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Sunday, April 29 2018
Meet Vero - The New Social Media App

Vero, the new social media app is luring social media users.

What Is Vero?

Vero is a new entertaining app for the social media lovers who are fed-up from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram and looking for something new. It has gained a lot of popularity and is nearing, three million registered users. The app allows the users to post and share movies, books, places, photos, links, etc. 

What’s Unique About Vero?

The unique thing about the app is, it has no ads & no algorithm. It shows you post in chronological order. Vero aims to provide its users with an uninterrupted experience by making it advertising free. People around the globe are loving this simple approach to social networking.
 
Who Should Try The App? 

You can try Vero, if you want to experience something new. Instagram, Facebook & Twitter use sophisticated algorithms to show you content, whereas, this app simply lets you view content in chronological order. 

Initially, Vero announced that the app is free only for the first one million users. But, due to enormous boost in popularity, they decided to extend the “Free Offer”. But eventually, the company wants to charge a subscription fee. The company says, “We made our business model subscription based, making our users our customers, not advertisers.”
 

Posted by: Andrea Shepherd AT 11:34 am   |  Permalink   |  Email
Sunday, April 08 2018
Top Voice Search Ranking Factors Analyzed

There are many factors that influence a sites ranking on voice search results. To figure out which factor is most important, Backlinko conducted an extensive analysis.

Here are the findings: 

  1. Page speed is crucial. Most of the results were from fast loading pages.
  2. Domain authority is of absolute importance.
  3. Content that ranks well on the desktop also ranks well on voice search. 
  4. Surprisingly, Schema is not that important factor as only 36% of sites that ranked well on voice search results were using schema. 
  5. 41% of Voice search results came from featured snippets. 
  6. HTTPS is an absolute must.

This research debunked the myth that Schema is of absolute importance. And also made it clear that page speed is CRUCIAL. All the results that listed well on voice search were almost 2 times faster than traditional pages.

Google’s reliance on domains with high authority for providing voice search results comes from the tendency that they “may” provide higher accuracy as compared to domain’s with less authority. But it is possible that they will come up with a more sophisticated approach for the same in near future. 

The research also shed some light on the importance of long-form content. People speak more words that they type, so it's natural that pages that use comprehensive content will reign supreme in this area. 

However, you don’t have to specifically optimize your site’s content for voice search, writing in-depth content will suffice the need. 

On a side note, the virtual assistants are on the rise. So the marketers who are willing to offer their clients with latest digital marketing should take these platform seriously.
 

Posted by: Andrea Shepherd AT 11:22 am   |  Permalink   |  Email
Wednesday, March 21 2018
Google Launches Two New Tools To Highlight The Importance Of Page Speed On Mobiles

From past few years, Google is consistently pushing the website owners to improve their mobile site experience. They have launched multiple algorithms, guidelines, and tools for the same purpose. 

Recently, at Mobile World Congress, they launched two new tools, a new Mobile Scorecard and a Conversion Impact Calculator. 

The mobile scorecard provides data on the chrome user experience so that you can compare the speed of multiple websites on mobile devices.  

The mobile scorecard pulls data from chrome to compare the speed of multiple sites on mobile. That’s the same data that Google uses in the Page Speed Insights tool

Google said that a site should load within 5 seconds on 3g connections and 3 seconds on 4G connection.

The impact calculator gives a rough idea of how much revenue a business is losing because of slow page load speed. It might seem a bit exaggerated but still useful.

And if you are in need of mobile website design or redesign services, please don’t hesitate to connect with us.

Posted by: Andrea Shepherd AT 11:17 am   |  Permalink   |  Email
Sunday, March 11 2018
Are You Seeking Information About Reputation Management? Then Check Out These Great Tips!

Are You Seeking Information About Reputation Management? Then Check Out These Great Tips!

How important is your business to you? If your business is tantamount to your well being, you must make it as important for those you do business with. That means managing its reputation well. Read on for methods that can help you do that.

Follow through with your customers to keep your reputation good. This is especially the case if your business is larger. The customers need to feel important. Automated systems can be used for following up. Also, you can ask them to make feedback on the purchases they've made.

Be Proactive With Respect To Your Online Reputation

Being proactive helps you counteract negativity online regarding your brand. Ensure you have plenty of positive feedback since this can drown out the negative. Continue posting positive content until the negative ones slip into obscurity.

Have a good online personality. Posting status updates and tweets doesn't work without active communication between you and your followers. When someone takes the time to leave a message on one of your social media pages, it is important that your are quick to respond. If someone posts a question and you don't have the answer, tell them you don't know but you're working on getting the answer for them.

Try to make your unhappy customers... happy.

When you can turn a client's bad experience into something good, your customer will appreciate your show of care. Do this online, as well. You will show customers and prospective customers that you are willing to address any issue, which makes them more likely to do future business with you.

Private sales and promotions need to stay exactly that: private. This is important especially if it's for a complaint. You don't want those "freebies" getting around, because other people will want in on the deal, too.

Social Media

Keep an eye on social networks. Most customers will expect companies to answer questions on social media websites. Be sure you offer prompt responses for that reason. You can stand out from your competition since many businesses won't be quite as vigilant.

Monitoring Online Mentions 

Monitor your online presence. A displeased customer may talk about you online, and you can see this through a search engine result. Go over the search engine results to prevent anything negative about your business from making it to the top. You should generally do this a couple times each month.

Regularly perform Internet searches on your own company. If you find misleading information, work to get it taken off the Internet. If you show the site owner that what they are presenting is factually untrue and they are liable, most website owners will comply with your request.

Treat Your Employees Well

If you own your own business, be sure your employees are treated with respect. If this principle is disregarded, the fallout can be severe. If others know that you don't treat employees well, they may not want to do business with you.

You are now very aware of how important your reputation is to the success of your business. This means keeping your reputation pristine. Use this information to manage your business reputation and attract customers.

Posted by: Andrea Shepherd AT 05:26 am   |  Permalink   |  Email
Thursday, March 08 2018
Google Adwords Updates For March 2018
Posted by: Andrea Shepherd AT 11:29 am   |  Permalink   |  Email
Tuesday, February 20 2018
Google Launches Beta Version Of Brand New Search Console

Google has rolled out the beta version of the new and improved search console and SEO’s are more than happy, to say the least. The most promising new feature is the access to 16-month-old historical data. It enables year over year comparison which is great from every aspect.

Google has built the new search console from the scratch and not all features are available yet. They are still working on it, and they will keep on adding useful features from the old search console to the new. So as of now,  most of the tools you will click on will have a coming soon message.

However, you do have access to the performance tool which is easy to understand with filtering options like: By device, country, impressions, CTR and more.

The Index coverage report is the perfect blend of old index status & crawl reports errors. It enables you to see how well Google is indexing your site as well to identify and fix any issues.


The new search console will also help you validate newly fixed AMP URLs. The updated AMP status report will provide details into the specific Errors. 

As of now, the above-mentioned tools and features are the biggest highlights of the new search console. But it’s still in the beta mode and many tools and features are yet to come, so stay tuned. 
We will keep you updated on new features as and when they go live.


 

Posted by: Andrea Shepherd AT 09:53 am   |  Permalink   |  Email
Sunday, February 18 2018
Important Google Adwords Updates For February 2018

•    The Dynamic search ads allow you to target the entire website or domain name so that you can target a broad audience. However, Google has made some significant changes to it and the changes will go live soon. To know exactly how it will affect you, click.

•    Google allowed the advertiser to spend as much as twice the daily budget simply to get more money from their pocket. But how advertisers are responding to it and does it really changed anything within AdWords … find out.

•    Google and Facebook get biggest slice of advertising cake. A recent study revealed that 1/4 (61%) of the global advertising spend goes to Google and Facebook. However, the number may drop soon as people are starting to allocate their ad budget to different platforms. 

•    Google officially removed the Adwords Review extension and all the performance data will be deleted by Feb 2018.

•    Last year we saw shocking reports that YouTube ads were running alongside some inappropriate videos. It scared the advertiser because it would cause more harm than good. Addressing the issue, YouTube has now made it mandatory for the YouTubers to have at least 1000 subscribers and 4000h watch time if they want to monetize their content.

•    Re-marketing is one of the best marketing weapons in your arsenal. Here’s a great tutorial on how to utilize it to the fullest.

•    What is Doubleclick adoptive re-marketing and how does it work. Find out.

•    Manually selecting placements to run display ads may seem like a good option, but it is not the right solution to click frauds. Also, it makes you miss the flexibility of automated placements.

•    Re-marketing is good but only if done in a balanced manner. Many advertisers overdo it and as a result, annoy the users. Although Google can’t tell advertisers to stop targeting a particular user, they may give the power to the users to block re-marketing ads coming from a specific advertiser.
 

Posted by: Andrea Shepherd AT 02:06 pm   |  Permalink   |  Email
Saturday, February 10 2018
You Can Now Add Videos To Your Google My Business Listing

Google was testing a new video feature in early January that allowed business owners and customers to add videos, related to the business. Allyson Wright from Google My Business advertiser community announced that they have fully rolled out the video feature and now all the business owners can add videos to their listing. These videos will be visible on Google Maps and local search results.

Some important points to consider:

•    Videos up to 30 seconds in length are supported. 
•    Videos will appear in the overview tab of the GMB Dashboard. 
•    Customer uploaded videos can be found in the customer tab. 
•    Merchant uploaded videos can be found in the by owner tab. 
•    All videos can be viewed together in the videos tab. 
•    After upload it could take up to 24 hours for the videos to appear. 
•    Once live, they will display where local photos do. 

The process to add videos is same as photos. Go to your GMB dashboard, click photos on the left and instead of adding photos, add the link to the videos.
 

Posted by: Andrea Shepherd AT 02:01 pm   |  Permalink   |  Email
Monday, February 05 2018
Page Speed Will Officially Be A Ranking Factor In Google From July 2018

It’s 2018 and if your web page takes more than 10 seconds to load, then you are far behind! Nobody likes to wait for minutes just for your page to load — they will simply hit the back button. According to a study, 53% of the users will abandon the site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load! So it came as no surprise when Google announced that site speed will be a ranking factor within the mobile search results from July 2018. 

However, Google assured that only a small percentage of the sites will be affected by it since the majority of the site loads faster than 10 seconds. Also, there will be exceptions to websites which provide relevant and high-quality content to users. Those websites can still rank well in the search engine result pages because the intent of the search query is still a strong factor.

If you are not sure about your site’s speed, you can use the Google’s “Test My Site” tool. This tool uses a standard 3G connection to replicate what most people are using to surf the web using mobiles. It not only tells you about your site speed but also gives suggestions on how you can improve.
 

What About AMP?

Google's announcement stated that it "applies the same standard to all pages, regardless of the technology used to build the page”, which means AMP gets no special advantage except that by its very nature it will pass all of these speed standards with flying colors. However, that doesn't mean that you get an automatic pass if you're using AMP because you need to be sure that everything is set up properly. If you need any help with mobile optimization, we can assist. Just reach out to us and we will be able assist you further.

Posted by: Andrea Shepherd AT 02:03 pm   |  Permalink   |  Email
Friday, November 17 2017
The Power of Christmas Greetings In Your Business

CHRISTMAS IS THE BIGGEST HOLIDAY FOR CARD SENDING…

Christmas Greetings are sent each year to the tune of 1.5 billion cards, that’s more than any other holiday. Holiday cards account for 60 percent of card sales each year.

Aside from families and personal cards, businesses find it a great time to send out Annual Christmas Greetings saying Thank You for your business, to customers/clients, prospective clients and employees.

HERE ARE A FEW OTHER BENEFITS OF SENDING OUT CHRISTMAS GREETINGS…

  • You stay top of mind
  • Shows you appreciate your current clients
  • Business relationships are enhanced
  • Promotes Referrals and New customers
  • Retains your current customers

SOME OTHER TIPS TO KEEP IN MIND WHEN SENDING CHRISTMAS GREETINGS…

  1. Be Sensitive to Traditions (seasons greetings or happy holidays)
  2. Update Your List (organize throughout the year to save the last minute hassle)
  3. Adding Personal Signatures
  4.  Mail to Home Address (for the biggest impact)
  5. Use Titles (such as Mr. & Mrs. etc…)
  6. Buy Quality Cards
  7. Avoid the Mail Rush (mail on time for the Holiday)

Organizing your Holiday Card List & Preparing your Christmas Greetings or Holiday cards before Thanksgiving will help you to enjoy the Holiday Season and give you more time to celebrate.

If you find yourself to late for Christmas Greetings, don’t panic!

Simply send out a greetings that thank your customers/clients for their business for the past year and that you look forward to serving them in the New Year.

Also important, don’t forget these great reasons for sending greeting cards to enhance your business throughout the year, until the Holiday’s roll around again…

  • Birthdays
  • Thank You
  • Thanks for the Referral
  • Sorry to hear
  • Anniversary Date of Client Relationship

Share this post and leave me a comment below if you have a fun idea or reason to send your clients greeting cards!

I’m sending Christmas Greetings your way in hopes that you have a wonderful Holiday Season and may 2017 bring you much joy and prosperity…Happy Holidays take care Everyone 

If you enjoyed this blog post today, feel free to like, comment, and share it. Much appreciated!

Reach out to me on Facebook if you have questions or want to chat with me.

Call/Text Me: (424) 442-0143
Email: andrea@andreashepherd.com
Have questions? Click here to chat with me on Facebook

Posted by: Andrea Shepherd AT 09:00 am   |  Permalink   |  Email

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