Archive for year: 2020

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How Social Media Can Increase Your Sales — or Not

Budgets for Social Media Deserve Careful Scrutiny

Now that we’re more 15 years into the phenomenon of social media (Facebook launched in 2004), it’s a fact that very few businesses are doing well with it. Why? Because social media is about authenticity and people who are extroverts. That’s right: at its core, it’s built for people, not companies. It explains why celebrities and a handful of people willing to live their lives on camera, or pretend they are, build up millions of followers. As a result, they have an outsized presence. But in the end, does it amount to much?  The answer is probably not.

In Reality, the Myths are Greater than the Realities

We’re not opposed to social media, so please hold the negative replies. But don’t spend any significant part of your digital marketing budget Facebooking, Tweeting, or Instagramming because of peer pressure – or because you’ve heard other business owners bragging. Frankly, if any small or medium-sized business reports phenomenal social media results, we’d be skeptical based on a lot of experience. The reality is that a little bit of this and a bit of that and hopping from this year’s hype to the next year’s fad will eat up budget dollars that are better spent on search engine optimization (SEO).

Social media can be a small part of SEO programs, but it doesn’t drive results like excellent website content, an active blog, and offsite backlinking. Many of the world’s followers want to jump on the social media bandwagon with little or no evaluation. They ultimately waste dollars and time. Business leaders and owners who are wisely skeptical will evaluate it and only invest small amounts until they see it accomplishing their sales goals.

Successful Social Media Always Comes from Inside

If you’re convinced that you should deploy digital marketing resources and budget to social media, don’t outsource the content (words and pictures). It needs to be 100% authentic and from inside your company to be effective. Digital marketing agencies can be good advisors for guiding your in-house staff in developing buzz-worthy content. But as outsiders, they can’t fake it for you on social media with sustained effectiveness. What agencies write on their own will be benign posts that gain little traction and are ignored.  It’s no way to improve your sales.

The ‘Musts’ for Social Media Success are Time Consuming

  • Day-to-day monitoring and responding to questions and comments
  • Authentic, creative posts (with images) to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn
  • Immersion in the social networking culture
  • Liking and following others – using good judgment
  • Creating engagement activities, contests, events

Developing and maintaining social media is continuous work. But even miraculous social media channels will only give you results in proportion to the actual work involved (it’s not easy nor cheap). It’s why you need to approach social networking with a results-oriented mindset. Don’t jump in with a large budget at first. You need to be disciplined and measure ROI to make sure it’s working one month in, six months in, and after a year.

Social media is like other digital marketing channels. It’s serious work requiring sustained effort. Ignore peer pressure and do it only if you have the commitment (and resources), and keep an eagle-eye on the results to be sure it’s paying off.

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How Philly Businesses Can Rank for Difficult Keywords

Ranking Websites in Search Engine Results:  Need Help?

Local business websites in Philadelphia with low Domain Authorities can have a very challenging time ranking on the first page of search results in Google. A case study could have been this website back in its beginnings — we faced the need to rank in challenging categories such as ones for SEO companies in Philadelphia. For a good reason, the competition is intense, and many existing SEO company websites had twice the Domain Authority or more.  The questions before us were what to do with a site that was nearly a start-up and had little or no Domain or Page Authority.

We need to reach our customers, and prospective customers, with user-friendly information on Google page one where they could find us easily. Our data showed they would be searching for “Philadelphia SEO” or “search engine optimization Philadelphia.” because they are the two highest volume searches for SEO in Philadelphia, PA. Since the launch of our website, we have worked hard to provide useful information about how to reach customers with digital marketing and helpful websites. We also want to help businesses optimize their websites for mobile devices because it is an essential priority for today.

Philadelphia Search Engine Optimization: Ranking on Page One

Because businesses need to help their customers find them easily online, ranking on page one in the Philadelphia search engine result pages (SERPs) is crucial. Using ourselves as a case study again, we started out trying to get to page two. While page one remained the ultimate goal, ranking on page two for high-volume searches and page one for a few long-tail keywords seemed like a wise approach to begin. Having our website rank in Google for the right keywords was our top priority because it is an example of success to add to our portfolio of accomplishments. By now, https://phillyseopro.com/ moved up in the rankings for “Philadelphia SEO companies” and now routinely appears on page one.

As we continue to help our search engine optimization clients improve their success in digital marketing, we’re looking for companies with marketing budgets large enough to fun significant programs. With these, we can provide an even better Return on Investment (ROI) for their marketing dollars. Most SEO companies spend more time and resources building backlinks, and that’s what it’s all about for them. It’s an approach that can have some merit, but we take a different approach based on developing user-friendly website content. Admittedly, SEO writing can be tedious, but who writes it matters, both to our clients and us. In support of our mission to be the best Philadelphia SEO writers, we produce all content for our client’s website and social media right here in the Philadelphia area.

Detailed and Clear Landing Pages: How Do They Help?

  1. Longer pages can help make up for lack of PageRank on newer websites with lower Domain Authority.
  2. Long-form website content helps Philly businesses reach their customers who run long-tail keyword searches.
  3. Well-written pages encourage visitors to spend more time on your website; they also lower bounce rates.
  4. Longer pages and blog posts can even out and help distribute on-site keyword density.

When we review our competitor’s work, we’re often disappointed to see that many SEO companies do the bare minimum. Do they compose authentically interesting blog posts? Also, is their SEO writing long enough to provide internet users with beneficial information — which, after all, is the point of running an online search. Too often, we see search engine optimization companies sticking to the minimum 350-word posts. With such thin content, imagine how long it would take to overcome a keyword density penalty? At that rate, it might take years for penalties to be removed.

Longer posts are beneficial to business websites in many ways and, over time, bring significant improvement. Our goal is to develop content that artificially intelligent bots regard as interesting, informative, and useful to searchers. We write naturally with the appropriate keyword densities. Even as we are writing this post, we include our keywords throughout to clarify its purpose and value. The articles we write for guest blog posts and external backlinks are similarly well written. Articles for publication should never be heavy-handed, and when written interestingly, the natural distribution and density of keywords works out overall. Writing more complete (longer) and helpful posts and web pages makes sense. Its unfortunate more SEO companies in Philadelphia and southern New Jersey don’t do it.

Search Engine Optimization in Philadelphia Ranks Websites in SERPs

For local Philadelphia websites to succeed, a Domain Authority of around 30, or maybe more, is optimal. When a site has little authority and light traffic, the best thing to do is begin writing. Adding longer pages and expanded blog posts helps in many ways. It balances out keyword distribution as you mention they appropriately thought the text. Many sites have penalties for dense content; longer-form writing corrects those problems. Our advice to companies looking to improve their website visibility is to write posts on topics that interest you enough to become a content creator. The internet is hungry for more well-written content, and nobody seems to be stepping up right now. Google looks for authentic reviews, well-composed testimonies, and thorough product reviews by writers who are qualified to be doing search engine optimization in Philadelphia.

In summary, there is no such thing as a blog post that is too long if the content is of value to users. Suddenly this post seems a little long at almost 1,000 words. But it took us two hours to write, and that’s the time we give ourselves to write a high-quality blog post (for Philadelphia SEO Pro as well as for clients).  Ending it now saves a lot more user-friendly content we can add to the next post we will be writing — so check back again soon.

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