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    Tag: Search Engine Optimization

    The pros and cons of outsourcing your digital marketing project

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    Targeting the growth of your e-commerce business should be an essential part of your online marketing strategy, especially in these unprecedented times. If you’ve resorted to Googling “outsourcing digital marketing in Vancouver”, know that you aren’t alone. Many business owners are on the hunt for ways to get ahead of their competition, and to help you make the best business decision, it’s important to know if the benefits outweigh the risks. 

    How to determine if outsourcing is for you

    Outsourcing your digital marketing is when you use a third party to create content or perform marketing services on behalf of your brand to promote the growth of your business. This could include writing copy, blog management, creating social media posts, producing custom video content, constructing lead magnets, designing ads, managing pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, setting up Facebook ads, and managing your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. While these are a few examples of what types of services you can outsource, there will always be options for more assistance elsewhere. 

    What are some pros of outsourcing digital marketing?

    Do you or your employees possess any hands-on digital marketing experience that could be advantageous in the implementation of future strategies? If not, here are some reasons to consider outsourcing digital marketing, especially in competitive marketplaces like the city of Vancouver.

    • Expertise: Whether you select an agency or a freelancer to be a part of your team, someone with expertise in the digital marketing field will know of ways to get things done more efficiently and effectively.
    • Money savings: While you may think paying someone to perform a service costs too much, it’s important to remember that if you lack the skills needed to get traffic to your website, you won’t be making any money to begin with. Consider the person you hire as an investment. The best part is that most agencies offer hours-based packages to allow you to start small and add more time as your business grows. 
    • Accessibility to multiple services: While this benefit may be achievable with the right freelancer, often the ability to subscribe to multiple digital marketing services can only be found within an agency. Outsourcing digital marketing in Vancouver gives business owners the power to access an entire team of staff that through collaborative efforts will provide your e-commerce brand with a menu of options to increase conversions. 
    • Frees up your time: By relying on experts to get your online marketing tasks done you have more time to dedicate to other aspects of running your business. 

    What are some cons of outsourcing digital marketing?

    Depending on how you measure your businesses’ success, it may be best to keep some of your digital marketing efforts in-house. For that reason, here are some examples of why you may want to not outsource all of your digital marketing services.

    • Fear of brand consistency issues: Every business creates values and a reputation over time, which can make it difficult to feel comfortable passing the reins to someone that doesn’t live and breathe every aspect of your brand. 
    • You won’t have 100% control of all timelines: While services like blogging, email marketing, and social media possess the ability to formulate strict posting schedules, other efforts like SEO and PPC advertising can take more time to show their value, and if you’re using a freelancer for any of the above tasks, you will need to remember that their ability to rearrange other commitments to prioritize you might not always be possible.
    • Not as much freedom to offer a personal touch: Small businesses build their brand on connecting with their customers, and while outsourcing gives you access to so many amazing resources, mastering the tone and voice you’ve envisioned may take time for other people to covet. 

    In our professional opinion, none of the above cons possess any inabilities inhibiting them from being overcome. Especially through the use of proper implementation and communication by outsourcing to the right digital marketing company in Vancouver.

    Do you possess any other questions or concerns about outsourcing? Please drop them below for a speedy reply.

    5 tips for how to proofread like a pro

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    Proofreading is an essential skill that many talented writers working at digital marketing agencies in Vancouver have, ensuring their client’s messages are communicated clearly, effectively, and professionally. While spelling and grammar tools are valuable as backups for business owners, it’s important for the person writing to thoroughly review their written content before anything is published live for the consumer world to see. Since many business owners are passionate about their products and often busy handling other affairs, they rely on the professional services of Trek Marketing to plan and create their content for them. Needless to say, we do possess clients that are aspiring writers themselves, and since today is National Proofreading Day, we have some tips for those who want to challenge their skills. 

    Tip #1: Be sure to read your writing out loud 

    Reading written content out loud is extra beneficial in the proofreading process because hearing the words can help you to find missing or misspelled words. Even the best writers will regularly read through their work as a benefit to the writing process. Not only will this technique help you in catching unnecessary phrases, but it will also allow you to create coherence in your writing, find your voice, and become a better reader and writer overall. 

    Tip #2: Change the way you look at your writing 

    Even the most proficient writers working at digital marketing agencies in Vancouver and beyond should take hold of an opportunity to revamp the way they analyze their writing. In fact, when re-reading the same types of content on the same types of platforms, it’s quite easy to glaze over simple mistakes, especially if proofreading is an essential role in your day-to-day job. As a way to combat this, try printing out the document, or conversely, open it on your desktop. Sometimes even changing the font or colour of your text is enough to visually alter the copy to make you more aware of mistakes that are slipping through. 

    Tips #3: Check for a variety of elements when proofreading

    Until your writing has been published it’s considered to be in its drafting stage, and there are an assortment of components that you could be looking for, aside from spelling mistakes and grammatical correctness. For example, you could fact-check your work to ensure that the proper names, dates, numbers, and resources were used to create the content. Once all of the above details are verified, you also want to read your work again to ensure that the overall flow of the writing is meaningful, systematic, and comprehensible. By splitting up what you’re looking for each time you proofread, it’s far easier to focus on an individual aspect and catch the little mistakes. 

    Tip #4: Ensure that any keywords and phrases you use are correct

    Novice writers heavily rely on their thesaurus to write a good piece of content, however, they should also remember to keep the dictionary closeby. Many words in the English language are interchangeable in their meanings, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are the best words to use in a particular writing project. This is especially true for longer documents. While you may want to get creative to avoid using the same words over and over, you also want to ensure that these changes don’t affect the meaning of the copy. 

    Keep in mind that sometimes consistent use is beneficial, especially if you’re an e-commerce business trying to get noticed on the wide web. Digital marketing agencies in Vancouver focus on a list of key terms as part of their search engine optimization service and create custom content to help your business rank better on popular search engines.

    Tip #5: Edit and read your work with a fresh set of eyes

    If you’re reading through your content and can’t seem to find any mistakes, chances are that you’re too tired to catch them. We recommend that you take a break between long proofreading rounds and switch between tasks, giving yourself some time to focus on something different and taking advantage of looking at your work again at a later time. Be sure to utilize this time and plan in advance so that you can include these breaks, yet still have enough time to make any changes before your upcoming deadlines. Alternatively, pass your work off to a friend or colleague to allow them to review your content for errors or edits missed. 

    Do you have any proofreading tips that you’d like to share with our readers? Drop them in the comment section below. 

    6 digital ways to improve real estate in a booming market

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    In the last year, the global coronavirus pandemic has shattered world economies, yet the real estate market has prospered despite job loss due to stay-at-home orders. While low-interest rates seem to be one of the driving factors keeping the housing market afloat, the extremely tight supply of homes is also a reason for the high demand. Needless to say, in this seller’s market, there are a variety of ways that digital marketing is improving the real estate sector for buyers, sellers, and listing agents. 

    How can digital marketing for real estate benefit buyers, sellers, and realtors?

    While every industry should adopt technology to attract new customers, some can achieve considerable heights through the help of professional digital marketing, and real estate is one of them! With fresh and exciting innovations, realtors are finding new ways to market properties and both sellers and buyers are loving the engagement that comes with this type of branded content.

    Here are some added benefits:

    • Digital marketing saves time and resources: Sellers can display their properties online which allows them to gain a further reach, whereas, buyers can take part in interactive tours, have face-to-face meetings, and read details about prospective properties before even stepping foot in them. 
    • Digital marketing raises the online visibility of real estate companies and listings: Achieving more website visitors is crucial for real estate and often using digital marketing to build up online traffic and increase customer service through informative blogs and social media posts are the best ways to build confidence, trust, and brand identity. 
    • Digital marketing boosts professionalism: Visualization tools (i.e., 360° modeling) are growing in the real estate industry, and if you want customers to remember your company, we recommend investing in this form of material. 

    What can the real estate industry do to improve its digital experiences in a booming market?

    Whether you’re looking to buy or sell a home or you’re the agent listing and showing properties, the scope of real estate is increasingly becoming more reliant on the internet as an external resource. 

    Those in the industry who want to reach and connect with potential buyers and sellers should consider the following digital marketing tips: 

    #1 – Share properties before they hit the market: In a thriving market, there will always be a lack of inventory, which is why it’s important to select an experienced agent that can find prospecting properties and potential buyers before hitting the open market. 

    #2 – Streamline communication with your clients: Communication is key in many buying-selling ventures, and in today’s fast-paced environment, timing is everything. Whether you choose to text, email, or call your client, understanding their preferred method of communication is what will lead to the most proactive relationships. 

    #3 – Allow clients to leave reviews: One way to improve current consumer engagement is by obtaining quality customer reviews. This can easily be done online by asking happy clients to leave a Google review or simply emailing a response that can be posted live to the website. 

    #4 – Educate your clients: While buyers can easily find properties at the click of a button, they still rely on you for advice and guidance. Use digital marketing to educate your current and prospective clients by creating FAQs sections on your website, as well as writing a fulfilling blog that can address common questions and concerns. 

    #5 – Always work on building your online presence: While you’re likely busy with the insane market, eventually housing will see a dip, and that’s when you can improve your authority through digital means. This means that you can continue to engage with clients via social media, organize ongoing marketing campaigns, and actively seek out new and improved ways to connect with your audience. 

    #6 – Invest in marketing automation: If you’re looking for an innovation that saves you time and improves your ability to add value to the consumer, you should consider marketing automation. Marketing automation allows you to create lead magnets that attract your client by setting up automated campaigns followed by initial interactions. This strategy allows you to program the type of property, area, and even price that your client is looking for and pool together properties as they become available. An email can then be sent out with some pre-scripted text to allow them to contact you if it’s a suitable fit. 

    Are there any ways that digital marketing and real estate tie together that we didn’t discuss? Please drop your opinions below.

    What’s BERT and how is the technology advancing digital marketing?

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    Google’s BERT, otherwise known as Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, is a Transformer-based machine learning technique that’s used for natural language processing (NLP). This update is helping Google to better understand natural language for search results, which means that it’s also an incredibly beneficial digital marketing advancement. More and more consumers are speaking questions directly into their smart devices, which has made it challenging for search engines to interpret spontaneous spoken query. BERT specializes in natural language as a whole and voice search queries, in particular, making it a modern technology that is changing the field of search engine optimization and digital marketing as a whole. Continue reading to learn more about the science behind BERT and how it could revolutionize content marketing. 

    Some background information

    The interdisciplinary scientific field of computer vision deals with how computers work to gain a high-level understanding of digital images or videos. As an advancement that works alongside digital marketing, it seeks to better understand and automate tasks that humans do. That being said, researchers have shown time and time again that there’s value transferred learning — “pre-training a neural network model on a known task… and then performing fine-tuning” — using a trained neural network as the basis of a purpose-specific model. This technique has shown to be useful in many natural language tasks in recent years! 

    How does BERT work? 

    BERT is not only a digital marketing advancement, it also benefits a variety of tech-related fields. However, to properly understand how BERT works, you must first know the breakdown of the following terms:

    • Transformer: an attention mechanism that learns contextual relations between words in the text.
    • Mechanisms: encoders that read the text input and decoder to produce a prediction for the task. 

    BERT uses a Transformer in its original form by separating two mechanisms. Since the goal of BERT is to generate a language model, the encoder mechanism is enough to provide detailed workings of the Transformer. 

    While directional models, which read the text input sequentially (left-to-right or right-to-left), the Transformer encoder reads the entire collection of words all in one go. Therefore, it’s considered to be bidirectional, allowing the model to learn the context of each word based on where it’s placed among its surrounding words. 

    To overcome the challenge of prediction of the next word in a sequence (for example, “The dog chased his ___”), BERT uses the following two strategies: 

    1. Masked LM (MLM)
    2. Next Sentence Prediction (NSP)

    MLM is a model that attempts to predict the original value of the masked words, based on the context provided by the other non-masked words in the sequence. 

    There are three ways in which it does this:

    1. Adds the classification layer to the top of the encoder output.
    2. Multiplies the output vectors by the embedding matrix and transforms them into vocabulary.
    3. Calculates the probability of each word with SoftMax. 

    NSP is another model that receives pairs of sentences as the input, learning to predict if the second sentence is a subsequent sentence in the original document. 

    To help this model distinguish between two sentences, the input is processed in the following way: 

    1. A [CLS] token is inserted at the beginning of the first sentence, followed by a [SEP] token at the end of the second sentence. 
    2. The sentence embedding is an indication that both sentences are added to each token.
    3. A positional embedding is then added to indicate the position within the sequence. This portion is presented in the Transformer paper. 

    For the model to accurately predict if the two sentences are connected, it also performs the following steps:

    1. The input sequence goes through the Transformer model.
    2. The output of the [CLS] token is transformed into a 2×1 shaped vector using the following classification scheme: learned matrices of weights and biases. 
    3. The probability is then calculated through the IsNextSequence with SoftMax. 

    What does this mean for digital marketing advancements? 

    There are a few things you can take into consideration if you work in digital marketing:

    • Model size matters.
    • There is higher accuracy.
    • BERT’s bidirectional approach (MLM) outperforms after a small number of pre-training steps. 
    • Offers research tools and methods for consumer-centric content marketing. 
    • In-depth demographic analysis showing users’ locations, devices, and applications. 
    • Supports social media listening. 

    Do you want more helpful, actional content? Drop some comments below to give us some blogging topics to research.

    How to attract online visitors using PPC

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    You may think that you can build the best website by making it informative, packing it with great content, and investing in an intuitive design, but if shoppers aren’t able to find your website, all that work and money will go to waste. We’re here to help by breaking down the basics of why PPC Advertising could be the strategy your business needs to attract more online users. So, here’s why you should want to use it! 

    What is PPC Advertising?

    Pay-per-click advertising, also shortened to PPC advertising, is a method of online marketing that allows businesses to place ads in strategic places where a fee is only charged after the ad is clicked on by a visitor. It’s a great way to buy visits to your website rather than taking the time to attract them organically. 

    Here’s how it works: 

    • When a user clicks on your ad, you pay a specified fee, which is referred to as the cost-per-click (CPC). 
    • The CPC can vary dramatically (average is between $1 to $2 with some as cheap as a couple of cents, while others go as high as $50 or more). 
    • Another way to orchestrate a PPC Advertising campaign is by using cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM), which applies to display and video ads. 

    Now that you have a better understanding of how PPC Advertising works to attract online visitors, we are going to provide you with some reasons as to why you should consider adding it to your digital marketing strategy. 

    It’s very targeted

    Entrepreneurs and digital marketers alike love PPC Advertising because it allows them to choose precisely who will be seeing the ad based on their location, choice of keywords, interests, age, gender, language, and even the type of device that the consumer is using. This ensures that you’re catering to an audience that’s more likely to enjoy your goods and services, which has a huge influence on click-through rates and conversions.

    You can even re-target previous visitors! 

    Most consumers will only click on advertisements that appeal to their interests, however, just because they choose to follow through to your website, doesn’t guarantee that they will become a customer. The great part about PPC Advertising is that you’re targeting those who share the same enthusiasm about your products and services, and the best part is that if they don’t follow through on purchasing the first time around, you can retarget the ones that left your website and remind them to come back again! 

    It’s cost-effective for all types of e-commerce businesses

    While many elements of your digital marketing strategy charge a flat-rate, monthly fee, you only pay for PPC Advertising when your ad is clicked by a potential customer. This means that the odds are always in your favour, allowing you to cater your ads to those whose values align with your business. Also, since PPC ads appear at the top of search engine results pages, you don’t need to spend the time and money building your content because your ad will already appear above organic search results. 

    It’s easily tracked

    Aside from the above conversion-based benefits, PPC Advertising is also easily tracked, meaning that you as a business owner can monitor how well your ads are performing and make adjustments to them if they aren’t receiving a good number of clicks. This is a great way to learn what attracts consumers to your products and services and what can be improved upon to drive sales and help your business grow. 

    Are you ready to test the waters of PPC advertising? Please fill out our contact form and anticipate a prompt email from our Client Success Manager to discuss your business goals!

    Do you have any further questions about PPC Advertising and how it works? Drop a comment below to share with our other readers. 

    Valentine’s Day tips for last-minute implementers

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    Do you have a good relationship with your target audience? Would you say you go together like search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising? While most professional digital marketing services take time to generate ongoing growth and conversions there are some things that you can do last-minute to entice your customers to shop. Valentine’s Day is one of the most overlooked occasions when compared to other days like Black Friday or Christmas, and even if your product(s) and service(s) don’t scream romantic, you can ramp up some sales by following the tips we recommend below.

    Host a flash sale for your shoppers

    Since Valentines’ Day is the celebration of love, it’s a good idea to show your customers some love and appreciation during this time by offering them a great deal on your products and services. One of the best ways that you can do this as a business owner is by surprising them with a generous flash sale… because of course, everyone loves to save money! Since the following idea can be executed rather quickly by sending out a short, punchy email and otherwise promoting it through your existing social media channels, you can consider hosting a sale last-minute. The best part is that if you possess an overwhelming amount of inventory for a few particular items, a last-minute sale can also double down as an opportunity to unload products that aren’t selling as well on regular calendar days. Whether you just have a buy 2, get 1 free sale, a store-wide discount, or a featured sale on a product category, giving your customers a deal is a perfect incentive to inspire them to make a purchase and possibly even tune into other sales or promotions that are offered in the future. 

    Email your customers some personalized Valentine’s Day cards

    While we did mention above that emailing is a great way to connect with your audience last-minute, if you aren’t up to hosting a sale, but you still want to take advantage of this tactic, we recommend coordinating a cute email campaign allowing you to send out virtual Valentine’s Day cards. Your card should coordinate with your brand and include a punny poem or a letter of appreciation to your customers, and if you’re feeling edgy, you can include a shop now button in there as well. This takes a lot of hassle out of putting a lot of work into your website and it shows your customers that you’re fun and not just sales-focused. 

    Create a quick landing page dedicated to themes of the holiday

    Landing pages, also known as lead capture pages or destination pages, are a great way to promote Valentine’s Day specials, and since the holiday is geared towards buying gifts for your loved ones, they can be extra beneficial when created specifically to target your audience and draw in shoppers. Now, if you don’t possess the knowledge of how to coordinate a strategy that targets a certain search engine optimization search result, don’t worry. As a professional digital marketing company, we have the skills and experience to market your promotion using industry-relevant key terms and phrases. 

    Last-minute doesn’t mean you have to tap out! How are you planning to orchestrate something for your company this Valentine’s Day?

    Make 2021 the year you crush your digital marketing goals

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    If 2020 has taught us anything as digital marketing professionals, it’s that consumers heavily relied on available online conveniences to keep themselves safe during these crazy times. Whether it was virtual doctor’s appointments, online grocery shopping, or simply transitioning to ordering more of their necessities through e-commerce sources, it’s clear that the digital age is evolving and growing to suit this new normal. So, if your business missed out on some of the digital opportunities that were available, why not start 2021 off right by crushing your digital marketing goals? 

    Invest in professional search engine optimization services

    For business owners who don’t already know, search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of traffic to a website or web page via search engines. Since SEO targets unpaid traffic rather than direct or paid traffic, it can take a bit of time to improve your business ranking, especially if you aren’t using professional search engine optimization services. SEO is broken down into two categories, requiring work to be completed both on-site and off-site. 

    Some examples of on-site work that your SEO specialist would do as part of your search engine optimization service would include: 

    • Page layout optimizations
    • SEO audits
    • Page speed optimizations
    • Finding and fixing broken links
    • The creation of engaging content

    Some examples of off-site that your SEO specialist would do as part of your search engine optimization service would include:

    • Public relations
    • Guest posting
    • The creation of engaging content for back linking 

    Consider the benefits of pay-per-click advertising

    Pay-per-click advertising, better known in the digital marketing industry as PPC, is a method of online marketing where business owners can place ads in strategic places online and pay a fee only when that ad is clicked on by a visitor. It’s a quick way to buy quality visits to your site rather than attracting them organically, which can take time as we’ve discussed above. 

    How does it work, you ask? Well, when a user clicks the ad, your business will pay the host a specified fee, which can range between $1 to $2 and as high as $50 depending on where your impression is posted. 

    Here are some of the best benefits achieved through PPC:

    • Ads are extremely targeted to your audience
    • Ads retarget previous visitors
    • Ads are cost-effective
    • Ads are trackable
    • Ads are fast 

    Email marketing is good for sales and brand loyalty 

    Email marketing is the act of sending online messages and newsletters to a group of subscriber emails. In its simplest form, each email strives to target new and recurring customers to come back to the website and make a purchase. While email marketing relies heavily on sending advertisements to solicit sales and traffic, it also works as an opportunity to offer industry-news, business updates, or up-to-date inventory revisions. 

    Here are some of the best benefits of email marketing:

    • It’s good for customer acquisition
    • It’s an economic and cost-effect digital marketing strategy
    • Each email can be personalized through customization
    • Newsletters are designed to be action-oriented
    • It’s easy to measure profit using the appropriate tracking tools

    If you aren’t marketing on social networks, you should be

    Social media marketing is the use of an assortment of social media platforms and websites to promote your businesses’ products and/or services. Although it’s challenging to create a following with a strictly sales-oriented agenda, many business owners utilize the power of each platform to create a relationship with their customers by sharing images/videos and posting other engaging content. 

    Here are some of the best benefits of social media marketing: 

    • Increases brand awareness
    • Improves search engine rankings
    • Increases conversion rates
    • Leads to better customer satisfaction
    • Offers more brand authority
    • Allows you to gain valuable insights

    Top it all off with some insightful blogging

    Business blogging, while not as easy to track conversions, is an essential element that should be part of every digital marketing strategy. Business blogs are a space where you can create custom content that may appease your customer’s interests or even answer questions they have pertaining to your products, services, or the general larger umbrella of your niche industry.

    Here are some of the best benefits of business blogging: 

    • Increase your business visibility online
    • Builds brand awareness
    • Builds up SEO authority 
    • Asserts your position as an expert within your industry
    • Offers free content to your subscribers
    • Supports the growth of your business
    • Engage with customers

    Do you have any further questions about any of the above digital marketing services? One of our Client Success Managers would be happy to answer your questions via email, by phone, or through a virtual chat.

    Which of the above digital marketing services would your business benefit most from? Drop a comment below to compare with other e-commerce business owners.

    Digital marketing techniques that hold the most value for business owners

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    Your online presence is essential, regardless of whether you’re starting a new e-commerce business or simply taking over from a previous owner. While the 2020 year has brought about a lot of changes, the only change to online shopping is that it has become more important than ever before, as more customers are flocking to the web to make their essential purchases. We’re in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it’s your job to keep on top of your digital marketing efforts to ensure that you prosper in the years to come. Here are some techniques that we recommend. 

    Understanding your audience

    As a growing, e-commerce business owner, one of the most important aspects of operation resides in knowing who your customers are. An engaged audience is key, regardless of whether you’re a startup business or you’ve been in the industry for years. For those who are hoping to better relate to your audience, this would require narrowing your content to meet the needs of that demographic, which as a result, will allow you to cater your digital marketing efforts towards campaigns that understand their pains, problems, and priorities. It could be as simple as communicating a compelling message that encourages a prospecting customer to purchase your product. However, it often involves digging a little deeper into the shopping habits of your target audience. 

    If you’re looking for professional digital marketing services that satisfy the above objectives, have a word with a member of the Trek Marketing team to get started. 

    Email marketing is booming

    One of the most cost-efficient, professional digital marketing services available is email marketing. Why is this? It’s because this type of digital service bridges the gap between generations. Pretty much everyone nowadays has an email, aside from using them to communicate with loved ones, most enjoy receiving special discounts from the online businesses they subscribe to. After all, who doesn’t love a good deal? However, the best part about email marketing is a quicker return-on-investment (ROI). While many professional digital marketing services take time to generate revenue, business owners can see the money that’s being made from a good email right away! Emails also help to create brand awareness, which translates to more valuable traffic leads down the road.

    Search engine optimization helps to increase your ranking

    Even if you have the most aesthetically-pleasing website, if you aren’t able to increase your search ranking, shoppers will have a hard time finding your online business. So, while there are many e-commerce entrepreneurs that don’t understand SEO, most invest in this content creating, link-building service! Since SEO involves a variety of crucial tactics, such as an initial audit, ongoing research, on-page optimization, and link building, it’s far easier to hire a professional to help you achieve your search result goals! 

    Don’t forget to be socially involved

    Social media marketing has become an integral part of professional digital marketing strategies for businesses. Its importance is huge in helping e-commerce companies expand their following, as many small businesses start gaining traction through positive reviews and customer word-of-mouth. Needless to say, building your brand involves consistency and relevance in the quality of content you publish. That’s why many e-commerce business owners seek professional digital marketing to help utilize tools that are available on social platforms, create a vibrant posting schedule, and cross-share their content. 

    Blogging adds value too 

    While many e-commerce business owners often overlook blogging, we believe that it holds great value in the expansion of your reach to potential customers. Blogging allows you to establish credibility for your business, inputting regular entries that offer insightful information, as well as take a sales-based approach. Keeping in mind that it’s essential that you create a regular posting schedule (once a week is ideal), unless you’re full of industry ideas, many look to professional resources to create ongoing website content.  

    Can you think of other digital marketing techniques that have added major value to your online business? Drop a comment below to share. 

    How often should business owners update their blogs?

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    If you’re looking for an answer to the question, “how often should business owners update their blogs?” we’re here to tell you that there’s no right answer. This is a contentious issue for e-commerce businesses everywhere and unfortunately, even as an experienced digital marketing company that handles professional copywriting, we can only provide you with feedback that has worked so far with our current clients. It’s to your companies’ advantage that you post at least once per week, however, the following things need to be considered for your submission to get noticed on the wide web.   

    Consistency is an important part of any blogging strategy

    Consistency is defined as the conformance in the application of something for the sake of logic, accuracy, and fairness. So, in terms of developing professional blogging content for your e-commerce website, it’s important for you to consider the publication of consistent blogs — same day/time each week — to show your readers and followers that you’re committed to your brand. Not only can your schedule content so that it automatically appears on your website, but you can take it one step further by sharing your blogs on social media. This is also something that should be consistent, for example, blogs are published Tuesdays and shared through social on Wednesdays. 

    Also, consistent blog updates allow visitors to see that your business is operating as usual, and in these uncertain times where many companies are struggling, you can continue to show potential customers that they’re good hands when they shop your collection of products and services. That being said, since leaving a long time frame between posting shows that your website is neglected, consider hiring a professional to handle the copywriting tasks for you. This will enable you to better organize your time for other tasks, while also ensuring that you always have fresh content that’s available to the consumer. 

    Short updates don’t serve a purpose on your blog

    Many business owners use blogs to provide customers with brief company updates and will write fewer than 100-word submissions to explain. What they don’t know is that short blog submissions lack the use of keywords, which is devaluing your website, leaving behind a layer of thin content that hinders search engine optimization (SEO) efforts and lowers the organic ranking. That being said, the best place for these types of updates is through your social media platforms, where short, punchy copy is always shared. Another way to ensure that your audience sees updates is by simply adding them to the bottom of long-form content as a way to increase your word count with something that provides value to your business. Keep in mind that while there’s no definitive word count for blogs, readers benefit most from submissions that avoid filler language and are 500 quality words or more.

    Relevance and quality are key 

    Whether you’re attempting to write your own submissions from scratch or have opted to hire a professional to handle all of your copywriting tasks, two of the most crucial factors to consider in your blogging posts are relevance and quality. Publishing content every day that’s irrelevant to your industry and riddled with typos and poorly constructed sentences are not beneficial to your website. In fact, low-quality blog content makes your site appear spammy to search engine algorithms. That’s why it’s worth investing time and money into the efforts that are needed to produce good quality content! 

    Is your business ready to develop a professional copywriting strategy? Get in touch with a member of the Trek Marketing team to get started. 

    What other elements need to be considered as part of a business blogging strategy? Drop a comment below to start a conversation.

    Are you looking for some SEO tips to boost rankings?

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    While most e-commerce business owners possess a rough understanding of how search engine optimization (SEO) affects their presence, many aren’t knowledgeable enough to increase their online rankings, which is why industry experts are needed to improve the quality of traffic and clicks. Nevertheless, with so much lucrative information available at your fingertips there are still some tasks that you can undertake to help your business crawl to the top, and if all efforts fail, an SEO agency for e-commerce who’s ready to swoop in and do all the work for you. 

    Tip #1: Focus on structured data 

    Since there are an abundance of websites that Google is crawling, the best way for this search engine to understand what each is about is through structured data giving purpose and meaning to each page. 

    Structured data is a standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying that page’s content. For example, a page displaying a recipe would include a section containing the ingredient list, another that explains the cooking time, and possibly even further subsections to describe prep, the number of calories, and so on. 

    An SEO agency for e-commerce would track to ensure that each markup is handled correctly, and follow recommendations by Google to review the companies’ online documents and monitor changes that may be needed. Tracking search engine results page (SERP) feature placements over time will also allow them to improve when there is a drop and help them to better understand if the structured data is working to the brand’s advantage. 

    Tip #2: Monitor backlinks

    While having more backlinks doesn’t always mean that your website will rank higher, an SEO agency for e-commerce will ensure that high-quality backlinks are produced, which is proven to be beneficial in boosting SEO rankings. 

    As you are likely aware, Google focuses on the authority and authenticity of every website linking to your domain, and if there are any spammy sites in that list, your ranking could be impacted negatively. These red flags are bad news for your SEO strategy efforts, so it’s always advisable to keep track of who is linking back to your website and monitor the quality of those links. 

    Tip #3: Create skyscraper content 

    Skyscraper content involves a little investigative work where you seek out already high-performing content in your niche and use it to create something better. Then, shamelessly promote it to your audience! However, since this tip involves a lot of legwork to have it done correctly, most business owners hire an SEO agency for e-commerce to handle everything involved in seeking and writing this type of specialized content. 

    Needless to say, for the go-getters, here are some tips to getting started:

    • Find out who your competitors are on Google
    • Discover which keywords best relate to your niche business
    • Add details to your website’s pages and create comprehensive posts about the topics above
    • Get insights from industry experts so that you’re able to add more value to your posts
    • Be sure to review analytics to see which content topics did well
    • Re-work your content to make it more digestible by using things like videos and infographics 

    The key to developing good skyscraper content is to get creative and make something better than anything readers and/or shoppers have ever seen before.

    Which of the above tips will you be trying out first? Drop a comment below to start a conversation with other readers.