Categories
SEO

The Longer the Better! Why Long-Form Content Is Crucial To Effective SEO

No two writers will ever agree on the same answer when it comes to long-form content. One argument we as an SEO company offering digital services in Ahmedabad constantly battle with, is that given that the attention span of netizens is getting shorter, we must write shorter, crisp content.

But, what about the readers who wish to attain complete information, in detail from us? And of course, it will hamper the SEO activity since short-form content will never be able to touch the minimum length requirements for it.

Let’s try and understand what exactly do we mean when we say long-form content, and why it still holds importance in content marketing.

What is long-form content?

content marketing experts

There have been multiple definitions of long-form content. While some claim that any blog that crosses the threshold of 700 words is long-form, content marketing experts suggest that informative articles that are more than 1200 words are considered long-form content.

Flora Fountain’s SEO experts have always believed that any blog or article that wishes to rank higher on the search pages, must be of minimum 800 words, and should have all the relevant keywords.

And writing long-form content comes with a plethora of benefits for brands that wish to grab as much attention it wants on the internet. Here’s how…

Gain more backlinks

Backlink
HubSpot graph showing the correlation between content length and backlinks

Google prefers high-quality content and link-building to rant any website on the search engine results page (SERP). And long-form content has a greater probability of earning quality backlinks.

HubSpot, in its research The Anatomy of a Shareable, Linkable & Popular Post found that articles with a word count of over 2500 words earn the most links. Short content on the other hand has 75% fewer backlinks than articles of average length (900–1200 words).

Drives traffic to the site

SEMrush further studied over 700,000 articles to come to a conclusion that articles with more than 3000 words generate 3 times more traffic than articles with 90-1200 words. In another study, HubSpot found that articles with 2,250 to 2,500 words earn the most organic traffic.

Here’s another fun fact that we came across. Founder of NP Digital and prominent digital marketer Neil Patel had clocked over 100,000 visitors every month in the first year itself of launching his website Neil Patel. Wondering how? Well, obviously his content is rich with data, facts and detailed knowledge about digital marketing, but apart from that, his blogs are anywhere close to 4000 words.

The point we’re making here is that when you write quality content in long-form, using the keywords strategically, search engines will definitely rank you higher and drive traffic towards your website.

Raises Click-Through Rate

Click-through-rate (CTR) is the ratio used to gauge how the keywords, advertisements and SEO listings are performing. A simpler way to explain this, is that the number of clicks an ad receives is divided by the number of times it is shown to people online. For instance, if an ad is shown to 100 people, and 5 of these people clicked on the ad, its CTR is 5%.

Search engines use this data to see if a page on a website is informative enough to the users or not. Less clicks means the page is not able to fulfill users’ query. So, they move the page down in the search rankings.

And when writing long-form content, it gives enough room to write compelling headers, description tags, and place multiple keywords on strategic locations of the write-up. These smartly written titles, headers and descriptions, peppered with keywords entice the user to click on it when shown of the SERP. And once pulled in, it can also reroute them into exploring the multiple offerings and pages on the site.

Increases dwell time

Dwell time is the amount of time any visitor spends on a particular site. This metric shows Google if a website or any page on the website is worth spending time on or if that page is fulfilling the needs of the user. If a website has a short dwell time, Google finds it irrelevant to the search query.

Long-form, good quality content gets more eyes on the page. It increases the dwell time as people stay on the page for a longer period of time.

Tips to write long-form content

  • Avoid writing in long-drawn sentences. Break down the information into shorter sentences and then place them into a paragraph.
  • Try listicles (Thank you BuzzFeed). People LOVE lists! Instead of big blocks of paragraphed content, list out the points and write shorter descriptions for them.
  • Set a flow for the content. For instance, decide a specific number of words for the opening, the introduction to the topic. Number the bullet points that cover the soul of the story and again fix a specific number of words for description of each.
  • Add source links to every study and research quoted in the article, helps with the back-linking.
Categories
SEO

Here’s How to Retain SEO Ranking even after a Website Redesign

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) Rankings are sensitive and are prone to changing every time there is a change in the design or content of the website without planning for SEO. During a website redesign or redevelopment, there is a high risk of the website losing its organic traffic, rankings and sales.

While there are plenty of blogs and conversation online revolving around how to make a website rank higher up on the search engine results pages (SERP), very few talk specifically about maintaining those rankings, even in the event of a redesign on the website. So, let’s talk about retaining a website’s rankings on the SERP after a redesign on the site and look at some of the tips shared by the SEO experts at Flora Fountain, a digital agency offering SEO Services in Ahmedabad.

search engine optimization

Save the original website’s data first

One of the ways to ensure website’s rankings don’t suffer heavily is by maintaining a similarity in the flow of content and design of the old site. Because search engines rank those pages or websites higher that are easy to navigate. It is important to save the old or current website’s data, i.e. a list of all the pages, its URLs, important pieces of content, keywords and the sitemap for future reference. It helps the developers and designers to ensure the user experience doesn’t get disturbed on the redesigned website.

Don’t make changes on the live site

This is an important point to remember. While making changes or during the redesigning process, the website must be disabled. The updated version should be made live only after testing. But disabling a website means the business will lose many customers and visitors who might be trying to access the site. It is advised to do it on a different domain. Experts providing top SEO services in India suggest that all the changes and updates should be made in a different domain or a staging site, and once all the changes provide satisfactory results in testing, only then the new site be swapped with the old one live on the internet.

Use 301 Redirects

301 Redirects

When there is a change in the URLs, make sure to have 301 Redirects for them. The 301 Redirects notifies the search engines that the content has been shifted to a new location and takes the visitors to the new web page from the old one.

A broken link can damage the ranking of the website, which will eventually lead to losing organic traffic to the website. This happens because the search engine assigns the existing ranking to the new page only after it knows that both the pages have the same content in them.

Check for broken links

Even upon setting up 301 redirects for the pages, problems can still arise. Broken links can show up if there is a mistype or a spelling error in the URLs. And when this happens, visitors and search engines will see a page with the message “404 Page Not Found”. This again creates a bad experience and can be a serious turn off for the visitors. This error damages user experience and search rankings of the website as well.

Look for broken links on the website by using tools like Screaming frog, Bing Webmaster, Broken link checker and Yandex Webmaster.

404 Page Not Found

Reinstall SSL Certificates

Redesigning a website can result in loss of the site’s Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate. And websites with SSL certificates have added advantage on the SERP. Safety and data privacy play an important role in ranking of a website as it gains people’s trust. SSL creates an additional layer of safety that protects the information people choose to share with a website. In other words, it is a protocol used to encrypt communications.
So, every time there is a redesign on the website, it is important to reinstall all the SSL certificates to ensure that the new site starts ranking up on the SERP quickly after going live. Here’s a easy to understand tutorial on how to install SSL certificates on the website

Update the Sitemap

The sitemap is an XML file that’s contains a list of the website’s URLs which helps search engines to know about the pages of your website for crawling. While redesigning a website, it is recommended to create a new sitemap XML document, as it helps search engines to index the website faster. Moreover, it allows site visitors to easily navigate it. An XML sitemap can be submitted to search engines such as Google, Bing, etc. through webmaster tools like Yoast or Sitemap Generator.

Update the Google My Business page

This might sound like a small step, but it is a crucial one. As soon as the updated website is live, the first thing to do is make changes to the Google My Business Page of the business.

Google My Business is an effective tool for businesses to use to improve their local search rankings. It can give local service-based businesses the exposure they need to be at the top of the SERPs in their area.

You don’t want to sabotage your SEO rankings while redesigning the website, do you? Let the Best Digital Agency in Gujarat help your business in retaining them. Drop us a message on hello@flora.ffteam.in

Categories
Digital Marketing Agency

Digital Agency vs Creative Agency: What’s the difference?

So, you run a business and it’s time you took the marketing up a notch. You know you need a professional agency, BUT, you are not sure which kind of agency you need. A digital agency? A creative agency? Or wait…do you need an advertising agency?

Now, you might think they are all the same fantastic beast with different names. Or you might they are different Pokémons with their own superpowers? (proud millennial here).

Traditionally, businesses have relied on advertising agencies to promote and market their brand. An advertising agency typically designs and writes copy for advertisements run in print such as newspapers, hoardings & magazines, design collaterals for events, conceptualize & create television commercials, create radio jingles….you get the idea.

But times have changed, the platforms for promoting your business are no longer restricted to print and television. Digital is now a more pervasive and cost-effective medium, to market and advertise businesses to customers right where they are : On Their Phone! As you consider digitally marketing your business, it’s time to understand the differences between a digital and creative agency, and how they fit under the umbrella of an advertising agency.

What is a CREATIVE AGENCY?

online shopping experience

A creative agency’s role is to make your brand stand out. This can be done through weaving captivating stories created through stunning visuals and words, creating concepts that inject life into your business offerings and creating a very unique brand voice for your business.

The output of this can be a single unique graphic design, an animated video, a memorable website, a social media campaign, newsletters, packaging.

This usually requires the creative brains of a visualizer or graphic designer, video animator, illustrator, content writer, all of who work together for your business to stand out through creative storytelling across any medium – offline or digital.

So if you want to create mind-blowing brand campaigns, whether audio, video or pictorial and someone to craft your brand’s personality in a memorable way, then a creative agency is the way to go. In India, Flora Fountain consistently ranks as one of the best creative agencies in Ahmedabad for lifestyle, fashion, food, travel, education, medical & media brands.

Still confused? Here’s what to expect from a creative agency

  • Designing logos
  • Designing brand experiences through brand stationary, packaging and other offline collaterals
  • Designing websites, mobile apps, social media campaigns to tell the brand story
  • Creating concepts and moodboards for shoots and campaigns
  • Copywriting for all digital and offline activities such as blogs, articles, websites, social media, ad copies, audio and video scripts
  • Creating infographics to break down heavy data and figures in easy to consume form
  • Creating email newsletter designs with a mix of visuals, content, and data
  • Audio Visual content for digital and television advertisements and promotions.

And when you look for the best creative agency in Ahmedabad, you will see Flora Fountain rank on top of the charts.

What is a DIGITAL AGENCY?

online shopping experience

One the creativity is put on paper or in bytes, a digital agency’s work come into the picture. Digital agencies work on creating a strategy to market a business and then executing this on various digital platforms like websites, social media, search engines, mobile applications and more.

Digital agencies help businesses amplify their brand on digital platforms. This, is usually done through digital marketing practices like search engine optimization, social media marketing, paid promotions on Google, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and other such mass platforms, developing websites and e-commerce management for the brand.

The services offered by digital agencies include

  • Search Engine Optimization or SEO
  • Pay Per Click or PPC advertisements on search engines and social media
  • Email Marketing
  • Social Media Marketing and Management
  • Influencer Marketing
  • Affiliate Marketing
  • Collaborations with other digital entities and influencers
  • Web design & development

Apart from executing these services, strategy is one of the core services offered by digital agencies to businesses, where the agency collects data and analyzes the brand, their competition, their users’ needs, desires, expectations and engagement with the brand across all digital platforms. This kind of data-drive research helps digital agencies create and target a brand’s ideal audience with curated content, both organically and via paid ads. This creating more data to analyze and use as feedback for the next round of strategic digital campaigns.

Research + Strategy + Execution lies at the core of Flora Fountain’s DNA and is what makes us a top digital agency in Ahmedabad with clients worldwide.

Now you might think there are overlaps between the digital and the creative…

And there are.

2020 taught businesses worldwide, the importance of having an active digital presence. How it can help businesses serve existing customers better but also find new customers and avenues of doing business.

More business going digital has added to the digital chatter, making it harder to get noticed. This had made creative storytelling and using research & strategy to create digital campaigns even more important. It has also meant that what companies need now is not just a creative agency or a digital agency but a full service digital agency.

And Flora Fountain is one such full service digital agency that works with creativity. We have team of dedicated experts catering to both creative and strategic needs of businesses online, to provide an end-to-end digital marketing solution for businesses in Ahmedabad, India and worldwide.

We as a digital marketing agency in Ahmedabad design and develop websites and ecommerce solutions on WordPress, Magento, Shopify, custom websites in PHP, manage social media profiles, plan and execute their business promotion strategies on professional platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter and Google Business.

But, there’s more! Our teams also consist of creative brains, who can create designs and visuals that improves the recall value of the brand by many levels. This harmony between creativity, strategy and technology is what makes businesses stay on top of their competition. When the creative and digital tango, businesses become more profitable and more accountable to their customers.

We hope this has made the difference between a pure creative agency and a pure digital agency a little clearer. And helped decide how you want to market your business digitally. In which case, why are you still reading this. Drop us a message on hello@flora.ffteam.in for a free consultation.

Categories
Ecommerce

Why your e-commerce website needs smashing pictures

A picture is worth over a thousand words

Every time you’re online looking to purchase something, what is the first thing that catches your eye and convinces you to click on it. The PICTURE, right?

It is only after you’ve seen the picture and your mind is convinced in the first few seconds that this seems to be a good product, is when you then move on to read a little bit about it, maybe on the title, the description, and then the reviews.

You see how important images are in e-commerce? If it doesn’t appeal to the eye, people online are going to scroll through and find something else that does.

But, why does this happen, especially with e-commerce and online shopping?

People prefer seeing things over reading about it

We are living in the smart age. Everything from your toothbrush to your television is connected to the internet and your smartphone. We no longer type things to send a message to someone or look up something online. We snap it using our cameras and do the needful (Thank you Google Lens).

Look at all the marketing and advertising studies and surveys done over the years, the visual element has always come out as the winner over text. Yes, people do love a smart pun here, a hidden joke there. But that beautiful dress won’t sell through words, people wish to see the design, the fabric, the idea of how it may look on an actual person wearing it. Only then they’ll take a look at the price and think about placing an order for it.

online shopping experience

But that beautiful dress won’t sell through words, people wish to see the design, the fabric, the idea of how it may look on an actual person wearing it. Only then they’ll take a look at the price and think about placing an order for it.

Here’s a fun fact: Of all the returns that are done after online shopping, over 20% of them happen because the actual product didn’t resemble what the buyer saw online on the website.

So, it is important that you put up real pictures of your products, shot by professionals, from multiple angles with a clean background and ample lighting.

Images contribute to your site’s SEO

YES, you read that right. Images contribute greatly to the SEO of your e-commerce website. With more and more people moving towards image search using Google Snap or photo search apps, the search engine AI identifies and matches the image’s visual elements with the pictures you put up on your website. And when they match correctly, your product shows up as one of the search results. And this is not anyone but the SEO experts of Flora Fountain, the best seo company in Ahmedabad advice it to all.

Additionally, naming your product correctly by its name instead of generic terms like “image1.jpg” helps the search engine to match with the searches and pull up your product online. Your images must also have Alt Text, which describes the product, e.g. Blue Cotton Summer Dress with Floral Patterns. All the ideal keywords got used to describe your product image and it makes absolute sense too.

Enhances the online shopping experience

People prefer seeing things over reading

If your brand doesn’t stand out and appeal to the visitor on your page, you will be losing out on a sale. And well-shot pictures of your products add a sense of originality and make it more trustworthy, since people are missing the tactile experience of examining the product using their hands and are solely relying on the visual experience on their screens.

So, it is ideal that one must invest in good photography of not just your products, but in creating an entire visual experience. Hire specialists who can help you build an entire concept around your product connecting with your brand and guides you in picking the right photographers to create a story through pictures.

It’s not an expense but an investment

The e-commerce space has become intensely competitive in the past decade with more players coming in and selling their wares online. And this trend saw a sharp rise when countries went into a lockdown due to the pandemic in 2020 and people were forced to get everything they need online.

So you need to move up and not rely solely on your brick and mortar store. You can either get an e-commerce website for your brand or business made or sell on third-party platforms like Amazon, eBay, etc. But no matter where you sell online, your pictures are going to play the lead role in attracting customers to your website.

Good, original pictures mean more people online click and engage with your product link. And when search engines and online shopping platforms notice this trend, they automatically rank your product higher. So it may seem like an additional expenditure now, but the ROI on good photography for your e-commerce platform will be multifold.

And if you’re still clueless about how to get started on photography for your e-commerce platform, drop us a line and we at Flora Fountain, Ahmedabad’s best e-commerce website development company, would love to chat about creating a concept for you and guiding you with the photo & video shoots in Ahmedabad.

Categories
SEO

Reasons why your website must be SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZED

What did you do the last time you wanted to look for a doctor around you, or check out a good place that could home deliver your favourite Baklavas on order? You asked Google about it.

Over 90% of the searches on the internet are done on Google and there’s only a 5% chance that we go beyond the results shown to us on the first page of the search window.

businessman-looking

And if you’re a brand that wants to be the first option of your consumer base, then you must feature on this first page every time someone searches for your name or a product or service you offer. The only way to be placed on top of the searches organically is through SEO, or Search Engine Optimization.

Wondering what is search engine optimization all about and how is it going to help your business or brand online? Here’s everything you need to know.

What is SEO anyway?

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is an internet marketing strategy where you improve the quality and quantity of your website based on the relevance of what your consumer base is looking and searching for on the internet.

The content on the website is optimized in a manner that ranks higher on the search engine pages of Google or Bing. And when someone looks for something which is even closely connected to your content, it shows up on the top of the search results.

applications-be-connected

And this optimization is done by putting up content that’s very relevant to what people are searching for, feature media that’s labelled correctly, contains references and links which support and make sense to the content, and contains the right amount of keywords and phrases which people use to search for your content.

And if you’re still not convinced on how SEO is going to help your business online, here we provide you with 5 benefits of having a website that’s Search Engine Optimized.

Improve Brand Visibility online

We’d like to start with an absolute no-brainer. Just imagine, you are a business that sells premium quality tea through your ecommerce website. While your business and its website appear on top of the search window every time someone looks up your brand name specifically, but whenever someone searches for “premium tea”, it’s your competitor’s name that pops up first. So frustrating, right?

This wouldn’t happen if you use the right keywords which people use to look for your product and service and link it to your website. This way, your brand name features on top of the search results and it gets etched into the minds of people who search for products and content related to your brand. The higher you rank on the search results, your brand’s visibility gets better.

Drive organic traffic to your website and convert them into sales

Apart from improving the visibility of your website, SEO also drives genuine visitors to your website, who hold a higher chance of getting converted into a paying customer for your product or service.

When you use original content, insert the right keywords, use genuine links to establish the authenticity of your content, and provide exactly what your customer is looking for, it is going to show up on the search screens on top.

Understand what and how your consumer thinks

Search Engine Optimization begins with research, about the consumers of the product, their background, their interests, and the time they spend on the internet seeking what they like. And with the data that this research throws up, you can understand the language that your probable customers are talking about and where do their loyalties lie when it comes to a certain product or service offered by multiple brands.

woman-casual

This helps in using the right keywords in your website, creating content for your website in a language that your consumer base will understand, and keeps them hooked on to it for a longer duration. This, in turn, increases your chances of converting them into a customer.

At the end of the day, your customer is the king and you must create and provide what they wish, and not what you want them to use. And search engines will push only the former on top.

No paying for “Ad Space”

No, you never have to pay Google, or any search engine to rank your website on top of the search results. The positions you see on the results page of the search engine are purely based on who did their SEO perfectly and ticked all the boxes.

We know, you might argue that what about the search results one gets to see with a tiny marker which reads “Ad” in black. They are Google Pay Per Click ads which, just like the name, are paid, advertised links of websites that pay a sum to google for every time someone clicks on that link.

They are not connected to SEO anyway, and all the results you see beneath those links, are purely organic. So technically, if you’re doing your SEO right, you never have to pay for an “ad space” for visibility like businesses have to do with OTT advertising.

Improves credibility of your business

A website that ranks on top of the charts of the search window tends to hold over 70% attention of the viewer compared the ones even in the 2nd or third position. It goes without saying that most of us won’t even bother clicking on the second page to see what more options do we have.

The credibility of brands that rank in the first 5 results is always higher compared to the others. Which means if your brand has done its SEO right, people will prefer clicking on your link if they see it first. This way only the right people get targeted, it results in higher organic footfalls on the website and in turn have a higher chances of getting converted into a valuable lead for the business.

Stay ahead of your competitors

And of course, when you’re on the top the charts every time someone searches for something, you’re miles ahead of your competitors. Just like we mentioned in our first point, you’re able to beat your competitors if you use the right keywords and links that connects with your business, and your visibility is going to peak higher than all.

And if you’re wondering whether your website is SEO friendly or not, how about you drop us a line here for a free consultation with our SEO expert.