Best Practices of Website Localization

The article explains certain best practices to make your website localization a success.

Expanding any business abroad is a major undertaking and often it happens that most businesses take a long time to touch a matured state in their approach to website localization. Often localization of a website is confused with translation. Website localization goes beyond translation and is a more specialized process of adapting web content and applications for regional (local) consumption. The process modifies the source language and other site elements, making it appeal to the customer’s preferences in their own local language. It is crucial for businesses to understand that website translation refers to the process of shifting an original language version of web content such as text, multimedia, e-books, or apps into a different language by simply substituting words from one language to another—in context. Experienced digital marketing agencies can help businesses with content localization.

Adapting localization strategies to the online content and deliverables for regional specificity help global brands to ensure a quality customer experience. Website localization is all about refining your message and curating your brand to meet the cultural, functional, and language expectations of your global markets.

Read Also: Website Localization – The Future of Digital Marketing?

Here are a few tips for optimized website localization –

Consider Web Analytics –Along with selecting the right language set, make sure to align with your leadership, sales team, and to mine language insights of your global audience from web analytics data. Make sure to look at the geographic locations from where your visitors most frequently access your website, and also their browser language setting. These two data points can provide significant insights about the languages that your visitors use day-to-day.

Consider Basics –Pay attention to even basic details. Some of them such as punctuation formats, time and date, can have significant impact on how the user perceives. Make sure that your content matches the accepted standards of your target market. For instance, consider whether your target market uses names of months in alphabets or do they prefer numerals? Do they prefer 12-hour standard time format or 24-hour format? Displaying dates and times in the preferred local formats is also recommended as it avoids confusion and allows for an improved user experience.

Offer Diverse Currency & Payment Options –For online E-commerce website, it is really crucial to display prices in the local currency. When users arrive at your site, the last thing they will want to do is convert the prices into values that leads to further decisions. Users in different countries also have different payment preferences such as iDeal in the Netherlands, Alipay and Tenpay in China, while few prefer cash pay delivery.

Create a Style Guide –Creating a style guide will help throughout the localization of your website. Different languages require different fonts and styles.This framework will help the readers understand the written and visual presentation of a company’s content.

Use Advanced Coding and Software –Use Unicode to standardize your website structure. This universal character encoding standard is an ideal way to mix various scripts and languages in a document and exchange documents between people with different locales. . Also consider implementing a multilingual user interface, which helps to change to other languages.

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Use Global Design Templates –The need for global consistency will only strengthen, with more and more companies adding languages and local websites. It allows management of a lot of country sites by very few people. It also allows all content managers to use common tools and processes. The global template is easier to manage.For the end user, these templates provide a reliable interface that will help in usability and credibility.

Choose a Reliable Digital Marketing AgencyMake sure to benefit from the services a translator who knows the cultural differences between both the countries, that is your country and the one you’re marketing to. Reputable online marketing agencies provide services from expert translators who stay in or have lived in that country. Such native speakers can pin point the ideas that will work in your advertising campaign. They can assist you with the viewpoint of the local people.

With appropriate planning, an intensive localization strategy along with a skilled LSP partner can help you successfully execute your strategy.

Website Localization – The Future of Digital Marketing?

 

You may have a well optimized website with good search engine rankings and increased user visits. But the increasing competition makes it vital to ensure your digital marketing efforts are also focused locally. Consider website localization. Reports state that web users are more likely to purchase from a company that communicates in their own language.

Localizing a website will provide fruitful results such as-

  • Add value to your brand
  • Increase in site visitors
  • Increase the number of customers
  • increase the number of visitors returning to your website

Localization process of a website involves numerous technical and linguistic stages: preparation, cultural adaptation, translation, multilingual adaptation, integration of multilingual content, functional and linguistic validation, quality control, final validation and the final process of going online.

Read Also: Ways Digital Marketing Will Change In 2016

Is it enough to translate your original website content?

A common mistake with localized websites is considering the translated content to be just another version of the pages in the original language. Translation isn’t everything. Of course, for the user it’s all about the content. The user will check whether the content is relevant and understandable and in line with the user’s cultural context. Therefore, winning consumers in these new highly competitive business markets will require companies to scale their global marketing initiatives and manage cultural diversity at a whole new level.

Localizing a website is an important business decision that will have a great impact on how well you achieve your business goals in certain markets. Before localizing any content, make sure to partner up with a digital marketing agency. This helps to better understand the target audience, and check whether your product meets local standards and is in line with the core cultural values of the audience. Understanding the basic differences in customs and practices between nations is important.

Translating a website (especially a complex one) can be a challenge. You need to decide on your core markets first and then choose the language version accordingly. Decision should be made earlier whether to display a language version based on the user’s IP address or on the browser’s settings. To be more effective in emerging markets, global brands must ensure that their content not only speaks to the culture of the audience but also reflects the intended brand message consistently from one region to the next.

What surveys indicate:

A survey conducted by Lionbridge earlier in 2015 revealed that

  • Many companies don’t have a localization strategy. Nearly 40 percent of respondents say they do not currently have a web content localization strategy and 13 percent of respondents handle localization requests on an ad hoc basis
  • When asked about the most important aspects of website localization, a majority (56 percent) of respondents identified quality and accuracy as the top answer, followed by customer experience (34 percent)

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Businesses will need to radically change their mindset about localization, as well as their translation processes and allocation of resources. It is very important for companies to focus on building a localization strategy to ensure the process is streamlined, consistent, and, most importantly, effective. By addressing the regular cadence of localization needs in a centralized manner, companies can ensure that translation quality and brand consistency are maintained across a number of channels, languages, and projects.

Few elements that you should keep in mind while localizing a website are – branding, culture-specific design and simple forms, lines, text and composition. An experienced digital marketing agency can provide comprehensive website localization services that can ensure that all content is addressed in an efficient and effective manner. It helps brands to stay engaged with customers and offer the best customer experience possible across all markets.

Ways Digital Marketing Will Change In 2016

Marketing and sales have come a long way from how they used to work in earlier days. The buyers have changed and their behaviour has seen drastic changes. Following the traditional marketing methods do not work anymore. As such, many businesses are failing these days. There was a time when a little amount of advertising and cold calling was able to get you a whole lot of appointments. But, this is not the case anymore.

A major change is that the buyers have control over the sales process these days. Every piece of information is available on the internet. If you need it, you get it! Earlier, sellers were able to control the sales process. The buyers had to interact with the sales people for all requirements. But now, they have every bit of information readily available. All you need is your phone or laptop. In such a situation, the buyers engage with the salespeople only when they are ready.

Adapt to the Changes

Every company now needs the help of a digital marketing agency to take up the job of marketing and promotions. With drastic changes in the buying process, businesses have been forced to change and adapt to these changes. You need to make strategic buying decisions and use marketing to match the all new buying techniques. The changes in marketing have also brought  some new opportunities.

Buyers have now started to become more knowledgeable. As such, marketing has turned out to be lesser of a single sided endeavour. The customers now place a whole lot of emphasis on building good relations with companies. This has led to the two most important concepts in marketing – Responsiveness and Personalization. Marketing now has to be become more of a dynamic creature that could incorporate all kinds of technologies to help efficient communication between the business and the buyer.

Read Also: 6 Benefits of Digital Marketing for Small Businesses

Content Marketing

It has been found that about 25% of all the marketing dollars in the US are now spent on custom and branded content. This is a great step with the fact that content marketing had just started baby steps one decade ago. With the advancements in this field, the demand for a good and efficient digital marketing agency has increased considerably.

These days, organizations are investing heavily on digital content and marketing. From white papers to custom videos, there are numerous options in front of you. This is a field that is changing rapidly. Every company is now used to send visually stimulating emails about the various deals and offer, and also has its own blog. If you do not put in much effort into your organization’s online content management, you are sure to be in for a loss.

Expectations for 2016

Based on the latest trends and changes in the market, here are a few ways in which the market could be expected to change in the year 2016. A look at these points would help your organization go a long way ahead:

  1. SEO will move way ahead from being just Search Engines 

It is not always possible to find everything you search for on the usual search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Bing. There are over 30 trillion pages on the web, and no matter how much the algorithms improve, accommodating all of them to show you the best results is not always accurately possible. You do not always get what you want.

The consumers these days have become more social as far as purchases are concerned. It is seen that about 88% of the consumers decide on a purchase based on comments and reviews. They rely on others’ experiences before buying. As such, you can see an increased search for products on YouTube and Pinterest.

The brands that are sharp and smart enough will start the move from pure search engine based efforts to social media networks. They will invest both time and money into making their mark in social media. Building strategies for more social and interactive ways to get your customers is advised.

  1. Competition will become even more Fierce

At the current stage, content marketing is the second largest component of digital marketing budgets. It falls just behind mobile marketing, which includes optimizing websites for the mobile version. The amount spent on content creation and management is tremendous for SMBs and enterprises. For extremely talented content makers who have a good track record, the competition is really high.

This is some unfortunate news for beginners and amateurs. For individuals who have niche specialities and can drive really good results, things will get worse. In the coming year, the following competencies could turn out to be the most sought after by the content departments in organizations:

  • Visual email marketing specialists
  • Workflow content specialists
  • Data-driven content creators
  • Sales/case study experts

The shortage of entry-level creators would never turn out to be a problem now. Individuals who have high creativity and knowledge of technology would be in greater demand.

  1. Touch screen/Interactive Content will see a Rise

Mobile optimization is of utmost importance in this era of smartphones and other gadgets. Every digital marketer could understand how important it is to keep up with the rising demand for mobile optimization of all websites and content. Using the tablet or smartphone to perform the various actions online will only increase your prospects for the better. Here are a few actions that you need to focus on:

  • Listen to music and watch videos
  • Read and write text messages and emails
  • Research and navigate local business listings
  • Use the various social media networks
  • Consume news, entertainment, or other types of content that are relevant professionally
  • Use the different apps or media to send messages to friends, family, and colleagues
  • Research products and make purchases online
  • Consume or complete product reviews

Making your website mobile responsive is very important. It must be designed such that it appears well on any kind of screen size. Creating content that is optimized specifically for touch screens is the main aim of the sharpest digital marketers.

Most people are likely to prefer to shop on a mobile app rather than taking pains to surf on the mobile website in the Smartphone. In every aspect, the mobile app is well optimised and comfortable. Creating mobile apps is now much easier for organizations, even if they have on-staff mobile developers for the different smartphone platforms.

In case you need time to optimise your concept of a branded app and create the related content, you could delay the release of your app. As such, you could think of the following ideas for creating mobile-only content:

  • Discounts codes, deals, or coupons specifically for smartphones
  • Emails or landing pages that are mobile-only
  • Social media content designed for smaller screens
  1. Budgetary Control will Change

Till now, budgetary control has always rested in the hands of CFOs and sometimes the CIOs. As per predictions, this practice will slightly change and the control of budget will shift to the CMOs.

Extreme flexibility is required for good and proper content. “Agile SEO” and “Agile Inbound Marketing” have started to become buzzwords. The brands that are able to pivot, respond, and also create proper and relevant work in real time will turn out to the best content brands in the world.

For content marketing teams, the traditional budgetary approval processes could never work out. Navigating through the usual processes like filling out forms and waiting for signatures from the management are difficult and time consuming, especially in an agile environment. As such, the average CMO will need to have much more control over the budget and monetary autonomy than before. Companies that have a strong leadership and strategic marketers will surely get benefits by following this step.

  1. Bigger Digital Content

Recently, the CMO Council’s Annual Survey has revealed that digital marketing will soon overtake television ads. Though expected by the year 2018, the world has slowly started to move in that direction. This is exciting news for all digital marketing companies given the fact that creating television ads is actually so expensive and time consuming. You need to have a good budget set up if you want a great commercial.

Enterprise organizations would soon shift from expensive TV commercials to strategies involving web marketing. The quality of the content created exclusively for mobile devices, tablets, and computers will increase considerably. This will offer high-quality games and apps, amazing web interfaces, and an exciting experience online. With fewer television commercials and better content for the web, the consumers are sure to be happy.

Recommended Read: What Is Content Curation? How Is It Relevant To Digital Marketing

  1. Virtual Reality

A number of virtual reality devices are set to release in the coming years. This will increase the emphasis on virtual reality especially for applications like video games and others used on a general basis. The Oculus Rift is the most hyped device based on Virtual Reality which is slated for release by the first quarter of 2016. An entirely new medium of online advertising will open up with these devices storming the market. Integration to the popular social media platforms, the video channels, and even messaging services will be an additional feature.

  1. Wearable Technology and the Internet of Things

Wearable Smart Devices will start getting more focus by the year 2016. The Apple Watch was unveiled in 2015 as the first generation smart watch. Come next year, we could expect a lot more smart watches and other wearable technology in the market to change the face of marketing completely. This will immensely blur the line between online marketing and real marketing.

The above trends are the most significant ones among the many that would make an impact in the year 2016. The way these trends will manifest and how they will impact the customer-client relation is something that you will have to wait and watch. Since most of them are driven by customer adoption, you could place a safe bet on trying them out to see positive results.

Video Marketing and Its Impact On Your Business

 

When it comes to digital or online marketing, the use of videos is gaining in popularity. The reason for this is the impact they provide. It is far greater than mere words as text and even static images. Research by top digital marketing agencies says that on Facebook, videos are clicked more often than mere pictures or text. And we know that Facebook‘s move to auto play videos is only going to increase video viewership.

Sharing of videos through social media has become the recent trend and statistics has shown that sharing of videos is 267% more when compared to posts.

Recommended Read: Video Content Marketing Trends 2015

Why Videos?

What videos have achieved is not a big secret, but what has led to this boom in video marketing is something to be analyzed. So, what is so special about videos?

  • The engagement power of a video is very high. While a reader may leave a post mid way, a video is capable of holding him onto his seat, simply because it has the capability to tell a story.
  • A video can easily convey an emotion to the viewer when compared to a reading an article or any other content.
  • Time is an important factor. A thousand words article may take some time to read, whereas the same article can be explained elaborately through a video.  1.8 Million Words = 1 minute video is something to keep in mind.
  • An average user of the internet sees 32.2 videos in a month and 16 minutes and 49 sec is the time he spends on watching online videos in a month.
  • A 2010 survey showed that the advent of videos increased the click through rate by 96%.
  • Moreover videos can also increase brand association by up to 139%.

How to Make Videos that Can Make an Impact?

While it is true that videos can make the impact that can push your products online, one should be really careful about the videos that they make. A bad video can be as viral as a good one. If not made properly, a video can do more damage to your business and you may not even realize it. So how to make videos that can boost your business?

  • Knowing what the audience wants is the key. When marketing a product online using a video, it should target the audience to whom the product or service is intended for. The viewer should easily relate to the video and understand what it is.
  • What is the product, how it works, how it helps the user, how can the viewer get the product, are the common question that the video must answer.
  • Remember, the idea of making a video is to free the viewer from reading a lengthy description page and hence save his time. Therefore making a 5 minute video can be suicide. The video should be short and simple.
  • Videos that are 15 sec or shorter are shared 37% or more than those between 30 sec to 1 minute.
  • The video should be engaging right from the beginning. If not, viewers may choose to skip them midway. 8 seconds is the amount of time within which the video must grab the attention of the viewer. VisibleMeasures, a popular consumer behaviour research team found in their research that 20% of viewers click away after 8 sec or fewer.
  • The video must be visually appealing to the audience and there should be clarity in the idea presented.
  • It was also found that 16% of YouTube videos that are liked or shared are on Tuesdays between 11 am and 1 pm. Hence, care should be given about when and where to post a video.

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The importance of videos is clear. But one should also keep in mind that video alone cannot help boost your product or services. Giving importance only to videos may also affect your online marketing strategies.

When combining videos with full page ads, it can boost engagement by up to 22% as compared to using them individually. It is noted that while 80% of the visitors go for videos, the remaining 20% prefers text. Even though it is a smaller percentage, it is an important one. A comprehensive technique is vital for online marketing.

8 Reasons Blogging Is Vital For Your Digital Presence

 

In the current internet based world, your service or product needs great online presence to reach the desired heights. It will help bring large number, of traffic to your site and stand out among your competitors.

To improve the online presence of your business, you can seek search engine optimization. SEO is highly effective in bringing your business in front of the whole world. Blogging is a vital part of an SEO strategy.

Reasons Why Blogging Is Essential For Your Digital Presence:

Higher Ranking In SERP – Making use of blog in a regular basis is a better way of adding relevant content in your site. These blogs play an important role as they are useful to your customers. It is one of the best ways to increase your search engine ranking.

Your website gets one more indexed page every time you write a new blog, increasing your chances of a higher ranking in SERP (search engine results page). Blogging can increase your web page indexing by 434%. Linked posts will get Google to index your website for high-quality keywords as well.

Read Also: 6 Essential Steps to a Successful Blog Post

Social Media Presence – Blogging also helps you to get social media presence as people can share these blogs on Social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and many more. This results in getting new, audience to your business. If you have a blog for your website, then you don’t have to ask your social media manager to come up with new content for your brand on a frequent basis.

More Inbound Links – Blogging helps to generate 97% more inbound links. If you share relevant and quality posts, then many people will link to your blog. This will result in generating traffic to your business. Quality inbound links is another factor that can influence search engines positively.

Helps To Bring Traffic – With regular posting, your blog will generate traffic to your site on a large scale. Thus, they will come to know about your brand. In time, brand, trust would grow manifold.

Convert Traffic Into Leads – You will get more sales and high-quality traffic when people find your blog through Google. When you get such traffic, it will be easy for you to convert them to leads with strategic placements of CTAs (call to actions) placed at right places in the blog.

Builds Trust and Reputation – Blogs are where you begin to influence, persuade and move your prospects to act. It’s where they begin to know, like and trust you. Reading about genuine information will make them come back to your website and look for more relevant topics. This builds trust in their mind, leading to better reputation for your website.

Read Also: SEO  Two Secret Ingredients for SEO Success 

Create Conversations – Keeping your audience engaged is always a good way to build your brand. Blogs create two-way conversations with prospects, customers, and industry peers. It strengthens interaction, comments and feedback.

Knowing Your Audience Better – Blog analytics enables you to track readers, popular topics, click-through, share and comments. By analyzing such data, you will be able to learn more about your audience. Knowledge thus gained can be utilized for furthering marketing strategies.

The earlier you start blogging, the faster your business will obtain its benefits – and don’t forget to set a goal. If you think there are more benefits to blogging, please share with us in the comment section.

Why Your Website’s Design Is Too Important To Be Left To Web Designers

 

Your company website looks outdated, whereas rival websites are looking fantastic. So you hire a designer or a designing agency to give your company’s website a new start.

But does a believable, compelling website design really matter?

Yes, it does. But, the important thing is that it should not be just good looking. It should also be user and search engine friendly. Your best bet is a digital marketing agency, unless you yourself are a digital marketing expert.

The following is a list of 5 key components, which an online marketing agency keeps in mind while designing a website:

Navigation

The navigation of a website is very important as it can make or break a website. It is especially true for websites with several pages. Website navigation normally includes a list of labels or navigation bar which organizes its pages for easy access. Web designers sometimes get carried away with fancy typefaces and designs while designing navigation. Good navigation must be simple to find and understand, making for quick and easy travel through the entire website.

Read Also: Design 2015: Changing Trends In Web Design

Brand Consistency

If your firm has a logo which is being used often in print materials (i.e. Pamphlets, business cards, letterheads, etc.), the logo/brand colors, logo, brand messaging and imagery utilized in print should be carried over into the website design.

It is significant for your clients to be capable enough to identify your brand in all forms of communication so that they can associate your promise and brand position with your business.

When the visual communication gets changed to a brand, it can make the clientele feel uncomfortable, which leads them to make a negative association with your firm. At the same time, a smart digital marketing agency will be able to enhance your relationship with the customer through clever usage of branding elements.

Reading Patterns and SEO

Many folks are comfortable in reading the whole website the same way they read a book. Web designers keep this in mind while designing a website. Most of the designers make sure to place the vital info on the upper left-hand column. This will aid you to get the message worldwide more efficient from the visitors who could be potential or current clientele.

Recommended Read: 6 Benefits of Digital Marketing for Small Businesses

Content

The content in your website is essential. Mainly because it communicates your company’s brand promise and brand position directly to your customers. There are other very essential elements which are taken into consideration when a copywriter writes the content and the designer designs the corresponding visual environment related to the content.

Trust

Making and maintaining trust amid your clientele is really essential, but it will not happen till you really get to know about them and their values. Marketing methods can help you find more about your probable customer’s requires.

Website design is much more than a fancy, eye-candy layout. It is an ideal way to make a user-friendly environment where folks come for necessary tips. A properly designed and managed website can see clients continuously returning to your website and doing business with your firm.

6 Benefits of Digital Marketing for Small Businesses

 

Today’s competitive world demands digital marketing for growth and establishment. Digital marketing agencies elevate communication and association of your brand with targeted clients to a higher level. Through social networking sites, instant messaging and mobile applications, it escorts your business to the next level. If you are a business holder, deciding on a marketing strategy can be confusing. Most companies lack in resources to deal with the diverse digital channels that are available today. Digital marketing agencies can rescue you during such situations and help prioritize the channels to be focused.

Recommended Read: 6 Essential Steps to a Successful Blog Post

Already excited over the idea of opening a digital marketing plan? Here are 6 benefits of Digital Marketing:

Digital Marketing Connects you with Online Customers

Gone are the days when people explore pages and pages for information. 80% of consumers now utilize internet for better and handy access of information. Business owners can achieve targeted customers and connect to them easily with online marketing.

Save Money with Online Marketing

Companies with very limited resources can generate desirable outcomes with minimum expense. It’s significant for any small business owner to lay down reasonable goals. But, keep in mind that the more attempts you make to attract social followers, the better your results would be.

Higher Conversion Rates Possible through Digital Marketing

Digital marketing opens the doorway to success by helping you reach out to more targeted customers. It enables to converse directly with the customers. Choose at least three social media sites and start discussing with them. Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus are good options to start with. You can get suggestions from customers and execute them in a way that giant companies can’t.

Recommended Read: 10 E-mail Marketing Hacks That Every Marketer Should Know

Enable Real-Time Customer Service

Online marketing offers great impact on the success of your business by providing a one to one chat with customers. Business owners instantly get to know customer response and experience can increase sales through personalised offers. It also helps in maintaining and creating new, contented, customers.

Generate Higher Revenues

Usage of minimal cost and greater savings helps to reap the benefits of generating higher revenues. Big companies may be capable of spending a great deal on multimedia but your profit as a small business is having an individual touch to your endeavours. This moreover enables an opportunity to locate yourself as part of your community.

Digital Marketing Keeps You at Par with Competitors

With persistent transformations and fast-paced competition, how do you make sure your small business remains at par with already established ones? Being unique is the key here. Exceptional service quality and products permit you to position yourself along with bigger marketing giants.

So, do you think there are other benefits? If you do, please share with us in the comment section.

Role of SEO in Brand Awareness

Establishing a brand is difficult, but creating brand awareness and retaining it is even more difficult. With websites popping in everyday, there is a lot of competition and it becomes necessary to hold your ground, or else you will end up being one of those one-day wonder websites. Brand recognition plays a vital role when it comes to ranking.  When people recognize your website by name and search your website for niche products, then you gain advantage in search engine rankings. Higher the search engine rankings, the more credible you are in the eyes of the customers.

So, how do you go about making your presence felt? The answer would be – SEO.  Yes! SEO is the right way to take your brand to the height of online success. The common notion about SEO is that it is just about ranking keywords. But no, it is also about making your website easy for both search engine bots and users to understand.

Related: 5 SEO Factors That Are More Important Than Keywords

So, what is it that makes SEO an important method of creating brand awareness? Search engine robots are very sophisticated; however they do not decipher and understand a webpage as humans do. SEO steps in and helps the search engines understand what the web page is all about. So, you can use SEO to your advantage and boost your brands’ worth. SEO practices have evolved over the years along with the continuous change to search algorithms from Google. You have to keep updating and constantly improvising your SEO practices based on the preferences of online users. Here are a few SEO tips that you can work on to improve your brands’ visibility on search engines.

1. Run an SEO Audit on Your Website: Errors like 404 pages, broken links, redirects or sitemap errors can make your website lose its credibility. Therefore it is imperative to conduct regular SEO audits to fix such errors that might affect search engine rankings. You can make use of tools like Google Webmaster or just do manual investigation on your website to enhance the user interface.

2. Minor Changes Make a Major Difference:  You have to constantly keep updating the information on your website, or else it might be deemed as outdated and old. For instance, the year on the copyright notice on your website footer might seem like an inconsequential thing. It appears in the footer of every single page of your website. And most often, many do not update the year in the copyright notice; which in turn lets search engines think that your site is old and out of date. So, the simplest of SEO change can make a huge difference.

3. Switch to Mobile-Friendly:  With more and more people relying on mobile devices for online experiences, it becomes imperative to take your website or blog mobile-friendly. If your website is friendly to mobile users, Google will indicate your site to be mobile-friendly in the search results, giving you an upper hand.

4. Focused Content: With the online market exploding with tons of information, you have to rise above the clutter to capture your customers’ interest. The best way to do this is to make your content credible. Reliable references or outbound links are a great way to give credibility to your content. When you are passing juicy links to relevant and ranking sites, you are indirectly giving signals to search engines that your site is relevant to them. This increases your SEO value.

5. Give Importance to Images: Engaging content doesn’t mean just text. Relevant and engaging images play a vital role too. Make sure any image you use on your webpage or blog page is complete with the right title tags, meta descriptions and ALT texts. Such relevant images will not only make your page interesting to view and read, but will also decrease the bounce rate.

6. Approach Keywords Differently: Instead of just being a robot and sticking to exact keyword matches, think of meaningful words that will still convey the same meaning. Use long-tail keywords; keywords that are geographical location oriented or those that describe the current period of time. These tactics will help you reach your target audiences with ease.

Read: Two Secret Ingredients for SEO Success

Why Mobile Marketing Is Going to Be the Next Big Thing

 

Look around you. Can you spot anyone without his phone? You can't. Such is the reach of mobile phones in our lifestyles. When one wants to connect, share, learn, buy, he reaches for his phone out of habit. So the best way to reach massive customer base, is through their little boxes of technology. People prefer smart phones over their desktops/laptops. To know why mobile marketing is going to boom, keep reading.

Accessibility

With lighter weight, high efficiency, very attractive and user friendly, mobile phones can be accessed by anyone at anytime and anywhere. With faster internet connections, it's a tiny world in itself. Everyday a superior phone gets released. Mobile phones can serve anyone who knows how to use it. From ticket booking to developing a business, there is a mobile app for anything and everything.

Immediate

Instant communication plays a vital role in the popularity of mobile devices. A retailer can connect with his customer over a video call. A consumer can contact customer support with very few texts. You can open a store in a matter of minutes with the help of a digital marketing agency. The mobile world provides the instant gratification everyone yearns for. Learning anything is instantaneous.

Effective

Mobile marketing is one of the most effective strategies. It highly cuts down the manual labour and thus reducing the wages. Digital marketing agency can reach the target and gets the reaction for its services immediately. It saves lots of time and effort. Multi screening encourages people to use multiple devices like TV, Laptops, and mobile phones simultaneously. The TV tags everything to their social media, which brings more traffic to their digital presence. It results in more revenue gain.

Consumption

This is the age of consumption. People see, they like and they consume. Consumption equals commercial opportunities. The more we consume, the more products are available, the more online businesses are founded. With the speed a product reaches customers, it's no wonder e-commerce is booming. It gives the option of buying without even leaving their homes. Strolling through a virtual store is much more comfortable than going through the whole physical store. Consumers can filter the products to their needs and buy. Hassle-free payments, well-tracked shipment, Mobile marketing is a way of life.

Connection

Everything connected to mobile marketing feels personalised. Customers feel exclusive, at ease when they buy from their phones. They feel confident in buying any product as they don't need to owe anyone an explanation. It's a pure 'get whatever you want' strategy. So, the customers feel good when they buy online. They have a sense of control and connection. When the digital marketing agencies put in some effort to send their customers personalised messages and free gifts, they end up with brand loyal customers. There are no gatekeepers between the buyers and sellers. The space to receive feedback in real time from consumers is a huge advantage for digital stores.

Relevance

Mobile marketing provides time and location relevance to businesses. These help it to narrow down its target and save resources. This relevance factor improves the quality of interaction between a digital marketing agency and customers. It sells the idea faster with the help of social media.

No matter what new gadget comes out, anything can be integrated and adapted to mobile phones. With millions of ways to reach the target, Mobile marketing is here to stay!

Online Video: The Future of Content Marketing

 

We live in a world of instant gratification. With people not even having time for their breakfast, nobody likes to sit and read page long stories and marketing content. They much prefer to see it rather than read it. They say one must have be futuristic to run successful online business. When that's the case, online video content marketing is the future that spreads like wildfire in the present.

Accessibility

With our hands permanently glued to our mobile phones, we at least see one video per day. We can't say the same for written media. All the consumer has to do is click the link and see your idea. It saves lot of time for people on both sides. There are lot of YouTube channels that regularly drive million views within a matter of hours. People prefer seeing people rather than reading blogs.

Attractive

The main advantage of video marketing by a digital marketing agency over other marketing strategies is it's very attractive. When we add human touch to the content, it engages the viewer. Emotional strategy is always better than intellectual strategy. Say you are selling a dog food product. You write a blog about it with a healthy and playful dog photo. You also release a video ad for the product on Youtube, showing the dog eating your food and playing around in a ground. Which you think would have attracted the customers?

Size

You can make the customer understand your idea better with a twenty second video instead of writing a five page long article. It avoids any confusion the customers may have about your product as they see it in a real situation. It provides transparency between a business designed by a digital marketing agency and its target.

Budget-friendly

There is a false notion that making a video for business is expensive. But, it is not. You yourself can make a simple video with an amateur camera. Idea is money, not the gadget. If we take YouTube, most of the videos there are shot at home with personal cameras. Still they work. Why? The content. A six-second vine by a digital marketing agency can sell idea.

Curiosity

With small teasers before your product release, you can entice the audience. The more curious they are, that much likely they are to buy your products. Once you deliver your products, trust is built with your customers. This can never be possible with any other marketing.

Instant

The most important feature of online video marketing is that it’s instant. You can shoot a video and upload it instantly. The customers can see it and give the feedback instantly. Once you know the reaction, you can improvise the product if necessary. This creates transparency and cuts down the cost drastically.

Variety

The promotional videos by a digital marketing agency need not be boring. With the types of video formats available, you can do anything with online video marketing. You can release

  • video testimonials of your customers to build confidence,
  • show product demos in real time,
  • instructional videos about how to use your products,
  • interviews with the business heads,
  • Q&A sessions,
  • Pop culture stars endorsing your products, etc.

When you are conceptualising your idea, make sure it’s relevant to your customer. Subtle placement of your product in a brilliant video is more effective than exaggerating. Do not hint on any stereotypes or insults on a particular group of people.

With million dollar businesses happening every second through little screens, it’s obvious who’s the youngest online marketing superstar is. Online videos, of course!