Tag: search engine optimization

Content Marketing Tips to Engage and Grow Your Audience

Content Marketing Tips to Engage and Grow Your Audience

nettsolutions

Content marketing matters now more than ever, especially for businesses looking to grow and engage their audience. Estimated global content marketing revenue rose from $72 billion in 2023 to $82 billion in 2024. And it’s expected to reach $107 billion by 2026.

But creating effective content that grabs the right people and interests them in your business isn’t easy. To help you engage prospective customers and build your audience, our Orange County SEO agency shares five valuable tips below.

Prioritize Quality and Value

Bashing content out and publishing it daily isn’t enough. Sure, search engines love fresh content, but they also know bad content when they see it.

Focus on constructing content with a clear message, audience, and goal. You should publish content regularly and according to a schedule, but create a checklist of points your criteria your content must meet. Whether it’s a blog post, podcast, or video, good quality is paramount.

Engage Your Audience with Stories

Try to include stories in your content. That might be an anecdote about an event, the background of your business, or a case study of a client you’ve helped.

Storytelling can engage users, connect with them emotionally, and keep them on your site for longer.

Try to Make Content Evergreen

Evergreen content stays on your site and remains relevant for years. You might need to update it from time to time, but it won’t have an expiry date unlike topical content.

Popular examples of evergreen content include guides, case studies, checklists, and FAQ pages. Promote these in social media posts regularly, as part of your social media marketing strategy, to attract new visitors.

Use Your Own Research and Insights

Adding research and links to authority sites is important to support points in content. But building content around your own research will make it unique and original.

Sharing a fresh perspective can provide readers with more value than content that primarily relies on other people’s findings. If you do it regularly enough, it can also position you as a thought leader in a specific area.

Avoid Clickbait Headlines

It’s tempting to use catchy headlines that might not exactly reflect the contents of a blog post, podcast, or video. But don’t give in to that temptation. Otherwise, you could lose visitors as soon as they realize what you’ve done. And many will know clickbait when they see it and avoid your content altogether.

Create eye-catching, engaging headlines that honestly align with subject matter. Your audience will likely appreciate that more than headlines that are exciting but misleading.

Conclusion

Creating high-quality, high-value content is fantastic for marketing your business. But bringing more people to your website and satisfying search engines demands more than just great content.

Effective SEO is vital for securing a strong position on results pages, and our Orange County SEO agency can help you with bespoke packages. To find out how we can build your site’s online presence, get in touch today!

Why Are People Leaving Your Website Without Converting

Why Are People Leaving Your Website Without Converting?

nettsolutions

Are you tired of potential new customers leaving your website without converting, but you don’t know what’s chasing them away?

Our Orange County SEO agency explores five common reasons why websites lose visitors.

It’s Just Too Slow

The longer your webpages take to load, the more likely users are to lose interest.

But improving your website’s speed can help you reduce your bounce and cart abandonment rates. A user-friendly experience may encourage users to convert and leave them with a good impression. And if they remember your site fondly, why wouldn’t they be back?

It’s Not a Mobile-Friendly Site

We’ve all probably struggled to use a website on a mobile device before. It can be frustrating enough to make you click away and try another site. According to Google research, users are 62% less likely to buy from a business if they have a bad experience with their website on mobile.

A well-designed, mobile-friendly site is quick and easy to use on a smartphone or tablet. Customers shouldn’t have to wait for pages to load, deal with missing media, or struggle to interact with buttons that are too small for the screen. If they do, they have less reason to stay on your site and convert.

They Don’t Trust You

Adding social proof to your website will help you earn trust and credibility. Integrating customer reviews into your site is one option. These show that other customers have bought products from your business or used your services with great results.

Other forms of social proof include:

  • Testimonials with pictures and names
  • Certification badges
  • Positive social media comments from real users
  • Snippets from reviews at notable websites

You don’t need to go overboard with social proof: just add enough to show that you’re a legitimate business with satisfied customers.

Your Content is Presented Badly

Good content is paramount. But even well-written blog posts and product copy can be rendered unreadable by bad presentation.

Website visitors should be able to understand your content, whether they’re reading about your company, your products, or your shipping. Avoid using a font that looks unprofessional or too small, especially on mobile screens. Make sure that text and background colors contrast nicely. And keep paragraphs to just a few sentences to prevent long blocks of text.

Your Site is Too Hard to Navigate

Visitors should be able to find whatever they need on your website through a clear, logical menu system and internal links. If they can’t, they won’t appreciate going round in circles, and are more likely to leave your site entirely.

Explore your website as if you were a prospect visiting it for the first time and see how easy it is to find key areas. Look for ways to clarify and improve your navigation to provide a better user experience.

Ready to Improve Your Website’s Performance?

Our Orange County SEO agency can help your business drive more traffic to your website and convert visitors into customers. To find out more, get in touch today!

5 Timeless Tips for a Strong SEO Strategy

5 Timeless Tips for a Strong SEO Strategy

nettsolutions

Does your SEO strategy need a little work?

Are you tired of seeing your ranking drop again and again?

Our Orange County SEO agency shares five timeless tips to help you improve your SEO performance below.

Keep Your Site Speed as Fast as You Can

Optimize your site speed and ensure that pages load quickly across all devices. When page load time increases from 1 to 10 seconds on mobile sites, visitors are 123% more likely to bounce.

They have products to buy or questions to answer, and your site is slowing them down. Why wouldn’t they look elsewhere? But faster load times will give visitors more reason to stay and learn what you have to offer.

Provide Visitors with High-Quality, High-Value Content

An effective content marketing strategy is a must for building a strong online presence. Publishing a great blog post packed with helpful insights can position your site as a reliable resource.

If you create content with an original perspective and unique research, you can demonstrate your thought leadership too. That will give other sites a reason to link to your content, which should enhance your ranking and drive extra traffic to your site.

Fix Broken Links (Internal and External)

Strong links are crucial for SEO. Internal links help users navigate your site, and external links provide them with valuable resources elsewhere. But links can become broken over time.

Broken internal links prevent search engines from crawling and indexing your entire site. That may have a negative impact on your SEO performance and diminish the quality of experience you offer.

Audit internal and external links regularly to identify broken ones. If you find any, fix them as soon as possible to reduce their effect on your ranking.

Update Older Content to Make It More Relevant

Publishing a regular stream of fresh content is vital for SEO: search engines will index your site frequently and you’ll have more keywords on your site. But if you have any outdated content, optimizing it can upgrade your SEO performance too.

Update blog posts and other content with new information. Make it more relevant to today’s audience, and ensure that all links are still active. Review the keywords and update them as needed. With a little refresh, content published years ago can still help you take your ranking higher.

Deliver a Positive User Experience

If your website is poorly designed, hard to navigate, and provides little to no valuable content, users will probably have a negative experience. And that can gradually damage your SEO performance.

But if your site is easy to navigate across devices and features high-quality content, users are more likely to stick around. Search engines will see that your site is engaging visitors and performing well overall. That may boost your ranking in the long run.

Want to Improve Your SEO Strategy?

Our Orange County SEO agency offers expert search engine optimization packages tailored to businesses with diverse goals and budgets.

To find out how we can make your site more visible on Google and other search engines, get in touch today!

 

4 Ways to Improve Your Business's SERP Ranking

4 Ways to Improve Your Business’s SERP Ranking

nettsolutions

The higher your ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs), the more visible your website will be to potential new customers. That’s great if your website is riding high on Google’s first page. But if it’s not, your site will be harder for potential new customers to find.

If you’re unsatisfied with your business’s SERP ranking, you can try various techniques to improve it. And our Orange County SEO agency shares four simple, effective ideas to help you below.

Make the Most of Titles, Meta Descriptions, and Alt Text

Descriptive titles play a key part in achieving a high SERP ranking. Google uses titles (specifically HTML title tags) to learn what a webpage contains, and users may decide whether or not to click through based on a title.

Your titles should be clear and contain one of your main keywords to maximize relevance.

Get Your Linking Right

A solid internal linking strategy can help you boost your SERP ranking. Search engines use internal links to crawl your site and establish relationships between pages. That helps them recognize content related to specific topics, which is crucial for directing visitors to relevant pages on your site.

But external links are important for SEO too. Linking to high-quality websites outside of your own can enhance your site’s credibility, and you’ll provide a stronger user experience if you link to external websites that offer further information on a topic.

Set Up Your Site to be Mobile Friendly

If your site doesn’t display properly on a smartphone or it’s too hard to navigate, users are unlikely to stick around for long. According to Google, almost 50% of visitors will leave a site if pages take more than 3 seconds to load on their mobile device.

The most important steps in creating a mobile-friendly site include:

  • Compressing images for faster loading
  • Simplifying the design
  • Making buttons big enough for easy use on touchscreens
  • Avoiding irritating pop-ups

When your site is mobile friendly, users will have less reason to leave without converting.

Publish New Content and Update Old Content

Publishing new content regularly is important for achieving and maintaining higher visibility. It allows you to add various target keywords to your website in an organic way, and creates backlinking opportunities to show search engines that your site has value.

But you need to update old content to maintain its relevance and visibility to search engines. Content that has become outdated, inaccurate, or irrelevant since publication can have a negative impact on your ranking.

That’s because search engines aim to provide users with the most relevant, valuable results. If they consider your content to be of low quality, that can affect your overall position on SERPs.

When looking for older material to update, consider repurposing content to make something new and exciting.

Increase Your SERP Ranking with an Expert SEO Strategy

If you’re looking to boost your business’s SERP ranking, these four tips should help you. And if you want to work with SEO pros, our Orange County SEO agency will create a tailored strategy to improve your online visibility.

Contact us today to get started!

 

 

How to Reach Customers Near You with Good Local SEO

How to Reach Customers Near You with Good Local SEO

nettsolutions

Local SEO can help nearby customers find your business online, whether they’re using their smartphone, their laptop, or smart speaker. But what does a good local SEO strategy involve?

Here are four great tips from our Orange County SEO agency to help you get started.

Target Local Keywords

Focus on local keywords for effective local SEO. For example, if you’re targeting parents and caregivers looking for kids’ clothes near you, one location-specific keyword might be “child’s clothing store in Orange County”.

When creating your content marketing strategy, focus on local events, community news, and any other topics likely to appeal to nearby customers. This ensures you can pepper plenty of local keywords throughout your site organically.

Take Advantage of Your Google Business Profile Listing

Google Business Profile (previously known as Google My Business) is a free tool that can help your company be more visible on SERPs. Use it to set up a distinctive local profile for your business, featuring key information, images, videos, and reviews. To avoid missed opportunities, update your Google Business Profile whenever your contact details change.

It’s crucial that you claim your Google Business Profile as soon as possible (if you haven’t already), or someone else could. Fortunately, you can reclaim it if that happens, so don’t worry!

Welcome Customer Feedback and Reviews

Feedback and reviews can make a big impact on your local visibility. Positive feedback alongside your results on SERPs will give you more credibility, which is vital for small enterprises.

Almost 70% of online shoppers read 1 to 6 customer reviews before they decide whether to buy something or not. If you have a selection of varied, honest, but ultimately encouraging reviews to your name, a large number of potential customers are likely to check them before they do business with you.

Ask customers to review your products and services after each transaction. Make the process as quick and simple as possible to reduce the risk of people giving up.

Optimize Your Website for Voice Searches

Voice search plays an important part in local SEO. Imagine a potential new customer asking their virtual assistant “where’s the best pizza place near me?” while walking within two minutes of your new Italian restaurant.

If your site is optimized well for local SEO, you have an invaluable opportunity to bring someone new into your venue, impress them, and convert them into a repeat customer.

Here are a few tips for voice search optimization:

  • Use conversational keywords (“where’s the nearest towing company in Orange County?”).
  • Include clear but detailed answers to common questions in your content (e.g. in an FAQ).
  • Design pages for easy use on mobile devices (critical for good local SEO).

Start Reaching Local Customers with Our Orange County SEO Agency Now

Our Orange County SEO agency is ready to help you boost your visibility and reach more local customers with a bespoke SEO strategy.

To find out exactly what we can do for you, get in touch today!

 

What 2024 SEO Trends Do You Need to Know About?

What 2024 SEO Trends Do You Need to Know About?

nettsolutions

A new year brings new changes to the world of SEO. And staying up to date with the latest shifts, whatever they are, is crucial to maintain or improve your SEO performance.

To help you do that, our Orange County SEO agency will look at 5 of the top SEO trends for 2024 below.

Mobile-Friendly Websites are Critical

According to Pew, more than 83% of people use their mobile devices to access the internet in the U.S., and this is the only way 15% of Americans can go online.

Consumers’ increasing reliance on smartphones and tablets for browsing the web means that optimizing websites for mobile devices has never been more important. Creating responsive sites is vital to ensure that they’re properly formatted and usable on any screen, so a mobile-first approach will continue to be a priority in 2024.

Optimizing Websites for Voice Search

Voice search has grown and grown in recent years with the rise of virtual assistants and smart speakers. And that looks set to continue in 2024, as voice search optimization remains an important element of SEO.

Using long-tail keywords that are more natural and conversational is vital to match the way people speak when performing voice searches (such as “Chinese restaurants near me”). Creating an FAQ section on your site is a simple and effective way to cater to voice queries.

Video Content Will Stay Prevalent

Videos commonly appear in search results, covering everything from tutorials to news reports. Businesses will keep using video content to boost SEO rankings in 2024, which is a great way to build brand awareness and engage potential customers.

Companies can use videos to showcase their new products in a dynamic way, show how their services work, and generate wider interest.

The Persistent Power of Analytics

Businesses can learn a lot from analyzing the wealth of data generated through digital marketing, and analytics will remain a valuable aspect of SEO in 2024.

Google Analytics, for example, offers a comprehensive insight into website performance, visibility, and more. You can use this data to learn more about your site and what changes you need to make to improve your SEO performance.

Personalization of Search Results

In 2024, personalization looks likely to become more commonplace as AI helps search engines improve the relevance of results.

Personalization is key for delivering the most relevant search results based on a user’s online activity. That reduces the amount of irrelevant content, products, and services presented to users, and offers a more satisfying experience overall.

Want to Improve Your SEO Performance?

If you want to take your SEO ranking higher in 2024 and beyond, working with a professional team of SEO experts is the simplest, most effective solution.

Our Orange County SEO agency is here to help you improve your rankings and reach the right customers. Contact us today to get started!

 

How to Create Your Content Marketing Strategy

How to Create Your Content Marketing Strategy

nettsolutions

A clear content marketing strategy is a must for any business trying to engage and expand its audience. But a survey by the Content Marketing Institute revealed that only 40% of B2B marketers have a clear strategy. Meanwhile, 33% had an undocumented one, 20% planned to set one up in the next year, and 7% had no such plans.

So, do you have a strategy for your content marketing?

If not, or if you’re looking to develop a fresh one, our Orange County SEO agency has a few helpful tips.

What is a Content Marketing Strategy?

A content marketing strategy covers the planning, creation, and distribution of your content. It encompasses everything relevant to how your business uses content to reach customers, grow your audience, and achieve your objectives.

Building a detailed strategy will clarify how you can help readers, viewers, or listeners better than anyone else.

Creating Your Content Marketing Strategy

Confirm Your Content Marketing Goals

What do you want to achieve with your content?

Identifying your goals can be a time-consuming process, but when you know what they are, rank them in order of priority. That will make it easier to create the right content for your business (and ideally your audience) in the short and long term.

Research Your Audience

To create the most valuable content for your audience, you need to know who they are. What types of content do they enjoy? How long do they prefer blog posts, videos, podcasts, and other content to be? And what content do they want but struggle to find?

Answering questions like these will equip you with the information you need to craft high-value content. You can use the following methods to research your audience :

  • Surveys
  • Social listening tools
  • User behavior analysis
  • Focus groups

Developing a content marketing strategy without research may be a little faster, but you’re more likely to miss the mark.

Brainstorm Concepts, Topics, and Exciting Ideas

Use your marketing goals and data gathered through your research to brainstorm content ideas. You can try various techniques, such as a mind map: write a topic in the middle of a whiteboard and surround it with anything that comes to mind.

Create Personas

Personas can help you create targeted content that’s more relevant and engaging to specific audience segments. They include concise information on a fictional reader representing a group, such as 30 – 40 year-old professionals with lots of disposable income and no kids. In-depth audience research is essential for building accurate personas.

Build your Content Calendar

Setting up a content calendar will enable you to stay consistent, organized, and aware of upcoming topics. That’s ideal if you need to research a subject or book a space for filming a video. It’s also helpful for promoting content via social media and email before it’s published.

Good content is fundamental for any digital marketing strategy. And if you need help with your digital marketing, including SEP and retargeting, leave it to our Orange County SEO agency.

How can we boost your online visibility? Get in touch to find out!

 

Create Better Content with Personas

Create Better Content with Personas

nettsolutions

Personas are a popular tool in digital marketing. A software business, for instance, might build user personas to understand who their new product is for. That can reduce the risk of launching a new program that fails to deliver the features that the target users need most.

Similarly, creating a persona for content marketing can help you bring the right information to the right people. You’ll find it easier to build content that engages the relevant audience segments and remains consistent.

But how do you create a persona for your content? Our Orange County digital marketing agency shares some tips to help you get it right

Research Your Audience

To create a persona, you need to know as much about your audience as you can. Here are a few ideas to keep in mind:

  • Send surveys to customers asking their opinion on your current content, the content they like to read, and what they find least appealing about content in general.
  • Chat with sales and support staff about common pain points. What drives customers to contact your business? What issues do they face? These insights can help you develop accurate personas.
  • Check your leading competitors’ content. What types of blog posts published on their site achieve the highest engagement? Which formats do they use most often, and how do readers/viewers react? You might learn more about what your shared audience likes and dislikes.
  • Pay attention to social media conversations related to your industry, business, and content. Social channels give you a direct connection to different audience segments, and can be vital when building personas.

When you gather information on your audience and how they engage with content, you can start crafting your personas.

Consider Your Target Readers’ Goals and Challenges

Use the information you gathered through your research to build a brief character study of your target reader, viewer, or listener. A content marketing persona should include essential details such as:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Location
  • Occupation (mainly for B2B companies)
  • Goal (what they’re looking for when they come to your content)
  • Challenges (what’s preventing them from getting what they want)
  • Social media channels

You only need to provide basic details in each area — personas should give you and your team at-a-glance breakdowns of the target individual.

Understand What Each Persona Needs at Different Stages of the Customer Journey

Content is important throughout the customer journey, so bear that in mind when planning your publication schedule.

For example, a potential buyer will find certain blog posts invaluable at the start of their journey (the awareness stage), such as a concise overview of a specific product or service.

Your content marketing personas can help you understand different readers’ goals and challenges at each stage of their customer journey. Consider how your content can engage them and encourage them to become loyal buyers. Brainstorm content ideas for each stage of the customer journey across your audience segments.

Our Orange County digital marketing pros are here to boost your business’s visibility on search engines through SEO, SEP, retargeting, and more. Contact us today to get started!

Mobile SEO Tips: How to Help Your Website Rank Better

Mobile SEO Tips: How to Help Your Website Rank Better

nettsolutions

While online, consumers all over the world spend more than half of their time browsing websites on a mobile device. But users may not be able to find your website in the first place if it’s not optimized for mobile. And that can have a serious impact on your rankings.

What can you do about that? Our Orange County SEO agency shares a few ideas to inspire you below.

Responsive Design is a Must

Mobile devices generate more than 60% of organic search engine traffic, so customers should be able to visit your site and enjoy a user-friendly experience on any device. Otherwise, you risk losing them: one survey found that 60% of consumers abandon transactions because of a poor user experience.

That’s why using responsive web design is a must for every mobile SEO strategy. Images, text, and other key page elements will be scaled to the appropriate dimensions for the user’s screen.

As Google gives preference to mobile-friendly sites that provide a positive user experience, responsive web design can help boost your SEO ranking.

Maximize Page Load Times

Page speed is critical. If your pages take longer than three seconds to load, you risk losing visitors and their business. Google also considers page speed a major aspect of quality websites and a positive user experience. If your pages take too long to load on mobile devices, it’s time to fix that.

You can increase page speed by:

  • Compressing images
  • Reducing redirects
  • Caching pages
  • Decreasing JavaScript, HTML, and CSS code

These are just a few ideas to help you get started. Keep making improvements until you get load times down to three seconds or less.

Target Local Customers

“Near me” searches have increased dramatically in the past decade, as smartphones and smart speakers allow consumers to find local providers with minimal effort.

More than 75% of people visit a brick-and-mortar location within 24 hours of running a local search on their mobile device, and almost 30% of those searches lead to a purchase.

Optimizing your site for local searches can increase your visibility on mobile. Create content with a local focus, set up a Google Business Profile, and enable customers to review your services. All this can make your site easier to find for local searches.

Create Mobile-Friendly Content

All content on your site should be easy to read and view on a mobile device. It also needs to keep visitors engaged enough to stay on your site and explore.

Try these tips:

  • Keep paragraphs concise to help visitors skim text
  • Embrace white space for easy readability
  • Use brief, punchy headlines
  • Break up text with videos and images (compressed, of course!)

Mobile-friendly content is essential for a great user experience, so optimize yours to boost your ranking.

Need a little help to take your rankings higher? Leave it to our Orange County SEO agency!

We’ll create a bespoke SEO strategy to increase your visibility and deliver a stronger user experience. Get in touch now to learn more!

5 SEO Trends for 2022 You Need to Know About

5 SEO Trends for 2022 You Need to Know About

mwon

SEO evolves from year to year, and it’s crucial that you stay up to date with the latest trends to avoid falling behind. With 2022 here already, we thought it was time for our Orange County SEO specialists to share five top SEO trends for the year ahead.

Greater Focus On Website Accessibility

As the Internet becomes increasingly embedded in our lives, every website should be optimized for improved accessibility. Many people may struggle to use your site properly if you overlook this key issue: for example, around 12 million people in the U.S. have vision impairment and approximately 15% of adults experience some level of hearing difficulty.

Enhanced accessibility can provide all users with a high-quality browsing experience, regardless of their capabilities. It will also reduce the risk of dissatisfied visitors leaving your site with a negative impression of your brand.

More Websites Catering to Voice Search

Twenty-seven percent of the worldwide online population uses voice search on mobile devices. This trend will drive more and more businesses to optimize their websites for voice search in 2022, but what does that involve?

  • Incorporate keywords into questions users are likely to ask, especially on mobile devices, such as “where’s the nearest pizza restaurant to me?”
  • Implement long-tail keywords for accurate targeting.
  • Write in a conversational style.
  • Create FAQ pages packed with relevant, conversational questions and answers.

Increasing Popularity of Featured Snippets

Featured snippets appear on around 19% of SERPs, and they give users a faster way to access information. Ideally, a featured snippet will provide an answer but still compel users to click through for a more detailed insight instead of scrolling down.

In 2022 (and beyond), more brands will structure their content to earn featured snippets. One technique is to use more questions and answers in content, beginning with “who”, “what”, or “why”.

Mobile-friendly Websites Becoming More Prevalent

More than 92% of Internet users around the world went online via their mobile devices as of January 2021.So, it’s no surprise that brands will increasingly optimize their websites for mobile devices in 2022 and beyond.

Mobile-friendly websites are critical to deliver the best user experience and prevent frustrated users from leaving your site.

Combining Video and Long-form Content for Better Results

Brands will continue to embrace longer content in 2022. This typically gives readers more valuable information and encourages visitors to stay on your site for longer, unlike a short piece of content.

And video will remain a key part of SEO strategies the world over. Ninety-three percent of businesses win new customers thanks to videos they post on social media, and companies that use video grow revenue 49% faster than those that don’t. Combining long-form content and videos can help businesses improve SEO campaigns significantly.

Our Orange County SEO agency is here to help you achieve better results, whether you’re starting from scratch or looking to overhaul your current SEO strategy. Get in touch to find out how we can help you today!