Month: December 2021

Google search
MartechSEO

How Small Businesses Can Make it to the Top of Google

How do you search for a business?

You will likely ask someone you know or Google it!

Reports depict around 97 percent of consumers learn more about a local business online. Out of these, 72 percent of consumers visit a store within five miles.

That’s how powerful the largest search engine, Google, is. 

If you are an SMB owner, you would already know the immense competition on Google. 

Not to mention, there are over 212.98 million SMEs worldwide. 

So, even if you have quality products, your business might be getting overlooked due to the well-established enterprises nearby dominating the top SERPs.

In this post, we have shared the best strategies that’ll help SMBs reach the top of Google rankings and enhance their conversions and ROI.

1. Create a Google Search Console Account to Identify Your Website SEO Health 

Google Search Console or GSC is a free-to-use SEO toolkit offered by Google. 

With GSC, you get free access to crucial SEO KPIs like the following and more.

  • The total number of organic clicks.
  • Impressions your website is getting on Google.
  • Keywords that users are searching for to search your business. 

So, if you don’t have a GSC account, add it to your priority list. 

All you need to do is sign in to GSC using your Google account. Post that, enter your website’s domain name and verify it. 

The process is quick and doesn’t take more than a few minutes. 

2. Perform In-Depth Keyword Research for Your Niche 

Keywords
Word “keywords” is written on the wooden cubes

Keywords can improve your SEO game in no time. 

Choose keywords that are relevant to your product offerings.

To find the best keywords for your niche, you can use the GSC tool. Besides, there are plenty of keyword research tools available in the market like – Ubersuggest, Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, and Google Keyword Planner

Here’s a screenshot that depicts how Ubersuggest offers crucial keyword information such as its search volume, SEO difficulty, cost per click, and more.

Ubersuggest
Image credits to @Ubersuggest

Implementing such a keyword tool will help you optimize website content with keywords that appeal to your target audience.

3. Write Relevant and Useful Content for Target Audience

Google has long stated that content is a vital ranking factor.

To ensure your website gains visibility, write quality content that’s relevant and informative.

It must stay true to Google’s E-A-T ratings – Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness. This practice will add value to the content, helping you reach the top of SERPs.

4. Open Google My Business Account to Get Discovered in Local Searches

Google Local Pack displays the top three businesses along with their details. 

Google My Business (GMB) account increases your chances to appear in the Local Pack. It can help your business gain better visibility in local SERPs. Check out this insightful infographic by Ronkot for detailed information on local SEO. 

Local SEO Checklist

To set up your GMB account, add the following details.

  • Business location
  • Services/Offerings
  • Operational Hours
  • Phone Number and Images

5. Ask Your Customers for Google Reviews and Respond to Them 

Google reviews can affect your business image. 

While searching for any business, customers also check the Google reviews.

Hence, you must ask your customers to leave feedback on Google.

Thank your customers for leaving a response. Also, don’t ignore negative reviews. Make sure you hear out what the customer has to say and respond with a clear solution to their problems. Finally, thank them for giving you an opportunity to serve them. 

Responding to reviews, negative, positive, or neutral, will send a message that you care for customers, thereby strengthening your GMB presence and local rankings. 

Conclusion

The strategies shared in this post have great potential to offer better organic traffic and visibility to SMBs. So, go ahead and implement them to hit the top results in Google rankings!

Computer
DevelopmentMartechProducts

Five Ways to Learn More About Tech

Are you in the technology business? Do you simply want to learn more about technology to improve a business that doesn’t involve tech directly? Whatever you are doing, learning about technology, engineering, and mathematics is always helpful. It can really supplement your overall knowledge and open the door to new opportunities. Technology is the future of our society. It is changing the way we live and augmenting modern life. Below are five ways you can learn more about technology.

Learn about Computer Programming

When it comes to computer programming, you can learn a lot on your own. You don’t need to go to college to learn how to program. First, think about what you are doing and how knowing a little bit about programming will help you grow and improve. You can take an online course, read up on blogs, and practice coding and programming at your home. Some people don’t need to know how to program, but it will facilitate your life if you are working in the business of technology.

Take Online Math Courses

If you are like a lot of people in the United States, you didn’t get a great education in mathematics. When you are in technology or are trying to get into the business of it, you should know more about math. There are plenty of options for learning mathematics. Taking a linear algebra online course will supplement your knowledge on the subject. Whether you’re a physicist, an engineer, or a technologist, knowing math is pivotal. Even if it doesn’t directly apply to what you are doing, taking online math courses will facilitate the process of learning more about technology.

Work with Engineers

Technology takes a lot of engineering. If you aren’t trained in the field, you should work with engineers and learn from them. It’s imperative to learn more about engineering if you want to learn about technology. There are all kinds of sectors in engineering. Employ engineers, network with them, and ask them questions. If you’re an engineer yourself, you know that it’s invaluable to gain knowledge from engineers in other areas of the field. Whether you’re trying to become a huge technology company or are specializing in a niche, working with engineers is very important.

What About Marketing?

Technology and marketing are colliding, converging. Marketing is no longer simply tangible; it is increasingly digital. Search engine optimization (SEO) is becoming more and more vital in the age of digital marketing. SEO is the process of creating content and using metadata to land web pages as high up on search engines like Google and Bing as possible. 

By using keywords, hyperlinks, and engaging copy, companies of all kinds can inform their customers, direct them to contact and purchase hyperlinks and use keywords to be seen when people type them in on search engines. If you are in tech, you should use it to learn more about who is successful and why. SEO provides education in all that is technology marketing. It will teach you a lot.

Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Network
Schematic display of the network

Finally, if technology is our culture, machine learning and AI are at the forefront of it. The ability for machines to teach themselves new things without humans is incredibly valuable. Can they automate on their own to produce results and find new solutions to problems? Your whole company and outlook on tech can be changed by this. When you are interested in tech and know a lot about it, the final frontier is AI and machine learning. If you learn about these subjects, you will be able to create success. A good place to start? AI writing software and apps that can make your life easier. 

Technology is evolving. Life is changing. Things are moving. Whatever you are interested in and whatever you do for work, learning about technology will enable you to get more done. Whether you want to create a game-changing tech business or want to use tech more effectively in your non-tech company, doing your best to learn more about it will do you a lot of good. What are you waiting for? If you need to learn more about technology, it’s time to get started. It is the future of modernity and, as they say, the future is now. The longer you wait, the more of an uphill climb it will be. 

Social media
MartechSaaS

5 Examples of Progressive Web Apps

Progressive web apps are increasingly finding favor with companies globally. It allows companies to engage better with their clients.

You may ask, what is a Progressive web app?

These are websites that look and function like an app. They use the latest technology to offer the users’ app-like experiences right in their browsers.

To explain to you in detail how progressive web apps helped companies achieve their goals, I have listed some real-life examples here.

Top progressive web apps that achieved their goals 

Tinder 

The first choice of the millennials when they are looking for a dating app is Tinder. If you look at the structure of this app, you will find that its main focus is mobile users. 

Recently, this immensely popular online dating app decided to invest in a progressive web app to target new markets.

While building this app, one of their key goals was to maintain 1:1 feature parity with their existing native application. And if you look at their newly launched progressive web app, then you will find that they have succeeded in this task.

The key points of this app that make it a grand success include the following.

  • The size of this app is just 10% of the existing native app.
  • Short development cycle.
  • The number of users swipes and messaging increased.
  • The session time of the users also increased significantly. 

AliExpress 

AliExpress
The card is used while paying on the AliExpress

AliExpress is another example of how the progressive web app helped a company to significantly improve the users’ engagement online.

This hugely popular e-commerce website was struggling in its effort to offer a highly engaging web experience to its users. The company experimented with the concept of using its mobile website to attract non-app users to download their app – this experiment did not give them the desired results.

To rectify the situation, AliExpress looked at various types of web apps and then decided to create a cross-browser progressive web app.

This decision was a smash hit with the users and the overall performance of the website increased significantly.

To help you understand the level of success of the new progressive web app of AliExpress, you need to look at its key performance indicators.

  • The conversion rate increased dramatically by 104%.
  • The number of pages visited per session also doubled.
  • The number of time users spends per session also increased by 74%.

Pinterest 

Pinterest
Pinterest logo trademark is displayed on the tablet

Pinterest also chooses to go with Progressive Web Apps as it aligns well with its business goals and objectives.

The planners at Pinterest were stumped on how to offer highly engaging service to those users who were struggling with low bandwidth or have a limited data plan.

After analyzing the viewer’s activity on their mobile website, they discovered that only 1% of the new users either signed up or logged into their account.

To meet this challenge, they launched their progressive web app and were astounded by the results. Some of the important highlights of their progressive web app include the following.

  • A huge jump of 103% in active weekly users numbers YoY.
  • The session length also increased dramatically by 296%.
  • The rate of signup YoY also saw a gigantic jump of 843%. 

Starbucks 

Starbucks
Starbucks logo is stamped on the cup

Starbucks always believed in offering its customers a great experience and a good value for their money.

Therefore, with the rise of mobile users, they quickly identified the potential and decided to offer a highly engaging mobile-first experience to their users.

They decided to do this through their progressive web app and the engagement statistics of the app show that it was a big hit among the users.

Some of the points that would buttress my argument regarding the massive improvement Starbucks saw after investing in a progressive mobile app are as follows.

  • It offered the users ordering offline ordering options.
  • The performance of PWA was significantly faster than the legacy native app.
  • The users used the app from their home screen an average of four times a day.
  • The session time was more.

Twitter

Twitter
The Twitter logo trademark

Twitter is a hugely popular social media giant with a user base of several million.

Twitter from its early days focused on offering a mobile-first experience to its users. 

However, in the emerging market, they faced the problem of users with limited bandwidth as well as legacy mobile devices.

For them, progressive web apps offered an optimum solution of offering their new users in the emerging markets a solution that offers feature parity with their existing mobile app.

The result of this investment was dramatic, to say the least. Twitter saw an overall improvement in all performance indexes of their progressive web app some of which include the following.

  • The number of tweets sent increased by 75%.
  • The length of each session also increased by 65%.
  • The bounce rate was brought down by 20%.
  • The frequency of tweets by average users increased to 4 times a day.

Conclusion

The examples I have put together in this article show conclusively why companies all over the world are slowly switching over to the progressive web app.

Laptop
SEO

Top 10 Tips to Optimize Your Blog for Higher Ranking in Google

As more businesses are coming online, it has become important to rank in higher positions and outperform competitors. Regardless of the blog size and industry, it’s important to gain the maximum organic traffic and drive more sales through the content.  

If you are new to optimizing your blog for higher rankings, then we’ve covered it. Here are the top ten tips that you can follow to optimize your blog for better search rankings in Google. These tips are always used by top SEO Company in India

1. Do proper keywords research  

The first step in on-page optimization is to do proper research on the right keywords for your blog post. You can use a number of keyword research tools such as Google AdWords Keyword Planner, Semrush, and KWFinder, and more to find profitable and high-traffic keywords for your blog post. Once you have found the right keyword, make sure to place it in the title, meta description, h1 tag, and throughout the body of your article. 

2. Optimize your meta description 

The meta description is the short snippet that appears under the title in the search engine results pages. It’s important to include your main keyword in the meta description and make it compelling to entice users to click through to your blog post. Keep it between 150-160 characters long. 

3. Include images and videos  

Including images and videos in your blog posts can help you rank higher in Google SERPs. Images can help improve user engagement on your blog posts, while videos can help increase the time spent on your website. Make sure to use relevant keywords in the file name and alt text of your images, and add a transcript or closed captioning your videos. 

4. Add internal links  

Internal links are links from one page on your website to another page on your website. They are a great way to help Google crawl and index your website pages, and also help improve the user experience on your website. Make sure to add relevant internal links in your blog posts, and use anchor text that includes your main keyword. In addition, external links are links from your blog post to other websites. They are a great way to increase the authority of your blog post and help readers explore more content on the web. Make sure to use relevant and high-quality external links in your blog posts. 

5. Optimize your images for search engines  

Include a descriptive alt text and file name within the image code, not the image URL, for high-quality images on your website. This will help Google understand the context of the image. In addition, make sure that all of your images are properly formatted with no broken links or missing thumbnails. 

6. Reduce bounce rate  

The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your website after viewing only one page. It’s important to keep the bounce rate low by adding engaging content, such as images, videos, and internal links, to your blog posts. This will help keep users engaged on your website and increase the time spent on your website. 

7. Focus on URL optimization  

The URL of your webpage can affect its ranking in search engine results pages. It’s important to keep URLs and file names search-engine-friendly by adding relevant keywords, using hyphens instead of underscores, and not using special characters or capital letters. In addition, avoid using dates and special characters in your URLs. 

8. Optimize for voice search 

Google is increasingly using voice search as a way to find information online. In order to optimize your blog for voice search, you need to make sure that your content is relevant to the questions being asked by users. You can do this by adding FAQs and long-tail keywords to your blog posts. Search for common questions that the audience is searching for and add them to your FAQ sections for better voice search optimization. 

9. Write quality guest blogs  

Woman
A young woman is working on her laptop

Guest blogging is a great way to increase the authority of your blog and reach a new audience. When you write guest blogs for other websites, make sure to include links back to your website and include your main keyword in the anchor text. In addition, make sure that the website you’re writing for has a high-quality website with good SEO metrics. Pick such a topic that will add more value to the readers. 

10. Use social media actively 

Social media is a great way to increase your website’s authority and visibility. Make sure to share blog posts on all of your social media platforms and include links back to your blog post. In addition, create a Facebook page for your company or brand so that users can find you easily online. Encourage users to follow you on social media by including social sharing buttons on each blog post. The social media marketing services offered by Digital Marketing agencies indirectly help you to rank higher in Google. 

Wrapping up! 

Follow these easy tips to drive more traffic and improve the overall SEO performance of your blog. Whether you’ve recently started the blog or run it for a while, these tips will surely help. 

Hosting
SEO

Top 5 Web Hosting Hacks to Boost Your Website SEO

Web hosting plays an important role in improving the overall SEO performance of your website. Many beginners make the mistake of opting for cheap hosting that brings no benefit to your website in terms of SEO. There are several ways you can optimize your website hosting to boost SEO in no time. And most of SEO reseller use this technique.  

If you are new to improving search optimization results by optimizing web hosting, then we’ve got you covered. In this post, we will have a look at the top five web hosting hacks to boost SEO that you need to know. 

1. Go for a higher bandwidth 

A higher bandwidth allows the website to handle more traffic at any given time. It also ensures that your site can handle all the traffic spikes caused due to high search engine rankings. This, in turn, increases customer satisfaction and makes your SEO campaign successful over a period of time. When your website has higher bandwidth, you can be sure that the bounce rate will be minimum as the pages will open in no time. In addition, more traffic on your website means more conversion opportunities. 

Along with this, ensure the web hosting has the minimum downtime so that your website will never halt when customers are browsing it. The majority of the web hosting companies assure you 99.8% of uptime but do a little research before you opt for one to boost SEO. 

2. Use a dedicated IP address 

Using a dedicated IP address is one of the best web hosting hacks to boost SEO. When you use a shared IP address, chances are that your site’s rankings will be compromised as it can be marked as spam by Google and other search engines. In addition, using a shared IP for your website will affect load time performance as well. Go for managed WordPress hosting: 

Managed WordPress hosting is specifically designed for WordPress websites only and comes with many advantages over normal web hosting plans such as better security and optimization features. It also ensures that your hard work does not go down the drain due to poor server performance or resource-intensive plugins that interfere with the overall working of your website.  

3. Opt for cloud hosting 

Cloud hosting is the best web hosting hack to boost SEO as this form of hosting will allow you to scale your website easily and also improve its performance by taking care of any server issues. In addition, it ensures that your site can handle higher traffic and minimizes load time and page-loading issues.  

Cloud hosting is specifically designed to boost SEO by improving overall ranking factors such as bandwidth, security, etc., so adding this feature will further help in achieving better results for your campaign. The scalability advantage offered by cloud hosting is also one of the biggest benefits that you need to look for while opting for this web hosting type. Cloud hosting is relatively expensive compared to other ones but it’s all worth it as it gives you an edge. 

4. Hosting location matters 

If you are wondering how hosting location affects your website’s SEO, then let us put it this way. For instance, if your site is hosted in the US or UK, then it will be easier to rank the website for local searches as compared to non-English countries. Also, hosting location can have a big impact on the load time performance of your website. So, always try to buy hosting of the same country where your company is based as it will give you a direct advantage. 

Whether you are starting out or already running a business and looking to switch hosting, always opt for the same country option. It will bring in several SEO benefits as your website will load faster.  

5. Use a CDN 

Network
A schematic view of the network that is placed above the computer keyboard

A CDN or Content Delivery Network is one of the best web hosting hacks to boost SEO. It helps in minimizing latency and makes your website load faster than before. With a CDN, you can be sure that your site’s responsiveness will increase and the bounce rate reduces considerably. In addition, users spend more time on your website and look at more pages which means added opportunities for conversions. Ask your web hosting provider to integrate a CDN with your plan. 

If you run an e-commerce website, then it becomes even more important to use a CDN and ensure the resources load faster. On the other hand, even if you own an enterprise website or a personal brand website, using a CDN is a useful hosting hack to boost the overall SEO performance.  

Wrapping up! 

Boost your website’s SEO performance with these simple hosting hacks. If you don’t have a technical team then it’s better to hire for example a professional SEO Company Bangalore that will handle all these aspects. When you focus on these additional aspects along with your SEO strategies, you will see a drastic positive shift in SEO performance. 

About Author –  With over 13 years of experience as a leader in digital marketing, Mansi Rana is the Managing Director of EZ Rankings. Passionate about all things data; providing actionable business intelligence in digital, future tech; and venture bubbles categories for everyone, everywhere.

Wind Power
DevelopmentInsights

The Different Types of Renewable Energy and Why They’re Important

Researchers have been warning that if we don’t reduce emissions, our actions will have a permanent, irreversible impact on the environment. Fossil fuels commonly used worldwide are responsible for much of these emissions linked to rising temperatures.  

As companies and governments emphasize solving the climate crisis, demand for clean energy is on the rise. It’s estimated that renewable energy sources will account for 90% of the increase in the world’s total power capacity this year. Renewable energy sources provide a cleaner alternative to non-renewable sources like fossil fuels.  

Read on to learn about the different types of renewable energy and why they are beneficial.   

What Is Renewable Energy?  

Non-renewable energy comes from sources limited in capacity. They take such a long time to replenish that they are gone for good once we run out. Types of non-renewable energy include coal, oil, and natural gas.  

Renewable energy comes from Earth’s natural sources that are constantly replenishing, like wind and sunlight. These types of energy do much less harm to the environment than their non-renewable counterparts.  

Types of Renewable Energy  

Although we think of renewable energy as the power of the future, it has been around for centuries. But, recent advances in technology have once again put it at the forefront. The most common types of renewable energy sources include the following:  

Solar Power 

Solar power harnesses the limitless supply of sunlight and turns it into electricity and heat. Solar power uses photovoltaic cells to convert light into energy.  

Solar power has become accessible renewable energy in the consumer market as individuals can have solar panels installed on their homes from companies like Blue Raven Solar. Solar panels can provide clean energy to a single building or an entire neighborhood.  

Wind Power 

Wind power harnesses the wind to turn the blades on a turbine, and this motion then powers a generator to produce electricity. Wind turbines are often located in rural areas but are also placed offshore. Although wind power doesn’t generate any emissions, people do find the large turbines noisy and unsightly.  

Hydroelectric Power 

Hydroelectric power station
A hydroelectric power station is located in the natural environment

Hydroelectric power uses fast-moving water in rivers to turn a turbine and power a generator to produce electricity. Dams often have these turbines to make hydroelectric power. Although dams produce renewable energy, they aren’t considered clean energy because they divert natural waterways and negatively impact animals and humans.  

Geothermal Energy  

This type of renewable energy captures the heat released naturally by the Earth to heat water and bring it to the surface to turn turbines. To reduce its environmental impact, geothermal plants pump water back underground.  

Tidal Power 

Tidal power is a newer form of hydroelectric power that uses the force and motion of the tides to generate electricity. It is a reliable and relatively constant method of generating power. Energy is often collected in tidal barrages, which are like dams.  

Benefits of Renewable Energy  

Renewable energy sources aren’t all clean since they do produce some effects on the environment. But, many of these sources produce no emissions. As the world becomes more reliant, we can reduce the impact our emissions have on the climate.  

In addition to the environmental benefits, the growing renewable resource industry creates more jobs to develop and install renewable energy sources.  

Renewable Energy Is Here to Stay  

Renewable energy has sparked a revolution in the energy industry as the world attempts to solve the climate crisis. Rising demand has led to advancements in the industry. With so many types of renewable energy, we have many ways to change how we get our power.  

Are you looking to keep up with the latest renewable energy news? Check out our website for the latest technology news and trends. 

Stickers
Insights

Keeping Images Ready for Quick Sticker Printing

Stickers are a useful and effective marketing tool, but that’s only if you have them ready. There’s nothing worse than needing to bring 500 stickers to an event in two days, only to realize you never made the files or sent them to the printer. Getting same-day stickers from printers in the L.A. area is possible, especially if you follow these tips to get your images ready ahead of time.

Use SVG files

The problem with printing stickers quickly isn’t the actual printing process itself. Issues that cause delays usually stem from problems with the files themselves, and what is being printed. JPG and PNG files may work fine for your website or static prints, but using those same images in a sticker will usually require the image to be shrunk down to fit the style and size of your sticker sheet.

SVG image files ensure that your picture scales properly when it’s resized, so you don’t gain any unsightly pixels along the way. If you keep all your logos, art, or other images in SVG files, resizing and arranging them on a sheet or for a roll becomes a quick and easy job, getting your stickers ready for printing in no time.

Reimagine Your Images in CMYK

The default for most image-creating software is RGB (red, green, blue) for colors. RGB shows up best on computer screens, as that is how they filter all the other colors. But printers use four-color filters, CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black). If you’re in a rush and don’t think to change the settings, your stickers can print out looking very discolored as the machine tries to print on a different set of colors.

If you make sure your images are already set to CMYK to start, then you won’t have to worry about trying to remember to change them beforehand. It’s always best to keep two versions of each logo or art piece you have: one that’s in RGB and scaled to fit websites and other computer needs, and one that’s in CMYK and scalable to work for any printing need you may have. Just make sure you label them properly!

Know What You Want

Stickers
Stickers are representing the cats with three eyes as a way of statement of art freedom

The worst part about getting stickers ready for printing is deciding what kind of stickers you want. Do you want a roll of stickers that’s just your logo? Would you prefer a sticker sheet that’s a sample of all your art? Or maybe a sticker book that can be used for long car trips? If you’re looking to print something quickly, you’re best off getting a single roll of stickers or using a sticker sheet that is compact and uniform. Otherwise, you may spend too much time designing your stickers and not enough time printing them.

You can get your stickers printed the same day you need them. But to make sure they come out on time and look the way you want, keep your image files organized. By using SVG files set to CMYK, you’ll get the best stickers printed out each time, whenever you need them.