4 of our picks for the best internet marketing strategies businesses are using. #infographic #marketing
Denese is a lover of knowledge and puts her research skills and creative eye to good use with her infographics. When she’s not researching and designing visuals to present data, she spends time volunteering in her other passion–health education.
Colleen EakinsColleen Eakins is a dynamic and creative individual that possess a knack for great design. With over 15 years of experience in the field of graphic design, Colleen is able to effectively brand her clients with great design pieces. Her motto is: “Anyone can make a pretty picture, but is it effective? Will it […]
Colleen Eakins is a dynamic and creative individual that possess a knack for great design. With over 15 years of experience in the field of graphic design, Colleen is able to effectively brand her clients with great design pieces. Her motto is: “Anyone can make a pretty picture, but is it effective? Will it make your customer buy your product or use your services? My design tries to answer with a YES!”
As technology and the way that people use it changes, marketing companies and small businesses must stay abreast of how they can adjust their strategies to remain competitive.
In 2018, one of the most significant shifts in the way people query for information is the broader adoption of voice search. Mobile devices and the introduction of voice assistant devices such as the Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Apple HomePod, can now perform searches just by asking a question. A helpful Alexa or Siri is always happy to respond with no keyboard required!
As you can imagine, this change in the way people search for information and data online has surprising and far-reaching implications as it relates to search engine optimization.
In 2015, 65% of smartphone users in the United States used a voice assistant. In 2013, only 30% reported using this feature on their phone.
In 2016, Google disclosed that 20% of searches originated from voice-based queries.
In 2017, 33 million voice-assistant devices were reportedly in use.
There’s little doubt that voice search is here to stay, so the big question is how this displacement of search queries affect search engine optimization.
Without users having to type keywords or search phrases into a search bar, it’s easy to see how everything changes for search engine optimizers. Here are a few factors to account for when optimizing for voice search queries.
One of the most significant differences when people use a voice assistant, versus performing a keyword search at their favorite search engine, is the way the query is phrased. When using a voice assistant, people are more likely to ask a direct question using everyday language and not a string of keyword phrases.
Whereas, when using a search engine, the query would include relevant keyword phrases.
For example, let’s say you want to find pizza delivery in your neighborhood. If you’re using your desktop computer, you might enter the query “pizza delivery” plus your zip code number and the search engine returns the best possible matches that offer pizza delivery services.
When asking a voice assistant, the chances are good that your question would be something like ‘which pizza place delivers to my house?’ To which the voice assistance would find possible matches for Italian restaurants and pizza joints that offer delivery services in the area.
Over the years of development, virtual assistants have come to understand complex queries and answer satisfactorily. For people who prefer to work handsfree, it’s a more convenient way to get answers to the questions they have.
When conducting a desktop-based search, it wasn’t uncommon for these queries to be without a lot of added context. The submitted keyword or keyword string was the only qualifier. Recent changes to major search engine algorithms have emphasized the meaning in which search terms are used when assigning ranking positions. Today, the best search engine results help answer the question of the searcher, based on the intent of their search query and serving matched results.
There is little doubt that contextual, local, and voice search should work together to connect with existing and potential new clients, regardless of the type of Internet-connected device they are using. By putting all of the pieces together in the right way, business owners and marketers can succeed in attaining their business objectives.
In 2013, nearly half of all searches conducted from a mobile device had local intent. When local purchasing intent and purpose is combined with voice assistant queries, the combination can be a powerful driver of foot traffic for businesses.
Think about it. Nearly everyone carries a smartphone with them at all times. No longer do people have to drive around hopelessly lost or unsure of where to find the next gas station. All they need to do is use their phone and/or its voice assist to get helpful directions to the nearest gas station or a major highway.
Simple keyword strings are being replaced with phrase-based queries often worded as simple questions, which are longer and more precisely formulated. Industry insiders refer to these query strings as ‘long tail keywords.’ They are the foundation for almost all SEO-related activity.
As users transition to using voice search for simple queries, the importance of long tail keywords is critical, as questions are asked in a more conversational tone. By understanding what your core keyword focus is, along with your local market, you can begin formulating a plan to be more relevant with voice assistant searches.
By fashioning relevant long tail keyword phrases into your content, in addition to providing helpful, user-friendly material, you are optimizing your website content for greater success. Ideally, the site should be friendly for visitors on browsers of all sizes, as well as compatible with search engine spiders and web crawlers that are responsible for indexing and ranking these pages.
I’m a Digital Marketer & Freelance Writer with a penchant for all things forward-thinking and positive. I’m a fan of abundance and progress.
Colleen EakinsColleen Eakins is a dynamic and creative individual that possess a knack for great design. With over 15 years of experience in the field of graphic design, Colleen is able to effectively brand her clients with great design pieces. Her motto is: “Anyone can make a pretty picture, but is it effective? Will it […]
Colleen Eakins is a dynamic and creative individual that possess a knack for great design. With over 15 years of experience in the field of graphic design, Colleen is able to effectively brand her clients with great design pieces. Her motto is: “Anyone can make a pretty picture, but is it effective? Will it make your customer buy your product or use your services? My design tries to answer with a YES!”
If you’ve been paying attention to recent news, the chances are good that you heard about all the controversy surrounding the ways that major platforms, such as Facebook, collect and share data with publishers, users, and advertisers.
In the wake of these disclosures to the public, and testimony before Congress, Facebook, Instagram, and many other high-traffic websites and mobile apps have had to update and make changes to their terms of service and operating agreements recently.
All you need to do to is check the email address registered with these sites, to find all the notices alerting you to these amendments to their operating agreements.
On Facebook, changes to the terms of service could potentially affect how brands and marketers connect with possible customers and clients. Changes to API access could limit the information provided when making a query.
Additionally, all applications that use the events, pages, and groups API must go through an app review process to assure that they are compliant with the new terms and conditions of the platform.
New restrictions on the Facebook login could also affect third-party providers who log in to their services using a Facebook account. Recently, covert trackers were found to be collecting data transmitted through the login and measures were taken to prevent third-parties from accessing user data including relationship status, education, interests, work history and more. On the Instagram side, the old Instagram API platform is getting deprecated and phased out as part of their current changes to their systems.
Privacy and security are two severe pain points for platforms like Facebook. Brands and vendors who built custom Facebook apps or utilized Facebook’s login to manage profiles or provide client services could experience issues with core functionality and usability.
It’s worth noting that while you may not have built your own custom app that integrates with these API calls, many third-party tools used to help with social media profile management rely on API calls to do tasks such as content sharing, replying to comments or messages, and other everyday online communications.
With more oversights, audits, and inquiries into how user data gets collected, shared, and disseminated, companies and individuals who work with clients to help them maintain their digital assets and brands could face more challenges as they implement changes to safeguard user information and protect privacy.
Advertisers who use social media platforms to market to existing and potential new customers could experience some changes in targeting capabilities, and other ad controls that specifically target their preferred client or customer.
When combined with other shifts the company has made in how news and updates get displayed to users, advertisers are well-served to create a strategic content marketing campaign to boost virality and the share-ability of content on these platforms.
In the last few years, the Internet has empowered people and organizations to share their values, beliefs, and opinions with anyone who is willing to listen. For that reason, more people than ever before began chiming in to try and influence others, especially during a particularly tense political climate.
Twitter revealed concerns over ‘bot activity’ surrounding US election meddling and responded by changing their API to limit or restrict API access.
These election bots were said to have been used to help mold and form the political opinions of users, as well as engage with others using the social networking application and website.
Additional scandal at Twitter includes employees getting caught on video making negative ‘off the record’ remarks about users and the internal policies. (Their comments were not representative of Twitter management.) As a result of these ‘off the record’ remarks, the platform has faced scrutiny from users who claim that they are being censored by the platform for their views.
Twitter politics aside, these API changes most likely won’t affect the average platform user, changes to the API could throttle usage for businesses and agencies who use tools not aligned with the updated terms and conditions of the platform.
Most of the mainstream social media management tools, such as HootSuite and others, are whitelisted so as long as you are following all the rules there should be very few issues with using them to manage clients’ social media pages.
In the wake of the upcoming updates to the Data Protection Directive regulations, Klout, a site that tallied the score of the influence and importance in their social media circles announced they were shuttering the site on May 25, 2018.
As part of their scoring algorithm, users had to grant third-party access to all their social sites including Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and others. Using all of this collated information, Klout issued the user a score from 1 – 100, with 100 being the highest score possible.
Now, all those scores are being set to zero as the site that was sold for $200M a few short years ago, is put into sunset mode forever.
Changes to the General Data Protection Regulation, in effect since April 2016, will begin superseding the Data Protection Directive on May 25, 2018. Changes will be made to website’s Terms Of Service to abide by the updated specifications.
For companies who are updating their Terms of Service, this offers them the opportunity to ask users to agree to their terms, as well as verify their membership at their site.
As you can imagine, this verification process is helpful for platforms to identify inactive, fake, robotic, or unclaimed accounts. Active users who confirm their account will be counted accurately by management. Inactive, unverified, or robotic accounts will be scheduled for review or deletion, saving liability, space, and resources for the company.
The only thing that remains the same is change. If you are receiving numerous terms of service agreement emails, this is the reason why!
I’m a Digital Marketer & Freelance Writer with a penchant for all things forward-thinking and positive. I’m a fan of abundance and progress.
©2018, Colleen Eakins Design
©2018, Colleen Eakins Design
©2018, Colleen Eakins Design
©2018, Colleen Eakins Design
©2018, Colleen Eakins Design