about Trump's immigration ban SEO service Miami. Blankfein wrote a letter denouncing Trump's executive order on immigration earlier this week, adding that it could disrupt operations. To see what other banks had to say, including Wells Fargo and BofA, click hereCarl Icahn, an advisor, and long-time friend to Donald Trump, doesn't seem to have any trouble getting a loan these days. He might want to tell President Donald Trump that professional SEO.

On Friday, Trump started his promised roll back of Dodd-Frank, the banking reform best SEO Miami that was passed in the wake of the financial crisis. Trump called the law a "disaster" and vowed to do "a big number" on financial regulations earlier this week. Trump also said Friday that he had first-hand evidence that Dodd-Frank was not working Harvard SEO consulting: His friends can't get loans.

“We expect to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank, because frankly I have so many people, friends of mine, that have nice businesses and they can’t borrow money SEO company Miami,” Trump said in announcing the review of Dodd-Frank on Friday. “They just can’t get any money because the banks just won’t let them borrow because of the rules and regulations in Dodd-Frank.”

However, plenty of Trump's friends and advisors seem to be doing just fine when it comes to borrowing SEO services. Icahn's company had its debt rating cut to junk in early 2016, but that hasn't seemed to impede its ability to get a loan. In the first nine months of last year , Icahn Enterprises took out nearly $400 million in additional debt. In all SEO company Miami, Icahn Enterprises borrowing has risen to nearly $13 billion, up nearly 50% from where it was before the passage of Dodd-Frank, the financial reform bill that Trump says is killing the ability of banks to lend SEO services, as Trump noted on Friday, to his friends.

Also having no problem borrowing, it seems Harvard SEO consulting, is Stephen Schwarzman SEO services Miami, the private equity executive who chairs Trump's Strategic and Advisory Forum and met Trump on Friday along with other business leaders. In September, Blackstone, Schwarzman's firm, secured $100 million in debt for a single building at 44 Wall Street, located just steps from Trump's own downtown office tower at 40 Wall Street. Schwarzman may have got the idea to take out the loan against the building from Trump SEO company Miami. A year earlier, a Trump entity borrowed $160 million against Trump's Wall Street building best SEO company.

In all, Blackstone's loans payable rose by $1.1 billion in the first nine months 2016. The company now has just over $12 billion in debt. In mid-2015, Seaworld, which was bought out by Blackstone in 2009, and is still the aquatic amusement park operator's biggest owner, took out a new $280 million term loan SEO services New York.

U.S. commercial and industrial loans took a hit after the financial crisis, but have since climbed substantially professional SEO. Among the businesses obtaining loans without apparent distress: Mary Barra, the CEO of General Motors, who was sitting next to Trump when he made the comment about his friends borrowing woes on Friday Professional SEO. Last year, General Motors borrowed $2 billion to in order to shore up one of its pension funds. A spokesperson at GM at the time of the transaction called borrowing conditions favorable.

Then there's ABC Supply Co., co-founded by Trump economic advisor Diane Hendricks SEO services Miami, which was able to borrow just over $1 billion in 2013, nearly three years after Dodd-Frank was passed. The company has continued to be able to finance a string of deals including a $670 million purchase in November of dry wall and ceiling tile maker L&W Supply.

Last year, Fortune found that Trump and his businesses have taken on more than $1 billion in debt. That amount includes a $170 million line of credit on Trump's recently opened Washington Hotel professional SEO.

In the past, Trump has said that Dodd-Frank is killing small business lending. But there isn't much evidence of that either best SEO Miami. Commercial and industrial loans have been one of the fastest growing segments of lending in the past few years. At the end of Sept. 2016, the last the figure is available, the volume of C&I loans outstanding from U.S. banks had risen to $1.7 trillion, up $250 billion from two years before SEO services.

Trump may indeed have some friends who are having trouble getting loans right now. But that may say more about the company Trump keeps, and less about Dodd-Frank Harvard SEO consulting.

What every entrepreneur should learn from the slow death of Google+

Tech giant Google (GOOG, +0.37%) quietly announced this week that users would no longer need a Google+ account to log into YouTube and eventually other Google sites as well. In addition, the site is breaking up into two pieces: Photos and Streams SEO services Miami, but that's a far cry from the market-leading integrated social platform that Google had wanted Google+ to be. Looking back SEO services, the news comes as no surprise given that Google’s answer to Facebook (FB, +0.11%) hasn’t exactly been a resounding success SEO Services New York.

Google+ has 300 million active monthly users compared to Facebook’s 1.4 billion, according to data compiled by Statista.com. that Others say it’s much lower at 4 million to 6 million, but whatever the real number, most analysts agree that Google+’s future isn’t bright SEO company.
As a user of Google+ myself, it’s not difficult to see why the idea has failed to live up to its promise. So below I highlight 3 of the biggest lessons every businessperson could learn from Google’s failed experiment Best SEO company.

Google+ was launched in 2011. By that time, Facebook had already become the dominant social media platform in the world, boasting 250 million active users. Facebook’s product was clearly ubiquitous and highly popular SEO services Miami. Yet Google thought it could convince millions of people to migrate to its own newborn social media site.

It’s possible Google+ could have developed a vastly superior product, but it didn’t. Its interface is clunky and less intuitive than Facebook SEO services New York; its mobile app equally uninspiring; most of all, it lacks a critical mass of active users necessary for a satisfying social media experience. More people have joined Google+ over the years but interaction amongst users is still much less robust than on Facebook. In other words, Facebook works because the community is already large and very active SEO company Miami.

To be fair, there was a time when Facebook had few users, too, but the crucial difference is that Facebook was relatively novel at the time. Also, it reportedly had a better user interface than its prime competitor MySpace, and a more innovative growth strategy, whereas Google+ has always been a less compelling clone of something people already have and with little else to propel it than the market muscle of Google Professional SEO.

Know who you are

A feature that differentiated Google+ from Facebook was its hybrid structure that allowed users to connect with professional SEO their friends but also follow complete strangers who could then follow them back - similar to Twitter (TWTR, -0.73%). That was a good concept except for two things: First, Facebook added a similar feature shortly after professional SEO, eliminating Google+’s prime competitive advantage. Second, it detracted from the intimacy that Facebook’s friend-based social media network provides Professional SEO.

Twitter is mostly a medium for quickly reaching a large number of users you don’t necessarily know, as well as their followers SEO consultant. Despite direct messaging and tweet-wars, followers aren’t really a network of ‘friends.’ While the lines between Twitter and Facebook are gradually blurring as the latter adds more features Professional SEO, Facebook still remains primarily a social platform for users who are at least tangentially connected, offering some security and closeness.

Google+ is both of these things and yet neither of them. It tried to meld two very distinct social media protocols, and in the process, created an identity crisis for itself SEO consultant

Don’t compromise your core business

Despite Google+ being a misfire, Google offers great products, especially its iconic search engine that accounts for 65% of the U.S. search market, according to digital measurement firm comScore professional SEO. Given that, the company should have protected the integrity of its core product at all costs. Instead, it gambled with it.

If I type in “Donald Trump” (to use an illustrative example) into Google, I may be looking for the latest news on the presidential hopeful SEO services Miami or maybe information on his real estate holdings, but what I’m definitely not looking for are my own posts on Google+ about Trump. And yet that is exactly what Google serves up, and not just deep inside the rankings, but on the first page SEO services New York.

Granted, this is apparently done to increase the SEO value of all Google+ posts, but it’s still inconvenient. Not only does it skew my search results but effectively forces me to sign out of Google in order to be able to run a proper search Professional SEO. That’s annoying for me but from Google’s perspective; it’s the exact opposite of what the company is aiming for, which is to keep you inside the Google universe at all times Harvard SEO consulting.

To be fair, this quirk was a lot worse a few years ago and Google seems to have minimized the intrusion of Google+ posts in search engine rankings since then, but the problem still remains. The point is if you have a flagship product, don’t tinker with it at the expense to promote another product.

S. Kumar is a tech and business commentator. He has worked in technology, media, and telecom investment banking. He does not own any shares of the companies mentioned in this article.

What Entrepreneurs Need to Know about SEO

Let’s be honest.

Online marketing is challenging. Every entrepreneur with a website has found this out at one point or another SEO services Miami

If you’re like most other entrepreneurs, you have poured tons of effort into your marketing efforts. You work on your content and your social media presence.

Only to realize that you’re not getting the results you want.

It happens to all of us.

Jacob Hagberg is the CEO of Orange Fox. He knows how much of a challenge online marketing can be for entrepreneurs. In this interview, he will provide some key insights on digital marketing and search engine optimization SEO services.

How did you get into digital marketing? Why did you decide to start a business that focused on digital marketing?

I am the luckiest man in the world and have tried to make the most out of every opportunity I have been given SEO services Miami. As an entrepreneurship major at the University of St. Thomas, I took a class called Entrepreneurship in Practice SEO services New York

Each student was required to find an internship under an entrepreneur or inside a startup. During my undergrad, I was operating a saltwater fish aquarium cleaning service and with a little encouragement from my father, I approached one of my clients. This was one of the best decisions of my life SEO services Miami

Curtis Nelson (formerly President of Carlson, TGI Fridays & Radisson Hotels) said, “yes” and some of the words of wisdom he shared included that “digital marketing was the way of the future”.

It may come as a surprise that a corporate executive would be interested in entrepreneurship SEO services New York but we developed our first successful digital property. A saltwater fish tank website that reviewed products and sold advertising.

How would you describe your company’s brand?

Orange Fox is a digital marketing agency built around the 4 values we would want in a business relationship: ROI, care, expertise and trust SEO services Miami

This means selling brands what they need, not what they want, turning down business that is not a good fit and doing what is right for the client instead of what is best for us Harvard SEO consulting

One of the biggest challenges for online entrepreneurs is increasing their traffic. What advice would you give them?

While tactics are always changing and every niche is different, there are 3 digital marketing strategies that have consistently worked: buy paid media, build a list, and optimize your website for search engines SEO services Chicago

The most important thing they can do is focus on finding a paid advertising channel like Google Adwords or Facebook Ads that they can scale SEO services Miami Do not be afraid to spend as long as it remains profitable and the business has the systems in place to handle the increase in sales volume.

Why is SEO important for new solopreneurs/entrepreneurs?

The truth is that SEO is only important to a certain degree for new businesses. They should be doing key things like optimizing their website’s SEO title tags and meta descriptions Harvard SEO consulting

After the business grows, the product matures and a profitable revenue stream is identified, then reinvest some of the profit into creating greater search engine visibility Harvard SEO consulting

If there was ONE SEO tip you could give for a person who wants to start a business, what would it be?

Do not underestimate the value of brand search. This is the accumulation of all the blood, sweat and tears an entrepreneur has poured into their business. This is commonly the least expensive and best converting traffic.

How would an entrepreneur/solopreneur know whether or not to outsource their digital marketing?

It is unlikely that a new business needs a full-time person that specializes in only one skill. Instead, they are more likely in search of a “unicorn”. This is a jack of all trades digital marketer that is well-rounded in search engine optimization, paid advertising, email marketing, SEO services Miami, content creation, analytics and conversion optimization.

This person’s skillset is best paired with a front-end website designer and/or back-end developer that understands user experience. Once your business is at scale, then start hiring the best in class for each channel in your digital marketing stack.

Conclusion

Let’s face it. If you’re an entrepreneur or solopreneurs who is working to build a business, you have to use digital marketing. Growing a viable online audience is critical to your efforts. Developing and implementing an effective digital marketing strategy will help you generate more leads and close more deals.