INSTAGRAM MARKETING

Why Use Instagram for Marketing?

For starters, why use Instagram for marketing in the first place? For one, it’s one of the largest social networks in existence with 800 million active monthly users and counting . In other words, it’s highly likely that a good portion of your target audience can be found on the platform.

Second, research has shown that Instagram has not one of the highest, but the highest engagement rate of all social networks, by far. Needless to say, if it’s your aim to increase the effectiveness of your marketing, you need to master the use of Instagram. But how exactly can you leverage this invaluable marketing tool to reach your business and social media marketing goals?

Six Ways to Turn Instagram into a Marketing Tool

1. Use Hashtags to Boost Awareness

To consistently generate new interest in your business, you need to use hashtags. After all, they are the way that users search for photos of a specific type or relating to something of interest. If one of your posts shows up during their search, they may take the time to explore your account further and may even follow you.

When choosing and using hashtags, though, there are a few things you need to keep in mind. First, while you don’t need to use hordes of hashtags per post, you do need to use at least a couple on every post. Which ones? That brings us to the second point.

The majority of tags you choose should be relevant in some way to your industry. That way, more people who stumble across your posts will actually be interested in what you do and offer.

Yet, you should also use a mix of local and trending hashtags. For example, #newyork or #flashbackfriday. These might not necessarily be related to your business or industry and, thus, will likely attract fewer qualified leads. That’s not to say that they aren’t worth your time. You can still boost awareness of your business this way.

2. Stick To Your Story, Strengthen Your Brand

Consistency is key. You’ll have a hard time keeping your followers if you’re “all over the map” and they never know what to expect from you. Therefore, each one of your posts should hold to the same theme as the others. Each post should fit seamlessly into the bigger picture—your business’ story—like a puzzle piece.

What about those times when you really want to share something without interrupting the story told collectively by your posts? That’s when Instagram Stories come in handy, as they’ll allow you to share content apart from all the rest.

3. Interact Freely With Your Audience

Engaging with others on Instagram can have numerous benefits. It’s a key ingredient in both customer satisfaction and brand advocacy. Additionally, it increases your business’:

•  Visibility

•  Likability

•  Memorability

•  Credibility

No doubt you’d agree that the benefits are worth the time it takes to interact. Who should you be engaging with, though? Your followers, industry authorities and the followers of those you follow. The more people you engage with, in a sincere way, the better the results of your efforts.

Industry authorities include micro-influencers, individuals who have cultivated a strong following within a highly specific niche thanks to social media and blogging.

4. Share User-Generated Content

Going right along with the last point, sharing user-generated content is an excellent way to engage and be engaged with. You can come up with fun and creative ways to get your customers to share their pictures, videos and positive experiences with your business.

In turn, others may become customers and share their enthusiasm in hopes of having the same honor. User-generated content is one of the best forms of social proof and one of the best ways to create an air of excitement surrounding your brand.

5. Encourage In-Person Interaction With Location Tags

As you try to nurture the leads you generate, it’s important that you find ways to get them more and more involved with your business. Since location tags encourage in-person interaction, they can help you to do this.

What better way to point users to your physical business location? That may be all the motivation someone needs to get in the car and pay you a visit, especially after seeing other images that may be associated with the location you choose.

Also, your location tag could point to a place you are or you want your followers to be, if possible. For example, a workshop or an important conference in your industry.

In case you’re wondering, here’s How to Add Your Location to Instagram

6. Advertise to a More Highly-Targeted Audience

One wonderful thing about Instagram is that, even if you only have a free account, it can still be an effective marketing tool for you. Yet, if you want to pack an even harder punch, you can use the platform’s advertising features as well.

Through Instagram advertising, you can be even more specific in your targeting to really take advantage of the high engagement rate. For more on Instagram advertising, check out the following posts:

•  How to Advertise on Instagram

•  How Much Does it Cost to Advertise on Instagram?

•  Examples of Instagram Ads

•  Instagram Video Ad Examples

Sujith A

GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Google Analytics

Google analytics is a free webservice offered by google which helps to track and reportwebsite traffic. It was launched by Google in 2005. It helps to track the visit details like the number of times visited, nature of the visit, browser used, location of visitor (country,city,etc), the time they spend on the site, which all pages were visited, from which webpage they navigated to a particular webpage, device used, network details, network traffic details etc.

Different types of visits

Organic visit: The number of people visited our website as a result of an internet search in search engines like Google, Bing etc. It is very important in seo, as our goal is to increase the organic visits to a site.

Direct traffic: Some people directly enter the url of the website or bookmark some sites for future use. The traffic by these searches is Direct Traffic.

Referral visits: Visits we get through referral links from other websites. 

Social media visits: Visits from social medias like facebook, twitter, etc.

Steps

• Login to your Google account.

• Go to www.google.com/analytics.

• Now click on sign in option on the right side of the webpage.

• Then from the dropdown list select Analytics, we will be redirected to the following window.

• Click the Sign up button and the page for new account creation appears in which, we have to fill in the details of our website.

• Fill in the details of our website like account name, website name, its url, etc.

• From the industry category, select the appropriate industry.

• Be careful while filling the next option, Reporting time zone. It should be based on the time of that country for which we are creating website for.

• Click the Get Tracking ID button. Now a Terms of Service Agreement of Google analytics appear. Choose the respective country from the drop down menu and click on I Accept.

• Now in the webpage that appears, copy the Tracking ID.

• Now go to blogger, select Settings and from that select the Other option. Then paste the Tracking ID in the Analytic web property id text field under Google Analytics label and click on the Save settings option in the right most side of the window.

• Now go back to Google Analytics and copy the Tracking code.

• Now go to blogger, then Theme and select the Edit HTML option and paste it in the head section.

• Now save it by clicking Save theme button. Now the process is completed.

• Go back to Google Analytics and on the left side, select All Website Data and choose website data.

• Now select Real time and select Overview. Then we can track the real time overview of our website.

We can also perform other tracking options to get various details like number of visits, details of visitors, time they spend, their location, etc.

Sujith A

WEB MASTER TOOLS

Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster tools (GWT) now termed as Google Search Console, is the primary mechanism used by Google to communicate with the webmasters. It is a free web service offered by Google for webmasters. It acts as a platform for Google to advice webmasters to optimize their websites and it helps the webmasters to check indexing status and errors.

Verification Steps

Verification is the process 

by which we prove that we own a particular site that we claim to own.

The steps to the verification process is listed

• Create a blog
• Login into your Google Search Console account or Google Webmaster tools account i.e., https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools.
• Copy the url of the blog with ".com". The url of the blog may be showing country specific i.e., ".in" extension. If it is so, change it to ".com" extension by adding ncr (no country redirect) to the url.

For example, if our address is in country specific i.e., https://www.blogname.blogspot.in change it to no country specific i.e., https://www.blogname.blogspot.com/ncr and press enter and now the url will be changed in ".com" extension.

• Now go back to webmaster tools or search console webpage and paste the url to the text field box where website address is to added.

• Click on the ADD PROPERTY button.

• Now we get redirected to another webpage showing various options of verification methods. From that select the option Html tag in the alternate method of search console. Copy the "meta tag " data given like <meta name=google-site-verification" content="...."/>.

• Now go back to blogger dash board. Select the "theme" option and from that select "edit theme" which helps to edit the html of your blog template.

• Now look for the <head> in the template html code, and paste the copied meta tag in the head section and click "Save theme" button.
• Go back to search console and click "Verify" button.

• Now a message appears with a green tick mark saying "Congratulations, you have successfully verified the ownership of your blog i.e., https://blogname.blogspot.com.

Steps for Fetching and Indexing

• Now press on the continue button of the verification message. We will be redirected our blog dashboard.

• In the left side of the dash board, select Crawl and from the dropdown list select "Fetch as Google" option.

• Now a window appears asking to enter the url.

• If we need to crawl the url, enter the entire url. Else enter the url of the page to be crawled.

• Go back to the blog, and copy the url of the blog post to be indexed. Note that we should only need to copy the part of the url avoiding the blog address part.

• Click the "Fetch" button.

• Now a window like this appears. Now select as per your needs. If only want to crawl the particular page select first option or if you want to crawl its links also then select 2nd option and press "Go".

• Wait for indexing to complete and the process is completed.

If you are interested to know more about related topics,  please refer On Page seo optimization.

Sujith A

SEO On-Page Optimization Methods

On Page Optimization Methods

There are several method for On page Optimization 

Follows :- 

Title Optimization.

Meta Description Optimization.

Content Optimization.

Anchor Text Optimization.

Keyword Optimization.

Image Optimization.

Authorship.

Title Optimization  

The title name should only contain about 55-60 characters. The Google text visibility is 70 character length and the google pixel width is 512 pixel. So the title should not exceed both limits. That is writing title in all capital letters may lead to increase in pixel width.

The title name should be relevant to the content of the publishing page. It should be apt to the topic discussed. So by viewing the title name itself both Google and user should get a vivid image of what the webpage exactly is.The presence of the focusing keyword in the title in an descriptive manner is an important factor in optimization. It strengthens the chance to get noticed and it reveals the identity of what is being trying to convey. Now the other thing is Google should find it easy to crawl the website.

Another factor to notice is that it should be error free - both grammatical and spelling errors. 

Choose a unique name because giving same name to two same pages in the publishing website may leads to Keyword Cannibalism, where multiple pages targeting to same keyword. Here the listing would occur and another different webpage takes their place. The title names should be impressive and catchy.

CTR and impression are important for listing our webpage in search results. CTR is the measurement of how many times an impression (or a page lists) in a search result through clicks. When title names are not given, then h1 tag is taken as title name and is displayed in the title region of a snippet. If both title and h1 is missing then h2 tag is used as title.

Meta Description Optimization 

It gives a brief idea of what the page is about in sentences or in small paragraphs. The title of the page can also be a meta description. In case of webpages, the meta tag description can be up to a limit of 155-160 characters but when it comes to post like article or blog the character limit gets reduced to 155 characters.  The reason is the post being time relevant comes with a date in the beginning which itself contribute some characters.According to the updates of 2014, pixel width for a meta tag description is 1024 pixels.

Like title, meta tag description also needs to be unique. The meta description should also be impressive and relevant to the content else the page will get unnoticed. There is a meta tag named robot whose content value defines how it works. If the robot's content value is not given the default value is considered. If we don't want to crawl a page then the content value is given as contents = "no index" or "no follow".

Body Portion Optimization 

The most visible area in a body part is h1 tag. It is described as the identity of a page in a website. It clearly identifies our webpage and it should be relevant to the content. After h1 tag h2 tag is visited. Content of h1 and h2 can be same, but different one is a good choice. Only after looking into h1 and h2 we checks h3. For a title, 7-8 words can be used. It should be impressive without any spelling errors or grammar mistakes. It should be relevant and should also include focusing keywords in it.

When more than one h1 tags are used, then bot gets confused and put it into sand box which is a temporary storage area. The consequence is that page gets listed in search result but the position won't change. Like this, h2 tag also be one. We should be keen that the tags used h1, h2, h3 and h4 should be relevant to the published content.

Anchor Text Optimization

Anchor text are easily visible to Google. It is the clickable text that the user sees as a result of a link.  The anchor text as a fuel or catalyst in crawling the contents of our publishing page. The use of  anchor text is very useful as it brings visit to our pages. But when usage is more, then equity is passed and also confusion occurs. Equity won't be passed for internal links.

Keyword Optimization 

Keyword density is the occurrence of keywords in respect to the total words in our publishing page. But according to Google, the keyword density is not considered a factor in ranking. But they states that presence of a few occurrence of focusing keywords in our publishing document is a plus point. Keywords using in the beginning of a paragraph or a sentence is a good practice. It will easily catch the attention of both the Google and user. Because both will find the page is appropriate to the search query.

Some claims that making the focusing keyword in bold helps in ranking. But this is not true. But yes, it may help to increase readability and avoid repetition and omitting of sentences and words if our paragraph is big. Also the user will have a satisfaction that they have selected the apt page when they find the focusing keyword in bold which catches their attention quickly. So here the motive is to make the website useful both to bots and users. Some believes that focusing keywords in grey and used before comas or full stop is beneficial. Google neither denied or accepted this.

Image Optimization 

The image consists of src and alt mainly. The alternative text in a image is alt and src referes to source path. The alt name should be meaningful and should be related to the image. Using irrelevant names can degrade the image. Also the image file name should be meaningful and related to the image. It should be written by words separated by hyphens or underscores. Content of the publishing page and the image should also be related to each other.

Authorship Optimization

Authorship or editorial power in seo refers to the process by which, author of an article is connected to google to create the ownership of the content. To publish a blog or article, authorship verification is a must process. Authorship optimization is only used for a single article and is not for a website and is the most important on page optimization. It gives authority and validity to content readers. The editorial power is increased as it is posted in many websites. 

Sujith. A

Search Engine Optimization, History And Evolution

Search Engine Optimization

The SEO means Search Engine Optimization. It’s a process we are using in our website  to ensure  visibility of our site. Its created by Google for their benefit and our website, most of the site visibility will come as organic search  its will comes normally.  Its implemented because when  lots of traffics comes in the website.  Doing SEO  building a strong site and clear navigation will  help to search the site easy and quickly. While doing SEO how unique our website from others . As we know its never ends it’s a continues process till we stops our website. 

To analyze our website we divide seo in three parts Crawling, Caching and Indexing

Crawling: -  It’s a process performing in  search engine to crawl all  information in the web site and it will collect all the relevant keywords.

Caching: -   It’s a easiest way to check the data or compare the actual data with  actual version  

Indexing: -  It’s a way how we index  keywords in our site , its easiest way to search the keywords.

Webmaster: - Is the person who responsible for the website.

As we studied SEO means is the main Keyword in the site. For this searching the Keyword is known as  “Keyword Research”. while keyword stuffing some of the users will be White Hat Stuffing and Black Hat Stuffing other than this some one we called Gray  Hat Stuffing.

White Hat : - white hat SEO refers to the usage of optimization strategies, techniques and tactics that focus on a human audience opposed to search engines and completely follows search engine rules and policies. Also called Ethical SEO.

Black Hat : In search engine optimization (SEO) terminology, black hat SEO refers to the use of aggressive SEO strategies, techniques and tactics that focus only on search engines and not a human audience, and usually does not obey search engines guidelines.

Gray Hat : - Gray Hat SEO is an SEO practice that's riskier than White Hat SEO, but one that may or may not result in your site being banned from search engines and their affiliate sites.

For getting the hits in the website we use Link Specification 

Quality Link Specification 

History and Evolution of SEO

Important Google  Updations

IMPORTANT GOOGLE UPDATES

From 2011 onward Google started introducing strong updates which wiped off all the low quality pages from the search results.

PANDA UPDATE

Google algorithm Panda 1.0 was introduced on Feb 23, 2011 and was against the content spamming which includes content duplication, contents of low quality, content spinning and thin content pages.The search engine started to focus a lot more effort on site content and sites with weak, poor quality or irrelevant contents were eradicated from the search engine results.

PENGUIN UPDATE

The Google Penguin Update was released on April 24, 2012 which was against link spamming techniques such as link exchange, paid links, link farming, comment spamming,wiki spamming and guest blogging.

PIGEON UPDATE

Pigeon update was released on July 24,2015 which focuses on images, video, data and local marketing(local SEO listing).

HUMMING BIRD UPDATE

Google's Hummingbird released on 20,Aug 2013 introduced semantic search results which provides a deep and detailed information on the search queries.

RANK BRAIN UPDATE

Released in 2015 Oct 26, this update is an advanced version of HummingBird Update.Here Google thinks like an intelligent person and delivers result for users based on the behavior and other features like age, economic background, education of the particular user with the help of AI.

OTHER UPDATES

PIRATE UPDATE

An update which focused on punishing websites which constantly accused of copyright infringement was released on August 2012. DMCA(US Digital Millennium Copy right Act) punishes those who stole copyrighted contents.

PARKED DOMAIN UPDATE

During the 2011-2012 period, a large amount of parked domains (internet domain name is registered but is not in live condition) were reported and Google has to introduce a new update which removed all the parked domains. Some were mistakenly removed and a new update Parked domain bug released to solve it on April 16,2012.

EXACT  MATCH DOMAIN (EMD) UPDATE

Google announced that parked domain which was Exact Match Domains will be  removed from the websites. This led to a large-scale reduction in the presence of EMDs in the search results. This update was announced on 27 September 2012.

MOBILEGEDDON UPDATE

In 2015, April 21 Google declared that website which are not mobile friendly will go down in ranking and just after one year on May 12,2016 Google started ranking websites based on mobile friendly feature and most of the sites were transformed to mobile friendly websites.

Sujith. A