Common Website Mistakes - Taking Up Too Much of Your Time

A common mistake small business owners make when creating their own website is they end up spending far too much time on it.

Building your website should not become your primary focus when it comes to running your business. Some websites that only take 1 or 2 weeks to create, might end up taking you months if your focus is constantly shifted.

The reason why it takes so long is because you’re busy running your business. There are day-to-day things you need to take care of, so your website ends up not being a priority.

What you might want to do is just hire a professional to take care of your website for you, while you take of the day-to-day operations of your business.

So as you can see there are quite a few reasons why some small business owners are still reluctant to have a professional website built for their business, but in most cases investing in an effective website is going to bring in more customers, more traffic, and more business than if you continue to ignore the Internet.

Your website and any form of internet marketing isn’t going to replace anything you’re currently doing, and it’s not going to significantly add to the amount of work you’re doing now.

Once you have a website setup, it will be like your own sales person, working around the clock to promote your business.

And you will be able to reap the benefits for many years to come.

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Advantage Local Agency

2400 Herodian Way SE STE 220

Smyrna, Ga 30080

404-806-7284

http://www.advantagelocalagency.com

Benefits of Ultra Short Marketing Videos

Many marketing videos are between 30 seconds and 2 minutes long, but what about making videos that are even shorter than that? Is there a benefit to using ultra-short videos like the ones users create on Vine for your business?

Let’s start by talking about what we mean by “ultra-short” in terms of videos.

The maximum length of a video on Vine is 6 seconds, while videos on Instagram can be between 3 and 15 seconds long.

If you’re thinking that 6 seconds isn’t long enough for you to get anything important across to your viewers, think again.

It takes the human brain only 13 milliseconds to process an image.

So a well-edited short video can convey an enormous amount of information very quickly.

Due to their extremely short nature, most viewers will watch the whole thing - and may even end up watching it more than once.

Ultra-short videos can be used for almost anything a longer video can, such as:

•           Product demonstrations
•           New product announcements
•           Calls to action
•           Entertainment

The benefits are:

•  They have the same SEO value as longer videos.

•  They are quicker and less expensive to produce.

• Vine and Instagram are relatively new social media sites, and using them can let consumers know that your company is hip and innovative.

•  Short videos are some of the most shared content on some major hitters in the social media arena. Vine is owned by Twitter, so you can embed videos in your feed and Instagram is owned by Facebook.

Here are a few ideas for you to try:

• Make a customer testimonial compilation video.  Ask customers to record themselves saying the one word they would use to describe your company.  Take the best ones and edit them together into a rapid-fire video.

• Go behind the scenes at your company.  You can shoot footage of employees doing their jobs, and edit them together to give customers a feeling for how you do things.

•  Unveil a new product on video. Edit together quick images of different components of the product, or various ways to use it. For example, an apparel company might edit together quick shots of a woman wearing a scarf tied different ways

•  Create a video series on a hot topic related to your industry. Vine allows you to link multiple videos together to create a longer narrative. If your business lends itself to storytelling, you might do a few short videos illustrating different elements of a story and then string them together.

•  Have a Vine contest. Encourage viewers to make their own videos showing your products in action. You can give away a freebie to the best one, and in the meantime, you’ll have a whole slew of customer-produced videos to share on your feed. 

As you can see, ultra-short videos are perfect for giving your online content a quick, easy and inexpensive BOOST. Give it a try! For more information visit Advantage Local Agency’s website at http://www.AdvantageLocalAgency.com

Is It Time to Dump Your Testimonial Page ?

To Dump or Not To Dump!

If you’re like a lot of business owners, you’ve done your research about the importance of reviews. You know that a huge majority of internet users rely on reviews of businesses to make purchasing decisions, and you’ve probably put a lot of effort into managing your review pages, responding to negative reviews, and demonstrating how helpful you are to potential customers. 

All of that is great, and you should keep doing it.

What’s the problem, then? If you’re taking those reviews and sticking them on a Testimonials page on your website, you’re undoing all your hard work. 

Here’s why.

Testimonials and Trust

But wait, you might be thinking. Didn’t I just say that the majority of customers rely on reviews when making purchasing decisions?

Note the language. They rely on reviews, not testimonials. 

It doesn’t matter if your testimonials started out as reviews. The moment you pick one out and stick it on your website, it’s a testimonial – something you solicited from a customer you knew was happy and satisfied.

Even if you include a few less than stellar reviews in the mix, it’s unlikely that customers will even bother to visit the page. They are going to assume that you picked out the best of the best, and that they won’t learn anything real about your company, products, or service by visiting the page.

In case you’re still not convinced, let’s envision a scenario where a company culls their best online reviews to put on their website. A customer decides to read them, and then – still unconvinced – decides to bounce over to Yelp to see what the people there have to say.

How do you think it will affect your credibility if there’s a significant disconnect between what’s on your site and your average Yelp rating? 

I’ll give you a hint: it’s not going to do you any favors. Customers want to see honest reviews, including the negative ones – and they want to see how you respond to the bad reviews.

It’s also important to note that the changes that Google made to local business information on Google+ mean that the only thing customers will see there are your location information and your reviews. You might as well make the most of them

.

How to Link to Reviews

If you’re wondering how you can harness the power of reviews while avoiding the pitfalls I have described above, don’t worry. I’m about to tell you. The key here is to link to (not copy) reviews from your website, and to do so in a way that doesn’t step on anybody’s toes

. 

Here’s what you need to do.

1.       Ditch the “Testimonials” page and make it a “Reviews” page instead.

2.       At the top of the page, put a few sentences about how you think it’s important for potential customers to hear what existing customers think of you. With that in mind, you’re providing them with some quick and easy links so they can see for themselves.

3.       For every link you include, make sure to use the target=”_blank” command so that the review site opens in a separate tab. You don’t want to encourage people to navigate away from your page, so don’t skip this step.

4.       Put a link to Google reviews at the top of your page. Google reviews are always going to be at the top of any list of search results, so you might as well list them first on your page.

5.       Do not link directly to your Yelp page. That might not seem to make sense, but Yelp frowns on direct links, so you want to make it look like visitors from your site are arriving at Yelp via organic search. 

      The way to do that is to do a Google search for [your business] Yelp, and then copy the link to the SERP (search engine results page) url. When visitors click it, they will be taken to the Google SERP page with Yelp at the top of the listings where they can easily click it.

6.       

      Do the same thing for any other relevant review sites, including Angie’s List and industry-specific sites.

The point of doing things like this is that you get all the benefit of directing customers to reviews without the suspicious element of listing them on your own website. Whether you agree with the perception that Testimonial pages are not to be trusted or not, the fact is that customers want to feel they have access to unbiased and honest reviews that are a true reflection of what they can expect if they do business with you.

Tips for Handling Reviews

If you’re worried about linking to unfiltered review pages, there is actually a very easy two-part solution that can alleviate that fear altogether:

1.       

      Do a great job of monitoring your review pages and replying in a professional and helpful manner to negative reviews. I know, it seems obvious – but sometimes the obvious solution really is the best one. If you want to be sure that customers are getting a clear picture of your great products and services, show them how important customers are by giving great customer service. It’s not rocket science – nor should it be.

2.       Some customers might leave a review anyway, but there’s no harm in encouraging them to do so. By providing a card, you’re making it easy.

If you find yourself resisting the idea of doing away with Testimonials, think of it this way. You still have them, you’re only changing the name. If you were listing only rave reviews on your site, the chances are good that your customers would go seek out the rest of your reviews in spite of that. This way, you’re being up front with them about your reviews, which shows them you have nothing to hide.

Click here for more information on Reputation Management

5 Best Social Media Marketing Practices

Social Media Marketing is a booming marketing tactic within the business world.  As new businesses are being created and established businesses are growing, their success can be attributed to social media marketing.  Here are some of the best social media marketing practices to use whether you are a beginner or a seasoned marketing specialist.

1)      Use all social media that is at your disposal.

This may seem like common sense to some.  However, using every type of social media that is out there can boost your audience.  These social media outlets include apps such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and others that are available.  These social media apps boast millions of individuals who are potential clients you can search by business, niche, and even interests.

2)      Create Content…Frequently.

Frequent content is important.  Frequent content that is created through social media is crucial.  Frequent content keeps you or your business relevant and up to date.  This also creates a presence in the social media world.  Frequent posts, blogs, and updates show your audience that you are proactive with your business and will create more opportunities to be seen and found in the social media realm.  This content should be fresh and original. 

3)      Review your practices often.

In order to stay relevant, it is important to review your social media practices frequently.  Make changes, update your profile, and remove old content that is no longer applicable.  Research up and coming social media strategies and implement them.  Stay up to date on new policies and procedures for your outlets.  Remove old content and create new content based on your current audiences’ needs.  Simply review your current practices and make changes that will benefit your audience and in turn, benefit you.

4)      Be Transparent.

Your audience is your audience for a reason.  They are interested in what you do.  They may be interested in what you sell.  Whatever the case, they clicked, “Follow,” and now are watching you.  It is important to be transparent with your audience members.  If a change is being implemented within your company, share it.  If you have new ideas, share them.  Make them feel as if they are a part of your team.  Transparency keeps you real to your followers and may even connect you with new solutions and creative ideas.

5)      Care about the visual experience.

Your audience sees every single post, tweet, and blog.  They also view your website for new content.  All of these things should reflect your brand and your focus visually.  A bad website will detour your audience and will scream unprofessionalism.  A grainy photo on a blog post for a photography blog will turn a new client off to your services.  Whatever your niche, your visual branding should say as much as your words.

All of these tips can be used to create a perfect social media marketing experience for your followers.  These practices will also allow you to stay on top of your social media game and will reflect back to you in successful growth.

How to Rank Your Website in 2016

Are You Doing the Right Things to Rank on Google?

Where does your business appear on Google when potential customers search for your chosen keywords?

If you’re not at the top – or near the top – it can be frustrating. There is plenty of evidence to show that very few users venture beyond the first page of results when they do a Google search. In fact, they’re more likely to refine their search than to move on to the next page.

Fortunately, there are quite a few things you can do to help your website rank on the first page in 2016.

Here are the top five.

#1: Worry more about authority than keywords

It’s still important to use keywords in your web content, but the days when high keyword density was the key to ranking on Google are long gone. In fact, your keyword placement is not nearly as important as the overall authority of your site.

Google’s algorithms are very sophisticated, and they no longer rely on keywords in a title or H1 tag to determine if a page is worth visiting. Rather, they focus on contextual meaning and look for expected words to rank pages.

For example, it used to be that if you wanted to rank for a keyword such as “Best Legal Services” you’d have to use that keyword three or four times in strategic places to have a chance of ranking. Now, if you talk about competent legal representation,

Google can tell that your page is relevant to the keyword even if you don’t use it more than a couple of times in your article.

#2: Pay attention to bounce rates and the time spent on your page

Another surprising SEO development for 2016 has to do with an evaluation of whether your page is providing visitors with what they need. In addition to crawling your page for keywords and context, Google also pays attention to what people do after they leave your page as a way of determining if your page is an authoritative one or a waste of time.

For example, if a visitor searches one of your keywords and clicks on your page, Google looks at how long they stay.

A visit of several minutes might indicate that a user is engaged with the content on your page and has found what they want. However, if they spend several minutes on your site, return to their list of search results via the dreaded back button, and click on another site instead, it’s a good sign that your site did not offer what they needed.

If you have a high bounce rate, a good way to improve your search ranking in 2016 is to make sure that your site provides the answers to the questions implied by your chosen keywords.

#3: Optimize your website for mobile users

In 2015, mobile searches on Google outpaced computer searches – and that trend is likely to continue. Google has placed a great deal of importance on mobile search as evidenced by their Mobilegeddon mobile-friendly update in early 2015.

If your site isn’t mobile friendly, now is the time to get on board.

Fortunately, most businesses can switch to mobile-friendly or (ideally) mobile-adaptive sites with little trouble. Sometimes it’s as simple as switching the template you use for your site. For example, if you have a WordPress site, they have a huge library of templates available, many of which are mobile-adaptive.

You may have to do some fine-tuning of your site to make a new template work, but it’s worth the work to get it done.

The beauty of mobile-adaptive sites is that they work by configuring to the specific mobile device being used. Mobile customers tend to be an impatient bunch, and they are unlikely to wait for a slow-loading page or scroll horizontally to read your content. If you take the time to optimize your site for mobile users, it can do more than anything else to improve your search ranking in 2016.

#4: Stay away from content that’s too short

It wasn’t that long ago that blog posts of 250 to 500 words were considered the norm. Short and snappy was the rule of the day, and the assumption that people wanted short content led to a glut of short articles that were light on value and meaning.

That has all changed. Truthfully, the trend toward lengthy web content has been happening for a while, but this year it has really become the rule rather than the exception. Research shows that web users are far more likely to engage with content that’s in the 1,000-1,500 word range than with short articles. Why? Because they want valuable information, and – with rare exception – it’s hard to convey that in just a few hundred words.

Of course you can offer a top 10 list that’s only 500 words long, but you’re not going to be able to explain why items are on the list as well as you would if you wrote a longer article or blog post.

The reason that Google is placing so much emphasis on length is that they want to make sure they are sending people to pages designed for humans, not search algorithms. If you’re worried about publishing long content, remember that you can make it more readable by breaking it up with subheadings and images.

#5: Make sure the user experience is front and center

In a way, this last point is a summary of everything that has come before it. Each one of the above points comes back to one thing: user experience. Old-school SEO focused on tricking Google’s algorithms – to the point where many websites were far friendlier to computers than they were to human beings.

More and more, Google is concerned about ensuring that their search results are leading users to sites that answer their questions. They want users to feel good about the search experience, something that’s unlikely to happen if they end up on a site that’s not mobile friendly, or is packed with keywords but contains no real value.

There are many things you can do to test the user experience on your site, including split-testing individual components on your page. However, the best thing you can do is to do what you can to answer key questions that are implied by your chosen keywords, and make sure that your site is easily viewable by any user, on any device.

Ranking on the first page of Google is always a challenge. Regardless of your niche, you will be facing some fierce competition. It might sound odd to say this, but the best way to rank is to forget about trying to rank. Don’t worry about algorithms and SEO tricks. Instead, focus on making your site a place where potential customers can find exactly what they need. If you do that, the search rank will follow.

Click here for more about Search Engine Optimization