The cycle describes the entire marketing cycle. It’s useful to use it as a guide to ensure your content marketing is a success. There can be a lot involved with marketing and easily get overwhelming. The cycle can help you structure and give reassurance to your content creation, especially if you are an entrepreneur and have little to no background in marketing.
Let's take a look at an example. After inserting a quick Google search for “Ottawa Coffee”, I found the business that ranked the best coffee due to the number of reviews and keywords used.
You can see that the highlighted words showcase the relevant keywords that apply to my search of "Ottawa Coffee". Do you know how many reviews people read before making up their mind on a business? According to a survey by Bright Local, consumers will read ten reviews before they can trust a business. In my example, you can see that the top three coffee places in Ottawa have hundreds of reviews. Reviews are incredibly valuable, 91% of 18-34 year olds trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
By simply increasing the number of Google reviews with your specified keywords, you can see an increase in visibility of your website. Encourage your clients to leave Google reviews and it reflects your credibility in the online world. This cheap (no cost!!) approach can quickly bring your ranking up since Google uses keywords in reviews to rank the businesses in order.
Ask your clients and customers for their feedback and attach a link to your Google reviews page. Don’t be scared to approach them: Podium’s study shows that 77% are likely to leave a review if they are asked. In addition, you can post on your social media accounts to ask for Google reviews. Be respectful when you are asking for reviews and don't make it obligatory as people don't want to be pressured into doing a favour. Make sure to train your staff and explain how to strategically ask customers to leave reviews.
Good news! Google recently made this process of getting a link to your Google review page much easier. Now from your Google My Business dashboard, you can enable a custom short name URL for your business reviews. This makes it really easy to share this URL with clients. You can include this link on multiple platforms like email signatures, social media, and your website.
You can also send personalized messages to your partners, clients, friends, etc. to ask for google reviews. Ask them to include the keywords specific to your business. For example, for WP Expert it would be “Wordpress Help Ottawa” and "Wordpress Support Ottawa".
By increasing your amount of Google reviews it can help your local SEO.
It affects your reputation because reviews add value to your product/service to customers who are searching something to fulfill their needs successfully. In a study done by Podium, it showed that 93% of consumers say that reviews have a high impact on their consumer engagement with B2B and B2C businesses.
Make sure your Google alerts are on and you will receive a notification when you get a review. Begin your response with the reviewers name, and don't wait too long to reply. Be proactive and manage your business mentions to maintain your reputation.
Remember to respond to your reviews: negative or positive. Leaving a review alone doesn’t help your business reputation. If it is a bad review, take time to breath so you don’t let your emotions effect your response. Try to look at them as an opportunity to learn. Thank the respondent for putting in time to review your business and offer them to contact you privately so you can discuss how to improve their experience with your business. Keep it short and simple in your professional response. Once you have been in contact with them and have made the customer happy, kindly ask them to edit their review. Your responses to the reviews are important as it encourages more people to leave a review as they know their review is important and they are valuable to the business.
Lost and need guidance? Google has a help page and can provide you with suggestions on how to improve your local ranking! Check the article out "Improve your local ranking on Google".
As you can see Google loves to read your reviews and will use them as a ranking factor. It’s a worthwhile task to try to get reviews to improve your local SEO. Thanks for reading our article! We hope you were able to learn how Google reviews carry a lot of weight when it comes to SEO. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to .
Working hard but not getting there?
Struggling to fill your ambitions?
Any type of business needs to create entrepreneurial goals. The key is to create goals that will motivate you to work and will actually help your business improve. It’s a competitive world and all entrepreneurs are striving to be better.
Creating the goals and carrying them out are two different things. Be attentive and committed to construct and organize the goals. A growing business will have more than just a few objectives. A diverse selection of long-term and short-term are encouraged to be used to get better results. Thread your energy carefully between the two to complete goals in both categories.
What do you want to accomplish? Why did you start this company?
Your answers are your long-term entrepreneurial goals! Review these objectives consistently as they could change and have to be adjusted throughout your journey. At times you may be eager to cut corners to be closer to success, but be thorough to really appreciate the victory when it comes. Minor accomplishes lead up to bigger ones, so acknowledge them all and realize that success isn’t always immediate.
Decide wisely where to spend your time and give yourself a deadline. Time management is important for long-term goals since they are to be carried out throughout a long period of time. Block time throughout to review the progress of the entrepreneurial goals. Re-evaluate them and adjust any timeline if there are obstacles in the way.
Create SMART goals to clarify your ideas and stay focused on the relevant tasks. This method is easy to use by anyone and won’t need any training or tools to use.
Short-term goals need to be detailed unlike the long-term goals. Stay focused on keeping it sensible and clear as you want to be motivated to complete the objectives. Answer the six 'W' questions to create specific short-term goals: Who, What, Where, When, Which, and Why.
You will want to put a figure or value to the objective. Concrete criteria is used for measuring the progress to attain the desired goal. Track the progress and use this as a motivation to accomplish it. Ask yourself: "how much", "how many", and "how will I know when it is accomplished" to measure the goal.
The goals you create need to be attainable so you can achieve them. Make sure you know the steps that need to be taken and who will complete them. Will you be tackling the task(s), or will someone else in your team be? If you are assigning goals to an employee, make sure they have the knowledge and capability to succeed.
Don’t create unrealistic entrepreneurial goals, but do make them challenging. Consider your resources and make your goals worthwhile.
Remember that these are short-term goals and you need to know how much time it will take and how much time you can give to it. Set a deadline to keep things on track. By creating a target date, it will encourage you to focus on the end objective. Lay out what needs to be done and by what date it would be reasonable to complete them by. Give yourself enough time, but don't be too generous. S.M.A.R.T
Your employees are working with you to make your business run smoothly and succeed. It’s helpful to you, and them, to include them and ask for their advice. Share with them any information necessary for your employees to help create and adjust goals. Don’t be afraid to hear criticism and welcome your employees to share their thoughts. It’s beneficial to have team meetings every week to share updates and see how things are running overal. Reward your employees who are working to create and achieve these goals.
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Good article to understand what the DNS records are and how it can affect your business if you don't know what you are doing...
Source: http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/an-introduction-to-learning-and-using-dns-records--cms-24704
PDF file: Understanding what DNS records are for your business
Source: All Resources - Growth Supply