There are many misconceptions that home pages simply don’t matter anymore. Why bother with a perfect home page when you can just create targeted landing pages for each of your marketing campaigns? But the truth is that the homepage is here to stay. Whether you like it or not, it’s the face of your company, especially when someone searches for you online. It welcomes new users and explains what your company is all about. However, what is changing is the way we visualize and design home pages. There was a time when the home page crammed in as much information as possible. They tried to tell users everything they could in just that one page. But that led to extremely overwhelming and confusing user experience. For instance, many homepages had carousel sliders that allow you to showcase multiple things at once. But over time, tests showed that they ended up negatively affecting conversions, SEO, and page loading speed. Today, homepage design is all about user experience. This means keeping things clean, simplistic, and minimal while telling users what they need to know when they first come to the site. Here are 5 diverse homepage design templates. Over the years at JustWords we’ve found that close to 85% of our clients’ websites fit into one of these design templates. You can figure out which one suits you best and adapt it for your own site. Template 1: Mint.com Mint is a budgeting app that people use to plan and manage their personal finances. With products like Mint that handles confidential financial information, designers always have to find that line between building trust and still being extremely user-friendly. The Mint homepage finds the perfect balance. The first thing that strikes you about the Mint homepage is that the design is extremely simple, without any added frills. The headline and sub-headline are strong and impactful but without having any unnecessary jargon. Their CTA is both simple and compelling – “Sign Up Free”. Finally, the homepage doesn’t try to perform too many functions at once. Its purpose is simply to tell you what the app can do for you and every section talks about this in different ways. Template 2: Kiva Kiva is a microlending platform that connects smaller entrepreneurs in developing countries with sponsors and donors from all over the world. Kiva had a dual goalkeeping things simple and impactful while also motivating people to take action. Here’s what they get right: Their template is extremely minimalist. The design is as simple as possible and there are plenty of white spaces. The headline and sub-headline are really hard-hitting. Being an impact sector company, Kiva’s goal is to showcase the impact of what they do. And the headline and sub-headline together with the cover photo do this very effectively. Their home page feed tries to accomplish only 3 goals — build trust in Kiva, showcase the range of offerings and get people to take action. There is no overcrowding and confusion on the home page. Finally, Kiva also needed to find a way to make visitors understand what value they could get. Hence, they decided to go for a pop-up overlay with a simple email subscription. This can be a risky move that may backfire. However, with clever content and right timing, a pop-up overlay can exponentially increase conversions. Doing several rounds of A/B testing to find the right content and timing is the way to go. Template 3: Jill Konrath If your business is built around your personal brand, Jill Konrath’s homepage is one template you need to see today. Whether you’re a life coach, a freelance copywriter, or a dietician, this homepage is personal branding 101. There are no frills and unnecessary technical terms. The headline and sub-headline tell you exactly what Jill Konrath is all about and why she’s so effective. A large part of Konrath’s website is about establishing her credibility as an authority in the sales field as well as her credentials as a keynote speaker. She has all her thought leadership materials as well as her press coverage prominently displayed on the homepage. With a personal brand website, there are two things that become even more important — making it easy for people to reach out to you and getting more subscribers to your content. Both the Contact Us and the Newsletter subscription are very accessible on the homepage. Image Source Template 4: MailChimp If you want to build a homepage with a razor-sharp focus on conversions, look no further than MailChimp. MailChimp has just one CTA (Call to Action) button above-the-fold on the home page. Above-the-fold refers to what you see when you first click on a website without scrolling down. In a way, this completely reduces the choices the user has when they visit the website. Given that more choices actually lead to higher decision times and sometimes no decisions, this is actually a good thing. MailChimp also uses negative spaces or white spaces very effectively. All the white space around the primary CTA makes it that much more prominent. The MailChimp homepage also uses a photography trick called the “rule of thirds” which means it puts the most important elements in the middle of your line of sight. In the example below, the design is helping you subconsciously prioritize a page hierarchy. Template 5: Evernote Evernote is a really interesting homepage design because, over time, the product evolved from a simple notes app to a whole range of productivity software. This could potentially make for a very messy website but Evernote navigates this problem successfully. Evernote emphasizes on the broad range of its tools but summarizes them into a few important benefits. This keeps the messaging simple but still shows customers the range of functions. The background colors are rich and muted which in turn makes the CTA (Sign Up for Free) more prominent. Conclusion Your homepage is the storefront of
Month: June 2019
11 Must-do Tactics for High Ranking Videos on YouTube
If you’ve been looking for YouTube video optimization ideas, you’ve most likely been through the regular tactics – adding proper tags, adding keywords in the title or description and the likes. This article is ideally for people who want to delve deeper into the core aspects of YouTube SEO, to go above and beyond and experiment, and find their niche to rank better. So let’s start with the fundamentals. People search differently on YouTube and Google This is one big reason why YouTube optimization can’t simply be an extension to your regular search optimisation process. You need to remember that the consumption of content is very different depending on the medium delivering it. The same video may have a lower watch rate on Facebook and higher one on YouTube. The rate of consumption also changes drastically on whether a video is sponsored or organic. This core understanding allows one to think differently on how you are creating videos and how you are disseminating it. You can rank and rank well even if you don’t have a huge subscriber base If you can engage, entertain, you can gain visibility even if you don’t make videos for the masses and are limited to a specific industry. SEO cannot outperform content Being visual, engaging and also a medium of choice, the quality of content you create here is directly proportional to the rank you achieve (all other factors of SEO being equal). The easiest example is the scores of recipe videos available on YouTube. If you look for Broccoli soup, you’ll see videos where the chefs are ambling for a while about the benefits of Broccoli before getting to the actual recipe. Within the recipe too, some spend time to show the detailed chopping of vegetables just to prolong the video. Other videos will simple show the accelerated recipe with captions describing the ingredients and method. While both show the exact same recipe, no prizes for guessing which video is likely to have a higher watch and completion rate. So now let’s get down to business What is YouTube SEO? YouTube SEO, as Google describes, is the process of optimizing your videos, playlists and channel to rank high when searched on YouTube. Videos are ranked based on their title, description and content. This definition, while sounding simple, allows us to form the base of the important factors that form the foundation of SEO for videos The title and description are super important – You need to feature your keywords here It is important to align with the user’s search intent – Think of the context in which you want your video to rank, evaluate who is already ranking and then provide a better context. Your video should be engaging enough: Engagement has many metrics on YouTube. It depends on how many people watch your video for the first six seconds and then go beyond it. It checks on how many people watch the full video – a metric that works disproportionately for longer videos. Here is a checklist of the top YouTube video optimization techniques. Searching for the right video keywords: The way we search has generally evolved with the adaptive intelligence of search engines or vice versa. From searching for ‘London Hotels’ to ‘Which hotel in London has the best reviews’, the way people search is now conversational. In YouTube too, you will see a lot of keywords starting with ‘How to…’ like “How to make Sanjeev Kapoor style butter chicken”. Tools for video keyword research Google Keyword Planner: Just like you do for regular search, pick out the keywords with the highest potential search volume. These give a base to start cover your ground, especially for the tags you’ll add during the optimization process Youtube auto suggest: Start typing the most likely terms someone might use to search for your video and YouTube will automatically drop down a list of phrases that are being searched. These give an idea on how to frame your title AHREF YouTube keyword search volume: AHREF comes the closest in terms of providing the YouTube search volume for keywords and phrases. Competitors: Stealing keywords from competitors isn’t a new SEO practice. Tools allow you to swoop on enough and more information on competitor strategy. See who is currently ranking for your prized keywords, analyze their video length, quality, backlinks, title and description optimization and also engagement ratio. This will give you a fare predictive model on what you need to achieve in the next three to six months to beat your closest competitors. How to optimize the title and thumbnail of your video The book is only as good as its cover. In this case, the title (a key part of your cover) is a big contributor in allowing easy discovery of your video. YouTube titles are similar to your blog headlines and you can pretty much use the same guidelines to create click-worthy headlines. A few tips to remember Include your most important keyword phrase in your title: Including the key phrase in your title gives validation to the user that your video is close to being the answer to what they are searching for. Solve a problem in your title: The intent to click on a video is high if the video is closest being the solution to the user’s query. For example, if the user is typing “How to make Origami Peace Crane”, having ‘Origami Peace Crane’ in the title is a must. Along with it, also include words like the easiest tutorial or quickest tutorial or such phrases that make your video closest to the user intent of learning to make the origami crane. The video thumbnail is essentially the make or breaks factor when it comes to clicking on your video. Choose your thumbnail to either include the finished product or value proposition so that viewers know what to expect by watching. Optimize your tags for SEO Tags give you the perfect opportunity to add Latent Semantic Indexing
How Customer Reviews Can Bring a Whole New Meaning to Your Content Marketing
Content Marketing and Customer Reviews have traditionally been two very different things, belonging to completely different domains. Content Marketing is used to build interest and educate users while customer reviews come only after the product has been purchased. Yet, in a world of peer reviews and social proof, the lines between the two are blurring rapidly. Let me give you an example. One of our clients that has a very niche B2B product, came to JustWords claiming that they simply didn’t have enough content surrounding their product that users would actually be interested in viewing. The product they sold was extremely vital for most businesses, it just wasn’t particularly interesting or exciting. We realized we didn’t have to inform or educate users through the content, we simply had to convince them of the credibility of our client’s product. We also found that our client had a solid and loyal base of existing customers. So our content marketing strategy really became about showcasing why customers loved the product through different channels and content formats. Simple and yet very effective. It’s not hard to understand the appeal of customer reviews — people tend to trust each other more than they trust businesses. With social media becoming such an integral part of everyday life, this peer reviewing has become even more important. A Brightlocal survey found that a whopping 84% of people trust online reviews as much as they trust a personal recommendation. Not only are peer reviews becoming more trustworthy, but people are actually using them to make purchase decisions. For instance, the same survey found that 70% of consumers need to read at least 4 online reviews before they trust a business. Tips to integrate customer reviews If you want to revamp your content marketing strategy to make sure it incorporates customer reviews, here are some key tips. Make it easy to collect customer reviews The first step towards creating a content marketing strategy based on reviews is to make sure you have a steady stream of positive reviews coming your way. For starters, make it as easy as possible for people to leave a review. Use email software like ActiveCampaign or MailChimp to send an automated mail to customers requesting them to leave a review on your preferred platform. Make sure you also leave a link on your home page to make it easy for people to leave a review on your preferred website. You can also ask customers for more detailed feedback through an online form submission. You can use this longer, more personalized feedback on important landing pages or critical content pieces. Use an independent review platform For reviews to be taken seriously, you need to make sure they are published on an independent, third-party platform that customers trust. If your reviews are not trustworthy, all the effort spent in collecting them will be wasted. There are two ways to approach this. The first is to find a platform that works for your industry. Zomato for restaurants, Amazon for e-commerce, and TripAdvisor for travel and hospitality are some credible forums. The other approach is to collect your reviews on a review platform like Trustpilot. In any case, make sure you check the site’s policy on sharing reviews before you make it your go-to review platform. Use embedded reviews in your website Well researched articles, versatile writers, and wide coverage of topics! Posted by Arielle Ann on Friday, February 3, 2017 Embed reviews from the third-party platform within your website, especially those critical landing pages. When users enter a new website, they are immediately looking for signals to confirm the credibility of the product. Embedded reviews from a credible, independent site like Yelp, Trustpilot or TripAdvisor can go a long way in building credibility right off the bat. In fact, customers won’t even need to go elsewhere to look for social proof; they will find it on your website itself. Use the latest marketing tools to incorporate reviews into your marketing content Recently, Promo.com and Trustpilot came together to create an integration that makes it extremely simple to incorporate customer reviews into your marketing. Promo.com is a tool that makes it easier for people to create marketing videos while Trustpilot is an online community for trustworthy reviews. With this integration, Promo.com customers can now identify important customer reviews on Trustpilot and easily incorporate them into their marketing videos. Similarly, rich-snippets stars that show up on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) as a result of reviews can lead to an increase to a 10-20% increase in CTR (Click Through Rate). Reviews also help businesses to qualify for Google Seller Ratings which is an automatic extension in Google Ads that can lead to higher CTRs. Do some research and use the many different tools available to incorporate reviews into your digital marketing effort. Use customer reviews as an inspiration for other content Many times, we don’t know how to create content that is valuable to users without directly promoting the product. Did you know that 79% editors end up turning down guest blog pitches because they’re over promotional? For instance, if you’re looking for content to promote your gourmet snack company, a blog entitled “5 Reasons Why Our Snacks Are Amazing” isn’t going to go down well. A great way to combat this problem is to actually go through customer reviews. Many customer reviews will have detailed insights into how your product is solving customer pain points. For instance, a customer may have written, “I love your snacks because I know they are good for me. They also tend to fill me up without bingeing and leave me feeling full for hours afterwards.” This could inspire you to write a blog post titled “How to Snack While Also Taking Care of Your Body”. Understanding customer pain points through meaningful reviews is a great place to look for content marketing ideas. Summing up Companies are always on the lookout
Google and the Future of SEO
This is one undisputed fact – Google, being one of the top search engines, has a massive influence on key SEO practices. The algorithm used by Google can essentially make or break the future of your online venture by determining its positioning in the search engine results. While Google fervently guards its search algorithms to provide unbiased information to its users, savvy SEOs have, over the years, developed a pretty good knack of getting an idea of what works and does not work in that mechanism. To keep its secret sauce really secret and prevent people from manipulating it, Google keeps changing its algorithms. This makes it essential for SEOs to remain updated. Here are some of the most prominent changes brought about by Google which may help you in redesigning your SEO strategy in an optimal manner. 1) Getting on the first page just got more difficult One of the most significant tweaks made by Google is related to the number of results displayed on the first page. It is a fairly known fact that search listings beyond the first page get significantly lower organic traffic, so SEOs try their best to hit that golden spot. The top listing on the Google search page may get 33 percent of the traffic while for the second position holder, the traffic drops down to 18% and keeps getting lower for subsequent listings. However, Google now frequently features less than 10 listings on its first page. Keep this in mind while designing your new SEO strategy so as to ensure that your website features on the first page. 2) Richer Snippets Google has changed its layout in a way that in many cases, the users do not even need to click on the relevant links to get the desired information. Snippets have now become the new battling ground for SEO. It has been observed that when there is a featured snippet, the topmost organic search result gets less than 20% of all the click-through. The richer content in the snippets now translates to lesser traffic for the concerned websites. In such cases, SEOs may need to redesign their websites to ensure that more Google users are converted into traffic for the website. Using a table with summary on your website or designing your website to be mobile friendly is a clever strategy to harness this new development. Further, you can rearrange the information on the website in such a way so that the snippet readers are motivated to get further information by visiting the website. These snippets are mainly based on the meta-description of the page and hence it may help to tweak the meta-description of different pages on your website. Ideally, the meta-description should be 300-320 characters long and should also be relevant to the content of your page. 3) Paid Search Results Google constantly revamps its search page to increase its efficiency as well as monetary value. Lately, these tweaks have brought paid search results to the fore. These paid results are displayed more prominently than organic search results as Google is all set to have four text ads instead of the current three, right above the organic listings. Hence, it is advisable for SEOs to remain vigilant and adaptable to ensure that their strategies are able to make the best of this situation. A smart mix of SEO and paid ads can be employed or better content and headlines can be used by a business to attract more traffic and distract them from paid ads. 4) Combine SEO with Other Tools While SEO is here to stay, the developments have made it imperative for marketers to combine SEO with other online marketing tools. Some of the most important such tools are page load speed optimizer and whole query placement. It is also time to pay attention to informative and high-quality content rather than just cramming it with keywords. You should also use relevant images to improve the overall readability of the website. As a matter of fact, 1 image for every 100 words is considered to be ideal these days. Regularly updating the website to provide the most relevant information is another way to ensure that your website is featured high on the search page. Also, keep in mind that a large population of the world is still offline. The SEO scene is likely to change drastically as more and more people go online. Overall, it is safe to assume that Google will keep playing a big role in online marketing policies adopted by brands. However, to stay on top of these developments, it is important to have a well-diversified online marketing strategy, using a wide range of tools. The SEO strategy also needs to be flexible to incorporate new changes without requiring substantial alterations and expenses. So, work today to make your SEO strategies future proof.
6 Reasons Why your Content Marketing may be Failing and How to Fix it
If you ask me, content marketing is probably one of the best long-term marketing strategies that you can adopt for your business. For starters, there is enough evidence that it works. And there is research to support what I just claimed. As per research, content marketing is actually three times as effective as outbound marketing and costs 62% less. And yet despite the fact that content marketing has been transformational for so many businesses, many brands still look at content marketing with skepticism and suspicion. For eg, a small business owner very recently declared to me that the whole content marketing thing was a sham and nothing really works. Turns out that he had hired a small-time agency who had promised great results through “a foolproof SEO and SMO content marketing package” and significant results are still to come in after 3-4 months in the game. And there are many like him who are simply not sure whether they should invest in content marketing when the results won’t come for days or even months. The reason for this hesitation and skepticism is not unfounded. The fact of the matter is that many companies who do content marketing get it completely wrong and struggle for months, if not years. This survey found that a whopping 96% of respondents believed that content marketing isn’t very effective. At Justwords, we’ve have met several clients who came to us saying that they’ve been publishing content regularly but they don’t think it’s having any impact. However, what people don’t realize is that content marketing is just like any marketing effort. It can be broken down into a number of logical steps. If any of those steps are being neglected or followed incorrectly, chances are your content marketing will fail dramatically. So in this article, I have broken down these important steps so you can see where you’re going wrong and take action to correct it immediately. Problem 1- You’re executing without an effective strategy This may seem basic, but it is one of the biggest problems we’ve seen over the years. Most companies are vaguely aware of the benefits of content marketing so they start publishing a blog post twice a week and then wait for the magic to happen. Even worse, they hire writers who start churning out content without any basic content strategy in place. The biggest mistake with content marketing is to start executing without a proper strategy. You have to begin by outlining your goals as clearly as you can at the very outset. The next step is to define the content formats and communication channels that you will be using to achieve these goals. Then use this strategy to prepare a weekly or monthly content calendar so that every piece of content is now aligned to the marketing and publishing plan and the overall goals. Simply put – If should know for what you are generating content for, which platform you are using and why, how are you publishing and marketing that article, where is that content piece sitting in your marketing plan and what is its final goal. Once you know this, you have a strategy in place. Problem 2- You don’t have a brand voice There are many companies that are churning out content regularly. The problem is, far from going viral or even creating a ripple in the vast ocean of the internet, most of this content goes by unnoticed. With over 2 million blogs being created every day, it’s easy to think there’s just too much competition and creating content is simply not worth the effort. But, there is also the fact that people’s capacity to consume content has also increased manifold. In fact, there are new blogs building a following and becoming wildly popular every single day. So what are they doing right? The answer is two-fold. First, to stand out, your content has to be truly exceptional. Ask yourself if you’re actually solving customer pain points in a clear and succinct manner, preferably in a way that hasn’t been done before. Secondly, there has to be a seamless flow between your content and your brand. In order to achieve this, you need to focus on what your brand voice is all about, and then create content consistent with this brand voice. Problem 3 – You’re using the wrong content format This is a very easy one to get wrong; especially if you haven’t focussed on audience research while building your content strategy. While it’s easy to follow some standard patterns— for instance, lifestyle brands should use Instagram stories while newsletters are a great idea for B2B brands — there are other nuances which need extensive research. Invest the time to understand what content is working for your competitors, what is the format in which your audience regularly consumes content, and so on. You really don’t want to waste time drafting blog post after blog post when an Insta story is what your audience needs or vice versa. Problem 4- You’re not being guided by metrics It’s great to go by your gut, but it’s not nearly enough to be successful. Your content marketing will only work if it is also backed by solid data and analytics. Unless you inculcate a culture of scientific, data-driven decision making, your content marketing strategy is unlikely to work. It’s important to have objective metrics to evaluate every single piece of content and alter strategy accordingly. Conversions, article views, CTR(Click Through Rates), shares, etc are all important metrics to track. Google Analytics is great for basic insights and you can also use specialized tools like Kissmetrics for more detailed analytics. Problem 5- You’re doing everything yourself This is one of the biggest traps smaller organizations fall into. The founder might kickstart the content marketing journey by writing a few blog posts, but it’s nearly impossible to sustain this. From content planning to strategy to metrics, there is far too much for a founder or marketing