When it comes to online marketing, businesses have access to a variety of tools that can help them reach their desired audience. However, some of these tools take considerable time and money to deliver a measurable ROI. This is where Google Ads (formerly known as Google AdWords) comes in.

What is Google Ads?

Google Ads is a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising system created by Google, that can work for almost any business model. This platform allows you to create online ads to reach audiences that are actively searching for products or services like yours. This powerful PPC platform delivers measurable ROI and provides you with total control over your campaigns.

Let us take a closer look at the reasons why you should include Google Ads into your online marketing arsenal:

1. It’s a Google cash cow.

With the increase in population size and access to the internet, Google has had to handle an obscene amount of traffic each year, with a record high of 2 trillion searches being documented in 2016. In 2020, Google made $146 billion from Google Ads. Two years later, according to Statista, in 2022, Googles’ ad revenue amounted to $224.47 billion U.S. dollars and with Google responsible for more than 84% of global desktop search traffic, it has proven to be the go-to platform for people world-wide.

2. Google Ads scales with your business

One of the many benefits offered by Google Ads is its ability to scale to your company’s ever-changing needs. As a business owner, you have full control over your campaigns’ daily / monthly spend, which means you can increase or decrease your campaigns’ budget, or even pause your campaign at any time to suit your company’s financial needs.

In turn, you can also create multiple Google Ad campaigns with different targeting methods and keywords to better determine which converts at a profitable rate and which campaign does not. This makes Google Ads a highly effective marketing tool for businesses of any size.

Google Ads can scale with a business by leveraging its extensive reach and targeting options. Advertisers can increase their budget, expand their ad campaigns to new regions or demographics, optimize keywords, and employ various bidding strategies to drive more clicks, conversions, and ultimately, business growth.

3. Google Ads is flexible

Google Ads provides you with a variety of targeting options to help you better reach your desired audience. With these targeting options, you can easily customize your campaigns to create high-performing, high-converting ads that will entice your audience to act. For example, with Google Ads you can:

• Specify keywords: You can choose to use long-tail or short-tail keywords within your campaigns to target a specific audience type at a specific stage of the customer’s journey. For example, if you use a search term like “construction company”, this will show your ad to prospects most likely at the earlier stages of the customer’s journey. Whereas, if you used a search term like “hire a construction company” your ad will show to prospects with purchasing intent.
• Ad extensions: Using ad extensions can help you showcase certain information at a quick glance such as unique product features, company trust indicators, service offerings, contact information, relevant website links or your physical location.
• Target your audience: By using the location, calendar, language, browser, or device tools within Google Ads, you can target your audience further. You don’t have to worry about showing your ads to audiences outside of your desired range, especially if your products or services are limited geographically.
• Negative Keywords: You can also add negative keywords to block your advert popping up when a related, but wrong keyword is searched for along side you actually targeted keywords. These would normally include keywords like job, free, diy etc.

4. Google Ads gives faster results than SEO

When using SEO tactics, your company could wait 6+ months before they see results within Googles’ search results. Whereas, with Google Ads, you can start measuring clicks, impressions, and conversions almost immediately. Through Google ads, you can get your business in front of your target audience sooner and receive actionable insights that can benefit your SEO efforts in the long term. It’s also easier to completely change your Google Ads campaign compared to turning around a current SEO position.

5. Create more engaging ads

Google Ads allows you to use various types of ads, including search ads that appear in search engine results, display ads shown on websites and apps, video ads displayed on YouTube, shopping ads for e-commerce products, and app promotion ads to drive app installs and engagement.

6. Google Ads dominates SERPs

Over the years Google has changed the ways the search results display within Google by giving more and more above the fold real estate to Google Ads, since it makes them more money. As a marketer this change is highly beneficial as it allows you to get your brand in front of potential prospects ahead of organic results. Coupled with more engaging ad formats, you can easily dominate the SERPs and improve your conversion rates. Organic search results are getting suppresses on page 1, requiring more aggressive techniques around visibility.

7. Improve your conversion rates

To improve sales conversions with Google Ads, businesses can focus on several key strategies. This includes optimizing keywords and ad copy to align with customer intent, conducting thorough audience targeting and segmentation, implementing effective landing pages with clear calls-to-action, utilizing remarketing to reach potential customers who have shown interest, testing and optimizing ad campaigns continuously, and leveraging conversion tracking and analytics to measure and refine performance.

8. Connect your marketing channels

Although Google Ads on its own is an extremely powerful marketing tool to have, it only forms part of your overall marketing strategy. When creating a Google Ads or PPC campaign, you typically connect to another online platform such as your website. Therefore, it would be beneficial for you to optimize your website landing pages to maximize the chances of converting prospects to paying customers. The same applies to aligning your marketing message across channels to ensure consistency and improve brand recognition.

9. Enjoy actionable insights

Google Ads provides comprehensive reporting to track the performance of advertising campaigns. It offers metrics such as impressions, clicks, click-through rates (CTRs), conversion rates, cost-per-click (CPC), and return-on-investment (ROI). Advertisers can generate reports on various dimensions like time, geography, devices, and demographics. Additionally, it offers features like conversion tracking, Google Analytics integration, and attribution modeling to gain deeper insights into campaign effectiveness, audience behavior, and the impact on sales and conversions.

10. Beat your opposition

Google Ads provides several ways to gain a competitive edge. Advertisers can use competitive analysis tools to monitor and adjust bids, keywords, and ad placements based on competitors’ activities. Utilizing ad extensions, compelling ad copy, and strategic targeting can also help improve visibility, click-through rates, and conversions, ultimately enabling businesses to outperform their competition in the digital advertising landscape.

Conclusion

When it comes to your online marketing strategy, it may be beneficial to consider using Google Ads. We at Cognite understand the value Google Ads can bring to the table and have seen first-hand how Google Ads have improved the ROI for our clients. Need help navigating the pros and cons of Google Ads, contact our team today and let us show you the way.

The post Top 10 reasons why Adwords is important to your marketing appeared first on Cognite Marketing.

How to make digital marketing channels work for you

With the transition to the digital space over the past decade, marketing to your target audience has become easier. As a business, you are able to market across a variety of different platforms instead of posting an ad in a magazine or on a billboard, hoping your audience will find you.

However, each platform has its own audience and therefore placing your marketing message across each platform may not be the most effective marketing strategy.

Having a digital marketing strategy in place can your business identify your ideal target audience, determine which channels they prefer and provide goal-oriented objectives to reach. So how do you determine the best channels to help you create your marketing strategy?

In this article we will go through a few marketing channels you can consider:

These channels are:

• Website and SEO
• Content Marketing
• Digital PR Marketing
• Social Media
• Email Marketing
• Online Advertising / PPC Advertising

The Website

This is your brand’s home in the digital world, and it needs to communicate your brand’s core values and personality. The messaging across the website should ideally be concise, engaging, and should indicate what the next step for the viewer should take e.g., fill out a form, sign up for a newsletter, purchase a product. If your website drones on and doesn’t provide clear indicators, viewers will navigate away, potentially costing you a conversion.

Website design tips:

• Mobile compatibility: Ensure your website is mobile compatible as most users tend to search on the go, therefore using their mobile phones, tablets, smart watches, laptops etc.
• Engaging content: Make sure your content is able to provide the user with the information they need at a glance.
• Easy to use interface: Don’t hide information or make navigation difficult, users want an easy, efficient experience, if they struggle to find what they’re looking for, they’ll look somewhere else.
• SEO is vital: It’s all good and well that your website shows up in SERPs for direct queries, but what about keywords? Identify keywords you want your website to rank for and adjust your content or create articles that include those keywords to improve your chances of being found organically.

Content Marketing

With content marketing, you can increase organic traffic, improve lead generation, engage in deeper communications with your target audience and showcase your brands personality and expertise. However, it’s important that your content aligns with your marketing message and is of high-quality, it can also vary from blogs, videos, infographics, case studies and so much more.

In addition, your content marketing can compliment your other marketing channels and aid in a consistent brand message across SEO, email marketing, social media advertising etc.

Digital PR 

Digital PR enables a two-way conversation and allows you to engage in a more immediate way with your customers. PR is used to connect with customers and to build and manage relationships. Digital PR also enhances brand awareness, exposure and SEO efforts.

Social Media 

Your social media accounts should contain informative, entertaining content that users would want to share and engage with.

Social media is ideal to:

• raise awareness
• tell your brand’s story
• customer engagement

Social Media Channels Explained:

With so many different platforms available, deciding which ones are ideal for you could be bit of a puzzle. We’ve summarised it nicely:

• Facebook: Traditionally viewed as a B2C platform, you can reach out to almost any kind consumer via Facebook. The key to success? Know your target audience.
• Twitter: Twitter is categorised as being more of a B2B platform than a B2C platform. However, if you’re trying to develop a new business and want to reach out to early adopters, then Twitter may be for you, particularly in generating fast brand awareness.
• LinkedIn: Want to reach out to business professionals? Then LinkedIn is the place to be!
• Google+:  Google+ is another way to reach out to early adapters. It’s advised to start using this, since doing so ought to have a big impact on SEO in the future (according to the gossip).
• Pinterest: Pinterest is one of the more visual social media platforms. Clothing retailers quite enjoy Pinterest. The majority of users are women, so Pinterest is ideal if your brand is directed to mostly women.
• Instagram: “Picture Twitter” is how I’d describe Instagram (or Insta for short) to newcomers. Instagram is also a visual-based platform, but one of the main differences between Insta and Pinterest, lies in the name itself. Instagram is all about sharing a photo instantly with your followers. Many major brands have joined Instagram, plus the photo filters can make anyone look like a professional photographer.

Email Marketing 

Email marketing is a great way to build a relationship with your customers. The main goal of your email marketing campaigns should be to retain the value of customers and to build brand loyalty. To achieve this, curating the content you send out is of paramount importance. Some entrepreneurs view email marketing as a waste of time, but they can’t be more wrong! Pratik Dholakiya, Entrepreneur contributor, emphasises this by saying: “A well-crafted email has tremendous potential to deliver the returns you are looking for. Don’t ignore this channel at any cost.”

Benefits of Email Marketing:

• Low cost in comparison to some marketing methods
• Sign-ups allows you to collect key information
• Emails can be used to cross-promote other channels
• Can build email campaigns on top of one another

Email Marketing Tips:

• Segment and personalise: Segmenting your mailing lists according to demographics and interest will increase the relevance of your email, which could lead to click-throughs, which could lead to sales… see where I’m going with this?
• Respond: In today’s digital world, people want to feel like they are speaking to another person, not just a large, impersonal company. Make sure you don’t have “do not respond” email addresses.
• Double-opt in: Send a verification email to show people you take things seriously. This will also give the impression that you’re not likely to spam them.
• Make signing up and unsubscribing easy: Remember, you want people to subscribe… Also, nothing is as annoying as a 10-step system to unsubscribe.
• Have clear privacy policies: Many bulk email systems require this before allowing you to send emails using their system.
• Testing, 123: Always send a test email to yourself to make sure everything is displaying correctly. When you speak to other marketers about this, they’ll all confess that a campaign they sent out had a “little glitch”. But don’t be fooled, this isn’t a right of passage, so remember: Be the best, do the test.
• Targeting: Use consumer intelligence for targeted and more personalised messaging.
• Have a specific email domain: This could keep your email out of the recipients’ spam folders.
• A sense of urgency: Create a sense of urgency if you can (a limited offer always does the trick).

Online Advertising / PPC Advertising 

Online advertising can increase both sales and brand awareness. Users can choose whether or not to engage with your ad. Paid advertising delivers targeted traffic in a short time. This is, however, impacted by your predetermined budget. Luckily, your advertising budget is still under your control. The success of your PPC campaign relies on how well you choose your keywords, as well as how you structure and optimise content. Another benefit of online advertising is that you can customise your targeting; defining it by demographic, geographical location and even interests! Examples of online advertising include Google Adwords.

Before Logging Off

Here are some final tips before you start planning your online strategy:

• Know Thy Customer: Go to where your customers are.
• Keep the content fresh: Rather have fewer, well-managed social media channels than a whole bunch of social corpses.
• Put People First: Jeremiah Owyang said “B2B and B2C no longer exist. All that matters now is P2P: People-to-people”

The post Digital Marketing Channels appeared first on Cognite Marketing.

Having a website in today’s business landscape has become a vital part of marketing your brand. As we continually strive for digital innovation, a website has become more than “a source of information”, it has become a means of connecting with potential customers, reflecting your brand and its value, and enticing customers to engage with your brand by either purchasing a product or selecting a service.

Therefore, the need for having a good – great website cannot be understated. More often than not, a customer’s first impression or interaction with your brand starts from the website. Having an outdated, broken, poor performing or hard to navigate website can leave potential customers with a sour opinion towards your brand.

In this article, we will take a look at a few reasons an outdated website can negatively affect your business, and how a website audit can help you take the necessary steps at improving your website.

How an old and outdated website can affect your business

1. Bad user experience
   User experience is a vital part of a strong website design. Users want to be able to access the information they need as efficiently as possible. Therefore, a modern website with easy-to-use navigation, direct messaging and speedy page loads are essential to a good user-friendly experience.
2. Losing mobile audience attention
   With the advancements in technology making information easier to access anywhere on the planet, the number of mobile users exceeds the number of desktop ones. Therefore, having a responsive website that functions correctly across multiple devices can open your brand to an expanded audience that your outdated website is currently costing you.
3. A question of quality and customer service
   Being perceived as high quality and customer-oriented is a big win in a potential client’s eyes, after all, they want to know what they’re purchasing is of good quality. As the website is typically the first thing people see, first impressions matter. If you have an old, outdated website, it give potential clients the wrong idea that your products aren’t great and that customer happiness isn’t a priority.

How a website audit can help your business

Through the process of a website audit, you will be able to receive actionable insights into the overall performance of your website from the perspective of a professional website designer. A website audit can help identify pitfalls such as poor planned or outdated SEO, technical issues or potential security concerns that come with outdated themes or plugins, visual or content related changes that need to be improved upon etc. The goal with these actionable insights is to make your website a stronger sales platform that can help generate leads.

1. Improve your rankings in SERP’s (search engine results page)
   Having effective “On-Page SEO” throughout your website can help search engines such as Google best determine the relevancy of your content in relation to a potential customers query. An audit will help identify your current SEO shortfalls and provide suggestions on how to improve them, in order to better your organic rankings within the SERP’s.
2. Enhance your user experience
   A website that provides ease of navigation, easy to access information, remains functional across devices and loads quickly, are all aspects that make a potential customers experience of your website good or bad. With a website audit, you can identify both front end and back end issues that could be jeopardizing your website’s ability to provide a good user experience, and provide suggestions on how to improve this for your audience.
3. Getting the desired results
   Let’s be honest, the goal for any business is to make money. The desired result of having a business website is to convert website visitors into paying customers. The website audit takes a look at your website sales methods and how it guides people to a particular action. This action could be anything from making a call to completing an online survey form. It really all depends on what your goal is for your website. But if you aren’t telling people what they need to do next, they could end up feeling lost. A reader that feels lost will move on to other websites that are easier to discern. Using a website audit will help you identify whether you are saying the right things to the right people.

What does all of this mean at the end of the day?

Design tweaks can refresh your website in a quick and inexpensive way. If you are attempting to make these changes yourself, you may be wondering where you should even start. If you contact a professional website designer, they will know how to give your website a complete overhaul. They will help you map out a plan that will ensure the growth of your website and your business. Your company growth can only be achieved if you constantly evolve. This evolution can only begin if you focus on new content and design adjustments as your company, website, or brand changes. A website audit will be able to tell you whether or not you are progressing or regressing.

When you have an audit done on your website, you will receive an in-depth report. With this report, you will be able to take action. You will be able to implement all the necessary updates to your website. Your website will then start converting more visitors into paying customers. Your customers will start to see your website as the preferred choice over your competitors. If your website attracts people to it and their interest lasts long enough, they will more than likely turn that interest into a sale of some kind. Therefore, by enhancing your website, you have a recipe for success!

As the saying goes “don’t fix what isn’t broken”, however, we here at Cognite believe that even things that aren’t broken can be fixed! Your website may be in perfect working order, but is your website really working for you? The design of your website is not just what it looks like. The design is how it works. Let Cognite put all of the pieces of your website together.

The post Your WordPress website may be broken and you don’t even know it appeared first on Cognite Marketing.

Clarify your mission

Begin by understanding your business niche. Ask yourself:

• What do you do best?
• Who needs what you do?
• How much are they willing to pay for the services and products you offer?

These questions will help you target the right market that will increase your sales. If you aren’t able to answer these questions, make a campaign for clarity and vision. This is a good way to put things into perspective and it allows you to focus on what really matters.

Advertise more 

Just when you think that you are doing great in sales and want to hold back a little, you should probably advertise more. There are many ways to advertise your business. You can consider magazine advertising, newspaper advertising, social media adverts, and printed material like flyers, banners, and much more. When advertising in newspapers, try using simple but catching words that people can relate to. For example: “Tired? Don’t want to cook supper tonight? Try this”. You can never have enough advertising of your products and services as competitors will always challenge you, so it is important to be at the top of your game.

Create your own celebration

People enjoy celebrating, create your own celebration that your customers can take part in. This tactic will bring more people to your shop as they will want to find out what the celebration is about. You can consider fun things your shop does or sells, or anything that your customers like about your services or products and make a celebration out of it. For example, let’s say a printing shop has “National paint your face day”, this would be where parents come with their children on a specific day to have their faces painted if they print a certain amount of copies. The key is to choose what you can focus on in your shop to create a celebration that will bring in a lot of sales for your business in a fun way.

Utilise the power of the web

Traditional sales methods can help generate sales, but don’t forget to take advantage of modern-day technology in your efforts. The internet allows you to reach a larger customer base and advertise in unique ways with no limitations. Customers won’t always have the time to visit your physical location when online companies can reach a million people in a short space of time. It is also important to uphold a personal relationship with your customers. You can do this by having a website presenting clear contact information and illustrating your excellent customer care through your website content.

Break your mission into specific goals

You can start by writing down your activity goals. It can be sales per month, calls per day, proposals per month, referrals per client, etc. Set result goals for each item and decide how much you would like to achieve on each item. You can then measure your progress and track it closely. Goals help you to focus your attention and energise your actions. It can be really motivating to see progress in your business, but in times where you don’t see progress, you can work on the weak areas and help strengthen them to increase your sales.

Use design in your business

Design opens up valuable opportunities for businesses. Its importance is often underestimated, but good design can bring some significant business benefits. The impact design has is much more than just the outward appearance of products or the graphic elements of things such as your website, packaging, and marketing materials. It plays a part in nearly every aspect of what most businesses do. In some areas, the importance of design is quite obvious such as when a business creates a consistent look across its products, signage, stationery, and marketing activities. Design can also be used to benefit your business in many less obvious ways. Remember that design isn’t just about managing the appearance of your business – it’s also about managing your business processes so they’re as cost-effective as possible.

People buy benefits

People don’t buy products, they buy the results that a product will give them. Start your process by identifying your ideal customers. You can do this by making a list of all of the benefits that your customer will enjoy by using your products or services. Think about elements such as:

• Highlighting what makes your product/service different
• Illustrating the kind of lifestyle your brand portrays
• Showing your clients the kind of quality your product/service has
• Telling your clients how your products and services will enhance their lives

Use content and social media marketing to your advantage

There are so many more ways to get your product to your customers than ever before. The best part is, they’re all free. You can use social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and a company related blog to your advantage. By building relationships with your customers through these channels, you can access more people than ever. Some of the benefits of content marketing include more access to qualified leads, more channels to sell your products on, and lower costs to acquire new customers.

Pick the right price

Do market research on your competitors to determine the right price. If you have a high-priced product, be prepared to over-deliver quality to your customers. Price can be determined by the perceived value of your product. If you can make your product seem superior to your competitors, you can charge a higher price. You can gather further research by talking to your target market through surveys or questionnaires and ask them what they would be willing to pay for your products.

Make your sales message clear

Pick out one or two benefits of your products and make sure that all of your marketing activities highlight those benefits. Make it clear to your customers exactly what your product is going to do for them. Be as specific and clear as you can be and project your products’ multiple benefits by creating targeted sales messages.

Sell your brand

As you can see, a lot of thought and research goes into maintaining sales figures that you are happy with. Try simplifying the process by contacting us. Let’s find the right marketing and branding solutions for your company. We can help you pinpoint what can be done in order to improve and sustain optimal sales figures.

Further reading

• https://www.thebalance.com/tips-to-increase-retail-sales-2890274
• https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikekappel/2017/01/25/small-business-strategies-to-increase-sales/#5b4d5fb45b1b
• https://databox.com/increase-sales-team-prospecting-activity

The post How to get more sales when your sales are low appeared first on Cognite Marketing.

Toxic websites are essentially backlinks

Toxic links/websites refer to inbound links to a website that lower the position of a website’s ability to rank well in Google search. They can eradicate your SEO work. Google has an excellent resolution in implementing measures to ensure outstanding user experience. Google does this by reducing exposure to negative website user experience through high ranking search results. This means that a web link that Google perceives as having no worth in enhancing ranking or improving traffic to your website, it will mark these links as toxic links, making these links useless.

Evading toxic websites is just as vital as including quality backlinks, especially when it comes to your link building strategies. Google evaluates the foundations of external web links to a site. Google formulates measures in the ranking and authority of the backlink source sites. Toxic backlinks can have very damaging effects on your website and its Google ranking. Google has concluded that toxic backlinks are a major factor when it comes to bringing down your search position, which means moving your website down in relevance and ranking. Essentially, this affects its position on the first few pages of Google search. But good backlinks and websites improve your rankings tenfold, allowing your website to stand on the first page of Google search. Therefore, it is of equivalent importance to identify and obliterate any and all toxic website links.

So why should you remove negative or toxic links?

Backlinks are considered as a significant element according to Google. If Google discovers that any of your links do not match or enhance the content on your site or the links do not add any value for your users, and they are simply there to increase your Google page rank or forcefully drive traffic to your site, Google is more likely to classify those links as toxic. Google will then take necessary action against those links.

Luckily, there are countermeasures to ensure effective SEO and website safety. Now you are probably wondering how to find out if you have toxic backlinks. To get an accurate, real-time view of your backlinks, you need to use a specialised, enterprise SEO tool. Google Search Console has an option to generate links to your site report or SEO report, but note that this SEO tool will not show you all of the backlinks to your website, due to the fact that not all links to your site are listed.

Once you have discovered how many of your links are toxic and where they are originating from, you can easily start with a cleanse to remove them. You can go to the specific links that are toxic and delete them yourself. Better yet, if you own the sites from where the backlinks are coming from, you can request to remove the links, but for optimal deletion, it’s better to remove them from your site directly.

What affects your Google rankings?

Your ranking can fluctuate for multiple reasons. Here are a few reasons why your ranking could be dropping:

• Tracking the wrong keywords
• Recent Google algorithm updates
• Your website is new, which could mean that it may not be ranked completely yet, meaning that it needs some time. Sometimes it needs a few days to a few weeks to register completely on Google
• Low-quality content or low-quality links (meaning your backlinks are not as strong or effective as other links)
• Losing high-quality links
• Cheap hosting
• Google penalties
• Most of your competitors are improving their SEO ranking as well, moving you down a rank or two. This is something to always keep in mind and is of great importance to remember

Once you make a few key SEO changes to your website, you may come to realise that you have barely touched the necessary SEO standards that will improve your ranking. SEO is a grueling task that will take some time to get it right. It is imperative that you do SEO correctly and run through it extensively, you don’t have to spend your life on the backlinks, but spending time on it will improve your ranking immensely.

How to improve your website rankings?

The rules for effective SEO has advanced to a more intricate marketing channel. As we are submerged in the industry of marketing, we are compelled to refine our SEO processes multiple times a year. This keeps your marketing strategy fresh and up to date.

Here are some ways to get your website onto the first page of Google search:

• Improve your local keywords
• Clean up your location data
• Plan a better website structure
• Focus your attention more on user experience
• Optimise your website for mobile compatibility
• Use original images – spend more time finding unique and unused images, (i.e. images not found on other sites)
• Use specific user-friendly names for images and shorten descriptions. This will allow Google to improve your rankings

Overall, you will need a good SEO strategy. It will not only benefit your site’s placement in search engines, but also the usability of your site. Improving usability will keep clients and visitors on your website for longer as it will increase the entertainment factor on your site. It’s one thing getting people to your site, but it is another ball game to retain that traffic effectively.

Detoxify your website

Toxic backlinks and websites are affecting your website negatively, it is imperative that you take your SEO practices seriously, giving it a lot of thought and attention. In this day and age, improving your website usability and improving SEO will allow you to be one step ahead of your competitors and increase your Google ranking to the first page.

Still unsure about how to detoxify your website from hazardous backlinks? Contact us and we will gladly tackle the problem head-on. We will assess your website, terminate any and all problems, and implement the best SEO methods to get your website ranking where it should be – at the top.

Further reading

• https://ahrefs.com/blog/bad-links/
• https://neilpatel.com/blog/11-fantastic-tools-and-strategies-to-recover-from-link-penalties/

The post Toxic websites might be linking to your site, killing your SEO appeared first on Cognite Marketing.

I’m sure you have realised by now that SEO is not a quick fix and it honestly involves hours upon hours of dedication. Not to mention the fact that it never ends, once you think you’re done, there will always be more.

Did you know that there are more than 200 factors that Google considers in their search algorithms? That can be daunting if you have no prior experience in the industry. To demystify some of the grey areas, we have included a list of top 10 SEO myths:

1. Buying advertising on Google will help your organic searches rank higher

No, Google doesn’t show favouritism to its paying clients. In fact, they can’t even cheat the system to get their own pages to rank higher. The only reason they rank at the top is because they have some of the best SEO people on their payroll. Sometimes, paying professionals to do your SEO can pay off in the long run.

2. If your domain is older than 2 years then you will rank higher in Google search

Just because spammers usually have young domains, that doesn’t prove to Google that you are not a spammer because your domain is older than most. If you haven’t spent the time to build up your domain authority then your domain will have a low score along with all the other people who haven’t committed to their SEO.

3. If you buy a whole bunch of domains with specific keywords in them then they will rank higher for those keywords

Buying 15 domains with different keywords and pointing them to your website will do more harm to your search ranking than it will do good. There is a term used in SEO called ‘link-juice’. It’s basically the indicator on how popular or relevant your website is. Your score increases if a website with a lot of ‘link-juice’ links to your website. Your website decreases its score in the same way when websites with no relevancy point to your website. If you have a lot of empty domains pointing to your website then you are leaking ‘link-juice’ on all sides.

4. SEO doesn’t matter

SEO might not guarantee that your business will succeed, if your product is bad then it’s not going to sell – no matter what you do. That’s not to say that SEO doesn’t matter. You want your website to be as accessible to search engines as possible so that you rank higher in searches. It won’t happen overnight, so hang in there for the long haul.

5. SEO companies can guarantee a top ranking

No one can guarantee a top ranking on any search engine… SEO just doesn’t work like that. If you have decided to rely on professionals to take care of the SEO nitty gritty items, make sure they are not over-exaggerating what they can deliver. There are never any guarantees and there are no exceptions to rule.

6. Social media doesn’t affect SEO

Of course social media affects your SEO! Anything that links back to your website is going to affect your SEO in either a positive or a negative way. When you integrate your social media into your website, you are constantly updating your website with every social media post you add. This means the search bots notice how your website is up to date with relevant information to your website. This means your organic search ranking will go up steadily as well.

7. Keyword stuffing is the best way to cover all your bases

Adding relevant keywords to your website is very important but they are not the only thing that factor into the search algorithms. Keyword stuffing can confuse the bots as to what your topic is about and this will result in a lower search page ranking. Google is all about the human experience so the algorithms favour SEO practices that use keywords in sentences that are natural.

8. SEO is a one-time effort

Think about any relationship you have ever had with a friend or loved one. When you stop putting effort into it then the value of your relationship decreases. The same applies to your SEO. Search engines are continuously evolving their algorithms and how they interact with users. If you don’t keep yourself up to date then you risk falling behind your competitors in search page ranking.

9. Writing a blog on your website will boost SEO drastically

While writing a blog on your website helps to keep it up to date and relevant, if you haven’t established your domain authority yet then you would be better off focusing your efforts on external blogging as well. This is a method where you write a guest post on another website and you link back to your website. Without this, it will be quite difficult to get people to your website to read what you have posted.

10. The order of heading tags affects your SEO score

Google software engineer, Matt Cutts, debunked this himself in a YouTube video a few years ago. Having your H1 tag below your H2 tag or having the order as H1, H3, H2, H4 will not hurt your SEO in any way. In fact, syntax errors or spelling errors are more likely to hurt your SEO score on your website.

What’s next

Do you have to use an SEO company to do your SEO to succeed? No, you don’t. But if you want the same results then you must put a lot of research hours to find out the information that the professionals eat and breathe every day.

Here’s an exercise… How much is your time worth? If SEO is going to cost you 3-4 hours of work a day (and that’s if you get everything right the first time), that means in a month you are spending an average of 60-80 hours a month on SEO. How much potential revenue are you losing while you are trying to save a quick buck by doing it yourself?

Contact us for an obligation free quotation and decide for yourself if you can afford to lose potential business at that rate.

Further reading

• https://www.semrush.com/blog/6-common-misconceptions-about-seo-that-can-hurt-your-digital-marketing/
• http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/post/7-common-seo-misconceptions/
• http://semgeeks.com/blog/14-common-misconceptions-about-seo

The post 10 misconceptions of search engine optimisation appeared first on Cognite Marketing.

In a nutshell, SEO is a technique which helps search engines find and rank your site higher than the millions of other sites in response to a search query. SEO thus helps you get traffic from search engines. It’s about making your site easy to read and attractive to the search engine spiders. If the spiders can move easily through your site and get a good idea of what it’s about without getting stuck, due to broken links or dead ends, they’ll remember you as a good source. When someone searches for topics you talk about, hopefully, the search engines remember to recommend your site as a source. However, none of this means anything if you do not know how exactly SEO works or what it is.

How search engines work

The first basic truth you need to know is that search engines are not humans. The differences between how humans and search engines view web pages are drastically different. Unlike humans, search engines are text-driven. Search engines crawl the web, looking at particular site items to get an idea what a site is about. They perform several activities in order to deliver search results, such as crawling, indexing, processing, calculating relevancy, and retrieving.

Search engines crawl the web to see what is there. This task is performed by a piece of software, called a crawler or a spider. Spiders follow links from one page to another and index everything they find on their way. Having in mind the number of pages on the web, it is impossible for a spider to visit a site daily just to see if a new page has appeared or if an existing page has been modified. In order to truly get into the minds of these spiders, you need to see what they see, by using a spider simulator. You will be able to see the most prominent or inaccessible page elements of your website. If certain things on your website are not visible, they will be non-existent for search engines.

After a page is crawled, the next step is to index its content. The indexed page is stored in a giant database, where it can later be retrieved. Essentially, the process of indexing is identifying the words and expressions that best describe the page and assigning the page to particular keywords. Sometimes they might not get the meaning of a page right but if you help them by optimising it, it will be easier for them to classify your pages correctly and for you to get higher rankings.

How a search result is processed

When a search request comes, the search engine processes it. It compares the search string in the search request with the indexed pages in the database. Since it is likely that more than one page contains the search string, the search engine starts calculating the relevancy of each of the pages in its index with the search string. There are various algorithms to calculate relevancy. Each of these algorithms has different relative weights for common factors like keyword density, links, or metatags.

That is why different search engines give different search results pages for the same search string. All major search engines, like Yahoo!, Google, Bing, etc. consistently change their algorithms and if you want to keep at the top, you also need to adapt your pages to the latest changes. This is one reason to devote constant energy into maximising your SEO efforts.

The last step in the search engines’ activity is retrieving the results. Basically, it is nothing more than simply displaying them in the browser, such as the endless pages of search results that are sorted from the most relevant to the least relevant sites. The amount of time you have spent on SEO and the amount of SEO knowledge you possess will drastically have an impact on the relevancy of your website versus your closest competitors.

Differences between the major search engines

Although the basic principle of operation of all search engines is the same, the minor differences between them lead to major changes. For different search engines, different factors are important. The major search engines like different aspects of a website and if you plan to conquer more than one of them, you need to optimise carefully. To start off with, rather familiarise yourself with one of the major search engines that both you and your target audience use the most. As you build confidence, you can try your hand at conquering one or two more of the other search engines. You will need to refocus certain areas of your website for specific search engines, but if you remember to get the core principles of SEO right, you’re good to go.

There are many examples of the differences between search engines. For instance, for Yahoo! and Bing, on-page keyword factors are of primary importance, while for Google, links are essential and critical for SEO. Also, for Google sites, they prefer matured websites that have been on the web for a long period of time. On the other hand, Yahoo! generally has no expressed preference towards sites and domains with tradition. Thus, you might need more time till your site gets mature to be admitted to the top in Google, than in Yahoo!.

What does this mean for bloggers and website owners?

SEO has taken the online marketing world by storm. 70% of the links that users click after searching for a keyword are organic. 93% of internet users are constantly using a search network to find new businesses and information. SEO spending has seen a steady increase over the last ten years and will continue to climb. A search engine like Google is important because when a web page on a site shows up on the first page of the search results for a particular search, it is very valuable.

Not many searchers click over to the second page of the search results. If your site appears on the first page for a particular search, you can be sure that the searchers will more than likely click on your result. It means more traffic for you and possibly more sales. Essentially, bloggers and website owners around the world are constantly trying to make their site more SEO-friendly so that the search engines will show their site’s pages on that front page.

Naturally, getting that first page spot won’t happen at all if the search engines don’t know your site exists in the first place. This is the winning formula that gets your website known and heard:

• Bots (spiders) found your site
• The bots crawled through it
• They figured out what your blog/website is about by reading your content
• Your website has been organised, filed, and stored in their gigantic collection of indexed webpages
• They determine how your page ranks among similar pages on the internet
• Your page is ranked according to various formulas and algorithms
• Searchers find your website and you gain more sales

Spread the word

The number of people using the internet continues to grow as there are more outlets to search online. More than 90% of internet users are using search networks to find new products and services. As you can see, SEO is a useful tool. In turn, this presents an opportunity to all website owners that are willing to go the extra mile to practice effective SEO methods as a means of improving their page rankings. The end goal is to ultimately drive more traffic to your website so that your web visitors will spread the word about your brand. So, fittingly, you need to be equipped with the right knowledge and tools in order to successfully practice SEO.

However, when in doubt, it is always beneficial to consult SEO experts directly. They have tried-and-tested SEO methods that can fast track your website to first page ranking. Our website SEO strategies are designed to analyse your website for its weak points in order to replace it with the right information that will drive the results you want.

Further reading

•  http://searchengineland.com/guide/what-is-seo
• https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization

The post What is SEO? appeared first on Cognite Marketing.

The display of the ads based on your bidding

Your ads appear as a sponsored link. The system is a pay per click system, this means you can dictate where your ad appears through bidding for a series of phrases. You only pay the amount you have bid for. If someone clicks on your ad as a result of a web search, you will be charged for that click based on your Cost Per Click. This is the amount that AdWords charges you for the click.

The ads take the format of a short text ad that includes a title line, two short descriptive lines, and a URL link to a website or a specific website page. You need to make sure that you think strategically when doing your advert wording. If the wording of the advert does not tightly match both the page that it directs to and the keywords that it is linked to, your advert will not be as effective as it could and should be.

The ad will appear on the page of results you decide you want to appear in, for example, page one of Google for a search result. The ads appear at the top of the organic search engine results. You can also decide what position on the page your ad will appear through the amount you are willing to bid. In turn, the more you bid for a phrase, the higher your ad appears on page one of the Google search results. If your campaign is still new, it is advisable to start higher with your bidding, and then as time goes by, you can slowly start to lower your bidding as you receive a higher quality score and Click Through Rate (CTR).

Keep a close watch on the quality score and the Click Through Rate

Google looks at how relevant and useful your ad is to the searcher and the search terms they have used. It also looks at how many clicks your ad has received previously (also known as its CTR) and how relevant your landing page is.

The quality score is an estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages. Higher quality ads can lead to lower prices for your bidding and better ad positions. In fact, even if your maximum bid is less than a rival bidder, you still may appear above their ad if your quality score is better. Your quality score is rated on a 1-10 scale.

The quality score is based on components, such as expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience. The CTR is a mixture of your clicks vs. impressions. The more impressions and clicks you receive, the better your CTR percentage will be. In order to achieve a good landing page experience and ad relevance, you need to make sure that the page that the ad lands on has quality information that the searcher will find valuable and relevant. The more relevant your ads and landing pages are to the user, the more likely it is that you will see higher quality scores.

Keep everything tightly linked

For instance, if the searcher types “wedding rings” and your advert appears saying: “Buy quality wedding rings here”, once the ad is clicked this needs to lead the searcher directly to a page featuring a selection of wedding rings that will interest the searcher of the term. If it just goes to your generic homepage, it’s not going to be good enough. The searcher does not have the energy or time to sift through your website to find what they are looking for. That is why it is essential to link the ads to a very specific page so that what they searched for appears immediately on their screen.

Research shows that 87% of web users do not scan past page one of their search engine results. In addition, the higher your website appears on a page will result in more visitors to your website, as web users prefer to click on the ads/search results at the top of the page. As you can see from this statistic, web users want information that they can conveniently have access to. They want to instantly have the information they seek in front of them. Ensuring that your linking landing pages display what the web user wants will have a beneficial impact on your ad position. It is a win-win situation for both you and your potential consumers.

So why use Google AdWords?

There is a difference between the types of visitors to a website. There are those that are actively browsing traffic and you get the visitors that may have found a website in a search engines’ organic results. Organic results behave differently to traffic that comes directly from Google AdWords or pay per click traffic. Traffic via surfing in organic results is simply people browsing for information, whereas, traffic via pay per click means that you are clicking on an ad. This means that the searcher that clicks on an organic result may not necessarily want to buy something, however, when a searcher clicks on an ad, it is more likely that they are physically looking to buy something. Whether that be a product or a service. Therefore, you don’t necessarily need millions of visitors via browsing, but rather specific targeted visitors via Google AdWords.

AdWords Management

You can aim for the highest bid for phrases and gain some great positions and traffic. You could set up a Google AdWords account in a matter of minutes, but without proper Google AdWords management, you will often find that not only will your budget get used up and not result in any sales or enquiries, but the traffic you do send via this method to your website may be disappointed when they get there, if the page they land on is not relevant to their search. They will simply click away and you will have lost budget and a potential customer.

In addition, through consistent Google AdWords management, not only will your campaigns become more effective in driving relevant targeted traffic to your website, the amount you bid for with your desired phrases may be less than your competition. In many instances, your ad will appear higher in the Google search result even though you are bidding less than your competitor for a phrase.

When deciding who gets top billing among the sponsored links for phrases, Google factors in bids and how many people click through each ad, giving preference to the more effective ads. If an ad and its destination are relevant to the phrase marketed, it is more likely to gain a visitor via pay per click. It can also be said that there is a good chance that these visitors will become customers through their conversions.

What to do now

Do you want to try Google AdWords but don’t know where to start? Do you already have a campaign, but you are not happy with the results? If you answered yes to any one of these questions, it could mean that you are in need of professional help. Contact us to discuss how we can efficiently and strategically manage and grow your AdWords campaigns.

Further reading

• https://econsultancy.com/blog/65682-what-is-google-adwords-and-how-does-it-work
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdWords
• https://adwords.google.com/home/how-it-works/

The post What is Google AdWords? appeared first on Cognite Marketing.

Google is the most used search engine in the world being used by millions on a daily basis, therefore, Google needs to provide you (the searcher) with up-to-date information when you need it.

How? Google uses and updates its search algorithm constantly so that it combs through websites and ranks them based on a process called SEO. As a local business owner, your goal is to rank high on Google, otherwise, people won’t know you’re there. As time goes by, you’ll find that your website disappears on Google for a number of reasons. Let’s have a look at some of the reasons why a website disappears, including algorithm updates.

Common reasons why a website disappears:

Hacked websites

Unfortunately, website hacking is a common activity nowadays. If your website has been hacked, such as spam content or links being displayed on the website, you should clean your site and update your website security.

Spam content

If search engines find that your website has spam content, it will stop displaying those pages. Go through your content and make sure that it does not have any content that your website reader will view as spam. Make sure that your website is clean, structured and has a clear purpose. Your readers will pick up very quickly if your website is stuffed with advertising terms and jargon.

Duplicate content

If an algorithm finds that content on your site is duplicated, it will penalise your website. Examine all of the content on your site with standard plagiarism checker tools to detect duplicate content. You want to put all of your efforts into ensuring that your website is original and unique. If you pick up that you do have any content that is similar to another website, you need to change the content. Make sure that you create your content using your authentic brand voice. It will help minimise the possibilities of having duplicate content.

Keyword stuffing/hidden text

Hidden text and keyword stuffing is a technique that should be discarded. Many website owners used these tricks in order to improve their ranking, however, it causes more harm than good. If the algorithm finds any trace of keyword stuffing in your website, it will remove those pages. Rather make sure that your website has a strategic fit with your brand and its products. You want to sell your brand, but make sure you are not overselling it by adding in the same keywords over and over again.

Black hat SEO techniques

This is the most common reason for the disappearance of websites. Several SEO experts are using the black hat SEO techniques to improve website ranking in search engines. These techniques do increase your ranking, but if Google picks up on these techniques, it will remove your page altogether. You should always follow standard SEO techniques for achieving a good page ranking. If you are letting your brand sell itself, your website will organically get a higher SEO ranking. This does take longer, however, it will ensure that your website gets a good quality stamp of approval from Google.

Unnatural links

If Google finds that the pattern of your outbound links on the site and the links that are pointing to the site are unnatural or manipulative, Google will then think that you are selling links that pass your page rank. Rather create proper URLs that Google will rank higher so that you can avoid running the risk of your website and its pages not being shown at all. Sometimes you need to play it safe to achieve the best results.

How does the algorithm update work?

If your website is not disappearing based on the above reasons, there is a good chance that it could be due to algorithm updates. The algorithm basically sorts through billions of websites to deliver the best results to you as the searcher. While no one knows exactly how the algorithm ranks your site, the best practice is through better SEO and relevant website content. If you find your website has disappeared then you need to check if Google has updated their algorithm recently and take the necessary steps to get back into the Google index.

How do the upgrades affect your company?

If your website has disappeared off of Google due to its updates then that means the searcher won’t be able to find you, which can drastically impact your online sales.

People search generally for companies that offer them a solution to their problem, “I need a new tyre” or “Hairdressers in Johannesburg”, etc. In today’s world, you are facing hundreds if not thousands of competitors online. So it stands to reason that if your website is no longer displaying on the Google search engine, this means that your competitor can get your sale before you even have a chance to show your message.

Google updates their algorithm when they find that websites with greater quality are being ranked lower than those of lesser quality, in order to provide you as the searcher with a better user experience. Google also applies these updates to ensure that you are getting the correct information you need when you need it.

Fix the problem

At the end of the day, there are thousands of reasons why your website could be down. There are also thousands of solutions and steps you as a company owner can take to rectify the disappearance of your website. When you don’t have the know how or time to make these rectifications, you then need to consider using a SEO or marketing company that can do it for you.

SEO companies are always in tune with Google so that they can react at a moment’s notice to an update before it can really affect your website. So make the smart decision and use a company that will be there for you and your business at the end of the day, because when you grow so do they.

We here at Cognite understand the ins and outs of Google’s search ranking. We analyse websites to identify SEO weak points. In-depth keyword research is done which reveals crucial keywords to focus on. We then add your keywords into the right places for maximum effect.

Further reading

• https://www.sitecenter.com/insights/80-how-google-algorithm-updates-affect-websites.htm
• https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change
• http://searchengineland.com/3-things-major-google-algorithm-update-260828

The post Did your website disappear off the search results? Make sure you adapt to Google algorithm updates appeared first on Cognite Marketing.

10 Reasons why YouTube you should consider YouTube ads

Here are 10 reasons why you should consider YouTube as a marketing platform for your brand:

1. Offers targeted advertising
2. Affordable marketing platform
3. It’s a platform that boasts with a rapidly growing audience
4. Highly measurable results
5. You can customise your content
6. Multiple ad display options
7. Your ads will show on multiple devices
8. Can supplement your existing PPC campaigns
9. Unsaturated market
10. Video is much easier to consume than text

The post Video Ads on YouTube: Top 10 Reasons why it works appeared first on Cognite Marketing.