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All You Need To Know About Content Marketing

May 16, 2023 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

Content marketing is a long-term strategy that focuses on building relationships with your target audience by consistently delivering relevant, useful content–blogs, newsletters, white papers, social media posts, videos, and more.

Ultimately, this content should generate so much value that when a prospective customer makes a purchase, they’ll think of you first. It should also convey expertise and make your company appear to care about its customers.

Why do you need Content Marketing?

Ultimately, content marketing is about providing valuable information that your audience can use to solve their problems or enhance their lives. Companies that do this consistently have a better chance of building a loyal following and retaining them for the long term.

To make your content marketing strategy as effective as possible, it’s important to have a clear plan for achieving your goals. This can be achieved by using a business case to determine how content will benefit your company and what resources you need to invest in creating the content.

A strong strategy also includes a detailed list of content creation tasks to be completed by different people within your organization. This will help ensure you have the right team in place for your campaign and that they are collaborating effectively on the project.

Once you have a content marketing strategy in place, you can use it to track your progress and analyze your results. Set a monthly goal and choose metrics that support your central goal. These should be attainable and measurable so you can track your success on an ongoing basis.

The next step in creating a successful content marketing strategy is to identify who your target audience is and what they want to hear from your company. This is a vital step in any marketing strategy. It’s a good idea to create buyer personas for each of your customers to better understand their needs and interests.

How effective is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is one of the most effective ways to build your business and drive traffic. It helps you attract, engage and nurture your target audience until they become brand advocates. It also builds trust and credibility, which leads to better search engine rankings, more sales, and increased profits.

Before you get started, it’s important to establish your goals. These could be to increase brand awareness, acquire email addresses, or convert new visitors into customers. Once you’ve identified these, you can then start defining success metrics for each piece of content you create and share.

Then, map out your customer’s journey from awareness to conversion and identify the type of content they need at each stage. This will help you craft content that targets their pain points and educates them about your product or service.

For example, if you sell payment software, you may want to create content that educates your buyers about their financial situation and how your payment system can help them. You can then provide them with customer testimonials, case studies, or demos that demonstrate how your solution can solve their specific problems.

It’s also important to consider the channels you’ll use to distribute your content, as this can determine which types of media you need to be active on. You can do this by assessing your current social media presence and examining which channels have the most reach among your target audience.

Finally, a well-planned content strategy will make your entire marketing process easier and more efficient. A solid plan should include a formal content calendar and a list of the main projects and campaigns your company will focus on. It should also outline the budget and resources you will need to invest in your content marketing.

Benefits of Content Marketing

Content marketing is a long-term strategy that allows you to build your brand and attract new customers. It is also a great way to increase your social media presence and generate traffic from search engines.

The best part is that content marketing is cost-effective. In fact, research shows that it can generate three times as many leads as other marketing methods and costs 62 percent less!

Another major benefit of content marketing is that it allows you to communicate with your audience without having to pay for advertisements. This can help you build relationships with your audience and get them to trust you more.

Creating value-driven content is the best way to engage your audience and showcase your expertise. It can also help you gain their trust and promote your business.

In addition, creating valuable content will improve your site’s SEO. This can help your website rank higher on Google search results and bring in more visitors.

A great way to improve your site’s SEO is to publish quality blog content on a regular basis. Ideally, you should publish 16 or more blog posts per month.

Your goal should be to educate your target market about your product or service so that they’ll be able to make the purchase decision more easily. This could be through a white paper, blog post, or case study.

Finally, a good content marketing strategy can also increase your brand affinity by generating positive recommendations from your existing customers. If your customers love what you do and feel that you’re the best in the business, they’ll vouch for your brand to their friends and family without prompting.

The key to a successful content marketing strategy is to map it out and consistently execute it. By measuring your results and identifying what works, you can tweak your strategy to achieve even more success.

Businesses that Need Content Marketing

Across all industries, business needs content to succeed. From professional services to e-commerce, businesses need to stay relevant and communicate with customers in ways that make sense for them.

One of the most important reasons to focus on content is because it is an effective way for businesses to build trust and awareness, which in turn generates traffic, leads, and sales. The process of using content to accomplish these goals is called content marketing.

The first step in a successful content marketing strategy is to identify your high-level goals and objectives. Whether you want to raise awareness of your brand or highlight a new product, it’s essential to know the goals that matter most to your business before you start creating content.

Establishing clear content marketing goals and KPIs will help you to maximize your opportunities and track progress. This will also allow you to analyze the results and determine which tactics work best for your business and which ones do not.

Another key element of content marketing is providing value to your audience. This could be a solution to a common problem, thought leadership, hacks, insights, and analysis, or some form of entertainment.

In addition, your content should reflect the voice and tone of your company. This will give your audience a clear picture of your brand and help them connect with you.

In 2023, it is critical for companies to stay focused on creating quality content that reflects their brand. This will ensure that their content remains relevant to their audience and improves their search engine rankings.

Why hire a Content Marketing Expert?

Content marketing is one of the most important things a business can do to grow its brand and gain more sales. It can increase brand awareness, boost conversion rates, and build loyal customers who will keep coming back for more. But to do that, you need great content that is targeted toward the right audience and that meets their needs.

A good content marketing expert will have several skills that will help them create and deliver excellent content. Some of these skills include knowledge of SEO and a writing style that is engaging and compelling.

Another skill a content marketing specialist needs is a deep understanding of their company’s products and services. This will allow them to create effective content that helps consumers learn about their offerings and find solutions to their problems.

It can also help them create valuable content that helps educate the public about an industry that is misunderstood or riddled with myths. This can save their sales team a lot of time by reducing the number of questions they need to answer.

Finally, a good content marketer will have a strong understanding of how to measure the effectiveness of their marketing efforts. They can use a variety of metrics to assess the success of their campaign and communicate the results to managers and executives within their company.

A content marketing agency can help you build an effective content strategy that will increase your website traffic, increase conversions, and increase sales. They will also be able to manage your content marketing campaign so that it is always running smoothly. They will also be able to help you determine which keywords are most effective for your business.

Contact us or call us today for any help you need with your Content Marketing campaign! We’re here to help you! Visit our blog for more related articles.

Why Social Media Is Essential To Your Business

May 9, 2022 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

5 Reasons To Invest In Social Media Marketing

It has become widely known that social media can have a tremendously positive effect on any business. Here are some of the best reasons to leverage social media to ensure business growth.

1. A Great Return On Investment

What business owner could ignore an opportunity to make their lives more rewarding – and delivers an excellent return on investment? Social media ticks those boxes. In fact, it needn’t place your business under any sort of financial strain at all. It’s free, from the moment you establish your social media account to the time that you make your first post there simply is no cost – that is true for all the top social media sites. Of course, you can choose to place paid advertising to promote your business brand or your products and services.

2. It’s Extremely Engaging

It’s difficult to think of a more effective way to communicate with your current and potential customers. It provides a business with an opportunity to showcase their brand and just how they differentiate themselves from the competition. It creates what marketers call ‘talk value’. In other words, those who visit your social media channels share the information you post with others, including your services and products before you know it your messages have gone viral.

3. It Raises Brand Awareness

Research has shown that customers trust brands that have a social media presence. In fact, they trust those brands around 90% more than those that are not active on social media. That is the power of social media – and why businesses are leveraging their reach and power to promote services and products.

4. It Supercharges Website Traffic

It may take some time – but social media drives traffic to your company website. It takes work, focus, and analysis but when you get it right you may see a spike of up to 90% in the number of visitors your site receives.

5. Lead Generation

Social Media leverages vanity to make visitors look good. They want to share how unique they are. Try a quiz that encourages social sharing, then post the results on your Facebook page or on your Twitter feed. Then watch the sharing begin and your messages reach a multitude of potential and current customers.

Call or contact SEO Houston Pros today for the help you need with your social media marketing. Visit our blog for more tricks and tips for Houston SEO!

Knowing The Vital Strategies For Houston Digital Marketing

September 12, 2019 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

9 Crucial Strategies That Are An Integral Part Of Effective Digital Marketing In Houston

Digital marketing is a term synonymous with networking strategies and campaigns. But to see the gains of digital marketing, you need to understand the procedure you will have at your disposal. Every digital marketing method you decide to use should help you stay afloat, giving a competitive edge and makes you a cut above the rest.

That then requires that you have a deep understanding of the ins and outs of digital marketing. You have to be familiar with the definition, its significant, and how you use the different digital marketing strategies.

What Is Digital Marketing?

It is a marketing approach that relies on the use of electronic gadgets and platforms. But there is more to it than you may think of from the outset.

Digital marketing is not something that came about with the advent of the internet. It has been around eve since electronic devices become an integral part of life and the way we do business. It entails more than just content generation and marketing, coupled with the leveraging of social media. Such things are part of the overall approach in digital marketing, but keep in mind that this is a marketing method that can take place online and offline.

Why Digital Marketing Matters?

The dependency on our electronic devices increases with every passing day. We are spending more and more time on these gadgets. Research shows that the average American spends more than 11 hours on electronic devices.

Those may be scary stats, but they are nothing compared to the fact that we are drawing ever so closer to spending every waking hour on these machines and gadgets. Given such statistics, digital marketing becomes a pivotal element in today’s world of commerce. The lack of adequate efforts to drive this marketing strategy can spell the downfall of your business. If you want to stay in the pack or ahead of them, then you should invest in digital marketing. Looking into the different methods employed in digital marketing and pick the ones that best suit your venture, target audience, and industry.

Types of Digital Marketing

1. Search Engine Optimization

It is a technique that entails growing online visibility for search results on search engines such as Google and Bing, among others. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) focuses on organic (non-paid) methods to ensure that your company, brand, product, or services appear on SERPs (search engine results pages). In short, eh user will receive individualized results for the keywords the input for the online search. Other elements also used to determine the results to show, including the user’s location and browsing history.

The search results are displayed in a list with the ranking determined by a search engine algorithm. The algorithms are updated continuously based on the users’ every changing way of engaging online and their searches. Therefore, if you manage to bag a high rank on the first SERP, then you are likely to enjoy more incoming traffic to your website. You then can convert those passive visitors into active customers.

2. Search Engine Marketing

You need to bolster your SEO efforts with some Search Engine Marketing (SEM). It will cover the areas the SEO fails to address. Ideally, the objective with SEM is to get the advertisement space on the SERPs. That means you will have to buy that space, meaning you will need to invest in paid search platforms such as Bing Ads, Google AdWords, and Next.

You will be charged a certain amount to have your advertisements appearing in various places on the search results pages. If you understand that SEM entails, then you will invest in it via options such as PPC (pay-per-click) advertising.

3. Social Media Marketing

At this point, you now know how crucial social media is in today’s marketing strategies. However, how well do you understand is implementation as a marketing tool? If you master how to leverage social media for marketing purposes, then it will be a platform that increases your exposure (online visibility). It offers an intimate approach to connecting and engaging with your customers. As you interact with them, you will manage to get valuable feedback that you can use to improve your products or services.

4. Content Marketing

Content is at the heart of it all. It is the material you display, be it text, images, or videos. However, prominence is given to written content. But even then, every kind of content has its place in today’s digital marketing hence the need to come up with an effective content generation and marketing plan that you can blend with other digital marketing elements such as social media marketing and SEO.

You need content to keep your target audience engaged. Therefore, the material you generate should be created with the audience in mind, taking into consideration the users’ likes, needs, and interests. And as these things dictate the subject for the content, you also need to consider their language and online search keywords they use so that you can utilize all that to boost your search engine optimization.

5. Affiliate Marketing

The need for hiring a salesperson for your brand, service, or products is the same way that you will need to invest in affiliate marketing, which entails paying for conversions. The affiliates are your sales personnel who promote your product or services and earn a commission. The beautify of it is that you will determine the rate and only pay for the conversions you get. You will not have to worry about upfront payments when it comes to affiliate marketing.

As you invest in affiliate marketing, make sure that all terms and conditions are clearly spelled out and agreed with beforehand. The affiliates you enlist will be your brand’s representatives tasked with carrying its message to the masses.

6. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing may be one of the newer tactics in digital marketing, but it has managed to make its mark known. It involves the use of people with a significant online reach and whom online users view or regard as experts. You will be leveraging their social influence to drive up traffic volume and sales. It is a popular strategy used in social media marketing. Some of the social media platforms known to be utilized in influencer marketing include Snapchat and Instagram. The influence will post images of your product or mentions your brand or services in their posts.

7. Email Marketing

Email marketing, as the name suggests, is about using your email address to update your customers or clients. You will be sending updates to your email subscribers regularly informing them about your business or what you have to offer. It helps establish a stable relationship as you make it part of your digital marketing campaign.

8. Viral Marketing

It is a strategy centered around creating content that has the potential of becoming a trendy topic. Such posts can be strange, funny, controversial, but bearing the power of sending the desired message across. It is one of the most effective ways of increasing traffic to a site over a short period. While viral marketing may be hard, its benefits are well worth the time and effort.

9. Mobile Phone Advertising

Lastly, you cannot overlook mobile phone advertising. We are in an age when everyone has and uses a mobile phone. Given this, all the other marketing tactics mentioned above can be done on mobile devices. Therefore, you need to ensure that your overall digital marketing efforts take into account the relevance of mobile phone advertising.

Call or contact SEO Houston Pros today for further information. Visit our blog for more tricks and tips for Houston SEO!

The Principles Behind The Effective Houston Digital Marketing Are Explained

September 5, 2019 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

7 Core Principles Of Effective Digital Marketing In Houston

Are you trying to figure out the best way to develop and deploy an effective digital marketing strategy for your business or that of a client? If you’re new to the field of digital marketing, practicing techniques for yourself is an excellent way to gain experience.

The approach you take to digital marketing will largely depend on your end goals, however, there are certainly some universal principles to keep in mind to ensure an effective strategy. If you want to learn more about successful digital marketing in 2019, check out this brief guide below to help you get started on the right track.

1. Draw Up A Realistic Framework

Prior to implementing any techniques or investing any money, you need to map out your approach. There are multiple ways to do so, such as timelines, editorial calendars, and content mapping. What’s more, there are dozens of free online tools to make the job of content planning and management super streamlined.

The essential point is to set several realistic goals for your strategy, leaving room for the unpredictable. You can do this by basing your goals on a series of key performance indicators (KPIs), which are directly related to the vision you have for your business.

2. Identify Core KPIs From The Outset

What are you like at setting goals? You need to select the right metrics to center your efforts on to ensure you get the end result you want. Choosing the correct KPIs – the ones most closely linked and representative to core target areas in your business – will help to keep you on target. In addition, you will be able to clearly see which marketing actions are working and which require tweaking.

Here are some questions to ask to help you work out which KPIs to use:

How is this KPI linked to my end goal?
What is this KPI measuring?
Is what is being tracked linked to user experience? If so, how?
What level of depth will I use to monitor certain metrics and is that accounted for in my plan?

3. Learn How To Create An Effective Funnel

Those with experience in the field of traditional marketing will already be acquainted with the idea of a sales funnel. A sales funnel is simply a play-by-play outline of each step of a buyer’s journey. Here is a brief breakdown of the concept with examples:

Outreach: Landing page, Facebook ads, infographics, explainer videos, content marketing, etc.
Conversion: Informational blog posts, quizzes, case studies, social media, etc.
Closing: Reviews, questionnaires, email series, etc.
Retention: Whitepapers, contents, e-mails, exclusive offers, surveys, etc.

The widest section or the beginning of the funnel is the outreach stage, where brand awareness and engagement occur. The stage is vital for capturing new traffic and re-engaging repeat visitors. The top of a sales funnels is where all the marketing happens and it needs to be highly engaging – start thinking about building relationships rather than focusing on the sale.

4. Understand How To Generate Effective Content

Effective content involves much more than Facebook ads, great blogs, and Tweets! There are many things you can do to create and distribute content more creatively. You are going to need to learn the latest methods of reaching new audiences by getting up-to-date with online technology.

To get the best results from your outreach and engagement methods, you need to be able to tell a story. Your strategy should focus on effective advertising campaigns that are not only high quality but offer value to the audience.

5. Allow For Flexibility In Your Strategic Plans

No matter what your plan is, there should be room for flexibility. Think about when you give “fake” deadlines for tasks you delegate to employees: you should take the same approach with your digital marketing plan. There should be ample room for dealing with unpredicted events and time fluctuations.

Ideally, you want to leave some “blank” spaces in your schedule and marketing timeline, which can be filled as you go. You also need to leave room for incorporating things like responding to viral articles from your competition, reacting to relevant current events, or unforeseen investments in new online tools that could alter the direction of your digital marketing plan.

6. Generate Lots Of Evergreen Content

Different forms of content serve different purposes and you need to incorporate various types when working on your business’s content marketing strategy. Although it may sound complex, it’s actually pretty simple if you take time to bulk content together and keep it all organized around tags and keywords.

Evergreen content is a form of unique content that can be repurposed in multiple ways across multiple channels. As a result, such content is generally not event or time relevant, but it centers around your brand’s story, key offerings, and core message.

7. Visualize A Clear Path

Is your content heading in a clear direction in line with overall engagement and traffic? You need to make sure that is the case from the outset in order to progress through each stage of your marketing strategy. Be sure to track how each phase of your sales funnel is performing and seek out re-engagement techniques if you notice conversion rates fluctuating.

The ultimate goal is to develop a flexible strategy that demonstrates a clear understanding of the processes you need to follow to create SEO-friendly, highly sharable content. Along the way, you should always compare actual results against expected results so you can track how well your strategies are workings and make any required changes.

Ending Words

In order to create a successful content marketing strategy, you need a solid understanding of effective project management, which involves having a solid overall vision of your plan as well as a detailed breakdown of each stage. Content marketing strategies require a mixture of art and science to ensure they are a success.

Effective digital marketing strategies can be tough to create, but with sufficient practice, you can master techniques that work to your benefit. Keep in mind your aim should be to remove your focus form conversions and profits and instead center your efforts on the human element – your brand story, the buyer’s journey, and audience engagement. If you learn how to authentically engage with your target audience, you are almost guaranteed to see success.

Please feel free to get in touch with the best SEO agency in Houston by contacting us today or giving us a call now! Visit our blog for more tips and tricks on successful SEO tactics!

Understanding The Importance Of Digital Marketing In Houston

August 6, 2019 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

Learn All You Should Know About How Houston Digital Marketing Operates

The purchasing patterns of consumers have evolved a lot in the last 10 years or so. It’s gotten to the point that many consumers are beginning and also finishing their shopping adventure completely online, which just demonstrates the power of digital marketing. Given this shift in the marketplace about how consumers make their shopping choices and even their buying, digital marketing is now crucial for any company hoping to keep up with the modern economy, no matter what sector or size they are.

What Exactly Is Digital Marketing Then?

Before you can learn about the ways in which digital marketing operates, you need to first know what it specifically is. Digital marketing could be defined as a way of promoting products and brands, both online and through various other digital mediums. Nearly every company or business has a particular audience that they are targeting and digital marketing is what gives these companies ways of connecting with their target consumers over the internet and in other digital channels.

Companies and the marketers responsible for their growth and success employ numerous digital technologies in order to convey marketing messages to specific audiences. On top of its own website, a business might also use social media, smartphones and mobile technology, email marketing, and display or PPC ads among many other things in order to draw in target consumers and engage them.

How The Tactics Of Digital Marketing Function

Company owners need to have a good grasp of digital marketing and how it operates in order to make wise choices in terms of their own digital marketing campaigns. The secret to comprehending all of this is by first learning the various particular elements involved and then being aware of how they each pave the way to marketing success. Keep reading to learn these different marketing tactics and how they can be useful to you and your business.

Website Marketing

The website your company has or will have is the foundation for nearly all of the rest of the digital marketing strategy you use. Your company website is usually the first place that your target audience forms an impression about your brand. On top of that, it’s also going to be the place where your leads get converted into paying clients. As such, your website serves a central role in your broader digital marketing efforts.

The primary goal of any digital marketing is the attraction, engagement, and conversion of prospects and leads. Nearly every technique you employ in all of this should be eventually leading your prospects to your website in order to either learn more or actually buy something.

There are times that your website is going to be your company’s only opportunity to make that crucial first impression. Given that, you need to be mindful of the site layout, graphics, and colors.

Search Engine Optimization

SEO is a huge factor in digital marketing. Search engines are the place to start if you’re looking to reach out to prospects that you’re hoping to convert. If you’re not constantly doing something to improve the SEO of your site, then you’re neglecting perhaps the most powerful avenue of generating lots of leads.

SEO is a process of making your website and its content appeal to the major search engines. Your final objective is ranking higher on any search engine results pages that relate to your products or services. When you rank higher in the SERPs, you’ll have more organic traffic coming back to your company’s website.

SEO doesn’t just get your website more traffic, but what’s considered high-caliber traffic. That’s because the traffic you will attract isn’t just high in volume, but those who are interested in what you have to offer. When your website focuses on the right subjects and keywords, you get to start reaching out to anyone online who are looking for things like what you have to offer.

Content Marketing

Another crucial tactic in digital marketing is content marketing. This is basically when your company comes up with and then promotes particular content resources with the intention of drawing in and engaging prospective clients or customers. You can create content resources or assets for many different reasons, which might include specific things like customer retention, boosting website traffic, getting leads, or just promoting brand awareness.

Regardless of which techniques you employ as components of your company’s digital marketing strategy, you’re going to need to put content out there in support of your efforts. That might be as small scale as thank-you emails to your subscribers or larger scale like an e-book that goes over and offers solutions to target consumers and the difficulties they might be looking for answers to.

The following are just several kinds of content marketing that you might establish in pursuit of digital marketing:

Ad content
Blog posts
Case studies
E-books
Images
Infographics
Social media content
Podcasts
Testimonials
Video content
Webpages
White papers

The trick to coming up with effective content resources that help drive your digital marketing efforts is by meticulously picking subjects that your audience is likely to find the most appealing. Unless you’ve already done it, be sure you research your target audience. You might even want to come up with some consumer personas to learn what about your customers. This will help you figure out what sort of content is going to prove attractive to them.

Social Media Marketing

Nearly every modern brand is employing social media marketing as a way to help their larger digital marketing efforts, specifically to get more traffic visiting their website. Social media marketing centers around the ideas of promoting the content so you can engage target consumers through options like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram. Digital marketing needs this particular technique because it helps companies grow their brand awareness, get more leads, and enjoy better customer engagement.

The one feature of the social media marketing that you might find most advantageous is just how large an audience is available to you. For instance, 8 out of 10 Americans that are online are also on Facebook. If your company isn’t using social platforms to reach out to and engage customers, then you’re really missing out on something that could mean a lot of new leads.

Social media can be very useful on its own, but it’s also something that helps every other one of your digital marketing efforts. For example, if your company creates an insightful e-book that your target audience is very receptive to, then social media can be used for promoting it, as traffic is driven to the download’s landing page. You could even use chapters or sections of that e-book as future social media content to lay the groundwork for more interest later.

PPC Advertising

Even though your company’s digital marketing strategy should be focusing on generating as much organic traffic as you can possibly get, it’s not wise to ignore how powerful pay-per-click ads can be. PPC ads mean paying ad publishers each time that a new lead actually clicks on an ad of yours. One of the most popular and successful kinds of PC ads is Google AdWords. These can get your business showing up not only on the first search engine results page but also over the organic listings.

You might be curious about why you would want to pay for ads when you’re currently trying to boost your website’s SEO. It’s a good question. The truth is that while SEO is essential, it can still take time for it to generate results. PPC ads can fill in during the meantime. PPC ads get you results much more quickly since your site is at the very top of any search results pages for related search terms. When you show up on the first page of relevant SERPs, your company gets more visibility, making it much more likely that searchers find and then click onto your website.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is just another component of digital marketing. Businesses put out branded emails in order to reach out to the core audience they want. Use marketing emails to spread the word about any special deals or promotions you have, build up your sector position, boost brand awareness, and promote any events you have coming up.

The specific content of any marketing emails you put out should be based on what your particular campaign goals are. The following are only several examples of the kinds of email marketing content that you might come up with as part of your digital marketing efforts:

Sending out welcome emails anytime you get new users who subscribe to your company’s marketing list. These should tell them what’s likely to happen through your brand emails.
Delivering promotional content. Put news and information about future discounts and sales right in the inboxes of those who might buy from you.
Developing a periodic newsletter. Deliver this to subscribers to they have the latest content and business updates about your company.
Emailing leads once they download any content from your company site. Thank them for any interest they show. Also, take advantage of this opportunity to suggest relevant content to them.
Recommendations about other content assets or products. These should be based on the buying and browsing patterns of your customers and leads.
Nurturing new leads that have shown interest. Many companies make the mistake of only trying to use email marketing for generating new leads, but it works far more effectively in following up with those that look even remotely interested as well as handling customer retention.

As with all the other techniques already listed earlier, email marketing isn’t used just by itself. Yes, you could make a monthly newsletter for promoting specials via email, but email marketing is also something you can use to support other techniques, be it social media or content marketing.

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SEO Houston Work: Creating The Best URL

July 10, 2019 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

The Keys For Perfecting The URL In Houston SEO Work

Creating the perfect URL in SEO may seem like a footnote and five-minute process and this can make a very important component of SEO success go overlooked far too often. URLs are the essential building blocks of web traffic and their use can really make or break the entire SEO campaign.

While all URLs must be created mindful of its particular task, no all the pointers listed here will apply to each URL on Each page. Your website will not be thrown on a hopeless tailspin of these are not applied to each page, these pointers are more about providing insights so that you can optimize your own practice and use URLs to their full potential.

1. Remove Extra Words

Make sure you take out all the words that are not absolutely necessary to the significance of the URL –– also known as “stop words”, this will improve the readability. This could include words like “and”, “that” as well as other extra words that don’t actually need to be there. The important rule to follow is that the URL must still be understandable to a human reader. This not only helps them to understand the subject better but improves their trust in the site.

2. Relevant Keywords

Keywords are one of the important elements that provide humans and search engines more information about the page they are on, so having a couple in the URL is a good idea. The best use is to have them describing the contents of the page itself.

Think of how often URLs must be copied-pasted when using social media or sending emails. This is because the URLs lack their anchor text, the text used in the URL is essential to understanding what will be found at the other end of a link. When you use proper anchor text with your URLs you are hitting many birds with a single stone –– the keywords you use to make it easier for the search engines to know what the content is all about so they can pass this on to those performing relevant search queries.

3. Easily Readable

Your URL will be read by both human beings and search engines. With this in mind, it is important that it is easy to understand and makes sense Your URL should inform the reader what they will find at that link. So be sure to include as many relevant keywords as possible and pull out anything unnecessary. Ideally, it should also include the domain, sub-domain and the keywords you have selected –– be sure not to make it look to spam-like because this can limit accessibility.

4. Utilize Hyphens & Underscores

The options available when looking to separate words in a URL are underscores, hyphens and nothing at all. We suggest using the hyphen option as this improves the overall readability of the URL and humans, as well as the search engines, will find it easier to understand. Underscores are another option that has risen in popularity recently since search engines are finding these easier to understand. Now that systems have been improved, hyphens and underscores are understood in the same way. Spaces are not recommended as they diminish the readability of the URL.

5. Single Domain & Subdomain

Many people disagree with placing content from subdomains into a subfolder to improve rankings. There may be times that a webmaster has no other choice and if that is the situation then go right ahead. But, if you want your website to perform especially well with the search engines you will want to keep things organized in a single root domain and subdomains. To think of this another way, practice the same logic you would use for effective website architecture –– shallow. Shallow means that there are not labyrinthine subdomains leading to netherworlds of content.

6. Canonicalize When Possible

If you end up with two identical URLs and both contain very similar content, you should consider applying a 301 redirector and cannibalizing them. Having duplicate content doesn’t actually make a huge impact on search engine ranking, but it can have an indirect effect by slicing signals between two different pages. It doesn’t occur to many people that a web page can have many different versions like a www version, a non-www version, an HTTPS and an HTTP version.

7. Exclude Dynamic Parameters

You may find it better to not use the URL parameters if you can avoid it. If you find yourself with over 2 URL parameters, you may want to consider reworking the URL so that it is static text and easily readable. There is a good chance that you rely on a content management system that is pretty quick to help out when there are many parameters. These parameters can perform functions like tracking clicks and in general, aren’t a problem except that they can make for some oddly complex URLs.

8. Match URLs & Titles

This is what all URLs and titles should look like, but some variations in the titles can be allowed. Matching the title with the URL accomplishes the important goal of improving user experience. This is the same reason that many pros will suggest making the page title and the visible headline the same. The title provides an expectation and the headlines come in with the confirmation.

9. Keep Only Essential Punctuation

It is easy to take out all punctuation from a URL and too much punctuation can make the URL confusing. Not only do they make things a little harder to read they can affect the smooth functioning of crawlers and web-browsers. Alphanumerics and a few other characters are the only ones that don’t require encoding when they are used within a URL. As a rule of thumb, just leave out the punctuation unless there is a really good reason to leave it in.

10. Limit Folders

Visible dashes separating folders are not actually a problem except that they make the site appear much deeper than it actually is –– for human readers and search engines alike. Lots of dashes can also make it more difficult to edit the URL. The rules on this point are not definitive and it will be up to the SEO adjuster to make a good judgment call on this one.

11. Restrict Redirection

Redirections are a good tool but don’t overuse them. It is pretty normal for a crawler to select URL 1 and receive a redirection to URL 2 or URL 3. But if this pattern continues for more than a mere handful of sub-links penalizations will be forthcoming. The search engine will often follow the redirects for as far as they can go but this will limit the ranking improvements you will receive and make the URLs seem less important.

12. Case Sensitivity

In general case, sensitivity is not going to be a problem, if you are using IIS or Microsoft. Sometimes trouble can arise when two similar URLs can be differentiated only by uppercase or lowercase letters, this is based on the case sensitivity of the servers in question. There is not any justifiable reason to insist on capital letters in a URL so it is best to just keep everything lowercase and avoid any problems like this.

13. Avoid Keyword Stuffing

You do want to make sure your URLs are bolstered with pertinent keywords, but you don’t want to go too far. Too many keywords will make your URLs look like spam and this can immediately incur a penalty. If this practice is used too often it will certainly ruin your SEO efforts. Only use the keywords you need for the page in question.

14. Using Tracking Parameters

Tracking Parameters are added to the URL to provide important information or say something about the page. For example, a web page may use “samplestore.com/?storeid=” to indicate the page of a specific store. But, it would be better to use something like “samplestore.com/store101”, actual descriptive words are a better option. Furthermore, try to limit the number of parameters you apply to a URL.

15. Shorter Is Better

As a rule of thumb, it is better to use shorter URLs than longer URLs. If you already have a URL with over 50 or 60 characters this is still ok. But, once your URLs are pushing higher than 100 characters, you should begin looking for ways to shorten the line. This is not an issue with search engines but with human users who will be copying and pasting these links. This way is more aesthetically pleasing and reliable.

16. One URL For Your Homepage

The home page is the most important page of the website and is also the most powerful in many ways. For this reason, it should be given a single URL. Your home page will be receiving more visitors from inbound links than any other page on your website. So it should be a simple URL with straightforward function. There should never be any links inbound to an alternative version of your main page. All 301 redirects should return to this home page if your site does include duplicate URLs.

17. Paginated URLs

Paginated URLs occur when a page that includes the listings for a category has to create more pages because the items exceed the dimensions of a single page. For example, a page that is made for a 50 item list now has 300 items to display. These paginated pages will look something like this “http://www.sample.com/white-shoes?page=1” then page 2 and so on.

The ideas and tips included here are all considered best practices but you are free to modify your approach to best suit your needs. By keeping up intelligent practices from the very beginning it is easier to make necessary adjustments in the future.

All of the above ideas can have a positive impact on your site’s ability to be indexed fast, and the list is by no means exhaustive. Call or contact SEO Houston Pros today for further information. Visit our blog for more tricks and tips for Houston SEO!

Knowing Which Types Of Businesses Need SEO Houston

July 5, 2019 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

Eight Types Of Businesses That Can Benefit From SEO In Houston

No matter what products you sell or services you provide, there are customers out there waiting to do business with you. Whether you target other businesses or sell directly to individual consumers, you should do everything you can to make it as easy as possible for people to find you. One of the best ways to accomplish that is through SEO. By putting together a solid search engine optimization plan, you can connect with customers who are actively searching for keywords and phrases that are related to your business.

Although every business can benefit from SEO, businesses in some industries stand to gain more by optimizing their sites than others. In these particular industries, developing a marketing strategy that includes SEO is extremely important.

The eight industries that can realize the greatest benefit from SEO are listed below.

1. Professional Service Providers

On the Internet, your website is the first introduction that most people have to your business. According to researchers, as many as 80% of people conduct research on the Internet before hiring a company or investing their money. When people visit your website, they are interested in learning more about your services. This not only includes researching what you do but also figuring out whether or not you provide high-quality services. If your site isn’t listed at the top of the search results on major search engines like Google, your business may never be discovered by these potential customers.

Professional service providers in industries like financial planning, accounting, and Internet technology can use SEO to connect with people in their own local communities. Local searches are on the rise, with more people than ever checking online before hiring businesses in their own communities. Through the use of SEO, businesses that provide professional services can connect with consumers who are interested in working with them.

2. Home Improvement

Home improvement projects usually involve remodeling, renovating, or adding on to an existing space. These projects sometimes take place inside the home. For instance, a homeowner may put in a new plumbing or electrical system. Other times, the work involves the exterior of the home. Homeowners may choose to pour concrete, install new siding, put on a new roof, or tackle other outdoor projects. Landscaping projects also fall into this category.

Companies that specialize in services related to home improvement can benefit from using SEO to reach a local market. By optimizing their websites, they can get more leads. When people need work done on their homes, they typically turn to the Internet to find local contractors. By creating a targeted local SEO campaign, companies can tap into this large online market.

3. Medical Providers

Doctors, dentists, and other professionals in the field of medicine also cater to a local audience. People sometimes search for new providers when they become sick. Other times, they may change insurance plans only to find that their old doctor no longer takes their insurance. In cases like these, they almost always go online to find doctors in their area. Medical providers who use local SEO are more likely to get discovered by these patients than providers who don’t.

4. Internet-Based Businesses

SEO is mandatory for companies that conduct their business online. Without a physical store for customers to visit, their online presence is the only way that people can find them. Getting noticed on the Internet requires a combination of both outbound and inbound marketing techniques. SEO is an excellent way to gain more exposure. Along with that, companies like these also need to optimize their websites for mobile users, actively participate in social media, and grow their sites through the use of content that is generated by their users. When done correctly, SEO can result in more leads, helping these companies grow over time.

5. Real Estate Professionals

The real estate industry focuses on buying and selling homes, businesses, and land. Depending on the property, these sales may involve any naturally occurring resources located on the land such as water or minerals. In some cases, it also may include a home, business, or other structure.

The world of real estate not only involves the buying and selling of properties like these but also activities like renting or constructing housing or commercial businesses. People who are in the market for a new home or apartment spent a lot of time searching online. That is why SEO is so important for professionals working in the real estate industry. From large real estate companies all the way down to independent realtors, anyone who sells real estate can benefit from optimizing their website.

This is one area where local SEO really shines. Professionals can optimize their websites to target cities, counties, or ZIP Codes. They also can target people who are looking for specific types of properties through both organic and paid marketing.

6. Businesses With More Than One Location

Companies that have more than one location can target specific customers through the use of local SEO. By designing a search engine optimization campaign that allows them to optimize their site for each individual location, they can connect with customers who are looking for exactly what they have to offer. For instance, if a company is holding a sale at one of their locations, they can optimize their site to target customers in those locations, helping to draw more people in.

7. Food Service Businesses

Restaurants, cafés, coffee shops, and other companies that serve food can use SEO to bring in more business. When people decide to go out to eat, they often search online for nearby restaurants. Through the use of SEO, a food service business can get their website in front of customers who are actively searching for that specific type of cuisine. This not only can bring in more customers but can also result in more reviews, helping your website become even more visible on the Internet.

8. Pet Service Providers

Companies that cater to pets and their owners can see a significant increase in business by using local SEO techniques. When looking for services like boarding, grooming, pet sitting, and dog walking, people almost always start their search online. Businesses that provide services like these can optimize their site, allowing them to beat out their competition so that they can get more business.

All eight of these industries can greatly benefit from local SEO. There are also many other industries where SEO can have a big impact on a company’s bottom line. By combining website optimization with other marketing techniques like blogging, getting listed in local directories, and posting on social media, you can start getting more attention for your business online.

When choosing an SEO agency, look for a provider that is capable of creating a comprehensive online marketing strategy for your business. We work hard behind the scenes to make sure that your site performs well, freeing you up to pay attention to other aspects of your business. Don’t wait to take action – otherwise, your competitors may beat you to the punch. It is well worth making this investment in your business.

If you are ready to start improving the performance of your website today, reach out to us right away to talk about your project for free. You can learn more on our blog about how companies in Houston can use SEO to get noticed.

Call or contact SEO Houston Pros today for further information. Visit our blog for more tricks and tips for Houston SEO!

Reasons Why Your Business Should Invest In Houston SEO

June 24, 2019 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

Understanding How SEO Can Benefit Your Business In Houston

Over the last couple of decades, search engine optimization has become a key part of online success. Companies that do business on the Internet have to optimize their websites if they want to increase their traffic and make more sales. The SEO process helps websites rank higher in the search results on major search engines like Yahoo, Bing, and Google. SEO is one of the best investments that you can make for your business. Below are some of the primary benefits of search engine optimization.

A Chance To Rising Above Your Competition

Staying competitive online is extremely challenging. Within your industry, there are most likely a large number of businesses vying for the attention of a relatively limited number of customers. SEO provides an effective way to beat out your competitors. By analyzing the marketing strategies of your competitors, you can identify areas where you can do better. An investment in SEO can help your website climb higher than the sites of your competitors in the search results. That can lead to far more traffic and more sales.

SEO Provides Money-Saving Benefits

Hiring a company to optimize your website can seem expensive. When you consider the benefits that SEO provides, however, it is easy to see that it is a smart investment. Most SEO companies charge reasonable rates for their services. Paying to outsource the optimization of your website is usually more cost-effective than hiring a marketing team of your own. When you compare the cost of optimizing your site to the ongoing costs associated with other types of marketing, it is a much cheaper option. As an added bonus, it also leads to a lot more conversions. That means that you can pay less money and get better results when you focus on SEO.

SEO Builds Trust

If your website is properly optimized and ranks well in the search engines, visitors are a lot more likely to trust your business. Through your website, you can provide your visitors with helpful information that they can put to use in their everyday lives. You can also teach them more about the products or services that you offer. When your site ranks well in the search engines, people naturally find it more credible. If you can get your site listed well and provide high-quality content, you shouldn’t have any trouble getting customers to trust you.

Search Engine Optimization Increases Your Company’s Visibility

By increasing your company’s visibility, SEO makes it easier for people to find your products through an online search. This can dramatically increase the amount of traffic that your website receives. Once customers land on your site, they have an opportunity to learn more about your business and to discover additional products that you sell. The increased visibility that comes along with having a properly optimized site can go a long way toward building trust with potential customers.

More Visitors

Search engine optimization not only increases the amount of traffic that you get to your site but it also helps ensure that your visitors are interested in the exact products or services that you offer. An increase in online traffic provides you with an opportunity to connect with a lot more customers. By boosting your ranking in the search engines, SEO can lead to an increase in traffic, which usually translates into higher profits.

Call us or contact us today for your free consultation. Visit our blog for more related articles on how to execute the best SEO in Houston!

Building Your Houston SEO Campaign With These 4 Pillars

June 13, 2019 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

The 4 Major Pillars To An Effective SEO Strategy In Houston

If you do a quick search on “SEO ranking factors” that will provide you with numerous answers. There is so much information that is available these days. In reality, although there are probably hundreds of different variables that work together to determine final rankings a lot of information that is offered is only guesswork. And every ranking factor is definitely not relevant for every single business.

Website owners need to seriously consider the following four key pillars of SEO:

Technical SEO: The extent to which your content is able to be crawled as well as indexed effectively.
Content: Having the best and most relevant answers to the questions that prospects have.
On-site SEO: Optimizing your HTML and content
Off-site SEO: Building authority for your website to make sure the deck is stacked in your favor by Google

1. Technical SEO

Although technical SEO might appear to be daunting at first, we are simply talking about making sure that search engines are able to read the content and explore your website. A lot of this will be handled by the content management system that you use, as well as tools such as Deep Crawl and Screaming Frog that can scan your website and highlight any technical problems that it might have.

The major areas that should be considered are the following:

Crawl: Are search engines able to explore your website?
Index: Is it completely clear which of the pages on your site should be indexed and returned by the search engines?
Mobile: Does your website adapt well the mobile users?
Speed: To keep visitors happy it is critical to have fast page load times.
Technical: Is your website using search engine friendly CMS or technology?
Hierarchy: How is the content on your website structured?

If you have a small business website that uses WordPress, then you should be able to check technical SEO off of your list fairly quickly. However, if you have a big custom website that has millions of pages on it, then the technical SEO process is a lot more important.

A lot of what is considered to be “technical SEO” actually is part of your website’s development and design. The key here is to make sure that your developer has a good understanding of the interplay between SEO, development, and website design and how to get a mobile-optimized and very fast website built.

2. On-site SEO Optimization

You need to ensure that your website is optimized at both the individual page level and also as a whole. There is some crossover with technical SEO here, and you should start by making sure your website has a content hierarchy that is well-structured.

One you have a well-structured website, it is a fairly straightforward process to apply sensible optimization. The following are the key areas to focus on:

Keyword research: Understanding your target audience’s language.
Descriptive URLs: Make sure each of your URLs is descriptive and simple.
Page title: Naturally use keywords in your page titles.
Meta descriptions: Create meta descriptions as f they were ad copy for driving clicks to your site.
Content optimization: Use keywords along with their variations in a sensible way in your copy.
Good user experience (UX): Make sure your website is enjoyable to navigate and use.
Strong calls to action: Be sure to make thing easy for your visitors so they know what action to take.
Structured data markup: To improve your click-through rates, tap into the most recent SERP features.

When you are optimizing your website, make sure that your customers are considered. If you run a local business, then using local SEO will be the most important, and your location and address will be critical points to optimize.

3. Content

Content is the king. Isn’t that how the saying goes? In a way, it is true. Your website is actually just a wrapper to store your content in. It is your content that tells prospects what things you do, where and how you do them, who have done things for in the past, and why somebody would want to use your business. If you are savvy, then your content will go beyond those obvious elements and help prospective customers accomplish their goals.

For businesses that provide services, there are three main categories that we will divide your content into:
Service content. What services you provide and where you offer them.
Credibility content. Why should a prospect do business with your company?
Marketing content. Content to help position your company as the expert and place your business in front of your prospects at an earlier point in the buying cycle.

It is very important to understand that SEO is essential for all of these types of content, but quite often is only considered with service-type content. When it comes to case studies, testimonials, reviews and other forms of credibility content, SEO is usually forgotten.

Make sure that all your marketing content is optimized, including testimonials, portfolio entries, and case studies – and not only the obvious service pages on your website.

A solid SEO and content marketing strategy is the most scalable way for you to promote your business to a larger audience as well. It usually has the highest ROI, since there is no cost per click involved – so you can scale your marketing without scaling your costs directly. This type of SEO strategy is not the best for every business, however, it is practically unbeatable when it’s a good fit.

The following are key takeaways:

Optimize your content across the complete customer journey.
Decide whether content marketing is a good fit for you via organic search.
There are still far too many SEO methods that take a paint-by-numbers approach, where local businesses pay agencies to pump blog posts out that are not a good strategic fit for them. Make sure that your content is all optimized, and make sure content marketing is a good fit for the marketing techniques you are using before doing it.

4. Off-site Authority Building

All SEO comes to the same spot eventually: authority building. To a major extent, building authority involves link building. It is true that links are a critical component still in building strong organic rankings for your website. However, links can be the most difficult part of SEO to really get right.

It is very important to make sure you have your link philosophy clarified before starting on the process. That can make or break the link-building efforts that you do. Although link building is a very deep topic that can’t be covered in depth in this article, if you get a positive link-building philosophy developed, then you will at least be ahead of most of your competitors already.

Key Takeaways:

Be sure to build the type of real links that actually make sense out in the real world so that you don’t upset the qualitative aspects of the algorithm, as well as its punitive side.
Make sure you have content on your website that actually deserves to be linked to and rank well.

Summary

It isn’t necessary for SEO to be really complicated. SEO has four key areas that need to be considered, and there is a methodical and structured process you can follow in order to optimize your website.

SEO, SEM, PPC… What In The Digital Marketing Is The Difference?!

February 5, 2019 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

What Makes SEO, SEM, And PPC Different From Each Other?

The realm of digital marketing has quite a few acronyms being thrown about, and trying to keep up with it all can make your head hurt. What do all these acronyms mean? Are they really that important? Do you really need to know them? All of these are great questions, but based on what you personally do or how you do things, then it might be really important for you to find such answers. With that being said, keep reading to learn three of some of the most-frequent acronyms you come across a bunch and find out how they can apply to you.

SEO: What Is It?

The acronym of SEO stands for search engine optimization. In short, SEO is a bucket of various strategies people use to make websites rank higher in search engines. This is crucial, because when online users type keywords or search phrases that relate to your niche, then you’d like them to come across your site. When your business is more visible to search engines, then you get more unpaid and organic traffic directed towards your site from the search engines.

SEM: What Is It?

The acronym of SEM is short for search engine marketing. In essence, it’s how you use paid digital advertising online to get traffic. SEM is also sometimes just called paid search, but whatever you call it, it can involve a number of various digital advertising activities, like paid search ads and PPC, which can be called pay-per-call or pay-per-click. Google AdWords is probably the most highly visible SEM engine, but there are also Yahoo Search Ads and Bing Ads among other options.

PPC: What Is It?

The acronym of PPC is short for pay-per-click, and sometimes pay-per-call if a phone call is what winds up being taken. It can also be known as cost-per-click or CPC, which is a method wherein the advertiser pays for any results generated by its digital advertising. In such cases, you only get charged when users actually click on ads.

PPC ads get served based off of bids which you determine, as you pick the keywords you’d like to rank for whenever you set up your ad. That just means that you aren’t able to pay more for your ads just to have it served extra times over your competition. You put your bid in, and then the search engine will decide the relevance and validity of your ads in terms of search queries.

SEO, SEM, And PPC: Similarities And Differences

The one thing that all three of them share is that each is a great way to get traffic coming to your website and building up your brand. All of them are online marketing techniques, so they all land under the same broad umbrella. The biggest differences between them is that while SEO is always unpaid advertising, it technically falls under the purview of SEM, even though SEM usually refers to actually paid marketing efforts. PPC is just a kind of paid advertising technique. All three of them work well with one another, but SEO is the basis which brings them all together. If you don’t have good SEO, then your paid efforts are going to deliver results which you need to be viable or bring you a good ROI.

How’s Your Website Doing?

If your current online presence isn’t living up to your hopes and dreams, then SEO, SEM, and even PPC can bring you a lot of improvement. We’re an industry-leading SEO agency, and we’d relish the chance to demonstrate what we might do for your website. Contact us right away to arrange for your SEO consultation and evaluation, free of both cost and obligation.

Call us or contact us today for your free consultation. Visit our blog for more related articles on how to execute the best SEO in Houston!