cese1931

[cese1931]

Citywide SEO Announced as a 2021 Local Excellence Award Winner by UpCity!

Citywide SEO Announced as a 2021 Local Excellence Award Winner by UpCity!

For more than a decade, UpCity’s mission has been—and continues to be—to help businesses find B2B service providers they can trust. The UpCity Recommendability Rating was developed to determine a service provider’s credibility and recommendability, giving UpCity the confidence to recommend them to the more than 1.5 million businesses that visit their site. 

Each year, UpCity analyzes and scores more than 70,000 service providers based on their UpCity Recommendability Rating and acknowledges the top national and local providers with an UpCity Excellence Award. The results are in, and we won!

We are ecstatic to announce that the Citywide SEO team has been recognized as one of the top B2B service providers of 2021 in the San Antonio area by UpCity! 

When it comes to your business, you need a skilled and flexible website team. That’s why Citywide SEO prides ourselves on offering all of our clients a dedicated team of digital marketing specialists, ranging from website designers, developers, SEO, PPC, FB specialists, and all things digital to serve your business.

Heidi Sullivan, SVP of Product & Marketing of UpCity, had this to say about Citywide SEO:

“Citywide SEO knows what it takes to deliver ROI to their clients. We’re proud to recognize them as a 2021 Local Excellence winner!”

– Heidi Sullivan, SVP of Product & Marketing

This recognition has been driven in large part by our 5.0-star review rating on UpCity. Here are a few of our favorite pieces of feedback we’ve received from our incredible customers:

“Citywide SEO did a fabulous job providing our firm with exacting what we needed. Our obsolete website was an overwhelming project we delayed updating for years. Citywide went above and beyond managing our team, keeping us on task, while delivering a website that was above our expectations.”

– Tami Owens, Citywide SEO Customer

“Jesse and his professional team were a joy to work with…but most importantly, their creative results exceeded all expectations ten-fold! Citywide SEO had to create our website from scratch and were very patient with us through the entire process. They produced a website and logo for us that is undoubtedly the best in our industry. Thank you Jesse and Team!!”

– WAYLAN OWENS, Citywide SEO Customer

Since 2009, Citywide SEO’s culture fosters long term relationships with a dedication to delivering the highest level of customer service. At the end of the day what matters most is generating a positive ROI on any service that we provide. Thank you to the UpCity team for this tremendous award and honor, and we’d also like to thank our loyal customers for making it possible for us to deliver award-winning services!

The post Citywide SEO Announced as a 2021 Local Excellence Award Winner by UpCity! appeared first on Citywide SEO.

[cese1931]

SEO is Extremely Powerful in times such as COVID-19

Whether you are a self-employed individual, a small business owner, or a privately-owned company, you may experience revenue losses in the coming months. We have been seeing alarming situations where companies are shutting down their entire business until further notice. There’s a lot of uncertainty around the potential economic impacts of COVID-19, which is certainly scary.

However, shutting down marketing operations may be a reaction that will set your business up for a long-term struggle for recovery. If you allocate a large chunk of your budget towards trade shows or events, consider transitioning towards a higher investment in internet marketing. Even if only a small fraction of your budget for events is shifted, it would translate into a massive growth online.

You may be wondering how your business can survive the economic impact of a COVID-19 outbreak, or the social distancing required to prevent one? Ecommerce or brick-and-mortar, product or service business, we are all preparing for a difficult time. There are a number of benefits to using SEO for your business during this historic time. Organic search is a zero-sum game meaning that your gains or losses are exactly balanced by the gains or losses of others in the SERPs. We treat paid search and social advertising as real-time auctions, but often don’t think of natural search in this way. SEO is definitely a competitive space that requires you to continuously improve or you will fall behind.

SEO is probably the most important platform during a coronavirus pandemic. It can help your business be one of the first to return to the top of the SERPs once the uncertainty surrounding the virus is cleared. We are helping existing and new clients do everything they can to remain at the top of Google. Please call (210) 200-8924 to get the extensive experience needed to help combat the challenges that you may be facing. We will begin by checking your current website organic search rankings and proceed by optimizing them for search engines to improve the quality and quantity of your web traffic.

By now, you’re probably aware that SEO stands for “search engine optimization”, but may not know exactly how it works. Essentially, SEO is the “process of optimizing your website to get organic, or unpaid, traffic from the search engine results page”. Search engines such as Google and Bing scan or “crawl” websites to better understand what they are about in order to provide users with the best service. This practice involves delivering results that are high quality and relevant to what the user is searching for.

Like many marketing channels, SEO is a long-term and continuous process where your brand grows over a period of time. Generally speaking, you can expect to see the results in 4 to 6 months. However, the traffic you are getting at 6 months will typically be less than what you will experience at the 1-year mark. You will constantly be moving ahead of the competition which means that you can take the required steps to obtain a higher ranking in the SERPs.

SEO is a pull marketing channel where keywords are the pathway to attracting an audience. A prominent listing can ‘pull’ customers to you when they identify their needs in searches. The best time to do this is when your audience is well aware of the product or service you provide and seeking a supplier. Even if users are not searching for your service or product now because of the pandemic, it will still attract potential customers.

By taking a holistic approach to SEO, you’re able to create a channel for user acquisition, improve your website’s user experience, and enable faster speed for on-page content. All of these aspects will help boost your search campaign. Obviously, SEO alone cannot save a website that is generating almost 0 revenue due to an uncontrollable and external reason like Covid-19. In addition to increasing the natural visibility of your business, our campaigns may involve web authority, content marketing, technical SEO, and a strategy that helps optimize your website and increase your online presence.

The great thing about SEO is that it can help you to estimate your demand decline ahead of time. Checking impressions in Google Search Console is just one way to identify when your business may start to see a decline in sales or leads because of the coronavirus. You will have a better insight into what to expect throughout the coming weeks and months. This indication will help you to identify what elements of business you need to focus on and plan accordingly.

Creating great SEO content that is “evergreen” and not sensitive to time will benefit your business year after year. Even content about travel will get picked up on after the pandemic ends. People will have a strong desire to travel, especially after having been obliged not to leave their towns for a long period. However, creating content that is suitable for people who may be quarantined or have been advised to stay at home may help to provide your business with more attention.

You do not want to promote short-term offers that may not be redeemed. On the contrary, create content that assures people your business will be there when the crisis ends. Strengthening your focus on web marketing will enable you to maintain normality in these crazy days and will give you a competitive edge over competitors who are slow to react.

The post SEO is Extremely Powerful in times such as COVID-19 appeared first on CityWideSEO.

[cese1931]

Marketing During an Economic Downturn in San Antonio – COVID-19

Business owners and marketers will be tested during the coronavirus crisis, but we need to think long term, keep building our brands, protect our staff, and honor our values. The wheels of the industry need to keep turning so the workers are paid and their families are fed. These wheels are driven by effective marketing.

Marketing budgets are the easiest target for businesses looking to reduce expenses. Decreasing your marketing activity is only a short term solution with a high likelihood of long term consequences. The smartest thing to do is to focus more of your budget on the long-term brand-building mission. In the current market environment, effective marketing cannot be achieved. It is essential that you maintain visibility in your market for continued investment and long term profitability.

Even though your customers are saving now more than ever to prepare for the dark days ahead, they are still spending money. They want to make every dollar count and deal with the companies they trust. At some point, consumers will return to the streets, the cafes and various other activities. Keeping your brand’s light burning is more cost-effective than snuffing it out for the rest of 2020 and then trying to re-ignite it next year.

Great brands are established in such an era because, in the face of the crisis around them, they are showing their brand value. They take care of their own and eschew short term profits in favor of ensuring that their people are getting looked after. Invest in brand-building media because, with many of your competitors losing their minds, there is a rare opportunity to come out of the crisis not only alive but ahead.

Take care of yourself, take care of your brand, and we will overcome this crisis together. Because this epidemic has a serious impact on all of us, businesses are responding to challenging times. It is time to prepare your business for the long haul! When preparing for a marketing campaign during an economic downturn, consider the following:

Focus on retention

Aim at your target market

Drive conversions

Measure extensively

Test, optimize, test again

Focus on retention: Acquiring new customers is more expensive than retaining existing customers. You risk losing your customers if you don’t consistently communicate with them. Out of sight means out of mind.

Marketing automation will free up your more expensive talent for creative activities and increase your return on investment. Some customers want to hear your news, so send out personalized, contextualized and targeted messages. This type of communication is more effective than spam emails or cold calls. Automation is the most effective system to keep in touch with your customers.

Content is king! Because many cities are isolated, content production is critical to maintaining your existing customer base. There are innovations that differentiate you from competitors and now is a great time to share them.

Engage in conversations with your existing customers by getting more social. Social platforms are where your customers share their views about your company, consider your products/services, and discuss their decision to buy from you. A low-cost plan will help you be more knowledgeable about your customers and enable you to attract customers at every point of their buyer’s journey. Receive input about your business and get educated about your market. You also need to make a valuable and appropriate contribution to the conversation because it isn’t about advertising.

Aim at your target market: Building brand awareness and gaining awareness among people who may already be interested in your business will attract new visitors to your website and drive more sales.

Get in front of the potential clients that are searching for what you’re selling. This practice is one of the best ways for people to learn about your business. Whether a potential customer is looking for a new supplier or evaluating a particular product, they should find you at every stage of the buying life cycle. By maintaining your advertising budget to maintain brand awareness, you will earn long-term benefits.

There is a “marketing phenomenon by which consumers develop a preference for your products or services merely because they are familiar with them”, known as “The Mere Exposure Effect”. Maintain visibility in front of prospective clients by exploring low-cost techniques. Creating high-quality content to be shared can reduce the cost of generating low-value, low-impact content.

Your business has interesting content that isn’t dated and still provides value to your customers. Update the content in the archives to improve your ranking in search engines..

Leverage the audience of other respected experts in your industry to gain more awareness with potential clients. The opinions of others about you are more important than what you say about yourself.

Drive conversion: CRO or conversion rate optimization is a low cost, high impact digital marketing system. Increase the likelihood of new website visitors becoming customers by making small changes to the buyers’ journey in increments.

Share positive stories and testimonials about your business for social proof. Find new ways to use reviews, case studies, and suggestions at every touch point in your marketing funnel. This content should be incorporated in your website and distributed consistently across your social media channels. Your buyer’s journey is essential to your success so ensure that you’re providing a fast and personal experience.

Now is the time to leverage artificial intelligence and get up to date with the latest developments in AI. Taking advantage of current developments in machine learning will provide you with a competitive advantage. You will have the opportunity to reach the right potential customers and reduce the cost per acquisition of new clients. Think about the best times to provide your target audience with specified messages to help you reduce waste.

Measure extensively: In order to manage campaigns effectively, you must measure your results, otherwise, you will be pouring money down the drain.

Define your key performance indicators. Measuring results provide accountability for your marketing spend. What is the criteria for success? You may want to consider metrics such as the numbers of leads generated, sales, upsells, referrals, etc..

Installing Google Analytics correctly ensures that you make data-driven decisions. Are your goals properly set up? Have your metrics been defined? Is your Search Console connected? Google Analytics provides free data you can use when developing your strategy?

You will have to make tough decisions such as how to allocate your resources when the budget gets tight. One option is to suspend social media activities because its time-consuming and may not be a required activity at the moment. But before you make that decision, measure the ROI of your social media in terms of engagement, visibility, and profits and how this practice affects your bottom line. Knowing what is effective and what isn’t, makes it easier to decide where to invest your cash.

Test, optimize, test again– There isn’t a cookie cutter method to effective digital marketing so its good to look at campaigns like experiments. The purpose of an experiment is to test and learn the best possible solutions.

Experiments should be quick, cheap, and easy to deliver. If the practice is working, then you should continue to do more of the same. If this practice doesn’t work well, then kill the experiment and move on to the next. Test something, learn from the results, and then test something new.

Before terminating campaigns, be sure to analyze the underlying data to determine the factors that are effecting your failure. Doing this will provide you with insights for whether you should adjust and re-launch your campaign rather than ending it.

Please call us at (210) 200-8924 or schedule a meeting online to discuss what options are available to increase your business’s chance for success. We will provide you with a complimentary detailed assessment to determine what your current position is in the digital landscape.

ol {padding-left: 0px;}

The post Marketing During an Economic Downturn in San Antonio – COVID-19 appeared first on CityWideSEO.

[cese1931]

COVID-19’s Impact on Web Design in San Antonio

Businesses are facing extreme difficulties as the global economy is impacted by the coronavirus, but there is hope. With so many companies being forced to shut down operations, you may be looking for ways to survive like other Americans shifting their budgets. Our advice is to stay positive, readjust your strategy, and continue your digital marketing efforts. History shows us that you stand to gain more by not cutting your budget during an economic downturn.

Although much is at a standstill, this situation will be over eventually. Business owners will need to position themselves to meet their revenue goals in the fiscal second half of 2020. Think of this as a small disruption to your business so that you keep from being left behind your competitors in the race to regain any potentially lost revenue.

Given the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19), Citywide Digital Marketing is committed to ensuring that we can continue to support our new and existing customers. If you need assistance, please contact us at (210) 200-8924 or request an appointment online.

Perhaps, you need a growth-driven website redesign. Citywide’s website design professionals can overhaul your website to reflect and align with your objectives. Our experts will review your website and provide a CRO review to ensure that all call-to-action converts potential customers. We will also help you increase your strategies for optimization by doing an SEO audit. These are complimentary service and will be done remotely.

Our agency is ready to meet with you and your business to assist in overcoming the current challenges you are facing online. Our professionals know that different industries have different problems. We collaborate with you to determine effective practices that are tailored to your business. As a business owner, you will have to be savvy and create alternative solutions.

Fitness Trainers and Yoga Instructors may want to use Facebook groups to live broadcast sessions online, so members can still enjoy their services from home. This practice can help reduce the loss of monthly income and help customers who are dealing with stress at this time. New members can sign up through a website and communicate with you directly through an integrated Messenger bot. We can also use automation tools to share daily routines via Messenger bot or email.

Attorneys can present themselves as trusted advisors who can lead in a time of crisis by making 100% of their services online. Offer the ability for clients to book their initial or full consultation through an online video call. Potential clients will be able to view the availability of your experienced legal personnel who may lack computer literacy. Provide advice on your website about common legal issues that arise during times of crisis. Create useful and high-quality content about the main problems people will deal with and what they can do about them.

I hope this gets some gears turning and has you thinking about other ways to operate your business during the economic downturn. Although you need to generate new leads, don’t let your existing customers fall by the wayside. Use your website to communicate urgent information to your customers so that the business continues as smoothly as possible.

Below are a few suggestions:

Website Banner Notification – Professionals in the medical or education industry may want to place a temporary banner at the top of their website. This practice is an efficient way to update visitors and can be adjusted or removed later. Contact us if you need help with editing your website in this manner.

Business Continuity Plan Post/Page – For your customers and community, your website is a critical information hub. Consider publishing your continuity plan so that customers know your status during and after this crisis. Share the plan as a new page or blog on the website and place the link in the notification banner.

Contact Page & FAQS – In terms of how to schedule an appointment or contact your team, the contact page is a good place to post any updated information. We can use an accordion widget to create an organized way to share FAQS. If you already provide FAQS, consider adding information that pertains to the coronavirus pandemic.

Event Registration and Information – Review all the information and registration details you have posted about the upcoming face-to-face events. Assure all the information about events is correct on your website, social, and/or listing platforms. Turn off any online registration options if you happen to be canceling the event. If you aren’t canceling the event, it may be a good idea to state that the event is still scheduled to happen.

Save & Secure Data – Information such as logins to your website and domain registration, CRM, or other tools necessary for operations should be secured. There are tools such as a password-wallet that may assist you with this task. Also, ensure that several trusted employees know where to find this information so that there isn’t a single point of failure, which is quite often for businesses and causes delays when implementing solutions.

Continued Maintenance & Support of your Website – Maintaining and updating your site is the most effective way to keep it secure. Maintenance processes can prevent future malfunctions and costs. Citywide Digital Marketing will continue to manage these issues for our existing clients on a regular basis.

Review Form Notifications – Reduce the chances of missing an email notification from your website forms by using a catch-all email address or alias email that delivers to multiple trusted employees. It is possible that you will miss out on some leads if this practice isn’t managed or a team member is out of the office.

Please call us at (210) 200-8924 or schedule a meeting online to discuss what options are available to increase your business’s chance for success. We will provide you with a complimentary detailed assessment to determine what your current position is in the digital landscape.

strong { font-family: 'Lato-Bold';}

The post COVID-19’s Impact on Web Design in San Antonio appeared first on CityWideSEO.

[cese1931]

Citywide SEO Recognized as a Top San Antonio Digital Marketing Company!

Dedicated to creating performance driven marketing strategies, the team at Citywide SEO has years of experience testing and improving our SEO, PPC, and web design practices. We’re determined to provide the best services given the latest technologies. That said, trust, especially among SEO service providers, is not easily won. Black hat tactics can be implemented undetected, and the consequences for a business can be devastating. A Clutch survey found that nearly 1 in 5 respondents said they had a negative experience before they found the right SEO provider.

This is where Clutch.co, a B2B ratings and reviews platform, has been an invaluable resource. They rank and evaluate companies first and foremost on client feedback, as well as among other quantitative and qualitative factors. Citywide SEO joined Clutch in 2016, and just recently, we’re very excited to have been named a top Digital Marketing company in San Antonio!

The criteria for the leading agencies include everything from the quality of an agency’s work to their clientele and general presence in the marketplace. Agencies are ranked according to this information, allowing a buyer to see how businesses compare in a specific market. Citywide SEO compares remarkably well, especially in the SEO space, and we’re happy that this award is due in large part to the feedback from our clients.

For a boutique clothing store looking to improve its online visibility, we provided a suite of services, including SEO, PPC, and web design. In an interview with a Clutch analyst, satisfied with the outcomes of their collaboration with us, they observed, “Since I’ve been with them, my business has grown 30%.”

All our great recognition through Clutch has gotten us a feature on their sister website, The Manifest. This profile is a great snapshot of our services and is a great way to check us out for anyone who wants to quickly learn more about what we do and how we do it.

Overall, we’re excited to receive this recognition, and we are looking forward to leveraging our reviews on Clutch to reach new buyers and continue to grow our reputation in the industry as a leading marketing provider.

The post Citywide SEO Recognized as a Top San Antonio Digital Marketing Company! appeared first on CityWideSEO.

[cese1931]

Digital Doesn’t Have to Compete with Traditional Marketing

One of the biggest challenges I face in trying to communicate the benefit of doing digital marketing (such as search engine optimization or pay-per-click marketing) is trying to convince businesses that have used traditional media – such as TV, print and radio – to give digital a genuine chance. In the minds of most advertisers, the budget they’ve previously allocated to traditional media is in direct conflict with the marketing budget I’m asking them to invest with me.

There’s always a disconnect with these types of advertisers. Truth be told, I get it. Traditional media is tangible. You can physically see it or hear it when you’re going about your day. It makes it easier to understand how your customers see, hear and experience it, too. The logic goes something like this: “I saw my commercial, noticed my ad or heard my radio spot. If I heard it or saw it, my customers must have as well!”

While there’s some logic in that (customers do hear and see and experience the commercials), there’s also a big misnomer; the assumption that customers who aren’t expecting to see your ad are noticing it and giving it the same relevance or importance that you are as a business owner. The simple fact is: they aren’t.

Perfect example. My wife and I watch TV nearly every evening. We have our favorite shows and we watch them live, most of the time, so we’re not able to skip over commercial breaks. The “Little Sweet” Diet Dr Pepper commercials have aired probably over 500 times over the last nine to twelve months. One came on last night and my wife turned to me and completely straight-faced said “wait, what the heck was that about?” It was the first time she’d actually noticed the commercial, even though she’s been exposed to it hundreds of times. Such is the problem with assuming that your consumers are noticing your traditional media ad the same way you do.

But fear not! There is a solution: build a correlation between your traditional media ads and your digital ads. They serve different needs, but creating a consistency between both allows you to maximize each method and improve the likelihood of catching everyone.

  Use Consistent Ad Copy

This seems super-simplistic, but think about it: if you’re already running a commercial, radio spot or print ad, it probably has some sort of branding and promotion attached. Something like a “Memorial Day Specials” or “20% off select items” or “Forget the Rest; Always Choose Best.”

No matter what your particular specials, taglines, or branding, the point is that there are several selling points that you’ve created for traditional media to entice your customers to buy from you. Simply put: you need to use the same verbiage and details in your digital ads as well.

For example, if you’re running a Google AdWords Search campaign, you should use some of the same specials and promotions as your ad copy. If you’re running a deal for the month on buy one-get one shoes, create an ad group that matches that. If your traditional media is all about promoting your new spring line, push that with your digital as well.

The more consistent your marketing message across multiple mediums, the more likely you are to connect with your customers.

  Create Landing Pages to Match Traditional Media Content

This one seems super simple, but if you’re running something on traditional media, you darn well better have the same type of products, services and content listed on your website. Otherwise, how are customers who see your ad supposed to get more information online?

Nothing – well, almost nothing – irritates me more than seeing something on a billboard, TV commercial, or print ad that catches my interest and then wanting to get more info, only to find myself unable to locate it on the business’s website.

Plus, the more content and landing pages you build out, the easier it will be for search engines to connect with your content and promote it to your customers when they’re searching. Since 80% of consumers search for products on the internet, that’s a great way to make sure you’re hitting the maximum number of potential buyers.

For example, if your traditional media ads say that you’re the home of the 365-day service money-back guarantee, you really should have a solid amount of content on your website that consistently matches that claim.

  Target the Same Demographics

I throw this one out with a disclaimer – there are businesses where the way the client interacts with the message determines the type of client, and they are two entirely separate groups. It can and does happen on occasion.

However, most of the time, the demographic that your print, TV or radio marketing is hitting is the same demographic you want for your digital as well. They live in the same area, match the same income parameters and make the same types of buying decisions.

Far too often, businesses treat these audiences like completely different groups of people and essentially segment the potential clients into distinct categories that don’t overlap. Creating a consistent, albeit overlapping, target audience will help you ensure that your business is not Diet Dr Pepper and consistently missing my wife just because she’s only exposed to one type of marketing from your brand.

  Branch Out

Finally, don’t be afraid to think outside the box. When running both campaigns simultaneously, you can get really creative on what you can do. If you’re hindered by budget in traditional media, use the digital media to create a consistent but creative twist on your message. Digital is much less restrictive and allows for more campaign styles within the same budget.

For example, if your traditional media is targeting your primary demographic, but you think there’s a subset of clients out there that can use your business, digital is a great way to test both without losing traction in your already-established market. Try a display campaign that targets a different demographic or area of town. Run a social media ad that focuses on a secondary product that you think will take off well, but can’t dedicate full-fledged traditional budget toward.

The options when pairing digital and traditional media together are nearly limitless, so don’t be afraid to get creative. The level of flexibility that digital affords can give your business a lot of wiggle room to experiment and test various theories.

So, as you can see, the question of how to spend your marketing budget does not have to come down to digital versus traditional. In fact, they can often work together in happy unison to create a more thorough, well-round marketing approach that hits more of your intended audience more consistently. By pairing the two types of marketing together, and working with a professional team like ours at Citywide SEO, you can put your business in position to see the maximum am

The post Digital Doesn’t Have to Compete with Traditional Marketing appeared first on .

[cese1931]

Citywide SEO Hosts Free Google Event for National Small Business Week

On Tuesday, May 2, our team here at Citywide was honored to partner with Google and host a free online marketing workshop as part of National Small Business Week.

  The event was held at the Hilton San Antonio Airport and was attended by dozens of small business owners and marketing managers. This event focused primarily on helping local small businesses know how to better utilize the free tools and features that are provided for them by Google.

  Overall, the event was extremely successful. Among the topics covered during the workshop were how to build a free website on Google, how to ensure that your website is 100% mobile responsive in the eyes of Google, how to use AdWords Express to get immediate traffic to your site and how to use analytics and webmaster tools to track the effectiveness of your online marketing efforts across all mediums.

  In the end, we had a lot of fun with the event and were proud to bring this free service to the small business owners of our community. Citywide SEO will be partnering with Google on future events to help increase awareness of digital media marketing and online marketing strategies.

  If you would like more information about how Citywide SEO can help increase your business, please contact us for a completely free consultation.

  The post Citywide SEO Hosts Free Google Event for National Small Business Week appeared first on .

[cese1931]

Why Does Google Update So Frequently?

  As a small business owner, you’ve got a lot on your plate. You’re balancing your revenues and expenses, managing staff, hiring and training new employees and making sure you’ve got enough inventory or materials to deliver your products and services to your customers… and that’s not even considering how much work you do with customers themselves! It’s a lot to manage.

Given how hectic and busy you are just running your business, I can completely understand why it seems like running your marketing – and in particular, your online marketing – is a completely daunting and imposing task. To make matters worse, even when you do find time to make updates and changes online, Google seems to come along a few months, weeks, or even sometimes days later and completely shift the rules.

For a small-business, it has to almost seem like Google isn’t playing fair. Just when you think you’ve learned the rules, they change the game. How are you supposed to keep up and manage your business? I’ve talked to several business owners who feel frustrated with the whole online marketing system, and in particular, are irritated with Google for always pulling the rug out from underneath them.

Well, the solution to that problem is understanding how Google operates, why they do what they do, and how to use the system to your benefit. That’s what we’re here to cover today.

How Did Google Become Dominant?

Let’s address the initial part of that question first. Google is the king of search engines and online presence, so they have a ridiculous amount of leverage when adjusting the way that the world views online information, such as your business’s website. We all know this, and tend to accept it with very little hesitation. But how did Google come to acquire so much dominance in online marketing that they can completely impact the way the internet—and its users—work?

Take a trip back to the late ‘90s or early 2000’s with me. Make sure to avoid the frosted tips, pukka shell necklaces, Doc Martens, Walkman CD players and dial-up internet. They won’t help you here.

During this bygone era of nostalgia, internet usage had just started to become mainstream. Internet wasn’t something that was made just for nerds who needed to share nerd information – you could actually look up stuff and find out about things.

In order to use the internet, you probably logged into MSN, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, Netscape, DogPile, AOL Search, Ask.com, WebCrawler, Lycos or AltaVista. Maybe you had some other random search engine that came preprogrammed with your desktop, but primarily, you went with one of these old relics.

Remember what would happen when you used any of them? You might type in a search for “Mexican Food Recipes” and then be flooded with pages of the Taco Bell Chihuahua, Cinco de Mayo articles, news articles about Selma Hayek, a site dedicated to the preservation of the Alamo and the obligatory homepage of some whack-a-doodle extremist group (seriously, why was there always a group of weirdos for every keyword and they always had a site that ranked well in search?). Okay, so maybe this is a radical example, but it’s also not too far off-base.

Point being, you got a ton of information, but most of it had nothing to do with what you wanted. The search engine connected you to boatloads of data on the Information Superhighway, but none of the exits were your intended destination. It wasn’t at all uncommon to go five or six pages deep in just about any search to find enough information to fulfill your needs.

Enter Google.

Google’s entire premise was less about making money off of their search engine and more about providing an outstanding user experience. When I meet with businesses to discuss their online marketing needs, I frequently tell them that Google doesn’t care about you, me, your business or your business website. What it does care about (and care about very deeply) is the people who use Google to find information. They believed that if a search engine worked efficiently and was easy to use, customers would opt to use it instead of the competition.

Due to their focus and design, Google sought to change the way that search engines connected people with the right information, rather than just connecting them with information overall. The developers at Google consistently tweaked their ranking algorithm to a point where customers no longer had to search through four or five pages to get the information they needed – they could find it on the first couple of pages.

As the internet and internet usage continued to increase, Google continued to tweak the algorithm. They wanted to make it better, faster and smarter. Essentially, they took the broken remnants of the web that were left disheveled by MSN, Yahoo and the rest and created the Six Million Dollar Search Engine.

Flash-forward to 2017, and Google is the most commonly used search engine in the world. Depending on the survey you’re reading, Google commands between 60-80% of all internet searches, and dominates with almost 96% on mobile devices.

Why do people use Google? Because you never have to go past Page 1 to find what you want. Frequently, you don’t have to go further than two or three results down the page. Google delivered on its quest to be the most efficient search engine in the world, and they were absolutely right on what would happen if they did it.

Why All The Changes, Though?

 So, now that you’ve got the context, let’s breakdown the rationale. Google’s dominance is directly correlated to the quality of its ranking algorithm. The people who use Google are now spoiled to the point where they want accurate information, and they want it in the first two or three results they find.

To keep up with this demand – and maintain their dominance – Google is always seeking to improve the ranking algorithm. The goal, as mentioned earlier, is always to deliver the best user experience possible. Keep people happy and they’ll keep using your search engine. The only way to do that is to keep making your recipe for rankings more efficient, more accurate and more precise.

Google not only revolutionized the search engine industry, they also learned from the history that they helped create. Google saw firsthand what happened to search engines when they don’t deliver great user experience and great results to customers. That’s why there’s primarily only three search engines in the world today as opposed to the dozen or so that existed pre-Google.

That’s Great, But What’s It Mean for My Business?

I’m going to pretend that everyone was interested in all the information I included up there. If not, it kind of makes that all seem like a waste of time.

However, now it’s time for the fun part: why the heck should I care?

Well, first off, you have to accept that Google’s got a lot to do with the online success of your business. Given its dominance and the increasing reliance on search engines to connect customers with businesses, you cannot survive long-term without a solid online presence.

That also means that you need to stay up-to-date with the latest Google updates. There are several sites that will break down new developments in the ranking algorithm, and one of my personal favorites is this site from Moz.

Finally, it means that you need to have someone running your online marketing full-time that can be dedicated to keeping up with the latest trends, news, developments and updates. Doing so will help keep your business ahead of the curve, because there is always a new curve coming.

Whether you hire an internal online marketing manager, assign the task to a current employee, reallocate your time to learn the industry or hire an outside team of experts (*cough* like Citywide *cough*), your business must have someone filling this role. Leverage your dedication to online marketing to put your business ahead of the competitors who don’t practice the same standards.

If you don’t, you might find your business going the way of DogPile, Ask Jeeves and Lycos… and you wouldn’t want that.

The post Why Does Google Update So Frequently? appeared first on .

[cese1931]

Use Fiesta to Power Your Digital Marketing

It’s April again, and in San Antonio, that means two things:

The Spurs are in the NBA playoffs. Go Spurs Go!

It’s Fiesta time, everybody!

While many businesses feel a boom from walk-by traffic during the Fiesta events (you’re especially in luck if you’ve got a business that is located near – or hosts – one of the main events), a large percentage of businesses in San Antonio actually feel a bit of a crunch during this festive time.

The reason seems simple: many of the customers who would normally be in a consumer-mode are avoiding spending any extra money so that they can attend more and spend more at Fiesta events. Have you ever priced the chicken-on-a-stick at NIOSA? How about the kettle corn at Oyster Bake? And don’t even get me started on price of a raspa if you’re standing on Broadway during the Battle of Flowers Parade. Why the heck does it cost that much? The point being, these things can add up quickly.

If this seems to happen to your business every year, fear not! There are ways to actually capitalize on the increase in consumerism during this most joyous time of year, even if you’re not a street vendor selling over-priced snacks and goodies.

  Capitalize on Social Media Traffic

If you’re a regular to the Citywide SEO blog, you know that I’m not a huge fan of using Social Media as your primary source of digital marketing. There’s just too many variables and not enough actionable conversion points. I don’t like it.

That being said, Social Media is a terrific (and nearly essential) supplemental avenue to grow visibility and user engagement with your business. During festivities, such as Fiesta, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Fourth of July, etc., there is almost always an increase in social media activity that correlates with that event.

Posting content that connects your business to Fiesta is a great way to help get additional traction among users. For example, you can create a Facebook or Twitter ad with a special coupon code for a “Fiesta Sale,” or post fun pictures of your staff engaging in Fiesta-themed activities. Make sure to use event-specific mentions and/or hashtags, as this will help increase your visibility.

If you’re looking to really capitalize on the social media awareness, try creating an event that dovetails with the most popular Fiesta events. Each of them have their own event page on social media, so be sure to @mention them in your posts so you can get some of the cross-promotional traffic.

Also, if all of this sounds like I’m speaking Russian to you, maybe you should contact an expert in social media marketing like Citywide SEO. Just throwing in that little bit of shameless self-promotion there.

  Tailor Your Google AdWords Campaigns to Feature Fiesta Content

Okay, I know. You probably just read that and said to yourself “how the heck do I include ‘Fiesta Content’ when my business has nothing to do with Fiesta.”

Don’t panic. This doesn’t have to be ultra-complicated.

Let’s say for example you’re a… I don’t know… maybe a criminal defense attorney. If you’re already running AdWords (and if you’re not, what’s wrong with you?), you can edit some of your ad text to include things like this…

Now, that’s a really quickly put-together thought, but something in this vein would work well, especially if you include keywords for popular events, such as Oyster Bake. You can do the same thing with any display ads or video pay-per-click ads you may be running.

The idea is to capture as much traffic to your business as possible from the consumers who are already searching for Fiesta-related keywords.

  Create Fiesta-Specific Events for Customers

One of the most obvious ways to involve your business in the Fiesta marketing swell is to create an event that correlates with Fiesta in some way.

Once you’ve got your event scheduled and planned, you absolutely, 100% need to publicize it. The best, quickest way to do that is through digital marketing. Mention the event on your social media, create AdWords campaigns that focus on tying your event with a Fiesta event, and even create content on your website with specific keywords that feature Fiesta details.

For example, let’s say you want to hold an event a few hours before The Flambeau Night Parade, you should make sure to create a page within your site about the event, include keywords and title tags that include Night Parade and Fiesta, and blast the event on all your social media.

That way, when customers are looking through social media or Google for info, they’re more likely to come across your event and decide they’re interested in attending.

  Design and Sell a Fiesta Medal

Want some immediate visibility? Create a Fiesta Medal. Let your customers do the work for you in promoting the business. People love medals, and the more unique and creative, the better.

However, just designing the medal alone isn’t enough. You’ll need to work it in with the other ideas I’ve pitched in this article. Promote it on social media, include it in your events, mention it on your website, create content for it that can be found by people doing online searches for “Fiesta Medals.”

  Remember to Have Fun

This might be the most important marketing tip of all.

Fiesta is all about community, family, fun and food. Don’t let the stress of Fiesta marketing take that away from you. If you’re not having fun with Fiesta, your customers probably won’t be interested in having fun (or doing business) with you.

So, cheer up, grab a chicken-on-a-stick and enjoy the ride. It’s Fiesta season, after all. Don’t take yourself too seriously.

Remember these helpful tips and you can make this Fiesta a resounding success. If you’d like some assistance with any of these, be sure to contact our team of experts here at Citywide SEO and we’d be happy to offer a complimentary consultation.

The post Use Fiesta to Power Your Digital Marketing appeared first on .

[cese1931]

The Relationship Between SEO and Social Media

Whether you’re at the beginning of launching your social and SEO campaigns or have been running one or the other with subpar results, understanding how social and SEO marketing campaigns inform and benefit each other is crucial for success. Leave it to the experts here at Citywide to help break it down for you.

Does Social Media Influence SEO?

While social media marketing does not impact your site rankings directly, utilizing social media can help give your SEO wings and works to help with the awareness and consideration phases of the marketing funnel. For example, when you’re sharing content on social media you’re making those who follow your page aware of activities, providing a platform for engagement, and potentially bringing interested visitors to your site. You may also be fostering brand affinity and trust, which may lead the interested party to google your brand, and end up on your page.

How Do I Know When That Happens?

Understanding these stages of the funnel can help you with collecting data around how effective your social media marketing is. It can also help elucidate what resonates best with your audience and what hooks bring you new visitors. When you have the information and engagement on social media, it can also increase backlinks and referral traffic which will help organic rankings as well. Want to segment out those users who have visited your site due to social media, and then have come back through organic search? Here’s how to set up the right segments.

Why Should I Care?

With that information, you’ll be able to understand better how social referrals are helping your brand grow. This can also help you:

Understand what content is helping your audience convert

Analyze social engagement vs. organic content engagement

Tweak everything from CTAs, page content to social media packaging

The proper Google Analytics segments, as well as a clear understanding of goals, can help you make appropriate benchmarks. For instance, if you aren’t currently seeing a high turnover of social to organic traffic, you may want to analyze the SEO friendly content pieces you’ve seen takeoff and try to adapt them to be more social friendly, or take a hard look at pieces that have done well on social but not converted to analyze what’s missing.

Many SEO strategies focus solely on content creation and backlinks – while these services are impactful, it’s important to make sure you’re taking the next step in your marketing strategy and distributing that content on social media and through paid promotion. The more engagement and visibility your content receives, the more helpful it will be for you as you continue to improve SEO.

Why doesn’t Google Consider Social Signals in SEO?

It’s a fair question. It would almost seem like Google would benefit from including social signals and social media presence in its organic ranking algorithm. Luckily, there’s this great video from Matt Cutts from Google to help with that very question.

  Next Steps

So, while social media may not directly impact SEO in the traditional sense, it can help your brand with visibility, increase organic visitors, and in turn show Google your website’s popularity. This is also an incentive to up your content marketing, and create engaging pieces around terms you’re interested in ranking for so that when you do see pieces take off, you get the additional lift of your keywords as well.

As you develop a strategy, it is important to understand how each marketing channel will help your audience, from a positive experience on your social media profile to a meaningful interaction with your website, to a conversion that helps your bottom line. Want help executing an awesome social media and SEO strategy? The team at Citywide SEO can help make this year the best for your business and you. Reach out today!

The post The Relationship Between SEO and Social Media appeared first on .

[cese1931]

Citywide SEO Earns Another Performance Award

We did it again! Citywide has been recognized by Clutch as a Top SEO Agency for our work with Austin businesses.

  Each year, Clutch releases a report of the top performing SEO, Web Design and Creative Ad Agencies in each major media market. The award recipients are determined based on a combination of data-driven results and interview feedback from clients. This will be our first recognition from Clutch, although we’ve previously been ranked as a Top SEO Agency and Top Web Designers by UpCity.

  “We’re excited to be recognized,” said Jesse Eslora, owner of Citywide SEO. “Austin is among the most tech-savvy cities in the country, and there are a lot of really high-quality agencies in that market. This just helps affirm that we’re doing things the right way out here.”

  While this award recognizes the efforts and hard work of our team, we also want to recognize and thank you, our clients. Without you and your business, this recognition would never have been possible. As much as this is a moment of celebration for us, it’s definitely something we want to share with you all, as well.

  We look forward to continuing our rock-star (and award-winning) service for you and your business as we move forward into 2017. Thank you for your continued support, and we anticipate more accolades as we continue to zealously promote our clients online.

The post Citywide SEO Earns Another Performance Award appeared first on .

[cese1931]

The Top Three Misconceptions of Search Engine Optimization

By now, you probably know how we feel about Search Engine Optimization here at Citywide SEO. Over the past decade or so, SEO has grown from a trendy concept among techie-types into a near necessity for small and large businesses alike. Regardless of your business niche, your growth goals or your overall marketing presence, SEO has become critical as more and more customers are looking for goods and services online.

Over the years, Google algorithm updates such as Panda, Possum, Penguin and Hummingbird have impacted the world of SEO. Since the industry is always changing and evolving, it’s easy for business owners who don’t keep up with the Google algorithm on a daily basis to get confused. Best practices that were relevant six months ago can sometimes be actively discouraged by search engines today.

Due to all of this, there’s a LOT of bad information and misconceptions out there about how your SEO should be managed. Let’s look at the three most common SEO misconceptions and try to find some truth.

Keywords Will Earn You #1 On Google

In the past decade, keywords were once the primary determining factor in helping your website to rank on Google and other search engines. Keywords (just in case you don’t already know) are the specific words that pertain to your product or service that individuals and prospective customers might search for online. Typically, a keyword consists of a search term and a geographic location, such as “SEO Company San Antonio.”

Yet, many people abused the use of keywords by practicing “keyword stuffing”—where a page contains as many similar iterations of one keyword as possible. Although it’s primarily an archaic, old-school way of “optimizing” a site, it’s still not terribly uncommon to see a website that says something like this:

Welcome to TeddyBearStores.com, where we have all the Teddy Bears you could buy! If you’re looking to buy Teddy Bears, TeddyBearStores.com is the website for you! We offer the best Teddy Bears you can buy at TeddyBearStores.com! Our website has more Teddy Bears than you could buy! Buy your Teddy Bears from TeddyBearStores.com today!

While this is a goofy and extreme example, this type of keyword stuffing caused Google to create algorithms to weed out spam content, making it more difficult for websites to rank in search results. Today, Google actively penalizes sites that practice this type of lazy SEO.

While keywords still remain part of an effective SEO strategy, it is important to avoid keyword stuffing and focus on the context. If you do practice keyword stuffing, Google will catch up with you at some point and the results won’t be pretty.

Link Building vs. More Content

A lot of DIY-SEO gurus (who typically aren’t nearly as much of an “expert” as they think they are) believe that link building is the way to go when it comes to increasing rankings and earning that first spot on Google. Yes, it is true that link building still remains one of the top factors for better ranking, it can also be a very delicate balance between good, Google-approved SEO and practices that can get your site in trouble.

Building links just anywhere on the web (or even worse, engaging in a practice called “link farming” that actively seeks to build sneaky links in order to pass more page rank juice) can do more harm than good. In fact, some types of link building can fall under Google’s “Black Hat Tactics” policy and actually penalize your website. When it comes to both link building and content, it is important to focus on quality over quantity.

As a good rule of thumb, links should always come from websites with strong domain authority. Investing in writing good quality content that can be used for blogs, landing pages and e-books that will earn you high quality links over time.

Meta Descriptions Directly Impact Rankings

For many years in SEO history, people believed that meta descriptions had a direct impact on search engine rankings. The old adage was that meta descriptions were the end-all-be-all of on-site SEO and neglecting them was a cardinal sin. Despite many SEO “gurus” harping on meta-description necessity, Google has long stated that “meta descriptions do not influence the search algorithm.”

Well, more specifically, meta descriptions do not directly influence the search algoritm.

That being said, it has been shown that writing compelling meta descriptions can increase your click-through rates. Having higher click-through rates is part of successful online marketing, but through time, also legitimizes your website as relevant and useful to users, which does directly influence your search engine rankings!

Summary

Understanding these myths about search engine optimization can help you yield better online marketing results. What used to be pivotal to increasing rankings doesn’t matter as much today. Building good quality links and putting emphasis on quality content will help improve your rankings and attract valuable traffic. Using keywords wisely and writing compelling meta descriptions can enhance the overall search experience for users.

In the end, good SEO truly is always a matter of quality over quantity. That’s precisely why you should always hire a certified professional like Citywide SEO to assist with your SEO, web design, PPC and social media.

The post The Top Three Misconceptions of Search Engine Optimization appeared first on .

[cese1931]

Is Pay-Per-Click The Best Option for Your Marketing?

If you’ve been following our blog at all, then you probably know that Citywide SEO offers a wide selection of digital marketing services for small businesses. Essentially, digital marketing includes all the efforts you make to promote your business online and includes pay-per-click (PPC) marketing and search engine optimization (SEO).

As we’ve covered before, PPC is a great way to drive your website to the very top of search results pages within a very short amount of time. It’s a great option for companies that need immediate business and aren’t able to wait months on end for SEO to accomplish the same results organically. But is PPC a sufficient standalone strategy for your digital campaign?

SEO and PPC Go Hand-In-Hand

The best digital marketing plans are multidimensional and include outreach on a vast range of platforms. SEO campaigns include social media outreach, link-building, blogging, article writing, advertising videos, and more. There’s simply no way consumers won’t stumble across your business if you’re being diligent in each of these areas.

Unlike PPC, SEO builds and proactively protects your commercial image. While PPC simply announces your company’s presence, various SEO strategies tell consumers what your company is all about and strategically shape public opinions. This makes your company better protected against both warranted and unwarranted reputation attacks, and helps move consumers through the purchasing process by educating them and by establishing trust.

Top Reasons to Invest in PPC

Business owners need to know that there are no organically ranked businesses present above the top of the fold of Google search page results. If you’ve attained first page placement solely through SEO, web users will have to scroll down to see your listing. Thus, PPC ensures optimal amount of visibility, when targeting consumers on the go who are more likely to use the very first listings they see.

Additionally, PPC is one of the most effective forms of marketing available today. Rather than paying a flat sum in hopes that a potential customer receives your message – as you would with a billboard, TV commercial or radio spot – PPC literally only costs you money when it actually works. If your online ad doesn’t get any traffic to your site, you don’t pay for it. You are only charged when the ad works and sends business to your website.

Consumers and Sponsored Listings

Most consumers are able to distinguish between sponsored and organic listings. Those who have the time and the ability can scroll past the top ads on the page. Think about your own browsing habits; how often do you click on the sponsored ads at the top of the search results page?

When you run your campaign with a combination of SEO and PPC, your business can be nearly impossible to miss. You catch those who don’t notice or don’t mind clicking on the pay-per-click ads as well as the customers who would rather scroll into the Maps or Organic sections of Google. Moreover, these two digital marketing methods can share a symbiotic relationship where each campaign reaps ongoing benefits from the other.

As your organic rankings increase, you typically experience a decrease in the cost-per-click of your PPC campaign. As the cost-per-click decreases, your website generates more traffic and domain authority, which in turn helps push your organic SEO rankings even higher.

If you think about it that way, it seems kind of wasteful to not run a dual campaign, right?

Controlling Your Digital Marketing Costs

The foremost concern when implementing a PPC campaign is overall affordability. It’s rarely feasible for small business owners to actively target high-interest keywords all of the time. This can either lead to unproductive clicks exceeding the marketing budget, or to more traffic and business than the company can manage. A blend of SEO and PPC is often an affordable and practical choice, especially when these two plans are individualized to the goals, needs, and spending abilities of the business.

Citywide SEO can help you create a blend of SEO and PPC strategies to boost your rankings and expand your online outreach. Whether you need to plan or enhance your sponsored or organic listing, give us a call today at 210-200-8924.

The post Is Pay-Per-Click The Best Option for Your Marketing? appeared first on .

[cese1931]

Succeed in Marketing: Avoid These 21 Common Mistakes

The world of digital marketing can be overwhelming, especially for those who are just transitioning from traditional marketing – so naturally, mistakes are going to be made. In fact, even the most experienced marketers will occasionally have digital campaigns that don’t yield desired results. Have no fear! Citywide SEO is here to make sure your next online campaign doesn’t meet with failure by avoiding these 21 digital marketing mistakes.

  Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

  Not Optimizing for Local Search

With the recent “Possum” update, Google made a number of changes to their local search algorithm to enhance the searcher’s local results. For brick-and-mortar businesses, proximity to the searcher’s location has become even more important. Businesses that optimize their location information will be rewarded with higher positions on search engine results pages (SERPs).

  To improve your local ranking, include location-specific keywords in your meta descriptions and page titles. Make sure your business name and address are “cited” on directories, association listings and review networks.

  Not Using Custom Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

Every page on your website should have a unique title tag and meta description. Not only does it provide search engines with an explanation about your page content, it is used on SERPs to display a snippet of what the page will be about.

  Besides using relevant keywords for SEO purposes, make sure your meta data is descriptive to entice people to click on your listing. Stay within character limits so that your meta data doesn’t get cut off on SERPs.

  Not Optimizing for the Right Keywords

Keywords are the building blocks of search. While it’s easy to focus on keywords that may bring you lots of traffic, to attract qualified traffic it’s better to target specific phrases that closely match your offering.

  Examples of keywords to avoid:

National or global keywords, when you only sell locally

Keywords that bring in visitors seeking information rather than buying

Broad keywords that have higher traffic but are very competitive

Generic keywords attracting visitors who are not interested in your offering

  Not Controlling Internal Link Juice

You’ve seen this before: that website with hundreds of links on the homepage. Businesses often make the mistake of linking everything from their main navigation. This actually reduces the SEO value – or link juice – that those internal links can pass through the website in the form of PageRank.

  Suppose your homepage links to a total of 200 pages, meaning the amount of authority passed from the homepage to each of those pages is divided by 200. By cutting the number of links in half, you’ll double the amount of authority passed from the homepage and increase the chance that your inner pages will rank.

  Link juice should be distributed as evenly throughout a website as possible. Tools like the PageRank Juice Calculator can tell you how much link juice a page has to distribute so you can better optimize your site’s navigation.

  Content Marketing

  Not Knowing Your Target Audience

Content marketing success begins with knowing your target audience so you can create attractive and useful content. Besides demographic characteristics, define targeted audiences according to behaviors, interests, purchase intent and life events. With this in mind, you can develop content that actually helps your readers and compels them to choose you over the competition.

  Producing Content That’s Not Useful

Most companies believe that they need to churn out a constant stream of content on all channels to have engagement. However, it’s best to focus on quality over quantity. Your content should provide answers to user questions or address your users’ needs. Always write for your audience first and search engines second.

  Not Writing Specifically For the Web

Web copy is very different from print. Most online readers don’t actually read text on the Internet; instead, they scan the text to pick out valuable parts. To get your message across you’ll need to write scannable content for your online audiences.

  Here are some tips:

Be concise

Prioritize key information

Use easy-to-read fonts

Use large enough text

Have ample white space

Delete marketing fluff

  Not Promoting Your Content

Once you have written quality content, be sure to use SEO tactics to increase the odds of readers finding the content. You can help your pages land a top spot in SERPs by using proper keywords, title tags, image tags and headings. Marketing your content on social media is also a good way to gain exposure. As no two social media channels are the same, be sure to adjust your content and tone to each channel accordingly.

  Online Advertising

  Trying Only One Source of Online Advertising

Organic search is a great way to drive website traffic but it can often take months to get the results you are looking for. Online advertising can help you get results more quickly. We recommend starting off with a few platforms to see where your target audience is most likely to be found. For example, Google AdWords offers targeting based on search keywords while Facebook targets demographics and interests. For niche audiences, you can explore other channels such as LinkedIn or Twitter. Ultimately you want to find the online advertising sources that give you the best ROI.

  Not Matching Your Landing Page to Your Ads

You may have the perfect ad campaign set up, but are your visitors staying on your landing page once they’ve clicked on your ad? People click on ads expecting to be brought to the exact information, product or service you advertised so your landing page should be consistent with your ad.

  According to Google AdWords, your landing page is evaluated based on relevancy, transparency, trustworthiness, ease of navigation and how well you encourage visitors to spend time on your site. If your landing page sufficiently meets these requirements, your Quality Score will improve – meaning you can expect your ads to perform better and your cost-per-click to be lower.

  Taking Remarketing Too Far

Remarketing (or retargeting) involves showing your ads to people who have already visited your website to get them to return again. A remarketing campaign can be very effective, but consumers often find this tactic annoying since they feel like they’re being followed around on the web.

  To avoid irritating your potential customers:

Set a frequency cap to limit the number of times someone can see your ads

Fine-tune your ad placements and targeting method to ensure greater relevancy

Vary your ads and rotate your creatives to combat ad fatigue

Exclude visitors who have already converted from your remarketing list

  Not Optimizing Display Ad Placements

With AdWords display campaigns, your ads can appear on a huge network of sites across the Internet whether it be pages, sites, mobile apps or video. Depending on your targeting method, Google will do the decision-making for you and use automatic placements even though they may not fit your brand or be relevant to your business.

  To combat this problem, navigate to the placements tab in AdWords and exclude any placements that aren’t appropriate for your campaign like spam websites and mobile apps. Be sure to monitor over a longer period of time and exclude any underperforming placements as well.

  Email Marketing

  Neglecting Email Marketing

Email marketing is often neglected for “newer” forms of marketing such as social media. However, this could be a missed opportunity to connect with your audience. Email marketing is known to deliver a high ROI and remains one of the most effective ways to reach consumers online.

Always get permission to email people and provide a mechanism for them to unsubscribe

Segment your email list to better target your communications

Monitor the analytics of your email campaigns including open rate, click-through-rate and unsubscribes

  Not Building an Email List

“The money is in the list” has been a mantra for digital marketers for years. To put it simply – grow your email list, grow your business. Your email list will help you connect with your audience repeatedly and foster them into long-term customers. To grow your email list:

Place opt-in forms on your website

Encourage subscribers to forward your emails

Invite social media followers to opt-in

Use pop-ups on your website to prompt visitors to subscribe

Offer discounts to customers that opt-in

Require email address in exchange to download high-quality content like e-books, guides and white papers

Pre-sell upcoming content such as blog articles or a new product

  Impersonal or Incorrect Personalization

Personalization issues are unfortunately common when it comes to email marketing. Even though most people know that majority of emails sent out by companies are automated, a certain level of trust is lost when you get their name, gender or interests wrong.

  Most email marketing software allow you to properly test emails with full personalization before sending. Many platforms also offer insights technology to correctly identify your customers’ interests so you can properly pitch products and offers for their next purchase.

  Social Media

  Creating Too Many Accounts Too Quickly

When starting out with social media marketing, businesses often create accounts on multiple platforms at once despite being unable to post regular content to engage followers. More often than not, they can’t keep up and abandon the platforms altogether. Implement a social media strategy with a manageable number of accounts to start and branch out only when you are certain that you can share relevant and engaging content on each platform regularly.

  Being Anti-social on Social Media

Your audience wants to interact with real humans, not corporate robots, so develop a tone of voice that is personal and reflective of your brand. Engage in two-way communication rather than talk only about yourself. To stay on track, follow the social media “Rule of Thirds” – your social media content should be one-third about your brand, one-third sharing content in your industry or thought leaders, and one-third based on interactions with your audience.

  Conversion Optimization

  Not Having a Single Purpose

As a marketer, you may already know that it’s important to send your ads to a dedicated landing page rather than to your homepage. While the homepage is designed to convey your overall brand and encourage visitors to explore your site, your landing page should serve one purpose only – to get your visitors to convert through a single call-to-action.

  Landing pages with a single purpose typically produce better results because they help narrow a visitor’s focus and get more people to follow through with your call-to-action. The more choices people have, the longer it will take them to make a decision – so reducing options will increase your conversions.

  Ignoring Site Speed

According to Conversion XL, 57% of visitors will abandon a page if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load, so a slow website could result in lost conversions and sales. Besides delivering a better user experience, having a faster website also ranks better. Site speed is one of the signals used by Google’s algorithm to rank pages. You can improve your site speed by optimizing your code, optimizing your images, improving server response time and leveraging browser caching.

  Here are a few free tools to evaluate the speed of your website:

PageSpeed Insights

YSlow

org

  Failing to A/B Test

Conversion optimization is not about guessing what users want, copying other sites or applying “best practices” and hoping they work. If you don’t A/B test you won’t really know what’s causing your marketing efforts to succeed or fail.

  A/B testing or split testing involves comparing a variation of a webpage, app or email to the current version to determine which performs better. The next time you implement a campaign, conduct A/B testing so that you can make informed decisions based on “what you know” instead of “what you think.” Remember to test only one factor at a time and keep the features that result in positive changes.

  Wrapping It All Up

  Trying to Do Everything Yourself

Digital marketing is a time-consuming endeavor that takes place in a rapidly changing environment. If you don’t have the knowledge, skills or resources to do it all by yourself, consider asking someone with deeper expertise to help you define and execute a strategy to get a better ROI. In addition, they can help you stay abreast of the latest digital marketing best practices and tools so that you can gain a competitive edge.

  The post Succeed in Marketing: Avoid These 21 Common Mistakes appeared first on .

[cese1931]

Mobile SEO Is Quickly Becoming Critical

Mobile-first. It’s a term we’ve been hearing and a concept Google has been pushing since Mobilegeddon back in September 2015 when the search engine started penalizing those without mobile-friendly websites. Now, they’ve taken it even a step further.

We’ve talked repeatedly here in the Citywide SEO blogs about how important mobile responsiveness is for your overall visibility. However, with Google’s mobile-first index, they will now consider the mobile version of your website as a ranking factor before the desktop version of your site. Indexing your site is Google’s way of taking inventory of every page and using what it finds as consideration for your relevancy and positioning in search results. This means before even looking at your desktop site, Google will crawl every corner of your mobile site first.

That’s big news for local businesses, many of which are still struggling to get their sites to be fully mobile-responsive. Here are a few things you need to know about mobile-first index to ensure your business maintains a strong ranking in Google search results —

1. You should have a responsively-designed website. If you don’t, Google will opt to crawl your desktop only version instead, but it will not help your ranking (as Google favors responsive sites). Also, since internet traffic is predominantly on mobile devices (51% of it), your site will not provide an ideal user experience for the majority of those searching for you.

2. If your content varies between device sizes, reconsider your mobile content. If for some reason you do have to pare down on a phone or tablet breakpoint, ensure the content you do have is keyword-rich and sufficiently optimized.

3. Your mobile site needs to perform well. Speed is a huge factor in user experience and Google knows that — most users will leave a site if a webpage takes more than 2-3 seconds to load. If your mobile website performs poorly, Google will count that against you — even if it’s lightning fast on desktop.

Because mobile-local index is still in “experimentation mode,” you probably won’t see a huge difference right away. However, in order to best position yourself in front of potential customer, it is important to be proactive in light of this change. Talk to your website development team, or give our experts here at Citywide SEO a call — we’d be happy to help.

The post Mobile SEO Is Quickly Becoming Critical appeared first on .

[cese1931]

SEO is Like the Spurs of Marketing

  I realize that anytime you talk about sports, and put thoughts into writing, there’s a very strong likelihood of eating your words later. In the sports world, things can change instantly and even the most profound statements have a tendency of looking foolish in hindsight.

With having given that disclaimer, I’m going to go ahead and make a bold comparison between sports and the digital marketing world.

Search engine optimization is the San Antonio Spurs of business marketing.

To make this comparison requires one to think a bit out of the box, but bear with me as I try to justify what sounds like the fanatic rambling of a lifelong homer.

  SEO is Consistent

Much like the San Antonio Spurs of the late nineties to today, running a well-structured SEO campaign will always put your business in a position for long-term success. Any sports fan knows that the Spurs have won the most championships of any professional franchise in the last twenty years, and sport the highest winning percentage of any team in that time span.

Despite their consistent excellence, the Spurs always seem to fly under the radar and are often ignored in comparison to flashier, short-lived, upstart teams. While the Spurs have rattled off consistent fifty-plus win seasons, the Lakers, Cavaliers, Heat, Celtics, Clippers, Timberwolves, Pistons, Suns and even the Warriors have all fluctuated between championship contenders and cellar dwellers.

In much the same way, search engine optimization is the steady, consistent way to promote your business month-over-month, year-after-year even while other marketing methods explode to prominence and then flare out.

For this reason, the businesses that see the best long-term success understand the value of investing in SEO and consistently focusing on their online presence.

  SEO is Everchanging

Any Spurs fan can tell you the lineup to the 1999 championship team. Tim Duncan, David Robinson, Sean Elliott, Avery Johnson, Malik Rose and the rest of the 1999 squad are household names in San Antonio. Over the years, the supporting cast changed dramatically. Names like Michael Finley, Brent Barry, Fabricio Oberto, Boris Diaw, and Stephen Jackson all served very important and revolving roles around the San Antonio centerpieces of Tim, Manu, and Tony.

SEO is the exact same way. Because search engines, like Google, Yahoo, and Bing, consistently tweak their ranking algorithm, the methods and strategies behind SEO are consistently evolving. While content is always king—just like Timmy, Tony, Manu and Kawhi have always been foundational pieces in the Spurs roster—the supporting characters change quite frequently. One month may focus more on H1 headers, while the weighting toward schema markups may be featured more prominently the next.

Yet through all that change, the Spurs and SEO remain consistent, reliable, and highly productive.

  SEO isn’t “Sexy”

For the greatest majority of the Spurs’ great run of success, they were known as a team that lacked flash, style and the “sexiness” of other marquee franchises. They never signed a crew of major free agents to create a “Super Team,” there was never an ESPN special about “The Decision,” and they didn’t run blistering type of offenses that wowed fans and put up ridiculous point totals night in and night out.

The Spurs were always content to play the under-appreciated role of an under-the-radar performer. Even in years when they eclipsed 60 wins, they were the least heralded contender year after year.

SEO is much the same way. Just nobody wanted to talk about the Spurs due to their lack of flash, no business owner truly gets amped about good SEO.

SEO just isn’t as flashy as seeing your brand on a billboard, a TV commercial or a radio spot. It doesn’t fill you with excitement because it doesn’t create the same ego-stroking energy that those over avenues offer.

That being said, how many times have you seen a billboard in the corner of your eye everyday on the way home from work and never noticed what it was actually selling? Even better question, when was the last time a radio commercial made you whip out your cell phone and call that number right away?

When it comes to marketing, it’s always better to focus more on substance and less on flash. Be the Spurs, not the Suns.

Black, White, and (Silver) Grey

Okay, this may be a little bit of a stretch, but the Spurs are recognized for their standard black, silver and white color scheme in their uniforms.

These three colors are also commonly seen in SEO. There are many ways to do SEO—some of which are approved by Google and the search engines, some are strictly prohibited, and some fall into a grey area between the two.

White-hat tactics are the SEO actions that are recognized and approved by search engines like Google. Performing white-hat tactics will keep your website in good standing with Google, connect your business to customers, and put your website at the top of the results page.

Black-hat tactics are the actions that Google and the search engines do not approve when trying to optimize your website. These tactics may help your website rank faster, but almost certainly come with a ranking penalty—or possibly even inclusion on Google’s blacklist—because you are almost certain to be caught by Google’s spiders eventually. SEO companies that use black-hat tactics should always be avoided because they can do more harm than good to your online presence.

Finally, grey-hat tactics are the ambiguous, vaguely-defined rules in between. While these won’t necessarily cause a penalty on your website ranking, they can easily lead to a slippery slope that may get you in trouble with the search engines.

In this regard, it is probably best to skip the tri-colored motif of the Spurs and instead stick to entirely white-hat tactics to promote your business online.

  Solid SEO Can Bring Home the Championship

While the Spurs don’t win every single season, their consistent and steady approach puts them in championship contention year after year. SEO won’t always get you every possible business lead, but it will put you in position to be the most consistently successful.  For your business, try to be like the Spurs and avoid the flash-in-the-pan marketing strategies that are competing for your budget.

The post SEO is Like the Spurs of Marketing appeared first on .

[cese1931]

Blogging Grows Your Business

Here at Citywide SEO, we often give suggestions and advice about how to make small tweaks to your small-business marketing strategy and improve your online presence. As we’ve discussed multiple times in our blog section, one of the biggest factors in your online presence is the content of your website. A great way to improve that content is through—ironically enough—blogging about your business!

  While no one – well, almost no one, at least—genuinely enjoys writing blogs about their business, it’s a great way to not only connect your business to more customers and grow your bottom line, but also to give information and details about your business back to your consumers. In this post, we’ll talk about how blogging helps this mutually beneficial exchange between your business and your customers.

Blogging Increases the Strength of Your Brand

You already know that your website is an essential piece of your marketing. It helps provide critical content to your customers, such as which services you provide, where you’re located, how to contact your business, etc. However, you don’t want to have a website that only throws information at your customers, you want to give them an experience. With just about any business, there’s way too much information to fit into the homepage, so it can be ridiculously challenging to get your business personality and voice to come across in so little space.

  Blogging helps a business to get more customers by helping to provide the experience that you want visitors to your website to have—the experience that sets your business apart from competitors and makes an impression on people. Through the use of consistent tone and voice—a business blogging fundamental—you can develop your brand identity and make clear to your customers the personality and values of your company. The more that people can feel personally connected to your business, the more likely they are to become customers.

  Blogging Improves Your Online Visibility

A greater online presence affords your business more opportunities to express its personality, and also more eyes on your brand. The more people are exposed to your business, and the more familiar they become with your business, the more likely they are to become customers—or better yet, loyal/repeat customers.

  Blogging helps a business to get more customers by increasing its online presence. First of all, your business website has a limited number of pages. However, with a blog, every post counts as a page. The more pages you have, the greater the chances you have of being discovered by potential customers searching online.

  Second, if another blogger, local media outlet or larger organization finds one of your blog posts to be helpful, they may include a link to your post in their content. This is called backlinking, and it now puts you in front of their target audience as well. Expanding your reach to a relevant audience greatly increases your chances of obtaining more customers.

  Third, blogging yields content that can be shared. By sharing your blog through social media posts and via email, you can greatly amplify the number of people who see your post. Each new person who reads your post is another introduction made to your business—and another potential customer.

  Blogging Lends Additional Credibility

Establishing your expertise within your industry is a great way to attract more customers to your business. Providing useful information to your target audience will earn their trust while at the same time showing your value. However, you only have so much space on your business website to show how much you know and prove that you can be trusted.

  A blog, on the other hand, provides a platform to continuously showcase your knowledge and show visitors that you are there to help. Through it, you can become a trusted go-to resource for people in need of your service. They may use one of your blog posts to do something on their own, but when it comes to a greater task that they aren’t able to do, they already have a trusted resource in their head that they will turn to. If you’ve helped them in the past, they are more likely to turn to you in the future. Blogging helps you to get more customers by establishing trust and keeping you top of mind with your target audience.

  Blogging Drives More Web Traffic

Increasing traffic to your website can bring in more leads and potential customers. People can go to your site by typing your address into the search bar, but that requires them to know you exist, and to know your website address. What about all of the other people out there who don’t know that you exist?

  Here’s where blogging helps your business. Each blog post is an additional channel by which people can arrive at your website and discover your business—not because they knew to look for your business specifically, but because they were searching for information that your blog post provided. Blogging helps your business to get more customers because it not only brings more people to your website, it brings in people who are interested in your products or services. By sharing your blog posts on social media and with your email list, you can further increase website traffic.

  Blogging Boosts SEO

We are Citywide SEO, so you really should have known this point was coming up sooner or later. Perhaps the most important reason to incorporate blogging into your online marketing is because it’s a great way to help increase your SEO rankings.

  It’s important to know that writing a blog does not get you more customers through informative content alone. You need the people who are searching for the information to find it in the first place; and if your website shows up on 7th page of Google search results, let alone the 2nd, it is unlikely to get seen.

  That being said, blogging can actually help your website rank higher overall. Search engine optimization requires several efforts over a period of time, and blogging can help facilitate the process. Search engines (such as Google, Yahoo or Bing) prefer to showcase websites that have a strong online presence and produce fresh content—two things that a blog can provide. The search engines also place high value on relevancy. Blogging gives you more opportunities to put keywords into your content, which will help Google to serve up your content to people searching for it.

Summary

  Using your online presence and expertise, you can strengthen your brand messaging and familiarize people with your business. Blogging is like the glue that binds these efforts together, ultimately connecting your business to more people who are looking for it. So, do your business and your customers a favor, and start blogging!

The post Blogging Grows Your Business appeared first on .