Month: April 2022

How Google Web Crawler Works: Ultimate Guide in 2022

How Google Web Crawler Works: The Ultimate Guide in 2022

A search engine provides easy access to information online, but Google web crawler/web spiders play a vital role in rounding up online content. Search engines organize the online content based on the web pages and the websites visible to them. Moreover, they are very essential for your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. Google’s web crawlers scour online data and feed results to the machine so that they can be indexed for relevance on SERPs. If you want your site to appear on search engine rank pages, you must give Google bots something to crawl.

In this article, we talk about 

  1. What is a Google web crawler? 
  2. How does Google search work?
  3. How do Google robots crawl your website?
  4. Why Google web crawlers are important for SEO?
  5. What are the roadblocks for Google web crawlers?
  6. How to improve web crawling?

 

What is a Google Web Crawler?

Google web crawlers also referred to as Google bots, Google robots, or Google spiders are digital bots that crawl across the world wide web (www) to discover and index web pages for search engines such as Google, Bing, etc. Google doesn’t know what sites exist on the internet. Google search engine bots have to crawl websites and index them before they deliver the right pages for the right keywords, and phrases people use to search a page.

Let’s say, for instance, you go to a new store for grocery shopping. You might walk down the aisle and look at the products before you pick out what you need.

Likewise, search engines also use Google web crawlers as their helpers to browse the internet for web pages before storing that page data to use for future searches.

 

How does Google search work?

To better understand the Google web crawlers, firstly you must know how Google search generates web page search results.

How does Google search work?

Google follows three main steps to generate these search results:

1. Crawling

Google web crawling means the search engine using Google robots to find out new content through a network of hyperlinks. The networking starts from an unknown page or through a sitemap.

2. Indexing 

Once a page is found, Google tries to understand what it is about and stores that information into a gigantic database known as Google index. This process is called indexing.

3. Ranking 

When a query is entered into the Google search box, Google finds the highest quality answers and then ranks them by the order of relevance, and finally serves them as a list called Search engine rank pages. The pages that appear on this list are highly ranked based on whether they offer the best answers while considering other ranking factors such as language, location, and devices.

 

How do Google robots crawl your website? 

When you launch a new website, Google web crawlers will discover it eventually. The bots crawl through the texts, images, videos, and more. If you want Google web crawlers to find and index your site quickly, you must follow these three easy steps:

    • Create a sitemap is a map that provides directions to the web crawlers for crawling. A Sitemap is uploaded to your root directory.
    • Use Google webmaster tools to submit your website.
    • Ask Google to index your website  Search engines try to crawl every URL which comes in its way, so if a URL is a non-text file such as a video, or an image, it will not read that file if it doesn’t have any relevant filename & metadata. 

 

Google search engines crawl the websites by passing between the links on the web pages. If your newly launched website doesn’t have links connecting your pages to others, you can ask Google search engines to crawl a website by submitting your URL on Google Search Console. Web crawlers act as an explorer in the new land. They are always hunting for discoverable links on pages and index them once they understand their features. 

Remember, Google website crawlers only sift through public pages on sites, they can’t crawl through private pages. Private web pages where the search bots can’t reach are labeled as “dark web”. Google robots or crawlers, while they are on the page, gather useful information about the page, and then the web crawlers store these pages in their index. Google search algorithm helps to rank your website high for the users. 

 

Why Google Web Crawlers are important for SEO?

 

Why Google Web Crawlers are important for SEO?

SEO helps to improve your website for better ranking. SEO efforts are designed to help a site gain online visibility. For ranking your website higher on SERPs, it is important for your pages to be searchable and readable for Google web crawlers, Google bots, Google robots, or say Google spiders. Crawling is the first way Google search engines look for your pages, but frequent and regular crawling helps them display changes made on your website. Since crawling goes beyond the beginning of your search engine optimization campaign, you can consider web crawler behavior as a proactive measure for helping you appear first on the SERPs and improve your UX.

Without web crawlers to scour online data and verify that the content exists, all SEO efforts will be unproductive.

Crawl budget management 

The amount of time that Google spends crawling a website is called as “site’s crawl budget”. The general theory of web crawling says that the web has infinite space, exceeding Google’s ability to explore and index each URL available online. As a result, there are limits to how much time Google web crawlers can spend time crawling any single website. Web crawling gives your new website a chance to appear in the top SERPs. You don’t get unlimited crawling from Google search engines. Google has a website crawl budget that guides its crawlers in – how often to crawl, which page to scan, and how much server pressure to accept. Heavy activity from web crawlers and visitors can overload your website.

To keep your website running smoothly, you can adjust web crawling through the crawl capacity limit and crawl demand.

Crawl budget management

The crawl budget is determined by-

1. Crawl capacity limit/crawl rate limit 

Crawl rate limit monitors fetching on websites so that the loading speed doesn’t suffer or result in a surge of an error. Google web crawlers want to crawl your site without overloading your server. The crawl capacity limit is calculated as the maximum number of concurrent connections that Google bots use to crawl a site, as well as the delay between fetches.

The crawl capacity limit varies depending on :

    • Crawl health

      If your website responds quickly for some time, the crawl rate limit goes up, which means more connections can be used to crawl.  If the website slows down, the crawl rate limit goes down and Google bots crawl less.

    • Limit set by the website owner in the Google search console

      A website owner can reduce the web crawling of their site.

    • Google’s crawling limit

      Google has so many machines, but they are still limited. Hence, we need to make choices with the resources we have. 

2. Crawl demand

It is the level of interest Google and its users have in your site. If do not have huge followings yet, then Google web crawlers won’t crawl your site as often as the highly popular ones. 

Here are three main factors that play important role in determining the crawl demand:

    • Popularity

Popular URLs on the Internet tend to be crawled more often to keep them fresh in the index.

    • Staleness

Systems want to recrawl documents frequently to pick up any alterations.

    • Perceived inventory

Without any guidance, Google web crawlers will try to crawl almost every URL from your website. If the URLs are duplicates and you don’t want them to be crawled for some reason, this wastes a lot of time on your site. This is a factor that you can control easily.

Additionally, events like site moves may increase the crawl demand to re-index the content under new URLs.

Crawl rate capacity and crawl demand together define the “site’s crawl budget”.

 

What are the roadblocks for Google web crawlers?

There are a few ways to block Google web crawlers from crawling your pages purposely. Not every page from your website should rank in search engine rank pages, these crawler roadblocks help to protect sensitive, redundant, irrelevant, or useless pages from appearing for keywords.

There are two types of roadblocks for crawlers:

    • Noindex meta tag 

It stops the Google search engine from indexing and ranking a particular web page. You should apply the noindex to the admin pages, internal search results, and thank you pages.

    • Robot.txt file

It is a simple text file placed on your server which tells Google web crawlers whether they should access the page or not.

 

How to improve web crawling?

How long does it take for the Google search engine to crawl a website? It depends on the number of pages your website has and the quality of hyperlinks. To improve the site crawling you have to:

1. Verify that your website is crawlable

Google accesses the web anonymously and will be able to spot all the elements of your web page only if everything is in order. The first thing you should do to improve your web crawling is by verifying that search engines like Google can reach your website’s pages.

2. Create a solid homepage

If you ask Google to crawl your page, start from your homepage, as it is the most important part of your website. To encourage Google web crawlers to crawl your website thoroughly, make sure that your home page contains a solid navigation system that links to all key sections of your site.

3. Beware of links that violate the guidelines

You can improve your site crawling by linking your web page with another page that Google web crawlers are aware of.

 

 

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How to Optimize Website Sitemap for SEO in 2022

How to Optimize Website Sitemap for SEO in 2022

Every complex website must have a sitemap if you look from an SEO standpoint. Sitemaps are a vital part of your technical SEO plan. It helps Google crawlers to better scan your website. Search engines utilize sitemaps to index your website. Having search engines crawl your website more intelligently, you can improve your website rankings and drive more potential traffic. 

In today’s article, we will learn all about Sitemap

Table of contents

    • What is a Sitemap in SEO?
    • Why do we need a Sitemap for SEO?
    • What are the types of Sitemaps in SEO?
    • Why Sitemaps are important in SEO?
    • How to create a Sitemap for SEO?

 

What is a Sitemap in SEO?

A sitemap is a file placed on your site which provides you with information about the pages, texts, videos, URLs, and other files. Search engines like Google use sitemaps to understand your website and its structure in a better way, while web users can use them to find specific pages on your site. It can help you in SEO if your site’s content is well-prepared and attractive to web users.

 

Why do we need to Optimize Website Sitemap for SEO?

A large and complex website must have a sitemap as it is a list of web pages created for crawlers to find your web content as fast as possible. Your website will benefit from having a sitemap, and you will never be punished for having one. It can help crawlers to scan larger and more complex sites. A sitemap is important for SEO as it provides faster indexation, better indexation of deep pages, and monitoring of index pages.

You need a sitemap if –

    • Your website is too large web crawlers might overlook some of your newly updated web content.
    • Your website content is changed frequently.
    • You need to index your new content fast.
    • Your website has a lot of heavy media content such as videos, and images. Google takes additional information from sitemaps into account for web search.
    • Your website is recently launched and has a few external links. Google crawlers scan the web by following the external links from one page to another. If your site is new Google might not discover your content pages if no other site is linked to them. A Sitemap helps Google to find out the newest web pages or all web pages together on a website.
    • Your website has a large archive of content pages that are not properly linked to each other. If your pages do not naturally reference each other, you can list them in a sitemap to make sure that Google discovers them.

 

Let me tell you something loud and clear –

“A sitemap does not help to boost your rankings.”

A sitemap is not for you if –

    • Your website is “small”.
    • Your website is a portfolio website.
    • Your website is widely linked internally.
    • Your website doesn’t have heavy or fresh media files.
    • Your website is a one-page presentation. 
    • Your website is a SaaS application or website for an organization.

 

What are the Types of Sitemaps in SEO?

There are 2 kinds of sitemaps often used by SEO professionals for their SEO strategy to target search engine crawlers and users.

What are the Types of Sitemaps in SEO?

Let us know about the 2 main types of sitemaps.

1. HTML sitemaps (Hyper-Text Mark-up Language)

HTML sitemaps are written for the users to browse, not search engine bots. It is visible to the website user. Search engine bots crawl through the HTML sitemaps and send strong user experience signals to Google.

HTML sitemaps

HTML sitemaps are often placed at the footer of your website to help you navigate from one page to another. Your HTML sitemap should have links that help users navigate from your site. You can organize your HTML site map such that – it is the directory of your website.

2. XML sitemaps (eXtensible Mark-up Language)

XML sitemaps are written for search engine bots to crawl, not the users. XML sitemaps are used to share technical details of your site, like how many pages you have and how often they’re uploaded. These are digital maps that help Google discover important web pages of your site and how frequently they are updated. You might want to communicate with your search engines when things change on your website. 

XML sitemaps

XML sitemaps are important but mostly underrated. An XML sitemap is for websites that are new, large, utilize lots of images, and videos, and have lots of orphaned pages. They allow search engines to discover fresh pages even if they are not linked to the main website. Search engine crawlers prioritize XML sitemaps for faster crawling.

An XML sitemap is further divided into –

  • Image sitemap: Image sitemap is used for images to get featured on Google Image Search.
  • Video sitemap: Video sitemap is used for videos to get featured in Google Video Search. It helps search bots to better understand the video content.
  • News sitemap: News sitemap is used for news to get featured in the “news section” Google SERPs. It is mandatory for a news website. It can not contain news articles that are published 2 days prior. A news sitemap can not have more than 1000 URLs. You can break 1000 URLs into multiple sitemaps and use a sitemap index file. 
  • Mobile sitemap: Mobile sitemap is used only for the specially formatted version designed for mobiles. As per reports, there is no need for a mobile sitemap in SEO for a mobile-friendly website.

 

HTML Sitemap vs XML Sitemap

HTML and XML both are coding languages used to create web pages. When it comes to sitemaps, the only difference between them is that XML is written only for search engine crawlers, while HTML focuses on making a user-friendly website for humans.

 

Why Sitemaps are Important in SEO?

Well-executed SEO means making your site crawlable and accessible.  A sitemap in SEO is important as it keeps your website organized.  

Here are a few benefits of using Sitemaps for SEO –

    • Makes your website user-friendly
    • Make it easy for search engines to classify your content
    • Helps you to find internal linking opportunities
    • Organize large sites
    • Determine areas to improve website navigation
    • Provides faster indexing
    • Automatically index your updated content
    • Increases visibility of your website in SERPs

 

How to Create a Sitemap for SEO?

Having a good sitemap for your website greatly increases the chances of your website’s content showing up in relevant searches. If your business makes money from your website, then have a look at the following steps to create a sitemap.

1. Review your website structure 

The first thing you need to check is to see how your website structure is built. See how the existing content is structured on your site. Start from the homepage and see where your homepage links to. You might figure this out easily with the help of menu options on your website. But, when it comes to SEO, all pages are not created equally.  Keep the depth of your website in mind while reviewing your site. Pages away from your website’s homepage will be difficult to rank.

As per the search engine guide, you should aim to create a sitemap having shallow depth, which means it takes only 3 clicks to navigate to any of your website pages. That’s much better for SEO.

You must create a hierarchy of pages based on how you want them to be indexed and their importance. Follow a logical hierarchy while prioritizing your content. 

 

2. Code your URLs

Now that you have gone through all of your web pages and determined the importance of each page and matched that importance in your website structure; it’s time for coding the URLs.

The best possible way to do this is by formatting each URL with XML tags. It will be very easy for you if you have experience in HTML coding. The “ML” in the term XML stands for mark-up language which is the same in HTML. Start by getting a text editor to create an XML file. The text editor must be a plain text editor like windows, notepad, or TextEdit for Mac users. 

Then add the code for each URL.

    • Location
    • Changed frequency
    • Last updated
    • Priority of the page

 

Here is an example of how coding will look for each one

    • https://www.ecsion.com/page1
    • weekly
    • 2022-1-2
    • 3

This method is best for small size websites as you have to manually enter the text on each page. Text editor makes it easier when it comes to adding code for each URL, but you need to be sharp as it is a manual job. Take your time and ensure that you go through each step properly.

 

3. Validate the code

While coding manually, human error is natural. But, for your sitemap to run properly, you can’t make any mistakes in your code.

Luckily, there are software tools available online to validate your code to make sure your syntax is error-free. You can find multiple tools on Google search for sitemap validation.

The sitemap validator tool helps to check whether your sitemap is formatted correctly or not. It will inform you straight away in case of any syntax error. You can check what is the problem in your sitemap and fix that issue before submitting it to Google.

For example, if you miss out on adding an end tag in your syntax or something similar, it can be quickly identified and fixed.

 

4. Add your sitemap to the root and robots.txt

Find the location of your root folder and add your sitemap file to this folder. It will add the page to your website as well. This is not an issue, lots of websites have this. Just type in the website address and add “/sitemap/” to the URL and see what pops up.

Here’s an example for the Apple website https://www.ecsion.com/sitemap/

Now, this can be taken 1 step further by looking at the code on different websites by adding “/sitemap.xml” to the URL.

For example, https://www.ecsion.com/sitemap.xml  

By adding a sitemap to your root folder, you might want to add it to the robots.txt file which you will find in the roots folder as well. 

But, what is the robot.txt file?  why it is important to add your sitemap file link to the robots.txt file?

Well, the robots.txt file is just a simple text file that is placed in your website’s root folder. It has different uses. It gives direction to the unknown crawlers by using a set of instructions to tell search engine bots which page on your site they can crawl and which page they should ignore. On the robots.txt page, if you add “disallow” on your site, crawlers ignore it.  This file allows you to block specific robots from crawling your website. 

For example, if a site is under development, it makes sense to block the robots from having the access to crawl the website until it’s ready to be launched.

Robots.txt file is the first place that the spiders or crawlers visit when accessing a website.

If you have multiple sitemaps, you can add all sitemap files locations in a sitemap index file. The XML format of the sitemap index file is the same as the sitemap file, making it a sitemap of sitemaps.

When you have multiple sitemaps, you can either specify your sitemap index file URL in your robots.txt or you can specify individual URLs for each of your sitemap files.

 

5. Submit your sitemap

Now, that you know how to create and add a sitemap to your website files, it’s time to submit it to the search engines. For the next step, go to the Google search console. On the Google search console dashboard, Navigate to Crawl and select Sitemaps from the drop-down menu. Next, click on Add/ Test sitemap on the right-hand side of the screen. You can test your sitemap for any errors before you continue. In case of any mistake, you can quickly fix it and then submit it.

Google handles everything else ahead of this. This helps search engine spiders to index your website with ease, which will increase your SEO ranking.

 

Conclusion

If you wish to take your SEO strategy to the next level, you must create a sitemap of your site. If you don’t want to change the code manually, the internet is full of resources that can help you create a sitemap for SEO without needing to manually edit the code.

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Ultimate Guide To Optimize Your Website For Mobile Search In 2022

Ultimate Guide to Optimize Your Website for Mobile Search in 2022

Mobile phone is the way of the future. It is more versatile and provides more value to the end-user than a computer. Nowadays, mobile phones are used more than desktops, laptops, and tablets. More and more web users are shifting from desktop computers to smartphones. Since people started using mobile devices on the go, mobile search has overtaken desktops. The usage of apps, voice assistants, and IoT devices for online searches has increased exponentially. It has become so important to optimize your website to work well on mobile devices. 

Wondering why mobile is so much important for small businesses?

Well, the answer is:

    • Mobile-friendly websites work faster and show up higher in search engine results.
    • Mobile searches make up most of the searches on Google.com.
    • Majority of the traffic comes from mobile devices.
    • If your website is not mobile-friendly, visitors will leave in no time.

 

In order to grow your small-scale business, it is crucial to invest some time to optimize your website and provide a mobile-friendly user experience. 

 

What is a Mobile-Friendly Website?

 

Mobile-Friendly Website

Responsive web design means no matter how big or small the screen is, it will fill the screen and the information in a clear way. A mobile-friendly web design allows your website’s information to be easily readable and accessible to all platforms including a much smaller screen of smartphones, tablets, and even watches. At a complex level, a mobile-friendly website means utilizing all the capabilities of mobile devices to deliver a satisfying experience to the users on the go. If your website isn’t optimized, then you are missing out.

 

Why Mobile-Friendly Website is Important for Your Business?

The use of technology is increasing rapidly, which is why it is today’s business necessity to discover an efficient and cost-effective solution to optimize your website.

Irrefutable truth: “To succeed your website better employ mobile-optimized web design

Potential customers expect speedy answers and faster access. Their experience on your website is most likely to influence their impression of your business.

To design an effective mobile-friendly website you need to look at the following elements:

    • Does your website load quickly?
    • Is it easy to navigate?
    • Is it easy to perform actions?

 

Nearly half of the visitors will leave their mobile if your website fails to load within 3 seconds. Visitors will leave if you do not optimize your website to provide a great user experience. A bad mobile experience may hurt your user base. 

Better play nice!

Your users, customers, or your business partners just want their information served fast, fresh, and convenient. So, you better focus on the ways to optimize your website design that encourage visitors to perform desired actions depending upon your small business marketing objectives. Emphasis on winning friends with a responsive web design.

Now that you know, what is mobile-friendliness and why it is crucial to have a mobile-optimized website; let us dig in more to learn the process of mobile optimization.

 

10 tactics to optimize your site for mobile search

Mobile search now dominates a significant portion of the online space. To be an effective marketer you need to create a strong user experience regardless of the device. The context of mobile search is different than that of desktop devices.

To get you started, here are the 10 best ways to make sure your website shows up on mobile SERPs:

10 tactics to optimize your site for mobile search

1. AMP is your savior

Accelerated mobile pages (AMP) are lightweight web pages used to create a fast mobile experience. The technology used behind AMP enables web pages to load more quickly for mobile devices. AMP utilizes a stripped-down version of Hyper-text markup language. It is a web component framework that allows web pages to load smoothly, and fast and prioritize user experience.

It helps businesses to provide a consistent and fast experience across all devices, which means better speed can improve user experience. To employ AMP, you don’t require any super-savvy computer skills. You can reduce the need for a vast developer since it is easy to build.

AMPs were included in Google’s mobile search algorithm in 2016.

Technically, AMP requires 3 main components:

    • AMP HTML
    • AMP JavaScript
    • AMP Cache

 

2. Use schema markup

As Google remains the king, it always works on providing the answers to user queries. When you search “how to optimize a website” for example, Google presents you with an info-box that contains the answer to your related queries.  This is possible only by implementing schema markup. It doesn’t require a technically savvy person to get started. There’s a plugin for WordPress called schema app structured data that offers a responsive web design. You just need to activate the plugin, add your logo and business name, and BAM, your content is optimized to be fully understood by search engines resulting in higher traffic and increased click-through rates.

3. Speed is the deciding factor

Speed up anything and everything. Slow loading time translates to a high-bounce rate. High-ranking results have faster page load times. Web page loading speed is quite an inevitable thing for your website when it comes to desktops, but if you think that your website loading speed remains the same for mobile phones as well, then you are wrong. As mentioned earlier, web pages load differently on mobile devices. It is important to optimize your website to improve your web page’s loading speed and generate high-quality leads for your business.

4. Make your site responsive enough

A responsive web design is mandatory to maintain a higher ranking on Google. Google has made it very clear that it is going to prioritize websites that are responsive and fits the screen of all devices. The responsive HTML framework adapts according to the screen size and orientation of the device viewing the content. It means HTML allows your website to fit well enough on-screen that is 5 inches to the screen that is 10 inches. If you succeed in crafting a responsive design for your website then you can rank high, drive a good amount of traffic to your website, and eventually, gain a good amount of revenue for your business.

5. Squeeze the image size

Images are necessary for dynamic web content and visual content is the topmost priority for digital marketers. By compressing an image, you enable web pages to load faster. Compressed image frees up space and decreases page load time.  It’s a win-win situation!

For example, imagine that you are a blogger who uses tons of graphs, screenshots, videos, and other types of visual content within the blog to attract followers. In order to optimize your website, you can compress image files up to 95% to reduce the file size using photoshop without hampering the quality. While visual contents are important, there’s one type of visual content that needs to be removed quickly from your website. 

Any guesses?

6. Remove flash

Flash is banned from Google’s AMP project. Vulnerabilities in flash make it less attractive in web designs. Cheesy animation might appear good on pen and paper, but in the real world, they look less operative. The trend of simple designs is ruling the internet. So, we suggest you exclude flash from your site.

7. Check if your site layout is mobile-friendly 

While crafting a website you should not just look at the technical side but also the non-technical aspects of your website such as fonts and colors.  You need to check whether your website‘s content design is good enough on focusing the key points of your site.

8. Use open-source tools to improve your website’s experience

If you want to enhance your website ranking on Google, then you should run a mobile-friendly test which you will get in the Google search console. This test is conducted by open-source tools so you get the results faster than expected. If you pass this test then you are most likely to gain more traffic and enhance the end-user experience. If you fail the test, fix the problems and repeat the test until you get the best results.

9. Identify how people look for things from their mobiles

Look at your mobile website. If you think that people search in the same way on both desktops and mobile devices, then I am afraid you’re wrong.  While searching from a desktop, people have enough time to type longer phrases. But, while surfing on their mobile phones they tend to type smaller texts to get the exact same results. For mobile users, Google lets you use up to 78 characters to craft titles and for desktop, it is just 70. To optimize your mobile devices, you get more space to elaborate the titles so that your visitors find you effortlessly.

10. Say no to Pop-ups

Keep away from pop-ups while optimizing your website for mobile search.

Pop-ups are a Big NO! 

Google penalizes websites if they fail to provide easily accessible content for users. If pop-ups of your web design irritate your visitors, then it will surely hamper your website ranking. You better get rid of such pop-ups to provide a great customer browsing experience.

 

Conclusion

Mobile phones are the future of online search. Every person has a mobile device than desktop computers. So, it is important to optimize your website to resolve mobile queries and thereby increase search rankings and build a strong digital foundation.

 

 

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How to Increase Business Conversion Rate with Qualitative Analysis in 2022

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In the marketing world, the business conversion rate is marketing with the purpose of increasing conversions. Good conversions mean a strong ROI.

Every small business owner running an e-commerce site has a dream of growing their online business to rival all the big names. Everyone dreams to have thousands of customers daily, monthly revenue in millions, and a feature on the cover of fortunes. All of this can be achieved by increasing your business conversion rate.

The dream is familiar ….

I am sure you all have the same dream to achieve, but growing a small business is not an easy task. Initially, it looks easy but the actual process is quite complicated. You need to take care of the daily operations such as stocking products, arranging shipping and logistics, sourcing the best price, and so on.

You need to be flexible to adjust to your user expectations and antedate their needs. In the case of e-commerce stores, customers physically disconnect from their purchased items – this is the gap we need to seal. Just bringing more visitors to your website won’t help. You need to do measurable improvements unless the content gains trust and encourages potential customers to purchase your products or services.

To achieve revenue growth, CRO focuses on:

    • Providing a better UX
    • Relevant and engaging content
    • Increase visitor’s motivation

 

But, what is CRO?

Customer rate optimization is the process of boosting the percentage of visitors to take the desired action. CRO has the objective to understand what content and encouragement customers need to buy your products and services. When properly implemented, CRO strategy goes hand in hand with your SEO efforts. So, instead of an SEO replacement, CRO should be considered as an SEO multiplier. Improvements that CRO makes to your content will also make your website more SEO-friendly.

Let’s start from scratch.

 

What is Business Conversion Rate?

 

What is Business Conversion Rate?

The percentage of customer actions taken after total clicks on displayed ads is termed the conversion rate of a business. Conversion rate measures the number of people who converted as a percentage of the total number of users that visited your website. Digital marketing strategy defines your actions such as clicking on a link, opening an email, filling out a registration form online, downloading an asset, buying a product, signing up for a special retail offer, or giveaways.

Formula is:

 Conversion rate = (conversions / total visitors) * 100%

Each conversion brings a visitor one step closer to becoming a potential customer. With the right web analytics and conversion tools, you can convert more of your visitors into prospects and then into customers. The higher your conversion rate, the more effective your content, and the more successful your online campaigns. 

 

Why does Conversion Rate matter to your business?

Conversion rate allows you to determine how effective your marketing strategies are. It is one of the most accurate metrics that compare the conversion rate with the number of customer responses to the total number of contacts. 

Just imagine, if you had 60 people sign up for last month, your first instinct would probably be to celebrate.

You might rethink that response if you find out that those 60 people came from more than 60,000 who visited your site. Sadly, that’s only a 1% conversion rate.

A good conversion rate means a good return on investment. Having a high business conversion rate is the foundation of high sales volume. If your business conversion rate is decreased, then your ROI would likewise decrease and if this happens, then you might change your marketing strategy.

 

What’s Qualitative Analysis?

Qualitative analysis is a process of gathering, structuring, and interpreting qualitative data to know what it represents. It utilizes subjective judgment to analyze a business value based on non-quantifiable information. It deals with inexact, non-numeral, and unstructured information that is not easy to collect and measure. It helps you to understand people and industry culture. It also allows you to look at the company through the eyes of the customers and understand its competitive advantage assists.

What’s Qualitative Analysis?

 

Businesses mostly perform this analysis based on user feedback which includes reviews, chat messages, complaints, support center interactions, customer interviews, and social media comments. 

Qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis are used together to examine a company’s operations and evaluate its potential as an investment opportunity.

 

How to increase business conversion rate with qualitative analysis?

Checking a large number of Qualitative Data can be a challenging task but with a little preparation and a few simple steps, it becomes easier to draw insights. 

How to increase business conversion rate with qualitative analysis?

 

Today, we will look at the simple steps to perform qualitative analysis to organize and code qualitative data. 

  • Gather your feedback

The first step for conducting a qualitative analysis of your qualitative data is to collect all the information such as comments and feedback which you want to analyze.  This data is available in different formats such as on post-it notes, on paper, or on various forums and surveys, so it’s important to gather all of your data in a single piece. To organize your content, you can use a master spreadsheet as a place to collect all of your comments and feedback, or you can set up your analysis template.

  • Coding your comments

The next step in qualitative analysis is about coding your comments and most importantly reading; making a decision on how each one should be organized.

There are two methodologies to approach this: 

  1. The first way assumes that you are looking for a predefined set or list of themes or issues. In this method, it is important you articulate your coding legend. A better way to do this is by creating a simple table outlining what each code is and what it covers. This can be mapped to the areas you need to report on or the key components of your project.
  2. The other way is focused on unpacking themes without having any prior expectations about what they should be. In the first method, it is important you articulate your coding legend. A better way to do this is by creating a simple table outlining what each code is and what it covers. This can be mapped to the areas you need to report on or the key components of your project. 
  • Run your queries

Once you are done coding all of your data it is time to run your queries. It means you need to check the insights of your data. Your reporting requirements will identify the extent and type of queries you run during this process.

Here are a few queries you run on your data:

    • Which are the most commonly used codes or themes? Represent this visually in order to get a sense of the most crucial areas.
    • How did people respond through different formats? Were there any variations in views based on the submission type?
    • Which issues are of more concern to different demographic segments?
    • Are there any relationships between issues?

Represent this visually to get a sense of the most crucial areas.

  • Reporting 

Now that you have run queries and explored your data you have a solid foundation and enough insight to begin your reporting. Reporting is the final step in your findings. This is a challenging step as it’s your turn to tell the story of what you have learned from your consultation. If you fail to perform this step well, your community will lose trust in your process and you might also face a community outrage.  Being on time and transparent is the best way to avoid this type of situation.  Utilize your insights to create a narrative about the issues and opportunities your community has identified.

While framing your insights you might consider using the following as useful ways of quantifying your findings:

    • Check what concerns were frequently raised by the participants 
    • See what most of the participants have commented 
    • Find out what most of the participants have suggested

You can utilize relative charts and visuals to help your community further explore your data. Once you have compiled and circulated your data, it’s better. Better to ask your community for their final comments. At this stage, you can check whether you have framed their concerns and issues correctly or not.    

You can decide to make any final changes if required before submitting the final report. Magic tools to collect qualitative data.

Here are a few magic tools you can use to gather qualitative data.

What is Business Conversion Rate?

 

  • Heatmap

It helps business owners to understand how customers are interacting with their site. Heatmaps show what people are clicking, it helps to determine what elements are converting and what are not. It analyzes the behavior of your visitors and helps you to decide where to place the best call-to-action button online. Heatmap shows the customer interactions with colored spots, where the visitors scroll the mouse, where the visitors click, and from where the visitors left the page. 

Heatmaps can be extremely useful for tracking shopping cart abandonment. It would give a clear idea of which products are your visitors clicking on, whether are they scrolling down the page, how are they moving about your conversion funnel, what is their reaction when they come on the checkout page, and what is exactly making them leave your online store. It is one of the main tools which provides amazing insight into your site visitors, which is why it is a must to put a heatmap on your online website.

  • Session recordings

Session recording lets you see your site from the eyes of a visitor and helps you to understand what made them leave or purchase. You can watch the recording of their individual browsing journey to find out why you are losing them. It allows you to find the issues with your website and help you fix them to increase the business conversion rate.

  • Customer survey

A micro survey gives you detailed feedback on what and how your customer thinks about your online site, however it highly depends on what type of questions you ask in the survey.

You need to keep the following things in mind while designing a customer survey

  1. Ask only important questions, avoid long and irrelevant questions 
  2. Keep your survey short and to-the-point
  3. Make it smart to gather some necessary details
  4. Do not push your customers to answer in a way you want them to answer, avoid biases.
  5. Have more yes/no – it is easy and time-saving too.
  6. Timing is important – conduct a survey when you think your customers would participate for sure.
  7. Offer perks, and incentives to make them fill and take your surveys seriously.
  • Live chat

Live chat can grab a higher number of customers in today’s world.  There is no more B2B or B2C anymore, this is the world of H2H: Human to Human. Having online customer service is the best way to promote your brand and convert your customers effectively.  Most of the customers prefer live chats to share their issues. 

Ensure that an expert is sitting on the other end to satisfy customer needs and fix their problems. 

Qualitative tools give you constant feedback from surveys and live chats, higher observations via session recordings, and problem identification to rectify it as soon as possible. 

 

Conclusion 

Qualitative analysis allows you to look inside the mind of your customers. You will know what they exactly think, what they want, and, how they want it.  If you fail to find out why people are dropping off here and there, Qualitative analysis can help. The qualitative analysis provides you with all the customer demand details and customer interaction.

Numbers and stats are just plain data. Qualitative data have some extremely useful customer insights to help you increase your conversion rate for the longer term.

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8 Expert Tips to Build Winning SEO Strategy in 2022

8 Expert Tips to Build Winning SEO Strategy in 2022

If you are going to publish content on your website, you might as well take time to ensure Google takes notice of your efforts. But, how to do that?

Most of you guys might have heard about the three-letter term “SEO” thrown around about Digital marketing, internet circles, and online businesses. But, do you understand what they mean?

Remember, instead of just creating what you think people are searching for, an SEO strategy makes sure that you are creating content that people are looking for. That is why to build winning SEO strategy is important to stay on track when creating content.

Today, we are going to learn everything about Search Engine Optimization to carry out a strong, and effective SEO strategy. We are going to cover:

    • What is SEO?
    • Importance of SEO Strategy
    • 8 Expert Ways to Build Winning SEO Strategy

 

What Is SEO?

Nowadays, people turn to Google to find out answers to pretty much all doubts or queries.  Business owners everywhere do whatever they can to make their site, and information findable on Google search. This is exactly what SEO is – the practice of optimizing your content to appear first on SERPs.

What Is SEO?

 

Search engine optimization is a process of optimizing websites to rank higher on Google search engine result pages through organic searches. SEO strategy is one of the fundamental strategies for any business to maximize the opportunity to gain organic traffic from search engines. It helps you discover opportunities to answer queries people have about their responsive business industry.

There are 3 types of Search engine optimizers:

  • On-page SEO

It focuses on content that’s actually on your website, and how to optimize it to increase the website ranking for specified keywords.

On-page SEO

In simple words, on-page SEO is the strategy that you implement on your website.

For example, 

    • The design
    • The text
    • Metadata
    • Alt text

 

  • Off-page SEO

It focuses on links directed to your site from elsewhere on the internet. 

Off-page SEO

Incoming links or backlinks coming from reputable sources help your site to build trust with search algorithms.

For example,

    • Social posts
    • External links
    • Other promotional methods

 

  • Technical SEO

 It focuses on the website’s backend architecture. Every business has different goals depending on its business size.

Technical SEO

SEO’s job is to examine their industry and identify what their audiences are looking for and establish a solid strategy to give them what they are searching for.

 

Importance Of SEO

    • SEO is a budget-friendly marketing strategy than paid advertising
    • It is more effective and longer-lasting
    • It provides increases higher quality organic traffic and drives sales 
    • It improves visibility, credibility, and trust
    • It provides higher ROI than other marketing channels
    • Provides customer insight and sustainability
    • Improves usability and user experience (UX)
    • Builds a positive online reputation and increases domain authority of your website

 

8 Tips To Build Winning SEO Strategy 

Every business should invest time in building a strong website strategy. It helps in increasing organic traffic to your site which is a crucial part of a digital marketing plan if you are looking for longevity and cost-effectiveness. Organic search driven by SEO strategies is unbeatable. Initially, SEO can feel like a slow burn, but the effects are long-lasting. A website is the anchor of your marketing efforts

So, you cannot understate the importance of having an effective website for your business.

Now let us learn how to build a winning SEO strategy in 8 steps:

 8 Tips To Build Winning SEO Strategy 

  • Write for people first and Google second

Google algorithm is getting smarter every day and uses constant human inputs to better align with your thought process. Being said that, there is no special mix to outwit a search engine, so it’s better to write for humans first than search engines. 

Ultimately, your objective is to provide naturalistic content to your audience. Discover the right keywords to find the right audience to find you and elevate your already informative and valuable content. 

 

  • Establish your top 3-5 goals 

Identify your business goals and order them in priority. It is important to find out why you are creating a website. Having a site that has clearly defined goals is the key to setting yourself up for a successful business journey. Take some time to think about whether you are trying to increase sales of your products, you are trying to increase your SEO or you are trying to convert visitors to leads before developing your website. 

 

  • Create a list of keywords 

Keyword research is a legit SEO strategy for building a killer website. One of the best ways to find the right keyword is that which your users search. Google suggest – start typing a keyword into Google search and you will get a drop-down list of suggestions. This list can make great keywords for SEO strategy as it is directly populated by Google, and Google provides this list based on what people are searching for.

Long-tailed keywords are less competitive than short-tailed keywords, but they have low search volumes, and they are much easier to rank for. You can use different keyword search tools to discover the search volumes and competition of those terms to rank first on SERPs. 

 

  • Focus on customer experience 

Improved customer experience and usability have a direct correlation with their perception of your business. There is nothing worse than customers not using your website. A bad user experience will deeply harm your organic traffic. In fact, after more than a few seconds of frustration customers leave your website. To avoid such situations, you must immediately remove dead links, and error pages, and modify the messy website structure.

Google crawlers scan your content and determine your search engine ranking. Easy navigation and good customer experience allow Google to rank your website higher in SERPs.

Key focal points to remember for providing a seamless UX:

    • Utilize heading and short
    • Utilize easy-to-read paragraphs
    • Tidy up your sub-folders
    • Reduce page loading time
    • Optimize your website for mobile devices

All these points will help you to reduce the bounce rate, improve your rankings, and generate a better conversion rate.  Loading, Interactivity, and visual stability are the 3 core web vitals that have become a ranking factor through page experience updates. So, you should be optimizing page speed more than ever before. A positive user experience has a direct impact on how successful your business will be. Businesses that actively work on UX can control their brand reputation online to some degree.

 

  • Focus on relevant links 

One of the key aspects of building the domain reputation or domain authority of your website is link-building. External links are important as it enhances the information that you are providing and also receive reciprocal incoming links through outreach. Google crawlers scan and discover content by following these links through subsequent pages and judge how related they are to a search query. You can also link useful pages to your website wherever and whenever required. Link-building attracts inbound links from other sources online.

You can approach different blogs for guest blogging opportunities through which can link back to your site. Websites with high domain authority that link back to your content have a more significant impact on your SEO strategies. Many marketers noticed an impact after a few months of implementing a link-building plan. 

 

  • Remove anything that slows down your site

While writing informative blogs, selling your services, or pointing someone in the right direction, your site needs to be quick, accessible, and easy to use. Nowadays users expect instant access and instant results.  If your website’s page load time is more, your customers will simply move.

Some of the ways to improve your site speed and the overall smoothness of your customer experience:

    • Delete old or defunct plugins
    • Clean up your code
    • Compress your images
    • Ensure that your sub-folders flow and make sense
    • Use tools to monitor your website performance metric (GTmetrix or Google page speed insights)

 

  • Compress media files before uploading 

As your website grows, you will have more content more images, videos, texts, and other relevant media to support your content. These visual files can be appealing to your visitors, but they can be very large in size.  Since page loading time is an important factor in SEO strategy, it’s important to monitor the size of the media files before uploading them to your website. 

Bigger file sizes may lead to reduced page speed. It’s harder for mobile browsers to load these heavy files as the bandwidth on mobile devices is significantly smaller. So, the smaller the file size, the faster your website will load.

 

  • Track your content’s success

Search engine optimization strategies require patience and a lot of hard work to achieve your goals. It’s very important to monitor your metrics to understand the success and overall progress to build winning SEO strategy. It helps you to identify the areas of improvement.  Organic traffic can be monitored by using various web analytics tools or by creating your own dashboard using Google sheets or excel. 

Tracking the overall process including conversion rate, ROI, and your ranking on search engine result pages can help you recognize your success as well as determine the areas of opportunity.

The search engine landscape is ever-evolving. Staying up-to-date about the current trends and best practices is a crucial strategy plan for SEO. 

 

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How to Increase Domain Authority using High-Quality backlinks?

How To Increase Domain Authority Using High-Quality Backlinks?

Are you wondering how to improve your marketing plan? Or how to rank your website higher on Google? If so, then you might have heard the term “Domain Authority”.

For people working on search engine optimization it is important to know that among the several ranking factors on Google, domain authority is one of the important factors.

But, do you know what your domain authority is?

Let’s dive in to understand all about the term “ Domain Authority”

Table of Contents

    • What is Domain Authority?
    • What is a Backlink?
    • Why Backlinks?
    • What is a Good Domain Authority Score?
    • How is Domain Authority Calculated?
    • How to Boost Domain Authority?
    • How to Check Domain Authority?

 

What is Domain Authority?

 

domain authority

Domain authority of a website is a search engine ranking score that predicts how well a website will rank on search engine result pages (SERPs).

Domain authority metric developed by Moz helps local businesses figure out where they may rank on search engines. They predict a page’s possible ranking through several channels, including hyperlinks to your website from another reputable site. Domain authority means the number of relevant backlinks your website has. The relevance of Backlinking also contributes to your Domain authority score.

But, how does Google determine what website to rank numbers 1, 2, and 3? 

It comes down to SEO, right? Well, it is more in-depth than that. Google has more than 200 factors; the number one factor that affects Google’s ranking is backlinks” 

what is a backlink? Why backlinking strategy is so crucial in 2022?

 

What is a Backlink?

 

Backlink

Backlinks are incoming links or one-way links coming from one website to a page on another website. Google considers these backlinks as “votes”. You can link your website with another website that has the same industry as yours. 

For example, imagine that you published an article about “weight loss” on your website. Next, you might want website A, which has published an article on “weight loss diet plans” on his site to link to your website. In this case, Google will put more weight on links from sites about weight loss, weight loss diet plans, and so on. Here, website A has an external link to your website; your website has a backlink from the website.

 

Why backlinks?

Backlinks are votes from different websites. These votes increase the value and credibility of your content. More backlinks mean more votes, and more votes mean higher ranking. Pages with a high number of quality backlinks tend to have a higher ranking on Google search result pages. But, not all backlinks are valuable. 

A single but high-quality backlink from a relevant website having a high domain authority is more powerful than thousands of low-quality backlinks. 

Now that you know the advantages of backlinks, you can use them in your marketing strategies to improve your Domain authority ratings.

 

What is a Good Domain Authority Score?

 

What is a Good Domain Authority Score?

Domain authority score ranges from 1 to 100. 100 DA score is like Google, a YouTube. It works on a logarithmic scale, in which it’s easier to go from 1 to 10, than going from 10 to 20. A high domain authority score means you are likely to see increased ranking and more traffic. 

So, if you can get a lot of backlinks, you can get them from relevant sites and you can get them from authoritative sites that have high domain authority, your rankings are going to climb up. When you launch a new website its domain authority is 1. Local businesses which have fewer backlinks have lower Domain authority scores (possibly between the range of 10 to 20).

DA score is categorized as:

    • Below 30 is poor
    • 30 to 40 is below average
    • 40 to 50 is average
    • 50 to 60 is good
    • 60 to 70 is very good
    • Above 80 is excellent

 

Domain authority helps you to find out a website’s performance in search engine results. Are you wondering how domain authority is calculated? 

Let’s find out…

 

How Domain Authority is Calculated?

 

How Domain Authority is Calculated?

Different tools use different methodologies to calculate Domain authority. Moz alone uses 40 different factors to provide you with a website’s Domain Authority score.

The following 5 factors are used to calculate the DA score

    • MozRank 

MozRank counts the number of incoming links to a web page. It also checks the quality of these websites that provides your page with an inbound link or a backlink.

    • Link Profile 

This includes internal links and external links from the web page. So, if your post links to a high-authority website and gets linked back by other websites with high domain authority, then you would get a good DA score.

    • Root Domains 

When looking at your website, Moz also looks for the number of unique backlinks. If you have several backlinks from a single website then Moz considers it as a single root domain. That is why it is important to get backlinks from different websites. 

    • Moz Trust 

Moz checks out the trustworthiness of the website linking to your site. If you get a link from a governmental site or a university website then you are likely to get a high domain authority score.

    • Website structure 

For a high Domain score, you need to make sure that your website structure is easy for web crawlers like Google for crawling your pages. You also have to provide a user-friendly structure to give a great user experience to your visitors.

 

How to Boost Domain Authority?

Boosting your website’s domain authority is a long-term process. More backlinks and better traffic can help you to increase your Domain authority. It’s important to focus on being the best resource for your users to improve your domain ratings.

Here are some ways to increase your website’s domain authority:

1. Acquire high-quality backlinks from high-authority websites 

 

Backlinks play a crucial role in calculating a site’s domain authority. But, the backlinks must be high-quality ones. According to a report, 53 % of websites don’t get any organic traffic since they don’t utilize backlinks. There are multiple ways to discover backlinks and strengthen your profile. To get started you can look into your top referral sources and find relevant sites for backlinking opportunities.

There are many tools that can help you spy on your competitor’s backlink sources, you can acquire the same for backlinking. You can also secure high-quality links from reputed websites through guest posting.

2. Create great content that’s link-worthy

 

By creating good content, you can compel visitors to link to your website. How a good content plays role in backlinking?  Well, if your content is helpful people will start to share your content with others. This increases your chances of getting backlinks from high-authority sites, like government websites, university sites, etc. Linking to a high-authority website will help you to boost your root domains and increase your domain authority score.

3. Remove bad links

Auditing your website is an important step to improving your DA score. While incoming links are vital for your website’s domain authority and ranking, having unnecessary bad links can affect your DA score. Links coming from spammy websites lead to more harm than good. Sometimes it can even lead to a penalty from Google. To prevent this from happening, you should audit your website and remove all the toxic links as soon as possible.  Using various SEO tools, you can identify harmful links and remove them easily from your website.

4. Optimize your website 

 

Always remember your website’s structure and user-friendliness are the factors that drive traffic to your website. With proper structure, search engines can crawl your web pages easily and index them on search results. You can create a sitemap in WordPress which will then help the search engine crawlers to navigate through relevant pages with ease. A sitemap includes all the important pages of your site.

Google has gone mobile-first, so you should check how well your website works on smartphones. You must ensure that your website functions properly, and loads quickly.  You must also ensure that your website is safe to use. This can be done by getting an SSL certificate and moving your website to HTTPS.

5. Improve internal links

 

To provide a better user experience and to reduce the bounce rate on your site you must improve your internal link structure. With internal links, you can help search engine bots to crawl your website and index your pages on search results. Another benefit of proper link structure is that it passes link juice from one page to another page. Link juice refers to the value of a page that is passed to other pages. It builds the trustworthiness of your website which adds up to boost your domain authority. Plugins like All in One SEO can help you to improve your internal linking strategy.

 

How to Check Domain Authority of a Website?

It’s really simple,

1. Ahrefs 

Go to ahrefs.com, put in a URL and you will get the domain authority score of your website. Ahrefs calls it a domain rating. It uses its own algorithm to calculate the DA score so you might see the variation in the score if you compare it with other tools.

2. Moz Link Explorer

.Moz Link Explorer

Go to Moz Link Explorer, enter the URL of any website, and view the Domain Authority score. Moz Link explorer also provides information about the number of unique backlinks, root domains, and keywords ranking for a specific domain. 

3. SEMrush

SEMrush

Go to the backlink analytics in SEMrush, and view the domain authority score of your or your competitor’s website in the overview tab. SEMrush is a very popular SEO tool that provides data about the Domain authority of any website.

Various authority checker tools help to determine the current domain authority score of a website. The best practice is to check your Domain authority score once a month.

 

Conclusion 

Domain authority may seem complicated in the beginning, but all you have to do is put the right pieces in the right place to increase your DA steadily. 

Remember that the Domain authority score won’t climb up overnight. It is a long-term strategy. Utilize the points as we have explained in this article and wait for the results. 

For any queries on domain authority, message us or leave a comment.  

And don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, and Instagram for more such helpful articles.

 

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Lead Generation: A Guide to Generate Sales Leads for Small Businesses in 2022

Lead Generation: A Guide to Generate Sales Leads for Small Businesses in 2022

Small business owners are continuously looking to expand their user base and grow their businesses. Business growth can be a challenge and a long-term process. Having access to a steady stream of sales leads can help you grow your business exponentially. Know the best tips to generate sales leads.

 

What is a Sales Lead?

 

What is a Sales Lead?

A sales lead is a person who shows interest in purchasing your company’s services and products in some way. Leads typically open communication with a business by submitting their personal information for an offer, survey, or subscription. A lead becomes a prospect once you identify their level of interest and fit as a loyal customer for your business. 

Every type of lead is addressed uniquely depending on how they are qualified

Type of lead

1. Marketing qualified leads (MQL) 

Contacts who’ve engaged with your marketing team’s efforts are known as MQL. 

For example, MQL is a person who fills a form on your landing page from an offer.

2. Sales qualified leads (SQL)

Contacts who have taken actions that indicate their interest in becoming paying customers are known as SQL.

For example, SQL is a person who fills out a form to ask a query about your goods and services.

3. Product qualified leads (PQL)

 Contacts who have used free versions of your product and show interest in becoming paying customers are known as PQL.

For example, PQL is a person who uses a limited or free version of your services or products but asks about features that are paid for.

4. Service qualified leads (SQL)

 Contacts who have indicated to your service team that they are interested to become paying customers are known as SQL.

For example, SQL is a person who tells your service team that they would like to upgrade their product subscription.

 

What is lead generation?

Lead generation is a process of converting potential prospects into customers. In marketing Lead generation is the act of attracting customers for your business output. This includes a customer providing you with their information for follow-up regarding your products and services.

What is lead generation?

For example, for your design firm to generate leads, you might receive:

    • A form submission from a potential client inquiring about your services.
    • A phone call from a potential client to set up a meeting.
    • A DM to your inbox from your social media accounts asking about your rates.
    • An email from a potential client asking for photos of your client sites for reference.

 

Thus, your lead generation strategy always results in the exchange of a potential customer’s contact or payment information, or an in-person meeting.

 

Why lead generation strategy is important for small businesses?

When a stranger shows organic interest in your business, the transition from a stranger to a prospect and then to a customer is much more natural. Lead generation falls in a stage where you’ve attracted audiences and is ready to convert them into leads for your sales team. Such leads are termed as Sales qualified leads.

The lead generation process has a few common stages in the lead lifecycle: 

    • Strangers discover your business through your marketing strategies like keywords, blog posts, and social publishing and they become your visitors after landing on your webpage by utilizing the call-to-action button. 
    • These visitors share their personal information in exchange for an offer.
    • Voila! You have a new lead

 

Let me simplify it, Visitor clicks a call-to-action button that takes them to the landing page of your website where they fill out a form in exchange for an offer, at which they become a lead.

After putting all these elements together, you can utilize different promotional platforms to drive traffic to your website to start generating leads.

Buying leads can be expensive for a small business on a budget, so it is recommended to generate leads organically.

 

How to generate sales leads for small businesses?

Whether you build or buy leads, a lead generation strategy is important for your lead generation marketing plan. Here are a few ways to generate leads for your small business.

1. Identify your target audience

The very first step of a lead generation plan is to identify your target audience. You should always research your audience to learn more about their personal interests, their lifestyle, and their personality.  

2. Direct engagement 

Directly engaging with a new customer is a great approach for small businesses to generate leads. The small business revenue model operates on low-value sales, so it’s the best rule to obtain more leads for your business.

You can reach out to prospects directly on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram which provides many opportunities for small businesses to create conversions with prospective customers and generate leads. You can also communicate by email, by phone, or by meeting in person.

For example, if you run a design firm and there’s a large property being built in the area, call the builder about designing the completed estate. This way you can easily generate leads for your local business in any area where your business may service.

3. Ask for referrals from current customers

Your existing customers are the best sources of sales as they have already purchased from you, and they already know that your products and services are good. Hence, they should be an important part of your lead generation strategy to attract new sales leads.

Always ensure that your customers are satisfied with your products and services. Set up a time to have a quick conversation with your existing customers and ensure that they understand you appreciate their relationship. 

If your services have delighted an existing customer, ask them to share their experience with their family and friends who also might benefit.

Customer referrals are effective and profitable, and your current customer is doing most of the work. This oldest lead generation strategy is a must for every small-scale business for lead generation.

Ask for referrals from current customers

4. Advertise and retarget 

Utilizing targeted pay-per-click advertising on search engines like Google and Bing, you can grab the attention of people to your business and convert them into leads.

Imagine you are a new salon in Nagpur trying to market your services across the city. You can create an ad that targets phrases like, “best salon in Nagpur”, or “new salon in Nagpur” and even use a geo-filter to target customers that are searching for a good salon in Nagpur.

Digital advertising takes time to show positive results. Very few visitors convert on their first visit to your webpage. You can retarget those visitors to show visual advertisements for your business and wait for them to convert.

5. Engage with sales leads at networking events

Attending online networking events can help you meet your leads online. Networking is an effective way to reach out to new people and build relationships. Networking also allows you to meet prospects face to face.

You can exchange your business cards with the new people you meet at the event, and save their information in your customer relationship management system. 

You can ask the people from an online networking event to connect with you on LinkedIn. It’s a great way to stay in touch. 

Engage with sales leads at networking events

6. Optimize your social media profiles to attract ideal sales leads 

If you have social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn then it is important to keep them up to date. It helps to attract the attention of customers and makes it easier to connect.  You can even share promotional offers on your social media handles that will help to compel your audiences to follow you and establish connections.

Optimize your social media profiles to attract ideal sales leads 

7. Create a sales funnel

Once you know your targeted customers and the best possible way to reach them, you should have a plan for collecting contact information. The first step is to funnel all the prospects and convince them to share their contact information, generally in exchange for an offer, a free gift, or incentives. It is very important to have a CRM database to keep track of the lead generation process.

Create a sales funnel

    • LinkedIn

       Create a solid title and description that will attract your audience. Your summary should describe your business. It should tell your customers what you are and what you do.

    • Twitter

       With your company’s title and a link to your company’s account, you should add a professional profile photo that is readable, a LinkedIn account link, and hashtags that are necessary to get you found by the audience. Keep your account active by retweeting information relevant to your industry, and don’t forget to follow potential sales leads.

    • Instagram

      This social media channel is very visual. Include an attractive professional profile picture along with relevant hashtags that would matter to your sales leads. Keep it professional yet a source of fun.

    • Facebook

      With a Facebook social media community that aligns with your industry, you can directly tap into your potential customers. CRM group on Facebook includes people like sales professionals, so it makes sense to join the group.

 

8. Use an email newsletter or email sequencing

Now that you are in contact with prospective customers, it’s time to create an email sequencing to create consistent communication. This email feature allows you to send a series of emails automatically to a group of people on a mailing list. The goal of email marketing is to build customer interest in your products and services. 

There are 2 main types of email sequencing:

1. Trigger-based sequence 

It sends emails based on the actions taken by the customers such as browsing your webpage, buying a product, subscribing to your services, or leaving something unpurchased in the shopping cart.

2. Time-based sequence

It sends emails at a specific time such as on anniversary dates, birthdays, etc.

9. Host a webinar

Online workshops and webinars allow you to share your knowledge and educate people online. Articles and blog posts help you in sharing information, but it is just one-way communication. Online webinars and workshops provide two-way interaction, which is more impactful in generating sales leads. Sharing knowledge online in this format establishes trust and increases the possibility to attract more leads.

Every person who signs up for the online workshop or webinar is a legitimate sales lead. Recording your webinar sessions will help people to watch the session even when you are not there and you can even answer their questions later when possible.

10. Live chat with users

By creating a personalized chatbot for your company you can converse with your leads anytime. Chat technology is more than just a mode of communication. It can do a lot more than say “Hi”. 

When someone visits your website, a chatbot appears on their screen with a customized welcome message.

A chatbot can ask questions, provide responses required by the sales leads, answers questions, qualify sales leads, and so on.

You can review the conversation between the chatbot and the sales lead to know more about the customer requirements.

 

Conclusion

Lead generation is the key to growing a small business. Use the key techniques outlined in this article and keep a watch on your analytics. It will help you to identify what works and what doesn’t. Once you start seeing positive results automate parts of your lead generation process to save time. This will allow your sales team to invest more time in high-value work like qualifying sales leads and less time in repetitive tasks.

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How to Use Google My Business Profile to Get More Customers in 2022

Nowadays in order to gain more visibility on Google, local businesses create a Business profile also known as a ‘Google Business listing’. To Utilize your Google Business Profile, you need management and editing capabilities to work as an effective lead generation and Search Engine Optimization tool.

So how to manage your Google Business Profile?

You need to create a separate Google My Business profile to manage your Google Business profile.

Setting up a Google Business Profile is by far the easiest way for people to find a local business on Google search and Google Maps. 

With a Google Business profile, you can interact with your customers through messages, showcase your products and services, build customer trust through reviews, understand how your customers find your business, and even specify what health and safety measures you have put in place to protect them.

Formally known as Google My Business, your Google Business profile can be managed and updated directly on the Google search either from your computer or if you are always on the go, using your smartphone makes it easy to make your business information accurate at all times.

Any business, small-scale, mid-scale, or large-scale is eligible for a Google Business profile. The good news is – 

  • It’s easy to setup
  • Takes minutes
  • Doesn’t require any particular computer skills 

And I almost forgot… it’s also totally FREE!

Having a well-optimized Google Business Profile in 2022 is going to be more important than ever before for every local business.

Let us first understand what Google My Business is.

 

What is Google My Business? 

 

What is Google My Business_

Google Business profile or Google My Business is a free Business listing from Google. It helps local businesses to manage their online presence across Google search and Google Maps. It allows customers to find your business online. You can verify and update your business information on your Google My Business profile. 

For example, if you run a business like a restaurant, a medical store, or a retail shop that serves customers at a particular location, your Google Business profile can help them find you. A verified business is considered reputable on Google.

Google My Business profile helps you to claim ownership of your Business profile and also provides you the rights of management. It allows you to utilize its free features to gain visibility on Google.

Now that you know Google My Business, let me tell you about Bing business place which will also help you gain visibility for your business.

 

Why “Bing Business Place” is important for local businesses?

Bing business place is a FREE service that allows you to manage your business listing on Bing Search results and Bing Maps. 

    • Bing Business Place helps local businesses stand out from their competitors by updating business information like store time, latest pictures of storefront and interiors, etc.
    • To ensure that your users always see the accurate and latest information about your business, you might want to add your business listing on Bing search and maps. It allows you to edit the Business name, address, map location, contact details, website, etc.
    • It provides tips on how to make your business listing more visible.

 

As a local business owner, you should take advantage of both services. Google remains a dominant search engine, but the search behavior of users is constantly evolving and millions of internet users turn to Bing to help them navigate. Bing commands billions of people and high-intent searches per month.

 

How to optimize your Google My Business profile? 

Google Business profile optimization is the key to getting found in local search. An optimized Business profile can improve the engagement of customers, boost the local ranking to provide more visibility with your business and convert more leads.

Here are the ideas to turn your Google business profile into a 24*7 lead-generating tool for your business.

1. Set up a Google My Business account

Firstly, understand that the Google business profile and Google My Business account are separate entities. In order to optimize your Business profile, you need to create a Google My Business account and later connect it with your Google Business profile. 

Set up a Google My Business account

To create a Google My Business account 

    • Search for Google.com/business
    • Sign in with the Gmail account you use for business

Once you create your business profile, don’t forget to claim your Google business listing on Google maps. It helps your local business to get found. 

2. Fill in every section 

Completeness of your Business profile helps Google to rank you higher in local searches. You can provide the latest and updated business information to gain trust and build a reputation.

Fill in every section

Some of the important aspects of your business profile that need to be filled right away are:

    • Business name
    • Address
    • Phone
    • Website 
    • Opening hours/ working hours 
    • Products and services
    • Posts and reviews
    • Questions and answers 
    • “From the business” description

 

3. Verify your business 

Once the profile is created, get your Business verified. To verify your business head to Google.com/business and click on “Start Now”. Verification makes sure that the information in your Google Business listing is correct. 

Verify your business

The information includes your business name, address, phone number, website URL, and store time.

Google will send you a verification code which you will have to enter on the website. You can get the verification code by postcard or a phone call, further instructions will be provided after you create your business profile.

4. Include high-resolution photos

Google likes visual content, so utilize plenty of good quality photos of your business inside and outside.

 To add photos to your Google My Business profile, select the photo tab, click “add photos” and choose the photos you want to upload.

Include high-resolution photos

Points to remember:

    • Add a high-quality cover photo that will represent your brand.
    • Showcase different aspects of your business such as products, services, and storefront.
    • The standard photo size is 800×600 pixels (Photos smaller than 800×600 will be enlarged to fit the screen and larger images will be cropped to fit the space)

 

5. Use keywords in your profile

Use of the relevant keywords in your Google business profile is one of the important optimization tips. This will help customers to find local businesses like yours while they are searching on search engines. Include keywords that are most relevant to your business such as services and products you offer or the location of your store.

Use keywords in your profile

There are two areas where the use of keywords plays a vital role in getting your business found 

    • “Name” field:  Name field is important because it serves as a link to your business profile.
    • “Description” field: Adding keywords in the description field helps your profile show up for related searches. The description area is the place that potential customers will see when they find you in search results.

 

6. Enable messaging

This feature allows customers to directly send a text message through your Google Business profile.

Enable messaging

This is a great opportunity for consumers to get in touch with you.

7. Performance measurement 

Monitoring your Google My Business profile on a regular basis is very important. You can set up alerts via Google My Business account. If someone leaves a review you will get a notification on your phone or desktop. 

Performance measurement

Check how things are working, how many views or clicks you are getting, and whether the visibility is increasing or decreasing. By checking GMB listings you can make required changes in your business plan.

8. Get customer reviews 

Reviews from your customer play an important role to show your business higher in search results. If you get a list of search results for a restaurant, which one would you choose? The one with a 5 yellow star rating or the one with a 1-star rating with no reviews at all?

Get customer reviews

Reviews influence customer choice, so this is the key ranking factor in Google’s algorithm.

Keep in mind – 

    • Always have Good ratings and customer reviews
    • While asking for reviews from customers, keep it polite.
    • Thank your customers who post a review, whether the reviews are good or bad.

 

9. Ask and answer questions

Google offers a feature “Questions & Answers” on your Google Business profiles. Answering the questions in this section will give potential customers confidence that you are a credible business.

Ask and answer questions

You can do this simply by logging in to your Google My Business Profile and going to your “Questions & Answers” section.

 

Conclusion

This guide will help you to know how to make your Google My Business listing accurate and complete. Follow the above steps and you will reap its benefits. It will help you to improve your ranking in local search results.

Have you tried optimizing your Google Business profile? Share your tips in the comment section below.

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How Does LinkedIn Matched Audience Help In Generating Leads?

How does LinkedIn Matched Audience help in Generating Leads?

Today, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions provides a convenient and unique way to target members by Company, Industry, Skills, Titles, Categories, and more; but what if you want to reach the people you already know? If you want to generate or nurture warm leads, customizing your ad targeting can help in your lead generation process which allows you to reach people who matter most to your business. Lead generation is an expensive process whether you run ad campaigns on social media platforms or buy lead data from third-party companies.

LinkedIn’s Matched Audience provides a set of target options to combine your business data with LinkedIn’s professional data. It helps you to convert hard-to-get and highly-valued leads into customers, which you may not have reached otherwise.

For many people, the matched audience on LinkedIn is a completely new topic so, in this article, we’re going to explain everything you need to learn about LinkedIn lead generation strategies.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

    • What are LinkedIn matched audiences?
    • What are the types of LinkedIn matched audiences?
    • Best ad targeting practices for strong lead generation
    • How to analyze your campaign performance?

 

What is LinkedIn Matched Audience?

Matched audiences on LinkedIn are the same as the custom audiences on Facebook. It finds out people who are already interested in your products or services. Matched audience allows more specific reach to the users. It is a set of tools used to connect businesses with their target audiences by leveraging the potential of their contacts in the database. It helps you to re-impact users who have interacted with your business earlier and provides better lead generation. 

What is LinkedIn Matched Audience?

Lead generation is essential for B2B businesses, but it is not just a number game. To get better results you need to focus on getting the right quality of leads. Quantity with no desired outcome is of no use.

To get started with matched audiences keep your conversion tracking enabled. It will allow you to measure the actions of the users who are coming to your website through LinkedIn ads or campaigns. The key actions can be a content download, page views, signing up through a lead gen form, etc.

Matched Audiences helps you to retarget website visitors, upload a list of accounts (companies), or email contacts to your target business. With this offering, LinkedIn becomes an ideally advanced lead generation strategy for always-on campaigns. It helps you to build a richer lead generation marketing plan to increase ROI and business revenue.

 

What are the types of LinkedIn matched audiences?

LinkedIn’s matched audience concept helps businesses to reach website visitors and retarget them by utilizing LinkedIn ads as they browse the internet. Matched audiences include parameters such as retargeting, Contact targeting, Company or Account targeting, and Lookalike targeting. With these parameters, businesses can perform 10 times better than usual.

Let us see how this works…

  • Retargeting

Retargeting or Website retargeting helps you to deliver relevant ad content to the audiences based on visits to your website page or action taken by the users with your LinkedIn ads. 

Retargeting

Now let me simplify this to make it more understandable for newbies. 

 

How does retargeting work on LinkedIn? 

It is a simple 7-step process:

  1. People see LinkedIn ads in their LinkedIn feed.
  2. They click on that ad.
  3. They land on your website page.
  4. They interact in some way, perhaps by downloading content or submitting a lead gen form, viewing video ads, or just by visiting your website page.
  5. They become a lead in your system.
  6. Their history is stored in your cookies and the data is delivered to LinkedIn.
  7. Retargeting ads are shown to these users.

With all these efforts you can hope for the potential 8th step where the leads take a step forward to become your customers.

Now, the next question popping up is …

How to set up a retargeting campaign on LinkedIn?

It is simple…

If you are retargeting visitors to your company website, LinkedIn Insight Tags (javascript code) can be used to track conversions, retarget, and find real-time insights on the content preferences of your website. You need to incorporate LinkedIn Insight Tags on your website’s page to enable this feature.

Create an audience to retarget by website, video ads, Lead Gen Forms, or a LinkedIn event. (Each type of matched audience needs to generate at least 300 people before ads can be delivered to that audience)

Share a copy of your matched audiences across any of your ad accounts.

Let your audience build, which will take nearly 48 hours. Your audience will continue to grow as more LinkedIn members engage with your ads. Once the audience is built, you can add it to a campaign using ad format.

View the status of audiences synced from your data management platform.

Utilize the A/B test to check the performance of your LinkedIn ad campaigns to discover which ad campaign is performing better and which is not.

  • Contact targeting

It helps you to market to prospective customers and known contacts by securely uploading your very own list of email addresses to match against LinkedIn members.

Contact targeting

You can get started by a CSV upload or by the data integration process. 

The LinkedIn algorithm will scan the list of email addresses and search within its own database to see if any email address coincides. If at all any email coincides then that user has used the exact same email to register on your website as well as on the LinkedIn account. Only in such cases, LinkedIn can find a match and you can re-impact those users on social media channels

Here are some pointers to keep in mind when it comes to contact targeting.

    • Deliver highly relevant ads to the leads.
    • Consider uploading a larger list of contacts for better results.
    • When selecting your contacts target top influencers.
    • Divide your contacts into customized audience segments such as current clients, prospects (members regarded as potential customers), and churned customers (customers which stopped using the company’s services)

 

There are two ways to get started with contacts targeting:

      • Contact targeting by uploading emails 
      1. Upload a list of contacts as per LinkedIn guidelines
      2. In the campaign manager find the account assets menu and click ‘matched audience’ from the drop-down list.
      3. Create an audience and then upload the list
      4. Finish the setup process by adding your file of matched audiences to a new or existing campaign.
      • Contact targeting by data integrations 
      1. To get started you need to have access to the creative manager on your campaign manager account to integrate with a data integration provider.
      2. Select your data integration partner for LinkedIn ads. The next step is completed within your data integration partners’ system.
      3. Your list will automatically populate on the ‘uploaded lists’ page of the matched audience tab.

This is how you upload or integrate your contact lists and add them to an existing or a new campaign.

  • Account targeting

 Account targeting is also known as company targeting helps you to target specific companies that are on your target list. It allows you to reach decision-makers to your target accounts (companies), by adding target company names to your campaign.

Account targeting

It runs Account-Based Marketing (ABM) campaigns by matching your target companies against 13 million LinkedIn pages on LinkedIn. 

LinkedIn account targeting provides 7 options to target your audiences by company name, company industry, company size, company connections, company followers, company growth rate, and company category. 

For example, you can upload a CSV file of the company (names/size/industry/category/growth rate) you want to target. LinkedIn will match your list with nearly 1300 company names in its database. If LinkedIn finds a match then you can target that company rather than targeting an individual. It provides you wider net to deepen engagement.

Here are a few tips for using account targeting:

    • Reach out to the top influencers who make buying decisions at your target accounts.
    • Drive more conversions by guiding decision-makers along their buying journey and generating more qualified leads.
    • Upload a list of at least 1000 companies for better match rates.
    • Avoid Hyper Targeting which can limit the delivery of the campaign.

 

Step-by-step set-up process for account targeting:

  1. Firstly, create an account list as a single column. One account per row inserting company names, industry, website, company country, etc. Save this list as a CSV file.
  2. Next, set up company or account targeting for LinkedIn ads 
  3. On the audience creation page in the campaign manager, click on the create an audience tab, choose a match based on a list of accounts, upload your file and click the next button.

The matched audience list will become available after 48 hours for targeting.

  • Lookalike targeting

Lookalike audiences allow you to reach new professional audiences similar to your existing customers, website visitors, and target accounts.

Account targeting

Here are a few tips for using Lookalike audiences:

    • Perform tests to check the type of audience. For example, test the website with your CSV list of uploaded contacts and discover what works best.
    • Review campaign demographics to discover the top engaging list & create a lookalike audience using the best performing list.

This is how LinkedIn Matched Audiences helps you to Generate and Retrieve quality leads.

 

Best ad targeting practices for generating leads 

Now that you know about the LinkedIn matched audience concept, it is important to find out the best practices for quality lead generation. Even if you are an experienced digital marketing strategist LinkedIn works differently than other social media platforms. 

Lookalike targeting

So, read on to find out best practices from LinkedIn’s professional ad targeting capabilities for generating leads.

1. Location

Firstly, identify where you would like to reach LinkedIn users. Location is a mandatory targeting field. You can specify a city, metropolitan area, state, or country.

Location

        This facet is based on the location a LinkedIn member has used in his profile or their IP address.

2.  Build your audience

Build your audience

       Select your audiences based on company, demographics, education, job experience, and interests.

3. Use audience template

 Utilizing an audience template can help you save time during the campaign setup process.

Use audience template

It helps you to create key audiences such as event planners, recent graduates, doctors, millennials, and more without manually selecting the right mix of targeting options.

   4. Avoid hyper-targeting

At the beginning of the campaign, a limited scale may hurt the results. We suggest you start with a target audience of over 50,000 for sponsored content. This allows you to cast a wider net and find out which lead generation strategy works best for your business.

    • Perform A/B test – Testing two similar campaigns with different targeting criteria, you can find out which campaign is most effective. For A/B testing you need to duplicate a campaign and make slight changes in the targeting parameters.
    • Use custom targeting options – Custom targeting on LinkedIn allows you to find additional audiences similar to your target audience also known as a lookalike audience.
    • Tailor your content to your audience – Share content that is more relevant to your audience’s interests. 
    • Gain insight with campaign demographics – Once your ad campaign has gathered enough data, check the demographics tab in the campaign manager and find out which professionals visited your ad and converted it into customers.

 

How to analyze campaign performance?

To measure the performance of a LinkedIn ad campaign, utilize a wide range of metrics that the campaign manager reports for every campaign you run. 

  • Choose your goals

Firstly, identify what is your goal. Is it building brand awareness (the upper funnel) or driving engagement (mid-funnel) or lead generation (bottom-funnel)?

Choose your goals

Select an objective from the funnels. Strong lead generation relies on a full-funnel content strategy.

  • Set up conversion tracking and lead gen form

Conversion tracking will help you to measure the performance based on conversions, conversion rate, and cost per conversion.

Set up conversion tracking and lead gen form

Lead gen forms allow you to measure the leads and cost per lead.

  • Optimize with performance insight

By accessing campaign insights you can find out how your ads are performing. It will help you to make changes in budgets.

 

Final thoughts

LinkedIn is a potential B2B marketing giant especially if it is used to convert targeted leads. The matched audience is one of the best features provided by LinkedIn marketing solutions to nurture leads that are generated from LinkedIn ads.

Will you try LinkedIn-matched audiences for generating leads? 

Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.

If you have any questions regarding LinkedIn ads or you want to take your business to the next level, connect with us below and let’s get to work.

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How to Utilize Facebook Business Manager for Clients: Ultimate guide in 2022

How to Utilize Facebook Business Manager for Clients: Ultimate guide in 2022

Do you want to run a Facebook ad for your client? Are you worried about the safety of access to your client’s account? In this post, I will guide you on how to connect your Business manager account to your client’s account and share that access with your team safely and securely. 

Firstly, understand exactly what is a Business Manager, anyway? 

 

What is Facebook Business Manager?

What is Facebook Business Manager?

A Facebook business manager is a place where all the Facebook marketing tools live. You can manage all your Facebook advertising and marketing activities here.  It helps to keep your business organized and safe. If you are using Facebook marketing strategies to grow your business, then you should be a business Facebook Business Manager

The business manager is like your hub. So, this is where you are putting all of your people, your Instagram account, Facebook pages, ads account, and your pixels.  And, this is also where you can determine who’s in charge of what and what they are able to do in each of these assets. In other words, it is a one-stop shop to manage business tools and marketing efforts in one place and share access to business assets across their team members, vendors, and partner agencies.  

 

What can you do with the Facebook Business Manager tool?

1. Create and manage multiple assets

FB business manager helps you to keep your business and personal profile separate from each other. But, let me tell you that it does not allow you to create a fake Facebook personal account just to run your ads. You need to connect your ads manager, business manager, and business suite to your actual personal Facebook profile. It can manage multiple assets like Facebook accounts, Instagram accounts, or product catalogs, all in one place.  

Create and manage multiple assets

2. Track Facebook Ads

It is a control center where you can track your  Facebook ads more efficiently with easy overviews. It provides a centralized dashboard that allows you to check account performance to analyze and further frame marketing strategies

Track Facebook Ads

3. Controls user access

It helps you to control user access and permissions for everyone who works on your ad accounts, pages, and apps. The main goal is to bring all of your assets together to your business manager so that you can disperse permission from your team members, employees,  partners, contractors, etc.

The Facebook business manager is a powerful tool that makes Facebook marketing more effective and convenient. But, the catch is – This tool is not easy.  It takes time for new users to understand and get used to the many features it provides.  

Here we would like to overview the benefits of the Facebook Business Manager to promote your small business on Facebook.  

Controls user access

 

Benefits of Facebook Business Manager at  a glance

Facebook Business Manager tool is one of the most powerful tools to achieve a  competitive advantage over other agencies. If you don’t know about the benefits of the Facebook Business Manager tool, then you are surely lagging behind your competitors. 

Here are some benefits of the Facebook Business Manager tool, which make it  essential for every agency to rely upon: 

1. Integrity

FBM manages your business from a centralized dashboard. The dashboard helps you to access and organize multiple Facebook accounts,  pages, assets, etc.  

It removes the hassle of using several tools for business management. The centralized dashboard streamlines workflow and responsibilities. It also helps in saving production time.

2. Scalability

FBM tool can be easily scaled. It can be utilized by small-scale,  mid-scale, or even large-scale businesses for Facebook marketing. 

It helps to create and manage pages, and accounts along with the ownership maintained for different assets.

3. Accountable

You get the authority to assign access to your team members based on the requirements without any security issues. If you want to perform work on behalf of someone else’s company on their pages or ad accounts, then you need to request access to that ad account as you don’t own them. 

If your staff resigns, you can remove their access with a click from your administration account and track any changes they made in the past. Thus, it is easy to determine who has the access to which data and who has permission to modify it. 

4. Security

Facebook business manager tool provides secure access to other people like vendors, clients, team members, and partners as it uses two-factor authentication. It is easy to prepare business reports with FBM as they provide customized options that are user-friendly.

5. Collaboration

With the visibility and powerful platform that this tool offers, you can create collaboration opportunities within your team. It provides an increased level of transparency for your organization as it shows a complete picture of business operations and objectives. 

With all these benefits you can push forward your business graph online.  

Now that you know why you should use Facebook business manager, let’s get you set up. 

 

How to Create a Facebook Business Manager for Agencies?

The setup process is very simple. The first step is to create a Facebook Business  Manager. If your client does not have a Facebook Manager account, then they should, because that is the preferred way of running Facebook ads. If your client already has a Business Manager then you’ll need to get connected to their  Business Manager.  

There are two ways to get connected to someone’s Business Manager: 

1. With a personal account

You are added to their personal account and given the employee access. 

With a personal account

2. Through partners

In this case, clients add you to their Business Manager account and provide you access to their assets such as Facebook accounts,  pages, and so on. This way is preferred to run ads for clients. 

Client’s ads should be run on their Business Manager. But, why so? 

Through partners

There are three main reasons why you should run your client’s ads from their  Business Manager and not your own. 

    • Retain pixel data

      Pixel data is a piece of code for your website that enables you to organize the audiences for your ad campaign. The client will retain Facebook pixel data, and it won’t get confused with any other pixel data that is already there, on your personal account.

Retain pixel data

    • Single billing method

The Business Manager allows a single billing method for a single ad account, so your client will have their own billing methods attached to their ad account.

Single billing method

    • Minimize risk

      Running multiple ad campaigns on your personal ad account is not a good idea. Because, if that ad account gets shut down, then you are putting all your client’s ads at risk.

 

Businesses and agencies follow different setup processes to create a Business  Manager account.

create a Business  Manager account

Let’s understand the Business Manager setup process from an agency perspective. 

 

Following are the steps to connect to your client’s Business Manager as a  partner:

Step 1  Go to the https://business.facebook.com/settings/ link. 

Step 2  Get your Business Manager ID from the Business Info section and share your ID with your client.

Step 3  Have your client go into their Business Manager Settings https://business.facebook.com/setting/  link (same link). 

Step 4  Ask them to click Partners under the Users menu in the left sidebar. 

Step 5  Next, ask them to click the blue “Add” button menu and select “Give a  partner access to your assets”.

Step 6  In the popup menu, they need to add your Business Manager ID into the  “Add a new partner” pop up and click next. 

Add a new partner

Step 7  Then you will get access to their pages, ad accounts, and possibly  Instagram accounts, Facebook pixel, and catalog. 

Facebook pixelr

Step 8  Finally, in your Business Manager, you need to grant access permission for assets to yourself and your team members in order to work on those assets. 

Your clients can grant you any level of access to their assets on their own Business  Manager by adding your agency partner ID. By giving access to your team members also, you allow them to act on behalf of your client’s business to provide better control of their assets and information. 

Let us dive in little deeper into each of the above steps.

When you go to the Business manager setting link, and you see many business manager accounts, that means you created more than one business manager account or you have been added to the business manager accounts as your personal profile. 

Click on the “Business Manager” for your agency 

Let’s say that the name of our Business Manager is Ecsion Inc. It is always on the top of the screen in the left-hand corner.  

Scroll down and click on the “Business info”. 

In the Business information, you can find your Business Manager ID right at the top. 

Copy that Business Manager ID and send it to your clients. Ask your clients to run steps 3 and step 7 in the above list. 

Firstly, have your clients go to their business manager settings and then click on  “Partners” under the “Users”. 

Next, click on the “Add” button and “Give a partner access to your assets”. 

The client needs to type your (agency) Business manager ID into the “Add a new partner” popup and click on the Next button. 

Now, they need to select the asset type and give you access to Facebook pages and Facebook ad accounts, etc. 

The clients can choose each of the assets and then configure them before saving the changes. Once they have all the required assets assigned, click the blue “Save  Changes” button.  

When all of that is done you should receive a mail inviting you to your client’s  Business Manager Account. 

Grant Access permission

Now that you connected your Clients’ Business Manager account to your own  Business Manager Account, grant permission to people in your Business manager to work on that asset. Don’t forget to give permission to track the performance. 

As an agent firstly, you need to go into your Business Manager settings, Select  “pages” on the left side under the “accounts” section. Find the page you have been given access to and then select “Add People”. In the dropdown menu, you can give access to yourself and your team members to create ads on that page. 

Repeat the same procedure for the “ad accounts” on the left side. Select people to manage campaigns and Click the “assign” button.

Navigate between client accounts

When the assets are assigned, you can go into your ads manager and use the dropdown menu to navigate between different client accounts. If the client forgets to name their ads account then you will just see a long string of numbers.  But, if you utilize the dropdown menu then you will always be able to see the  Business Manager name there. 

Share ads manager reports 

Now that you as an agency get connected with your client’s ad campaigns, they might want to check the results. You can share the report link from the ads  Manager reporting area.  

Share ads manager reports 

FBM allows you to customize the columns to show your clients the data they wish to see. When that is done, you can share that link from the report’s dropdown menu with your clients. 

 

Conclusion

Facebook Business Manager tool is for entrepreneurs who want to make a mark on their businesses. This tool provides a 360-degree view of the business process on a centralized dashboard to allow transparency in workflow between the client and the agency.  

It supports your digital marketing strategies and business goals. 

Are you running an ad campaign for a client or you would like to be? For any queries and doubts write to us in the comment section below. 

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