Category: Blog

Chatbots – automated conversation programmes – are the talk of the town. You have perhaps noticed that several companies have set up their chatbots. Now you have a burning question in your mind – “do I need a chatbot?”

Chatbots can certainly make customer service quicker, modern and efficient. However, they also call for a good amount of maintenance. But they are extremely popular, look uber cool on a website and they are an efficient way to boost your customer service.

How to Tell if Your Business Needs a Chatbot?

Ask the following questions to determine whether your business needs a chatbot:

• Will it add value to your business? Would a live chat be a better option instead?
• Is a chatbot the right communication channel for your target audience?
• Do you have in place a messaging strategy or do you get the same questions repeatedly from customers and prospects?
• Do you have the resources on hand to set up a chatbot and monitor its performance?
• If you are a high-profile business, will a chatbot make your business look cheap?
• Is your team to provide back up to handle complex questions/issues?

What Can Chatbots Do?

A chatbot isn’t just a snazzy addition to your website. It can bring a range of benefits and add excellent value to your business when done right.

Let’s take a look at some of the top reasons why your business should invest in a chatbot.

Chatbots can Automate Boring Tasks

How often did you miss converting a prospect into a customer because they couldn’t find someone to help answer their questions?

More importantly, how often did you realise that those questions have already been answered in your FAQ section?

Nothing could be more frustrating than that!

However, when you have a chatbot, you will have answers to all those basic questions in one place. Chatbots can answer those questions easily, efficiently and quickly.

Offer Better Service with Chatbots

People want help but more often than not, they do not want to physically talk to someone.

And that’s a puzzle that you must solve!

However, there’s no denying that people love to chat.

A study by Servion predicts that by AI will handle 95% of all customer interactions by 2025.

That leaves you with two options:

• Option 1 – Hire many customer service agents
• Option 2 – Invest in a chatbot system to handle most of the work and hire a skeleton crew of agents to take care of complex queries/issues.

We’d highly recommend option 2, especially because a chatbot will stay active 24/7, and it will perhaps have an answer to most of the frequently asked questions.

Scale Your Business Effectively

A chatbot is an automate programme that enables you to handle multiple customer queries at the same time. If your current customer care solution is completely handled by human agents, you are certainly limited to handling only a certain number of queries at a time. After all, human agents can only answer one or two customers at a time.

Another point to note is that while chatbots handle multiple questions at a time, they can offer a certain level of personalisation that’s difficult to match even if you have a huge team of customer care executives.

This gives chatbots an edge as they can answer multiple customers at the same time whilst offering a personalised service.

When you complement your human agents with a chatbot, you can scale your operations easily without worrying about the rising number of calls and chats.

Chatbots Help Build Trust

Chatbots can build trust and credibility in your brand.

If the chatbot is the first interaction your prospects have with your business, you can use this opportunity to educate your prospects about your products and how you can solve their pain points.

Bots can help create a positive first impression, resulting in a strong bond between your brand and the consumer.

Time Efficient and Cost-Effective

Once you have visitors landing your website, it’s important to keep them engaged. With a well-designed chatbot, you can engage visitors easily and quickly. This can further help convert prospects into customers.

And think about all the money you will save by reducing your human customer care team. Money that you could instead use to promote your business and generate more traffic!

Understand Your Customers Better

Finally, chatbots can go a long way in helping you learn from your visitors and customers.

Most chatbots follow a decision tree structure. A question unfolds several possible answers; the customers choose their answers and continue.

The best part about chatbots is that they can store all that information (the answers) and save it so it could be put to better use later.

Thereby, learning something about your consumers.

Convert Visitors into Customers

Let’s say a visitor lands on your website, explores the different pages and is ready to take the next step. Perhaps he has a question? Maybe he wants a quote?

What happens if the only way to reach your business is by filling out a contact form? He has to fill in the form, wait patiently for a response.

Given that lead quality deteriorates with time, swift replies and action are crucial.

With a chatbot, your visitors can easily and quickly find the answers they are looking for, turning them into warm leads. Chatbots can answer quickly, minimising the possibility of misplacing or losing leads.

Chatbots can schedule appointments and meetings instantly, route potential customers to your sales team or even convert visitors into customers by helping them choose a product.

What’s more, chatbots can effectively handle the qualification process on your behalf. By collecting data from the customer’s visit, chatbots can distinguish qualified leads from unqualified leads. This will dramatically reduce deadend leads, saving you time, effort and money.

Conclusion

With so many things to offer, chatbots are a wonderful investment. They are the future! So now is the time to prepare for the future. Need help setting up a chatbot for your website?

Schedule a free consultation to discuss your project!

Whether you have a question, need more information about a product/brand or are researching a subject, Google can help you find the answers you need. For a lot of people, the search engine giant is the first thing that comes to mind when they are looking for information on just about anything.

This means that if you want your prospective customers to find your website, it must show up in the search engine results pages (SERPs). And that’s easier said than done!

A business blog is a fantastic way to boost your search rankings.

So to answer the question, “Do I need a business blog for SEO?”, the short answer is YES!

Blogging improves your website’s SEO because it gives a huge boost to some important ranking factors. When you have a business blog that’s regularly updated with quality, relevant and engaging posts, it can boost your website’s performance in the search engines.

Here are some ways a business blog is good for SEO.

Improved Visibility

A business blog allows you to reach an extensive range of search queries. For example, if you search Google for “do I need a business blog for SEO,” most of the results will come from blogs.

Blogging helps attract more diverse search queries that a website simply doesn’t. If you are not blogging, you are losing a huge number of potential visitors.

Keep Your Site Fresh, Relevant and Current

Google wants to offer its search users relevant and current information. It does not want to deliver outdated information to its users.

A blog allows you to keep your website fresh and updated. Every time you update your website with fresh content, you give search engines reason to crawl and index your site.

By constantly updating your site, you are indexing your site more often, staying on the search engines’ radars constantly.

Engage Your Audience for Longer

Google’s topmost priority is offering its search users the information they are looking for. If a visitor leaves your site within moments of landing on it, it tells Google that perhaps it is not relevant to the specific “search query”.

However, when someone stays on a page for some time, Google perceives it as relevant, useful and helpful. After all, why else would you stay on a website long enough?

A blog post gives people a reason to stay around to read the entire text rather than a page that does not have any information/text.

More Indexed Pages

Search engines give preference to websites that are trustworthy and credible. They don’t want to dole out random information to their search users. They want to deliver reliable information to their users.

And one way they measure this is by looking at the number of indexed pages your site has. Generally speaking, a larger website corresponds to being a good source of information. However, search engines realise that this isn’t always true. That’s why even smaller websites are able to rank high!

However, with a consistent blogging strategy, you can have lots of indexed pages over a period of time.

Rank for Long-tail Keywords

Many people begin SEO with the goal of ranking for the most relevant keywords for their business. For instance, if you sell baby diapers, you would love to show up on the top of the search results for the keyword phrases “baby diapers ”.

However, that’s a difficult goal to achieve.

Instead, you can aim to rank for long-tail keywords – longer, specific keywords that are highly relevant and easier to rank for.

Although long-tail keywords are important for your SEO strategy, they are not as easy to incorporate in your product pages. But they are the perfect fit for a blog post.

If you are looking to rank for long-tail keywords like “baby diapers small size,” the best way to go about it is to write a blog post on that topic. When people use that search phrase, they are looking for more information as they are not completely sure how business blogging can help them.

Establish Industry Authority

When you blog about newsworthy topics relevant to your industry, your readers will perceive your business as a thought leader. With a blog, your business gets a voice. You also get the opportunity to establish your expertise.

By consistently creating content that helps your target readers, you become an authority in their eyes. And this can prove extremely beneficial for your sales and service departments.

Easier to Get Backlinks

Google sees backlinks as a signal of authority. When more and more sites link back to a site, Google considers that as a signal of authority and trustworthiness. But getting backlinks is the most difficult part of SEO.

A blog can make the task much easier.

By consistently adding blog posts, you are filling your site with loads of valuable information. If your website has great content that is worth linking to, third-party websites will point to your site when they want to point their readers to some valuable information on related topics.

A HubSpot study found that businesses that have a blog earn as much as 97% more inbound links compared to those that don’t have a blog.

Although there are many ways to build backlinks, one effective strategy is to create a stellar quality post on a topic that other people have already tried their hands at and then do an outreach campaign to sites that have linked to blogs on that topic.

Conclusion

Starting a business blog is one of the best decisions you’ll make as far as your SEO strategy is concerned. If you do not have the time or the resources to consistently maintain a blog, delegate blogging to the copywriting team at Numero. With years of experience in business blogging, our writers can write for a range of industries including technology, medical, manufacturing, professional services, B2B, B2C and more.

Get in touch with us today to discuss your business blogging needs.

When you want to get your website in front of your target audience, you must focus on improving your rankings for your target keywords. There are several fantastic free tools that can help improve your rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs) – and Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) is one of the best.

While most business owners with websites are aware of Google Analytics, not many have heard of Google Search Console. In essence, it’s your control panel where you can monitor and direct how Google views your website.

For instance, let’s assume you removed a page and forgot to redirect the URL. The next time Google’s spiders crawl your site, GSC will notify you if there’s a 404 error. This alert tells you exactly where you need to add a redirect.

In essence, Google Search Console helps ensure your visitors don’t leave or bounce your website. GSC enables you to offer a better user experience to your visitors and to perform an array of SEO tasks.

If you are still not sure why you need Google Search Console, here are some ways it can help your business:

Keep a Tab on the Progress of Your Content Marketing Strategy

Head to Content Keywords reports in Google Search Console and you will know the most common keywords on your website as identified by Googlebot, the search engine giant’s web crawling bot.

This is a fantastic feature you can use to assess the progress of your content marketing efforts. By knowing whether a specific strategy is working, you can steer your content marketing efforts in the right direction.

Compare this list against your own list of keywords to identify discrepancies/contradictions if any. If a specific keyword has a higher (or lower) significance than you intended, it’s time to update the content.

Know Where Your Visitors are Coming From

If you serve a specific country, it’s important to gain traffic from that specific geographic region than any other location. Google Search Console provides precious data about your visitors’ location, so you can ensure you are targeting the right people.

Click on the Search Analytics bar and choose Countries from the menu.

Now you will see the clicks received from each country, in descending order. You can choose to view the results by click-through rate, impressions or even search ranking position.

Monitor Your Click-through Rate (CTR)

We highly recommend keeping tabs on your CTR. Any huge movement is critical. If the CTR has gone down, but impressions have increased, it means you are ranking for more keywords. So the average CTR has come down.

However, if the CTR has increased and so have the impressions, it means you have lost keywords. If both your impressions and CTR are up, you are on the right track!

Learn Which Websites Link to You

This is critical information when you are focused on improving your search engine rankings. Backlinks are a huge ranking factor, so every link pointing to your website is a signal to the search engines that your content is useful and trustworthy.

Generally speaking, the more backlinks you have, the better it is for your website. Of course, quality is important too. One link from an authority website is much better than two links from sites with low authority.

Head over to the left-side menu and click Links to Your Site under Search Traffic.

You will see a list of all sites that are pointing a link to your website. You will also see a list of all the pages on your site that have the most backlinks.

Under the section titled “How your data is linked”, you can even see the most common anchor text used by people linking to your website.

Find Website Security Issues

Whether your business is big or small, if your website gets hacked, it can affect your business in many ways. Sensitive customer data may be compromised, you may lose sales for as long as your site is down (especially if it’s an eCommerce website), lose your reputation or lose search engine rankings among other things.

Google Search Console offers an easy and quick update if your website has security issues that you must know about. From the left-side menu, click on the Security Issues option.

If there’s nothing to worry about, the Console will tell you so. And if there’s an issue that needs your attention, you will have all the details you’ll need to find out how to fix it.

Sync with Google Analytics

Google Analytics helps track and report your website traffic. If you are not already using it for your business website, we highly recommend you do so at the earliest.

Google Search Console works in tandem with Google Analytics and it’s easy to sync them together so you can view your GSC data right from the Google Analytics reports.

They may sound very similar, but there are some key differences. Whereas Google Analytics provides insight into the total interest or number for a given keyword, Google Search Console shows you the most commonly used keywords on your website.

Another critical difference is that while Google Analytics tells you if leads are converting, Google Search Console shows you why they are (or aren’t) converting.

Conclusion

The Google Search Console is completely free and it offers a lot of useful information that you can use to give the much-needed boost to your digital marketing strategy to improve leads and conversions.

It offers a transparent view of your website’s SEO health from the search users’ perspective. When you fix any issues, your site is sure to enjoy improved rankings, eventually gaining more traffic, leads and sales. Be sure to log in to your Google Search Console account regularly to assess your Search Analytics and customise your SEO strategy accordingly.

Need help with SEO? Get in touch with Numero today.

85% of consumers search online before deciding to make a purchase. A lot of times, your website is the first touchpoint your customers have about your business and products/services. The kind of impression they have will determine whether they will do business with you or not.

So what makes a website great? Videos, content and images are all critical aspects but there’s more, right?

For instance, 79% of visitors scan websites, so if your website is not scannable, it won’t engage your visitors. Credibility is another important aspect. And the list goes on!

There are several little things that go together to make a good website. Here are the crucial elements of a quality website:

Usability

Your website’s visitors are there looking for information. The reality is that today’s online users are impatient and distracted. They will leave your site instantly if they can’t find what they are after, can’t comprehend how to use your site’s functions or are simply unimpressed by your site.

For instance, a site offering a wide range of products must have an effective search function, a product catalogue and a user-friendly e-commerce shopping cart.

Moreover, a responsive, welcoming website will mean visitors can have a seamless experience no matter the size of their device.

A website that’s built on a well-planned wireframe will also be compatible with all types of browsers and mobile devices.

Overall Design and Visual Appeal

Your website’s layout is one of the most important components. First impressions are crucial, so you want to impress your visitors as soon as they land on your site.

Users take less than 50 milliseconds to decide whether they want to stay on a website or leave it.

This means the design must be familiar, simple, clean, intuitive and accessible. Use lots of whitespace to give the elements of your website breathing space and use grid-based designs to keep the design elements organised and clutter-free.

Every design element on your website must fall in line with the visual hierarchy you are aiming for.

Images and Video

Be sure to include images or videos in every new page/blog post your publish. Websites with images and videos are far more successful at engaging visitors and even have better rankings in Google.

Professional photography, graphics or icons complement the website copy. However, ensure the images complement each other as well as the brand image you want to create.

User-Focused

Your visitors will ultimately decide whether or not your website is a success. A user-focused website is one that’s accessible and functional at the same time.

Many business owners become distracted by their specific expectations for the website that they forget about the needs and wants of their target customers.

As your designer, our job is to keep everyone happy and satisfied. And that can sometimes mean offering sound advice and to remind our clients that they are veering off the path from what their site must be achieving.

Navigation

Site navigation might not seem like an important element to pay attention to. That’s a mistake!

Visitors should be able to find the information they are after effortlessly. They shouldn’t have to struggle. The menu options must be limited so they don’t feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of options.

Page Load Speed

The sooner your website loads, the higher the conversion rates would be. It’s as simple as that!

Do not settle for the cheapest web hosting service or web design agency you can find. You are going to get what you pay for.

Paying a little extra can mean you will avoid technical difficulties and ensure your website loads quickly every time.

Testimonials and Reviews

Displaying customer reviews and testimonials creates social proof. This holds true if you get a testimonial from someone who’s an industry expert.

You must also dedicate a section on your site where customers can leave their reviews easily.

Although good reviews are what you are aiming for, some negative comments might even boost your credibility. If all customer feedback on your site is positive, it may seem fake.

Be sure to interact with every customer who leaves a review. It helps build your credibility as a professional business that’s not shy of accepting mistakes and is committed to making improvements.

Your Contact Information

This goes without saying but you would be surprised to know how many business owners skip this part. We come across several websites that do not provide any contact information.

Not displaying contact information can work against you! Visitors may find your business sketchy and may hesitate to do business with you. You may lose their trust.

Be sure to place the following information on your website:

• Physical address
• Phone number
• Email address
• Links to social media profiles

Quality Content

Creating well-written, engaging and useful content is one of the most important components of building a good website.

Quality content is purposeful, original and delivers value. It is also optimised so that search engines and people are driven to view, read and share your content.

Google recognises relevant, high quality content and amply rewards such websites with higher rankings.

Focus on creating nothing but the best quality content. It will go a long way in boosting your search engine rankings whilst delighting your audience.

Conclusion

All of these components must be in place when you want to build a quality website. When your goal is to impress visitors, engage them, convert them and have them come back for more, you cannot skimp out on these important aspects.

If your website looks untrustworthy or incomplete, it can dramatically affect your traffic and conversions.

If you are looking to build a new website for your business, get in touch with Numero today. Our team of professional web designers will take the time to understand your requirements to build a stunning website for you. Whether you want a brochure website, booking website or an e-commerce website, we’ve got you covered.

Book your free consultation today!

One common question business owners ask when considering a PPC campaign is: “how do I know if Google ads will work for my business?”

We could simply say yes, but it’s not as simple as that.

We answer that question in this post by walking you through the various steps you should take to identify if Google Ads are a good fit for your business.

Google is the most popular search engine, connecting businesses with people looking for a product/service.

Here are the four critical steps you should take to determine whether Google Ads are good for your business.

Step 1 – Assess Your Budget, Offering and Time Constraints

A huge hurdle facing businesses using Google Ads is budget.

Can I afford this? Will I be wasting my money?

This can be traced back to loss aversion theory – we would rather keep our money safe than risking it for equal gains.

But Google Ads can offer some stellar results, and you can expect to see your ROI doubling.

Assess your budget

Begin your research by assessing the average CPC (cost per click) in your industry and benchmarking that with conversion rates.

This will tell you how much you would end up sending in any given month and what kind of returns to expect.

Let’s say the CPC is $1.38 and the CVR is 2.77%. This means you would need 36 clicks to get one conversion. That would cost $50 to generate one conversion.

Understand the time constraints

It’s time to identify how much time you have on hand. Do you have a team that can handle your Google Ads account? Can you outsource it cost-effectively?

Managing Google Ads is a time-intensive task. Assess the amount of time you have to manage ad campaigns. Don’t forget to account for a few hours every week you must spend on maintaining your campaigns.

Are your products/services right for Google Ads?

Now, it’s time to determine if your offering is ideal for Google Ads. Is your product/service easy to sell online? Is it a product that sells better with photos? Is it virtual software?

Although the Google Ads platform is a good fit for most products – there are many other platforms you can consider including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Bing and LinkedIn among others.

Step 2 – Identify the Traffic Potential by Doing Keyword Research

As mentioned before, you must set aside time to manage Google Ads. It can take a few weeks to get your account ready for success, not to forget the daily and weekly chores such as adjusting budgets, creating new ads, testing new designs, adding negative keywords and scouting new keywords.

One way to find out if Google Ads will work for your business is to carry out keyword research. With keyword research, you can see how many people search for your product and determine whether it will be worth your while.

If, for instance, only 15 people search for your keyword each month, the time and effort that you need to put in may not be worth it.

However, if the search volume is high, it means that people are actively searching for your products/services.

Step 3 – Do Competitor Search

Competitor research is a wonderful way to discover if your competitors are creating ads for your target keywords.

If competing businesses are bidding on those search terms, they are likely generating some revenue. By doing nothing, you are simp0ly letting them reap dividends without giving a friendly competition. And that’s one mistake you might regret.

Moreover, competitor research will provide some insightful data about how much a business is spending on Google Ads.

This will give you a good idea about the kind of budget you will need.

Start by visiting Google. Look up your target keywords to see if any ads are running currently, to find out if any of your direct competitors are active.

If you do find any competitors bidding for terms you are interested in, head over to SpyFu. Simply enter your competitor’s URL and you will get a detailed report on their keywords, their monthly sp0end and their ad copies.

This nifty little tool will help you discover the keywords your competitors are bidding for. The information about budget will give you an idea of how much you must spend to compete with them.

Step 4 – Find a Network that’s Right for Your Business

According to the Economic Impact Report by Google, marketers on Google Ads generate about $2 for each $1 they spent.

With Google Ads, you can expect to double your investment.

But how does the Google Ads platform manage to deliver such a high ROI?

That’s perhaps because the Google Ads platform offers countless advertising options. From audience customisation and different targeting to retargeting and multiple ad types, Google Ads offer something for every type of business to help boost their sales.

Looking to expand your lead generation strategy? Need something to complement your email marketing efforts?

Google has you covered with Gmail ad campaigns.

Perhaps you have a virtual product and you want to offer a product demo? Consider opting for TrueView ads in Google Ads!

The point is that Google Ads offer an an array of methods, ways and mediums for you to choose from. Whether you want to do A/B testing, explore various ad options or want to find something that suits your budget, Google Ads offer something for every type of business.

Start with a small budget and test the platform. Run multiple ad campaigns and look at the kind of results you are able to generate.

That’s the only way to see how well Google Ads work for your business.

Conclusion

Google Ads are an excellent way to generate traffic, leads and revenue for any business. But knowing if the platform is the right fit for your business isn’t simple.

Follow this 4-step approach to find the answers.

Start small and test the waters. After all, you’ve got nothing to lose. In fact, you only have everything to gain.

Need help setting up a stellar Google Ads campaign? Contact us today to discuss your project.

Getting good traffic to your website is something we always appreciate and want for our business. In fact, most marketers are focused on generating traffic in the hope that the traffic will convert into leads.

However, if you are not making the most of this traffic – if you are visitors are not converting (whether your goal is to generate a sale, lead or sign up to your email newsletter) – all of that traffic serves no purpose and all that money you are spending is going to waste.

That’s where conversion rate optimisation (CRO) can help. In this guide, we share our top 9 conversion rate optimisation tips to help boost your sales and revenues.

Use Powerful Headlines

Headlines are usually the first thing visitors see after landing on a page/site. A headline is nothing but your sales message presented in a single, bold sentence. It should pique your visitors’ curiosity, solve a problem, answer a question or be instructional.

In the absence of a well-constructed headline, you risk losing a lot of prospective leads. Be sure to use any one of the following types of headlines for best results:

• Direct Headlines
• Command Headlines
• Question Headlines
• Instructional and How-to Headlines
• Problem Solving Headlines

Add a Pop-Up Banner to Your Website

If you thought pop-ups don’t have a place in digital marketing, think again. When done right, pop-ups can boost your conversion rates.

A study by Sumo found that the conversion rate for the top-performing pop-ups is 9.28%. Here are some things you can do to propel your conversion rates using pop-ups:

• Try different offers (premium content, different products, PDFs, or other freebies) until you land a winner.
• Make it easy for visitors to close the pop-up banner.
• Put a 30-second delay timer on your pop-up banners, to keep them from annoying visitors.
• Install cookies so the pop-up only appears for each user only once.

Add Social Proof

People want to do business with companies that others trust. If others are happy with your offerings, your visitors are more likely to convert.

More often than not, the most convincing of websites aren’t enough to convince people to make the final decision. By displaying other customers’ opinions about your brand and products/services, you can overcome their hesitation.

Social proof like reviews, testimonials and awards/accolades help put people at ease.

So be sure to add reviews, logos or testimonials on every critical page on your website.

Create a Sense of Urgency

The more time that people spend making a decision, the higher are the chances of them having a change of heart or getting distracted by other deals and offers.

When it comes to improving conversion rates, your goal should be to limit the time a visitor takes to make the decision of converting.

The idea is to create a sense of urgency.

One great way to accomplish this is to place a time limit on your offer. For instance, “Buy One, Get One Free – Only for the Next 24 Hours”.

Improve Page Load Time

Page load speed can have a direct impact on your website’s conversion rates.

Today’s consumers are impatient and distracted. They expect things to happen at the blink of a second, and if it does not, they are simply going to go back to the search results to find another website that does.

The quicker your website is, the better the conversions. Take a look at these numbers:

• 25% of visitors will abandon a site that takes any more than 4 seconds to load.
• A one-second delay in load speed can reduce conversion by 7%.
• Websites that load in 5 seconds (compared to sites that take 19 seconds to load) on average see 70% longer sessions.

One of the best ways to reduce your page load time is to use a fast hosting service. Other ideas include image optimisation, minification and data compression.

Add Live Chat

Some visitors are ready to buy but something is stopping them. They have a question or lingering doubt that keeps them from converting.

A live chat tool is an ideal way to help these visitors.

Live chat tools are very easy to add to any website and can have an instantaneous impact on your conversion rates.

Bolster Your CTA Copy

Generic CTA buttons like “Start Trial” or “Sign Up Now” won’t deliver the best conversion rates. Spend some time to improve your CTAs and see your conversions rise.

Your CTA should begin with the word “Yes.” It has an excellent impact psychologically as it shows the offer in a positive light. Here’s an example:

Yes, I want my 30-day FREE trial

So try this simple formula: Yes, I want [your offer]!

This is sure to deliver better results compared to a generic CTA button.

Make it Easy to Take the First Step

Humans are psychologically primed to finish things that they begin.

So when you are making an offer, ensure the first step is extremely easy to complete.

Instead of asking people to fill out a lengthy form, simply ask for their email address to get things started. You can provide the remainder of your form in step 2, hoping they will provide further information.

Even if they don’t you still have their email address.

The easier it is to take the first step, the higher are the chances of visitors taking the desired action and following through right to the end.

Simplify Your Navigation

Navigation is at the core of conversions. The direct traffic coming to your landing page is not the only traffic you must be paying attention to. In fact, the simpler the navigation is, the better it is for visitors all over your website to head back to the landing page and CTAs.

• Use inbound links in articles to improve traffic to the landing pages.
• Use directional text and arrows to direct people to CTAs.
• Create a customised menu that’s distinctive and features easy to understand navigation items.

Parting Thoughts

Conversion rate optimisation is a proactive process. These tips can go a long way in boosting your conversions. Need help designing a CRO strategy for your website? Contact Numero today!

EMD and PMD are two abbreviations that are commonly used in the digital marketing space. So what do EMD and PMD stand for? Why should you care? How do these terms relate to SEO? EMD is short for exact match domain name and PMD stands for partial match domain name.

If your business name uses a keyword, you might be using a PMD or EMD unknowingly. You might even choose to use an EMD or PMD as your website’s URL even though it’s not your business name.

So what’s the best approach and how can EMDs and PMDs help boost your SEO rankings?

In this post we look at how an EMD or PMD can help boost your SEO rankings. Let’s dive right in!

EMDs, PMDs and Branded Domains

Exact Match Domain (EMD)

An exact match domain name includes your target keyword. Essentially, it contains a keyword that your people commonly search for on Google.

For example, if your target keyword is “baby diapers online”, an exact match domain would have the entire keyword in the URL – babydiapersonline.co.nz. In other words, a URL that’s exactly the same as your keyword is an EMD.

From SEO perspective, an EMD domain is extremely powerful. When the search engines see a domain name with specific words in it, they can instantly gather that the website is relevant to those words.

Partial Match Domain (PMD)

A partial match domain name is a mixture of your primary keyword and some other words. Essentially, it contains your keyword but also some other words that define your business/industry.

For example, continuing from the example of baby diapers, some ideas for PMD include diapersauckland.com or bestdiapers.com.

Branded Domains

And then there are branded domain names. When you want to boost your brand presence in the long run, a branded domain is a wonderful choice.

Just like our domain – bwg.co.nz.

But branded domain names are the most difficult to rank for. However, if you can build some branded searches and authority, you can see some exciting results.

EMDs, PMDs and SEO in the Past

Let’s step back and look at how exact match domains were used in the past. EMDs became extremely popular back in the day among digital marketers and SEO specialists because of their potency. If you had an exact match domain name, you could be sure you would get a high ranking in Google and other search engines, including the top spot.

A few years ago, EMDs were considered a top SEO ranking factor!

This held true even for competitive keywords. In some cases, the EMD domain would rank far higher than a website with better quality content and design simply because it had a domain that had an exact match.

As you can guess, many people began taking advantage of this situation. They’d find a keyword, typically a product/service, that users would look for on Google. They would then buy the exact match domain for the keyword and wait for the EMD boost to kick in. And voila! Their search engine rankings would shoot right up.

What began as a trickle, in no time, became exploited.

Soon Google began to recognise that many of the EMD websites offered poor user experience, especially those with long-tail keywords. So Google updated its algorithm to ensure poor-quality websites did not rank well on the search engines even though they were exact match domain names.

So How Can an EMD or PMD Help Your Website?

That doesn’t mean that you cannot rank well for exact match domain names!

In fact, exact match domains and partial match domains can still do well in search engine ranking pages (SERPs). When there’s tough competition for a ranking and multiple sites vie for attention, an EMD can give you an edge over your competitors.

In essence, if you have a quality website and you have an EMD, you certainly have an advantage. This means you can get higher rankings in Google!

Let’s look at the ways EMDs and PMDs help with ranking:

• Keywords in the domain – As explained above, this is an immediate benefit of having an EMD/PMD.
• Keywords in anchor text – If you have been doing SEO for a while, you already know that the anchor text, the words that are used when linking to a website, is an important SEO factor. When people link to a website, they typically use the URL as the anchor text. If your domain name has your keywords, those backlinks will contain your keywords. When you yet a ton of natural links with your keyword as the anchor text, imagine the rankings boost you get!

EMDs and PMDs are Good, Spamming Isn’t

EMDs and PMDs have a lot of potential when used with purpose.

A site that has an exact match for the sake of it without paying any heed to the quality of their content and user experience, cannot expect to rank high in the search engines! At the end of the day, it all boils down to the quality of your website and content.

Here are some things to consider when using EMDs:

• Structure of your domain name – Not all EMDs are equal. It might perhaps be difficult to rank for a domain name that’s more than three words long, whether it’s an EMD or otherwise.
• Deliver a stellar user experience – When it comes to improving your SEO rankings, there are no shortcuts. You must take note that Google expects you to EARN your ranking. This means that you won’t simply get a good ranking just by getting an exact match domain. You must invest in a quality website and add quality content to your website on a regular basis to be seen as relevant and an authority on the topic you want to rank for.
• Create an effective SEO strategy – There’s no way around it. You need an effective SEO strategy in place if you want to improve your online presence.

What’s the Final Verdict?

If you’ve heard negative stories about EMDs and PMDs, don’t panic. EMDs and PMDs still have a place and it’s possible to rank them. They certainly give you an advantage. However, you will still need a good SEO strategy.

Numero can help build your online presence. Book a free consultation today!

There’s no doubt that ranking at the top of search engine result pages (SERPs) is a must. However, if you don’t know how to get your e-commerce website to the top, you are losing potential customers to your competitors.

Whether you have just launched your e-commerce store or are looking to improve your existing E-commerce site, in this SEO guide, we share some useful tips and tricks to step up your SEO game.

Begin with Keyword Research

The first step is to carry out keyword research to identify the target keywords you want to rank for. Without keyword research, you are essentially throwing stones in the dark.

Moreover, it’s important to get this step right. If you don’t, you will be targeting keywords that are practically impossible to rank for and/or you may rank for keywords that do not generate much traffic.

When choosing keywords, the most important factor to keep in mind is buyer intent, which means how far along a user is in the purchase journey.

Here are three places to find the right keywords for your online store:

1. Amazon
2. Competitor websites
3. SEO tools such as Ahrefs and Ubersuggest

Get the Site Architecture Right

Once you have a list of keywords you want to target, it’s time to put that information to good use. This begins with your e-commerce website’s architecture.

Site architecture refers to how your website is structured. Essentially, it is about ensuring users can find the information they are looking for easily and quickly, with a view to drive conversions.

A great website structure follows the following rules:

• It is simple and scalable
• Getting from one page to another shouldn’t take any more than three clicks
• Use your keyword research to create extremely relevant page URLs and subdirectories.

Identify Problems that Need Fixing

Now it’s time to audit your website for problems that need attention. Here are some of the most important aspects to look into:

1. Site errors – Use Screaming Frog to find website errors. This free tool will crawl your site’s images, links, script, apps and CSS from an SEO perspective. It will then deliver a report of problems including redirects, errors, missing header tags, duplicate pages, etc. Some of the biggest issues you’ll want to fix are:
   1. Redirecting any 404 pages.
   2. Updating duplicate content, meta descriptions and meta titles.
   3. Replacing 302 redirects with 301 redirects.
2. Find your website speed – Your website’s load speed is an important SEO factor. If your visitors have to wait too long for your website to load, they are likely to head back to the search results to look for a faster site – in other words, your competitor. Use this tool from Google to find your website’s load speed. Here are some things you can do to improve your load time:
   1. Minimise HTTP requests
   2. Defer JavaScript loading
   3. Improve server response time
   4. Choose a reliable hosting service
   5. Enable browser caching
   6. Enable compression of files
   7. Reduce image sizes

On-Page Optimisation

Although off-page optimisation (link building) is important, so is on-page optimisation. On-page SEO involves all the steps you can take on your own website to improve its rankings in the search engines.

On-page SEO is completely in your control and that gives you a whole lot of power!

It’s time to optimise the pages and blogs on your website for the target keyword. To optimise each page, you must ensure the keyword is present in strategic locations including:

• URLs – URLs should not be user-friendly, meaning they must include real words and not a lot of gibberish and numbers.
• Meta title and description – This is the title and description that shows below your URL in the search engine results. Make sure not to make your meta title and description too spammy by stuffing them with too many keywords. They shouldn’t sound gibberish or have nothing but your keywords. They must read like an ad as the higher your CTR (click-through rate), the higher your ranking in the search engines.
• Page title – This is the title of the page that shows at the top of the browser. Keep it short, real and user-friendly.
• Headers – Headers are an important part of every page. It tells in few words what the page is and the relevancy of your page to a given search query.
• Subheaders – Subheaders are like icing on the cake. They complement your headers. Here, you can add your secondary and related keywords to strengthen the SEO prospects of your page.
• Paragraph copy – This is the body of your page. Be sure to keep the content engaging and user-friendly, providing lots of value. If all the reader sees is a bunch of keywords slapped together, they are unlikely to engage with your content; instead they will head back to the search results and go to another page that offers better value. So when optimising your paragraph copy for your target keywords, don’t forget about offering value to your readers.
• Image file names – The search engines can’t see an image, so they rely on the data in the image such as the image file name and the alt tag to “see” it. Be sure to include your keyword in the image file name so search engines can understand the subject matter of the image.
• Image alt tags – The alt attribute adds strength to your message and helps the search engine spiders better understand your relevancy, whilst imp00roving your website’s accessibility. Every image on your website should have a suitable alt text. Not only for SEO purpose, but also because visually impaired and blind people can’t otherwise decipher what the image is all about.

Conclusion

There are many more strategies and techniques to improve the SEO of your e-commerce site. Follow these essential techniques to get your online store’s SEO off to a good start. Should you need more assistance or a proactive SEO campaign, our SEO specialists would be happy to help.

Contact us today for a free consultation.

Search engines place those websites on the top of the results that they find the most relevant on the subject/theme for a given search query. Therefore, the main objective of SEO is to make improvements to a website so that it’s relevant not only to targeted keywords but themes matching those particular keywords.

Usually, a website is a disconnected web of different topics without a central theme. Such websites have to settle with poor search engine rankings for their target keywords.

Creating a silo structure will establish your website’s topical relevance and put in place the building blocks for higher rankings in the search engines. It’s an essential part of search engine optimisation but is often regarded as an advanced topic.

Implementing a silo structure for your business website can be a formidable task, especially for organisations that offer multiple products/services, service a variety of industries, have multiple locations or even blog posts.

When not implemented correctly, search engines won’t be able to understand your website. In the end, SEO authority won’t flow across your pages and the search engines will have a tough time indexing your pages. That’s the last thing you want!

However, when you correctly organise your website’s content, you will benefit from several benefits including:

• Faster indexation of updated and new pages
• Parent pages will have a lot of authority
• Your website will benefit from better user experience and behaviour flow
• Authority will travel to important pages that are difficult to build backlinks to
• Your website would become more relevant to the topic, thereby ranking higher

What is a Silo Structure in SEO?

An SEO silo structure is the best way to organise content on a given topic. Creating a silo structure will ensure search engines and users can navigate your website easily.

A silo structure is essentially a deep website architecture that is locally organised. The site’s hierarchical structure is identified by topics and subtopics. This means that closely related topics are structurally close to each other. In short, silos are a way to categorise your site’s content into different categories.

So related pages are grouped together either through linking or structurally, to create the website’s keyword-based themes. So you can create a silo structure for your website to differentiate the various content themes so that search engines clearly understand what your website is about.

This means search engines will be able to crawl, index and rank your site efficiently. A case study conducted by Moz found that Google gauges the quality of a site’s silo structure to rank pages within that silo.

Creating a silo structure for your website helps improve the relevance of your webpages for your target keywords. The more topically relevant you publish in a silo, the higher are the chances of Google finding your website to be more topically relevant. So if Google has ranked a website at the top of the search results, it means the website has covered all the major search queries.

Instead of letting the website to be considered as a disorganised mix without any focus in terms of keywords or topics, an SEO silo structure divulges what the website is actually about and helps position your site as a leading source on relevant topics.

Internal Linking

Coming back to the idea that a website is split into separate sections of topically relevant pages, internal links are usually not considered in a blog. Typically, blogs link out to service/product pages, but those pages don’t usually link back to the blog.

This practice of one-way linking is not an ideal practice, but nevertheless, it’s a common practice.

When you silo your website, internal linking will become a lot easier to implement. Essentially, each silo will link to same and lower-level pages, as well as upper-level pages, given that the topics are in the same category.

Internal linking across your silo structure will deliver stellar SEO value. Internal linking will extend authority to other pages show the search engines that your website is extremely relevant for this particular topic.

Keyword-Rich Content

Content is at the heart of SEO. However, just about any content won’t cut it. Your content must be written with specific aspects in mind to achieve the standard that Google and other search engines expect today.

It must meet several guidelines before it’s considered useful.

The very first step in the process of content creation is to identify how much content must be written in order to achieve top rankings. This will pave the way for creating keyword-rich content.

Although content alone won’t suffice to improve your search engine rankings, having adequate content is important to take your website to the top of the search engine results.

How to Create an SEO Structure for Your Website?

Here’s a brief look at the process of creating an SEO silo structure for your website.

• Step 1 – Identify the common theme for your website. What content do you already have and plan to publish, and what is the overarching theme?
• Step 2 – Select your silo strategy. It’s time to decide how you’ll implement the website structure that identifies the themes clearly – virtual siloing and physical siloing or virtual siloing only.
• Step 3 – Plan the linking structure. Assess the link structure and identify how to connect the pages. You will need at least 5 supporting pages to build a silo theme.
• Step 4 – Build the silos. Write and publish quality content that’s optimised for your target keywords for each themed silo.

Conclusion

Siloing your website is the perfect way to organise your content. Although creating an SEO silo structure is an uphill task, it can have far-reaching benefits – search engines will be able to crawl, index as well as rank your site better.

Creating a page that’s dedicated to a topic and other pages with other supporting content will establish to the search engines your relevance to the topic and will help improve your search engine rankings.

Internal linking in a silo structure can further improve the SEO juice of your website by spreading authority across the pages.

Need help creating an SEO silo structure for your website? Get in touch with us for a free 30-minute consultation to see how we can create a silo structure for your website.

CRM, short for, Customer Relationship Management, is a programme that gathers all the data about your customers in one central place. A CRM solution can help your business organise communication, interaction and relationships with your customers as well as prospects.

With a CRM software, all the data relating to your customers (both current and future) is centralised, so your team can keep on top of their tasks. Customer service agents can log accounts of customer calls, purchases, chats, emails, support tickets, etc. This way, you can maintain all the details of a customer’s relationship with your business.

You can choose a CRM programme to suit the size and budget of your business; from a simple SaaS-based model to an enterprise solution. So why does your business need a CRM? Let’s take a look at some of the things CRM can do for your business.

Streamline the Sales Process

If you find yourself inundated with new leads coming your way but can’t find the time to keep up with the flow, a CRM can come in handy. A smart CRM system can help you sort and prioritise your leads in no time so your salespeople can follow up with your leads promptly and efficiently.

The CRM system will accompany your sales executives at every stage of the sales funnel, from lead generation and conversion through to repeat sales, cross-selling and upselling.

If you want to ensure your sales team is better organised and works as a cohesive unit, a CRM programme can help. If your sales executives work as a group on a specific project or if some members take care of different parts of the sales process, coordination can be an uphill task.

A good CRM system allows you to programme customer-centric tasks and assign them to different members of the sales team. This way, all sales executives know what their role is, what their objectives are and what’s expected of them.

This means that no sales opportunity goes wasted, and no one in the sales team is left clueless.

Locate Your Customer Data Easily

Email, spreadsheets and sticky notes could have worked well for you when you started your business. But as your business grows, those tools will quickly become a bottleneck, impeding your ability to quickly make informed decisions.

That’s where CRM can help, giving your company a centralised location to store and access your data that you can leverage to drive conversions as well as customer retention.

In addition to giving you an organised, centralised location to store all your customer information, a CRM offers a complete picture about each customer – how you acquired them, when, where, what and how they buy from you or interact with your business; and from this, you can find out how to keep your customers coming back.

From contact details and social media activity to purchases and previous interactions, a CRM keeps a record of every interaction your customers have with your business.

Offer Stellar Customer Experiences

Winning customers is a tough task but retaining them is even tougher. One poor experience is enough to put them off and you can lose customers forever. If your customer service agents are spending more time reacting to consumer complaints rather than anticipating their needs proactively, a CRM system can provide all the answers.

By effectively managing case flow and providing a unified view of each customer, a CRM system will enable your customer care team to provide an unmatched experience for your customers whilst ensuring that they come back to you for more.

With intelligent CRM solutions, customer service agents can share their learnings with each other, thereby ensuring they can answer questions quickly and efficiently. Moreover, they can even route cases to the right representative.

That’s not all. With a CRM, you can even create a self-help community where your customers can go to look for answers to frequently asked questions on their own, allowing your agents to handle tougher complaints and requests.

Seamless Integration with Marketing Tools

You can effortlessly integrate your CRM with marketing tools including email marketing, messaging, social media, telephony and live chat to stay on top of your customers’ minds.

By integrating your CRM with your email marketing software, you can create a personalised message to ensure a high level of engagement.

By combining CRM data with a messaging service, you can connect with your audience, providing them a service they expect. You can send automatic reminders to customers about upcoming events and offers. You can send people a text such as product tracking information, discount codes to further grow your sales.

You can bring efficiency to your company by integrating your CRM software and telephony software. An integrated CRM enables you to make calls quickly thereby increasing the reach to your audience. Agents can take detailed, accurate notes that could be used to provide stellar customer service as well as in converting leads into customers.

Increase Your Brand’s Reputation

A CRM system ensures you have all the information you need to provide prompt responses to customers without any delays and provide unmatched service.

Imagine the impact of a stellar customer experience on your brand image. Consumers will consider your company as a highly efficient one in the market. Your team will be considered the best.

Reduce Cost

Another important benefit of a CRM programme is that it helps reduce your costs. When you reduce the time spent answering customer complaints, you are able to put your employees’ skills to better use – in delighting customers and increasing sales.

When your employees can find the information about your customers at a moment’s notice from anywhere, it results in improved efficiency.

With time, as you and your team understand how to make use of CRM to suit your requirements, your daily tasks will become a breeze and won’t take much time either.

Conclusion

If you can relate to any of these advantages, it’s time to take the plunge and invest in a good CRM for your business. A CRM system will help you generate more leads, close more transactions, keep your customers happier and connect your entire business – putting your business on the path of growth and stupendous success.