• FAQs

          Search engine optimization (SEO) helps businesses drive visits to their website through organic search traffic. Given that the top organic search results receive a third of the clicks, a decline in ranking could be detrimental for your business. Implementing SEO best practices on your website will help to ensure that your web content is seen by as many potential customers as possible. The more visitors you have, the better your chances are of converting those visits into sales!

          Local search engine optimization (SEO) helps local businesses gain visibility by optimizing their local business listings for local search. A business that leverages local SEO will include its address, phone number, local opening times, and exact location in the form of a local citation. The goal is to rank for local searches which are usually performed by people in a specific geographical region looking for a business near them.

          We typically see results within the first 30 to 60 days, but when it comes to SEO, there are many factors at play. It's important to remember that SEO is a long-term strategy and results may not come as fast at you wish.


        • FAQs

          Digital advertising uses the internet to send advertisements to customers who are online through different websites and social media platforms like Google, Bing, LinkedIn and Facebook.

          The price for Google Ads management depends on the monthly ad spend. For accounts with $1,000 in monthly ad spend, the price is $550/month. Between $1,000 and $5,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $950/month. For $5,000 to $10,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $2,000/month. For more than $10,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $4,500/month.

          The price for Social Media Ads management depends on the monthly ad spend. For accounts with $1,000 in monthly ad spend, the price is $550/month. Between $1,000 and $5,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $950/month. For $5,000 to $10,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $2,000/month. For more than $10,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $4,500/month.


        • FAQs

          This depends on the complexity and size of a redesign and if eCommerce is needed. On average, it takes around 14-18 weeks from the web design intensive stage to launch.

          If your website experiences the following issues: it’s not responsive on all devices, has a slow loading speed, the design appears old and tired, users don’t spend long on the site, sales are stagnant, or your business is going through a rebranding - your website needs a redesign to boost your brand awareness and sales.

          Sometimes there’s no need to rebuild a website. Minor edits, refreshing page content and images, or restructuring page layout for SEO best practices can boost traffic and sales.


        • FAQs

          Semantic search launched in 2013 with the release of Google's Hummingbird update. Since then, Google's search engine has become more complex. The integration of machine learning, with RankBrain, and NLP, with BERT, has enabled the search engine to better understand the context of a query and deliver more personalized and targeted results. Semantic SEO is the process of creating machine-readable content using structured data and linked open data to help search engines better understand your content.

          On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing individual web pages in order to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines. On-page SEO refers to both the content and HTML source code of a page that can be optimized, as opposed to off-page SEO which refers to links and other external signals. From meta tags to page content, website structure, and HTML, on-page optimization services are focused on making your website more visible to search engines.

          Structured data refers to any organized data that conforms to a certain format, such as information in a relational database. When information is highly structured and predictable, search engines can more easily organize and display it in creative ways. Structured data involves using a piece of code that is laid out in a specific format easily understood by search engines. The search engines read the code and use it to display search results in a more dynamic way.


        • FAQs

          An SEO agency has experts in different areas of search engine optimization that may be out of the realm of your marketing team's abilities. SEO can be very complex and time-consuming. Furthermore, as search engine algorithms change it can be difficult to stay current on the latest ranking factors and strategies for improving online visibility. You will likely see a greater return on investment and better results from using a professional SEO agency than you would from tackling this on your own.

          As a digital marketing agency, SMA Marketing provides products and services in four areas: SEO, Local SEO, Digital Advertising, and Web Design

          We focus on building authentic, long-lasting relationships with our clients. We’re goal oriented and results driven and believe in doing good and making a difference in the world.

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7 Reasons Content Marketing is Overwhelming

When you are looking for ways to reduce company expenses, it’s tempting to cut business costs by doing your own marketing. The challenge is that as a business owner you likely already have way too much to balance. If you don’t have the time to market your company, you will find yourself feeling more overwhelmed by the extra tasks that you didn’t first anticipate. Great content marketing takes time and attention to detail as well as consistent execution.

Here are 7 Reasons Content Marketing is Overwhelming

It’s Hard to Know Where to Start

Content marketing includes all the written content you create as promotional and educational materials for your company as well as videos, graphics, slide decks, and infographics. With so many different options to create it’s hard to know where to get started.

Let’s say you have a new product you want to introduce to your customers. Do you create an email series introducing a new product or start with a blog article and then send an email? Maybe for this product launch, you should leverage video instead of written content for your target audience.

With limited time it’s important to maximize your efforts, so you may think the best choice is to focus on the area that you are most comfortable executing, but what if your target audience prefers to consume different content?

Content Marketing Advice Varies

It’s natural to head to Google to find the answers to your questions. The problem with content marketing information is that there are hundreds of successful experts, thousands more who claim the title expert and, depending on who you follow, you will receive very different advice.

In fact, if you collect enough content marketing advice, statements will begin to contradict. Consider these two marketing theories:

  •        “The more you tell, the more you sell.”
  •        “No one reads online. Focus on the visuals.”

Which execution is correct for your product or services? Active Campaign points out, and I agree, that neither philosophy is accurate when applied exclusively.

Effective Content Marketing Takes Time to Execute

Another reason content marketing is overwhelming is that it takes time to execute well. Besides writing the blog article or creating the images, there are many steps marketers take to make sure the content they develop has the best chance to rank in search queries.

Before you create the content you should:

  • Evaluate your previous content to see what your customers and social media followers are interacting with the most.
  • Do keyword research to see what long-tail phrases are best to use around a topic.
  • Do a content analysis to see how competitive a topic is as this will inform how you should best structure your piece.

As you develop your content you should:

  •  Incorporate SEO best practices such as headers, bulleted lists, and optimized images.
  •  Proofread your content for clarity, spelling, and grammatical errors.
  •  Consider ways to build on the original content. Will you turn a blog article into an infographic or a video?

After you publish each piece of content, you need to promote it on social channels and through email. Promotion requires more than posting a link to your content just once. You need to also build in time to engage with readers and interact on social media.

It Never Ends

You can’t publish one blog article and consider your content marketing complete. There is a direct correlation between how many times a company publishes and the amount of traffic they attract to their website. If you choose to take care of your content marketing, it’s going to be important to build time into your calendar, several times a week, to focus on this aspect of your business.

You Don’t Have a Strategic Plan

One of the biggest reasons that content marketing is overwhelming is that many people don’t take the time to develop a strategic plan. Creating content that will connect with your current and potential customers requires a lot of research.

You need to understand how your buyers search online to solve their problems. Once you know what questions are asked most frequently, you will know how to create helpful content that educates your current and potential customers.

Once you’ve completed your research, you can map out a plan to publish your content in the order that makes the most sense.

You Aren’t Measuring the Right Results

Part of creating a strategic plan is making sure you are targeting your efforts in the right categories. Does your target audience prefer video over written content? How do you know? It’s important not to focus on vanity metrics and instead measure the impact of your content as well as your rank in search.

It feels great when you post an article on social media that attracts a lot of attention, but if those likes and shares don’t translate to an increase in website traffic or inquires from potential customers what is the true value of that attention on social?

If you spend time focusing on vanity metrics your content marketing efforts aren’t as likely to increase your opportunities to attract customers.

You Need to Delegate

The main reason that content marketing is overwhelming is that you aren’t delegating the tasks you don’t have time to complete. We all understand the demands required of a business owner. There is always the potential for an emergency to come up that requires your immediate attention.

When customers and employees need your help, it’s important to prioritize them, but it also means that you need to rearrange your calendar.

It’s hard to publish quality content consistently when your calendar is always full. Writing late at night or early in the morning in order to stay on schedule will eventually lead to rushed production or skipping tasks altogether as exhaustion takes over.

At SMA Marketing, we partner with business owners who need to delegate digital marketing, including content marketing, so that you can focus on growing your business. We understand the value excellent content marketing adds to your company which is why we leverage unique, strategic content plans that are backed by analytics and SEO best practices for all our clients. Contact us to learn more.

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