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Vital SEO First Steps For A New Website

April 18, 2019 • Featured, SEO 101 • 40
When you launch your first website, it can be quite daunting – you do all of that work, set it to live and nothing happens. But that’s okay because that is perfectly normal. However, if you don’t have the vital SEO first steps covered before you hit publish, there’s a chance that nothing will happen for a long time. Cover these key areas, however, and you have a better chance of starting to see organic traffic.

Understand what search engines look for

Before you design, write or sketch a single thing for your website, it is important to understand what search engines such as Google are looking for. By creating your website with these principles in mind, you have a better chance of catching their attention and getting that important traffic.
- Content – are you creating content that is relevant to what users are searching for?
- Performance – does your site load quickly and work properly? (If using WordPress avoid bloated code editors, like Visual Composure)
- Authority – do you have useful content linked to other authoritative sites (and are planning for other sites to eventually link to you)?
- User experience – is the site easy to use and navigate so users can get around?
Vital SEO first steps

With these principles in mind, you can then move onto looking at those vital SEO steps to use in the creation of the website to help cover these main areas and provide what search engines and, most importantly, users are looking for.

The domain name

Choosing a domain name isn’t as tricky as many would think. You will likely want to call the website after your business, but do you go for a .com, a .co.uk or one of the other variations? A .com website is considered the top level and is always desirable but if you can’t get it, a .co.uk website is great if you are based in the UK.

Do your keyword research

Keyword research and analysis is something to learn from the start because you will always be doing it. There’s no point writing a piece of content with keywords that no-one uses or phrases that are too specific for normal people to ever think about. Finding the right tools such as a good SEO checker will help you get into practice studying and analysing keywords from the start. SEMRush is a good place to start.

Create the website

When it comes to creating the actual website, a good priced web design company will be your friend. There are some great DIY options out there, but the time involved in learning all of the things you need to learn is often counter-productive. A good web designer will be able to create a site that is attractive but more importantly functions well, loads quickly and is easy to navigate, two of those key areas mentioned above.

Create the content

Armed with keywords and having a website to hold it, you next want to create content. There is plenty to do and you can do this yourself, hire a freelancer (www.peopleperhour.com) to do it or a mixture of the two. You will want web page content for sales pages, product pages and other core pages such as About Us. You will probably also want blog content for using in content marketing.

Technical SEO

These vital first steps are then backed up with technical SEO elements which can include things like meta descriptions, title tags, XML sitemaps and more. While I would recommend you set up Google Search Console and go and use an onsite website crawler which will highlight any low-level issues. Ahrefs.com and SEMRush are worth a look.
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6 Strategies to Level Up Your Affiliate Marketing in 2018

April 4, 2019 • Uncategorized • 66

Whether you are a beginner or a seasoned affiliate marketer, you know that the concept itself
is simple. Using any number of strategies, you market/recommend products or services of
other companies with links to those companies’ sales pages on your own site or blog. You
will then receive payment for consumers who visit those sites, and especially if they should
make a purchase. While many think of this as “passive” income, the strategies you must use
to make good money as an affiliate are anything but passive.
Affiliate marketing can be lucrative, but it is competitive and takes work and continued
experimenting with new tactics. Low quality content and setting up websites that do little
more than attempt to link visitors to the products of others are not going to get traffic and are
not given value by search engines. You need to have a quality site or blog, attract traffic, and
use proven tactics to motivate your visitors/followers to click those links.
Here are some of the latest strategies that could boost your affiliate income in 2018.

1. Be More Discerning

The biggest mistake anyone can make is to become an affiliate for low-quality
products/services or for products or services that do not relate to your own niche. It’s time to
drop those companies that are not worthy of your recommendation and seek out those that
your followers will appreciate. Re-evaluation should occur regularly – after all, your
reputation is at stake too.
Most worthwhile companies that allow affiliate marketing will evaluate your site or blog
before allowing you to become an affiliate, so focus on your own quality first.

2. Take a Lesson from Groupon

Groupon is probably the most extreme example of an affiliate marketing site. People flock to
it because there are coupons for virtually every type of product or service. Visitors can search
by specific niches, and they continue to come back to check on any new deals.
You may not be a Groupon, but if you have established yourself as an affiliate to any
company, ask for coupons that you can post on your site or blog. Everyone wants to get a good
deal, and if you offer quality coupons, they will come back for more. What’s more, they
should be able to sign up for emails of new coupons – you build your own email list while
increasing your chances for those commissions.

3. Sell Private Label Rights (PLR) Products

You may want to dive into affiliate marketing full blast. This is especially lucrative for
individuals who do not have their own products to sell, but are skilled in writing engaging
marketing content. There are a number of PLR websites, such as InDigitalWorks, at which
you can pick from any number of products, and then market and sell them under your own
brand name. You get to keep the bulk of the profits. This will be a continually growing
industry in 2018. Your work is to set up a great website, write stunning content for the
products, accumulate email addresses for future marketing efforts, and continually evaluate
sales numbers from each of the products. You can add, modify, or delete at will.

And the best part? You are totally in charge. You can offer discounts, and encourage your
customers to get involved by providing feedback on products they buy and sharing their good
feelings about your site on social media.

4. Increase Your Use of PPC

This is a great way to leverage search engines to drive very specific traffic. Your ads show up
when searches are conducted by keywords/phrases, and you only pay per click. You can drive
traffic to your website or directly to the vendor’s website.
This is not a tactic you can just dive into. You need to do a bit of studying on PPC
advertising. For one thing, search engines do evaluate the ad quality and response, and place
the better ones in more favorable positions. You need to get creative with those ads.

5. Create an Affiliate Blog and Write Reviews

If you are a beginner, this is a great strategy. Consider this: how many products or services
have you purchased just within the past year – products that you really like? Contact the
website administrators/owners and ask about affiliate marketing. It is unlikely that they will
turn down someone who can write compelling content and who has a blog that is already
recommending quality products and services. You can create “how-to” or explainer videos
and drive traffic to your blog through social media and other blogs to which you become a
contributor.
This too will take a bit of study and practice. You can check out the basics of writing and
publishing affiliate reviews here. It’s a worthwhile read. You are basically becoming a brands
ambassador, and are more trusted because these are products you actually use.
This is not an overnight strategy. You have to write genuinely valuable content about the
product; you have to speak to its value; and you have to place the link to the vendor
appropriately. And it takes time to develop organic traffic through keyword research and
SEO.
You can also engage in product and services reviews without your own blog. If you are a
skilled writer, you can post on other blogs, link to the vendors, and collect your commissions.

6. Using Webinars – It’s Pretty Hot Right Now

Webinars are, first and foremost, visual – and visual trumps text anytime. Consider this: if
you are in the process of looking to buy an expensive or sophisticated product, you have two
options:
● You can read about the product directly from the vendor; you can read reviews of the
product.
● You can view a webinar in which the product is actually displayed, and the use
instructions are visually demonstrated. You get to ask questions and have them
answered in real time by a real product expert.

You would probably take the second option, because you can actually see the product in use.
If you should decide to add webinars to your bag of strategies, you have some work to do.
You have to practice being a host; you have to outline the important points you intend to
make. And you have to promote your webinar with everyone on your email list, on social
media, and often offer an incentive for others to market that webinar too.
And once the livestreaming is over, you can save that webinar on your site or blog and
promote/replay it in the future.
Whether you are a beginner or someone who is just not realizing the income you want from
affiliate marketing, these six strategies are a good start point. As you become more
sophisticated, you will develop more important strategies, such as A/B testing, etc. There are
successful affiliate marketers who do write about their strategies, and you should read these
to see what takeaways there are for you.
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The First 6 Things You Should Learn In SEO

April 2, 2019 • Featured, Get to Know SEMPO, SEO 101 • 112

There’s no doubt when you look at SEO, there is a huge range of topics to learn. Then there are trends which come and go and the best SEO tools to help you manage it all. Don’t forget those local SEO tips if you are working with local customers or businesses! Sometimes it can seem a bit overwhelming so here are the first 6 things you should learn in SEO to help you focus.

Understand your audience and user intent

This might seem off-topic at first glance because SEO is all about getting traffic to your website. But the key to getting that traffic is to understand your audience, what they want and how you can use that to bring them to your website. SEO is about a lot more than just adding the right keywords – for example, are your audience readers who love a good blog post? Or do they prefer audio content like a video or podcast? You need to understand the user intent and your audience when you plan everything you do.

Create amazing content

Once you know how your audience consumes their content, you can move on to creating amazing content that answers their questions, solves their problems or even just makes them smile. Not only that, but exceptional content will rank better with search engines than mid-level, mediocre content. This is both a core part of SEO and an on-going trend – it isn’t so much about hitting a specific length of content but about having the best possible content with the most important in it.

Build expertise, authority and trustworthiness

Talk to non-marketers and someone is bound to make a comment about all that ‘dodgy’ stuff on the internet. There’s a perceived distrust of the internet that is made worse by things like fake news. And this is why a big part of SEO is building expertise, authority and trustworthiness or EAT as Google calls it.

Building EAT helps to boost your SEO ratings but also makes the site authoritative, a reliable place to get information or buy products and this shows in real life. Say what you like about Amazon, for example, but people trust it. It has built that EAT factor and even dodgy sellers on it can’t shift that perception.

Get help with technical SEO

While learning the basics of on-page SEO is something every business owner should do, the technical SEO stuff is often best left to experts. Things like site speed, JavaScript and Progressive Web Apps are unknown territory to many business owners and even some SEO experts – that’s why working with experts in this area is the best way to handle this area.

Work on on-page SEO

On-Page SEO is definitely more accessible for everyone and that’s why it is one of the main parts of SEO any website owner should learn. It includes a host of little pieces that fit together to help improve the general SEO of the website. It also includes optimisations that make for a better experience for the user and this is something that Google prizes.

Learn the basics of Featured Snippets

Optimising content for Google search also includes elements such as Featured Snippets and other SERP features such as answer boxes, knowledge graph, recipes for food businesses and even carousels. Again, you might want to grab some help on these topics but once you have the basics in place, you are well located to start securing more traffic from Google by getting these key elements to improve your rankings. And we all know the aim is to be as high on that first page as possible!
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4 Big Benefits of Declaring Your Agency’s Niche Market

March 30, 2019 • Featured, SEO 101 • 107

Finding a niche is a hot topic for many types of business and a marketing agency is no different. There’s always this fear that by going niche, you are cutting off a supply of potential customers outside that niche. But the fact is, by being something for everyone, you can end up being nothing for no-one – people tend to go for experts in their niche over generalists.

If you are considering niching down for your agency, it is always good to look at the benefits and be certain that it is the right choice for your company. Let’s take a look at what a niche really means and why it might be the course for your business.

Benefits of a niche

Let’s start by examining the benefits you will get if you choose to niche down in your agency. There are four big ones:

You have a business roadmap

Trying to market your business is tough – trying to market it to everyone is even tougher. However, if you decide that your niche is to be dentists and dental services related businesses, you can create a roadmap that ensures you completely understand all the areas that these businesses need.

You will know about dental companies, what’s important to them, their services and their customer habits. You will get to understand what their audience pain points are and what issues the companies have – and you can map your company experience around these. Knowing that you can offer tailored SEO services to these dental companies, which there are many to choose from.

You can predict the market

Another big benefit is that you can predict what will happen within your niche of the market because you know it so well. For instance, let’s say you work with law firms – you will learn about what’s important to them, and what months trends are busy than others. And you will be able to predict what is to come from that knowledge.

Law firms can then be more selective, by only choosing from a range of specialist law design or marketing agencies. Being niche targeted improves the chances of converting enquiries coming in. While they could be fewer enquiries, coming in, when compared to an agency that offers a service for all niches, being more specific tailors that experience to them and their business. Hence improving that chance of gaining a new customer.

Growth potential is impressive

A niche agency has far bigger growth potential than one who simply tries to grab any client that comes along. That’s because you can offer more specialised service and will produce better results. You will have case studies from that niche and can show customers what you have done for others – and they will relate to this information because it is their niche.

You get to know the competition

Finally, you will also get to know the competition, the other agencies that are in your niche and what they do – so you can outdo them.

You can offer different services, cover gaps they have left and make sure you give better value. Because you are only monitoring a small number of agency competitors rather than the whole market.

Niching down obstacles

Now there are some solid benefits to niching down but there are a few obstacles that you need to overcome if you are going to move your business in this direction. When you have a plan on how to handle these obstacles, you are ready for success.

Top of the list is making sure customers are a good fit and this isn’t just financially. You want to offer a niche service for the best possible outcomes for your clients and this is achieved by ensuring you take on the right clients. Take on the wrong ones and you might struggle, despite all of your combined abilities.

Constant learning and development is also key to learning your niche inside and out. This helps you continually position yourself as a leading expert in your field or your company at the top of the niche list. By being at the top of the field, you are the first name that comes up about your niche. Monitoring new technology, software and tools is also a big part of the project.

Charging the right prices

A secondary benefit from niching down is the ability to charge more for your services. While you always want an eye on the market, a specialist can charge more than a generalist, and this means you can potentially increase your prices as your niche experience expands. That’s just one more reason why niching down your agency is definitely the way forward.
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7 Steps to Building a High-Performance Digital Marketing Team

December 24, 2018 • Featured, SEO 101 • 1164

Digital marketing is a wide-ranging discipline that has grown to incorporate a lot more than just some SEO knowledge and how to make online ads. This has resulted in a businesses requiring a team of digital marketers, all with their own specialities. But how do you build a high-performance digital marketing team that works?

Built not just by chance

One of the key things to understand when working through these seven steps is that a great team doesn’t just happen by chance, it is built by design. Start out by hiring ambitious employees who are flexible and creative employees who work well with others. View team building as an ongoing project from the beginning and make sure the team always has the right tools for the job.

Hire people for their hunger

When hiring, look for a creative attitude and a hunger for the job. Someone that is always looking to learn, take initiative and have great personal drive. Experience is nice but can quickly be obsolete. Don’t be afraid to give interviewees a real-life marketing project to work on. Use situations that your company has dealt with and see what kind of solutions they come up with. Also look for samples of their work in the past.

Look for employee specialisation

The most successful team will have specialists that handle a specific part of the digital marketing business. You don’t have to employ them as specialists – you can work with them to help them become specialists.

Help them to learn

It is important to help employees grow and build some structures in the training process to help them become specialists in a specific area of digital marketing. Tools like five-year plans and monthly one-on-one’s can help with goal setting and providing company guidance. It should also include time for them to experiment and gain experience during this process. Conferences, webinars and even curated reading lists can also complement this goal.

Don’t over-staff

There’s a balance between “just right” and too many staff. Don’t be tempted to over-staff with too many employees just because the budget affords it. A steady hiring pace can ensure you get the right employees who fit your needs while making sure there is a need for each hire. Let your team grow naturally over time. Bringing on the wrong person or hiring too many people at once can interrupt the dynamics of your team.

Create a collaboration culture

One of the side effects of success is that collaboration becomes increasingly difficult as the company grows larger. Oftentimes, employees are working at their own pace and on their own projects that seem to have no relationship to other projects. Our goal is to cultivate collaboration both in real life and in the cloud.

With the use of team work sessions and collaboration software, team members can have a better idea of the project objectives, their responsibility, and how their roles fit in the larger picture.
It’s a good starting point to encourage collaboration, a sense of teamwork and a happier workplace.

Building a team

Telling people they are a team is one thing – making them feel a part of it is another. As your team grows, you will need to find team building activities designed for larger teams to nurture their relationships and optimize work performance. Creating a culture that encourages shared goals, ambitions, and a collaborative work environment is one of the key ingredients of a successful digital marketing team.

A successful approach

By taking these steps when you are building your digital marketing team, you increase the chances of success. Having a team of happy employees who complement each other is the best approach to creating happy customers and repeating clients.
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