A favicon (pronounced “fave-icon”) is a small iconic image that represents a website in web browsers. If you take a look at the address bar of your browser right now, I’m sure you’ll see several favicons. Well-designed ones are styled to feature a logo, the first letter of the company name or simply an image that reflects the specifics of the website it represents. In the small chance that a website doesn’t have a favicon, the browser will display a generic browser symbol.Here are examples from famous brands:Which of these favicons do you recognise?While favicons may seem small and insignificant, having one can make a huge difference in terms of user experience and online branding. In this post, we’ll figure out where favicons come from, what kinds are used in modern browsers, and how to create one for your website.
Why is a favicon important for your brand?
Favicons attract user attention and boost brand awareness. If users visit a website with a memorable favicon a couple of times, they will then easily distinguish it from others in the future. Think about a famous brand you interact with daily—like Facebook or Instagram—you should be able to easily picture its favicon with your eyes closed. Again, If you‘re like me and tend to keep dozens of tabs open simultaneously—ultimately being unable to read their names—favicons are your best friends that make finding the website you need much easier.The favicons for Facebook and Twitter have look exactly like their respective logos. So, does it mean that all you need is to minimize your logo image and upload it onto your website? Let’s dive deep into all the technical details and talk about what it takes to create a favicon.
What type of image is a favicon?
Although most modern browsers will recognize PNG, GIF, and JPG formats for favicons, Internet Explorer currently does not. It is recommended to use the Microsoft ICO format, which works in all browsers.
What size should your favicon be?
Another good reason to use the ICO format is that it can contain multiple favicons of different sizes in one ICO file. It is best to have, at minimum, a 16×16 pixel version. I usually include 32×32 and 48×48 versions as well. That way, if users drag the bookmark to their desktop they will see a nicely scaled version of the icon instead of the 16×16 version stretched out. Google recommends going with the largest possible resolution of 192×192. At the moment, Google simply stretches existing low-resolution favicons when a bigger size is required. As a result, all of the images look blurry and take away from the user experience.
General tips to consider
So, if you don’t want to lose out on clicks, consider “upgrading” your site’s favicon. And here are some general guidelines you should stick to:
Use a square icon.
A favicon should represent only your brand and not contain inappropriate symbols (like swastikas) — otherwise, Google will not show it and will use the generic symbol instead.
Favicon file should be accessible to Google crawlers.
How to create a favicon
Although there are many ways to create favicons, the easiest is to use an online tool. Use an existing image of, for example, your logo and upload it to an online generator like a site heaalth checker. Once you download the generated favicon, all that’s left is to add it to your site.
How to link to your favicon
Now that you’ve created a nice little favicon, you need to tell web browsers and other applications where to find it. Adding this line to the <head> section of your HTML will ensure that your favicon will be found:The location of the favicon isn’t really important, as long as the href attribute is accurate. Most are, however, placed in the root directory (the directory that contains the homepage). Keep in mind that it is not necessary to have multiple instances of the same favicon on one website.If you add a favicon without linking to it within your HTML, you may notice that some browsers will still find and display it. This only occurs if the favicon is in the root directory. It isn’t good to rely on this method, so if you want to make sure that applications will see your favicon, <link> to it!
Conclusion
Favicons help websites stay afloat in the vast ocean of online resources, plus make them more attractive and professional in the eyes of the visitors.If you need any help with yours, turn to our website audit for help. Among other things, it can run a full technical check-up for your website that includes finding your favicon. Well, your favicon is a very small detail that can affect the public perception of your site and brand, their recognition and even the volume of traffic it gets from search, so don’t underestimate it. It’s worth every second that you invest in it.
If you have already audited your website and have walked here to understand how meta-description works, I’m here to help remove that confusion. This article will cover everything you need to know about the basics of meta- descriptions and what makes a perfect one. You’ll also learn why your site’s meta descriptions are so important, as well as the best length for your meta descriptions (especially taking into account Google’s changing policies) and some great meta description examples.
What is a meta tag?
A meta tag is an HTML element that provides information about a webpage for search engines and website visitors. Two elements must be placed as tags in the <head> section of an HTML document. These elements are:
Title tag
Meta description
We’ve already discussed title tags in a separate post, and now, let’s move straight into meta descriptions.
What is a meta description?
The meta description is the short paragraph of text placed in the HTML of a webpage that describes its content. This is also known as a snippet. The meta description appears under your page’s URL in Google’s organic search results. The meta description will often appear when people share your articles across other websites and social channels.
Where is meta description added?
You can add a meta description in the <head> section of your site’s HTML. It should look something like this:<head><meta name=”description” content=”Here is a precise description of my awesome webpage.”></head>Here are examples:If you use an SEOplug-in, that comes with a content management system, you can add a meta description to the ‘meta description’ section, and you can preview an example of how it will look in search engine results pages (SERPs):
Why is the meta description important?
Since meta descriptions appear with your title and URL on the results pages, they have the power to influence the decision of the searcher as to whether they want to click through on your content from search results or not. The more descriptive, attractive, and relevant the description, the more likely someone will click through. Research has shown that having your content focus keyword in the meta is a relevant signal for search engines to discover you.
How to write a perfect meta description?
A great meta-description will compel the reader to visit your website and read more. Here’s an example of what it usually looks like.
1. Keywords
Do make sure your most important keywords for the webpage show up in the meta description. Often search engines will highlight it in bold as a clue to where it finds the searcher’s query in your snippet.
2. Write legible, readable copy
This is essential. Keyword stuffing your meta description is bad and it doesn’t help the searcher, as well as robots, discover you well. They’ll assume your result leads to a spam or phishing website, so make sure your description reads like a normal, human-written sentence.
3. Treat it as an advert for your web page
Make it as compelling and as relevant as possible. The description MUST! match the content on the page, but you should also make it as appealing as possible. That is what we call SEO copywriting.
4. Length
Google cuts off the displayed description tag at about 150 characters but may index up to 185 characters. Other engines may index up to 250 characters, but will still only display about 150. Therefore, try to say what you’ve got to say in 150 characters or less, but feel free to use up to 180, and even up to 250 if you’re not concerned with the entire thing getting indexed by all the search engines. Aim for about 1-2 sentences (140-160 characters) long
5. Keyphrase
Use your primary keyphrase at the beginning of your description tag, giving it higher “keyword prominence”. Don’t overuse your keyphrase though, or it can be considered “webspam”. Higher than zero keyword prominence is good, but higher still is not always better.
6. Use natural-sounding language
Use proper grammar, and try to peak interest in the subject. Also, consider making an actual “offer” in your description tag. Remember, you want the reader to click your ad, but not just to record impression. Now let me ask you? how many times have you skipped over a search result because the two lines of text you see (the description tag) in the SERPS looked gibberish?
7. Do not duplicate meta descriptions
As with title tags, the meta descriptions must be written differently for every page. Google may penalize websites that indulge in mass duplicating of meta descriptions.
Examples of good meta descriptions
Since you only have 160 characters to work with, writing a great meta description takes more than just throwing a few words together. To help you get your creative juices flowing, here are some examples for your inspiration.
Helpful online tool for checking your meta descriptions
Below is a helpful tool that you can use to test your meta descriptions as you write them.SEO Analyzer— This tool analyses the health of a website. It will provide you with a list of issues that makes it easy to see where exactly a website is struggling, including missing and duplicate meta descriptions:
Conclusion
Remember, the primary reason for a perfect description tag is NOT so you can rank higher, (since Google, for example, is currently not using the description tag in their algorithm). The primary reason for a good description is to compel the reader to click on you, instead of the competitor.
Defining title tags rightly is very crucial for your business. The title tags in SEO are the title of your document to your most important types of readers; people and robots. The page title is used by search engine algorithms to decide the order when listing pages in search results. Title tags are shown in the browser’s title bar or in the page’s tab and are the most prominent and noticeable part of a SERP result. The contents of a page title are very important for search engine optimization (SEO). People need to know what they can expect to find on your page when they click the link.
What are Title Tags?
The <title> tag defines the title of the document.
Your title tag is the “headline” that people will see in the search results. It’s also one of the primary factors for the search engines in determining your ranking for a given search phrase, although that’s declining in importance.
In the HTML code of your web page, they should appear as:
<head><title> Your Title Goes Here </title></head>
These titles can appear in:
Search engine results
Social media posts
Unfurled chat messages
Browser tabs
Why are title tags important?
Defining title tags are important because they let readers know what information will be present when a user clicks on a page. They also function to determine the relevancy of the web page as a result of a search query. If your title tags do not appeal to Google, then they may change it to better suit their/user needs. If this happens, you can bet it most likely won’t be to your liking.
Tips to defining your title tags
Here are some tips and best practices to ensure your title tags are optimized for crawlers and readers alike.
Your wording
Stay away from all capital letters in your title tag as they’ll use up more character space than lower case letters will and like emails, it is considered improper. Instead of the title, “BEST SELLING SHOE SHOPS IN GHANA” use “Best Selling Shoe Shops In Ghana”.
Search engines will display about 50-60 characters of the title, so try not to have titles longer than that. Keep your titles shorter. This makes for a nice headline for the SERPS and prevents the title from being cut off in the mid-sentence. Google has not specifically come out and said that title tags should be this length; however, if your title is longer than 60 characters, you risk the chance of it becoming cut off in the middle.
Avoid stop words in your title tags such as A, And, But, So, On, Or, The, Was, With, etc. Sometimes it might not seem impossible to have a title tag without stop words, but if you try different combinations of the same title, you can find them.
Your creativity
Write the title in plain English, using proper grammar, make it easily readable, and not just stuff a jumble of keywords in there. As a headline, it should captivate the reader’s attention and motivate them to click. What do you think is more effective to draw in a customer” “SEO Ghana – Evans Stevens” or “SEO Ghana – Secrets to Boosting Your Online Presence”?
Put in your most relevant and desired keywords you want to be ranked in the title, but don’t overdo it. Google can easily recognize keyword stuffing and may change the title of your web page if it feels you’re just throwing different variations of a keyword into it.
Having action words in your title tags can help entice users to click through. Some examples of action words often used in titles are: Get, Take, Boost, Learn, Make.
Try to feature your brand at the end of the title if there’s space. If not, shorten your page title and make space. Having your brand featured can further convince users that the web page is reputable, trustworthy, and has solid information. By using your company name in the title tag, you’re possibly also wasting space that could otherwise be used for a secondary persuasive keyword or phrase. What do you want here? New customers or bragging rights? You decide!
Conclusion
Title tags play an extremely important role and the way you use them can impact your SEO significantly. Use all the SEO tools at your disposal wisely and ensure that you’re getting the most out of each SEO facet, no matter how small it seems.
Remember this is the headline for your search listing!
Many website owners don’t give their websites the needed care, and so they get astonished when things get bad. Rebuilding your website can be costly but this can be avoided by having simple tools to regularly check on your site. This will ensure that your website is competitive and up-to-date with changing trends in your field of work. You can use many free website tools to grow your business in Ghana. However, in this article, we shall talk about these 3 free website tools: SEO analyzer, keyword planner, and site health checker.
SEO Analyzer free website tool
SEO simply consists of multiple strategies, which have the end goal of improving your website’s position in search engines.The analyzer, a free website tool is used by businesses to improve their website’s ranking on search engines. With an SEO analyzer, you can spot issues on your site and get a full list of strategic actions you can take to fix them. SEO analyzer tells you what aspects of your SEO strategy are working and what isn’t working. You can utilize SEO analysis results to help you rank higher, expand your reach, and drive traffic.If you want to get more visitors to your site, Get a FREE report of your website here. If you want more search traffic, all you have to do is follow the website analysis report. It will give you a complete list of errors that are hindering you from achieving the top spot on Google. Our SEO Analysis tool doesn’t just point out errors but gives you step-by-step instructions on how to fix each of them. Once you make changes, you can re-run the report and check to see if you did it correctly.
Keyword planner free website tool
Are you familiar with Keyword Planner? Choosing the right keywords and phrases can get your promotions closer to the top of Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) and in front of the right clients. After all, to drive increased traffic, you need to know which keywords customers are using when looking for your site and the role these words play in SEO. If you don’t know how searchers are looking for your products or services, you are working blind. The right keywords planner is a tool that every search marketer needs to familiarize themselves with. The good news is that keyword research doesn’t need to be a daunting task. One of the best places to start to gain an insight into the search terms you need is free here. With this free digital checker, just start with a solid list of keywords, and a column or two of variables, and you’re good to go. This free tool sits at the core of your SEO or PPC toolset and helps to discover new keywords, and plan your Google Ads budget. If you need to find the right keywords for your business, it is a great place to start.
Site health checker free website tool
Often when we’re asked to build a website, the client expects it to work flawlessly forever. The truth is, it won’t. Websites break most of the time because they’re out-of-date, or some plug-ins just stopped working, or it’s taking time to load. With 2020 properly underway, it’s a good time to take a step back and assess the health of your website. While you’re unable to tell immediately if your website is performing at its best, there are a few regular checks that can help. We all know how important page speed is, slow site drive visitors and search engines will drop your ranking. On-site SEO should always be top of mind. As your website grows, remember that good on-site (or technical) SEO is the foundation for any successful SEO strategy. Also, having a responsive website is essential. In 2019, 80% of users used a mobile device to search the internet. Besides, your site in 2021 should be using several security measures such as an SSL security certificate (HTTPS). This is both for ranking and for customers to have confidence in your website’s security. If your website gets hacked, it will have a big impact on your brand. Check the health of your website for free by simply pasting the URL here, with no other characters, and wait for the magic to happen!
Conclusion
Regular analysis of your site with these free website tools will ensure your site always performs at its best. If you’ve found this analysis useful, you may even want to do it once a month. Constant small improvements are the most direct path to a high-performing website.
Email marketing is the oldest form of online marketing. It is the most direct and effective way of connecting with your leads, nurturing them and turning them into customers. Most digital marketers use email marketing to advertise special deals, highlight content or promote an event.Email marketing is one of the most popular and effective tools to help you boost sales online. In this article, we’ll share how email marketing can help your business grow and few tips to get you started.
What is email marketing?
Email marketing is a powerful digital marketing strategy used to promote products or services to prospects and customers. Effective email marketing can convert prospects into customers, and turn one-time buyers into loyal, raving fans. Using emails can also help your customers to become aware of your latest items or offers. Email marketing can play pivotal roles in lead generation, building relationships and also driving traffic to your blog, and social media.
How email started
Engineer Ray Tomlinson, the father of emails, in 1971 launched the world’s first email while in a windowless room in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The message was nothing special, a series of numbers and letters that looked more like a password than a message, but its significance was profound.The email was sent from one computer to another, travelling through a network of machines not unlike the internet we know today. Tomlinson also introduced the “@” symbol in email addresses to the world.In 1978, Gary Thuerk, a marketing manager for the now-defunct computer company Digital Equipment Corporation, sent out the first commercial and unsolicited mass e-mail promoting his firm’s computer products. Sent to hundreds of computers over ARPANET (a precursor to the Internet; see DARPA), Thuerk’s message immediately gave birth to email marketing. There were only a few hundred people on the list, but that was enough for Thuerk to claim the mantle, “Father of Spam.”Today, we’re inundated with email marketing campaigns, and spams, but there’s no denying the impact a well-crafted message can have on your customers.
Why is email marketing important?
You now know what email marketing is. Let’s talk about why email marketing is relevant for your business.Despite the rise of social media, and a hundred other forms of messaging, the traditional email format feels relatively old. However, it still remains one of the most powerful and effective way to nurture leads and boost customer loyalty. That’s why almost every social media platform requires you to have an email. The email list can yield dramatic rewards for business owners. According to Direct Marketing Association, email marketing on average sees a 4300 percent return on investment (ROI) for businesses in the US.
Importance of email marketing
1. Email is the #1 communication channel. You can go for a few days or weeks without checking social media like Facebook or Twitter, but most people use email every day, if not multiple times a day, so it’s safe to say that email marketing is good for business. At least 99% of consumers check their email daily. That can’t be said of any other communication channel.2. You own your list. On any social media platform, your account (along with all your fans and posts) could be suspended or deleted at any time, for any reason, without notice. However, you own your email list. No one can take those leads away from you.3. Email converts better. People who buy products marketed through email spend 138% more than those who do not receive email offers. In 2015, a study by the U.K.-based Direct Marketing Association (DMA) found that for every $1 spent, email has an average return on investment (ROI) of $38. That’s huge! The average order value of an email is at least three times higher than that of social media.4. Email marketing allows you to run A/B tests. With email marketing, you can run A/B tests of a subject line or call to action to identify the best performing message using email marketing software that can also be configured to easily send out emails.
How to get started with email marketing?
Email marketing is made up of several moving pieces, but that doesn’t mean it has to be complicated. Here’s how it breaks down:
Step 1: Establish your goals
But signing up to an email marketing tool and jumping to send your first email, it’s worth taking a minute to think about your goals and what you really want to achieve with email, as that will dictate the type of campaigns you send, who you target, the content you include, and how you measure success.
Step 2: Build your email list
Now that you have identified your goals and what you want to achieve from email marketing, it’s time to build your email list so you can start sending campaigns that those goals. There are a couple of different ways you can build your email list, but the right method depends on the goals you establish in Step 1.
First, create a branded opt-in pop-up form for your website
Pop-up forms provide visitors with a quick, convenient way to share contact information and subscribe to your list while they’re browsing your site, making them a powerful tool for audience growth.
Create marketing campaigns to find your people with Facebook ads
Facebook ads can help you reach new audiences and find new customers by targeting people who’re similar to your existing contacts. But Facebook ads aren’t just used for selling stuff, but also to generate leads by collecting emails through ads that link to your landing pages with opt-in forms. In just a few steps, you can create an ad that drives people to your site so they can quickly and easily sign up for your email list.
Step 3: Select the type of campaigns you want to send
There are several different types of email campaigns you can send to subscribers, and the type you choose really depends on the goals you established in Step 1. The campaigns could be newsletters (about one main topic of interest), Marketing Offer (offering discounts and special promotions), announcement (announcing a new product, feature, or service), and event invitation.
Step 4: Create your first campaign
Now that you’ve decided on your goals, built a bit of an audience and selected the type of campaign you’re going to send, it’s time to start building your email. Find tips to making the most of your email marketing campaigns in the next heading.
Step 5: Measuring your success
After publishing your email campaign, it is now time to keep track of your progress and learn exactly how many new people join your email list. You can track the success of your email marketing campaigns: using tools like Google Analytics.
Email Marketing Strategies
Effective email marketing takes effort. Here are a few strategies for making the most of your email marketing campaigns:
Send relevant emails
Once someone has trusted you with their email address, don’t abuse that trust. Inundating your audience’s inbox with emails will cause them to lose interest or unsubscribe entirely. Focus on sending them relevant, engaging messages about the stuff they like, and they’ll be loyal for a long time to come.
Attract your subscribers
Grow your email list, you need to attract people with a compelling offer. You need a lead magnet, something awesome that you give away for free in exchange for an email address. It doesn’t have to cost you anything to create. Some popular lead magnet examples are: eBooks, resources or consultation.
Seek permission
Probably the most obvious problem is when your email gets sent to a subscriber’s spam folder. Before you can email anyone, you need their permission.
No purchased emails
While buying email lists may sound like a great shortcut, it isn’t. And we do not recommend it. We also do not recommend adding emails from people’s business cards that you collected at seminars or workshops unless you have their permission. People who don’t opt-in specifically for your email list are not interested in your services. Emailing them, therefore, is a complete waste of your resources.
Consistency
it’s important to email your subscribers consistently, so your list doesn’t go stale. So to keep your list fresh and filled with engaged subscribers, it’s a good idea to periodically remove inactive subscribers. An inactive subscriber could be anyone who has not engaged with any email in the past 6 months or more.
Timing
Timing can have a huge effect on subscribers opening your emails, so think carefully about what time and day you send your emails.
Make subject lines stand out
When it comes to email open and click rates, your subject lines are everything. Your job is to make your subject lines stand out. The subject line should entice curiosity, include numbers, be friendly and speak in a language and style that your subscribers use themselves.
Be friendly
When you draft your subject line and message content, write as though you are speaking to a person, with a personal subject line and a personalized message.
Mobile friendly
Mobile email accounts for 67% of all email opens, depending on your target audience, product, and email type. Make sure your email is responsive and includes easily loadable media. Also consider the fact that mobile screens are smaller, so long subject lines may get cut off on mobile devices.
Content must be engaging
If a subscriber is happy with your content, they are more likely to open your emails in the future. Conversely, if a subscriber is displeased with what they get, they probably aren’t going to open your emails again, and they may even unsubscribe. Simply make your content engaging and appealing t your subscribers.
Conclusion
Email marketing is a powerful driver of sales & revenue for your business, and has a greater reach and return on investment than any other channel available to marketers today.Follow the steps outlined in this guide for a quick start to email marketing and campaign success.Get started with email marketing today with SEO Digital!
Social media marketing first started with publishing where businesses were sharing their content on social media to generate traffic to their websites and, hopefully, increase sales. But social media has matured far beyond being just a place to share content. These days, businesses use social media in a myriad of different ways. Some ways in which businesses use social media are, monitoring social media conversations and analyzing their reach, views, likes, follows, engagement, and sales.
Social media marketing is simply digital marketing that involves connecting with your audience to market your brand and boost sales for your business or company. Social media marketing activities involve publishing radically different social actions such as sharing short messages/texts, videos, media links, joining events/groups. It also involves the use of paid social media advertising to drive audience engagement, build brand awareness and increase sales.
We’ve created this guide to help you understand the relevance of social media marketing and how to develop a compelling social media marketing plan for your business this year.
The major social media platforms in 2021 are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat
Why is social media marketing relevant in 2021?
While it may seem overwhelming, the importance of social media cannot be overstated. It’s so important that 97% of marketers and 78% of salespeople are using social media for their business. Plus, its benefits extend far beyond increasing sales. However, not all businesses are aware of the benefits of social media marketing. 50% of small businesses aren’t using social media to promote their business. That’s an alarming number. Even more concerning is that an additional 25% don’t plan to use social media in the future either.
How Will Social Media Boost Your Business Online
1. Makes it easy to promote your business
2. Help you increase your clients reach
3. Promotes brand recognition and awareness
4. Increase traffic to your website
5. Build your conversions
6. Enhance communication and engagement with target audiences
7. It is mostly FREE!
Do you now see the relevance of using social media marketing to boost your brand online and drive sales? Are you ready to get started with marketing on social media? Here are a few things to consider before you kick-start your social media marketing
1. Start With a Strategic Goal
Social media strategy planning starts with identifying your brand’s goal. Maybe, you want to use social media to increase your brand awareness, generate engagement around your brand, or even drive website traffic and sales this year. Either way, your goals will define your content strategy and how much time and energy you’ll need to dedicate to your campaigns. Additionally, the goals you set for your business must be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound). Starting a social media marketing campaign without a strategy goal in mind is like going to visiting a new city without a map—you might have fun, but probably get lost.
Second, research to know which social media platforms your competitors are and where they have their largest reach/following. Your competitors can provide valuable data for keyword research and other social media marketing insight. Start by creating accounts on the same platforms to beat the competition, but always do it better! You can also figure out which social media platforms you want to focus on.
Aside from the major social media platforms, there are also social messaging platforms like Messenger, WhatsApp, and WeChat you can explore. Always start with a few platforms that you think your target audience is rather than to be on all platforms.
Here are quick questions to ask yourself when defining your social media marketing goals:
Why do I want my brand on social media?
What am I hoping to achieve with my brand through social media campaigns?
Who is my realistic target audience?
Where does my target audience hang out and how would they use social media?
What message do I want to send to your audience using social media marketing?
Your business type should inform and drive your social media marketing strategy.
Last, think about what type of content you want to share to attract your target audience best? Will they be images, videos, or links? Is it going to be informational, educational, or entertaining? With time, you can always change your strategy according to how your social media posts perform by tracking the data using analytical tools.
2. Plan and Create (curate) compelling content
By now, you have managed to figure out your strategy goal through research and planning. But how about your content strategy? The next thing to consider after setting out your goal is to develop your content strategy with great, compelling, and innovative ideas.
Publishing content to social media is as simple as sharing a blog post, an image, or a video on your personal Facebook or Instagram profile. But in this case, you will want to plan your content ahead of time instead of creating and publishing content spontaneously. Also, your content must be informative, educational, or entertaining depending on the goal you set for yourself in the beginning. Examples of content you can consider are stories, images, short-lived videos, and showing your audience the human behind the posts they see. To ensure you are maximizing your reach, always publish content at the right time and frequency.
There are a variety of social media scheduling tools that can help you publish your content automatically at your preferred time. This saves you time and allows you to reach your audience when they are most likely to engage with your content.
3. Listen and Interact With Your Audience
As your business and social media following begins to grow, conversations about your brand will also increase if you strategise well. One key to being successful in social media is to listen and interact with your audience. People will comment on your social media posts, tag you in their social media posts, or message you directly. Always find time to respond and address their concerns. This will show you are reliable and they can trust you for a quick response to your products.
So what is social listening? Social listening involves tracking conversations around your brand and in your industry and using the information to review your marketing strategies. Social listening and interacting will help you understand your audience better, where they like to hang out, and what they like to talk about. It is simply finding out what people are saying about you. If you’re not using social listening, you’re leaving a lot of great insights on the table.
Social listening and social monitoring are however two different things. Social listening involves what your audience does and social monitoring is about why they do what they do.
People might even talk about your brand on social media without letting you know. So you will want to monitor social media conversations about your brand. If it’s a positive comment, you get a chance to surprise them. Otherwise, you can offer support and correct a situation before it gets worse. There are several social media listening tools out there that you can use, explore and find the one that best suits you and your budget.
4. Track your analytics
Along the way, you will want to know how your social media campaign is performing. Are you reaching more people on social media compared to months back? How much positive feedbacks do you get? How many people used your brand’s hashtag on their social media posts? The social media platforms themselves provide a basic level of such information.
To get more in-depth analytics information or to easily compare across social media platforms, you can use a wide range of social media analytics tools. For example, Google Analytics can be used to measure your social media marketing techniques, as well as determine which strategies are better off abandoned.
Metrics you can measure with analytical tools
1. Reach
The number of unique accounts that have seen any of your posts.
2. Clicks
Refers to the number of clicks on your post or account. Tracking clicks per campaign are essential to understand what drives curiosity or encourage people to buy.
3. Impressions
The total number of times all of your posts have been seen.
4. Engagement
This refers to the total number of social interactions divided by the number of impressions and sheds light on how well your audience perceives you and their willingness to interact. It can also be measured by the number of times your post was liked, saved or commented on.
5. Hashtag performance
What were your most-used hashtags? Which hashtags were most associated with your brand?
6. Saved
This refers to the number of unique users that saved your post.
7. Profile visits
Times your profile was viewed.
8. Following
The number of accounts that started following you.
Having these answers can help shape the focus of your content going forward.
5. Advertising
When you have more funds to grow your social media marketing, an area that you can consider is social media advertising. Social media ads allow you to reach a wider audience than those who are following you. These platforms are so powerful nowadays that you can specify exactly who to display your ads to. You can create target audiences based on their demographics, interests, behaviours, and more.
When you are running many social media advertising campaigns at once, you can consider using a social media advertising tool to make bulk changes, automate processes, and optimize your ads.
CONTACT SEO DIGITAL NOW TO HELP YOU DEVELOP A COMPELLING SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING STRATEGY
At SEO Digital Ghana, we use social media marketing to build your brand and boost your sales. Get all the benefits of social media with SEO Digital Ghana Now!
Digital marketing, also known as online marketing or internet advertising is a big deal these days. Internet usage has doubled over the past decade. This shift has massively affected how people purchase products, services and interact with businesses.
So, what is digital marketing? It is simply the use of the internet, emails, mobile devices, social media, search engines, and other channels to reach the right consumers. All these forms of marketing help introduce people to your company and convince them to buy your products. One key element of digital marketing is that, it requires the use of innovative approaches to attract and understand your potential customers as compared to traditional marketing.
Digital Marketing Assets and Strategies That Can Boost Your Brand
Digital assets and strategies are vital in today’s market and if you don’t keep up, you will be left behind. Let’s take a look at what your business needs to maximise its marketing plan and start reaping profits.
Digital Marketing Assets
Assets are values owned by a group or company. Marketing items used to project your business and get potential clients attracted to buy your products are termed Digital Assets. Are you using the available digital assets you have at your disposal to boost your marketing? If you’re unsure, don’t worry, here are few examples:
Strategies for digital marketing is also constantly evolving. Some strategies businesses use are:
1. Pay-Per-Click Advertising
PPC advertising is any type of digital marketing where you pay for every user who clicks on an ad like Google AdWords and Facebook Ads.
2. Paid Search Advertising
Google, Bing and Yahoo allow you to run text ads on their Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) to target potential clients who are actively searching for a product or service like yours.
3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
With SEO, you can rank pages or blog posts on your site organically and not have to pay directly for every click, but this usually takes quite a bit of time and effort.
4. Paid Social Media Advertising
Social media platforms like Twitter allow you to run ads on their site to increase your business’s visibility with audiences.
5. Social Media Marketing
This is free and organic however, organically marketing your business on social media takes a lot more time and effort but in the long run, can deliver much cheaper results.
6. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
CRO is the art and science of improving your online user experience. Most of the time, businesses use CRO to get more conversions (leads, chats, calls, sales, etc.) out of their existing website traffic.
7. Content Marketing
This is another fairly broad digital marketing term. Content marketing covers any digital marketing effort that uses content assets (blog posts, infographics, eBooks, videos, etc.) to build brand visibility, drive clicks or sales.
8. Native Advertising
Ever get to the bottom of an article and see a list of suggested articles? That’s native advertising and mostly fall under content marketing because it uses content to attract clicks.
9. Email Marketing
This form of online marketing is the oldest and it’s still going strong. Most digital marketers use email marketing to advertise special deals, highlight content (often as part of content marketing) or promote an event.
10. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is essentially paying someone else (a person or a business) to promote your products and services on their website.
How Powerful is Digital Marketing Now?
With technology continually evolving, so do the behaviours of consumers. As a result, we have seen how traditional forms of advertising has continued to decline. We have also watched how digital advertising have grown from strength to strength. Some reasons for this include, an increase in the way we access information, news and an increased activity on digital devices. In addition, digital marketing is affordable, which allows any sized business with any size budget to target specific markets effectively. Today, just having a website is no longer enough to engage your audience and convert them to new customers. It is now important to consider implementing a complete digital plan that works across multiple channels.
With this in mind, here are 7 reasons why you need digital marketing for your business:
1. Increase reach
With the growth of the internet, more people are spending their time online. Over 7.7 billion people use the internet across the globe. It has become an integral part of everyday life to conduct searches, check social media, and purchase products online. Your customers are online, which highlights the importance of digital marketing. They’re browsing the web looking for your products or services. If they can’t find your services/products because you’re not online, you risk losing those leads to your competitors.
To drive the best results for your business, you need to build your online presence. This will help you reach more audience that want your products or services.
2. More Advanced Analytics
With digital marketing you know the following about your ads and audience:
Whether they actually saw it. With traditional marketing like TV and radio ads, you don’t even know that much.
What they interacted with
If they liked it
If they lingered on it
What they viewed
If they shared it with a friend
Did it prompt another action
If it led to a sale
You also learn much more about the people interacting with your ad:
Who’s most interested in your ads
What are they like
What makes them more likely to take an action
Who is easiest to convert
Who spends more
What do they do online
Gives you their demographics
What terms do they use to find you online
Which websites do they visit that lead them to yours
All of this easy to with free analytics software like Google Analytics. You can gain even more insight with paid tools. In addition, you can use what you learn to cut costs where you aren’t seeing an ROI and increase efforts where you get the best results.
3. Keep up with your competitors
Online marketing is highly competitive and your competitors have already taken advantage of it. They’ve created social profiles, adapted their website for SEO, and run paid advertisements to reach new leads. This reason in itself is one of the reasons why you should use digital marketing. If you want your business to compete with others, you have to do what your competitors are doing and even more. By neglecting digital marketing, you’re already falling behind your competition.
Your competitors are gaining traffic that could be yours if you’re also investing in digital marketing. Customers online won’t know that your business is an option and will automatically choose a competitor. You must invest in digital marketing to get leads to consider your business as an option.
4. Target the right audience
The ability to target the right audience is one of the most obvious reasons why digital marketing is important. Imagine being able to market directly to people who have an interest in your products or services. You have the capability to directly reach leads interested in your business.
With digital marketing, you can target your audience more precisely than traditional methods. You can input important information about your audience and use that information to shape your marketing campaigns. It makes it easy for you to reach the right people. When you better target your audience, you drive better results with your campaign and reach more leads.
5. You can monitor and optimise your campaigns for better results
The importance of digital marketing is that you can easily track and monitor your campaigns. When you invest time and money into your campaigns, you want to know that they are working. Internet marketing makes it easy for you to track your campaigns, which allows you to adapt and drive better results.
It can be challenging using traditional methods to know the results of your campaign. If you run a TV ad, you may have to ask every person that comes into the store about what brought them to your business. It would be a very time-consuming effort that could annoy people who visit your business. You don’t need to worry about bothering your audience with online ads. Every campaign you run is easily trackable to see if it is driving valuable results for your business. In addition, metrics such as impressions, clicks, views, comments, conversions, and more can be analysed.
When you track your campaign’s performance, it’s easier to fix it and adapt to changes. With traditional advertising campaign, you typically can’t make changes until the campaign is over. It only benefits the next campaign you run, which can feel like you wasted money on the previous campaign. Whereas with online ads, you can see if they are successful or need improvement. If they need improvement, you can make immediate changes and implement them at any point during your campaign. In addition, online marketing helps you spend your budget more wisely to get more out of your campaigns.
6. Best return on your investment (ROI)
If you want to know the importance of digital media, look at the results it drives for businesses. Marketing strategies online have awesome return on investment (ROI). When you invest in these methods, you’ll get more out of them. For example, email marketing has the highest ROI of any marketing method. Every $1 spent, you have the potential to earn a whopping 4400% in return. This is a great opportunity for you to grow and earn a profit from your marketing efforts.
Internet marketing is also cost-effective and hence, leaves room for a great ROI. It doesn’t cost much to run a social media ad campaign, compared to certain traditional methods, and this gives businesses an opportunity to grow.
7. Easy to Scale & Adapt
For small businesses, it becomes very clear when you see how easy it is to scale and adapt as your business grows. Example, with social media campaigns, you can choose a daily budget and know how much it will cost without having to renegotiate an ad spot on TV. As you continue to convert that traffic, you just increase your daily spend and revenues with it. If you got a massive order from a customer and need to scale back to avoid getting backlogged, it’s just as easy. The power of digital marketing lies in the fact that, you can get instant results and analyze data fast to reduce wasted ad spend.
Digital Marketing Strategy
At SEO Digital, we recommend a professional online plan to raise awareness of your business and engage with prospective customers. Hence, strong digital marketing strategy should consist of the following elements:
1. Website
Build a functional, professional and easy to navigate website. Include a blog on your site to update and inform your customers of any news in your industry. Also, consider inbuilt functionality to streamline office processes and make the customer experience better.
2. Search Engine Optimisation – (SEO)
Your website needs to include high quality, relevant content about your business and services. A number of SEO techniques such as high quality content, and keyword research can all help with your online presence. Keep this up to date and integrate it with a website measurement tool such as Google Analytics to improve your chances of being found online. Additionally, using strong quality content and relevant keywords on your website can improve your organic search results and make you visible to people.
4. Mobile responsiveness
If your website is difficult to read, the chances are prospective customers won’t make an enquiry. Make sure your website is optimised for mobile devices and creates a pleasant user experience.
5. Social media
The development of social media platforms will grow your online audience, and assist with online marketing. Social Media allows you to speak directly with your customer base to provide valuable information and build trust digitally to to increase your audience.
6. Online Advertising
Consider using various online advertising streams to increase your brand awareness. Common online advertising strategies such as Google AdWords allow you to target specific demographics and set your budget to suit your business. Online advertising is a highly effective way to add impact to your business and brand.
7. Nurturing your leads
Your digital strategies need to engage your customers to get them to take the next step and make a purchase. You need to have clear ‘call to action’ strategies built in to your digital platforms and make it easy for the customer to take that next step.
CONTACT US NOW FOR A DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGY
Digital marketing is becoming more complex, as we develop new ways of effectively reaching clients and driving revenues online. Your digital marketing strategy and assets are essential in driving business success. Contact SEO Digital today on info@seoghana.com or +233 50 664 3847 if you would like to review your business’ online marketing to increase your client base and profits.
SEO is a vital tool for digital marketing but what exactly is it? Is SEO useful for businesses? SEO simply means Search Engine Optimization. It consists of multiple strategies, which have the end goal of improving your website’s position in search engines. This is why it’s called “search engine optimization.”
On-page consists of anything you can control on your own website to improve your rankings. Site speed, keyword presence, header text and content are examples of on-page SEO. For example, keywords must be well-researched, carefully chosen and used in your content in order to be effective. Keywords are words and phrases that prospects use to find content online. Brands use keywords to connect with prospects who are looking for their products and services.
When researching keywords, it is advisable to use those with high search rates and low competition. Short-tailed (such as food), long-tailed (such as foods that are delicacies), and local keywords (such as food delicacies in Ghana) are good for your content. Your content must also be educational, compelling, relevant and shareable to attract prospects. Content can include videos, infographics, social media posts, and local listings.
Off-page
Off-page consists of anything that happens away from your site. Generally, this only refers to links. The current best practices include guest blogging, creating compelling infographics and mentioning influencers. By appropriately implementing the components of on-and off-page factors, you’ll rank high in search engines.
Is SEO important for businesses and digital marketing?
Are you in an industry where there’s little to no competition? Are you already ranking #1, and wondering if there are options to keep you visible always? No matter the business you own, if it has a website, then SEO is crucial for its success online. Even if you are the only one in your industry, SEO is still important.
Importance of SEO to businesses
Investing in your business’s SEO, is making direct investment in its visibility and profitability. Regardless of the future, you can count on that visibility to help your business prosper.
Search engine is valuable tool for brand awareness and positioning yourself as a trustworthy expert in your field.
It also helps to know that once customers visits your website, then they have an interest in your services. Hence, saves you time in convincing them to patronize your product.
Search Engine Optimization rewards your business for its efforts at a higher rate compared to all the other forms of online marketing.
It is relatively cheap in the grand scheme of things.
A strong search engine can also leave lasting impacts many years ahead.
Finding the right SEO firm for your business
The SEO industry is constantly evolving. You need to stay on top of trends in order to maintain your rankings. You need a reputable and reliable partner that fully understands your business. A partner that will work with you to reach more people and make sales online. When selecting SEO firm to work with, examine their pricing, area of expertise and clients published testimonials.
Choose SEO Digital Ghana as Your Trusted Partner
Are you looking for a trusted and reliable SEO company to get you on top of search engine rankings? Kindly call/WhatsApp us on +233 050 66 43 847 NOW! Our experts are always available to speak with you and answer all your questions,
Which of these favicons do you recognise?
While favicons may seem small and insignificant, having one can make a huge difference in terms of user experience and online branding. In this post, we’ll figure out where favicons come from, what kinds are used in modern browsers, and how to create one for your website.
Defining title tags rightly is very crucial for your business. The title tags in SEO are the title of your document to your most important types of readers; people and robots. The page title is used by search engine algorithms to decide the order when listing pages in search results. Title tags are shown in the browser’s title bar or in the page’s tab and are the most prominent and noticeable part of a 
In the HTML code of your web page, they should appear as:
<head>
<title> Your Title Goes Here </title>
</head>
These titles can appear in:
While it may seem overwhelming, the importance of social media cannot be overstated. It’s so important that 97% of marketers and 78% of salespeople are using social media for their business. Plus, its benefits extend far beyond increasing sales. However, not all businesses are aware of the benefits of social media marketing. 50% of small businesses aren’t using social media to promote their business. That’s an alarming number. Even more concerning is that an additional 25% don’t plan to use social media in the future either.
1. Makes it easy to promote your business
2. Help you increase your clients reach
3. Promotes brand recognition and awareness
4. Increase traffic to your website
5. Build your conversions
6. Enhance communication and engagement with target audiences
7. It is mostly FREE!
Do you now see the relevance of using social media marketing to boost your brand online and drive sales? Are you ready to get started with marketing on social media? Here are a few things to consider before you kick-start your social media marketing
Social media strategy planning starts with identifying your brand’s goal. Maybe, you want to use social media to increase your brand awareness, generate engagement around your brand, or even drive website traffic and sales this year. Either way, your goals will define your content strategy and how much time and energy you’ll need to dedicate to your campaigns. Additionally, the goals you set for your business must be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound). Starting a social media marketing campaign without a strategy goal in mind is like going to visiting a new city without a map—you might have fun, but probably get lost.
Second, research to know which social media platforms your competitors are and where they have their largest reach/following. Your competitors can provide valuable data for keyword research and other social media marketing insight. Start by creating accounts on the same platforms to beat the competition, but always do it better! You can also figure out which social media platforms you want to focus on.
Aside from the major social media platforms, there are also social messaging platforms like Messenger, WhatsApp, and WeChat you can explore. Always start with a few platforms that you think your target audience is rather than to be on all platforms.
By now, you have managed to figure out your strategy goal through research and planning. But how about your content strategy? The next thing to consider after setting out your goal is to develop your content strategy with great, compelling, and innovative ideas.
Publishing content to social media is as simple as sharing a blog post, an image, or a video on your personal Facebook or Instagram profile. But in this case, you will want to plan your content ahead of time instead of creating and publishing content spontaneously. Also, your content must be informative, educational, or entertaining depending on the goal you set for yourself in the beginning. Examples of content you can consider are stories, images, short-lived videos, and showing your audience the human behind the posts they see. To ensure you are maximizing your reach, always publish content at the right time and frequency.
There are a variety of social media scheduling tools that can help you publish your content automatically at your preferred time. This saves you time and allows you to reach your audience when they are most likely to engage with your content.
As your business and social media following begins to grow, conversations about your brand will also increase if you strategise well. One key to being successful in social media is to listen and interact with your audience. People will comment on your social media posts, tag you in their social media posts, or message you directly. Always find time to respond and address their concerns. This will show you are reliable and they can trust you for a quick response to your products.
So what is social listening? Social listening involves tracking conversations around your brand and in your industry and using the information to review your marketing strategies. Social listening and interacting will help you understand your audience better, where they like to hang out, and what they like to talk about. It is simply finding out what people are saying about you. If you’re not using social listening, you’re leaving a lot of great insights on the table.
Social listening and social monitoring are however two different things. Social listening involves what your audience does and social monitoring is about why they do what they do.
People might even talk about your brand on social media without letting you know. So you will want to monitor social media conversations about your brand. If it’s a positive comment, you get a chance to surprise them. Otherwise, you can offer support and correct a situation before it gets worse. There are several social media listening tools out there that you can use, explore and find the one that best suits you and your budget.
Along the way, you will want to know how your social media campaign is performing. Are you reaching more people on social media compared to months back? How much positive feedbacks do you get? How many people used your brand’s hashtag on their social media posts? The social media platforms themselves provide a basic level of such information.
To get more in-depth analytics information or to easily compare across social media platforms, you can use a wide range of social media analytics tools. For example, 
When you have more funds to grow your social media marketing, an area that you can consider is social media advertising. Social media ads allow you to reach a wider audience than those who are following you. These platforms are so powerful nowadays that you can specify exactly who to display your ads to. You can create target audiences based on their demographics, interests, behaviours, and more.
When you are running many 
Digital assets and strategies are vital in today’s market and if you don’t keep up, you will be left behind. Let’s take a look at what your business needs to maximise its marketing plan and start reaping profits.
With technology continually evolving, so do the behaviours of consumers. As a result, we have seen how traditional forms of advertising has continued to decline. We have also watched how digital advertising have grown from strength to strength. Some reasons for this include, an increase in the way we access information, news and an increased activity on digital devices. In addition, digital marketing is affordable, which allows any sized business with any size budget to target specific markets effectively. Today, just having a website is no longer enough to engage your audience and convert them to new customers. It is now important to consider implementing a complete digital plan that works across multiple channels.
With this in mind, here are 7 reasons why you need digital marketing for your business:
With the growth of the internet, more people are spending their time online. Over 
With digital marketing you know the following about your ads and audience:
The ability to target the right audience is one of the most obvious reasons why digital marketing is important. Imagine being able to market directly to people who have an interest in your products or services. You have the capability to directly reach leads interested in your business.
With digital marketing, you can target your audience more precisely than traditional methods. You can input important information about your audience and use that information to shape your marketing campaigns. It makes it easy for you to reach the right people. When you better target your audience, you drive better results with your campaign and reach more leads.
The importance of digital marketing is that you can easily track and monitor your campaigns. When you invest time and money into your campaigns, you want to know that they are working. Internet marketing makes it easy for you to track your campaigns, which allows you to adapt and drive better results.
It can be challenging using traditional methods to know the results of your campaign. If you run a TV ad, you may have to ask every person that comes into the store about what brought them to your business. It would be a very time-consuming effort that could annoy people who visit your business. You don’t need to worry about bothering your audience with online ads. Every campaign you run is easily trackable to see if it is driving valuable results for your business. In addition, metrics such as impressions, clicks, views, comments, conversions, and more can be analysed.
When you track your campaign’s performance, it’s easier to fix it and adapt to changes. With traditional advertising campaign, you typically can’t make changes until the campaign is over. It only benefits the next campaign you run, which can feel like you wasted money on the previous campaign. Whereas with online ads, you can see if they are successful or need improvement. If they need improvement, you can make immediate changes and implement them at any point during your campaign. In addition, online marketing helps you spend your budget more wisely to get more out of your campaigns.
If you want to know the importance of digital media, look at the results it drives for businesses. Marketing strategies online have awesome return on investment (ROI). When you invest in these methods, you’ll get more out of them. For example, email marketing has the highest ROI of any marketing method. Every $1 spent, you have the potential to earn a whopping 4400% in return. This is a great opportunity for you to grow and earn a profit from your marketing efforts.
Internet marketing is also cost-effective and hence, leaves room for a great ROI. It doesn’t cost much to run a social media ad campaign, compared to certain traditional methods, and this gives businesses an opportunity to grow.
For small businesses, it becomes very clear when you see how easy it is to scale and adapt as your business grows. Example, with social media campaigns, you can choose a daily budget and know how much it will cost without having to renegotiate an ad spot on TV. As you continue to convert that traffic, you just increase your daily spend and revenues with it. If you got a massive order from a customer and need to scale back to avoid getting backlogged, it’s just as easy. The power of 
At SEO Digital, we recommend a professional online plan to raise awareness of your business and engage with prospective customers. Hence, strong digital marketing strategy should consist of the following elements:
Digital marketing is becoming more complex, as we develop new ways of effectively reaching clients and driving revenues online. Your digital marketing strategy and assets are essential in driving business success. Contact SEO Digital today on info@seoghana.com or +233 50 664 3847 if you would like to review your business’ online marketing to increase your client base and profits. 
