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          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.


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          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.


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          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.


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          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.


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          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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How to Use Empathy Mapping to Transform Your Marketing & Sales Processes

We live in a culture that is responding less and less to mass marketing and in order to reach our target buyers, we have to personalize our message. This allows us to market to the individual and their specific needs. Building a business that connects starts with the development of emapthy. By putting ourselves in some else’s shoes and viewing life from their perspective, we can adapt our marketing and sales message to connect with people who truly want and need our products and services.

Video Transcript:

Hey, what’s up everybody. I’m Ryan Shelley coming to you from the “shed quarters” here at Shelley Media Arts.

In today’s SMA Marketing Minute, I want to talk about a topic that I am just really, really, really into, and that’s empathy. Understanding empathy and understanding how we can put ourselves in other people’s shoes to learn from them, to grow relationships, and also how that impacts our business. How that impacts our marketing messages. How that impacts the sales process. And understanding that empathy and knowing how to use it can really position ourselves as better problem solvers, better business owners, better marketers, and better sales people.

Empathy is a little bit deeper than just doing a typical buyer persona– where you kind of step through, and you talk to people.

You get some data and market research and we make some assumptions based on who they are. And it kind of starts to touch the surface. But I think a tool that really helps the process out is this great tool by a marketing company called, Xplane. And they developed what’s called The Empathy Map. The Empathy Map forces you to kind of go deeper than those surface level questions. Not just what their typical day looks like, but what their life looks like.

  • What do they see?
  • Who do they interact with?
  • What are the things that they think about?
  • What do they say?

But then also what do they do? Because oftentimes we know that those are two different things when it comes to what we say and what we actually do.

So I recommend that you download the tool. The link is right here. You can download it from Xplane’s website. And put it into practice when you’re developing your business strategy, when you’re developing your marketing strategy, your SEO strategy, your sales strategy. So you can really start to understand the people who need your products and need your services. And develop ways that actually speak to them in ways that are going to engage with them and allow them to interact more naturally with you.

The first key to really putting empathy into your business strategy and marketing strategy is understanding that we’re talking to people—like real human beings. On the other side of that computer screen, on the other side of that ad, that click, that post, is a person— not a lead, not a number. Yes, leads are great, but they are only part of the story. We need to understand the human being behind the message that we’re speaking and what are their needs as a person. When we can start to see them like that it starts to really kind of soften our walls that we kind of put up and make it this really, really almost stale business process. It doesn’t have to be. We can be very personalized. We have tremendous tools out there that can help us personalize our message even more. But it starts from understanding that we’re talking to human beings.

The next thing we need to realize is we have to be authentic in our messaging. Just because somebody else is doing it one way, doesn’t mean you have to do it that way. You need to be true to who you are, and share your message authentically from who you are as a person. Again, people connect with authenticity. And when they see that you’re kind of pushing the line and maybe trying to be something you’re not, it really comes across as being manipulative. And that’s really going to draw people out of your marketing processes, out of your business, out of your sales process. Because red flags are going to go up and say, I don’t know if I can trust this person because they’re not being true to who they are. How can I be sure that they’re going to actually deliver on what they say and provide?

The last key to really using empathy in your growth strategy is believing in your products and services. You have to believe in what you’re doing if you’re going to be authentic and able to use that and to connect with people. If you don’t believe in your solutions, if you don’t believe in your product, you don’t believe in your business— you can’t expect anybody else to. When you’re communicating, you have to have some sort of passion, some sort of emotion behind it that’s going to allow people to want to just draw in and be a part of what you’re doing. When it comes to communicating, it’s up to the communicator to get the message across. If the audience doesn’t hear the message or take the message in right, that’s not the audience’s fault. That’s the communicator’s fault. And the only way we can create messaging that’s going to really connect with the people that we’re trying to reach is by understanding truly who they are, how they receive communication the best way, and how we can tell our story. How we can walk them along our business processes. How we can initiate a sales process from the standpoint of empathy.

I hope you guys learned a little bit of something with this video. If you have any more comments or suggestions, please comment and post below. We would love to keep the conversation going. And until we see you next time, happy marketing and good luck out there.

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