Building links through testimonials and reviews

Testimonials are no doubt a great way to increase your brand's trustworthiness and credibility, but they can be a great source of quality backlinks as well. 

Let us see how you can leverage them to improve your SEO efforts -

Leave useful reviews

Yes, you do not have to wait around for someone to write testimonials for you. Depending on your niche, make a list of the tools or software's that you regularly use. You can leave a meaningful review with a link to your website on the high-authority tools. If their website itself does not have any provision for leaving review, you can check high-authority third party websites to leave your testimonial.

Encourage your customers to leave reviews

Either on your own website or third-party review platforms, do not shy away from asking your recent customers to leave their feedback, and make sure that they include a link to your website.

Find unlinked mentions

Check any of your previous testimonials for unlinked mentions. If you find any, you can contact the customer and ask them to include a link to your website or the relevant web page.

Contact a digital marketing company for further information and help on earning quality backlinks for your website.

Internal Linking: Why is it One of the Most Important Factors for a Website's SEO?

It is no secret that link building is integral to any successful Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. Links essentially act as a signal to Google and other search engines that your website has quality and useful content, increasing your chances of ranking higher.

However, most webmasters focus on obtaining external links or backlinks to build authority on websites and neglect the opportunity to capitalize on internal links.

What are internal links?

Simply put, internal links are those links that point from one page of a website or domain to another page belonging to the same domain.

Strategically linking your internal pages can have many SEO benefits.

What are the advantages of internal linking?

#Improves site architecture

The most prominent benefit of internal linking is that it facilitates a sound site architecture. This lets search engine spiders to easily crawl and index all the pages of your website. With a good internal linking structure, Google will be able to better understand the relationships between your pages and other content. Not only this, but Google can also discover your topics that cover similar subject matter, which can act as a strong topical authority signal and give a boost to your search engine ranking.

#Improves user experience

Internal linking makes it easy for your visitors to navigate the site and quickly find the content relevant to them, contributing to an overall positive user experience.

#Improves traffic to lesser known pages

Internal links using relevant, keyword-optimized anchor text increases the chances of visitors clicking on them. This will allow them to discover and increase traffic to the deeper, lesser-known pages that might not show up otherwise.

#Improves time on site

As we said in the above point, internal linking leads your visitors to more pages on your site. Provided your content is relevant, engaging and value-driven, this can greatly improve visitors' time on site and reduce bounce rate, sending another positive signal to the search engines.

Contact a digital marketing company for a complete SEO audit of your website and discover more SEO benefits for your website.

TSL Consulting Pvt Ltd is an integrated marketing company based in India. We offer customized outbound marketing, inbound marketing, digital marketing and data profiling services to a wide spectrum of small and mid-sized organizations.

Effective tips for broken link building

 Broken link building is a smart way to replace the dead links on a relevant website with your own. It is beneficial to both parties – you get a backlink and the host website gets rid of a dead link. Now, there is a general consensus that the broken link building method is time-consuming and not that effective. There is no guarantee that the website you have contacted will reply or change the link. However, with the right approach, this method can be very effective and well-worth the effort. 

Let us see some tips for you to effectively leverage broken link building -

• To get the right type of backlinks, use online tools to find the websites that are regularly visited by your audience, as well as check the high-authority websites in your niche

• Try to use online tools to find out the content of the old link, so that the content you offer as a replacement is as similar as possible to the old one

• Keep your email short and to the point, as webmasters get such emails and pitches all the time

• Make sure that you are contacting the right person, and not using a generic email address on the concerned website

Send a follow-up email once or twice, but do not be too pushy as you can get reported as spam

How to get quality backlinks without creating new content

Content creation is a great way to earn quality backlinks, but it is also time-consuming. 

Let us have a look at some alternate, effective techniques of link building -

•  Broken link building – Find a website with broken links that direct to pages or blogs similar to your own, contact the said website and offer your pages as a way to fix the broken links

•  Online directories/Resource pages – Find relevant, authentic and high-traffic directories or resource pages to list your business in them

• Leverage existing partnerships – List your partners on your own site and ask them for a link back, or you can leave a testimonial for a company whose services you are using

• Unlinked mentions – Find if you have any unlinked online mentions and ask them to link back to you

• Contest – Hold an online contest to encourage more social shares and online mentions

Get in touch with a digital marketing company for further information on earning quality backlinks and optimizing your overall SEO strategy.

Unnatural link building practices to steer clear from

Everyone wants backlinks for boosting their SEO efforts and drawing traffic to the website. However, obtaining links from bad sources or through unnatural practices can adversely affect your ranking or even get you penalized by Google.

Let us have a look at some of these practices -

•  An unnatural amount of links obtained through link exchange practices

•  Buying or selling links

•  Using automated link building programs to build links to your site

•  Spammy guest posting practices

•   Leaving spammy comments on irrelevant blog posts or discussion forums

•   Low-quality directory submissions

•   Using private blog networks – sites that use different IP addresses and exchange links, but are owned by the same person

An excessive amount of keyword-rich footer links

Top 5 Skills You Need to Become a Successful SEO Specialist

As Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is more important than ever to increase your online visibility, draw organic traffic and strengthen your credibility, it is natural for the demand for SEO specialists to be on the rise. If you are thinking about embarking on an SEO career, you will want to obtain more information about certain skill set that organizations look out for.

Let us have a look at the topmost skills you require to become a successful SEO professional in the competitive digital marketing industry -

Critical and analytical thinking

An SEO professional needs to be clear that no same strategy will work for every website. He/she has to carefully audit every website they are working on, for any shortcomings and come up with suitable solutions to fix them.

Also, a website rank will not be consistent. It may be positively or negatively affected at any given time. An SEO specialist must be adept at unconvering the cause behind a sudden rank drop, so that the issue can be fixed as quickly as possible.

Research skills

As an SEO specialist, most of your time is going to be spent on research. From keyword research and competitor analysis, to keeping up with the latest techniques and Google algorithm updates, research will be an important part of your job responsibilities.

Basic programming skills

This may not be a hard-core requirement, but technical considerations such as page speed, server side redirects, rendering, etc., are an important part of every optimized SEO strategy. A basic knowledge of languages like HTML, CSS, or JavaScript will help you work better with these aspects and use them to improve your SEO efforts.

Communication and team work

You will need to regularly work together with other team members such as content writers and digital marketers to make sure that your SEO strategy is being executed perfectly.

Also, you will time-to-time find yourselves in a position to explain SEO concepts to a client in a manner that is easy to understand, making communication skills an absolute necessity.

Content skills

It is rare that an SEO professional will need to produce content, but there are times when it can become necessary. Also, content being an integral part of SEO, you need to have an understanding of the right kind of content and the quality required to make it user-friendly.

Link exchange for SEO – Is is good or bad?

Link exchange programs have long been marketers as a give and take strategy. One website offers another to add their links, if the other site will also add the former's own links to their website.

This strategy has been exploited a lot in order to gain quick backlinks, get traffic and improve search engine rankings in a short amount of time. However, these days link exchange programs are frowned upon, and can hurt rather than help your SEO if they are not used carefully.

If you have earned a backlink naturally because your content is relevant and of high-quality, and the other website has chosen to link back to you for a similar reason, the exchange will prove beneficial to both. However, doing so purely as a shortcut can also end you up with a penalty as this goes against Google's webmaster guidelines.

This will have a massive impact on your site's rank, authority and traffic.

The best course of action is to focus on naturally earn backlinks, rather than actively seeking a link exchange. If you need help with your website's SEO strategy, you can contact a digital marketing company.

5 Of the Most Important Strategies for Website Optimization

Optimizing your website is not only important for increasing ranking through SEO and driving organic traffic, but also to convert this traffic into business leads and ultimately into paying customers.

Let us the topmost important strategies you need to implement to optimize your website for SEO and conversion -

Page Speed

The importance of a fast-loading website cannot be stressed enough. Every extra second it takes to load can cost you a potential customer. An optimum page speed will result in reduced bounce rates and increased time-on-site, which is a good indicator for the search engine algorithms.

Mobile-First Indexing

Since Google has officially rolled out mobile-first indexing, mobile-friendliness is not merely a nice-to-have option. As Google will give priority to the mobile version of a website over the desktop one, your ranking might suffer even if you have a great desktop website.

Quality Content

Of course, no website optimization strategy can ever be complete without content. Google will actively demote thin content or content that provides little to no value for the intended target audience. For successful SEO, your content should be -

●      Original and free of plagiarism

●      Relevant to the website visitors

●      Must provide value to the readers

●      Inclusive of keywords mapped to the user search intent

User Experience

This is one of the most important considerations for website optimization. If your website does not provide a good user experience, the visitors will abandon it, leading to an increased bounce rate that adversely affects SEO. Some of the top factors that contribute to a good user experience are -

●      Aesthetic website design

●      Easy site navigation

●      Optimum page loading speed

●      Ease of accessibility

Link Building

Link building was and will always remain an integral part of website optimization. Quality links from high-authority websites act as an endorsement for your website and contribute to its credibility and trustworthiness.

If you need help for optimizing your website for SEO and/or content, you can engage the services of a digital marketing company.

TSL Consulting Pvt Ltd is an integrated marketing company based in India. We offer customized outbound marketing, inbound marketing, digital marketing and data profiling services to a wide spectrum of small and mid-sized organizations.

4 Key Elements of an Effective Content Marketing Process

A lot of considerations are involved when you are planning a content marketing strategy. However, marketers tend to overlook them in favor of the actual content creation. There seems to be a widespread belief that the more content you create, the more successful your content marketing efforts will be. However, the frequency of content posting matters very little in the favor of the value you are providing with it.

Let us have a look at the top essential elements that are the marker of successful content marketing, apart from the actual content creation -

Audience

When you are focusing on what you should write, you cannot forget who you are writing for. Consider what your audience would like to read and not what you want to write. Research all the channels that will be viable for promoting a particular piece of content, and decide an objective for it. Consider whether your content provides an actionable takeaway for the audience.

SEO

If you don't optimize for SEO, you will have a hard time making sure it reaches the right audience no matter how great it is. Optimize your content for intent-based keywords, and make sure that it is free of duplicacy, is relevant and adds to the knowledge of the reader.

Promotion

Promoting the content you have created is just as important as creating it. You cannot rely on SEO alone to attract traffic to the content piece. Actively promote it on your social media accounts. You can also send an email with the link to the content the subscribers who might be interested in it; however, make sure that you do not appear as a spammer by sending it to irrelevant subscribers.

Repurposing

You might have a content piece that had performed really well when it was published, but is now past its shelf life. Repurposing it will give that content a fresh chance to rank online and reach new people. It will also help you save the time and efforts required for creating new content from the scratch.

A digital marketing company can help you strategize a comprehensive content marketing and content creation strategy that caters to your business goals, and attracts the right kind of audience.

TSL Consulting Pvt Ltd is an integrated marketing company based in India. We offer customized outbound marketing, inbound marketing, digital marketing and data profiling services to a wide spectrum of small and mid-sized organizations.

How to Create an Effective Editorial Calendar For Your Content Marketing Strategy

Why do you need an editorial calendar?

Content marketing involves a lot more than haphazardly scribbling a blog whenever you have the time. You also need to think about the objective you want to accomplish with every single piece of content you create, along with planning the distribution of content on relevant digital platforms.

                                          

Creating an editorial calendar would greatly help you streamline and organize this entire process. It will leave you plenty of time to properly strategize and create content before the actual publishing. Thus, an editorial calendar will not only help you save time and efforts, but will also improve the overall quality of your content.

Let us see how you can create an effective editorial calendar

Select an editorial template

Often, the main reason content marketers hesitate to create a calendar is that they have no idea where to start, or think that the task will take up too much time. You can use one of the many online calendar tools available and use readymade templates to make the process easier.

Establish your content objectives

If you haven't already, now is a great time to determine your content marketing objectives. They could include -

• Increasing your brand awareness

• Improving your SEO efforts

• Portraying yourself as an industry thought leader

• Driving more traffic towards your website

•  Generate leads for a product or service

Make sure that your calendar prioritizes and reflects and all these objectives.

Research and come up with content ideas

Conduct an in-depth research to get an idea of what kind of content is performing well in your niche, and the kind of content (and formats) that is preferred by your target audience. Based on this research, you can start coming up with different ideas for topics and headlines.

Perform a thorough keyword research

Before you start creating content on these topics, conduct a thorough keyword research and include the high-ranking keywords in your content so that it will easily show up in search results. As far as possible, try to categorize your keywords according to user intent (navigational, transactional or informational), so that it will have better chances of ranking for the relevant searches.

Analyze your results periodically

Regularly monitoring the performance of your content will allow you to optimize your strategy for better results.

A digital marketing company can help you create a detailed editorial calendar, as well as create content that is mapped to your marketing objectives.

TSL Consulting Pvt Ltd is an integrated marketing company based in India. We offer customized outbound marketing, inbound marketing, digital marketing and data profiling services to a wide spectrum of small and mid-sized organizations.

Content vs Backlinks: Which One is Better For Your Website?

There are many different strategies and techniques available for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of a website, each of them effective in their own way. While it is neither practical nor possible to implement all of them, content and back-links have always been counted among the most important strategies for any website. Ideally, both of them should be exercised, but if it comes to prioritizing one of them, content will always gain the upper hand.

Let us see the reasons for this preference -

The purpose of back-links and content

Back-links from a high-authority website increase your brand awareness, as well as act as a vote of confidence for your own website.

Now, imagine that a user sees such back-link and decides to visit your website. There, if he finds that the content is not useful or relevant to him at all. It does not provide him any new information or does not convey how your solution can help them overcome a particular business challenge.

This will lead him to abandon your website. Therein lies the difference between the purpose of content and backlinks. Backlinks will merely serve to bring people to your website. Thereafter, it depends on the content to engage the visitors and encourage them to convert into leads which you can nurture into revenue-generating customers.

As a matter of fact, if your website does not already have high-quality content, you will find it nearly impossible to get a backlink from a reputed source. On the other hand, keyword-optimized and value-rich content has fairly high chances of ranking.

Content for site structure

Content is also integral for building your site structure. It enables your visitors easily traverse your website and access the information they want. Not only this, but this also helps search engine spiders to discover the most important topics your website is covering.

To conclude, backlinks are important for SEO and do help you rank, but only when the efforts for them are backed up by strong content. If you have to make a choice between the two, your best bet will always be to go for content. You can engage a digital marketing company if you need help to strategize and create quality content for your business.

TSL Consulting Pvt Ltd is an integrated marketing company based in India. We offer customized outbound marketing, inbound marketing, digital marketing and data profiling services to a wide spectrum of small and mid-sized organizations.

Why Should You Incorporate Videos in Your Digital Strategy in 2020

Humans have been visual creatures right from the primitive ages. Long before the alphabet came into existence, our ancestors used visuals to communicate with each other.

                    

Thus, our brains are naturally inclined to respond and process visuals faster than plain text content. In the age of information overload, marketers have been quick to realize this fact and act upon it. From images and info-graphics to charts and presentations, engaging visual content is widely used along with textual content so that the target audience can easily consume the information. 

Among all these, videos are, and will continue to remain for the foreseeable future, the favorite visual medium of marketers. Today, any B2B digital marketing strategy is incomplete without some form of video content. In fact, according to Wyzowl’s State of Video Marketing Survey, 85% of businesses use video in their marketing strategy, and 99% of current video marketers plan to continue using videos in 2020.

Let us see the reason for this popularity, and why you should seriously consider incorporating videos in your digital strategy in the near future -

Encourages audience engagement

Business executives are pressed for time. Serving them text-heavy documents warrants a cursory glance at best. A short, engaging video will work better to catch and hold their attention completely.

The interactive nature of videos will give your audience the sense of 'speaking' directly to you. This not only adds a personality to your business and brand, but also targets both the analytical and emotional mind of your potential clients, enabling them to form a better connection with you.

A format favored by social media

A solid social media presence is necessary for every brand to increase their digital outreach and strengthen relationships with their customers. Videos are much more likely to be shared and viewed on the social media platforms than huge blocks of textual content, giving way to increased visibility and engagement rate.

Improves Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engines favor websites with videos, as they are a marker for quality content. A good quality video, along with proper SEO-optimized meta description and title can increase your chances of ranking higher.

Boosts your conversion rate

90% of consumers believe that a video can help them make a purchase decision. Including an explainer video or product demo video on your website and landing page can potentially increase your conversion rate.

If you are held back by the thought that video creation or editing is a tedious and time-consuming task, there are plenty of online tools which can make your task easier. So, start planning for including videos in your B2B marketing strategy to take it to the next level!

TSL Consulting Pvt Ltd is an integrated marketing company based in India. We offer customized outbound marketing, inbound marketing, digital marketing and data profiling services to a wide spectrum of small and mid-sized organizations.

5 Digital Marketing Trends We Are Looking Forward to in 2021

Quick as a flash, 2020 is rapidly approaching its final few months and 2021 is already looking around the corner. As always, it is time to look into the future and see whether the digital marketing trends can help you plan the strategic positioning of our businesses for the new year.

AI-powered chatbots

It is estimated that around 75 to 95% of customer queries will be taken care of by chatbots by 2022. Today, most consumer prefer to forego any human communication and demand an instant answers to their queries through live chats on websites.

An AI-powered chatbot will not only provide instant answers, but can also learn continuosly to provide a deeper answer to improve customer satisfaction.

Voice search marketing

More and more people are using smartphones and /or virtual assistants. It had been predicted that 50% of all online searches will be attributed to voice activation, and this number will only stand to increase in the near future.

Thus, optimizing your website for voice search can help you drive more traffic and improve your customer service, lending you an upper hand over your competitors.

Hyper-targeted advertising

Customers have grown insensitive to, and are even annoyed, by the constant barrage of irrelevant advertisements. They are more responsive to the advertisements that are relevant to them or address a very specific business challenge. Thus, personalization will continue to be important for engaging customer attention and bring relevant leads to the mouth of the sales funnel.

Augmented Reality (AR)

Immersive technologies like Virtual Reality (VR) have already taken firm root in the digital marketing strategies of several brands; but, the use of AR has been few and far in between, especially for B2B brands.

However, the new decade has brought signs for more inclusion of AR. B2B brands can use AR to give immersive product demos and show them exactly what the product could do for their target audience, leading to a vastly improved customer experience.

Messaging apps

An increasing number of marketers are using messaging apps like WhatsApp to stay in touch with their customers and target audience. Using messaging apps will increase the chances of your message getting read, and reduce the possibility of spam as your customers would have willingly given you their number themselves.

A digital marketing company can help you strategize and execute a campaign that includes the latest trends that are in line with your business and marketing goals.

TSL Consulting Pvt Ltd is an integrated marketing company based in India. We offer customized outbound marketing, inbound marketing, digital marketing and data profiling services to a wide spectrum of small and mid-sized organizations.

How to use social proof for B2B conversions

A new restaurant has opened in your neighborhood, but so far you have been reluctant to try it out. But, when your friend comes to you with a rave review of the place, you are finally convinced and even eager to give it a go.

This third-party endorsement by a peer of influencer is nothing but social proof, and is a favorite tool of B2B marketing companies to boost their sales. Let us see different ways in which you can leverage social proof for your own business -

• Include customer testimonials and reviews on your website and third-party review sites

• Listing the names of big-shot clients on your website

• Using industry influencers to spread the word about your brand

• Listing your awards, recognition's and certifications on your website

• Publishing case studies that highlight your most successful endeavors

• Show off statistics such as a high user or subscriber count

Tips to optimize Facebook ad targeting

The success of your social media advertising campaign largely depends upon the audience you are targeting. Reaching the right people will enable you to increase conversions and save budget in the long run. Let us see some useful targeting tips to help you do so -

• Use Facebook Custom Audiences to deliver ads to your existing customers, for a greater engagement or click-through rate

• Use Facebook Audience Insights to narrow down your target demographic

• Re-purpose your best performing content into a Facebook ad through info-graphic or a short video

• Use Facebook Lookalike Audience to target the people who are similar to your existing customers

• Serve ads targeted to your fan base, provided you have a loyal one

Contact a digital marketing company for more insights and help for running optimized Facebook advertising campaigns.

What is SEM and What Does an SEM Specialist Do?

If you are fascinated by the workings of the search engine that decide which pages show up first in the search results and which pages get pushed down, the job of a Search Engine Marketing (SEM) specialist is the right one for you.

                           

In fact, as more and more businesses are moving online and competing for the larger share of user attention and website traffic, they are on the hunt for SEM specialists that can be a value addition to their digital marketing team.

Before diving into an overview of the roles and responsibilities for this job title, let us first understand the meaning and purpose of SEM.

What is Search Engine Marketing?

SEM is nothing but the practice of increasing the visbility of your website or brands on search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo and so on. SEM encompasses different methods including organic ones such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and paid ones such as Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. 

Who is an SEM specialist?

An SEM specialist is a person who puts their knowledge of how search engines pull up results to work on behalf of their organization. Their aim is to ensure that when the organization's target audience searches for specific keywords or queries, their website or relevant web page/blog will rank as high as possible. The higher the page ranks, the more probable it is for the user to click on it, get engaged and progress towards conversion.

The overall daily responsibilities of an SEM specialist include -

• Research and keep up-to-date on the latest trends and search engine algorithm updates to make sure your strategy is on the right track

•Target and test new keywords that are relevant to your niche and target audience

• Work on the website's overall SEO strategy including keywords, analyzing content, technical SEO and making changes whenever required

• Set up and manage PPC campaigns

•  Analyze website performance through online analysis tools for different statistics such as website traffic, traffic source, etc., and modifying strategy based on the metrics

Education and skills required to become an SEM specialist

While the requirements will depend upon the organization you are applying to, here is an overview of the common skills and educational requirements for the job -

• A bachelor's degree

• One or more years of relevant experience

•  Good communication skills

• Basic understanding of SEO and PPC

•  Basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

•  Strong analytical and problem-solving skills

TSL Consulting Pvt Ltd is an integrated marketing company based in India. We offer customized outbound marketing, inbound marketing, digital marketing and data profiling services to a wide spectrum of small and mid-sized organizations.

What Makes a High Quality Backlink in SEO?

We always hear marketing and SEO experts iterating that we need to focus on quality, rather than just quality of backlinks. However, what exactly constitutes of a high-quality link? Let us find out.

                                           

Here are some of the characteristics that indicate the quality of a backlink -

Domain authority

Imagine that you are confronted with two opinions, one from a well-known industry expert and another from a largely unknown person. Now, whose opinion will you tend to trust more? Obviously, that of the industry expert's.

Similarly, you want to be sure that the website you are getting a backlink from has high-authority and is trusted on the web. When you have backlinks from such websites, their visitors will naturally transfer this credibility and trustworthiness to your page.

Relevance

Of course, relevance is the basic requirement for any backlink. The website, page or blog on which your link is posted on must talk about the same topic it does or at least be relevant to your own niche.

Ability to direct traffic

Any link that does not direct traffic is not serving its purpose. To be able to do so, it must be placed in a prominent position so that it will be easily visible to the site/page visitors. Not only this, the anchor text used for the link must be good enough to generate curiosity and make compel the visitors to click on it.

Comes from a unique source

A backlink that comes from a source that does not have too many links to other websites will add more weight to yours. A large number of backlinks from the same source will divide up the trustworthiness and authority of your own link.

One-way link

As far as possible, it is better that there is no or minimum link exchange between your website and the one you are linking from. This practice has been widely exploited in the past, and can be considered by the search engines as an unnatural practice. Thus, the best option is to acquire the link through content quality and relevancy, rather than an empty exchange.

If you need help evaluating the quality of your backlinks or acquiring new ones, you can contact a digital marketing company.

TSL Consulting Pvt Ltd is an integrated marketing company based in India. We offer customized outbound marketing, inbound marketing, digital marketing and data profiling services to a wide spectrum of small and mid-sized organizations.