Everlasting Moments offer wedding photography and videography services to clients across Pickering, Toronto & Mississauga in Canada and Detroit & West Bloomfield Township in the USA. To help them reach a wider audience, we launched their new website - www.everlastingmoments.com

We wish everyone at Everlasting Moments the best of success! 

LA Studios Million Dollar Tan delivers the most personalized spray tanning services across Canada. They ensure a unique experience and bring the finest, newest, and safest product lines available. To help them reach a wider audience, we launched their new website last week - www.lastudios.ca

We wish everyone at LA Studios Million Dollar Tan the very best of success! 

Reviews are an integral part of branding. They not only fuel your SEO for a privileged ranking on Google, but they simultaneously secure trust and confidence in your products and services. Reports suggest that over 90% of consumers consider online reviews before making a purchase decision.

At the same time, the quality of your reviews and the frequency of positive and negative reviews further impact their decision to pursue or abandon a businesses’ products or services. The date and time of your latest reviews also matter, so if you aren’t working to collect new reviews, it’s time you get started.

To help you get right to it, the marketing experts at Webware.io have listed the following tried and tested techniques to collect business reviews online and boost your business through brand reputation management.

1. Set up accounts on trusted review platforms. 
Different people use specific platforms to research businesses. While some prefer Facebook, others choose Google Reviews, Yelp, or BBB. By launching your business presence on different review sites like these, you can ensure your brand receives more visibility.

2. Make it easy for clients to leave reviews. 
One way to do this is to integrate review platforms like Google My Business, Facebook, Yelp, etc. with your website. Another is to bring the review platform to your client via email. When you email your clients review invites, you can include links to the review platforms you’re present on.

Similarly, you can request feedback through regular newsletters by including a link under your signature. Other means of communication are useful too, like text messages or Facebook messenger to direct your clients to your reviews page.

3. Time your review requests and reminders. 
If you wait a few days after delivering a product or service, the client will have sufficient time to try it out and identify the things they like most about your products or services. If your brand gets tagged on social media, you can use it as an opportunity to claim a review. In case you don’t get an immediate response from your clients, and you can remind them to review you after a few days. You can also ask for reviews after a repurchase or re-order. 

4. Respond to reviews - positive and negative.
As we’ve mentioned, before choosing a product or service, most people look through reviews and ratings to ensure they’re making a rational investment. That means your response to customer reviews will be visible to them, too. Many people appreciate a company that’s interactive with clients. It makes them feel valued and encourages clients reading to choose you and review you after a purchase. At the same time, when you get negative reviews, you can use it as an opportunity to show your clients that you appreciate their honesty and offer resolutions to their grievances.

While many business owners are tempted to get rid of negative reviews or reply to them defensively, it’s not the best strategy. To learn How To Deal With Negative Reviews On Social Media, please click here.

5. Share reviews with clients.
When you get positive reviews on different review platforms, you can highlight them as helpful reviews. You can even send them to your new customers by email or via text message asking your clients if they had a similar experience and if they’d like to share it. You can even ask if they are willing to help more people make a choice between you and other businesses. Showing people enthusiastic reviews can motivate them to write similar insightful reviews, and convince potential clients to purchase a product or enlist your services.

How Webware can help!
Your online reviews reflect your reputation in the market. They determine your commitment to positive customer experiences and decide where you rank in the market. That makes reputation management a vital component of your digital marketing strategy.

As a digital marketing expert, Webware.io provides you with different review collection strategies to build your reputation online. We take the time to understand your business and plan actions for fruitful results. Besides reputation management marketing services, we offer an array of other digital marketing services to ensure your online presence is well-established to leverage higher conversions.

To learn all about our services and complete digital marketing tool kit, please click here. If you have any questions about how we can help with your digital marketing needs, we’d love to hear from you. Please contact our experts here.

Esquire Canada Immigration and Education (“Esquire”) is an innovative Canada immigration and education consulting company serving clients in Hong Kong & Toronto. To help them reach a wider audience, we launched their new website - www.esqedu.com

We wish everyone at Esquire Canada Immigration and Education (“Esquire”) the best of success!

Millennium Strategies Inc. is a sales, advertising, and marketing firm focused on building relationships for clients looking to expand. They serve clients across Cleveland, Ohio. To help them reach a wider audience, we launched their new website last week - www.millenniumstrategiesinc.com

We wish everyone at Millennium Strategies Inc. the very best of success! 

Jennifer McLean Mortgages offers various Mortgage Services to clients across Calgary, Airdrie, and Chestermere, Alberta. To help them reach a wider audience, we launched their new website last week - www.jennifermcleanmortgages.com

We wish everyone at Jennifer McLean Mortgages the best of success!

As a leading website design and web development company in Toronto, we understand that social commerce is a powerful e-commerce technique to promote and sell products and services through social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Twitter, etc.

Interestingly, Yahoo! introduced the term ‘Social Commerce’ way back in 2005. Back then, it revolutionized the way we looked at buying and selling goods and services on the internet. Before Yahoo! made the term famous, social commerce was confined to the setting up of online collaborative shopping tools such as shared pick lists, user ratings, other user-generated content, sharing of online product information and advice based on user reviews to make informed decisions on online purchases on eBay, Amazon, etc.

Today, social commerce has evolved into a more socially interactive concept where users of social networks can directly buy and sell goods and services from their social profiles through social media marketing and a focused digital marketing strategy. Today, social commerce has become more interactive and engaging rather than just being a facilitator of information that aides transactions on e-commerce websites.

How do social networks use Social Commerce to help marketers boost sales?

Pinterest is an excellent example of social commerce done right. It allows marketers to research audiences, competitors, design ‘Buyable Pins’ to facilitate purchases directly from the Pinterest post.

Facebook also facilitates social commerce via Facebook shop. Marketers can connect an e-commerce platform to Facebook or upload their product category manually. E-commerce platforms like BigCommerce help marketers easily sync a product catalog with Facebook. 

Instagram is also emerging as a very popular social commerce platform for marketers. If you are an e-shop or an online products seller, Instagram’s ‘Checkout’ is your best friend. ‘Checkout,’ is a function that enables people to browse images and videos of items in their feed and purchase directly from the app, without being redirected to a website.

Does Social Commerce offer anything else?

There are a plethora of options that social commerce offers and content to conversions are just the tip of the iceberg. Technology has already opened up new and exciting avenues for e-commerce, which help boost social commerce as well.

Technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Reality have also been integrated with social commerce to enhance customization and personalization, allowing shoppers to visualize apparel items on themselves and solicit feedback through social media tools.

The days of actually going to a store and walking around buying things may soon be a thing of the past as virtual walk-throughs are here. Virtual stores and shops are a next-gen shopping platform, where users, sitting in their cozy living rooms, are taken on a virtual tour of a virtual shop - a virtual replica of an actual shop.

Here buyers can click on the products they want to buy, try them on, test them, and get more information and then place an order for it to be delivered to their homes.

Travel companies are also experimenting with social commerce to sell holiday packages. A virtual reality tour of a holiday destination to facilitate a booking can be an exciting new way of enthralling holiday goers with exciting travel deals. Show them what they will experience, on a tropical cruise, or on an underwater scuba diving experience to explore the seas. Holiday goers can also share their virtual experience on social networks and seek reviews or influence other holiday enthusiasts to experience the virtual tour and book one for themselves.

The Bottom Line

If used correctly, social commerce can have a snowball effect on your business and rake in sales and conversions. However, to make the best use of social commerce, and leverage social networks effectively and efficiently, you need the help of a digital marketing company like Webware.io.

With a well-defined digital marketing strategy and targeted social media marketing, you can either leverage our digital marketing toolkit to boost your sales or let us do the heavy lifting for you.

To learn more about our services and how we can help boost your small or medium-sized business, please click here. If you have any questions about how we can help with your digital marketing needs, we’d love to hear from you. Please contact our experts here.

Caregivers in Canada in association with DIS Canada Ltd. help families find caregivers for their loved ones. They serve clients across Oshawa, Toronto, Guelph, Waterloo, Kitchener & Hamilton, ON. To help them reach a wider audience, we launched their beautiful website - www.caregiversincanada.ca

We wish everyone at Caregivers in Canada the very best of success! 

Preferred Carpet Cleaning & Floor Care specialize in carpet cleaning and floor care services in Atlanta, GA. To help them reach a wider audience, we launched their new website last week - www.preferredcarpetandfloors.com

We wish everyone at Preferred Carpet Cleaning & Floor Care the very best!

As more businesses join the online revolution, getting noticed on the internet has become tougher. If you’ve recently launched your website, you’ve probably experienced the same struggle. Besides the competition online, search engines like Google control what’s displayed to internet users. They use a special algorithm that ensures relevant results are displayed to people based on words used in their search queries or search terms.

To hack this algorithm and boost your digital presence, you may have come across search engine optimization (SEO). SEO involves a set of practices that help search engines recognize your content (online presence) and its relevance to specific search queries. The more relevant your content is to a search, and the more prominent your online presence is, the higher your ranking will be on Google.

However, one aspect most businesses fail to consider is that search engines change their algorithm regularly to improve search result quality. As a result, your SEO techniques must be tweaked from time to time to match the new ranking criteria.

To get you up-to-date with the latest SEO practices to help you rank better online, we’ve listed five ways to boost your visibility online.

1. Update website content.

The number one driver behind your Google ranking is quality content. But, to go from showing up somewhere in Google search results to ranking on the first page, it’s essential to enrich your content with keywords. (That is words or a collection of words which people use in search queries.) After researching the best keywords for your business, you need to place them throughout your website strategically. You can then conduct a website analysis to see which keywords get you traffic. Accordingly, you can update your website content through the addition of new pages with these keywords in focus.

While creating content for your website, make sure to avoid using keywords excessively (keyword stuffing), as Google could penalize your site. Adding genuine content that’s helpful to visitors can improve your site’s authority and relevance. Regularly updated website content is also viewed as an indicator of relevancy, and a website’s attempt to enhance the visitor experience.

2. Get listed in website directories.

Another way to improve your ranking is to leverage the popularity of online directories and review sites like Google My Business. As a popular directory, Google My Business helps people find businesses and enables businesses to be found. The website directory goes beyond basic website listing by allowing people to review and rate companies based on their experience. Besides reviews, there are more details that the Google directory puts on display. For example, when searching for CPAs in Toronto, Ontario, the Google results display a list of CPAs registered with Google My Business. These listings include reviews, addresses, contact details, timings, and a link to each business website. That way, people can find your business easily, get the gist of your operations, and communicate with you instantly.

Listing on other directories like Yelp, Angie’s List, and Whitepages works a bit differently. When people look for businesses like yours online, these directories may get listed in search results, and when clicked on they can lead people to websites listed in your industry.

3. Blog about what matters.

Blogs are a great way to get better listings on Google and stay relevant online. They give you the flexibility to use the same keywords multiple times as you can cover numerous topics related to your business in detail. 

The only challenge with blogging is selecting topics that provide content that is both informative and interesting. With the right topic, you can either inspire your readers or become a solution provider to innumerable people.

Unique and useful information is the kind of content people look for today as there are several blogs online with identical information in different packaging. To create unique content, your blogs should contain actionable details that readers can put into use and benefit from. The way you present your content matters too. Long-form blogs that are saturated with text can increase your ranking but also your bounce rate, which could negate the advantages of blogging.

4. Collect reviews from clients.

People need assurance that they are making the right choices when purchasing products and services, and company reviews and reputations play a significant part in this. Similarly, online reviews communicate to search engines the authority and trustworthiness of a website as Google wants to offer users the cream of the crop in its top results. Reviews from clients also help businesses improve their SEO as reviews contain valuable keywords. For this reason, it is vital to encourage clients to review your products and services online.

5. Understand website reports.

The primary purpose of website reports is to analyze what happens on your website. These reports tell you which keywords are bringing in the traffic, which web pages are performing the best, which blogs have the highest views, and also how visitors have accessed your website. All of these details are crucial as they help you see where to improve your SEO strategy. They indicate which keywords you need to focus on, what kind of content your audience enjoys, and which platforms you audience prefers using to learn more about you. With this information, you can then test new content strategies, AdWord campaigns, and other online promotions to redirect traffic from Google or other search engines to your website.

Setting up your SEO strategy

Now that you’re all caught up with the latest SEO hacks, it’s time to put them into practice to launch your online presence to the forefront of the industry. However, to boost your visibility through these practices, you must understand that they aren’t one time activities. Search engine optimization is a continuous process, irrespective of the methods you use. That means you must regularly dedicate time towards your SEO. To learn more about how to derive success for an SEO campaign, please read our previous blog by clicking here. 

Keep in mind that failing to commit your time towards nurturing your digital growth, will hamper your online visibility. To prevent this from happening to your business, reach out to Webware.io for all your online ranking and visibility needs. As specialists in digital marketing, we are dedicated to helping you achieve your digital goals. Through our all-in-one digital marketing toolkit, we efficiently manage your SEO, online reviews and reputation, blog requirements, and more!

Our services and technology platform are designed to help small businesses like yours easily navigate the digital world so you can focus on what you do best. Moreover, our services allow you complete control over our digital marketing efforts, so you can choose what’s added or removed from your website.

To learn more about our services at Webware.io, please click here. If you have any questions about how we can help with your digital marketing needs, we’d love to hear from you. Please contact our experts here. 

Panthro Fitness offers strength classes, mobility classes, recovery classes and other fitness classes to clients across Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. To help them reach a wider audience, we launched their beautiful website - www.panthrofitness.com

We wish everyone at Panthro Fitness the very best of success!

YU+ME Design offers interior design and decorating services to clients across Vancouver, Maple Ridge, White Rock, Coquitlam, and New Westminster, British Columbia. To help them reach a wider audience, we launched their beautiful website - www.yuandmedesign.com

We wish everyone at YU+ME Design the best of success! 

Le Circuit Quyon offer rental and competitive Go-Kart racing to enthusiasts from Fitzroy, Orleans, Nepean, Pembroke, Ottawa, Hawkesbury, Ontario, Quyon, Gatineau, Quebec. To help them reach a wider audience, we launched their new website - www.lecircuitquyon.com

We wish everyone at Le Circuit Quyon the very best of success! 

Let’s face it, no matter how hard you try, you cannot please everybody, and not everyone is going to love your business. While several clients may leave tonnes of positive feedback, it only takes one harsh review to scare off potential customers.

At Webware.io, one of the critical components of our digital marketing toolkit is reputation management. We understand how vital addressing online reviews are for small and medium-sized business owners, especially if they are negative reviews. 

As specialists in digital marketing, we’ve faced a fair number of negative reviews, but instead of letting them drag us down, we turned them into a positive outcome by addressing them quickly and professionally. To give you the same ability, this week, we’re going to talk about how to deal with negative reviews on social media.

 “I’ve received a negative review, what should I do?” 

It’s every business’ worst nightmare - the negative online review that is turning away customers. Negative reviews can drastically hurt your business, and surveys show that almost two-thirds of customers form an opinion of a business after reading just about four reviews.

However, how you respond to a negative review will make all the difference. When you receive a less than favorable review, here’s what you must do: 

a. Listen carefully for feedback.

Stopping a problem in its tracks and building lasting relationships with customers starts with social listening.

Unfortunately, an angry customer won’t always speak directly to your business. To ensure you don’t miss valuable feedback, you should track all mentions of your brand, branded hashtags, and branded URLs shared on social networks - whether they include an @ mention or not.

Once you find the feedback, with a calm mind, understand what the client is saying, why it is being said and what led to the client to address it publically instead of coming directly to you. 

b. Respond quickly.

Responding to the review comment as soon as possible shows that you are interested in solving the problem that the reviewer has. 

When responding, don’t let anger and frustration take over. Apologize, if needed, and explain how this is unusual in your business. Consider offering a special deal or a discount on the purchase, if applicable.

Responding to negative reviews will not only work to appease a disgruntled customer, but it may also help grow your business and present it in a new light. 

While replying, it’s essential that you do not use stereotype replies. You must humanize your response, maintain transparency, and not be negative. It’s important that people see that you respond to every inquiry and you’re interested in your customers’ opinions. 

“Should I hide a negative review?” 

Never remove or hide negative comments! If customers take their time to post about you once, they will post again. If you remove a real comment, you can be sure they will come back: louder, angrier and more frustrated. Secondly, negative comments show that you’re a genuine, honest brand.

Think about it this way: customers enter your profile and see only good opinions which could make them think that you’ve made all these comments up. They probably start digging for other opinions on forums and review sites. Sooner or later, they’ll find negative feedback, and they might choose your competitor because they feel you’re not honest.

Don’t forget to follow up! 

Once you address a complaint, don’t forget to follow up and ensure that they are satisfied with the product or service as if they are dissatisfied with the solution or the fix you provide, they are likely to post a second negative review, which is more harmful. 

Make the client feel valued!

People like to see that businesses care about their opinions. The best way to put out the fire of negativity is by handling the customer and the situation in a professional manner. As a business owner, you can take control of the situation by responding helpfully and genuinely. Never respond negatively or defensively.

Ensure your customer feels listened to, and don’t be afraid to apologize for any inconvenience or a less-than-stellar experience to help diffuse a negative situation.

As a business, you’re likely to receive a negative online review sooner or later, but with these tips, you can use the negative review to make your business even better. 

As experts in digital marketing, at Webware.io, we offer an array of digital marketing services to ensure your online presence is well-marketed and leveraged to find customers, keep customers, and earn referrals. Our key digital marketing services include email campaign management, newsletter communications, SEO, Google AdWords, social media advertisements, content marketing, lead generation, online reputation management, and more.

To learn more about our services and complete digital marketing tool kit, please click here. If you have any questions about how we can help with your digital marketing needs, we’d love to hear from you. Please contact our experts here.

Stealth Marketing Group provides marketing & sales expertise to clean energy, telecommunications, and home improvement brands across Philadelphia and Princeton, Pennsylvania. To help them reach a wider audience, we launched their new website - www.stealthmarketinggroup.co

We wish everyone at  Stealth Marketing Group the very best of success! 

As specialists in digital marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the many tools we offer our clients as part of our digital marketing toolkit. And often, one of the first questions that we’re asked is, “How much time will it take for SEO to show results?”

The answer to this question isn’t straightforward as the SEO game is in a perpetual state of flux and is continually changing. 

SEO today is increasingly driven by what is called ‘phrase’ or ‘instruction’ search, as people now use questions, phrases, or instructions rather than two to three keywords. One of the primary reasons for this change is down to people using tools like ‘Siri’ and Google ‘voice search’ to speak their searches, rather than typing them in. In addition, people have also begun including more details in their typed searches as they want to find what they’re looking for faster. 

These keywords are much easier to rank for as they’re not as competitive and are much more relevant because they include more detail. As a result, traffic from these keywords converts at a higher rate. In aggregate, the number of searches in the long tail often adds up to many more searches than you would get from your “golden keywords.” Therefore, the objective, when it comes to search rankings, is not to rank for a few top keywords that remain the same over time but to focus on a much larger number of phrase or instructional searches that are growing and changing rapidly.

How long does it take for SEO to start working? Don’t stop too soon!

Earlier, the strategy was to identify those keywords that were the most relevant to a business, got the most traffic, and weren’t very competitive. We used to figure out ten to fifteen keywords that were called the “golden keywords” and would bring in the majority of the traffic. That keyword strategy is now evolving, because with rarer and rarer exceptions, there is no one keyword, and no small group of keywords, that is going to drive a lot of traffic to a website. Instead, a long tail of search is the new mantra for SEO. 

Do search rankings really matter? Output v/s Outcomes!

Search rankings matter, but they’re not the metric you should be focusing on. If, by asking “How long does SEO take to show results?” you mean “How long will it be before I get top rankings?” then you’re mistaking outputs for outcomes. Getting rankings is an output SEO firms can easily sell because they’re emotionally satisfying, but they’re worthless unless they generate the outcome you want - Leads / Activations / Sales / Service Requests, etc. That’s why you should only hire SEO firms or SEO professionals who focus on outcomes, rather than outputs.

The question you should be asking about SEO!

Now that you know how SEO has changed and that you want leads and sales from your SEO firm rather than just rankings, the question you should be asking is “How long will it take for SEO to start generating leads and sales?”

Now that we’re ready to answer the right question, the answer is - SEO success depends on a few factors. Factors such as how long has your website been around, how much SEO has been done on it previously, what shape the website is in, how much content is on it, its link profile, and others, all contribute to answering the question you’ve asked. 

Professional SEO firms or individuals will tell you that it usually takes four to six months to start seeing results. That’s usually an accurate assessment, but keep in mind that this is when the results will start coming in, and SEO results grow over a period of time. Whatever results you’re getting at six months should be considerably less than what you’re getting at twelve months. At some point, you may see your results slow down a bit, and then it may be a matter of maintaining results rather than growing them.

Many companies underestimate how much time and money it takes to be successful with SEO. SEO success by any standard rarely comes within the first three months, even with a healthy, substantial budget. 

We’ve experienced companies getting started the right way, but quit after two to three months saying, “We just weren’t getting the ROI we needed to justify the spend.” This experience highlights that these companies went into the SEO exercise with unrealistic expectations, mainly fuelled by knowledge gained from unprofessional and unreliable sources (and there are plenty of them in the market these days).

If you can’t budget for six to twelve months of SEO, you might be better off putting that budget somewhere else as paying for just a couple of months of SEO activity is no better than throwing your money away. SEO is a long-term marketing tactic, and shouldn’t be seen as a way to generate sales quickly. If companies make the proper investment and plan it for a long time, then SEO will get them the best ROI on their spend.

If you’d like to take your SEO to the next level, reach out to the digital marketing experts at Webware.io. We specialize in optimizing websites and content for improved search engine results and provide small businesses with the right tools and supporting services to nurture and manage their online presence. 

Our head office is located in Toronto, and we serve clients across Canada and North America.

To learn more about our services and complete digital marketing tool kit, please click here. If you have any questions about how we can help with your digital marketing needs, we’d love to hear from you. Please contact our experts here. 

Renée Bourget Makeup Artistry provides professional makeup services across Vancouver, Port Moody, Coquitlam, Burnaby, New Westminster, Maple Ridge, Port Coquitlam, White Rock, and Pitt Meadows, British Columbia. To help them reach a wider audience, we launched their new website - www.reneebourgetmua.com

We wish everyone at Renée Bourget Makeup Artistry the very best of success! 

Hill's Brothers Construction, LLC offers home, bathroom, kitchen remodeling, and renovation services to clients across Clearwater, St. Petersburg, and Largo, Florida. To help them reach a wider audience, we launched their new website - www.hillsbrothersconstructionllc.com

We wish everyone at Hill's Brothers Construction, LLC the best of success! 

Ever since Instagram launched in 2010, it has steadily scaled from a photo-sharing app to a marketing platform. With the introduction of Instagram Stories, IGTV, Q & A Instagram Live, new profile view, video calling, shoppable posts, push notifications, and insights along with several other new features, it is clear that Instagram is turning into the most powerful marketing tool for businesses. Last year alone, Instagram released over twenty-five innovative features to improve user experience and engage more customers.

One feature that has gained much momentum over the last two years has been Insta-stories with around five-hundred million daily active users. While the idea of Instagram stories was picked up from Snapchat, Instagram has added augmented filters, question poll, GIF stickers, hashtags, music, emoji slider, and a lot of other improvements to increase interactivity and bring in more sales. You even have the option to add multiple photos or videos from your camera roll to your Insta-story. Stories disappear after twenty-four hours, but they can live permanently on your profile through Instagram Story Highlights.

What are Instagram Story Highlights?

Instagram Highlights are archived photos or stories that you can pin to your profile. In other words, once your story vanishes after twenty-four hours, they become a part of your archived gallery. You can either create a Highlight by adding stories from your archived gallery or save it directly as a Highlight after you upload a story. Note that they will remain for your followers to see until you choose to remove it.

Instagram Story Highlights gives clarity to your profile by allowing users or consumers to identify the personality of your brand or business. Brands use story highlights to feature their events and promotions, showcase their products or services, and so on. This long-story format has helped many brands draw in more consumers and build a stronger connection with followers. However, if you want to take full advantage of Instagram stories and integrate them into your digital marketing strategies, you need to be aware of all that Instagram Story Highlights has to offer.

Here are a few ways you can effectively use Instagram Story Highlights to represent your brand in the best possible manner.

Tip #1: Categorize your highlights.

When a new user visits your profile, they will likely view your Instagram Story Highlights after reading your bio. To make a great first impression on them and potential customers, it is advisable to organize your content into distinct categories by creating multiple story highlights. For instance, if you have a catering business, you can create separate highlights for your recipes, recent events, client reviews. By utilizing Highlights to categorize your stories, it allows you to display your most valuable content to your followers and gives you the freedom to set the tone for your brand image.

Tip #2: Keep a short name for your story highlights.

By naming each story highlight, you are summarizing exactly what you do or offer in a few letters. Ideally, the entire name or title of your highlight should fit within the area. However, as it is a small space, there is a limit on the number of characters your highlight can have. Ideally, it should be up to fifteen characters long, but if you want it to be fully displayed, keep your highlight name around ten characters.

Tip #3: Use a custom cover image for each highlight.

If you want to come across as a professional brand and set yourself apart from the competition, consider uploading a custom highlight cover to give your profile a cohesive look. Make sure your cover image is not only eye-catching but also in line with your brand identity. You can either design a cover on Instagram or use more resourceful editing apps or software. To establish uniformity, try to create similar covers for your highlights; it could be adding a standard color or background, typography, image, etc.

While Instagram is continually rolling out new features and updates to help business owners boost their brand, there are other digital marketing strategies such as SEO, email marketing, content management, social media promotion that can raise brand awareness and fuel business growth.

As one of the best digital marketing toolkit providers in Toronto, Webware.io has been helping clients navigate the digital landscape and build a successful online presence. We offer a full suite of services to create and maintain a robust online strategy for your business and websites.

To learn about the services that we provide, please click here or get in touch with us here for any information you need. You can also book a live demo by clicking here.

Barrier Group is an industrial company that services the oil & gas industry across Western Canada. They offer field coating, excavation, welding, pipeline construction, and tank coating services. To help them reach a wider audience, we launched their new website - www.barriergroup.ca

We wish everyone at Barrier Group the very best of success! 

When it comes to their online presence, everyone wants to see their website rank better on search engines. To achieve this, currently, there are two methods, which are on-page and off-page SEO. However, implementing each one on their own isn’t nearly as effective as using them together.

In our previous post on SEO, we covered the fundamental terms of on-page SEO. If you missed our article, here’s a link to it so you can understand it before diving into the off-page version. That way, you can spot the distinction between different SEO terminology. In case you’ve already read it, you’re all set to expand your knowledge on SEO. Keep reading to learn what off-page SEO means, and what are the unique concepts that differentiate it from on-page SEO.

Off-Page SEO

As we mentioned, there are two main elements of SEO: “on-page” and “off-page.” Off-page practices include everything you do outside your web pages to improve their rankings. The central aspect of off-page SEO is link building.

Curated Content

Content curation is the process of gathering information relevant to a particular topic or area of interest.

Listing Directories

A directory or more specifically a business directory is an online listing of businesses. The listings provide information about specific companies like their name, address, contact information, associations, and the services and products they offer. These businesses are usually categorized, by location, activity, or size. It is essential that your business ensures that all your company information is up to date on every directory listing.

GoogleMyBusiness

GoogleMyBusiness is an internet-based service for business owners and operated by Google. It is a way of giving business owners more control over what shows in the search results when someone searches their business name.

Facebook

Facebook is one of the best social media platforms for businesses to use to reach their target market – whatever that audience may be.

Twitter

Twitter is a ‘microblogging’ system that allows you to send and receive short posts called tweets.

Newsletters or Email Marketing

Email newsletters are an email communication sent out to inform your audience of the latest news, tips, or updates about your product or company. They are often used for a variety of purposes–and they come in many different forms. Some are weekly digests of content, some are quarterly organization updates, and others promote new products. The point of email newsletters is to keep subscribers connected, engaged, and informed about what’s new with the organization or business (and often to drive sales.)

Link building

This is one of the biggest SEO terms. Link building is simply a process of getting backlinks to your page.

Backlinks

Backlinks are simply a link placed on someone else’s website that points back to your site. Backlinks are one of the most critical factors for SEO. Getting a lot of backlinks with relevant anchor text is the shortest way of improving your search engine rankings.

SEO Tools

SEO tools investigate the potential of web pages for high placement on search engine ranking pages. They provide information on backlinks and keywords as well as insights into SEO competition on the internet.

Google Analytics

It is a free web analytics program that can be used to track audience behavior, traffic acquisition sources, content performance, and much more.

New Users

The new users’ metrics in Google Analytics allows you to see how many people visited your site for the first time in a specific time. The first time a person visits your site, a Google Analytics cookie will be set, and a unique identifier will be assigned to them which will help in distinguishing the person as a “new user.”

Traffic Channels

Traffic channels provide an overview of where your site traffic is coming from and groups the traffic into seven default categories, i.e., Direct, Organic Search, Referral, Email, Paid Search, Social, and Other.

Page Views

According to the Google Analytics support site, a page view (or pageview hit, page tracking hit) is an instance of a page being loaded (or reloaded) in a browser. Pageviews is a metric defined as the total number of pages viewed.

Bounce Rate

This is the percentage of website visitors who leave without visiting another page on that website. Bounce rates range widely depending on the industry and the niche. Although the bounce rate can indicate potential content or website issues, it is not a direct ranking factor, according to Google.

Exit Rate

The opposite of a landing page, an exit page on Google Analytics refers to the last page a user accesses before their session ends or they leave the site. The Exit Pages section of Google Analytics, therefore, allows you to see which pages people most frequently end their sessions on or leave the site after viewing.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console (previously Google Webmaster Tools) is a no-charge web service by Google for webmasters. It allows webmasters to check indexing status and optimize visibility of their websites.

XML sitemap

It’s a file (usually sitemap.xml). Its primary function is to give search engines a map of all the different URLs that a website contains.

Crawl Errors

Crawl errors occur when a search engine tries to reach a page on your website but fails at it. Google divides crawl errors into two groups:

Site errors: Site errors are all the crawl errors that prevent a search engine bot from accessing your website.

URL errors: URL errors refer to crawl errors that occur when a search engine bot tries to crawl a specific page of your website.

Fetch as Google

The Fetch as Google tool enables you to test how Google crawls or renders a URL on your site. You can use Fetch as Google to see whether the Googlebot can access a page on your website, how it renders the page, and whether any page resources (such as images or scripts) are blocked to Googlebot.

Search Queries

A search query is an actual query a user enters in Google search. The Google search queries are generated impressions of your website URLs in Google organic search results. It helps in understanding the correlation between how users search and the relevancy of your pages to those queries to provide insights into how to optimize your content.

Search Pages

The search page shows you which pages on your site appear in the search results.

Black Hat SEO

Like everything, SEO has its dark side too. Black hat SEO is the name for all SEO practices that are known for being manipulative or unethical, and in the long run can hurt your website, or even get it banned from search engines.

Cloaking (page cloaking)

It’s a practice of taking a webpage and building it in a way, so it displays different content to people and to search engines. That way, at least in theory, you can get a good ranking for your desired keywords (by presenting an optimized page to the spiders) and then show real people with unrelated offers and content. While this might work from a marketing standpoint, it can also get you penalized or even banned very quickly.

Duplicate Content

If you have two separate pages within your website that have the same content on them (or very similar content), then you have duplicate content. Duplicate content is believed to be a bad thing for SEO. Google doesn’t like sites that use the same piece of content over and over again, and they often penalize them for it.

Keyword stuffing

Keyword stuffing is a practice of taking a word or a phrase and repeating it very often in a piece of text, especially when unnecessary.

If you’re looking to explore off-page SEO, you’re now fully equipped with the basic terminology. Navigating through this next level of search engine optimization will be easier as you will understand precisely what your online marketing expert is suggesting. In case you’d like to know how off-page SEO works, reach out to the digital marketing experts at Webware.io. We specialize in boosting SEO for a variety of small businesses with our all-inclusive digital tool-kit designed to help you succeed in today’s web-based world.

To learn more about Webware’s digital marketing tools and competitive online services, please click here. If you have questions about SEO and digital marketing, we’d love to hear from you. Please contact our experts here. Our head office is located in Toronto, and we serve clients across Canada and North America.

Camlife Financial Corp offers Whole Life Insurance, Health Insurance, Critical Illness Insurance, Mortgage Insurance to clients across Vancouver, Richmond, Burnaby, White Rock, Coquitlam, New Westminster, BC. To help them reach a wider audience, we launched their new website - www.camlife.ca

We wish everyone at Camlife Financial Corp the best of success! 

To help you wrap your head around the possibilities of online marketing, we’ve already covered the concept of search engine marketing (SEM). In case you haven’t read it yet, click here to catch up on the basic terms used in SEM. If you’ve already read it, you’re all set to dive deeper into the context of online marketing through Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

SEO is a process designed to navigate your target audience through the crowded online market to your website or the products and services. However, this is entirely dependent on the search queries they put into search engines like Google. To ensure you’re immediately visible to relevant prospects when they search for things related to you, there are two types of SEO techniques, which are commonly referred to as on-page and off-page SEO. In this article, Webware.io will take you through the terminology behind on-page SEO, and cover the unique concepts and jargon of off-page SEO in our next article in the search engine glossary series.

Here’s our exhaustive list of the top on-page SEO terms, used by most marketers, online marketing gurus, and marketing reports.

SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s a practice of improving a site’s ranking on the search engines for given keywords. When doing SEO, you need to take care of both on-page and off-page SEO. However, the actual tasks that need to be done are changing almost every day. What worked perfectly yesterday may not work at all tomorrow, but that’s just the reality of SEO. For this reason, SEO shouldn’t be considered as a one-time task but an ongoing process.

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO practices include everything you do on your page to improve its rankings. This includes things like tuning your website’s HTML structure, improving title tags and descriptions, improving your website’s speed, checking keyword usage and density, improving the internal linking structure (the way your pages are linked to each other), etc.

White Hat SEO

As opposed to the black hat SEO, white hat SEO is a set of all SEO practices that search engines encourage you to use.

Canonical Tag

It’s an HTML link element that allows webmasters to inform search engines about duplicate content pages they’ve created. The tag is placed in the head section of the HTML structure. Here’s what it looks like:

This tag informs that the current page is a copy of the page located under the address set in the canonical tag (href). The main idea is that when a search engine sees this tag, it does not rank that page, but transfers all the rankings to the canonical page. So, in essence, it’s very similar to the 301 redirect.

Do-Follow Link

It’s a standard HTML link that doesn’t have the rel=“nofollow” attribute. Do-follow links are the most valuable ones from an SEO perspective.

Nofollow

The nofollow attribute notifies the search engines that they shouldn’t pay attention to such a link.

Keyword

A keyword may be a word, words, or phrases that an SEO professional or marketer targets to match and rank for during online searches. These words, when used on webpages, can help search engines determine which pages are the most relevant to show in organic results when a searcher enters a query. Also, keywords usually represent topics, ideas, or questions.

Meta Tags

Meta tags consist of two main elements, the meta description, and meta keywords. Meta tags are placed in the head section of the HTML structure of your page. The information contained in those tags is usually not meant for users, but for search engines. It helps them determine what the page is about. Therefore, it might be worth it to set them manually for each page or post within your blog.

Title Tag (Meta Title)

Every web page has a title tag. From a user’s standpoint the title tag is visible only in one place – your browser’s title bar and on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

Meta Description

A tag that can be added to the “head section of an HTML document.” It acts as a description of a web page’s content. This content isn’t used in ranking algorithms but is often displayed as the “snippet” that appears in the search results. Accurate and engaging descriptions can increase the organic click-through rate.

Above The Fold

Content that appears on a website before the user scrolls. In email or web marketing it means the area of content viewable before scrolling.

Keyword Density

Keyword density is a number describing how often a keyword appears in a piece of text. To calculate it you need to divide the number of times your keyword appears in a part of the text by the total number of words the entire piece of text has, and then multiply the result by 100. The final result will be expressed as a percentage score.

CTA (Call To Action)

A call to action in advertising refers to the portion of the message that gets a reader to act on the advertisement.

Anchor Text

The clickable word or words of a link is known as the anchor text. This text is intended to provide contextual information to people and search engines about what the webpage or website being linked to is about.

Alt Tag

It’s an HTML attribute of the IMG tag. The IMG tag is responsible for displaying images. The alt tag or attribute is the text that gets displayed in case the image can’t be loaded (if the file is missing, for example). Alt tags have some SEO value too. Currently, Google can’t (at least at the moment) see what an actual image presents, but it can read the alt tag, so using alt tags is the preferred way of informing Google what’s in your images.

Organic Search

You do an organic search every time you visit Google, input a phrase, and push the search button.

Algorithm

A complex computer program used by search engines to retrieve data and deliver results for a query. Search engines use a combination of algorithms to deliver ranked web pages via a results page based on several ranking factors and signals.

Spider (Crawler, Bot, Robot)

A search engine spider is a unique piece of software that browses the web, looks for new sites, checks what’s on them and sends the data back to Google (or other search engines) so they can index and rank these sites.

SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages)

SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page. This is a page that gets displayed when you search for a keyword on Google or other search engines.

Now that you know the basic terms of on-page SEO, implementing it should be a breeze! If you’d like to take your SEO to the next level for better or continued top ranking, reach out to the online marketing experts at Webware.io. As specialists in digital marketing, we excel in optimizing websites and content for improved search engine results. Our technology platform provides small businesses with the right tools and supporting services to nurture and manage their online presence.

To learn more about our services and why we are known as a complete digital marketing tool kit, please click here. If you have any questions about how we can help with your digital marketing needs, we’d love to hear from you. Please contact our experts here. Our head office is located in Toronto, and we serve clients across Canada and North America. 

Abacus360 provide accounting and assurance services for individuals, businesses, corporations and non-profit organizations across Zambia, Mauritius, and Pretoria, South Africa. To help them reach a wider audience, we launched their new website last week - www.abacus360.co

We wish everyone at Abacus360 the very best of success! 

Cindy's Painting offer residential interior & exterior painting services across Port Perry, Bowmanville, Whitby, and Ajax, Ontario. To help them reach a wider audience, we launched their beautiful website last week - www.cindyspainting.ca

We wish everyone at Cindy's Painting the very best of success!