Keywords are the bedrock of a quality SEO strategy.

They influence everything from site structure to the type of content you create. Keywords are what our customers use to find us online.

That means your competitors are also performing their keyword research strategies against you.

Let's discuss competitor keyword research, what it means for your SEO, and how you can use competitor keyword analysis to your benefit.

What is a Competitor Keyword Analysis?

Before we answer this question, let's first define a competitor keyword.

A competitor keyword is any term or phrase that a company in your industry uses to vie for improved SERP rankings. They use these keywords to plan their webpage content, paid ads, blog articles, and more.

This is no different than what you should be doing for your brand's website.

A competitor keyword analysis is a process of actively researching the keywords a competitor is targeting. You can use that knowledge to investigate how the brand is using those keywords.

If a competitor outranks your brand, you can investigate their keyword research to discern what makes their content superior to Google.

Conversely, you can identify weaknesses in their keyword strategy and exploit them to improve your rankings. If your team can create more engaging, high-quality content, you may be able to leapfrog them in SERPs.

Effectively, a competitor keyword analysis is like a road map. Take a look at your surroundings, determine what gets results and what doesn't, and adjust your SEO strategy accordingly.

How to Perform Competitor Keyword Research?

Competitor keyword research is a straightforward process. However, there are a few steps you'll need to take before you can get down to the finer details.

Step 1 - Identify Your Top Competitors

The first step is to determine which competitors in your industry are in direct competition with you online.

Your top competitors will demonstrate these characteristics:

• They offer products or services that are similar to yours
• They target a similar audience
• They’re close in ranking for the same or similar keywords
• You can reasonably compete with an effective strategy and budget

Your closest competitors will also vary based on how large of an area you serve.

If you are a local brand, you'll want to focus on businesses in your industry within the same county and surrounding areas. You can perform a quick Google search to bring up the nearest companies. Bear in mind that the brands ranking well online may differ from the ones you may be directly aware of or interact with in person.

For example, if you're a brewery, you could search breweries near meā  or brewery zip code.ā  Google will pull up a list of the nearest competitors. Specifically, you'll be interested in the local 3-pack that appears at the top of the SERP.

Brands that earn the 3-pack ranking demonstrate exceptional SEO. This is the result of many factors including NAP optimization, user reviews, and effective keyword selections. You can also check out high-ranking results just below that just miss the cut for these positions.

National or eCommerce competitor analysis is similar with the exception that there is no local 3-pack. You'll want to search for online retailers that deal with the same or similar products as your business.

Bear in mind that the size and scope of the brand are important when determining competition. Your small online startup is not going to have the resources necessary to dethrone a corporate juggernaut like Amazon.

Focus on brands like you that manage to obtain and withhold the top organic rankings. It's their strategies that you'll want to investigate if you want to improve.

Step 2 - Investigate Competitor Websites with SEO Tools

With your top competitors identified, you should have a list of domains in hand.

There are myriad free and paid SEO tools to assist with competitor keyword research.

1. Semrush

Semrush is an amazing keyword research tool that allows you to research by specific terms or via domain.

You can take one of your competitor domains, enter into the organic research field, and instantly generate a list of keywords found on their site.

Alternatively, you can enter your domain. Then, underneath Domain Analytics, choose Competitors. This will generate a list of keyword rankings for your site and compare them to other domains that are just above or below you in SERPs.

Semrush allows you to see a variety of insightful metrics including:

• Position rankings
• Average search volume
• Keyword difficulty
• Cost-per-click
• Traffic percentage by domain
• How many times a domain appears as a result for a keyword

Semrush also offers a variety of filters that allow you to customize your search by specific geographic locations.

It starts at $119/95/month with the ability to track up to 500 unique keywords. However, they do offer a free trial so that you can determine if this platform is right for your business.

2. WordStream

WordStream is a platform that puts a greater emphasis on PPC marketing.

However, they do offer a free keyword tool with many of the same features and benefits as Semrush.

The research process is similar. You can enter any keyword or URL into the search tool and instantly find a list of relevant search terms.

It offers some of the same key metrics including search volume and CPC. It also has a competition metric, showing how difficult it will be to rank for that keyword. This is comparable to Semrush's keyword difficulty.

Step 3 - Compile Your Research

After you research your listed competitor domains, you need to organize your findings.

Compile all of the discovered keywords and their associated metrics into a format that's easy for your team to follow. Your SEO tool of choice will likely offer the ability to take all of your collected data and export it into a user-friendly Excel file. You can then import data from Excel into various analytics tools to further manipulate and analyze the information for deeper insights.

Semrush offers its Keyword Gap tool for this express purpose. After entering the root domains of the competitors you wish to track, simply export the data into a file format of your choosing.

Likewise, you can download any WordStream reports as a CSV file, which can be easily uploaded into Microsoft Excel. If you're working on a paid ads campaign, know that these files can also interact with Google Ads to assist with planning.

Step 4 - Analyze the Competitor Keyword Data

Now that we've isolated the data, we can begin to conduct a proper assessment of our top competitors.

For starters, it's a smart idea to eliminate keywords with a high difficulty from contention. However, do not delete the data. While it's unwise to burn resources on keywords that won't generate the best ROI, you might be better positioned to target them at a later date.

Keywords that feature a high difficulty are in strong contention by several parties. Those brands have likely been pursuing those keywords for some time, making it virtually impossible for you to make any headway at this time.

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With those terms eliminated, you should now have a much shorter list comparably.

Next, begin the process of reviewing keywords used by specific competitors. Some of these may be terms that your team is already trying to use for rankings. There may also be additional terms that are not present in your SEO strategy.

Think carefully about which missing terms are most applicable to your brand. If the keyword seems to describe something tangentially, but not directly related to your business, you can eliminate it from contention.

This should leave you with a list of the following:

• Keywords used by both your brand and competitors
• Keywords you’re not currently using, but present real opportunities for better rankings

Step 5 - Check Out Competitor Keyword Usage in Action

The final step in this process is to investigate how your competitors utilize the keyword for rankings.

This applies to both types of keywords we narrowed down in the previous step. Particularly, you'll want to focus on competitors that currently outrank you for terms you have in common.

You can do this by navigating to the URL that is ranking for the keyword in question.

Consider what the competitor is doing with the content. Many factors can contribute to superior content rankings including:

• The subject matter
• The quality of the content
• Content layout (headlines, sub-headers, clean organization)
• Internal linking and anchoring
• Keyword frequency
• Secondary and tertiary keyword usage

Also, look for other success indicators such as likes or shares. If a page or a particular piece of content is gaining large engagement numbers, you'll want to take note. Let the consumer tell you what content they want to see.

Of course, additional off-page factors may contribute to superior rankings and domain authority for a competitor. Among these are backlinks, meaning that other sources share the competitor's content with their audience.

Keywords by themselves simply tell you where to aim. However, by taking the time to better understand why a domain ranks higher for a keyword, you can gain real insight as to how you can adjust your strategy.

Also, do not simply attempt to copy or imitate the competitor directly. Focus on the aspects of your brand that help it stand out. Then, use that unique perspective to add flavor to content that only you can provide.

Finally, don't ignore or rule out competitors that you're currently beating. Rankings can change overnight with how frequently Google's algorithm changes. Stay up-to-date with their keyword and content strategies, and always assume that you could fall back in rankings at any time.

Conclusion - Should You Use Competitor Keywords?

A competitor keyword analysis is critical for any successful SEO strategy.

To improve your ROI, you need to make gains in your organic traffic and rankings. You cannot achieve this without proper keyword selection. Capitalizing on the right search terms will help you connect with the right users and help you outshine competitors in the same industry.

Whether or not you should use a competitor keyword depends upon key factors.

• Does the keyword directly pertain to my business?
• How difficult is it to rank for this keyword?
• Can I use my unique value proposition to outrank my competitor for this keyword?

If the keyword satisfies one or more of these conditions, you may want it to consider for use either now or down the line.

Finally, high keyword rankings among competitors will tell you a lot about their marketing strategies. Pay close attention to the type of content they create, how they present it, what makes it strong, and when it presents a weakness.

Then, use all of this information to guide your content creation process. Consider how you can differentiate your brand from the competition, and add that unique spin to your keyword-focused content.

There has been a tremendous change in Internet usage behavior across the planet, especially since the pandemic outbreak in 2020. More and more small and medium scale businesses chose to go digital to serve customers' needs and comply with the COVID protocol. They needed digital marketing agencies to reach their audience, generate leads, and meet the requirements of the customers' shifting mindsets.

Digital marketing agencies also cropped up globally to bridge the demand and supply gap. However, an agency can't specialize in all marketing streams such as PPC, social media, video, and content marketing, which is a major challenge agencies face. This is also a significant reason why agencies can't scale swiftly.

Most online marketing agencies are unable to expand their capacity or expertise as per clients' requirements. How can you realistically shatter those boundaries? In such a situation, DashClicks comes to your rescue as a white label agency and online marketing fulfillment solutions.

If you are a marketing agency consistently onboarding clients, scaling rapidly, offering new products, and looking to expand your team, you can leverage white label services to solve your woes.

What Are White Label Marketing Services?

In the current market conditions, where technology and trends change rapidly, white labeling has emerged as a popular business model at the agency level. It allows you to leverage the expertise of the external teams to ensure the agency's success.

For example, DashClicks offers fulfillment services for SEO, PPC, social media posting, directory listings, and Facebook ads. These services help you acquire enhanced capacity and provide multiple services to increase growth and ROI. Furthermore, it involves less stress as fulfillment teams have experienced professionals working at the backend. So, you need not worry about quality, client satisfaction, and affordability.

Most digital marketing agencies provide web development, web design, SEO, and search engine marketing services. Suppose you specialize in web design, but your client also needs SEO and search advertising marketing solutions.

In such a scenario, hiring white label services is the best way. When you employ white label marketing services, you get expert, end-to-end solutions from your white label partner for your client so that you can deliver them under your branding.

However, many agency owners aren’t mentally prepared for this business model. There are two reasons behind it,

• They want to exercise extreme control over processes
• They are apprehensive about the quality of services white label companies offer

So, several agency owners never dare to take that step forward and trust external parties. Maybe because they aren't aware of the value white label outsourcing partners offer.

As a matter of fact, both these fears are baseless!

However, global technology giants such as WhatsApp, Google, and Apple frequently use white label outsourcing services to meet their complex business requirements. These business processes are often critical in running projects smoothly and finishing them on time.

How DashClicks' White Label Marketing Services Can Help Grow Your Agency?

DashClicks can help you grow your agency in numerous ways. Here are a few things it allows you to do to take baby steps to scale your business beyond your wildest imaginations.

1. Make Vendor Management Easy

Customers and agencies love one-stop-shops. White labeling simplifies vendor management for the agencies and makes it easier to track everything. Many of your clients might ask you to provide many other services because it's convenient for them to buy everything under one roof. These services can be SEO, web design, search engine advertising, email marketing, social media posting, and Facebook ads. This way, agencies won't have to manage multiple vendors to handle service fulfillment.

2. Use Highly Effective Prospecting Tools

DashClicks offer InstaSites and InstaReports, which are highly effective prospecting tools. DashClicks have been successfully using it for a long time. InstaSites app is a heart stealer that creates professional-grade websites of about 25 pages that are niche-based. The InstaSites software is a website creation tool that allows you to rapidly generate brand-new websites in a few clicks.

InstaReports is another prospecting tool that generates comprehensive marketing reports with tips and insights that can improve your business.

While these reports will help you in client acquisition, they will also offer valuable, actionable data that can help your clients better understand their digital marketing efforts.

3. Create a Swift Onboarding Process for Your Customers

Onboarding is always cumbersome, especially when it's manual. An easy onboarding process is vital to any agency's success. This is a honeymoon period with your clients, where you get access to their social media pages and website CMS. It also includes taking access to the Business Ad Manager.

It happens through its automated onboarding center. It minimizes manual processes and delays. The platform gathers essential information from your clients using its intelligent onboarding process. The platform also sends automated email reminders to clients, urging them to achieve their onboarding in time.

4. Increase Service Offerings for Clients

If you are serious about reducing vendor clutter and want to streamline your services, hire professional white label services like DashClicks. It's illogical to outsource your directory listing services, SEO, PPC, and content from different vendors and freelancers on Fiverr and UpWork. It will create chaos everywhere.

DashClicks offers online marketing fulfillment services to clients under one roof by trained and dedicated full-time professionals to prevent unwanted delays and inferior-quality jobs. With white label services, you can expand your portfolio with complete confidence in the quality and level of expertise your white label partner offers. It also helps you become flexible and able to deliver what you promise.

5. Hire Experts at an Affordable Cost

According to data released by FastCompany, in the United States, 30% of employers waste more than $50,000 annually on making bad hiring choices. On the flip side, a white label marketing company like DashClicks allows you to hire an entire team to skip everything from recruitment, orientation, training, salary, benefits, insurance, and other HR formalities.

It also includes the productive time wasted in looking for efficient web designers, social media managers, and content marketers, not to mention the other expenses such as salary packages, benefits, and taxes you pay. The small monthly cost you pay to the white label agency allows you to hire a team of experts and trained professionals that you can trust. These people know the trade tricks, and their services help your clients achieve their goals.

When you outsource white label services from DashClicks, you are not concerned with absenteeism, leaves, and low productivity issues. Most of the white label services are automated and are just a click away!

6. Focus On Scaling Your Business

While running an agency, many routine tasks keep you busy, such as preparing reports, listing on directories, writing copies, and optimizing campaigns. When you hire white label services, you source these services from the experts through the most advanced tools. So, you deliver the best services to your clients that increase their loyalty and trust.

It lets you focus on your front-end, i.e., sales and other service offerings, while the white label team delivers what you need to offer to keep your clients happy.

You can dedicate this time to building relationships with your clients and delivering excellent services. It helps you with client retention as well. With the help of the white label services, you can take on as much business as you want without worrying about expanding your team. So, you focus on growth, keeping your revenue streams busy. It helps you scale.

In the meantime, let the white label agency do the heavy lifting for you.

Final Thoughts

This is the winning formula for the agency owners, where they can get an entire marketing team to work for them and get the service they can bank upon. It helps them add loyal clients. With white label services, you can sell many services such as SEO, PPC, search engine advertising, and content marketing to your clients and keep them contented. With DashClicks' white-label services delivered by the experts, your clients achieve fantastic results and successfully grow their businesses.

DashClicks enhances your capacities with the help of sophisticated tools, a white label platform, and a single dashboard. All of that comes at highly affordable rates, so you can achieve success in your agency business and keep it rolling.

No other marketing strategy may be more powerful than word-of-mouth marketing.

Studies suggest that word-of-mouth marketing is five times as effective as PPC campaigns. This is more staggering considering that you spend nothing when a loyal customer spreads the good word.

However, building those initial relationships is a more complicated endeavor.

This article will explore:

• What is Word-of-Mouth Marketing?
• Why WoM Marketing is Still Important in 2022?
• How to Motivate Your Audience?
• Effective Strategies for WoM Marketing

What is Word-of-Mouth Marketing?

Word-of-mouth marketing refers to any time an existing or previous customer speaks positively about and promotes interest in a brand.

All of us experience word-of-mouth marketing daily. Any time we share our interest in a product or service, friends or family may share recommendations.

These word-of-mouth exchanges happen all the time, cost nothing, and generate valued business.

Why Word-of-Mouth Marketing is Still Important in 2022?

The benefits of word-of-mouth marketing are abundant. Here are just a few to convince you of just how powerful this advertising channel can be.

1. Word-of-Mouth Marketing Builds Trust

Think about your perception of a typical advertisement.

They’re often noisy, intrusive, and abundant. Even if an ad might teach us about something we’re interested in, we ultimately understand that a business is trying to profit off of that interest. We’re much less likely to trust a paid ad or promotion from that perspective.

Nielsen, an audience measurement and analytics company, finds that 92% of consumers trust personal recommendations over all other marketing.

That’s a level of confidence that’s simply possible to recreate on your own. While you may strongly value a customer’s well-being, your brand survives on profit, meaning that your motives will always be questioned.

2. Referred Customers Have a Higher Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Customer lifetime value is a metric businesses use to determine the actual value of a customer over their lifespan.

You can calculate CLV with the following formula:

We also know that, on average, it costs a business five times the amount to secure a new customer than to retain existing ones.

Here's how word-of-mouth marketing fits into this picture.

Whenever you invest in a loyal customer, they're much more likely to share recommendations with others based on positive experiences. Those consumers may then become customers based on the referral.

That means that you gain value from new customers without spending anything to acquire them.

Furthermore, the data shows that a referred customer has an average 16% higher CLV than a non-referred customer that features the same attributes. Referred customers also show roughly an 18% lower churn rate than their non-referred counterparts.

For brands that wish to improve revenue and grow sustainably, generating quality word-of-mouth marketing is non-negotiable.

3. Generate Compelling Content with Loyal Customers

Satisfied customers generate social proof for your brand.

We know that outside recommendations generate better results than paid advertisements. Therefore, there is an opportunity to combine customer stories with your marketing vehicles to create compelling user-generated content.

UGC can come in the form of text, photos, videos, or creative works that speak positively about your brand. The work still comes from an outside source, you're just leveraging your following to give it greater reach.

How to Motivate Your Audience for Word-of-Mouth Marketing?

While word-of-mouth marketing generates free results, you still need an important component - loyal customers.

If you're struggling to generate solid WoM, you need to first invest in your existing clientele. While you may provide a useful product or service, it takes exceptional customer care to generate a passionate, loyal following.

Here are some quick tips for motivating your audience to speak up about your brand.

1. Focus on Connections, Not Numbers

Most modern digital marketing primarily focuses on data collection, and for great reason.

Between PPC platforms, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and other analytics tools, we can easily collect insights about our daily visitors.

Paid ads specialists then utilize this data to curate marketing campaigns directed at key demographics. Segmented marketing will generate superior results than campaigns with less focused targeting.

However, many experts get too caught up in viewing their users as mere data. Customers feel the disconnect, and that's why you aren't developing relationships.

The good news is that you can correct this process by training your sales teams accordingly. Your brand should be striving to give each new prospect an exceptional buying experience. Listen before you speak, prioritize their needs, and think about what you can do to make their lives better.

Each person is different, so results can be unpredictable. However, we can start by focusing on the key qualities of a genuine individual. This includes kindness, humility, compassion, and empathy.

In a transactional sense, you can provide a better experience than your competitors by rewarding both new and loyal customers. Exclusive discounts, gifts, and thoughtful service are often enough to get people talking.

2. Deliver an Exceptional Product or Service

This may be intuitive, but it's a point worth acknowledging.

The entire reason customers come to your brand is for your offerings. If your goods or services are substandard or worse than a competitor's, there's nothing worth sharing with friends or family. An experience that fails to hit the mark may earn negative word-of-mouth marketing, which can rapidly tarnish your reputation.

Get back to the basics. Focus on building a team that's genuinely passionate about what your brand aims to provide to others. Work hard to make something exceptional that's worth the buzz.

Finally, listen to your audience. Even amid complaints or negative reviews, they are telling you how you can improve. Taking your lumps and utilizing that feedback may be the first step in fostering goodwill with alienated customers.

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Building a Word-of-Mouth Marketing Strategy

You can start to build customer motivation by utilizing related marketing channels. Here are a few strategies used by top brands to generate positive buzz around the web and in person.

1. Get Active on Social Media

If you want to focus on building connections, there's no better marketing channel than social media. It's in the name.

Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube function differently than other parts of the web.

A website, for example, provides a solo user experience. Your audience likely found your site by asking a question or typing certain keywords into Google. They then check out your site for information and eventually leave.

Social media is different in that it's a communal experience. Thousands of updates go out every minute that allow each user to participate in new conversations. They could be discussing local happenings, national events, or viral content. They may also be talking about you.

Engaging in the conversation on social media helps to build those connections. You can alter your public perception to make your brand seem personable, rather than being a cold, profit-driven entity.

Be sure to utilize a social media expert that understands how to use the local lingo. Capitalize on trending hashtags to help your content connect with the right audience. You may quickly gain likes and shares, which in themselves are a form of word-of-mouth marketing.

2. Gather Reviews & Testimonials

This tip harkens back to our understanding of consumer-to-consumer recommendations.

Positive reviews about your brand create social proof. Even though the review isn't from a personal connection, it can satisfy the need for a trustworthy recommendation.

Reviews are so important that they act as a ranking factor in local SEO. When you search for “restaurants near me,” you get a list of results accompanied by star ratings and testimonials.

Naturally, businesses with higher ratings take precedence over results with low ratings or with zero reviews.

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Adding positive reviews to your website helps you to control the narrative. It also demonstrates that you value the customer experience and helps you forge those connections that lead to quality word-of-mouth marketing.

3. Initiate a Referral Program

Another way to motivate customers to talk about you is to reward them for their efforts.

A referral program typically offers gifts or exclusive discounts to loyal customers. Any time a new customer makes a purchase based on an existing customer's referral, the existing customer gains the reward.

Typically, referring customers can continuously gain rewards. This makes it beneficial to keep spreading the word about your brand.

Creating the ideal reward is key here. You want to offer something genuinely desirable that will not hurt your bottom line. Think about how much you stand to gain from these new free customer acquisitions. Then, compare that to the amount you're spending to provide the referral reward.

Referral rewards are powerful because a great one offers exponential gain. We know that referred customers exhibit less churn. Therefore, they're more likely to spend and pay the referral forward to even more customers.

4. Start a Content Blog

Content blogs help you market in several ways. If you're trying to improve your website rankings, content becomes a critical part of your SEO strategy.

However, great content can potentially generate positive word-of-mouth buzz.

A high-quality blog offers users educational or entertaining content for the audience. If you present something worth reading, then your users are more likely to share it with peers.

In addition to this, a blog presents the opportunity to build your authority as an industry expert. The better your content serves your readers, the more they will trust you in everything else you have to offer.

5. Promote User-Generated Content

User-generated content is any content that your customers make regarding your brand.

UGC can take many forms including stories, videos, artwork, or photos of themselves enjoying your products or services. In many ways, UGC can serve a similar purpose as testimonials or reviews.

UGC costs nothing to create but can pay dividends for marketing your brand. It establishes trust with new audiences, offers new and creative content for your ads, and shows the public that you value your customers.

All of these help you create a more sociable, genuine, and positive connection with your audience.

6. Create Entertaining Video Content

The power of video content is unquestionable. It’s far more powerful than text-based content or static images.

Wyzowl’s 2022 video marketing report proposes the following stats:

• 94% of marketers report that videos help customers better understand an offering
• 93% say that video contributes to brand awareness
• 81% say that video was a direct factor in increasing sales

Video content is stimulating. Entertaining or insightful video content gets people talking. Some of the most successful marketing campaigns ever started with a simple video that went viral. For a small investment, it can get the entire internet talking about you overnight if you’re successful.

To give your video content the best chance of success, choose a compelling emotion.

Humor is a popular way to go, but heartfelt messages can trigger a response that motivates action. There's a reason why ASPCA's TV spot with Sarah McLachlan still plays today.

Build a Word-of-Mouth Marketing Strategy That Works

Word-of-mouth marketing is desirable for every brand.

Not only is it direct feedback on your positive performance, but it also generates free publicity and lead generation. When you provide something worth sharing, the results will come to you organically.

Referred customers from word-of-mouth are not only free to acquire but statistically exhibit a higher customer lifetime value.

You can motivate your customers to share your brand via word-of-mouth with a variety of strategies.

Take advantage of modern marketing channels like social media, video, and blogs to connect with audiences. Find opportunities to utilize testimonials and user-generated content to foster trust and social proof with new leads.

All of these techniques come back to one key point - personal connection. Appeal to emotion, focus on their needs, and provide the answer to their problems. Positive word-of-mouth will follow naturally.

Client reporting is an important part of running a successful digital marketing agency, thereby making reporting tools crucial for marketing agencies. Most agencies use third-party tools, but they don't want to see the tool's branding on their reports. It is because third-party logos and branding send a wrong signal to your clients that their work is being subcontracted. It puts a question mark on the efficiency of the agency itself.

Many tools that the agencies use give them a competitive advantage. So, there is no way you can suddenly stop using those tools. But, you would never want your clients to identify the tools you use. It justifies the practice of "white labeling" for agencies as it safeguards their branding interests.

What is a White Label Report?

White labeling allows you to add your own branding to the product or service marketed or sold by you regardless of where you have sourced it.

When we use a third-party reporting software but use our own branding, it's referred to as white label reporting; it doesn't threaten your agency's branding.

Reports are an integral part of your overall branding. That explains why you should include branding in your reports. It also gives a personalized touch to your reports.

Some clients are so demanding that they want their branding. At least, they want a combination of their logo and the agency logo on the reports.

This article discusses the most essential white label reporting features that agencies need. These features will add a touch of branding to your company's deliverables. A white label reporting tool allows you to add your branding in six ways.

1. Allows You to Use Your Agency's Logo

As an agency, you would definitely like to see your logo on the white label reports that you get through your white label solutions partner. The location of the logo is also crucial. Usually, it is placed in the top right corner for better visibility but can also be added to the top left corner.

Your dashboards should also carry your branding. You can always use a Wordmark logo, but you don't need any of the taglines while using it. However, you are free to add a slogan or tagline if you are interested. You can also add your client's logo here, which will help you personalize and quickly sort your reports.

You can also add a logo on the cover page of your report. You can place your logo on the Dashboard in the top left corner. It will help your client feel a sense of belonging.

2. Enables You to Add Your Branding on Cover Pages

A logo on cover pages reinforces your brand. Agencies also use it to impress their clients. Branding everywhere, right? As people frequently see reports, it's crucial to have your branding on the cover pages and the report title, time, and release date. It gives your reports a professional look.

Using a Woodmark rather than a logo will also be treated as a brand element and can be judiciously utilized with brand colors.

Sometimes, your clients would insist on combining your branding with their branding. In such situations, you can choose the colors from the color palette and save the cover page and the report to use later as a template. The next time you create an SEO report, you will not have to redesign your cover page. All you need to do is update the logo design, colors, and title.

3. Allows You to Add Vital Agency Info on Headers and Footers

Sometimes agency owners want to have their branding on every report page. In such situations, we would use branding on headers and footers. It helps your clients or anybody else using the report easily find your contact information. You can add this on every page.

However, avoid cluttering your reports with unnecessary information. Also, never paste images other than the logo because they look messed up. If you don't use your logo or Wordmark, you can use your agency's brand fonts and use your primary color for the text. It would suffice your branding needs.

4. Allows You to Match Your Brand Colors

Make sure you don't use unnecessary colors that are not your brand colors. In your reports, use your brand colors only. For example, if you have maroon in your palette, you can use that as the primary color of the font against similar colors such as red or orange. You can also choose specific colors for headings. White labeling also includes the background, row, and column colors in a table and element colors in a chart, such as lines, bars, and pie slices.

5. Enables You to Create Your Email Domain

Agencies share reports through email using PDF files or links to an online report. They also do it directly through the Dashboard. These are the automated solutions, so you need to ensure that they have agency branding in them. For example, the sender's name should appear as xyz@myagency.com and not a third-party domain name autogenerated by your email software, such as no-reply@my-report-vendor.com.

Your email domain strongly represents your branding. It also helps your clients identify the sender to open it. This becomes crucial when clients use strict email filters that dump such unbranded emails straight into the spam folder. Once your client safelists your email domain, your email will not land in their spam folder.

Sometimes, an agency assigns an account manager to send such reports and other important communication to specific clients. The email is delivered by the account manager's email account, which comes with an agency-branded domain. So, just by hitting reply on the email, your client can easily communicate with the right person, who is an account manager in this case.

6. Allows You to Host Dashboards On Your Domain

Agencies provide their clients with access to their white label reports through the white label dashboard. Luckily, you can also add your branding here. While providing the access, the agencies would use a unique subdomain to host all of the white-label reports generated for their clients.

All the clients have to visit that subdomain to view the reports by login into the URL, i.e., https://dashboards.yourdomain.com. It provides you complete creative control over the Dashboard's appearance and choosing the branding elements as per your wish.

How to Add White-Label Features?

Choosing a white label reporting software that allows you to personalize your white label report entirely is crucial. It applies to online reports, PDF files, and dashboards you create for your clients.

Start Building White-Label Reports With Your Branding

To scale your company and grow it, you need to create a strong brand. It is an identity that helps clients know about the company's services, its mission statement, and values. Your brand also reflects your commitment to your customers.

White label reports include your company's name, logo, brand colors, and other branding elements.

Your clients frequently log into their lead tracking dashboard, where they see your logo and other branding elements such as your agencyā€™s name on the platform and in the URL. Similarly, every time you send them an email about a fresh lead generated, your branding also appears here. According to stimulus and response theory in psychology, it leads to an intense brand reinforcement, where a client thinks of your agency whenever they think of a new lead.

In this episode of Whiteboard Wednesday, i.e. episode 12, Chad Kodary, CEO of DashClicks, discusses efficiently outsourcing digital marketing services. So, if you are a marketing agency looking to offload all the hard work instead of doing it in-house, read on.

I’ll also discuss how to use an outsourcing partner efficiently. To begin, you can do the following:

• Scale-up fulfillment
• Focus on the front-end of your business, i.e. sales
• Let a white labeled company like DashClicks handle all the back-end work

It will keep your hands free to focus more on sales and revenue for your agency. So, first and foremost, let’s talk about why agencies cannot scale.

Here at DashClicks, we provide white label fulfillment services. DashClicks is a white label platform for marketing agencies and your clients. Thousands of agencies use our platform and white label fulfillment services, and we’ve been doing this for a long time.

How to Scale Up Efficiently?

We’ve seen a lot of trends, and one of the biggest trends that we’re shocked to see here at DashClicks is the number of agencies failing to scale. Why does it happen? Why do agencies fail at scaling their fulfillment and their services?

There can be different reasons for that. So, let's discuss how to avoid those issues and scale up efficiently.

Disadvantages of Using Multiple Vendors

The first reason most agencies fail at scaling and creating scalable fulfillment is that they use multiple vendors. For example, someone uses DashClicks for SEO services and other white label fulfillment partners for their Facebook Ads, Google Ads, and content requirements.

The drawback of such a practice is that it leads to chaos as different vendors have different processes, contact persons, and schedules. Such a matrix leads to a management disaster that can drive you insane. Furthermore, it prevents scaling, especially if you have numerous clients. This system may collapse if you have 50-100 clients.

Imagine your team members interacting with a dozen teams and white label partners. It makes it very difficult to keep the data streamlined and organized in one place.

Reporting is another issue that you might confront. Imagine outsourcing on-page SEO, off-page SEO, backlinks, and directory listings from several freelancers on Fiverr, UpWork, PeoplePerHour, etc.

The entire practice may become inefficient if you put 50 clients through these processes.

The Takeaway: Never fall into this miserable matrix of using multiple fulfillment partners. This process is not sustainable.

Experience the Difference With DashClicks

At DashClicks, we offer all fulfillment services in-house. We don't source it from the marketplace. Instead, we have full-time employees and trained teams to take care of your campaigns. It ensures reliability, timely delivery, quality, accountability, and robust communication. The entire DashClicks ecosystem is designed to help you scale faster.

We are already past the experimental stages and have a proven track record of solid white label fulfillment partnerships with agencies. We have built a system that ensures your success.

What makes this entire ecosystem conducive to the success of agency business? It’s fast and hassle-free, and has the following advantages:

• Allows you to order white label fulfillment with the click of a button
• Enables you to automate the onboarding process
• You speak to one team through the Slack workspace
• Sign in to one reporting dashboard in DashClicks to log in to the platform
• Your clients get their own client dashboards where they can see their reports

Apart from that, there is no need to deal with different freelancers when you use our platform. It increases your overall efficiency.

Source: Ep. 12 ā 05:33

Disadvantages of Using Freelancers

There are many disadvantages to using freelancers. They disappear suddenly, citing different excuses, and they may steal your clients. And that's not the way you would want to scale up your fulfillment partnerships, especially at the beginning.

The most efficient way to do it is to get it all done by one vendor. They will produce quality results and help you maintain consistency. The most significant advantage of using reliable white label partners is that they will help you scale, whether you add five or 100 clients.

The Takeaway: You can use freelancers in an emergency, but you shouldn't make it a long-term strategy. It's not a sustainable practice.

Scale Your Way up Using a Single Dashboard

While choosing a white label service partner, you need to ensure that you can offload all of your customers. They should have one dashboard to log into, so you can easily manage and track all your projects, quickly.

Life becomes more manageable when you create a system that can do things consistently to scale your business. On the flip side, management becomes a nightmare with multiple vendors, and you are always busy firefighting. So, hiring a reputed white label fulfillment partner is a winning solution for your business. With just one team to speak to, you can save almost 70% of your productive time.

Benefits of Having One Point of Contact

When you order fulfillment services from DashClicks and get onboard for the first time, you get a 30-minute onboarding call with your account executive. You'll interact with the DashClicks team using Slack Workspace. You can also give its access to your employees.

We assign a dedicated account executive and a client success rep to your account. They will help deliver your work with our fulfillment teams on the back-end.

Our trained teams are always at your service removing all the hassles of hiring, recruiting & staffing, payroll, vacations, software expenses, and equipment. We'll manage all the stuff for you, so you can focus on just one thing ā€” getting clients. This is the best thing about outsourcing from a white label fulfillment partner.

An Amazing and Powerful Dashboard

Secondly, our dashboard is fantastic. This is a blessing for both agency owners and their clients. You can check analytics and results right on the dashboard. Apart from analytics and reporting, you also get a built-in CRM, automations platform, and many other features in the dashboard.

Our analytics app offers cross-channel reporting and supports multiple integrations such as Facebook Ads, Google Ads, call tracking, Google Analytics etc. You can do these integrations with the click of a button.

Source: Ep. 12 ā 10:34

Leverage Our Expertise & Robust Processes

We have been doing this since 2009, so we know how to deliver digital marketing services. We specialize in many digital marketing services such as Facebook Ads, Google Ads, search engine optimization, content marketing, social media posting, and directory listings.

Our teams have provided these five core services for the past 13 years. As a result, we have successfully built a solid process around these.

Very few people know the importance of processes in successfully running an agency business. To deliver outstanding results month after month, itā€™s extremely important to streamline your processes.

Final Words

We are not talking about your efficiency at the front end of the business. To produce quality results at scale, you need to have robust processes in your fulfillment department. To achieve that, you should avoid the following:

• Missing tasks
• Not making and working on a schedule

The inability to make a routine and stick to it is also responsible for the failure of many businesses. Along with energy and resources, you should also have a winning strategy and robust processes.

To explore DashClicks’ incredible features, create an account today and go to your dashboard. You’ll be amazed at the level of automation it offers.

We’re super excited to speak with you, so feel free to discuss the challenges you’re facing or ask away ‌questions‌.

See you in the next episode of Whiteboard Wednesday. Have a fantastic day!

Crawling and indexing your web pages is a critical component of any SEO strategy.

To achieve these goals, marketing specialists utilized a free tool known as Google Search Console. This application monitors your website to track health errors that directly impact performance and search engine rankings.

When analyzing your website, you may encounter something known as an index coverage issue.

This article will explain what indexing issues are, why they occur, and what you can do to fix Google index coverage issues moving forward.

What Are Index Coverage Issues?

To better explain an index coverage issue, let's first explore how the indexing process works.

To manually submit your site to Google Search Console, you will need something known as an XML sitemap. This site map lists all of the pages present on your website along with their corresponding URLs.

Otherwise, Googlebot will periodically attempt to crawl your site by following links on and off of the domain.

Crawling is the process Googlebot uses to discover a URL and read the content on the page. Once it reaches the URL, it begins the process of indexing the data.

Indexing is the process in which Googlebot attempts to understand the content. It does this by checking for keywords, analyzing headlines, reading content, and following internal and outbound links. The better it can understand a page, the more accurately it can “grade” a URL for search rankings.

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With this information in mind, let's answer the initial question.

An index coverage issue happens if something prevents Google from properly crawling and indexing a URL.

You can identify an index coverage issue by checking your Google Search Console Index Coverage Report for one of four status notifications.

The Four Index Status Codes and How to Fix Them

When the indexing process is complete, each URL will feature an index coverage status. You can find a full list of these statuses courtesy of Google here.

Valid

Ideally, all of your URLs will have the “Valid” status.

This means that Googlebot was able to successfully index the webpage without any notable issues.

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You will only receive a notification if you did not include this URL in your sitemap. If you intend to index a page, always be sure to properly list it within the XML file.

Warning

If a URL displays the “Warning” status, it can indicate several things.

First, know that the Googlebot did index the page despite the warning. You will need to check the reasoning for the status of the report for greater details. The two types of warnings are as follows:

• Indexed, though blocked by robots.txt – Googlebot indexed the page despiting blocking it with your robots.txt file. This typically occurs when an external website is linking the blocked page. In this scenario, Googlebot still follows the outside link to the page and indexes it.

• Page indexed without content – Google was able to index the page, but some factor is preventing it from reading the actual content. You can refer to the coverage section of your report for more information.

How to Fix Warning Status Indexing Issues?

A. Indexed, Though Blocked by Robots.txt

If you intend to block the URL from further indexing, you must add a ‘noindex’ meta tag or header on the page for the HTTP response. Your meta tag should look like this:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex>

If you instead wish to add an HTTP response header, Google recommends the following:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

(…)

X-Robots-Tag: noindex

(…)

Furthermore, Google instructs us to not add the blocked URL to the robots.txt file. If you attempt to block using this method, Googlebot cannot check the page for the appropriate ‘noindex’ tag.

B. Page Indexed Without Content

This warning only occurs in rare circumstances. The most common culprit is accidentally publishing a webpage to your site that has zero content to read.

However, pages can also receive this warning if you are using a practice called cloaking.

Cloaking is the act of using technical processes to show Googlebot one type of content while showing your users something different than what is indexed. Cloaking is against Google guidelines and can prevent your website from appearing in any search results.

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If you receive this warning, but cannot find a discernible cause, check with your development team for a possible hack. After addressing the problem, you can resubmit your website to Google for proper indexing.

Excluded

The ‘excluded’ response code typically appears by user choice.

Your SEO team may choose to prevent Googlebot from indexing a page for several reasons. The most common is having multiple versions of one page with duplicate content. To avoid penalties, you may exclude a page from the indexing process.

If you do not wish to exclude a URL, check your coverage report for one of the following messages:

• Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag – The URL has a meta tag or response code instructing Googlebot to avoid indexing the page.

• Blocked by page removal tool  – An authorized website user blocked the URL with a URL removal request. These requests will expire after roughly 90 days.

• Blocked by robots.txt – A robots.txt file is blocking the indexing process.

• Blocked due to unauthorized request (401) – Googlebot was unable to continue the crawl after receiving a 401 authorization response put in place by the website owner.

• Crawled, currently not indexed – Googlebot crawled the page but has yet to index it. In most scenarios, the indexing will follow soon after.

• Discovered, currently not indexed – Googlebot identified the URL but stopped short of crawling to prevent site overload.

• Alternate page with proper canonical tag – Google recognizes this URL as a duplicate of an existing page. The other page has a canonical tag prompting it to avoid indexing.

• Duplicate without user-selected canonical – If two pages have duplicate content, and neither has a canonical tag, Googlebot will attempt to differentiate the two. This URL received the non-canonical tag.

• Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user – Google sees your canonical tag but thinks this URL should be the one to receive the tag.

• Not found (404) – Googlebot found this URL organically only to receive a 404 error.

• Page with redirect – Googlebot will not index redirect URLs.

• Soft 404 – The URL leads to a page with a soft 404 not found message.

• Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical – This URL is likely one of the multiple pages that contain duplicate content. However, none of these pages has the canonical tag.

• Blocked due to access forbidden (403) – The URL features restricted access prompting Googlebot to provide credentials. This almost always results in an incorrect error response on your site.

• Blocked due to other 4xx issue – This applies to an error caused by any other unnamed 4xx code.

How to Fix Excluded Status Indexing Issues?

1. Excluded by noindex' Tag

If you meant to use a noindex' tag, this code requires no response.

If you wish to submit the page for indexing, simply remove the noindex' tag from the page.

2. Blocked by Page Removal Tool

Avoid using URL removal requests and instead, use the robots.txt directive. Make additional attempts to crawl the URL for indexing before the request expires.

3. Blocked by Robots.txt

If you meant to block a URL from indexing, remove it from the robots.txt file and use the noindex' tag instead.

Otherwise, simply remove the URL from the robots.txt file.

4. Blocked Due to Unauthorized Request (401)

Remove the authorization requirements you have in place to access the page. More importantly, look into how this URL was discovered and address any related issues like broken or toxic links.

5. Crawled, Currently Not Indexed

Check the date of the last crawl. If it was recent, allow Google more time to index the page. Typically, no action is necessary.

6. Discovered, Currently Not Indexed

Google likely rescheduled the crawl. No action is necessary but check back to ensure that the site is properly indexed soon.

7. Alternate Page with Proper Canonical Tag

You added a canonical tag to a page with duplicate content. If this for some reason is incorrect, remove the canonical tag from the other URL and add it to the correct one.

8. Duplicate without User-Selected Canonical

Your site has more than one page with duplicate content. Select the most valuable one and add the canonical tag.

9. Not Found (404)

If the page no longer exists, meaning the 404 is intentional, no action is required.

If the page does exist at a new URL, you must add a redirect to the new location.

10. Page with Redirect

Google does not index redirects. No further action is necessary.

11. Soft 404

If the page no longer exists, make sure it returns a proper 404.

If you do not mean for a 404 to appear, you need to update this page with appropriate content for proper indexing.

12. Duplicate, Submitted URL Not Selected as Canonical

If you wish to index this as the URL, you will need to use the canonical tag. Google will index this page and prevent the other duplicates from being included.

13. Blocked Due to Access Forbidden (403)

If you wish to index this page, remove all restrictions preventing users and Googlebot from accessing the page.

If you intend for the page to be this way, be sure to utilize the noindex' tag as described earlier in this article.

14. Blocked Due to Other 4xx Issue

You will need to investigate the particular URL to understand its behavior. Be on the lookout for the 4xx status code and investigate what needs to be done to correct the issue. These errors range from 400 to 451, making it difficult to diagnose with a quick tutorial.

Error

The error code appears on your Coverage Report when Googlebot is unable to crawl the pages that are eligible for proper indexing.

The types of error codes are as follows:

• Server error (5xx) – This occurs when the website’s server is unable to fulfill the request to access the URL at the start of the process.

• Redirect error – One of a few direct errors occurred. This prevents Googlebot from reaching the desired URL for indexing.

• Submitted URL blocked by robots.txt – You blocked this page from indexing using your robots.txt file.

• Submitted URL marked ‘noindex’ – This occurs when you ask Google to index a page that has the ‘noindex’ tag.

• Submitted URL seems to be a Soft 404  – Googlebot crawled the page and found it to be a Soft 404.

• Submitted URL returns unauthorized request (401) – Authorization requirements prevented Google from crawling and indexing the page.

• Submitted URL not found (404) – You asked Google to index a URL that no longer exists.

• Submitted URL returned 403 – Something on the page is preventing anonymous users from gaining access. This is usually regarding a login issue.

• Submitted URL blocked due to other 4xx issue – One of the many 4xx response codes not previously listed prevents Google from indexing the URL.

How to Fix Error Status Indexing Issues?

1. Server Error (5xx)

5xx errors are most commonly a firewall issue. It can also be caused by a DoS protection protocol you have in place to prevent excessive requests to the server. Because Googlebot is making many requests in the indexing process, your security may be halting progress.

You or your hosting provider will need to examine which part of your website’s security is stopping Google. With the correct configurations, the indexing process should be allowed to go on without issue.

You can learn more about server errors from Google here.

2. Redirect Error

There are multiple types of redirect errors. The first step is to identify which one your website currently has.

• Redirect loop – Your redirect chain is taking the user back and forth between the same URLs. You need to check your redirect chain and make sure that the user ends up at the correct URL.

• Chain is too long – If you need to redirect users, you should always point them from URL A to URL B. If you receive this error, your website is redirecting Google too many times, causing it to abandon the crawl. Eliminate unnecessary steps in the chain to resume normally.

• Redirect URL exceeds max URL length – Google has a limitation on how many characters belong in a URL. If you receive this error, look into how you can update the URL or move the content to a new one.

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• A bad or empty URL in the redirect chain - Google recognizes that one step in the chain is preventing normal navigation. Revisit your redirect protocol and make sure that each step points to the right destination.

If you have any more questions or concerns regarding redirects, Google recommends that website owners utilize Lighthouse for these types of errors.

3. Submitted URL Blocked by Robots.txt

If you wish to block a URL from indexing, you should not use robots.txt. Instead, use the noindex' protocol on the page.

If you mean for this page to be indexed, remove it from robots.txt and avoid using any unnecessary tags. Then, resubmit the URL for indexing.

4. Submitted URL Marked noindex'

If you wish to index this URL, you need to remove the noindex' protocol you have in place.

5. Submitted URL Seems to be a Soft 404

If you receive a soft 404 error, you can take one of the following actions depending on the situation.

If the page no longer exists, utilize a true 404 status code to indicate this.

If you moved the content to a new destination, submit the new page for indexing and remove the soft 404 page from the website.

6. Submitted URL Returns Unauthorized Request (401)

You must remove any authorization requirements if you want Googlebot to crawl the page.

7. Submitted URL Not Found (404)

You cannot submit a nonexistent URL for indexing.

If the content exists and you mistakenly used an old URL, update your sitemap with the correct URL.

8. Submitted URL Returned 403

Remove any restrictions that are preventing anonymous users from gaining access.

If you intended to restrict access, utilize the noindex' protocol for this URL.

9. Submitted URL Blocked Due to Other 4XX Issue

As we explained with similar exclusion errors, there are over 50 potential 4xx errors. Read the status description carefully to gain insight as to how you can correct the issue. See if you can replicate the issue or identify the problem using Google's URL inspection tool.

Address Index Coverage Issues Quickly to Protect Your Rankings

Google Search Console is a great boon for helping you publish your website updates quickly. The more you utilize best SEO practices, the more likely you are to see positive gains in SERPs.

Indexing issues are not uncommon. Fortunately, many of them are easily correctable with Google offering many solutions to get you back on track. Healthier websites equate to more satisfied users.

Understanding how Google responds to certain protocols also allows your SEO team to perform actions in your favor. This can protect your rankings as you experiment with website changes.

As long as you stay on top of these notifications, your website should always remain under control. Regardless of website length, utilizing these coverage reports will better serve you in keeping your website healthy.