Archive for the ‘Internet Marketing’ Category

What Is SSL Certificate and Why It’s a Must For Your Website?

April 3rd, 2021

SSL is an acronym for Secure Sockets Layer. As the name suggests, SSL is a security layer that secures the data passage between a server and a web browser. SSL is a protocol that helps insecure as well as encrypted communication over a computer network. SSL certificates are digital data files that encrypt the website with SSL/TLS when installed on a website server. This SSL/TLS encryption is feasible because of the public-private key pairing that SSL certificates contain along with the website’s identity and other related information.

A website with an SSL certificate on its server has padlock and HTTPS before its URL. Thus, an SSL certificate transfers a website from HTTP to HTTPS, making it more secure. Although the SSL protocol was succeeded by TLS in 1999 yet people refer to these related security protocols like SSL or SSL/TLS. All major Los Angeles SEO companies consider a website insecure as well as non-SEO-friendly if it lacks an SSL certificate.

The Need for an SSL Certificate

If you own a website, especially an e-commerce website with integrated payment gateways, SSL is a must. An SSL certificate is not a luxury anymore as Google has been flagging sites without an SSL certificate. Thus, it’s a fundamental need nowadays. The majority of Los Angeles SEO firms have seen online data beaches in e-commerce websites that are gradually increasing over the internet. So, to encrypt user’s info, every website owner must use an SSL Certificate to provide a safe as well as a secure platform to the users. Therefore, here are some reasons for fulfilling the need for an SSL certificate for every website.

  • Better Search Engines Rankings

Google made some changes to its algorithm in 2014 to give the upper hand to secure HTTPS-enabled websites. In his study, Brian Dean, founder of Backlinko has shown a positive bond between HTTPS and search engine rankings. Thus, as per various studies by Los Angeles SEO experts, almost all sites at the top of Google search results possess SSL certificates.

  •  Impact on Customer’s Trust

Apart from encryption and security, SSL certificates are also crucial for gaining customer trust. Having an SSL certificate will show up your country in green beside your website’s URL. This will instigate trust in your site visitors and they will consider your business a genuine one. Thus, they will feel free to fill and save their sensitive information like credit or debit card numbers, PINs, etc. As a result, you will see a hike in the conversion of visitors into paid customers.

  • Financial Support in Case Of Fraudulent Transactions

SSL certificates leverage a warranty of a certain amount. The use of stolen credit cards is rising day by day. It’s common with e-commerce sites, but various e-commerce platforms like Magento support SSL certificates. So, in case of such transactions, banks usually reward the user of the card in case of a chargeback claim. However, if your site is secure with an SSL certificate, that amount doesn’t need to come from your wallet. If the transaction value is within the warranty of your certificate, then your SSL certificate service would cover it.

  • SSL Helps to Meet PCI/DSS Requirements

If your site accepts online payments, you must know about PCI/DSS requirements. Your website must be PCI/DSS compliant to receive online payments. Thus, having an SSL certificate on your site is the major requirement set by the Payment Card Industry. As per top Los Angeles SEO companies, SSL is mandatory for a site, especially an e-commerce site accepting online payments.

Winding Up

SSL certificate is not just a comfort anymore. Google has been flagging sites lacking an SSL certificate since 2018. No user will proceed with your site if the browser shows it as “Not Secure”. Thus, it’s crucial to have an SSL certificate installed. If you are confused about the most relevant SSL certificate for your site, feel free to contact Clap Creative, the best SEO Company Los Angeles.

How E-commerce Web Design Help Web Stores To Uplift Ordinary Products and Brands

March 22nd, 2021

The E-commerce industry is a highly promising business with great returns. The e-commerce businesses have seen huge growth during the COVID-19 lockdown. It is because of transport restrictions. Thus, online shopping is the only alternative if the local market is unavailable due to the lockdown. However, even with a flourishing E-commerce business or a well-established E-commerce Web Design company, being able to sell all products is very challenging. Although some products might be highly useful yet they may fail to reach that high standard. That’s where the image of big brands becomes so important.

Let’s take the example of Apple. Apple’s bold as well as sharp marketing strategy has been emblematic for decades. Apple usually rolls out a slight update or a similar product with just a slight change in the feature, yet yields huge sales just because it’s Apple. Thus, a brand’s image plays an important role in product selling. Some E-commerce Web Design tactics can drive the sale of normal products and the brand’s image.

Elaborating Product Descriptions

The selling rate of products is directly proportional to their usefulness as well as after-sales support. In the e-commerce sector, the after-sales service is usually handled by the seller. This imparts trust in the consumers, whereas the usability of a product is a more abstract matter. Products that have useful functions have high orders online. However, those that do not have real benefits can be optimized for orders by elaborating the descriptions. Thus, the compelling description serves the readers with better awareness about the product and its uses.

For instance, in a menu for a small restaurant, you’ll see just sober item descriptions such as “Cheesy Chicken burger with a large drink” it’s fine if you’re quite hungry and not in the mood to go very far. But, it’s not at all interesting for a little choosy people. On the other hand, in a rich lounge, the same item could have a very compelling description as “A crispy ground chicken patty seasoned with sauces and smoked paprika with a melting cheese slice packed in a soft bun, served with a large exotic drink”. Thus, how you describe an item matters to increase sales.

Writing SEO-Oriented Content

Online marketing is nothing without Search Engine Optimization. SEO practices in E-commerce Web Development involve publishing informative as well as appealing blogs about the products on the website. Some articles also compare the products using infographics and images, giving detailed reviews to help the buyers. Ecommerce Web Design companies know the impact of video and graphical content so they also publish product videos. Moreover, writing a piece of FAQs about the product that you want to sell can bring relevant traffic and increase the sales rate.

Some products have enough hype in the market, so they are preferred by the users due to their brand image. However, some products need more awareness in the market to influence the users.SEO is the only way that helps a product or its brand get the hype in the market. Thus, E-commerce web design with SEO from a leading Shopify, BigCommerce, or Magento Development Company can trigger the sale of each product in the listing.

Making Bundles of Tempting Deals

Customers showing interest in a specific product will surely buy it. If a customer needs one product, then he might need other related items too. But, sometimes customers are not mentally prepared to checkout with the new items as well. Thus, providing a neat bundle of related items can be a good approach for increasing sales, especially for those items that do not easily get hype among users. Moreover, adding suggestions of some items during checkout may also work to an extent.

Let’s say you want to sell a range of grooming products for men. Suppose you have a beard shampoo, beard oil, beard cream, razor, comb, and a pair of scissors from a new brand, and none of these items have that level of sales. So, there’s a way to add these items in suggestions for the users buying other similar stuff. But, the more influencing way is to add the items into a grooming kit for men with 10% off the whole price. Seeing all the items in a bundle with a discount will surely change the mindset of the customers. Thus, selling less inspiring items becomes easy as a bundle.

Creating detailed as well as Unique Brand Profiles

Besides improving product sales, boosting the brands can also escalate customer engagement and, thus, sales rate. Presently, most brands have their persona, a unique logo, and a tagline. An instinct of uniqueness attracts people to explore the brand more. However, some companies are not well-established brands but have an excellent range of products. So, creating detailed profiles of such a brand can be a great move to attract users. It also helps to raise the brand’s and its products’ market worth

Although an exclusive brand profile adds up to the sales rate in an e-commerce business yet you need to focus on the after-sales service. This will blow trust for the brand in the potential customers. As per various e-commerce Web Design companies, such a marketing scheme will help you with the sales in the short as well as long run.

Summing Up

Having a good e-commerce business can help you come out with flying colors. However, using the proper marketing strategies can help you get the best output in sales. As an ambitious e-commerce company, selling only high in demand products will not help you excel. So, you also have to sell less attention-grabbing products. With the help of Clap Creative, a leading company for Web Design Los Angeles, you can get help for increasing product sales and improving the brand’s image.

6 Ultimate Website Auditing Tools for Effective Analysis

July 13th, 2020

Today, every small- and large-scale business is focusing on making their presence online. And to fulfil every requirement to stand out as a unique product or brand, it is essential to know about your strengths and weaknesses. Similarly, it goes with the website which is the face of your brand. It needs plenty of time to discover the pages, or content which is doing good, the things that need improvement and attention to strengthen its search ranking. Website auditing demands a keen eye to the details which will cause an expansion of your brand’s website.

Why is website auditing needed?

There could be several reasons behind implementing the need for website auditing like:

  • Search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing keep on updating their algorithms, so your business has to be aware of these changes to present or adjust the content accordingly.
  •  The content present on your website should not be outdated. It is vital that you not only provide fresh but unique and relevant content to the website so that search engines have reason to draw attention towards it. If there is no or less traffic on your website in 6 months, it is time to re-test the content or get rid of it.
  • Websites should not have an error message or broken links, or that will expose these errors during auditing will lead you to redirect them and recover lost traffic.
  • Website auditing is not limited to the sites you own, with certain auditing tools you can even check your competitor’s website and understand their keywords, backlinks, strategy, etc.

There are numerous tools available in the online market that make auditing much easier. Audit tools can help you identify the problems with your website. However, it is essential to note that using website auditing tools alone will not help you identify the problems in your system. Are you thinking about Google for searching the best website auditing tools? Don’t worry! Here is the list of the best website auditing tools that we have compiled for you to utilize and implement. Let’s get started.

Ahrefs

With Ahrefs site audit, when you see an issue unclear to you, you can check Ahrefs’ dashboard to understand what’s wrong and how to make it right. The aspect that makes the site more convenient than it is a cloud-based tool and not a software to install. With insights gained through Ahrefs, you can identify the traffic which might have better chances to rank and get shares.

WooRank

WooRank is a great website auditing tool to perfect your digital marketing strategy and increase online visibility.  It is the best option if you want to work on your website’s SEO, research keyword opportunities. The elements included in this website auditing tool are keyword identification and tracking, competitor analysis, individual page analysis and much more. It offers API integration for larger products.

HubSpot’s Website Grader

A free website performance and SEO audit tool that generates personalized reports to analyze your page’s site, speed, and key SEO metrics. With actionable insights, you can improve a website’s performance to drive more traffic.

Moz Pro

Moz Pro has been a reliable site audit tool for digital professionals. It provides the essential information you need to optimize your website like a Crawl Test to analyze your site and deliver a detailed report directly to your email.

SEMrush

Another long-time veteran of the website optimization world is SEMrush. This tool is a consumer-facing product, thanks to its useful UX design features. It is extensively used to track the organic keywords, competitor research, backlinks, PPC keywords of the competitors.

Raven Tools

Raven Tools is the best option to get quality reports with all technical SEO issues and recommendations. With this tool, you can get all the suggestions related to site page speed, social media reputation, backlinks and online reputation management (ORM). This tool is easy to use and helps you easily sort through the most important information with customizable widgets.

Wrapping up

To avoid any weaknesses or difficulties in your website, you need to analyze and declutter the things. Site auditing tools bring out the issues and clarify what needs to be done for improvement. With regular monitoring and enhanced performance, the importance of website auditing should not be ignored. So, if you are planning to maximize your search results and need maintenance for your site, get in touch with the companies providing excellent SEO optimization services. We at Clap Creative provide WordPress SEO optimization and SEO services across Los Angeles to keep businesses set and run their website smoothly

Advantages of Utilizing Digital Marketing for Law Firms

March 23rd, 2020

Remember those days when we had to shuffle between the big yellow pages for finding every important service we needed? Well, with that bygone era, people are smarter and they are thinking above and beyond now. Rather than depending on conventional means of advertising, small and large-scale enterprises are making their way towards digital marketing. Yes, you heard that right! Be it the branding of your small event or large company’s promotional strategies, digital marketing is your door to growth. Every industry is choosing this path of digital marketing and definitely for the sake of development in the market.

So, without any beating around the bush, we are going to explain to you how digital marketing can work in favor of the law firms. Let’s get started!

It is very likely that today if a person needs something, he will turn towards the internet and see what suits best to his preferences! But how do the best or so many other services in the same race come forward? The answer is digital marketing. Means to expand your online presence and reach the appropriate audience. The basic reasons why an individual or a layman might turn to the internet while they are considering any type of legal thing –

  • To use resources online in order to check what types of legal actions might benefit.
  • To find a lawyer who seems qualified among all in the given searches to handle their case.
  • To fact check if they are reputable enough as their online portfolios suggest?

This seems like half of the work done for the law firms to provide services and for the people looking for them. Now check out what benefits does digital marketing for law firms offer?

If you have a law firm or even if you are a solo law practitioner, you will need to establish your authority and online presence by having a website with effective content that is beneficial for your prospective clients. You need user-friendly, digital marketing assets. It’s the online equivalent of high-quality customer service. Regularly participating in forums and helping out information seekers with accurate legal advice can also help you to brand yourself as an expert.Having a sound SEO strategy can help your website rank on the first pages of search engines.

What’s more in this package full of advantages?

Wider Range

Digital Marketing has the ability to broadcast the business globally or locally. Your law firm can target clients in areas you think are great for business by conveniently setting the marketing campaign’s radius to your liking. You can even run virtual ads in specific neighborhoods and zip codes which provides you with the control that offline marketing cannot provide. With so many online platforms to choose from, digital marketing enables its users to meticulously pick out their clients. For instance, if one would print thousands of flyers promoting their business, and go door to door in a 50-mile radius around their law business location, they still won’t get the same coverage as digital marketing for law firms will do. With the click of a mouse or just one tap on the phone, a person could learn all there is to know about every single business residing in their locale. This is how digital marketing can be proven fruitful for law firms.

Engage Potential Clients

There is a common thing between traditional marketing methods and digital marketing for law firms. Not everybody, who sees your company’s name somewhere, read an advertisement about your services, social media posts, website, or any hoarding, would walk into your office and directly avail of your services. They will need some time to understand you better. They will need a lot of information before they opt for you for what they are looking for. If you put up a hoarding even for a month, a person may not look at it every day or get in touch with you to know more. You need to nurture your target audience through effective digital marketing strategies and keep them engaged. Eventually, you can make them convert and choose your services. Regular online ads, efficient Email marketing, Social media posts, and regular blogs are the part of digital marketing to keep your leads stuck to your law firm.

Complete Mix of Mediums

When you have digital marketing in hand, you cannot be limited to only one medium. You can make the most of all and even get overwhelming feedback. Build an attractive customer cycle and engage with potential clients through:

Search Engine Optimization

SEO involves several activities to boost rankings, keyword research, on-page and off-page optimization, organic link building, advertising, and so much more.

Email Marketing

The traditional email marketing is still an effective way to build rapport with potential clients. Email marketing campaigns are relatively fast to create and can be customized to a specific target audience of your marketing campaign.

Content & Social Media Marketing

Content is certainly the king and will always be. With useful, high-quality and relevant content on your website and other platforms can gain immense results. The content may include blogs, articles, web page content, newsletters, podcasts, images and videos, infographics and more that would also be published on social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and so on.

Website Optimization

Websites are essential for every business to thrive today. But creating a website is not enough. You need to optimize it with quality content, attractive graphics, responsiveness, shareability and a lot more to make it’s ranking higher.

Summing up

In the age of mobile devices, social media and voice search, these staples of digital marketing can help your law firms to build better connections and attract clients. Competition in the legal sector is increasingly difficult. Non-digital advertising, like billboards or TV ads, may not target the right audience specifically but with digital marketing for law firms, you can reach clients that need your specific expertise while maintaining a professional image.

Reasons Why SEO is Important for Your Small Business

June 26th, 2019

If you own a small business, you might think why SEO is important and how it will affect your business to gain popularity on an online platform?… Well, surely it is important because your visitors will have fantastic user experience with the help of SEO services.

Many companies and brands know they need search engine optimization for their websites. This certainly improves a website’s overall searchability and visibility, but what other real value does it offer?… Check Below:-

Builds Trust and Credibility

The goal of an experienced SEO is to establish a strong foundation for a user-friendly website with a clean, effective user experience that is easily discoverable in search. And to build trust and credibility of the brand and its digital properties. Many elements go into establishing authority regarding search engines like Google. But authority is accrued over time as a result of elements.

Establishing that authority will do more for a brand than most, if not all, other digital optimizations. Problem is, it’s impossible to build trust and credibility overnight so, it is earned and built over time.

It Enhances Your User Experience

Search engines have learned how to interpret a favorable or unfavorable user experience, and positive user experience has become a pivotal element to a website’s success. Customers know what they want. If they can’t find it, there’s going to be a problem. And performance will suffer.

A clear example of building a strong user experience is how Google has become more and more of an answer engine offering the sought-after data directly on the SERPs (search engine results pages) for users. Quality SEO company incorporates a positive user experience, leveraging it to work in a brand’s favor.

It Increases Engagement, Traffic, and Conversions

With the rise and growing domination of mobile traffic, local search has become a fundamental part of small and medium-sized businesses’ success. Here comes the Local SEO that aims at optimizing your digital properties for a specific vicinity, so people can find you quickly and easily, putting them one step closer to a transaction.

Local optimizations focus on specific towns, cities, regions, and even states, to establish a viable medium for a brand’s messaging on a local level. SEO pros do this by optimizing the brand’s website and its content, including local citations and backlinks, as well as local listings relevant to the location and business sector a brand belongs to. To promote engagement on the local level, SEO pros should optimize a brand’s Knowledge Graph panel, its Google My Business listing, and its social media profiles as a start.

SEO Helps You Understand the Environment of the Web

With the always changing environment that is the World Wide Web, it can be a challenge to stay on top of the changes as they take place. But staying on top of SEO includes being in the loop for the major changes taking place for search.

Knowing the environment of the Web, including tactics being used by other local, comparable businesses and competitors, will always be beneficial for those brands.

Conclusion:

Google’s algorithm has many ranking signals. They have made noticeable efforts in the past few years to emphasize the signals related to engagement. Metrics like dwell time, time on site, pages viewed per session, and page load speed all been emphasized as having greater importance for Google to rank websites. And all is the part of Search Engine Optimization. With it, your local small business grows and expand to the worldwide market.

What are the best SEO secrets you know?

March 27th, 2019

The world of Search Engine Optimization is ever-changing and the worst part is, you might not even know it. SEO hacks that have worked fine for you till last year are not only obsolete in 2019 but might even hurt your site’s rankings. Especially, if your so-called SEO hacks land your website a penalty from Google.

Well, your online business, let alone any reputed SEO company Los Angeles (or anywhere for that matter) can never be too careful these days when Google is ever-updating its page ranking algorithms and guidelines, besides releasing new features every now and then and paying more attention to websites adopting the “best practices”.

All the more reason for you to stay on the top of the SEO ball, i.e. learning some of the top SEO techniques that can help you skyrocket your search engine rankings along with boosting your number of monthly visitors from organic search. Let’s get straight to them.

Improve UI

As we know, Google always aspires to show the best results for a user’s query and not some irrelevant, low-quality results which will scare the users away. So, optimizing your website for SEO, you will need to work on showcasing the best results to those users. The best way of doing it is by improving the experience that visitors are having with your website. Let’s see how

  • Optimize your content for readability by making your posts go easy on the eyes.
  • Use bucket brigade technique for explaining any complex idea.
  • Use the inverted pyramid method to present information according to its importance.
  • Use tools such as Google Optimize to analyze and improve page designs.
  • Improve your site speed to secure higher rankings and close more conversions.

Optimize Voice Search

By the end of this year, more than half of the Google searches will be conducted by question-based voice searches. That’s why our second secret is to optimize your website to answer questions (and that too without overhauling your entire website). Ready? Here’s how to do it.

  • Create content targeting long tail keywords (3+ words) instead of short ones.
  • Use structured data to give Google a quick rundown on what your page is about.

Focus on Topic Clusters

As Google is evolving, so is its algorithm and with it, the focus has shifted more to understanding the intention of its users i.e. what they are looking for, what they expect, and how best to answer their queries. User Intent is one such that helps you determine what your users are looking for rather than thinking of different ways users can phrase a search query. For this to work,

  • Know your target audience to create better content and in turn, better your SEO.
  • Organize your content by breaking it down into topic and clusters.
  • Research well your keywords before use and use them sparingly, not too often.

Longer Content

Yes, it is true. Recent studies have shown that the longer the content for the blog post, the higher are its chances of ranking at the top. However, I understand writing a 2000+ words blog post isn’t easy, not only is it intensive and time-consuming but often times, not necessary at all. Though one cannot determine how long is good enough but in case, you decide to go down that road, here are a few tips.

For instance, you can always elaborate an already existing smaller content into a bigger one. One primary benefit is, since it contains both an established authority and the readership, you won’t have to deal with the trouble of starting entirely from scratch but can easily refresh and update your older post that is already doing well on Google.

Try Experimenting

If you are those lucky ones who have resources to spare in your business, why stay limited with the traditional techniques, why not move ahead and consider launching some SEO experiments on your own. They will not only let you venture outside of proven techniques but also help you look for opportunities to innovate. Here are a few such ideas.

  • If you haven’t, try outsourcing video production and see how far it takes you.
  • For some time, stop making new pages and focus entirely on the promotion of those existing.
  • Create a niche website to carry out your experiments and promotions without affecting your business.

Conclusion:

So, how many of these SEO strategies are you currently familiar with? If none, then also don’t worry. It’s never too late to improve your strategy. Use the secrets mentioned in this article to enhance your website’s search engine ranking. And if you have some secrets of your own to share, well, I am all ears.

Digital Marketing Trends to look out for in 2019

February 5th, 2019

In order to reduce the stress of the growing complexity, a side effect that our ever-evolving technology has bestowed upon us, many of us at the start of every year make resolutions where we pledge to keep our tech stacks lean and mean for the coming year. However, these resolutions, just like our other ones, give way to the latest technological interventions that promise better results from previous years.

The good news is, one doesn’t have to plan a budget by indulging in self-deprivation or impracticality so as to acquire newer technologies. All one needs is to act smartly while having an implementation strategy and ensuring that you are empowered to take advantages of the latest marketing technologies.

The reality, however, is that the digital marketing industry of today is in a constant state of disruption from tech companies innovating at a fast pace. And as we progress further in 2019, a quick review of some of these emerging technologies might be in your company’s best interests. Here is a sneak peek on some such digital marketing trends that have aimed to rule our online world this year.

Several Digital Marketing Trends 2019 are:

Voice Activated Search

Undoubtedly, voice search will play a major role in our day-to-day behaviors. And companies who are aligning their offers with voice technology will capture the majority of the market. Though a majority of internet users are still unaware of everything a voice search can do, its prominence in smart devices will surely rise in 2019.

Visual Search

Another upcoming form of search is visual search which enables consumers to capture photos of their desired products with the help of smartphones in order to help locate similar items within a given store’s inventory. With unlimited application possibilities, it would be fascinating to see where this visual search takes us in 2019.

Video Marketing

So what kind of content did you consumed the most last year? Images? Blogs? Videos? Most probably videos. Convert it into marketing, invest your time and effort in making vernacular language based videos on YouTube to help increase your brand visibility on the internet. Videos are something that will continue to dominate in 2019 and beyond.

Artificial Intelligence

AI is another pivotal trend to watch out for in 2019. Almost half the industry users are already using AI in some form, a number bound to increase more than a quarter this year. It’s no wonder that Artificial Intelligence is providing enhanced analytics to assist online marketers in efficiently planning and executing campaigns.

Instagram Advertising

Instagram is one of those social media channels that is continuously soaring high in organic reach. Where last year was all about shifting businesses to Instagram, this year will be more about Instagram stories, Instagram content marketing, and Instagram advertising. If you haven’t taken this platform seriously, do it now.

Chatbots

Another one to dive deeply into the massive social media market is chatbots. Chatbots, by 2020 is expected to empower more than one-third of all customer service interactions. In addition to the progress in conversational interfaces, we are experiencing huge advancements in hyper-personalized experiences as well.

Augmented Reality

No doubt online shopping offers comfort and convenience but wait till you get the wrong fit and the hassle of returning and reordering. AR technology is one such that has helped brands solve this issue. Be assured that in the coming months, you will see advertisers continue to push the boundaries of AR innovation. Be ready to hop on this train.

Machine Learning

A subsidiary of AI, Machine Learning mainly focusses on machines’ ability to learn by themselves with the help of algorithms which they modify to learn more about the data sets they are processing. This year too Machine Learning is expected to take contextual content and marketing automation to whole new levels of speed and accuracy.

Conclusion:

Above are mentioned some of the hottest digital marketing trends that will gain (or continue to gain) major marketing ground in 2019. Just make sure your enterprise’s digital maturity matches your appetite for all of these wonderful advances in technology. So, get ready to embrace these emerging technologies and advertising formats that will thrive in 2019.

Importance Of Voice Search – SEO trends In 2019

February 2nd, 2019

Talking to your cellphone is a booming trend these days. Either iOS or Android both giving us an experience like farfetched science fiction movie where people talk to their screens, gadgets and much more. The trend of voice searches is in growing pace with recognizable names – Siri, Cortana, Alexa, and Google Assistant. As a result, SEO rules also adjusted to meet the needs of this dynamic approach.

With the changing trend of search based on speech, the SEO needs to get ready to turn itself with market swing. But, first of all, let’s see what the voice search is and how it impact over SEO?

What Voice Search is?

Searching through your speech is a new generation voice recognition technology that works with your smartphones or portable devices. Through this technology, a user can speak their queries using digital assistants and get results without typing a single word.

What are the Devices?

Voice Activated Speakers:- As technologies drastically changed, the smart voice-activated speakers are becoming a more common household thing across the globe. Apart from Alexa and Siri, a number of new products like Amazon Echo, Apple HomePod, Google Home have revolutionized the market with its smart speech system.

Smartphones:- Anyone using a smartphone is very much familiar with Hey Siri and OK Google. Where Siri struggled with a majority of accents, Google Assistant is presented with more improved technology and now available in 60+ languages. Google’s speech recognition system is more accurate than ever. No matter if you using iOS or Android, both operating systems are able to understand user’s behavior with available data to help the consumer more effectively.

Computers and Smart Gadgets:- Cortana in Windows 10 is Microsoft’s new power voice search technology in its devices from computers systems to Xbox One. Chrome browser to Google Maps, every new update comes up with the inbuilt voice search feature. The phrase “near me” on Google changed the businesses drastically over the past few years.

Voice Search and Its Impact over SEO

Not only Google, although China’s iFlytek also giving speech recognition system with 98% accuracy. Perfecting the voice search becoming a global movement that means marketers will have to fine-tune their approach with developing trends to optimize voice search as a regular part of the SEO strategy.

Voice search changed the way of SEO is done and how it attracted the traffic to your websites as well as on mobile apps. The trend of search by speech is growing bigger day by day which demands from brands to adopt new plans and strategies to optimize their customer experience to give an edge to competitors.

SEO Strategies to Adopt for Voice Search

Content Quality and Using Long Tail Keywords:- There is a huge difference between the content used for written searches and voice searches. While written search more focused on the phrases and structuring of sentences, speech search is more conversational. People don’t ask voice assistant the same way they type into a search engine. Searching with voice allows us to ask queries more directly to get relevant answers. So, this is where long-tail keywords come in handy instead of short-tail keywords. Voice searches often in the form of questions so to address the specific questions you need high-end content typically to answer what, when, who, where of topics. Beyond this, follow up questions can creatively consider benefiting your ranking in voice search engine page.

Develop an Informal Tone to your Content:- Voice search is often colloquial. It is not as direct as the text search. So, to match up the tone of speaking, content must be generated more informal and conversational. This completely changes the way SEO works with keywords. Thus, replacing phrases with questions make it more familiar to a search query on voice assistant.

Structured Data:- Using structured data enables content to be accessible to search engines. Optimizing the data using Schema Markup also improves SEO. This plays a crucial role to enhance your voice search results.

Local Searches:- The revealing fact is that searches with the phrase “near me” plays a major part to increase the ranking of businesses. The local searches made by people looking places like “SEO Company Los Angeles”, “Best restaurant nearby me” and items around their location enhances the outreach of local SEO. If you run a local business it is more important to optimize your site according to speech search properly.

Conclusion:-

As voice search continues to rise in use, it impacts the SEO trends and strategies towards gathering search engine results. Your virtual assistant is friendly with your natural language and voice which added a new layer to the search components. This shape the SEO in a new form by creating the needs of websites to appear in the voice search results as well as results in the typed queries.

It might extremely early days for this technology, but the future of voice-based technology has huge potential. Savvy business and brand owners need to be prepared for this new movement where voice devices as a search channel gain revolutionary popularity. It is also predicted that by 2020, statistics will rise 50% of the searches performed via voice.

Digital Marketing Trends that will Hold Sway in 2018

April 23rd, 2018

With the unfolding of modern technologies, businesses whether small or large scale, are doing everything in their power to match up, be it bringing their brick and mortar businesses to an online platform or escalating the current marketing strategies with the help of digital marketing techniques. But whatever the effort, the central idea behind every marketing technique will always be the same, to capture the attention of as many viewers as possible.

For it is this process of attracting audiences (whether online or offline) that will differentiate a successfully thriving business from a failed one. And I am not talking about receiving tons of daily traffic as it will be equally useless if you are unaware of the art of converting leads into sales. What I am talking is identifying and keeping up with the current trends in digital marketing that will hold sway in 2018 to unleash its full potential. But what are these trends we should keep up to? Let’s find out –

Video Marketing

I understand video marketing is nothing new, but it is certainly proving itself to be one of the most powerful tools of digital marketing now more than ever. And it seems convenient as well, I mean why spend 15 mins reading an article when you can watch its video in 2 mins. But that’s not all,

  • Videos attract viewers like magnets and that’s why search engines love videos.
  • Using a video to promote your brand will triple your chances with conversions.
  • Implementing video strategy into your email marketing campaigns will dramatically increase open rates along with decreasing unsubscribe rates.
  • Eye-catching videos bore much higher chance of getting shared by consumers.

Chatbots

Brands have relied on semi-intelligent chatbots for user engagement for a long time now, but chats, with the help of Artificial Intelligence, are about to take digital marketing strategies to a whole new level this year. For e.g. we can expect chatbots to better understand users’ inquiries via Natural Language Processing Technology.

Also, chatbots are being upgraded to offer more human-like responses while interacting with customers. By offering a standardized customer service, interactive bot plays the key role when it comes to improving your site’s design and architecture for marketing purposes.

Social Media Advertising

2017 was the year you could have expected organic reach to provide steady traffic and customer engagement but those days are long gone since. Now, in order to gain any traction, you must advertise on social media. Unfortunately, it’s an expensive process. Though it doesn’t seem much expensive when you consider the Return on Investment which is roughly around 11 times more as compared to traditional digital marketing strategies. Nevertheless, this advertising cost is something you will have to bear if you wish to offer seamless UX to your visitors.

Voice Optimization

In 2017, you must have come across certain virtual assistants such as Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana etc. Well, this year there contribution to digital marketing is only going to get sky high with over 60 million people currently using these digital assistants in the US alone. Moreover, in coming years, websites optimized for text-based searches will give way to voice-based queries.

Personalised Marketing

As the year 2018 is progressing, so is the need to personalize the shopping experience of consumers. Automation has always been used as an effective marketing tool to help branch out people according to their behaviors, interests, and demography. Now, digital marketing is ready to take one step further by providing a personalized experience throughout the customer’s buying journey. Below are listed some such tips to help you with personalization,

  • Using customized landing pages for different campaigns.
  • Recommending products and services based on purchase history.
  • Analysing visitor’s behavior and sending out lead nurturing emails accordingly.
  • Offering customized games and other interactive features.
  • Conduct personalized surveys and offer rewards for completing it.

Content Marketing

Content marketing will continue to gain even more importance this year and with it, the creation and distribution of content will also change radically. Some of these changes include laying more emphasis on remarketing technique to help with lead generation, creating more niche content that is extremely in-depth or creative, producing shorter and visually rich content to meet the ‘shorter than goldfish’ attention span of millennials, offering complete transparency with brand advertising and much more.

Conclusion

The time has come to shed old techniques and replace them with tools and strategies that will bring your business some jaw-dropping results. With the help of these above-mentioned trends, you will not only tell unique stories about your brand to your audiences but will also be able to provide astonishing experiences to your target customers. Though for this to happen, you too will have to keep a close eye on the latest features of the popular marketing platforms to create innovative campaigns for your audience.

What are the Startup accelerators for social media?

December 14th, 2016

Taking a business to the next level is getting easier in today’s world, thanks to innumerable accelerators and new venture funds that have come up in the past few years. The function of accelerator (a man-made perfect storm of mentorship and access to technology) is to turn the art of starting a company into a program.

If you are planning to launch a startup, you will come across a number of hindrances. The achievement of startups depends on many factors, such as the founders, funding, and the environment of the industry in which it is established. Startups never stop searching for a chance to progress their profitability of business and its success. A considerably excellent accelerator can provide enough mentorship (to help founders clearly understand what they want and what they should focus on) and funding support for startups. Social media effectual accelerators and incubators for startups can be of great help for your businesses. Enter these accelerators at the right time and do your research about that particular program. Startups can have essential resources and the largest access to acceleration technology network which will help them to strengthen and execute their business model efficiently. Social Media Accelerators are highly valuable for startups today because-

  • Mentorship is the key to success
  • High technological advancements in the businesses with enormous genius ideas
  • Product will be developed and tested
  • A recognisable brand with uniquely designed program and strategy
  • Invaluable Networking

Social media is a wonderful tool to increase awareness about your brand, build a loyal customer base as well as attract investors to your project.  Clap Creative is a skilful Social Media Marketing Company to make you understand how to attract your first few customers through social media. See the few key things a startup can do by developing and applying an impeccable social media plan.

  • Budget Marketing
  • Customer Services and Retention Programs
  • Branding and Community Building
  • Potential Lead Generation
  • Self-storytelling and Blogging
  • Platform for advocating your brand

Startup accelerator not only provides office space for early stage social media startups, but also offers niche workshops to guide business enterprises in the right direction. A well knowledgeable and skilled social media marketing company will help you to understand your customers better and target the right audience through social media. With the specialised assistance of these companies, you will learn:

  • How to choose the right channel
  • When to turn to social media
  • Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Google Plus marketing tactics
  • How to create engaging creative concepts
  • How to grow an account from scratch
  • How to track and measure your social media efforts
  • How to convert the traffic to leads and customers
  • How to create and use Live Video for marketing

Social media can be instrumental in empowering startups with an array of marketing benefits. Social Media Accelerators for Startups always encourage young entrepreneurs to start new businesses and help to improve economy also suggest many more practical and useful business enhancement tools that you can apply to your business.