Monday, August 24, 2020

Five Key Tips On How To Choose An SEO Agency

Five Key Tips On How to Choose an SEO Agency

A right SEO agency can make a massive difference to your business. With the right team behind you, you can see more call sales and a positive return on your SEO investment. That’s why you should take care in choosing an SEO agency for your business. If you’ve googled the best SEO agencies stop right there, you should not hire the first agency on the list.

As an owner who works at a reputable Hawaii SEO agency, here are five tips to help you narrow down that list of best SEO agencies from the search results.

  1. Know your business goals
  2. Research the company’s expertise
  3. Have a budget in mind
  4. Evaluate their transparency
  5. Get real proof

I’ll start with three tips you can try before getting in touch with an SEO agency.

Know your business goals

You really shouldn’t make any partnership decisions before outlining your business goals. Approaching an SEO agency and telling them you want to show up in search engines isn’t enough. Also, it’s pretty vague. If you choose the wrong agency, you’ll pay for a whole lot of nothing.

Some slightly more specific goals you can consider are getting more customers through sales or leads, improving brand awareness, gaining more industry recognition. And or building a more reliable reputation. You don’t only have to stick to those goals, but make sure whichever goals you choose to align with your brand.

Research the company’s expertise

Different SEO agencies have different capabilities to help you meet your goals. Some may only work in specific industries; some may offer additional services outside of SEO. There’s also a lot to know about SEO itself. Three significant parts of SEO are on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO. You can get even more specific with e-commerce, youtube local SEO, etc.

Seo can impact your business in different ways. And you don’t want to partner with an SEO agency that doesn’t have e-commerce experience if you’re an e-commerce business. Make sure to do your research first.

Click here for expert SEO services.

Have a budget in mind

SEO isn’t free unless you do it yourself, but that’s a lot of ongoing technical work that I wouldn’t recommend doing if you are trying to run a business. Knowing how much you can spend on SEO can help you understand what you are willing to pay to achieve your goals.

There is a range of companies that offer “cheap SEO services” however, going with the cheapest option to save a few dollars can burn you in the end. For example, It’s like needing a new dining room chair and going with the cheapest option. You get it home, and it falls apart after a few weeks because of its poor construction.

The expensive chair might cost more initially, but it lasts for years in the end. If you go with cheap SEO services or “the best bang for your buck,” you might end up with a one-size-fits-all strategy. Some bad SEO practices can get you quick results but ultimately cause penalization of your site by search engines.

Evaluate their transparency

don’t be afraid to ask how the agency will inform you about what they’re doing to get results. You’re paying for their work, so you have a right to know where your investment is going. When choosing your SEO agency, you should know the processes in place for executing strategies. Like how they keep you in the loop on their progress towards your goals.

You should also know how they report results do they send over a document once a month with a bunch of numbers for you to interpret or do they prepare a custom report with valuable insights regularly. If they don’t tell you how they get results or at least how they communicate what they’re doing, you should probably look elsewhere for an agency. At Shane Perry Marketing, we make sure we communicate any new ranking movements, so you know where your site is at.

SEO isn’t some secret magical thing that a company does on the backend to instantly get you results. A reputable SEO agency should be open about what they’re doing to optimize their client’s results.

Get real proof

It’s easy to pretend that you’re something that you’re not on the internet nowadays. Any SEO agency out there can say they’re the best, but you need to find actual proof of this when you’re researching an agency. You might find case studies and testimonials on their website touting their excellent customer service and superior results, but they can control all that.

I’m not saying you should ignore all these things but be wary. Look for third-party reviews on sites like Facebook, Google, my business, Clutch, and Up To City. Also, don’t be afraid to ask the agency for references so you can learn about their client’s experience straight from the clients.

If you know any local business owners or managers who work with a specific agency, ask them about their experiences. Do your review research so that you can choose the best SEO agency that ads value to your team, goals, and brand.

Suppose you want to partner with an experienced SEO company that drives serious results to contact us to see if we’re a good fit. You can find reviews from our clients on the sites I mentioned above.

Read here for six SEO solutions that increase your website visibility. And last but not least, please consider subscribing to our blog.

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Thursday, August 13, 2020

Squarespace vs. WordPress in 2020 | Which Website Builder is Best https://t.co/CAPDdDkWTk #shaneperrymarketing #socialmedia #SEO #digitalmarketing

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Squarespace vs. WordPress in 2020 | Which Website Builder is Best https://t.co/T2aVcExNkA

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Squarespace vs. WordPress in 2020 | Which Website Builder is Best

Squarespace vs. WordPress

It’s Shane Perry and I’m here to settle the debate of the decade, Squarespace or WordPress.

So I’m not actually going to determine a winner, but depending on your use case and skill level, either one is an awesome option for building your website. So instead what we’re going to do is a side by side comparison of Squarespace and WordPress in five different categories to give you the latest information and help you decide which one is best for you category.

Ease Of Use Comparison

Number one, ease of use. While Squarespace does have a slight learning curve, it’s not nearly as complex as WordPress, largely because Squarespace doesn’t have as many options with a sizable collection of templates and a variety of fonts and colors, you can easily switch up your content and style.

Plus, the drag and drop block editor makes it easier to add images, videos, and audio without using code. On the other hand, WordPress is definitely not for beginners when it comes to the back end. Over the years, the user interface has grown to a full-fledged CMS platform that offers better control over website design and functionality. There are both coatless and coated builders available for WordPress and the right themes and plugins can help you build a website drag and drop style.

That said, you’ll still want a basic knowledge of HTML and text to create or customize your website on WordPress.

Templates And Theme Comparison

Category number two templates and themes. WordPress has the biggest collection of themes compared to any website builder. I’m talking thousands of templates but is more always better? Let’s see Squarespace.

It features a variety of 110 templates across 14 categories, including blogs, travel, photography, online stores, and so on. With so much to cover, there aren’t many templates per category, but of course, everything from the font to the images to the content can be customized. Plus, all of the templates are mobile, responsive, meaning you don’t need to do any extra work for mobile and desktop users. WordPress themes, on the other hand, are plentiful.

However, not all of them are as polished. Since WordPress is an open-source and anyone can create themes, it’s also not super easy to switch up your theme. Aspecific plug plugins and functionality may not be one size fit all. You may also have to put in extra work to ensure your site is optimized for mobile and desktop users.

Features Comparison

Category number three features. Both website builders are loaded with quality features. But let’s break down how these two hold up based on builtin SEO systems and e-commerce compatibility. First up, SEO, every Squarespace website has basic SEO built-in, meaning they’re automatically SEO friendly. Your data is automatically structured, your site map is automatically generated and linked and meta tags are automatically generated. Amazing, right? WordPress also provides some SEO friendly themes, but the real power of SEO on WordPress comes from the plugins with a plugin like used.

For instance, you’ll learn exactly what you need to optimize your title tags, metadata, and descriptors next. Content management system. Squarespace is a hosted CM’s drag and drops website builder, which means it has ECMS that you can use on any browser. Alternatively, WordPress is a CMS, which means you can build a fully customized website with complex functionality using the WordPress CMS.

This is a super powerful tool that lets you do post scheduling, comment management, multi-author advantage, and multilingual settings. But to unlock the WordPress VMS, you’ll need to pass a pretty steep learning curve.

If you’re interested in SEO help you can find our services here.

eCommerce Comparison

Finally, e-commerce compatibility. The obvious choice for e-commerce store owners in the past few years has been Shopify. But both Squarespace and WordPress are fully e-commerce compatible and offer cheaper options. Squarespace offers an all in one solution for e-commerce from its business plan and up and with polished templates and tools, it’s pretty easy to set up shop.

Keep in mind, Squarespace is only compatible with Stripe and PayPal for payment processing on WordPress. You’ll need a plug-in like e-commerce to transform your website into an e-commerce haven.

Once you do, though, while commerce has you covered with every tool you need straight out of the box and more flexible payment processing through Google Checkout to checkout pioneer and Bitcoin category for extensions and plugins, WordPress has fifty-five thousand plugins.

Squarespace is still a little new to the app game. They’ve recently launched Squarespace Extensions, which has third party apps mainly for e-commerce store owners, for example, after ship and Easy Ship help you manage your fulfillment and shipments.

It’s also worth noting that the apps are developed in-house so they work seamlessly with Squarespace and can be trusted. WordPress is plugins, on the other hand, have the ability to unleash the builder’s full power. As I mentioned, there is no shortage of apps to choose from. A few favorites among the apps IMO team include Elementary, one of the most popular drag and drop page builders available, and Yoast SEO.

Pricing Comparison

Category number five pricing. I know you’re a budget-savvy bunch, so now it’s time to talk. Which builder offers you more bang for your buck? The four premium plans of Square. Space range from twelve dollars to forty dollars per month, and if you choose to pay annually, you get to save around 13 to 30 percent depending on the plan. While WordPress is a free option, you’ll still need to shell out some bucks for hosting theme’s e-commerce integrations, plugins, and development costs.

Depending on your project, this cost can vary, although some number crunching suggests the starting investment for a WordPress site will run you around one hundred and thirty-nine dollars to two hundred dollars with some lower recurring costs.

We want to hear from you. Which website builder has won you over? Is it Squarespace for the simplicity and easy learning curve, or is it WordPress for its tremendous potential and functionality? Let us know down below which one you prefer. Subscribe to our blog for more help with leveling up your business.

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Monday, August 3, 2020

Creating and Executing an Epic Social Media Marketing Strategy

Creating and Executing an Epic Social Media Marketing Strategy

Today, we’re going to talk about eight steps to creating and executing an epic social media marketing strategy. Our company helps small businesses grow with our marketing strategies and services. So make sure to follow us to learn tips, tricks, and strategies to grow your business and fuel your brand.

Research Your Competition

Step number one is to research your competition. Now, this might sound like a no-brainer, but really, if you spend the time and energy in the beginning, understanding where your competitors are, what channels they’re producing on, what profiles, and what social channels they’re on, it really helps you identify where you should be focusing your efforts and where you should be spending your time.

Now, additionally, you may be able to understand and find some new channels or new profiles that you should start, where you can jump in first, and really be the thought leader in that space. If your customers are there, you should be there, too, and if you can get there before your competition does, it’s a win-win for everybody.

If your customers are there, you should be there, too, and if you can get there before your competition does, it’s a win-win for everybody.

Pick Your Social Media Platforms

Step number two is to pick your social media platforms. You’ve already done your research. You’ve already found where your competition is. Now you have to identify which platforms you’re going to be spending your time and energy on. Now, running a social media campaign is not the simplest thing in the world to do. It takes time, energy, money, commitment, focus, to achieve your goals, so you have to identify where do you want to be.

Where can you commit to being, and what do those channels look like. There’s a bunch of social media platforms to choose from, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google My Business, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and many more. Pick the ones you’re familiar with, start there, and create a plan to grow as you see success in the channels you’re on.

Outsource Or Keep It In House

Step number three is to decide if you’re going to hire, outsource, or enlist the help of somebody else.

Now, it may make sense to hire somebody new into your company who can help you to achieve the goals that you want. Maybe you don’t have the time, skill or experience, or even the desire, to run your own social media channels, so hiring somebody, and bringing them into the company, may make sense for you. You could outsource.

You can outsource to a full-scale marketing agency (which is what we are). Obtaining professional guidance will help you to achieve your goals by creating more user-generated content. Another option is to outsource to friends and family, depending on what your business is and what your goals are. Don’t feel that all of the focus, energy, and the time has to be on your shoulders. As long as you’ve got some people in your organization that is willing that may be a great opportunity, as well.

Contact us if you are looking to create a social media plan and need help executing it.

Finally, you want to decide, is it worth it to you? Social media is all about pulling back the curtain and allowing people to see what your business truly is, and what your business means. Sometimes it may not make sense to bring in an outsourced party, or a third party, or even just an individual who doesn’t represent your business at its core.

If you can produce that voice authentically yourself, we highly recommend that that’s the way that you go. You can try a couple of different things, and as long as you achieve the goals you’re looking for, then it’s a win.

Content Research

Step number four is to research the type of content you want to be posting. What are your customers looking for? Once you’ve identified what kind of content they want, then start to work on producing that. You can also balance this by generating additional content from people outside your organization, such as blog posts, other DIY companies, or networks. You can augment a lot of the material that you’re producing with third-party resources that can help to shore up the content that you’re posting on a consistent schedule.

Now, you want to make sure that the content you’re posting is highly valuable. Look at it. If this is something you would want to read or see, in your timeline or feed, then that’s the kind of content you should be producing. If you don’t find value in it, neither will your customers, so ensure that the value is there.

Create A Posting Schedule

Step number five is to create a posting schedule. People love consistency if you can create a calendar where you’re consistently posting, regardless of the platform, or the channel that it’s on. You’re always posting the same kind of content that they are expecting, you can start to increase your engagement. And you can begin to teach people that, on certain days and certain times, they can expect to see specific types of content from you. Maybe on Saturdays, you post a blog, on Mondays, you post a motivational quote, on Wednesdays, you post pictures from around the office.

Here’s a platform that we use to schedule our content, Instapro.ai.

Choose your schedule, define what that looks like, and then stick with it. You’ll see your engagement go up, and your consumers will love it.

Utilize A Budget

Step number six is to utilize a budget. Now, this is a step that a lot of people skip. Unfortunately, if you skip on using a budget to promote and increase your engagement, you’re hoping to be found by random chance. Most algorithms for social media networks don’t produce organic results, so you can’t always rely on that. You also can’t rely on just randomly showing up in people’s timelines or feeds and hope that you’ll see the success. By having a budget, it doesn’t even have to be a massive one, but by having a small budget for boosting posts, sponsoring content, or just increasing engagement, you can see a lot more value as time goes on.

This is also a great way to find new customers, people that haven’t heard of you before, or people that haven’t engaged with your content in the past. If you bring them into the content fold, you bring them into your social media profiles and platforms, just a little bit of spending can result in a significant increase for your engagement and the number of people that are communicating with you over social media.

If you’re looking for help to run ads check out our PPC Management Page.

Optimization

Step number seven is to optimize. Don’t skip this part. Just because you’ve made a plan, and it looks great on paper, doesn’t mean that it can be executed well. Or that you’re getting the results that you’re looking for. By optimizing after you’ve received the data, this allows you to change up your schedule. Also, it can allow you to change up content, to change the posting that you’re doing, to achieve maximum results.

Take a look at your analytics. Every social media platform will have analytics of some sort. See what your engagement looks like. What do your clicks look like? How many comments or shares are you getting? These are all things you want to keep an eye on, and if you find that you’ve got specific content that is generating better engagement and better results, that’s the kind of content you want to stay producing.

If you’ve got content that, honestly, it’s just mediocre, and it’s not getting what you’re looking for, pull that out of the posting schedule and find new styles of content to put in there. You never want to clog up a user’s feed with something that’s not valuable to them, so by optimizing your content schedule, it saves you time, increases your engagement, and produces an excellent value for your consumers.

Engage

Tip number eight, engage. You have to engage with your customer base. If people are leaving comments, they’re liking, and they’re sharing, they’re asking questions, they’re sending messages, you have to engage with them.

You need to make sure that you are as available to them as they are to you. You’re interrupting their social media experience or their social media feed with content that you’ve spent a lot of time to produce, so you want to make sure that if they are taking their own time to engage with you, that you’re responding to them.

If they’re sharing your content, go and leave a comment, thank them so much for sharing. If they leave a comment with you, respond, or send them a message. Thank them for their question or their feedback. Drive them into your sales funnel. It could be another opportunity to answer questions or to produce additional customers, maybe even both. Social media is all about connecting with people. It’s a way for people to communicate with other people, so having natural language, natural communication, and proactively engaging with your consumers is a great way to ensure that they keep coming back, and they specifically keep coming back to you.

It’s A Return On Engagement

Finally, we’ve got a bonus tip for you. Keep in mind that the goal for social media is not supposed to be a return on your investment. Initially, the purpose of social media is to up your return on engagement. You’re looking to engage with customers and consumers in a safe place. A place they’re familiar with. By focusing on a natural language, and consistent communication with your customers, just because of that, you start to see that you will see an increase in sales, an increase in ROI, and an increase in brand ambassadors.

These are all things to look for, but really, focus on your engagement first. The return on investment will come, but you can’t be solely focused on that. Social media is not about sales. It’s about natural human connection and human language.

I want to thank you guys so much for reading. If you enjoyed the content, please like, share, and comment. Please leave us a note. Let us know what other kinds of content you’d like to see additional tips and strategies, and we’ll be sure to produce more content about subjects you’re interested in.

Check out some of our other top blog posts below:

3 Internet Marketing Services that Will Improve Your Business

Website Branding 101 | Learning The Key Basic Of Online Branding

Eight Instagram Marketing Strategies For Small-Medium Size Businesses

Top 10 Apps For Social Media Content Creation

Shane Perry Marketing Blog

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Eight Emailing Marketing Tips For 2020 https://t.co/R3NbJBfIbH

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Eight Emailing Marketing Tips For 2020

Eight Emailing Marketing Tips For 2020

Hey, Shane Perry, here, and in today’s blog post, I’m going to be sharing with you eight email marketing tips for 2020. Here is a quick bullet point list of email marketing tips we’ll be talking about:

  1. Don’t be spammy
  2. Think about benefits
  3. Keep it simple
  4. Use stories
  5. Keep your list clean
  6. Always warm up your list
  7. Be GDPR Compliant
  8. Your Workflow

We know email marketing is not dead, and if used correctly, it can provide a significant source of revenue and leads.

So let’s get on to tip number one.

Don’t Be Spammy

Stop sending spammy emails that people don’t want to receive. Stop sending monthly company newsletters that people don’t want to get, that people ignore that they just kind of sit there.

Your open rate’s going to drop. That’s going to affect you. Stop trying to send out these pretty templated emails where you fill in the different boxes every month. Again, people do not want to receive these, and also, a lot of the time, people won’t even accept them because platforms like Google & their spambots will just filter them out and put them in the promotional part of your email, and they will not receive them.

Take a look at google’s spam filter in G-suit.

Think About Benefits

Tip number two, with every email you send, think what the benefit to the person receiving this email is? There needs to be a benefit, a use.

What is the reason that you’re sending someone that email? And it cannot be just to sell someone something. It needs to be linked to a benefit so that people get used to when they receive emails from you; they should open them because there’s always something good inside for them.

Keep It Simple

Tip number three. Keep it simple, stupid. Remember KISS. Every time you send an email, keep it simple, stupid. You want to be sending out simple emails. Don’t over complicate them, don’t fill them with loads of imagery. Don’t fill them with lots and lots of scrolling to get to the bottom where the benefit is. Keep it simple, really to the point. Lead with the value, pull people through, offer them something. If you want to sell to them, that’s fine, but you need to find a way that there is a benefit for them and keep it simple. Don’t dance around the house because people don’t want to read an essay.

Use Stories

Tip number four, use stories. People love a good story. It’s the reason things like “EastEnders” and the “Kardashians” are still going. These reality shows are all based around stories, and people want to know what happens. They get sucked into them, feel like they know these characters, and feel invested in the show.

If you’re looking to create engaging stories through social media connect with us here.

You want them to feel like that with your brand. If you can tie your offerings and what you’re trying to get across to people into the form of stories, you will find that you pull people into it more. It helps you build more rapport, build more trust, people will feel like they kind of know you more, and they’ll be looking out for your next email. They’ll be wanting to get your following email to find out what the next thing that’s happening in the story is. So if you can find a way to link your email communications to accounts, you win.

Keep Your List Clean

Tip number five: keep your list clean. List hygiene is critical. Suppose you are sending out emails to a load of out-of-date email addresses where they bounce, where your open rate’s terrible, the email sender monitors all of this. If your list hygiene is awful, they will stop sending as many of your emails out. It will affect your deliverability rate.

Every month make sure you’re looking at your list. Look at who’s been unsubscribing. What emails did you send? What can you learn from that? Look at who’s not opening those emails anymore. Have they not opened quite a few of them? If so, you need to send them through like a warm-up sequence. Whereas if they don’t reengage, you take them off the list. If you have got any hard bounces, you need to make sure you take those off your list.

Your goal is to try and get all of your emails being delivered, and when they are given, you want the majority of people to open those emails. Now, you’re not going to get people to open them every time because stuff comes up, but you want the majority of people on your list to open your email. If they’re not, then something’s wrong with your emails.

Always Warm Your List Up

Tip number six, always warm your list up. Build trust. This will massively help. When you bring people into your list, instead of bombarding them regularly with a load of random stuff, you need to take them through like an onboarding sequence.

Explain to people what content are they going to get from you? How often? What should they expect? Why should they be looking out for and opening it? You want to condition people from the very start that they don’t want to miss an email because if they do, they are going to kind of miss out on the story. Or they’re going to miss out on the latest deals or offers or whatever it is, the benefit but make sure that you warm your list up properly. Whereas if you’ve not emailed your list for quite a while, you need to kind of warm it up slowly. Take sections of that list to send to.

Don’t just start running it and trying to send it out to 80,000 people because if you get a load of hard bounces, unsubscribes, it’s going to send the wrong metrics to your email service provider, and you’re going to end up in problems. So don’t do that. Make sure you warm your list up slowly. So before we get onto the next point, I’d love to know are you currently using email automation in your business? Hit yes or no in the comments below.

Let me know and let’s get on with the next point.

Be GDPR Compliant

Tip number seven, do not forget about GDPR. Yeah, if you’re in the EU, and you’re sending emails, you need to make sure you’re following the rules. If people sign up for your email list, they need to correctly tick a box to say that they want to receive email communications from you. You can’t have it pre-ticked, you can’t just take your email list and go yeah, I’m just going to sign them up to it, you can’t do that.

There’s fines, penalties, a whole host of bad stuff. Don’t do it, just make sure you’re communicating the value of somebody opting into that list. Just stress the point, they can sign out at an end. They can opt-out of any future emails. That you don’t spam, you don’t rent their lists or sell their data. Just be upfront and clear. Lead with value, and people will opt-in if the amount is significant enough for them to give you their email address and opt in to your list to say yes, you can email me. Whereas if you’re just saying we’re going to kind of send you the odd email here and there, there’s no real value statement. People just won’t tick the box.

Your Workflow

Okay, number eight. Your workflow. You should be using something like Klaviyo, something that enables you to set up email workflows.

Instead of having to go in every time, build out a new email and hit Send, you’ve already built it out. You’re continually building out emails in an ever-ongoing sequence so that when people opt into your email list, they go into whatever flow you’ve set up. They’re able just to go through at a frequency that you set out, and they’re automatically receiving emails based on whatever way you’ve set your email flow up.

If you haven’t done that, you need to look at email automation. You also need to be setting up streams so that you’re doing the work once, and it’s able just to go off. People can kind of segment themselves on autopilot, receive email communications automatically. It’s the future of email. You do not want to be just sat there having to hit send every day or every week or every month. Definitely look at email automation.

So those are my email tips for 2020. I’d love to know how many of those you’re currently using or what you’re going to try. Again, let me know in the comments below if you’re now using email automation or not with a yes or a no. If you’ve liked this blog post, make sure you hit the share it with your friends, and if you’re new and you want content like this, then consider subscribing. I’ll see you in the next blog post.

Also, check out more of our blogs here.

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