The Evolution Of Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization has come a long way since its inception in the 90s when search engines first made an appearance. The earliest SEO involved manually submitting your website to the search engine so that it could be indexed and placed on the list of results that the engines returned. The earliest search engines used very limited factors to determine the ranking of a website. These factors included keyword density and links on a website, and webmasters soon started stuffing their websites with keywords, sometimes in invisible fonts and very high quantities to secure top rankings for their websites. Soon the search engines caught on to such tricks and updated their algorithms, which spawned the industry for SEO services that exists and thrives even today.

A Division in The SEO Industry
It has been a steady battle, between search engines and SEO services, each tries to outdo the other. Search engines try to filter out useless information and include only relevant results, while it is the job description of a Search Engine Optimization expert to ensure high ranking for his or her clients. Soon this race led to a fracture in the SEO industry out of which two different factions of the SEO experts were formed. White hat SEO experts use ethical means to promote websites, while the other faction, performs unethical, and sometimes downright illegal things to secure the top rank for their clients. This is known as black hast SEO. The penalty of being caught using black hat SEO is severe, and any business that wishes to enjoy long term success naturally prefers white hat SEO services. Search engines can do many things to penalize sites such as eliminate a website completely from its search results or give it a penalty to significantly drop its rankings.

The Increasing Complexities of Search Engine Optimization
Google is the biggest search engine today, and the primary focus of most SEO service providers. To counter unfair means, the search giant uses hundreds of factors that are combined together to calculate the ranking of a website. SEO companies have taken on this challenge and try to find new and innovative ways to improve SEO rankings. Some popular ways of boosting SEO rankings of a website are:

1. Studying the website and ensuring it has no code error

2. Optimizing website code for performance and faster loading

3. Ensuring that the website really has something useful to offer through quality content

4. High quality links from reputed and reliable sources

5. Ensure that a site has no broken links or duplicate content

From random stuffing of keywords, to highly sophisticated and targeted optimization techniques, Search Engine Optimization has come a long way. It has evolved magnificently and continues to do so. Each year search engines update their algorithms, and SEO services adapt their services to these new changes.

Modern SEO industry
The SEO services of today have evolved beyond all recognition and are drastically different from the services of just 10 years ago. Leading SEO companies continue to deliver great results for their clients. With the Google Hummingbird update, the rules of engagement have once again been changed, and the focus is now on creating websites that users will like. Google is all about sharing quality information and content with its users. SEO services continue to evolve, and they will no doubt adapt to this as well, and create even more effective Search Engine Optimization techniques. Google will constantly change and update their algorithm to benefit its users and so will the SEO companies continually have to change their strategy. This is something that will be continually ongoing and will never stop. If you need any help with your SEO or any other digital marketing, please feel free to reach out to the team at Mind Digital Group.

Reference:-https://www.minddigital.com/the-evolution-of-search-engine-optimization/

The Most Important Factors For Successful E-commerce SEO

Many things need to be considered when integrating your E-commerce and SEO strategy so that they work as cohesively. The way to integrate SEO features into your E-commerce site is by having an SEO consultant as part of the core team of web designers, developers, and information architects. As an example, your Developers need to be aware of duplicate content issues and how to resolve them. Products on the E-commerce store should be organized by category and sub-category. This improve the E-commerce website’s optimization. Conduct keyword research of both your website and competitor websites. Remember that “long tail keywords” is where most of the action lies in terms of search. Make sure your website has breadcrumb navigation. Having descriptive meta tags that include prompts such as ‘find out more about’ is an essential technique. It’s a must to write Img Alt Tags. This helps non-visual readers such as vision-impaired consumers. There are so many things to keep track of it can be quite intimidating hence the reason for having an SEO consultant can surely easy these headaches.

While SEO and automation used together can have negative connotations, for E-commerce websites with thousands of products, it is important to facilitate automation whereby programmers can automate on-site elements such as title tags. User generated content should be leveraged to help improve the site’s ranking. Since user generated content tends to be original and fresh, this improves the site from an SEO perspective. Allow buyers to write product reviews and testimonials. This creates a community of happy users and convinces visitors that they can trust you. Help visitors spread the word about all the products on your site by integrating social media on product pages. Also, this will help you avoid using manufacturer product descriptions which can lead to duplicate content which is a no-no from an SEO perspective.

You can maintain a blog where you talk about new products and offers and have an FAQ page that helps answer the most frequent queries of your users.

Optimized product pictures and videos should be used on the site as the quality of your product pictures can influence how visitors feel about your product. Make sure customers feel comfortable sharing their financial information on your site. Prominently display the logos and text certifying that you comply with security standards (SSL/Visa). It’s better to offer peace of mind to visitors rather than take the security aspects of the website for granted.

Mobile and smartphone usage is growing like crazy. This trend will only persist. For E-commerce retailers, the website should be optimized for mobiles via using responsive web design or having dedicated mobile sites.

If you have local presence apart from being an online retailer, then your business’ name, address, and phone number (NAP) for all locations should be present on your website. All the branches should be listed on Google Local Business via a Google+ page. You should allow reviews and rating on each branch of your business. This will be displayed by Google when someone searches for a local branch of your business.

These are some of the basic E-commerce techniques that should be taken care of at a minimum to ensure survival and growth for your business in the online commerce space. If you need any help or assistance with your SEO strategy, please feel free to reach out to the team at Mind Digital Group.

Reference:-https://www.minddigital.com/the-most-important-factors-for-successful-e-commerce-seo/

Activities A Search Engine Optimization Specialist Performs

Search Engine Optimization has a lot of mystery surrounding it and there are many people who do not understand what exactly a Search Engine Optimization Specialist does. While the technical details of this process are certainly not very interesting to someone who lacks technical knowledge. The misconceptions surrounding this industry often cause people to get scammed by unscrupulous SEO professionals who claim to be a Search Engine Optimization Specialist but provide their clients little or no benefit. In addition, sometimes clients hire a SEO specialist who partakes in black hat SEO which is looked down upon and can seriously hurt your rankings. It is important that you know what an SEO specialist really does in order to help your website get a good search engine ranking so that you can avoid being scammed. In addition if you understand what an SEO specialist does, it can help you pick a good SEO company out of the many options presented to you.

Basics of SEO
You do not need to become an SEO expert in order to tell which SEO company will provide you the best results. As long as you have basic knowledge of what a Search Engine Optimization Specialist really does, you can safely pick a quality SEO professional to assist you with your rankings. SEO is divided into on page and off page optimization and before you delve deeper, you need to understand what they are.

✓ On page Optimization – Any changes that a Search Engine Optimization Specialist makes to your website are part of the on page optimization. Usually this involves ridding the website code of errors and ensuring W3C validation. In addition, an SEO specialist will also add proper tags throughout the website and complete all metadata so that search engine spiders can analyze and classify your website with greater ease. He or she will place to correct tagging on your site so that the search engines know what your site is about as well as what to rank your site for.

✓ Off page Optimization – A large portion of time that a Search Engine Optimization Specialist spends on SEO for a website is spent on off-page optimization. Off-page optimization includes sharing links for your website on social networks, popular websites, developing links for your website and getting them placed on websites with a high PageRank. In addition SEO specialist submit articles relevant to your company on different sites, embed quality anchor text links which help you get high search engine ranking for the keywords that you want and more.

Summary
Search Engine Optimization is a time taking task that needs to be handled by trusted professionals who have the experience and expertise to deliver good results. It is something that is a long term task and cannot be done overnight. Any company or individual who claims to get overnight success will be using black hat unethical tactics which you should stay far far away from. If you need any assistance or advice with your Search Engine Optimization or any other digital marketing, please feel free to reach out to the team at Mind Digital Group.

Reference:-https://www.minddigital.com/activities-a-search-engine-optimization-specialist-performs/

Is SEO Important?

Search Engine Optimization is an important marketing tool for business owners. It can no longer be something that is good to have but is rather viewed as a must have in today’s marketplace. Online marketing may prove to be a challenge for many because promoting one’s brand online requires an understanding about online marketing trends.

SEO is a marketing strategy that should be clearly understood and if implemented properly can boost your brand value online.  SEO increases your website’s visibility in a search engines natural results which is always free. In this era of technological evolution it’s very important that your website always stays ahead of others and appears on the first page of the search results. This will increase your websites presence, recognition, and traffic that is generated.

SEO aims at understanding how popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. works, what people search for, what keyword they use while searching for something &how often they use these keywords. If you understand this then you can optimize your website and make it SEO friendly. This will in turn provide you with the results you want and need to increase your presence online. Optimizing your website requiresupdating the content of your website on a regular basis. You should always try to use unique content in your website that is relevant for your users you are trying to attract. The HTML and associated coding to should also be relevant to the specific keywords and it will remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.

Why is it important to appear on top of the search results through SEO?  Here is your answer below:

From the graph below you can see that the top listing in Google’s organic search results receive higher traffic and the traffic keeps on decreasing with the second, third, fourth ranking.

(Source – chitika.com)

Apart from targeting your choice of keywords, using SEO friendly coding, a keyword analysis should always be performed for SEO optimization.With technology being changed constantly for SEO, it is imperative that you monitor your SEO efforts and adapt your strategy accordingly. If your SEO is performed correctly the results that can be achieved are tremendous. We have certified SEO experts at Mind Digital who are constantly trained according to SEO best practices as well as all the online marketing trends. As always if you need any SEO advice or are looking for an expert to boost your rankings online, please feel free to reach out to the Mind Digital team anytime.

Reference:-https://www.minddigital.com/is-seo-important/

Tips To Create A Good Backlink Profile

Content is king in terms of Search Engine Optimization and this statement which I am sure you have heard many times before is also one of the most over-stated facts about SEO. On the basis of only content, you cannot get higher rankings within the search engines. You need to do something beyond just create unique content such as both on-page and off-page SEO. Nowadays with the changing landscape of SEO, you hear most experts discuss mainly 2 things which are content and on-page optimization. Off-page SEO has importance that needs to be taken seriously, however it is not as important as before but still a vital part of your digital strategy. Today, we are going to discuss about how you can create a good backlink profile to help with your SEO rankings. Creating a good backlink profile comes underneath the remit of off-page SEO activities. Below, we will give you some simple advice on how to create a good backlink profile.

1. Pick Targeted Keywords – The first step is finding the main keywords that you want your website to rank for. This is critical and the first task which you need to undertake before doing anything else so you know exactly where you want to be. Ensure that you are doing research and thinking thoroughly about where you want your business to be viewable online. You should ideally target 5 to 10 keywords in the beginning that are not very high competition that you would like to rank for within the search results. After this is complete; your strategy, content, and goals should revolve around these targeted keywords.

2. Main Competitors - Once you have completed the first step, the next thing you need to do is see who are the competitors that are ranking for your targeted set of keywords. Once you have completed this and identified all the main competitors, move on to the next step.

3. Backlink Analysis – You now have your list of targeted keywords and your main competitors, great! The next step is analyzing and seeing what are the backlinks of these competitors. There are many free online tools that are available through which you can explore the backlinks of any website. Use these tools to identify the links and once you have this detailed list of backlinks, you should filter the quality sites into a separate list.

4. Get Links From Similar Sites – This is a lot easier said than done, however try your best to get links from the same site or similar sites to your webpage. Use techniques such as content seeding, creating valuable content that the website owner would want to share with their audience to generate you a backlink or even just contact the webmaster directly. Links from similar sites shows the search engines that your website is also relevant for the same topic.

This above list are some simple steps you can follow to get higher rankings by improving your backlink profile through targeted efforts. You would be surprised how far you can get with thinking things through and creating a good SEO plan. If you need any assistance or help with your SEO or anything else digital marketing or development related, please feel free to reach out to the team at Mind Digital Group.

Reference:-https://www.minddigital.com/tips-to-create-a-good-backlink-profile/

An SEO Company Can Help Your Website

When IBM decided to enter cognitive computing and developed their Watson computer system, they decided to first develop it specifically to answer questions on Jeopardy and famously pitted the computer against former winners Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings. The resulting publicity has made Watson more or less a household name. The Jeopardy match-up resulted in invaluable coverage in the media which would otherwise have cost IBM millions of dollars in publicity expenses.

Marketing and publicity are a key part for any brand or business. Which is why the expensive half-time commercial slots during the Super Bowl cost $4 million for a 30-second spot and yet, there is no shortage of buyers.

In the online world, making a website popular is clearly one of the necessary conditions for website owners and Ecommerce businesses if they want to survive and flourish. One of the ways to achieve popularity is via Search Engine Optimization (SEO) with an SEO company. SEO is at the opposite end of the spectrum from Super Bowl half-time ads. SEO is entirely free and the only investment being the SEO professionals themselves times.

Of course, digital marketing is an ever growing activity and online businesses need to opt for paid online marketing activities such as search advertising, PPC advertising and online video ads. Such paid online marketing campaigns can be effective in the short run and they are typically the preferred method when the intention is to promote a short-term activity such as an end-of-season sale. But nothing beats SEO as the preferred vehicle of online marketing to increase a brand’s online profile in a sustained manner as once you achieve rankings, it’s free traffic.

SEO company
For those who are serious about their online business (which includes all Ecommerce businesses at the very least), there are two essential requirements for enduring success: 1) have a user friendly, functional and simple-to-use website with a great user interface and 2) engage a digital marketing company to help you with the SEO aspect of your business in an ongoing fashion.

SEO is for the long haul
Why do you need to hire an SEO company instead of doing it in-house? Well, that is because SEO is a job for professionals who have gained long years of experience by working in the SEO business. They have in-depth knowledge and perspective about both the past and the future possibilities of SEO.

With SEO professionals at an SEO company are taking care of SEO for your website, you will be assured that all the basics are taken care of: such as on-page and off-page optimization. SEO professionals will also know to avoid the deprecated practices or black hat SEO techniques.

Search engines like Google are taking action against those websites who try to artificially enhance their organic search rankings on the search engine result pages (SERPs). An SEO company that knows what they are doing will ensure that the website is appropriately optimized, no illegal quick fix solutions are tried. When it comes to SEO and website organic search rankings, the smart ones know that ‘slow and steady wins the race’ is the motto to remember and follow. There are no quick fixes. For example, if a site is old, it will a get certain amount of value and weightage in Google’s rankings irrespective of other qualitative aspects of that site.

SEO is a many-splendored thing
SEO is not a single monolithic thing anymore — if it ever was. SEO comprises of many things. Apart from the off-page and on-page optimization mentioned earlier, SEO professionals at an SEO company will ensure that there is no duplicate content on the website. Google chooses to punish sites with duplicate content (since in Google’s view, such sites do not add value to the internet; and Google is right here) and it is better to remain careful rather than seeing your hard-earned position in the SERP suddenly vanish. With numerous algorithm changes such as Google Penguin, Google Panda (not named after the cute animal), and Google Hummingbird, Google is trying to adapt to changes in user behavior as well as trying to provide the best and the most relevant links in the organic search results.

After all, Google’s (and other search engines’) reputation relies on such website providing authoritative answers to users’ queries. The changing nature of audience behavior includes such seismic shifts as the inevitable predominance of mobile devices to access the internet. To cater to these changes, Google is changing its algorithm to be able to better meet the needs of its customers. These are all things that your SEO company that you are working with will need to keep mind.

With the growth of mobile, voice search has grown. And with the Google Hummingbird changes, Google has revealed how it seems to answer truthfully any question put to it. Today of course, Watson is much more than a Jeopardy winning computer server. Watson has morphed from being unbelievably good at Jeopardy to helping cancer specialists make sense of the growing volume of medical literature comprising of endless data from current and old studies, clinical trials, side effects of drugs, drug combinations to avoid, etc.

Similarly, SEO professionals will take the guess work out of SEO. Apart from making sure that the website adheres to all the rules from search engines, SEO professionals that are working at an SEO company will develop and implement long-term plans to improve your site’s SEO. That includes running content marketing and social media marketing campaigns to improve the website’s SEO.

SEO includes content marketing & Social Media marketing
For a website to get good ranking in the organic search results, it needs to have great on-site content which the SEO company you are working with can advise you on. Google gives great weightage to authentic and authoritative content. Hence, SEO professionals ensure that websites have a deliberate approach towards content marketing which includes regular blog posts.

Blogging, email marketing, white papers, Slideshare presentations, etc. are a few of the ways of generating and then sharing great content. If the community of users likes this content and consumes it and shares it, this will give a signal to the search engines that this is valuable content. That will translate into those sites getting good rankings in the organic search results. If the content on a site gets many Social Media shares, this tells the search engines that this is authentic, meaningful and powerful content created by experts or industry leaders.

Search engines will display such sites higher up in the search rankings. Of course, the final rank of a site is determined based on ‘more than 200 factors’ as Google might put it but having good content is one of the most effective ways to enhance your site’s SEO in an effective and long-term fashion. An experienced SEO company can guide you and the do’s and don’ts in this area.

An SEO company specializing in content marketing will ensure that your site has great content. Social Media is the other great battlefront for the modern SEO professional. This battlefront must also be conquered if your website wishes to last for long. Social media — Twitter, Facebook, etc. — is the place where you have to post funny and relevant content which will get widely shared and disseminated among peers in a user group.

When a blog post shared on Social Media gets numerous Likes or Retweets, that gives the search engine the idea that this is a good site with interesting content. Of course, for content to be shareable, they have to avoid the cardinal mistake of being boring. Content can be boring because of many reasons — it can be too technical, archaic, or arcane, it can be presented in a soporific manner, it may lack the factors that make a post go viral such as having images or an emotional core to it. A good SEO company knows the balance that needs to happen in this respect

Social Media is sort of a pressure release valve for many busy working people. Hence, the popularity of cat videos on the internet — or videos of human twins doing funny stuff and so on. An effective Social Media marketing strategy will take into account such rules of the game as when to post content and how often to post content to each of the different social media platforms.

SEO companies with proven social media marketing strategies and expertise will be long-term assets for your company Once you get your ‘content strategy’ honed, you will likely get a pretty popular website which attracts endless unique visitors as well as a devoted band of regular readers. The deep engagement with your community of readers apart from the large number of social shares will give the right signal to the search engine that the website is an authority on that given business vertical. This will help your website rank higher in organic search results leading to more search engine users discovering your website.

Conclusion
For the above reasons, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) by an experience SEO company can lead to greater popularity for your website. If you are looking for a reliable, trusted and experienced SEO company that can help you achieve higher rankings, please feel free to reach out to the team at Mind Digital Group for any of your digital marketing needs.

Reference:-https://www.minddigital.com/an-seo-company-can-help-your-website/

A Comprehensive Digital Marketing Campaign Can Do Wonders

Very few companies and brands have global recognition. There is only one Coca Cola, one Apple, one Sony, and one McDonalds. There might be hundreds of brands that will ring a bell with consumers but there are millions of companies out there. Every year, new businesses join the existing hordes and try to stand out from the clutter. How do new companies and small enterprises with limited finances accomplish this or even try to? Digital marketing is a highly effective, flexible tool that can be deployed to this end. The cost ofdigital marketing varies to suit all pockets and companies of all sizes. So, unlike traditional advertising which can be highly expensive (consider ad rates during the Super Bowl or the Olympics) and therefore an option that is available to Fortune 1,000 companies and the like, the digital marketing option is available to companies of all sizes.

Digital marketing encompasses a range of activities including paid advertising, email marketing, display re-targeting, SEO, news/PR releases, and social media promotion. With digital marketing, you can measure the ROI very accurately and ensure that your marketing budget is being well spent. Since millions of customers (either existing or potential) are online interacting and sharing experiences with their friends, relations, and colleagues via Social Media. Companies who are present on social media can reach out to these customers directly and intimately. Those who are not present on Facebook, Twitter or Google+ are essentially sending a negative message about themselves to customers.

If companies choose to remain absent from Social Media, they are losing out on an opportunity to build relationships and enhance their credibility with customers. When you want to advertise a new product or something unique about the company such as a green initiative, as an example you can create a cool video about it and upload to YouTube. If it’s a great video that the online audience takes a liking to, then millions will watch it and spread it to their friends and beyond thus volunteering to be your brand ambassadors. Another area that is gaining traction is online reviews with E-commerce retailers like Amazon leading the way. The popularity of Yelp and Tripadvisor show the potential benefits and importance of having good online reviews for your company.

You can even keep track of what the competition is up to by setting up Google alerts. This helps you stay up to date about new products or marketing strategies from the competition. The company website is often the first point of contact between a company and a customer. Therefore, to make a great first impression, the website should be suitably impressive. For E-commerce companies, the website is their showroom as well. Customers expect nothing less than a first-rate experience from E-commerce websites now a days. Amazon and EBay have raised the bar for everyone to try and live up to. With many technology and platform options available, it is incredibly easy for even very small or specialized E-commerce retailers to make great impressions with customers by having a rocking website with all the bells and whistles such as shopping carts, multiple payment options and so on.

The bottom-line therefore is that a comprehensive (and sustained) digital marketing campaign pursued in a thorough and professional manner will lead to more awareness about a company among customers who choose to spend any amount of time online. This will surely do wonders for any company including increasing the top and bottom-line. If you need any help or assistance with your digital strategy then feel free to reach out to the team at Mind Digital Group for any of your digital needs.

Reference:-https://www.minddigital.com/a-comprehensive-digital-marketing-campaign-can-do-wonders/

Activities A Search Engine Optimization Specialist Performs

Search Engine Optimization has a lot of mystery surrounding it and there are many people who do not understand what exactly a Search Engine Optimization Specialist does. While the technical details of this process are certainly not very interesting to someone who lacks technical knowledge. The misconceptions surrounding this industry often cause people to get scammed by unscrupulous SEO professionals who claim to be a Search Engine Optimization Specialist but provide their clients little or no benefit. In addition, sometimes clients hire a SEO specialist who partakes in black hat SEO which is looked down upon and can seriously hurt your rankings. It is important that you know what an SEO specialist really does in order to help your website get a good search engine ranking so that you can avoid being scammed. In addition if you understand what an SEO specialist does, it can help you pick a good SEO company out of the many options presented to you.

Basics of SEO
You do not need to become an SEO expert in order to tell which SEO company will provide you the best results. As long as you have basic knowledge of what a Search Engine Optimization Specialist really does, you can safely pick a quality SEO professional to assist you with your rankings. SEO is divided into on page and off page optimization and before you delve deeper, you need to understand what they are.

✓ On page Optimization – Any changes that a Search Engine Optimization Specialist makes to your website are part of the on page optimization. Usually this involves ridding the website code of errors and ensuring W3C validation. In addition, an SEO specialist will also add proper tags throughout the website and complete all metadata so that search engine spiders can analyze and classify your website with greater ease. He or she will place to correct tagging on your site so that the search engines know what your site is about as well as what to rank your site for.

✓ Off page Optimization – A large portion of time that a Search Engine Optimization Specialist spends on SEO for a website is spent on off-page optimization. Off-page optimization includes sharing links for your website on social networks, popular websites, developing links for your website and getting them placed on websites with a high PageRank. In addition SEO specialist submit articles relevant to your company on different sites, embed quality anchor text links which help you get high search engine ranking for the keywords that you want and more.

Summary
Search Engine Optimization is a time taking task that needs to be handled by trusted professionals who have the experience and expertise to deliver good results. It is something that is a long term task and cannot be done overnight. Any company or individual who claims to get overnight success will be using black hat unethical tactics which you should stay far far away from. If you need any assistance or advice with your Search Engine Optimization or any other digital marketing, please feel free to reach out to the team at Mind Digital Group.

Reference:-https://www.minddigital.com/activities-a-search-engine-optimization-specialist-performs/

Breaking SEO Myths – SEO Is Simpler Than You Think

More and more people think that Search Engine Optimization is an immensely difficult technology that only a very few can master. This myth has helped SEO companies demand high fees from their clients and also ensured that more and people are coming to companies for SEO services. The bottom line is that SEO is not rocket science however it is not easy either. It is a step by step process that anyone can learn and get a reasonable command over in a short period of time. You need to put in time, dedication and have the drive to learn all about SEO involves as it’s a very deep subject matter. However, true expertise in this field requires a lot of effort and time which is the case with every field of work.

When you hire a professional SEO company, you pay them for their time, efforts and expertise in this field of work. You can learn to perform SEO on your own but differentiating between facts and myths of SEO is one of the biggest challenges for those who start down this road. An authoritative guide that can help you figure out the proper way of optimizing a website is not easy to find and there are thousands of people who try to sell SEO guides that promise to teach everything about SEO. If someone has a basic understanding of how a computer system and the internet works, it will not be a big leap forward for them to learn how to perform SEO.

For most small businesses and professional bloggers, simple Search Engine Optimization is more than enough and you can easily learn to do this on your own. You can follow well-known blogs and industry veterans such as SEOMoz, Search Engine Land and a host of others which give reliable SEO information. It is only for the more extensive websites, especially the ones for companies that are operating in intensely competitive industries that professional SEO services are needed.

The first step towards figuring out whether you are capable of handling your SEO needs on your own is learning what all constitutes SEO and the time that you will need to spend in order to see the desired results. SEO is not difficult, it is, however, very time consuming. Even the slightest change in the ranking of the website that you are trying to promote can sometimes take weeks. SEO is time consuming and you cannot expect results overnight by any means. This is the reason that businesses tend to hire SEO services company for promoting their website as these companies have the skills and the resources to ensure that the desired results are obtained.

Employ the services of a capable SEO service provider and give them the time that they need to do their work. There is nothing more frustrating for an SEO company than a client that expects results within days of assigning the Search Engine Optimization project to them. Learning about the basics of SEO will help you know what can or cannot be done by an SEO company. This will also allow you to know when the SEO company you are considering or working with is making false claims. It will also give you an advantage when you are picking one company out of the several professional SEO companies you are looking at. If you need any assistance or advice on your digital marketing including SEO or any type of web development, please feel free to reach out to the team at Mind Digital Group.

Reference:-https://www.minddigital.com/breaking-seo-myths-seo-is-simpler-than-you-think/

The Most Important Factors For Successful E-commerce SEO

Many things need to be considered when integrating your E-commerce and SEO strategy so that they work as cohesively. The way to integrate SEO features into your E-commerce site is by having an SEO consultant as part of the core team of web designers, developers, and information architects. As an example, your Developers need to be aware of duplicate content issues and how to resolve them. Products on the E-commerce store should be organized by category and sub-category. This improve the E-commerce website’s optimization. Conduct keyword research of both your website and competitor websites. Remember that “long tail keywords” is where most of the action lies in terms of search. Make sure your website has breadcrumb navigation. Having descriptive meta tags that include prompts such as ‘find out more about’ is an essential technique. It’s a must to write Img Alt Tags. This helps non-visual readers such as vision-impaired consumers. There are so many things to keep track of it can be quite intimidating hence the reason for having an SEO consultant can surely easy these headaches.

While SEO and automation used together can have negative connotations, for E-commerce websites with thousands of products, it is important to facilitate automation whereby programmers can automate on-site elements such as title tags. User generated content should be leveraged to help improve the site’s ranking. Since user generated content tends to be original and fresh, this improves the site from an SEO perspective. Allow buyers to write product reviews and testimonials. This creates a community of happy users and convinces visitors that they can trust you. Help visitors spread the word about all the products on your site by integrating social media on product pages. Also, this will help you avoid using manufacturer product descriptions which can lead to duplicate content which is a no-no from an SEO perspective.

You can maintain a blog where you talk about new products and offers and have an FAQ page that helps answer the most frequent queries of your users.

Optimized product pictures and videos should be used on the site as the quality of your product pictures can influence how visitors feel about your product. Make sure customers feel comfortable sharing their financial information on your site. Prominently display the logos and text certifying that you comply with security standards (SSL/Visa). It’s better to offer peace of mind to visitors rather than take the security aspects of the website for granted.

Mobile and smartphone usage is growing like crazy. This trend will only persist. For E-commerce retailers, the website should be optimized for mobiles via using responsive web design or having dedicated mobile sites.

If you have local presence apart from being an online retailer, then your business’ name, address, and phone number (NAP) for all locations should be present on your website. All the branches should be listed on Google Local Business via a Google+ page. You should allow reviews and rating on each branch of your business. This will be displayed by Google when someone searches for a local branch of your business.

These are some of the basic E-commerce techniques that should be taken care of at a minimum to ensure survival and growth for your business in the online commerce space. If you need any help or assistance with your SEO strategy, please feel free to reach out to the team at Mind Digital Group.

Reference:-https://www.minddigital.com/the-most-important-factors-for-successful-e-commerce-seo/

Know What Search Engine Optimization Can Do For You

One of the biggest challenges for a business is to engage with more people and convert those people that are engaged into customers. Entrepreneurs spend a good amount of money on creating websites that have brilliant design and a great user-experience. However, none of that matters if you are not getting any traffic to your website. This is where SEO (Search Engine Optimization) comes into play and allows a site owner to gain visibility online. SEO services usually fall into two categories; white hat SEO and black hat SEO. White hat SEO also known as organic Search Engine Optimization does not violate the terms of service of the search engines while black hat SEO completely ignores it. Any company that you engaged with for SEO services should be thoroughly vetted and you should be absolutely sure that they are only engaging in white-hat SEO services. Below, we will take a look at how white-hat SEO services can help you take your business to the next level.

✓ Achieve Your Business Goals
Every business online or offline has certain goals that they want to meet and exceed. If you implement the correct SEO methodologies and techniques on your website, you will be able to reach your goals quickly and efficiently. With the help a professional SEO company that can provide you great SEO services, you can see the rankings on your website increase in the search engines which will generate traffic to your website. When you generate traffic to your website, this will generate you customers and help you to achieve your business goals

✓ Increased Visibility
When a prospective customer is searching for a specific product or service, are you getting found online in the search engines for these services or products that you are offering? If the answer is no, then you need to be working with an SEO company that can help you increase your rankings in the organic search results ensuring that you are getting found for all the relevant keywords you want to be ranking for. The SEO company you work with will provide you SEO services which will help you get found and help you gain more visibility online across the multiple search engines.

✓ Cost Efficient
They are many marketing channels that you can opt for which will increase your sales and add to your bottom-line. However, SEO is one of the most cost-efficient methods that is available in the market today. Granted, it does take time and effort to rank high in the organic search results but once you are ranking within the search engine for your relevant keywords, the traffic is absolutely free. Compare that to Paid Search (PPC) where you are paying each time a visitor comes to your site, this can become an expensive affair! SEO services is one of the most cost-effective ways of generating traffic and sales to your website. The SEO company you work with will be able to provide you guidance and help you to execute the necessary strategies so that you are ranking high within the search engines for all your relevant products or services.

Summary
Working with a company that can provide you SEO services can be a very profitable and fruitful venture for your business as long as you can find the right partner to help you. The SEO company that you choose to work should undergo a due diligence check, reference check, credit check and so on to ensure that they can deliver what they claim to. SEO is something that needs to be taken seriously no matter what size business you have and is something that can help your business flourish. If you are looking for a reputable, experienced and trusted SEO service provider, please feel free to reach out to the team at Mind Digital Group for any of your digital marketing needs.

Reference:-https://www.minddigital.com/know-search-engine-optimization-can/

Four Steps To A Comprehensive Content Marketing Strategy – Part 3

Target Audience:

You should know your audience to get the maximum mileage out of your content marketing budget — if your audience is CEOs and other senior management type executives vs. whether you are targeting teens. This will determine the tools and platforms you need to use for your content marketing efforts.

The must-use social media these days is Facebook to get your message to the largest audience possible. Facebook is the number one digital marketing platform if you are a Business to Consumer (B2C) company while LinkedIn gets primacy if you are a Business to Business (B2B) company.

Getting the attention of Facebook users can be a tricky affair. After you create a company Facebook page and upload a Profile picture, a large header image and otherwise give the Facebook page a professional look, the next challenge is to attract followers to the page or getting Facebook users to ‘Like’ your FB page.

This will probably require you to ‘promote’ your page on Facebook and FB will do that for you and charge you accordingly. After you get people to Like your Facebook page, you can start posting content to the page. The content may be articles, FAQs, viral videos or whatever may be of interest to your customers depending on your business vertical.

Facebook’s ever-changing Newsfeed algorithm ensures that it’s not enough for you to get thousands of people to Like your Facebook page. Those who have liked your business’s FB page may — or, more likely, may not — see your Facebook posts.

Only if those FB who have liked your FB page have also chosen the option and asked FB to always show your posts on top of their Newsfeed when they log into Facebook, then FB will show your posts to them for sure. Otherwise, more Facebook paid marketing is required.

Facebook says it gives priority to friends and family meaning posts shared by one’s FB friends appear on others’ Newsfeed. After that, the next priorities are for the Newsfeed to inform and entertain.
 

Content Marketing Using Facebook:

You should of course upload your blog posts to Facebook and do that on a regular basis for maximum impact. Facebook’s trending topics give insights into what people are talking about at a given moment and you could post relevant links to a trending topic. You could share interesting YouTube videos as well as images to your FB feed as people respond more to images and videos.

Facebook’s search box lets you find people and other business pages who may be competitors or just noteworthy or notable or good quality pages in general that you could learn from. And you can promote specific Facebook posts as well.

If you want to target a wide range of tech-savvy professionals in their 20s and 30s, having a popular Twitter feed can be a powerful weapon to reach them.
 

Content Marketing Using Twitter:

You can settle upon your plans and outcome out of your Twitter campaign — whether it’s about generating traffic to your website or blog, or about some ‘conversion’ action such as signing-up to an email list or joining some free trial.

Find, build, and engage with your audience on Twitter using lists in Twitter, Twitter’s search box, and Twitter hashtags. And schedule your tweets to get the maximum impact. You can also get content ideas from Twitter as well as monitor your competitor’s Twitter feed and keep tabs on them as well as get new ideas.

You can also ‘promote’ your content on Twitter if you can allocate a portion of your company’s digital marketing budget for this.
 

Effective Content Marketing Using LinkedIn

To target business professionals, using LinkedIn for content marketing is quite effective — even Microsoft thinks LinkedIn is worth investing in to tap into the business professionals with accounts there. LinkedIn groups are definitely useful for sharing content. Since LinkedIn is a network of professionals, it works best as a B2B marketing vehicle. You should ensure your posts to LinkedIn groups are relevant and useful to the professionals who are part of that group.

SlideShare is part of LinkedIn; therefore, you could have a presentation about your company or a product and share that on LinkedIn. Similarly, sharing videos can be useful and effective on LinkedIn as they are on any other social media platform.

When you share something to Facebook or Twitter, make note of what LinkedIn group that post might be suitable to and share it on the group with a relevant question to get a discussion started.

Now that LinkedIn has its own publishing platform, you can try and write original posts on LinkedIn or share a part of your blog post existing elsewhere and then link to your blog. LinkedIn posts also do well in Google search results often showing up on page one of organic results. Online publishers such as Quartz are already doing this in their endless quest for more traffic and hits.
 

Using Quora for Content Marketing

Quora may seem like too small or geeky a social network for brands or marketers to bother with it but it has a lot of trust worthiness and can help your brand build thought leadership over a period of time. You can use Quora to learn if there is any discussion happening around your brand or your competition or your business segment. It will help you keep track of the conversation and join in when relevant.

You can learn from others as well as answer users’ questions. One nice thing about Quora is the first person nature of the answers people can get from the likes of Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s founder. There are astronauts like Clayton Anderson answering queries on Quora.

As with any other form of writing, use catchy headlines when you write something on Quora. Also, you can start your own blog on Quora where you can share your own thoughts on a given topic. One benefit of writing on Quora is that it seems to have good traction in Google’s SEO landscape.
 
Schedule:

You have to be predictable in your content marketing plans. Once you have an audience for your content, you need to keep supplying them with fresh content on a predictable basis so that the audience is not disappointed. Much thought and effort needs to go into ensuring that you have a ready supply of fresh content.

Different social media platforms need different posting frequencies and schedules for maximum impact.
 

Twitter Schedule:

Maximum Twitter users log into their accounts in the morning — many do that first thing after they wake up — and at night. So, depending on your time zone, you could try to time your tweets accordingly.

Links to your blog posts can also be tweeted more than once during the day to ensure more of your Twitter followers get to see it. Weekend tweets can be lists of the best stuff you have shared over the preceding week.
 

Facebook Schedule:

As to the schedule of posts on Facebook, it has been determined that Thursdays and Fridays are best to run Facebook campaigns as people are in a more relaxed mood ahead of the weekend compared to Mondays when people are more likely to be in a grumpy mood or on Tuesdays when people are likely to be in the middle of work and overworked or overstressed.
 

LinkedIn Schedule:

It works best if LinkedIn posts are uploaded when professionals are likely to have downtime such as just before the start of the work day (7 to 8 am), or during the lunch break (11 am to 2 pm), and towards the end of the work day (around 4 pm).

One way to ensure a continuous supply of content to post is to aggregate content. This can be done occasionally or you can have a weekly schedule of posting aggregated content. These can be either internal or external content.

Someone like Maria Popova has built a formidable readership for her Brain Pickings website, and her newsletter goes out every weekend and it’s all about mostly content aggregation — excerpts of books, commencement addresses and so on. One more similar content aggregator is Farnam Street.
 
Tools:

You can use the different social media tools effectively if you become an expert at using them and learn each tool’s particular characteristics and quirks. NASA does a nice job of harnessing social media using different Twitter handles. Being ‘NASA,’ and doing what it does — operating rovers on Mars (Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity https://twitter.com/MarsCuriosity), spacecraft orbiting Saturn (Cassini Saturnhttps://twitter.com/CassiniSaturn), spacecraft now orbiting Jupiter https://twitter.com/NASAJuno) — it is relatively an easy task to gain followers among discerning Twitter users.

Everyone cannot be a pioneer in space exploration like NASA but businesses can try and build excitement around some scientific or space success or milestone being achieved and these can become popular on social media.

It’s not outlandish. That’s exactly what Google does with its relevant doodles. There was a Google doodle on the 4th of July when Juno successfully entered Jupiter’s orbit. There was a Google doodle celebrating Philae lander’s landing on Comet 67P.

https://twitter.com/GoogleDoodles/status/532597835569434624

And Google had a relevant doodle when Curiosity successfully landed on Mars.

https://twitter.com/GoogleDoodles/status/232588351193104384

Your social media tools are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Quora primarily. You have to decide how to use those tools depending on your target and your budget.
 

Outsourcing Content Marketing

Outsourcing content marketing to a digital marketing agency in India can be a wise decision and an investment worth making to build your brand’s online presence and reputation in the long term. Outsourcing done right can get great results for any business. Giant businesses like Apple and GE are using outsourcing of various activities in a manner that adds billions to their bottom-line and top line.

Focusing on core competencies leads to business success. This is as true — or truer — for small businesses as it is for large corporate. It is better to outsource your content marketing work to content marketing professionals at a digital marketing agency in countries like India instead of asking the kayaking instructor at your adventure tourism company to double-up as the in-house blogger and content writer.

Instead of asking the chef of your restaurant to do part-time duty as your website’s SEO guy, it is better to outsource SEO work to SEO professionals at an SEO company in India.

Finally, content marketing can both help companies keep in touch with customers and be used as a platform to attract new customers. Having a proper content marketing strategy is essential to get the best return on investment on this technique.

Reference:-https://www.minddigital.com/four-steps-to-a-comprehensive-content-marketing-strategy-part-3/