How to get most results out of your SEO, Social Media & Digital Marketing activities.

What Are The Three Key Elements Of Digital Transformation?

While the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation efforts, research from Deloitte shows that 70% of these types of initiatives fail. This failure can be attributed to underestimating the processes and complexity of digital transformation, lacking guidance and ownership from the top and not knowing how to implement various facets of this journey.

To successfully transform a digital tool into an advantage for a business, you need to possess a digital capability to use technology to improve essential parts of your business. Then, you require a leadership ability to form and compel change in the organization in a streamlined and profitable manner. Lastly, you also need to appreciate that your company can continue to experience barriers in its efforts to change without knowing and understanding the three key elements of digital transformation. So, here are those central elements of that transformation journey that you need to focus on.

Future-Proof Your Employee Experience (EX)

While a digital adoption platform (DAP) can assist your company in leveraging technology to help it change, it is not enough. You also need to ensure that the drive for digital transformation also involves continually considering the voice of employees every step of the way. A recent study demonstrated that gaps in talent or skill sets were the main barriers to a successful digital transformation. As this research indicates that employees can inhibit transformation success, you can improve your EX by considering how technology accelerates employee productivity and performance. While technology such as this could assist people in working faster, smarter, and more safely, your business would also need to consider how these tools can change specific job roles and how they could emotionally support employees experiencing these shifts.

We all know that the keywords and phrases you use in a document can play a part in your Google Rankings. However, can having similar articles on the same topic add more value to your rankings? Can the “topical depth” you add to your content present your site as being an authority on that subject.

In this video, we cover a practical example of how you could add depth/authority to your content. You can apply the same tactic to any topic.

Topical authority is an important SEO factor. It might sometimes make more sense from an SEO perspective to develop similarly themed content, and establish an authority around a topic than to focus on multiple differently themed topics.

Also, if you’re looking for a great tool for keyword research, I’d recommend KWFinder as a first preference because of it’s low cost and second, you could consider SEMRush.

Your competitor in the real world may be very different from your competitor in the digital space. That’s because online, and in the SEO world, you are competing with sites who are ranking for the same keywords that you’re targeting for your business. So when it comes to doing competitive research, you’ll want to consider the sites ranking for your target keywords as the ones you need to research rather than focussing on those you think are your competitors.

If you’re new to SEO, and haven’t a clue of where to begin, then you should involve a data-driven SEO company to do this competitor research for you.

How to choose the right competitors for analysis?

Your top rivals are websites that are promoted by the same keywords as you and are competing with your site for the top positions in organic results. These rivals should be divided into:

direct (companies that sell the same product to the same customer group as you);
indirect (such firms sell other goods or services with similar qualities, but at the same time their target audience is the same as yours).

Competitive SEO research is needed to identify key contenders. The main principle is to take into the study only those sites that are most similar to yours. If you are a small furniture store, feel free to remove aggregators, large stores (Hoff, Ikea), design sites, and portals from the list of opponents. Leave only the same small furniture stores as yours. If they are not in the search results for the selected queries, then you will probably have no chance to get into the TOP for these queries as well.

I just stumbled upon a link building tactic that I think might be worth a goldmine (at least to me)! First, some background information to give you some context. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been actively scouring the internet for opportunities to build links for a site in the real estate niche – I’ve been browsing through forums and their marketplaces, reading articles on various link building strategies and even experimented with a few link purchases for some of my lesser known sites.

Giving you this background information because it’s necessary to realize the state of awareness I’ve been in while browsing through content online. During the day, I’d typically consume at least 7-10 articles in that niche and I’d always look at the outgoing links from within each article to figure, “why did this author choose to link to this article”. It bothered me not knowing how I could get my links featured in those articles when I had equally good and relevant content available on my site. Read More

Effective Tips for Influencer Outreach

Any business needs coverage and visibility to get revenues. In this regard, influencer marketing best practices can be crucial to improving brand awareness, recognition, and visibility.

Some companies use them from the beginning of their operation; others may require them to enter new markets. In any case, you would need to find the right influencers and reach them. In this regard, influencer outreach becomes crucial for the effective collaboration and implementation of the strategies. However, influencer outreach is not as easy as it seems.

Read on to know more about creating an influencer outreach campaign, using the right outreach tips, and writing an effective influencer collaboration email.

What is Influencer Outreach?

Before all, let’s consider the concept of influencer outreach. It is concerned with the identification of the bloggers, content creators, and experts that can affect your target audience and promote your product. The influencer outreach campaign allows finding the right people and approaching them in order to set the conditions for the product placement or content promotion.

Notably, when you start an outreach influencer campaign, you may have different goals. You may want to promote a product or content, generate traffic, attract leads or improve engagement. Your outcomes can be simply reputational or affect conversion rates. Thus, before starting an influencer outreach campaign, you should determine the goal.

How to Reach Out to Influencers

The peculiarity of influencer outreach contemplates a targeted approach that allows you to find the right influencers among many ones. Usually, you target the pool of influencers and consider the one that will contribute to your influencer marketing the most. For sure, many things depend on the goal and the budget. Yet, the fundamental rules refer to picking suitable targets, doing thorough research, and engaging with relationships building in mind. The following outreach tips will help you reach out to influencers effectively.

Backlinks – It’s hard for us SEO folks and much harder for regular folks to really spot opportunities from your competitors’ backlink profile. A lot of people talk about how you must analyze your competitors’ backlinks and try to see if you can emulate those same kinds of links.

The fact of the matter is if you don’t know what to look for, you won’t gather many actionable insights. Sameer covers some practical things you could do in this short article about how to find those patterns that you should look for when analyzing your competitors’ backlinks.

If you’re looking for a decent tool for backlink analysis, then I’d suggest LinkMiner which is super affordable and if you have a higher budget, then SEMRush.

All business owners are aware that social media is a powerful tool for attracting new customers and building a brand. But what you may not realize is that social media monitoring tools can be just as valuable in helping you achieve your business goals.

With the right social media monitoring tool, you can track mentions of your brand, analyze sentiment, and even find new leads. In this article, we’ll share some tips while working overtime on social media monitoring tools to grow your business.

1. Use social media monitoring to track brand mentions

One of the most important things you can do with a social media monitoring tool is track mentions of your brand. This includes both positive and negative mentions, as each can give you valuable insights.

Positive mentions can show you what customers like about your brand, while negative mentions can help you identify areas for improvement. Either way, tracking brand mentions can give you a better understanding of how customers perceive your business.

Image: Pixabay

With the high street still struggling to recover from the economic damage inflicted by the pandemic, the world of eCommerce has never looked so lucrative for business owners. The isolation imposed by the pandemic of 2020 accelerated the shift away from traditional brick and mortar stores and toward digital shopping. For most physical store owners, maintaining an online presence is now considered an essential aspect of business, as opposed to an optional extra.

However, establishing and managing an online store can be a frustrating and difficult process for those unfamiliar with the territory. If you’re thinking about launching your business online, we’d recommend that you thoroughly equip yourself with the tools and knowledge necessary for success. With the eCommerce market as competitive as it is, it’d be a fool’s errand to head into battle unprepared.

Planning on launching your business online? The process can be daunting, but fear not — we’ve gathered some useful tips that should make the transition process as stress-free as possible.

Design Your Store With No Coding Necessary

In days gone by, the honor of owning a website demanded a range of specialisms; from fluency in coding languages to understanding aspects of server and network maintenance. Luckily, those days are planted firmly in the past. Store owners can now create a fully-functioning eCommerce store within a matter of hours, all without the hassle of stumbling through the complexities of HTML and CSS or outsourcing development to a costly team of third-party developers.

A What You See Is What You Get editor simplifies the process of website creation dramatically. With such an editor, even those with little experience can edit their web pages without the need for any technical knowledge. Design and layout are taken care of in real-time using drag-and-drop mechanics and users are guided by an intuitive graphic interface. Wix and Squarespace are two great examples (and are popular choices among budding business owners), but there are a huge variety of editors to choose from online, all with varying features and quirks.

However, it’s worth bearing in mind that most WYSIWYG editors come at a price — usually, the software is offered as part of a subscription model. While using these editors may represent a saving over hiring a team of well-paid web developers, these monthly fees can quickly stack up. It’s also common for such software to have pricing plans aimed at generating extra cash from the sale, so always check the small print!

If you’re confident in your web development skills but you’d prefer to save your cash, WordPress may be for you. As one of the most powerful and reliable CMSs (content management systems) available, it’s perfect for anyone who wants to build a store from scratch. This software allows for a greater degree of customization than is typically offered by the more simplistic editors on the market, thanks to the huge selection of plugins and extensions available to download and implement at the drop of a hat. You can get in touch with Blacklight Software if you need an expert advice on the best software solutions for your business.

If you do decide to opt for WordPress, you’ll need to pair your website with a suitable host, too. Most providers will specify which CMS platforms they’re compatible with. Some hosts might focus on eCommerce, whereas others may market themselves toward SaaS hosting. In any case, be sure to make an informed decision based on the specific needs of your site. Specialist integrations are also worth considering; Cloudways is well known for its Cloudflare integration, for example.

There is no secret to good SEO other than making a solid effort across all aspects to deliver the best legal and related business content that meets Google’s current (and likely future) guidelines to get good search placement and page rankings. An often overlooked part of the equation, especially among busy legal teams is delivering strong off-page SEO alongside the typical focus on your on-page efforts. Follow these techniques to bring balance to your SEO and improve your results.

Off-page SEO refers to anything that you do beyond your own business website. The aim here is to generate cumulative results with the greatest reward for a small amount of effort. So, you might take part in an interview on the latest in compliance/biz-law/class action or another relevant area for another site.

You would expect to get a link from that article to your practice site. And you can then use the piece to do some social media sharing. And if it was a video interview, use a few clips over time for regular promotion, or share the whole thing on your own social video pages to generate interest – all from one interview.

There are so many other aspects of off-page SEO and there are several strategies and techniques you can use to boost them. Here are the key stages of off-page SEO for law firms:

Brand building in law

Every case you take, any event you go to, and each conference you participate in or sponsor is part of any law firm’s overall brand-building effort. Every interview or thought piece for a law site adds to the overall image of your company and its place in the legal profession.

For lawyers, the brand is typically the company name, or any unique products or services it sells. The key with off-page SEO is to maximize the brand impact it has on your site, helping to build its authority and improve its status in a Google-search-dominated world. That means:

Ensure your company brand names are spelled correctly in their wider use around the internet
That they link back to your site as much as possible.
That they appear on high authority legal sites to improve your own authority.

This will help your own brand appear high up in searches for it, rather than being swamped by adverts and rivals who have a higher authority or are playing advanced SEO strategies to appear ahead of your own brand.

From bloggers to influencers, you’ve seen people create all kinds of entertaining, engaging, and educational content that is expressed through different media arms and channels.

If you are wondering what that means for you and how you can make use of it in your own business, then read the rest of this post to discover everything you need to know about what a content creator is, the types of content creators out there, and how you can become a successful content creator.

But before we can define what a content creator is, I think it’s important to first take a step back and look at what content is in the first place.

What is Content?

Content is a broad subject, which means defining it may not be as easy as one might think.

For example, when you conduct a search for “What is content”, you’re presented with varying definitions, including the following:

Content is the information contained within communication media. This includes the internet, cinema, television, radio, audio CDs, books, magazines, physical art, and live event content.
Content is information presented with a purpose and distributed to people in a form through a channel.
Content is the stuff you publish, which covers writing, visuals, video, presentations, etc. that can be published on blogs, webpages, social accounts, etc.
Content is a compilation of information, ideas, and messages that are translated into some kind of written, visual, or audible format for others to consume.
Content is engaging, relevant, reliable, interesting, entertaining, or enlightening in the form of text, image, video, or audio.

The definition of content might mean different things to different people and in different situations because of context.

What Are The Three Key Elements Of Digital Transformation?

Future-Proof Your Employee Experience (EX)

Why Topical Authority Matters, all you need to know about the “Topical Depth” SEO Ranking Factor

What should you consider when doing SEO Competitor Research?

How to choose the right competitors for analysis?

Effective Tips for Influencer Outreach

What is Influencer Outreach?

How to Reach Out to Influencers

Impossible to Emulate your Competitors Backlinks? Of course it is! But here some key ideas.

Tips on Using Social Media Monitoring Tools to Grow Your Business

1. Use social media monitoring to track brand mentions

4 Tips For Taking Your Retail Store Online

Design Your Store With No Coding Necessary

5 Off-Page SEO Techniques for Law Firms

Brand building in law

From Bloggers to Influencers: What Is a Content Creator?

What is Content?