• 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.

  • Contact

Strategic Content Calendar: A Blogger’s Best Tool

When I first began blogging, I posted every day when my son went down for his afternoon nap at 1 pm. Every day I wrote an original blog post including an image. Just thinking about this now makes me laugh. How in the world did I expect to reasonably keep up that schedule?

Balancing work, family and my blog can get crazy at certain times of the year like around the holidays. In the past, I would just stop blogging for a week here or there and pick up when life slowed down. But as far as strategies go, that one wasn’t great.

Two years ago, I became a monthly contributor to The Glorious Table blog. With posts going up six days a week from twenty-plus contributors our editor wisely established the requirement that our blog posts were due two months in advance. For the first time ever as a blogger, I was forced to think ahead about what I was going to say, and it was the best thing that could have happened to me.

The requirement to write one post for the future encouraged me to think long-term about all of my blog posts. Once I started thinking strategically, a content calendar became the tool to help me keep all of my ideas organized.

Using a content calendar allows bloggers to strategically develop blog ideas incorporating keywords, flow, and long-term goals.

Keywords

A common mistake bloggers make is not taking the time to optimize their content. Writing excellent content is great, but if Google can’t categorize it correctly, web searchers won’t find it. Catchy titles are fun, but web crawlers don’t catch nuance. A meta description with a keyword also featured in your blog post becomes even more necessary the more creative your blog titles stay.

Developing a list of keywords to write content around will keep blog posts focused overall, but more specifically will help create titles and meta descriptions that tell the web crawlers to direct your content to the people searching for the subjects on which you are writing.

Flow

An ideal content calendar at a minimum will include:

  • Dates for future content to publish
  • A space for blog title development
  • A keyword to write the post around

If you have a goal to post twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays, you will write out the dates for let’s say three months, and then move from there. You may realize that a holiday falls on one of those times or a special event you would like to highlight.

Once you have filled in your blog ideas for the three months, move on to flow. From a big-picture view, you will be able to evaluate if the blog posts are in the best order. You may notice that you have three posts on the same subject with similar titles back to back. At this point, you can choose to create a mini-series or spread the posts out depending on what better supports your long-term blogging goals.

Long-Term Goals

Blogging takes too much time and energy to write without a goal. Perhaps you want to increase your email list, develop an eBook, or an online class. Maybe you want to accomplish all three of these things. Regardless of the long-term goal, a content calendar is the first step to developing the right strategy to achieve it.

Excellent content takes time to create. It includes research and rounds of drafts and edits. When you develop a content calendar, you can save relevant articles for future blog posts to refer back to when you carve time to write.

Consistency

The most significant value a content calendar brings to a blogger is the ability to develop consistency.  When you know the content you intend to write, you can carve out time to write a few blog posts at a time. You may not believe me, but I guarantee you will discover the same thing I did. When you have your content calendar filled out with blog titles and keywords, and part of your research done in advance you can write two to three blog post drafts in the time it usually takes you to write one.

Beyond Blog Posts

If you Google “content calendar” you will find extensive options. Some are free, others charge, and the only thing they have in common is that each one is unique. The great thing about that is that it means you can create a content strategy that works best for you, and expand or shrink it at any point to accommodate everything on your plate.

In addition to blog posts content calendars sometimes include space to highlight:

  • Email subjects
  • Offer subjects
  • Social Media Scheduling
  • Blog link-ups to participate in
  • Guest post ideas
  • Blogs to read and comment on
  • Backlink strategies
  • Images to look for
  • And so on

If you have never used a content calendar, it’s time to start. The best part is, you get to decide how detailed your calendar is! I suggest starting with fewer details until you get into the routine of working ahead. Focus on the necessary aspects of organizing your blog posts. As you develop the discipline of working off a content calendar you can decide for yourself what details to include tracking.

We’ve created a simple worksheet to help you get started. You can download it here.  Are you looking for help developing content for your website? Our expert team is passionate about creating personalized, high-quality content for our clients. Let’s schedule a time to chat!

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