Once upon a time a brand walked into a digital marketing agency. And realised by 2025, digital ad spending will reach $800 billion!
Evidently, that isn’t a joke, but neither is hiring a digital marketing agency. Because with the rise in digital spending, more brands want a marketing partner who helps in telling their brand story to the right audience, over the right medium, at the right moment to evoke the right response and get the best ROI.
Too overwhelming? Too many metrics to measure? Too …
Worry not, Flora Fountain, the leading social media marketing agency in Ahmedabad and India shares just 5 things that can help you make a better decision while hiring a digital marketing agency.
Top 5 factors to consider before your hire a digital marketing agency
To hire or not to … hire a branding agency, is a question that you must answer after considering the following points:
Identify your purpose
Look for an agency with experience and expertise
Understand the agency’s processes and strategies
Evaluate the results promised
Value for money and price play
Let’s dive into the details.
Identify your purpose
Before you venture out to hire a digital marketing agency, introspect and ask yourself:
What end goal am I trying to reach?
Is it to increase my reach online?
Or keep the existing audience more engaged through content?
Do I need help creating content?
Evaluate the results promised
Or help enhancing conversions?
What particular service does my brand require?
What services am I expecting the agency to deliver? (Hint: You want to hire a branding agency for things like brand strategy, identity & logo creation and an eCommerce website development company for things like website development or eCommerce management)
Will I require one set of services like social media marketing services and then need to expand my scope beyond it? (In such cases you might want to go with a full-service digital marketing agency, which can provide multiple services)
How much am I willing to keep aside as a marketing budget?
Will I be dedicating a percentage of my sales to marketing?
Or do I want to invest an initial amount and decide based on the results?
By answering these three questions you will be able to pinpoint WHY you need to hire a digital marketing agency and WHAT services you require from them today or in the future.
Look for industry experience and expertise
Once your goal is set, initiate filtering to identify agencies that have an expertise in your particular industry or the services you are looking for.
It is important to make sure the digital agency has relevant expertise and experience. Inquire and research their specialities and previous successes.
Having digital marketing professionals who have a good understanding of your industry and its specific nuances can make all the difference when it comes to achieving success online. Experience in both general digital marketing techniques, as well as those that are specifically relevant to your industry, plays an important role in selecting the right partner for your business.
Additionally, asking about the resources available for client-agency collaborations such as intelligence tools, content platforms, and analytics software is a must-do for those looking to hire a social media marketing agency.
Here are a few things you can do to understand whether or not the agency is a good fit:
Review their previous projects
Ask for proof of concept (POC)
Ask for referral contacts (in your industry and outside)
Look at any blogs or case studies the agency has produced
Check their reviews on Google My Business, Clutch etc
Understand the agency’s processes and strategies
Before you decide to work with a digital marketing agency, it is essential that you understand and evaluate how they work.This includes their work ethics, strategies used, work framework and methodology, business terms, approach towards the brand, partners, number of meetings required and project management.
The tiniest details from the mode of communication to the efficiency in their process can impact your decision to hire a branding agency. Hence, take time to ask questions that can help you understand whether the agency’s ethics, strategies and processes work for your business.
Knowing these details in advance will help you understand whether the agency is the right fit for you.
Evaluate the results promised
Big promises of great results can be exciting, but also can be cause to raise an alarm and ask more questions. Sometimes, if it seems too good to be true, it actually might be!Consider what the agency is promising and ask them how they plan to achieve this? See their track record. Have they delivered such impressive results in the past?
Value for money and price play
This one is important for everyone. From small businesses to reputed brands. However, what you should be evaluating is the value for money and the ROI.
Know the industry standards. When setting the price, ask:
If the agency works with a fixed scope or customises it as per the brand requirement.
How do they document the investments made for any digital strategy or campaign?
Why are their prices low/high?
How do they allocate the resources for various campaigns and what are the end results of it?
Also, think from an agency viewpoint, with higher funds, the agency would be able to put more effort and seriousness into the project.
And with that, you will be able to identify the right digital marketing agency to hire.
Hire Flora Fountain!
Anchored strongly in the digital world, Flora Fountain holds expertise in every domain that your brand may need. Including eCommerce website development and management, branding, content curation, designing, SEO, concept shoots, video animation and social media marketing.
With a strong team of experts and innovators, we build unique digital solutions and strategies to provide your brand with the visibility it requires with an exclusively curated scope as per your needs. Cut through the noise with effective strategies and tell your brand story with us. Drop us a hello at hello@flora.ffteam.in and start a conversation.
“I have a small business; so I don’t need digital marketing services right now”
“Email marketing? Does it even work today?”
I don’t need a website design and development service for better digital marketing
These are some of the most commonly used rebuttals by entrepreneurs when they are asked to hire a digital marketing agency for their businesses. Now, they either don’t know what digital marketing is, or have heard and believe in the various misconceptions around it.
But, what are these misconceptions about digital marketing, and how are they detrimental to businesses, if not busted?
Below we have listed the most common digital marketing myths:
Small businesses don’t need digital marketing services
Investing in social media is unnecessary
A digital marketing strategy is only needed if my competitors are doing it.
Email marketing is out of fashion and ineffective
SEO is not important for digital marketing strategy
Search engines other than Google are irrelevant
Conversion is secondary, traffic is more important
The website must be revamped in every 6 months
Blogging is dead and has no scope in digital marketing
Bots and live chat are of no use
Let’s take a look at them in detail.
1. Small businesses don’t need digital marketing services
The biggest myth around digital marketing is that only big, successful and established businesses need it.
Fact
Digital Marketing provides all businesses, big or small, with equal opportunities on the internet. With a well-researched and proven strategy, small businesses can compete with big brands online, allowing them to reach a wider audience despite having a standard marketing budget for it.
A Forrester study states that post-pandemic, businesses should ideally spend around 46% of their total marketing budget on digital marketing now. In today’s day and age, having a digital marketing strategy is indispensable for every business no matter what size it is.
Because whether it is a smartphone or a roll of toilet paper, people are now looking for them online first.
2. Investing in social media is a waste of time
Another mistake a business can make from time to time is to believe that its customers aren’t on social media. This supports the myth that investing in social media is unnecessary.
Fact
When a potential customer looks online for something he/she wants to buy, there are high chances of them clicking on the very first link they see on the search engine page.
According to a study on Statista, over 3.6 billion people were using social media worldwide in the year 2020. These numbers are projected to jump to almost 4.41 billion in 2025.
Having a presence on social media gives businesses the opportunity to promote their products or services to their ideal customer base directly, interact with them more, stay on track with the trends and even sell through these platforms.
The possibilities to attract potential customers and generate leads through targeted ads on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram are endless.
3. I only need digital marketing if my competitors are doing it
As unreal as it may seem, many local businesses believe in this myth and only avail of digital marketing and website development service until one of their competitors do.
Fact
Now, let us make it very simple here. If your competitors are doing digital marketing, then you should do it too. But, if none of your competitors is online, be the first one to be. Grab that first mover’s advantage and make hay as the sun shines bright.
A brand should stay ahead of the curve when it comes to digital marketing, as not going digital means missing out on a whole new world of new customers a brand can reach. And digital marketing is not just promoting products and services on social media. It includes email marketing, targeted digital ads, SEO and much more.
Here’s a sneak peek into the various activities done by Flora Fountain, a digital marketing company in Ahmedabad India.
4. Email marketing is dead
This myth is very common, especially with the rise of social media. But in reality, the facts indicate otherwise.
Fact
Let’s clear this misconception with the help of some statistics:
There are 4 billion email users worldwide and this is expected to reach 4.6 billion by 2023.
99% of email users check their inboxes every day. Of those, 58% check their email first thing in the morning.
65% of email users check their email at least 3 times a day.
44% of users check their email for a deal from brands.
Email marketing has an ROI of 3,800%.
Still, think Email marketing is outdated?
If a business feels that email marketing is not working for them, it is mostly because of the strategy and not the channel.
For a successful email marketing campaign, the promotional emails must have something that provides value, like a coupon or discount, an option for the receiver to unsubscribe and the emails should be sent on a regular basis.
5. SEO is not important for digital marketing strategy
When a potential customer looks online for something he/she wants to buy, there is a high chance of them clicking on the very first link they see on the search engine page. Making this idea nothing more than a myth.
Fact
SEO or Search Engine Optimization means optimizing your website content for higher ranking on search engines like Google. If a business needs improved visibility and regular traffic on its website, SEO is a must.
With the help of a well-strategize SEO plan, businesses can rank in the top 10 results of the search engine. This means their chances of being the first choice of the customer increase exponentially. Check out how Flora Fountain helps businesses with SEO.
6. I only need to focus on Google as other search engines are irrelevant
Another common myth around digital marketing is that search engines like Yahoo and Bing are irrelevant.
Fact
Though it is true that Google is the most popular and preferred search engine worldwide, there still is scope to use other search engines like Yahoo and Bing.
For better and more inclusive reach, using different search engines becomes important. And since different search engines have different algorithms, having a dynamic strategy will give your brand an extra edge over others.
This specifically helps those brands that have a niche target audience within specific geographical boundaries. For instance, Yandex, a Russian search engine, holds only 2% of the world market shares but is widely used in Russia, even more than Google.
7. Having high traffic to the website is all that matters
It is a common myth to believe that more traffic means more business and hence all the efforts of a website design and development company must go in directing high traffic to the website.
Fact
Most people think that generating enormous traffic can open the door to huge business prospects. Website traffic is not necessarily going to result in a surplus of leads for your business.
Conversion and traffic are two distinct concepts. The amount of visitors to your website is referred to as traffic, whereas conversion refers to the proportion of visitors that used your website to make a purchase or subscribe to a service.
Additionally, translating internet visits into conversions takes a lot of work and interplay of elements like the website’s performance, the website’s UI/UX, offers and discounts, enticing texts, bright CTAs, and high-quality material.
Flora Fountain, a website design and development company has developed websites backed by smart layouts, strong designs and content that converts.
8. You should redesign your website every 6 months
Unlike those who are fixated on not spending time and effort on website development services or web design companies, many businesses hammer on the myth of redesigning the website within a short period of time.
Fact
Though redesigning your website gives it a fresh appeal, it is not required every 6 months. As a website design company, Flora Fountain understands the emotional and psychological impact of various designing elements on visitors. And having the design changed so frequently can lead to a loss of identity for a brand.
It is hence suggested to develop and redesign your website in around 2 years, as it gives you a chance to overcome redundant content, placement issues and counter the bugs that may hamper the user experience.
10. Bots and live chat only annoy the visitors
As a website development service provider, another myth we face commonly is that having bots and live chat tools is useless. This significantly impacts businesses’ growth and consumer retention time.
Fact
Businesses frequently employ live chat and chatbots to assist and communicate with customers. These tools can work efficiently when consumers have business queries and increase their engagement with the website.
Apart from enhancing the consumer experience, chatbots are cost-effective as they help businesses manage the massive inflow of queries in a shorter time at any given hour of the day. Now with the help of chatbot analytics, businesses can measure their performance and develop more efficient website strategies.
These were the top digital marketing 10 myths you need to leave behind this year to take your business a notch above others.
How Can Flora Fountain Boost Your Digital Presence?
Give your brand the visibility it deserves with the best social media agency in Ahmedabad, Flora Fountain.
With a team of leading marketers, tech experts, strategists, copywriters and designers, we provide expertise and customised digital solutions ranging from branding, website design and development service, content curation, social media marketing, SEO and many more,
Make a difference in your business by embracing the digital and getting online. And let the best digital agency in Ahmedabad, Flora Fountain, be your launch pad for success. Get in touch with us via hello@flora.ffteam.in to know how we can help you with your digital marketing strategy.
In the mesh of 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created every day, is your digital marketing agency able to create a memorable impression on the target audience? Well, here is a way to find out::
Can you describe your ideal consumer persona in 3 lines?
Have you identified the key communication channels for your brand?/span>
Does your campaign reflect the core value of your brand?
How will the campaign lead you towards your end goal?
Somewhere within the answer to these questions lies the proof of the pudding that is your digital campaign strategy. Whether it is foolproof or will outrun the budget midway depends on how well-planned it is. For every digital marketing agency knows the difference a thoughtful, well-developed and executed digital marketing campaign can bring to a brand.
A digital marketing campaign, as a building block of your digital marketing strategy, requires in-depth research, planning, time, practical budgeting, industry expertise, knowledge about the medium, content and design intellect. So if you didn’t have answers to most of them, this guide on how to plan a successful digital marketing campaign by Flora Fountain, the best digital marketing agency in Ahmedabad is all you need.
Get ready to gear up your digital presence!
What is a Digital Marketing Campaign?
In a buffet of news, memes, reels, emails and blogs flooding the digital world, a digital campaign can be a delightful dessert for the brand and the audience likewise. But before understanding the nuances of a digital campaign a social media agency must unravel the complexities of digital marketing strategy.
Your digital marketing strategy is a plan for establishing and strengthening the digital presence of your brand. It involves selecting the appropriate medium of communication, audience demographic, defined end goals, ways of measuring the goals, design, and content structure.
The specific action you take to implement a marketing strategy is your digital marketing campaign. A digital campaign can be launched in the form of an online video, paid social media ads, graphic storytelling or as simple as a social media post. Hence, digital strategy is the “WHAT” is to be done while the campaign is “HOW” the goals are achieved.
For instance, with the aim of increasing its sales and attracting a younger demographic in India, KFC launched the Design Your Own Bucket campaign on Facebook. The simple idea of letting its audience design the KFC bucket brought great exposure to the brand amidst a totally new audience base. Additionally, it boosted their daily interaction as over 5000 participants shared their ‘So Good’ moment on their page.
Another impressive digital campaign was ‘#TouchOfCare’ by Vicks, launched in 2017 on YouTube. This campaign weaved around the millennial consumer and the changing idea of families brings out the core of storytelling curated as per the audience profile. The film in the series received over 22 million views in no time.
A significant insight for brands and a digital marketing agency from this campaign is that any digital marketing campaign, especially those that run over a long stretch of time will change as per the changes that affect the audience.
Planning a digital marketing campaign like a professional digital marketing agency
The steps of planning a digital marketing campaign include:
Step 1: Curating the audience persona
Step 2: Sketching out your end goals
Step 3: Evaluating your budget
Step 4: Working on the content and communication channel
Step 5: Auditing your campaign strategy and executing accordingly
Let’s understand each step in detail.
Curate the audience persona.
Knowing your target audience is essential for any marketing approach, whether digital or otherwise. Your first step should be to establish detailed buyer personas, which are the foundation of the most successful digital marketing strategies. This will help in developing various kinds of digital material that will relate to them.
The kind of information a digital marketing agency researches about the ideal consumer depends on the positioning of the product, business model (B2B or B2C), price range, etc. Here are a few parameters for the demographic details of the consumer persona:
Location
Age
Education qualification
Income
Goals
Hobbies
Purchasing habits
It is best to always use real data and not assumptions and to get a more inclusive data bank of your audience, taking into consideration a wide pool of individuals coming from diverse backgrounds.
As a seasoned digital marketing agency in Ahmedabad, Flora Fountain understands the significance of laying SMART goals before starting any campaign. A more important thing is to ensure that the goals of the individual campaign are aligned with the brand’s core values and vision. It is only then that a meaningful and memorable campaign comes into existence.
Some important questions to ask yourself:
Will the campaign strengthen the existing loyalty for my brand or will it reach out to new consumers?
Will it increase brand awareness by 30% or increase social media followers by 1000 in 2 months?
Evaluate your budget
The biggest risk an outsourced digital marketing agency takes is not sketching out a realistic campaign budget. The budget helps you determine the scale at which your goal can be accomplished and what kind of campaign it should be.
Though digital marketing campaigns are more cost-effective than traditional marketing, creating a budget is still important. Determining how much should be spent during which phase of the campaign, when to boost and how much content to create depends on the budget.
Work on the content and communication channel
Content and design together are used for storytelling and determine how the audience will react to your campaign. From building a concept to the selection of apt fonts and colour palettes to the tone of the language and the words selected to convey meaning, everything comes under their purview. Another important part of communication depends on the medium selected.
As the top digital marketing company in Ahmedabad and India, we understand the need of having a multi-channel approach for your campaign since the responses differ greatly on each forum. Some factors that will determine the channel of communication include:
Platform expertise
Channels usage by target audience and competition
Type of content created (graphics, podcasts, animation, videos, blogs etc)
Audit your campaign strategy and execute it accordingly
Once the campaign content is curated, audit your plan to ensure it is foolproof. You must assess your current paid media across all platforms like Google AdWords, Facebook, Twitter, email, etc. to determine which will most likely assist you to achieve your present objectives.
Additionally, involve someone who has not been conditioned to the plan to overview it, this will give you a fresh perspective and identify loopholes that you may have missed. Once your plan gets a green signal you are ready to roll it into the execution phase.
Remember, the audit doesn’t end here. Once the campaign begins, it is vital to analyse its successes and drawbacks. Doing so will give you insights into which part of the plan is working well and where you can improvise. Any experienced digital marketing agency will not skip the continuous audit of their campaigns and using it as feedback for the next iteration of campaigns
All social media agencies are aware that failing to plan a digital marketing campaign is the master plan to fail a brand. Time, money and the brand’s image: After all, a lot rides on digital campaigns. Here are the top 3 reasons why you need to keenly plan out your next digital marketing campaign:
You gain focus and clarity of direction:
In order to accomplish your goals, a clear approach is required. By assessing whether you are moving in the right way and whether your campaign can be successfully executed you can narrow down the areas that will turn out to be the most successful ones.
Save resources:
Having a plan in place helps determine your next steps. With a strong strategy, you know where you are and how you will lead closer to your end goals in the most effective way as developing a plan requires brainstorming effective solutions, identifying backup plans, and fixing the right channel of storytelling all to utilise your resources in the most optimised way possible.
Be memorable
As the top digital marketing agency in Ahmedabad, Flora Fountain has always been people oriented and understands that the biggest advantage of social media campaigns is that they can delight thousands of people and make the brand impression a memorable one.
With specific goals and properly planned execution, digital campaigns add to the brand value and position a strong recall value for the brand. Take a glimpse at these examples:
#DaagAccheHai – Surf Excel’s oldest campaign goes digital
#PyarWaliChai – Wagh Bakri reinforcing its presence on Vimeo
Each campaign has its own medium and emotes a unique emotion among the audience base. That is the power of a well-planned digital marketing campaign. Before you outsource your digital marketing to a professional agency for your next campaign, clearly communicate the goal you wish to achieve.
Explore the various types of digital marketing campaigns possible to achieve your goals with Flora Fountain, one of the top digital marketing companies in Ahmedabad.
Types of digital marketing Campaigns
Here are the various types of digital marketing campaigns your digital marketing company must know:
Content Marketing
Developing content for the purpose of cultivating a relationship with your target comes under content marketing. By establishing a rapport with the audience via blogs, articles, how-to videos and similar forms of content, you can generate more quality leads. By addressing regular queries of the customers with instructional and informative blogs, a social media agency also develops a brand image as an expert.
Social Media Marketing
By utilising social media channels, targeted posts and ads can be brought to the attention of the user. Being among the most widely used campaign strategy, it has caught the attention of most social media agencies. It can be used for creating visual content, interacting with customers, collaborating with content creators and re-sharing posts.
Email Marketing
Developing content and sending it directly into the audience’s inboxes is known as email marketing. With this, any digital marketing agency in India can engage your customers and carry out more individualised marketing. Sharing newsletters, promos and coupons are just a few examples of the same.
SEO Marketing
It entails making websites and web pages more effective and optimised for search engines like Google. With 63,000 search Google queries every second, it is natural that your campaign needs to be perfectly optimised.
Another interesting form of marketing campaign is mobile marketing. Any form of advertising that uses mobile devices, including tablets and smartphones, to advertise is mobile marketing. It uses the characteristics of mobile technology to customise marketing campaigns accordingly. For instance, by identifying the location of the individual, the technology will customise the campaign features. Text ads sent via messages and app push notifications are some examples of the same.
In Conclusion
No brand or digital marketing agency can turn a blind eye to recent developments in the world of online marketing and digital campaigns. As a means to connect with potential customers, digital campaigns require intense planning and attention to the virtual landscape.
Flora Fountain is home to a stellar design and content team along with social media and SEO experts that have curated hundreds of successful digital marketing campaigns for our clientele. This makes us the top digital marketing agency in Ahmedabad and now ready to test our mettle elsewhere in India. Check out our blogs to know more about the work we do. Interested? Write to us at hello@flora.ffteam.in.
The human brain is hardwired for visual content. We can process visual data 60000 times faster than text or audio. From shapes, colours, lines, to textures every element leaves an impact. Visual storytellers or simply put graphic designers play a very important role in a brand’s journey, making a splash (pun intended, sure sure) with their creativity and art.
When it comes to designing, it’s not just about thinking creatively. It is very important to have in-depth knowledge about the software and tools required to edit, design and create.
Budding designers can learn the ropes of designing from Adobe’s design tutorials, and online courses on SkillShare polish their skills on tools of the trade like Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign.
Sketching skills come in handy
A graphic designer needs to think creatively, and nothing stimulates creative thinking like sketching does. Even the National Center of Biotechnology Information agrees. Sketching brings forth clarity to ideas and thoughts.
These rough drawings allow the designers to play around with their ideas, usage of elements, the flow of colours and placement of content. These sketches also aid in showcase an idea to the clients for approval before digital designing begins. This way it can help save time.
ALWAYS have a backup
One of the most important things to be mindful of as a designer and content creator. While this point may be a subject of many jokes, it is painful when you’re not able to retrieve something beautiful, created with much passion and hard work, just because you forgot to take a backup of the file.
Always keep a copy of your work, downloaded fonts, elements, and other content on a hard drive or any form of detachable digital storage device. Even storing it on cloud is a great option and increases accessibility, but also brings along with it the risk of lack of data privacy.
Creative block is a thing!
There will be days when you wake up and just can’t find the same mojo and inspiration with which you create designs every day. It is completely OKAY to feel this way, and it is called a creative block.
Getting out of this phase may look difficult, but it’s not the end of the road. Go back to your previous work, look at what you have created and to reignite that lost spark.
Sometimes, even looking at the work of other fellow designers, can inspire you to break the block.
Every designer must have a well-presented and updated portfolio consisting of their best works, adding any testimonials they’ve received from their clients. A portfolio is a sneak peek into a designer’s brain and an overview of his/her design style and language. A beautiful and thought-out portfolio makes you stand out and increases your chance of getting the job or project.
Be open to criticism
You cannot make everyone happy. No matter how much thought, hard work and creativity you’ve poured into a project, there will be naysayers.
But not all feedback is negative. In Fact we believe that all feedback has at least 1% truth in it. Some of this can be constructive and help you grow as a designer. Instead of blanket rejecting all feedback, accept, listen, and take in the bits that can help you improve. It also helps one show their intent to grow, ego-lessnes regarding their own work and a willingness to try new things in their profession.
Always seek an advance while freelancing
Graphic designing is one of the many jobs which has the benefit of working from home. But with remote jobs, there comes along with it challenges of not being paid in full for the job done.
Clients may offer you tasks, assignments or even seek samples of your work before green lighting the project.
But it is important to be assertive and inform the other party about your terms and conditions. One of which should be to get paid at least 50% of the total project cost in advance. Genuine clients who appreciate your work will agree, and it ensures both the parties fulfil their part of the contract, now that a monetary transaction has taken place.
ALWAYS Stay curious!
Never shy away from asking questions, trying to find new things, and learning new skills. Because curiosity may have killed the cat but it definitely helped the designer become better one day.
Before working on the design, the designer should always go back to the client to clarify any doubts he/she has in their mind. It’s true sometimes it feels like only a NASA scientist can decipher what the client wants, but asking as many questions will always help.
BONUS TIP : Don’t be afraid to push yourself outside of your comfort zone! Keep learning!
If you are a budding graphic designer who’s looking to work on some elevated ideas with a bunch of cool folks and cooler clients, drop us your work portfolio and CV at hr.florafountain@gmail.com. And if you’re among the ones looking for such creative minds and professional graphic designers in Ahmedabad to work for your brand, drop us a hola on hello@flora.ffteam.in.
93% of all online experiences begin with a search engine like Google.
75% of users never go past the first page of search results.
Knowing such facts is one thing, but internalising them and then acting on them is what helps a brand really shine online.
SEO or search engine optimisation empowers brands to do that. The process of optimising a website to improve its visibility and rank in search engine results is known as SEO. It is a detailed plan which on execution helps a website improve its search engine ranking in order to capture more organic traffic. This plan is built on two different foundational pillars like on-page and off-page SEO. In order to fully optimise a brand’s SEO strategy, a thorough understanding of these two pillars become extremely important.
The difference between on-page and off-page is quite simple. On-page as the name suggests are all the activities done ‘on the pages of your website’. Whereas off-page means all the activities done ‘beyond the pages of your website.’ Of course it’s more than just these two lines.
The process of optimising individual web pages in order to rank higher and garner more relevant organic traffic in search engines such as Google and Yahoo is known as On-page SEO. It entails optimising both the content and HTML source code of a page. From creating content with keywords, optimising title tags, meta tags, and internally linking relevant pages as per the URL structure, everything that takes place on the website falls under on-page SEO.
Content and keywords
You might already know all about content and keywords, but a refresher never hurts!
Content is indeed the king QUEEN! Most brands, despite knowing this, fail to optimise content. SEO includes looking for the keywords that your audience is using to search for information on the internet, and then creating, optimising, and regularly publishing website content around these keywords. Content also includes the kind of images you put out on your website. So you need to optimise them as well. Make sure that they are not larger than they need to be and are in the right format (JPG and PNG).
The experienced SEO team at Flora Fountain, the best digital marketing company in Ahmedabad, India, also understands how to optimise existing content, in order for a brand to increase its organic traffic.
Title Tag and Meta description
The main heading or the title of the web page is a title tag. And the short description that appears under it is a meta description. Title tag comes up on the search engine results page (SERP) and is a very important factor for the success of on-page SEO. And because Google search engine usually picks up only about 65 letters or characters from the title tag, a brand needs to choose every word, even letter, very wisely! Meta tags on the other hand describe the content on that page but, more importantly, it’s written to help your web page stand out in the list of SERP results. Keep the meta description under 155 characters to ensure your entire description is shown in search results.
Internal Linking
Connecting any link from one page on the website to another page on the same website is known as internal linking. Linking to various relevant pages on the website makes it easier for search engines like Google to understand the relationship between pages on the site and to crawl everything. Internal linking also provides a more immersive user experience that can keep the visitors engaged for a longer time. Though, unlike backlinks, internal links don’t boost the website’s domain authority. But, they funnel existing domain authority built using backlinks and spread it across the website.
Mobile friendly website
A website designed to show the most optimised view as per a device’s screen size, ranging from smartphones to tablets, is known as a responsive website. The overwhelming majority of website users browse on their phones, and yet 44% brands still do not have mobile-friendly websites. Google too favours mobile-friendly websites, pushing up the ranking of the website if it is mobile-friendly. These are all the considerations that go into website development when you hire a top SEO company like Flora Fountain to work on your website re-design from day 1. Just like this Ahmedabad-based school did!
Another thing to keep in mind is that SEO results are different when it comes to mobile pages. A website does not automatically inherit the main site’s SEO ranking on mobile. The search results on mobile are calculated based on the site’s mobile page speed.
URL structure and SSL HTTPS
URL structure is a very crucial part of any website. URLs with relevant keywords allow search engines to crawl from page to page on a website very smoothly. This also makes navigation more efficient for visitors. While creating a URL, a brand should always use the primary keyword for the page and avoid repetitive words to keep it short.
Similarly, an SSL, or Secure Sockets Layer, certificate is also very important as it improves the website’s page security and visibility. With the help of SSL, the likelihood of interference of a third party in between a website’s server and a visitor’s server, decreases, guaranteeing that the content on the website is safe. Moreover, because of this search engines give ranking preference to sites that are SSL enabled.
Website Speed optimization
1,2,3,4,5! If your site takes this much time to load its content completely, chances are that 90% of users will abandon your site before the website loads. This metric is tracked as the bounce rate. And the more time your website takes to load, the higher the bounce rate. While crawling, Google correlates a high bounce rate with lower user engagement which affects your ranking as well. In fact, as per Google guidelines for developers, the site speed does impact search rankings.
So while most website design agencies might not give enough importance to this, from an SEO and user experience perspective, your website must load in under three seconds, so that with the help of SEO services and other on-page and off-page optimization, your website can come up ranking high in Google.
Breadcrumb navigation and Alt Text
Some other important parts of on-page optimisation include adding breadcrumb navigation and alt text. Breadcrumbs inform the website visitors to navigate through the site. It shows them where they are on the website. Moreover, it enables Google to understand the structure of the site. While alt text is a word or phrase that can be attributed to a picture file to help ensure it gets indexed and makes the website more accessible for reading software. Both these factors make a website with alt text for its images rank highly.
As you might have guessed, On-page SEO optimisation is something you have complete control over through your website’s code and content, however that’s not always the case for off-page SEO. So what exactly is off-page SEO optimisation?
Off-page SEO
As mentioned before, this refers to all the strategies and activities planned and executed, outside of your website, to bring traffic to it. It is tremendously valuable because it tells search engines that the website is important to others on the web. Every link that a site receives acts as an endorsement from another source. It shows the quality of the website. This is usually done through backlinks.
Backlinks
Also-known-as inbound links or incoming links, Backlinks are links that are created when one website links to another. They help a website gain more traffic and it also serves as one of Google’s top three ranking factors.
Imagine, a company with a brand new website. And no one links to it and it doesn’t submit the website Google. It can’t be found because search engines will take forever to find it, if at all. But if multiple other websites, especially those with a high ranking or domain authority, link to it, search engines can crawl through that link and index the pages. If this sounds awfully a lot like a popularity contest straight out of high school, that’s because it kind of is. Being linked to by the “popular kids” or high-trafficked websites, usually ranks your website high in search engine’s crawling eyes, and eventually bodes well for your website traffic.
Create. Earn. Build.
These are the three ways to get backlinks.
Creating means when someone manually adds links to their site from other sites. This can be done by regularly leaving blog comments or replying on forums. Earned backlinks or organic backlinks occur when people discover a site’s content after googling it or through social media and choose to link it in their site. This usually happens when the content on your website is rich with information or entertainment, or another quality that the reader highly values. Last but not the least, building backlinks means when a website owner contacts other website owners or editors and requests them to link to their website. This usually works as a barter between websites.
Local SEO
According to studies, more than 50% of ‘near me’ searches result in a store visit and 46% of all Google searches are seeking local information. So your brand needs to show up when someone searches for the service you provide in your area. That means you need to show up in your local google searches. But how does one go about it? With ‘Local SEO’, which helps brands to be more visible in local research on search engines like Google.
As part of local SEO, a citation is an online mention of your business on another’s website, that links not only the name but also the address and phone number of your business. It consists of your business’s name, address, and phone number or NAP. You can submit these citations to the listing sites or can hire an agency to do it for you. These citations work as proof for Google’s algorithm to find out that your brand is a local business.
Social media
Over 93% of regular internet users log into social media. So as a brand make sure to create social media accounts for your business on the platforms where you know your target group is active.
And though it is true that the likes and comments on social media don’t directly impact the website rank, it still enables you to promote your site to 93% of users who are either new or existing customers of your brand. When they see your brand on social media, they get an opening to contact you, and you get to answer them regularly.
Another thing that you can do is join hands with the right influencers and seek collaborations to promote your product or service. When influencers successfully create a buzz for your product, Google takes note of this online chatter and if there are enough shares, they’ll start to prioritise your content over others. Similarly, blog posts are a great way to put out new keywords with more recency, as blogs get indexed by search engines. In such cases, it makes sense to go with a top digital agency, with social media services, content-writing services and SEO services in-house so all the functions can work together without friction.
Reviews
It should come as no surprise that people do a fair share of research on the product they are about to purchase. And 88% of customers trust reviews posted by others online. So the more the reviews, the more your brand establishes itself as a trustworthy online brand among your existing and potential clients.
Still on the fence about SEO? Let the SEO experts, at one of the best digital marketing companies and SEO companies in Ahmedabad, India help you get a better understanding, and craft a smart and persistent SEO strategy for you. Give us a call now to inquire about our SEO services.
No, that’s not the increase in population but the increase recorded in social media users.
4.55 billion people, or about 57.6% of the global population, today use social media.
This ginormous population is constantly interacting online, collectively creating (and bringing down) trends, fashion, memes and also brands! Whether they are B2B, B2C, B2B2C, every brand today needs to know what people are talking about them and their competitors online. They also need to know where to find the users who are talking about them, and which users to pay more attention to.
How? Through social listening.
Let one of the best digital marketing companies in India, Flora Fountain help you hit a gold mine for customer service and product development through social listening.
Social Listening
Social Listening is a strategy used by brands to monitor and track all the public conversations taking place on any social media platforms related to their brand or product. These conversations or mentions are analyzed for insights to evaluate customers’ feedback.
In simpler words, it helps a brand understand why, where, and how online conversations are happening, and what people think of the brand.
Why do brands need it?
Social listening can help brands understand and thrive in a dynamic industry that morphs faster than a Power Ranger.
A. Brands can learn about their audience & create better content
If a brand actively practices social listening, it can learn a lot about what its customers desire. The strategy helps the brand discover where their audience is most active and which social networks they predominantly use. Also, brands can understand what their audience wants, where their interests lie, and questions they have, based on certain topics and keywords. Knowing where your company falls behind and knowing where you exceed customer expectations will allow you to perfect the areas you’re already succeeding in and build a plan around the areas that are in need of improvement.
B. Brands can build better social media marketing campaigns
Once brands learn the various important aspects about their audiences, this information can help build a better digital marketing campaign. Because the best digital marketing companies will always make campaigns focusing on topics that are relevant to the target audience, so they sit up and pay attention.
Social listening helps a brand uncover such relevant topics by analysing all the social conversations based upon such keywords.
C. Brands can get a better understanding of their competition
Social listening also enables a brand to get a better understanding of how audiences feel about their competitors and the industry in general. This data gives an insight into where the brand fits in the market. It might also reveal competition, direct or indirect, that the brand didn’t even know existed.
D. Brands can find relevant social influencers
Finding the right influencer for a brand is not a piece of cake. But social listening helps brand identify people with a strong following on social media and other online platforms, that match their target audience. Because when the right people talk about the brand to the right audience, chances of higher sales and customer retention increases.
But how does one practice “Social Listening”?
Users are unafraid of sharing their opinions online. So, in order to keep up with them, a brand must listen to them. This can be done by either hiring a team or a social media agency to keep a tab on trends, or by using specialized software or online platforms that offer social listening tools, that give businesses access to more detailed forms of information.
What is it that the brand wants to achieve with promotional activities on social media? Higher sales? Explore new audiences? Improve customer retention or form a new channel of sales/revenue? Once this is clear, it becomes the GOAL of the brand.
Next, the brand must figure out where should they put its ear on. In simpler terms, a brand should know which platforms they need to pay attention to. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Google searches, LinkedIn, etc.
Thirdly, how to identify these conversations. Through direct mentions of the brand, social media handles, and/or product names, hashtags, campaign names and relevant keywords, names of important people in the company, and topics related to the brand. And all these points to study the competitors as well.
A great example of it is the following post, where Starbucks was not tagged with its official twitter handle, yet the brand was able to identify it online thanks social listening and respond to it, thus improving their customer engagement.
2) Empathize with the audience & respond fast
The audience needs to feel that they are being heard.
And in order to do that, the brand needs to engage a little more with its audience. Be it negative or positive, the brand needs to empathize with the audience.
If a brand gets positive feedback, then it needs to figure out what the audience loved about it and build marketing campaigns on that basis. And if the brand gets negative feedback, it needs to know the pain point of the audience in order to solve it.
3) Choose the right listening tools!
As kids, everyone is taught how active listening is important, but when it comes to brands, they haven’t always had the right tools to do so at a large scale. But now, there are many that can help brands in collecting and analyzing data in an easier way. Here are some that work across major social media networks:
This tool provides brands with in-depth analytics and insights for organized social listening. One of its features shows the hashtags and topics that are trending across the mentions of the brand and replies on behalf of the connected brand. The name of the people and brands that most frequently talk about and get mentioned with a particular brand surface on the tool.
Brands can use this tool to monitor conversations, keywords, and mentions, along with hashtags, and respond to them. The tool helps a brand to analyze many real-time conversations taking place on digital platforms.
Brands can monitor social interactions and connect with the right people. It allows a brand to link data from social media with contacts in their database in order to create custom keyword monitoring, email alerts, mention notifications, etc.
Other than these, there are tools like Lately, Brand24, Brandwatch, Buffer, TweetDeck, Mention, which come with comprehensive features to help brands collect brand mentions across major social media networks.
