Starting a business is a dream come true for many entrepreneurs, but making it successful is no small feat. In the wake of a global job crisis in a world struggling to contain a pandemic, visibility on search engines and Google Maps has become more critical than ever; it can make or break your business.

Until 2014, competing with national brands and finding a place on top of search engine result pages was almost impossible for small businesses. However, Google provided them a golden window when it rolled out the first Pigeon algorithm update in July 2014.

The update allowed Google to suggest local businesses and stores when users search location-specific keywords such as “Spa near me” and “Dentist in Downtown Miami.” As Google opened its gates for local businesses, proactive entrepreneurs leveraged the opportunity, making local SEO and directory listings a key determiner in ensuring a business’s online visibility.

What makes local SEO so crucial for brick-and-mortar stores is that 72% of users who perform a local search end up visiting a physical storefront within a 5-mile radius of their existing location. According to another report published in Search Engine Land, 78% of location-based mobile searches end up in successful offline sales.

An Introduction to Local SEO and Directory Listings

Local SEO is a pack of SEO tactics that marketers perform in a sequence to improve your business's visibility on search engines for people nearby. It's ideal for businesses, stores, and service providers that operate in the physical space, such as flower shops, grocery stores, hospitals, physicians, roofers, and plumbers.

It includes everything from creating a business listing to ensuring that the company's regional office appears on Google local search and voice search. It's also known as citation management. Google combines it with reviews and ratings, making it easier for potential customers to trust your business.

SEO professionals create a powerful local-centric social media presence to boost your business’s engagement with regional audiences. Adding local keywords is an integral part of local SEO. Therefore, marketers deploy the keywords people use to find businesses in their location. For example, “Spa in Marina Bay area Singapore” is an intent-based local keyword mainly used by tourists.

Marketers can perform local SEO by adding the location, city name, or zip code. You can also build links from local directories and popular sites and add reviews to the listing. If done right, local SEO can:

A. Improve your business’s sales and awareness through online visibility
B. Boost footfall to your store or local office
C. Promote your business within a service area

Advantages of Using Local Directory Listings

Here are five significant benefits of using local directory listings:

1. Builds Online Visibility

You'll often encounter the term online business citation' when researching about local SEO or talking to an SEO consultant. It includes your contact information, business name, and address, known as NAP (Name, Address, and Phone number). It increases your business's online visibility.

Though popular with directory listings, online citations are widely used elsewhere too. A good example is the details you fill in when creating your social media or Google My Business profiles. You can also use them in online directories such as Yelp, MapQuest, HubSpot, TripAdvisor, Super Pages, Yellow Book, Foursquare, and Yahoo Local.

Citations are a powerful way to help the right people find your business. They act in the same way posters and banner ads do in the brick-and-mortar world. Most online directories categorize businesses according to their services and location. For instance, if you own a homestay, an AirBnB NAP will help you attract tourists visiting your city or town.

Citations are a vital part of your local SEO. According to the Moz Local Ranking Factors study, citations are the fourth most powerful way to influence a business's regional rankings. The top five factors are:

A. Google My Business

B. Inbound links to your website

C. On-page SEO

D. Citations

E. Reviews and ratings

2. Improves Traffic for Most Relevant Searches

SEO involves a series of well-planned actions over time, including on-page and off-page SEO. Much like regular SEO, local SEO also requires a list of on-page optimization tactics, but not all of them are equal in terms of their overall impact on visibility. For example, submitting pages to social bookmarking sites, directories, craigslist, or creating blogger dot com subdomains aren't as effective as including local keywords, using Google My Business, generating Q&A schema, and doing SERP analysis. Therefore, you need to prioritize the strategies that have more weight than others.

Tip: The on-page optimization you do towards your business's local SEO is not a one-time activity. To continue to attract local traffic, you will have to consistently devote time to your on-site optimization and tweak it when needed.

As a business, you must keep your content the same across all devices. The game of local SEO changed when Google rolled out the Google mobile-first index in July As a business, you must keep your content the same across all devices. The game of local SEO changed when Google rolled out the Google mobile-first index in July 2019. Marketers should also change their tactics to stay on top. You can start by doing the following:

1. Optimize your site for mobile devices
2. Improve the page load speed for your site’s both mobile and desktop versions
3. Provide complete SEO metadata for each page
4. Include search terms in your content that are relevant to consumer search habits. You can use tools such as Google Keyword Planner or Ubersuggest to conduct keyword research.
5. Don’t stuff keywords unnecessarily or use keyword clouds to trick search engines. Instead, use keywords organically across all your website content, including blog posts, product pages, whitepapers, and landing pages.

These practices will boost your local search rankings and help you create relevant content that will improve your overall SEO and site traffic. Actions such as increasing your page load speed will enhance your site’s user experience and build trust and brand loyalty, positively impacting sales and revenues.

3. Boosts Google Rankings

Though Google ranking algorithms are mysterious, they depend heavily on your address's proximity to the search user's location. You can't control your ranking on Google, but you can tweak your Google My Business (GMB) profile to influence it positively.

GMB is Google's local business tool that helps you manage your online presence on organic search and Maps. It is among the most exhaustive online directories supported by Google Search and Google Maps. It is also a ranking factor that Google never hides from its users. Therefore, improving and verifying your GMB information is a surefire way to fix poor visibility and rankings and ensure better engagement and click-through rate.

GMB has many powerful features such as images, reviews, contact information, opening and closing hours, posts, and Q&A, which you can leverage for maximum advantage. A rich GMB profile makes your business stand out in front of search users, enhancing visibility and conversions. According to Google, with verified GMB information, you are twice as likely to be considered a reputable business.

4. Improves Relevance to Search User's Requirements

Your business’s local ranking depends on the following two variable factors:

A. Its prominence—awareness about your business or store

B. Whether your business listing is optimized to match search user’s requirements

Search engines need web content that talks about your business and relevant websites that point to your website to control and influence these two factors. So, you need to leverage content marketing and try link building.

Link building will boost your brand awareness and prominence. Through local content marketing, you can target regional audiences and discuss the things and issues relevant to them. Apart from building a reputation, these measures will boost customer engagement and brand loyalty. You may also get some relevant backlinks in the process.

When you invest in local content marketing to create valuable content for regional audiences, you build an ecosystem prompting other local businesses to link back to you. Both types of inbound links the ones from local sources in your area or town and the ones coming from newspapers, periodicals, or high-authority industry-specific sites are made this way. It will boost your authority and trustworthiness among search engines.

According to the Moz Ranking Factors study, the two most important local ranking factors are your GMB listing and the inbound links you receive from regional and industry-specific sources. Apart from boosting your search rankings, these links will also act as a sustainable source of relevant traffic, generating revenue for your website.

5. Builds Trust

With reviews after each local listing, online reputation management (ORM) has become an integral part of local SEO listings on Google.

It is a critical deciding factor because even a single negative review can send a potential customer to another listing and ruin your chances of making a sale. According to the annual BrightLocal Consumer Survey 2020, the number of consumers looking for positive reviews before making a buying decision is increasing exponentially every year.

The survey also claims that 50% of online shoppers say they expect to see at least a 4-star rating before deciding to make a purchase. A whopping 85% of consumers say they trust online reviews and consider them equal to personal recommendations. They also expect sellers to respond to negative reviews as early as possible for effective damage control.

Recent and diversified reviews can help you gain prominence on local search results and win customer trust. The most crucial review factors, according to this survey, are:

1. Star rating: Consumers expect at least four stars
2. Legitimacy: Reviews by actual people are considered legitimate. It’s better if they are from the same region as the potential buyer.
3. Recency: 73% of consumers paid attention to the reviews published within one month
4. Sentiment: Reviews from enthusiastic, happy, or excited customers reflect a positive sentiment that often has a powerful impact on potential buyers. Such reviews prompt them to make a purchase decision.
5. Quantity: The quantity of reviews also makes a difference as it indicates a business’s popularity.

Conclusion

According to the BrightLocal Consumer Survey 2020, more than 90% of consumers used the internet to find a local business last year. More than 34% of people search online almost every day. It shows how important local SEO and directory listings are. If you want to establish your business in your region and make consistent sales, you need to get your local directory listings right.

Managing business assets on Facebook can be overwhelming. Facebook Business Manager can make things easier for businesses and marketers. It offers a centralized dashboard through which you can manage and organize your FB business assets and keep them safe.

The many detailed specifications needed to use a social media tool may prevent a beginner from getting it right. So, here we give you a low-down on everything you need to know about Facebook Business Managerā its features, mistakes to avoid, and a step-by-step guide on how to set up the account.

What's Facebook Business Manager?

It is not just a tool; it is a centralized platform to manage all your business assets, marketing, and advertising activities on Facebook. It allows you to do it all through a single dashboard, provide and control multiple user access to product catalogs and FB-owned platforms such as Instagram. It lets you:

1. Keep your personal and business accounts separate, so you can avoid errors such as accidental posting and stay away from distracting personal feeds when working.
2. Track and control your Facebook ads from a single dashboard and get detailed reports and analytics of your ad’s performance.
3. Give employees or clients access to your Facebook pages and ads without transferring asset ownership.
4. Keep personal information hidden from coworkers. They can only see your name, pages, ad accounts you own, and your work email.

Setting Up a Facebook Business Manager Account

Step 1. Create a Facebook Business Manager Account

Like Google, Facebook also needs you to have a personal account on it before creating a business account. Facebook needs a personal profile to confirm your identity. However, your coworkers and vendors will not have access to this information.

1. Go to Facebook Business Manager’s homepage and click on the blue button Create Account. It’s at the top right corner.
2. Enter your business name and email address in the relevant fields and click on Next.
3. Enter other business credentials, including your postal address, zip code, and the country you are running your business in.

You now need to check your inbox for an email by Facebook. Its subject line would be — “confirm your business email.” Open it and click on the Confirm Now link.

Step 2: Create or Add Your Facebook Business Page

For this, you will find various options. You can create a new Facebook business page or add an existing one. If you want to manage a business page for a client, you can request access to it.

You have to use the Add Page option only in case you are adding your own page. If you want to manage your client's Facebook page and ad account, click on the Request Access option. Once you get access to manage your client's page and ad accounts through Business Manager, their access will reduce, and they will not get to use many of their business assets. So, inform your clients beforehand to avoid any stalemate.

To add your Facebook page to FB Business Manager:

1. Head to the dashboard and click on Add Page. Remove any popup blocker you may have, as a popup will appear just after you click on the Add Page button on the Set Up Your Business Manager page.
2. Type your Facebook business page's name in the text box. This column has an autocomplete feature; you just need to click on it to add and confirm that you have chosen the right business page. If you have admin access to the page, you can add it to your Business Manager account as soon as you click on Add Page. Follow the steps on the screen to add multiple Facebook pages.

Step 3: Add Your Facebook Ad Account

Once added to your Business Manager, you cannot remove the ad account. Therefore, you must add your own account only. If you have an existing Facebook ads account, here's how you can link it:

1. Open your FB Business Manager dashboard, click on Add Ad Account and then click on it again. Go to the Ads Manager, find the ad account ID and enter it.

If you don't have an existing Facebook ad account to connect, you can go to the Business Manager dashboard and click on Add Ad Account and then click on Create Account.

2. Enter your ad account details and click on Next.
3. If you are using this account for your own business, mention it here. Click on Create.

Facebook allows you to create one ad account for your business. But if you regularly spend money on this account, you can add more accounts based on your ad spend. However, you can't request more ad accounts when starting out.

Or Request Access to a Client's Page

As emphasized above, Facebook also allows you to access your client's accounts. To request access to your client's business page, you need to ask for their permission first. You do not get complete ownership of their business page; Facebook would restrict your access to performing specific predefined tasks. So, you can view, run ads, and comment on your client's page. It will be visible on your Business Manager, but the page will have your client's business name.

To request access to a client's page:

Go to Business settings >> click on Pages (below Accounts) >> click on the blue Add drop-down button >> select Request Access to a Page >> Enter the Facebook Page name or URL >> Choose which permissions you need using the toggle buttons >> click on Request Access.

You'll see the page in your FB Business Manager only after the admin approves your request.

Step 4: Add People to Manage Your Facebook Assets

You may need to assign your business's Facebook marketing to other people. Facebook Business Manager allows you to add team members to handle ad campaigns. To do it:

1. Go to the dashboard and click on Add People
2. Enter these people’s business email addresses in the popup box

Apart from employees, you can also add freelancers and agencies. Depending on your requirements, you can give your ad account's limited or full access to other people. Limited access is usually given to employees, whereas the admin has full access.

Once you are through with this, click on the Next button.

3. When you are on the Assign Access screen, select Pages from the Select Asset Type menu. Choose the Facebook pages you want to assign to this particular team member. Use the toggle switches to customize their access.

4. Go back to the Select Asset Type menu and click on Ad Accounts. You can add more accounts you want this particular member to work on and use the toggle switches to customize their access. Once done, click on the Invite button on the bottom right.

5. Similarly, you can add more people to handle these accounts from the dashboard.
6. These people will get the invitation to join your Business Manager team via email. You will have to wait for them to confirm to complete the process.

They will have to click on the link received in the email to get started. However, we recommend you also send them a personal message via social media or a messaging app they use.

You can use your dashboard to see pending requests; it gives an overview of people who have responded and those who haven't. You can remove anyone at any point. To do it:

1. Go to the Business Manager dashboard, click on Business Settings
2. Go to the left menu and click on People
3. Click on the names of the people you want to remove, and then click on Remove.

Now go to the specific asset the employee was involved with and click on the "trash can icon" to remove them altogether.

Step 5: Add Another Layer of Security to Your Account

Facebook Business Manager allows you to add an extra layer of security to your business account. To do it:

1. Go to the dashboard and click on Business Settings

2. Click on Security Center from the left-hand menu

3. Set up the two-factor authentication and choose the settings Required for Everyone to enable maximum security for your account.

Creating Your First Campaign on FB Business Manager

Your account is set up. Now you are ready to create highly effective Facebook ads and launch them. To start your first ad campaign on FB Business Manager:

1. Go to the dashboard and click on Business Manager
2. Click on Ads Manager under the Advertise tab and then click on the green Create button.

You can choose your target audience and campaign objective. You can also set your budget and schedule your ad in much the same way you do when setting up Google ads. You can also choose the specific ad types you want to run and their placements. To know more about how to set up a campaign, click here.

Organizing Facebook Business Manager

When the number of assets increases, it becomes challenging to use Facebook Business Manager. Therefore, you must create business asset groups to organize your ad accounts, pages, and team members.

How to create your first business asset group?

1. Go to the dashboard and click on Business Settings
2. Go to the left menu and choose Business Asset Groups under Accounts and then click on Create Business Group

You will get various options to organize your assets based on regions, brands or businesses, agencies, and others. Choose the suitable options and click on Confirm.

Give this business asset group a name, and click on Next.

Now choose the business assets you want to move to this group. These can be pixels, ad accounts, pages, and Instagram accounts. You can also add people, custom conversions, apps, catalogs, and offline events. Once you are done, click on Next.

At this stage, you have got everything streamlined and controlled from one dashboard. You are now ready to use Facebook Business Manager to get the best results and ROI for your Facebook ads.

Mistakes to Avoid When Using FB Business Manager

If you're struggling to get the desired results from your Facebook ad campaigns, you should avoid the following mistakes.

1. Optimizing Facebook Ads Frequently

Rather than tweaking your ads often, you should build a sales funnel based on three stagesāawareness, consideration, and conversion. Identify the ad strategy that works best in each of these three stages. Invest your money consistently into those strategies.

2. Targeting Without a Plan

When marketers resort to lazy and imprecise targeting, their campaigns stop yielding results. Therefore, you must go for refined demographic targeting with multiple interests and behaviors. Don't narrow down your audience much initially. Negative feedback about your ads can hurt their performance adversely.Ā Ā

3. Not Focusing on Your Prospect's Pain Points

Ads should be customer-oriented and address their pain points. Craft your ads in a way that targets their problem areas and offers them a worthwhile solution through your product or service.

4. Going for General Ads Placement

Consumers have a short attention span. One size fits all approach doesn't work with ad placement. Therefore, customize your ad creatives to fit the placements. You should also optimize your video ads according to the platform or device you are running them on for the best results.

The Facebook pixel helps you to get the maximum ROI on your Facebook ad budget. It is a tracking code that you can place on your website to gather vital information about visitor behavior and Facebook ad conversions. You can use the information to remarket, build targeted audiences, and optimize ads.

The pixel uses cookies to collect this data. When these cookies are triggered, they start tracking user behavior on your website and your Facebook ads. The most popular type of pixel is the Facebook custom audience pixel, the upgraded version of the old custom audience pixel. If you have worked with the old version, you need to upgrade it to the current version.

The cookies that the pixel installs on a website are indispensable for a Facebook marketer. You don't need any programming skills to install or use them. It is a piece of JavaScript code generated by Facebook for their ad accounts. You can easily add it to your website and landing pages. It enables your website to share its traffic data with Facebook. This crucial data about website visitors and ad viewers will help you achieve better results when generating new leads.

Getting Started with the Facebook Pixel

With the FB pixel, you can extract tracking data on various events, which can be divided according to two sets:

1. A predefined set of standard events
2. Custom events as set by you

According to marketing terminology, an event is a specific action taken by a website visitor, such as signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase. There can be various standard events such as viewing content, finding a location, adding payment information, adding to cart, adding to wishlist, completing registration or subscription form, donating, and submitting an application.

You can use custom events instead of standard events to get more out of your Facebook ads. Custom events give a lot more information than standard events can ever provide. They are based on the keywords used and the URLs involved. To know more about custom conversions for the web, you can read this Facebook document.

What Makes the Facebook Pixel Indispensable for a Marketer?

The valuable visitor or conversion data it tracks makes the Facebook pixel unique. The insights it gives will help you to create better and more effective Facebook ads. The data also allows ensures that your targeted audience sees your ads.

The Facebook pixel is crucial if you want your visitors to take action on your ads or landing pages. It will improve your overall conversion rate and ROI.

You should set up the Facebook pixel as soon as you create your Facebook business page, and it will start tracking and gathering insights right away. However, if you set it up when launching your Facebook ads, you will have to do everything from scratch, which might be counterproductive and time-consuming. You would also miss out on the crucial visitor data, which you could have gathered if you had set it up initially.

Here are a few ways you can use the Facebook pixel to get optimal results for your Facebook marketing campaign.

1. Use Facebook Conversion Tracking

When people see your ad on Facebook, they click on it and are taken to your website. Once they're on your website, the Facebook pixel starts tracking their behavior across the various devices they use to gather essential insights. This data helps marketers review their ad strategies and calculate return on investment.

2. Use Facebook Retargeting

You can use Facebook pixel insights to show targeted ads to your website visitors. Use laser-sharp retargeting to ensure they click on the ads you're showing them when retargeting. They are more likely to take action when they see an advertisement for the exact product they had visited or moved to a shopping cart or wishlist on the website.

3. Create Lookalike Audiences

You can also use the Facebook pixel insights to create a lookalike audience for better targeting. These people can be similar to your website visitors regarding interests, likes, and demographics and potentially expand your customer base.

4. Optimize Facebook Ads for Conversions

The Facebook pixel allows you to get useful tracking data to optimize your Facebook ads for specific conversion goals such as newsletter signups and purchases. Without a tool like the FB pixel, you can optimize only for conversions like link-clicks.

5. Optimize Facebook Ads for Value

The FB pixel collects data related to your website's purchases on predefined variables such as buyer persona and the amount they spend. These insights allow you to optimize your Facebook ads according to the monetary value of products. This data will also help you show your ads to the people who purchase products in a similar value range.

6. Gain Access to Crucial Facebook Ad Tools and Metrics

You can use the FB pixel to run conversion campaigns and create custom audiences. The tool also lets you strategize your ads based on metrics like cost-per-conversion and cost-per-lead.

7. Get Deep Insights

The FB pixel allows you to get deeper insights into two standard events using a few extra codes known as parameters. You can customize these insights based on the conversion event's monetary value, currency, content type, and basket contents. For example, if you want to segregate the data of women looking for moisturizing cream from those looking for sunscreen lotion on your e-commerce website, you can do it according to the content they viewed.

Creating the Facebook Pixel Code for Your Website

Here is a step-by-step process to create and add the Facebook pixel code to your website.

Step 1: Create a Pixel

Go to Facebook Events Manager, find the hamburger icon on the top, and go to Pixels.

Click on the green Create a Pixel button.

Give it a name and enter your URL. Now click on the button Create. Remember that the pixel's name should represent your business and not a campaign.

Step 2: Add the Pixel Code to Your Website

Before you start using the pixel to collect information about your website, you need to install a code on your web pages. How you add this code to your website depends mainly on the website platform you use.

Set up Your Pixel Method

You can use an integration or tag manager for platforms like BigCommerce, Magento, Shopify, or Google Tag Manager; the Facebook pixel can easily integrate these platforms.Ā

You can also install the code manually. Or you can ask your developer to do it for you. However, if you use an eCommerce platform such as Shopify or a tag manager like Google Tag Manager, you will not have to edit your website code to install the pixel.

Here is how you can insert the code directly into the website:

1. Click on manually install the code yourself.
2. Paste the pixel code into your website’s header code.
3. Repeat the process for all your website’s pages or templates.
4. Choose automatic advanced matching. It will match the data of your website visitors to their Facebook profiles. You can do it using contact data such as the email address, or phone number visitors have entered on your website. It will help you get more conversions for your Facebook ad and make remarketing easy.

Enter your website URL and click on Send Test Traffic to check whether you’ve inserted the code correctly into the website.

Once it starts tracking visitor activity, click on Continue.

Step 3: Track the Right Events for Your Business

Now you can choose the suitable events out of the 17 standard events you want to track using the toggle buttons. You can also decide whether you should track on-page load or inline action.

• Track event on page load: Choose this option if you want to track a website visitor’s actions when they go to a new page to complete a purchase or achieve a conversion goal such as the “sign up success/thank you” page.
• Track event on inline action: Choose this option if you want to track a visitor’s actions within a web page. It may include clicking an “add to cart” button as it doesn’t involve opening a new page.  
• The FB pixel also allows you to set parameters for events such as tracking purchases in a specific price range.
• To use the custom events:
• Go to Facebook Events Manager
• Go to the top left menu and choose custom conversions
• Click on Create Custom Conversion to define your custom conversion event using URL rules. For example, if you need to track all URL traffic events, don’t include a specific URL.

Note: If you run a complex funnel or eCommerce platform, it's recommended to use the Facebook Conversion API which enables marketers to track both online and offline conversions with their Facebook campaigns.

Step 4: Confirm if Your FB Pixel is Tracking Properly

After testing if the FB pixel is installed correctly, confirm whether it's tracking and sharing reliable data. Add Chrome extension Facebook Pixel Helper to your browser. Please note that Pixel Helper only works with a Chrome browser, so don't install it if you don't have a Chrome browser.Ā

Switch to the page where the FB pixel is installed. If the Chrome extension finds it, the extension icon will turn blue. A popup will appear; it will have details such as the number of pixels active on the page and whether it's working correctly or not. In case it's not working, it will also provide you information about the error, which you can use to troubleshoot and fix it.

Step 5: Add Pixel Notice to Your Website

Facebook's terms and privacy policies require you to inform your website visitors that you're tracking their data. We recommend you also provide them with information on how they can choose not to have their data tracked and collected. To know more about it, visitĀ  Facebook Business Tools Terms and check Special Provisions Concerning the Use of Facebook Pixels and SDKs.

For more information on the Facebook pixel cookies, you can read this article on Facebook cookie settings. If you want to know more about how businesses are using the Facebook pixel effectively, you can go through the case studies in this post by Christina Newberry.

A website, a landing page, and a sales funnel are three different terms, but they can be used together to create a winning marketing strategy.

A landing page is a web page where marketers send users upon clicking on an ad on social media, a website, or an email. It is your website's first touch point for users. Meanwhile, a sales funnel encompasses a buyer's entire journey, involving many such landing pages with different calls to action (CTAs), directing and educating the user along the way with the ultimate objective of closing the sale.

The primary aim of both a sales funnel and a landing page is to generate leads and close sales, but they vary significantly in implementation and use. Here, we will explain both these terms, how you can use them to run successful ads, and highlight their significant differences.

What is a Landing Page?

It is a single webpage with a predefined objective. Its design is usually minimalistic to propel the visitor to take the desired action. It looks like the website's homepage, but it lacks many website elements to keep visitors scrolling down without any distractions until they take the intended action.

For example, if a landing page's objective is to get the visitor's contact information, it would act as an opt-in page. You can use it to offer your potential customers something of value, such as a free video tutorial, in exchange for their email addresses. Once they give you their email address, you can take them to a "thank you" page that gives them the link to the video.

Most landing pages aren't used as a stand-alone tactic for conversion. Instead, they are used alongside paid promotion or as part of the sales funnel to push the visitor into the final stages of the buyer's journey.

Image Source

Landing pages pursue a single objective and ask the visitor to either take action or leave. They usually have the following three elements:

1. A scrollable page with a compelling offer, often with a video for powerful messaging
2. A section that asks the visitor to take action, such as a submit button and blank fields for entering contact information
3. A “thank you” page for follow-up. It usually contains something of value for the customer or more related information

You can create landing pages for multiple objectives, such as increasing footfall at your brick-and-mortar store, getting customer details, pushing educational content, or populating your email subscriber list.

What are the types of Landing Pages?

There are mainly two types of landing pages:

A. Lead Generation Landing Pages: They are also known as lead captureā  pages. They often use a form as their CTA to capture lead data, including the visitor's name and email address. B2B marketers use these landing pages to sell expensive items that require building a list of prospective customers and then nurturing those leads. For instance, if your company sells a B2B IoT infrastructure solution like an MQTT Broker, its language should speak directly to its target audience. To achieve this level of clarity and engagement, we recommend it contain a mix of technical and high-level information to communicate the benefit to its end user.

Businesses also use these pages to offer free ebooks and webinars in exchange for visitors' contact information.

B. Click Through Landing Pages: These are frequently used by eCommerce businesses and are tied to a CTA to close sales or subscriptions. They use a button to send the visitors into the checkout flow to complete a transaction.

What is a Sales Funnel?

It is a path in a buyer’s journey that often involves several steps that a prospect can take to become your paid customer.

Here is an example of a sales funnel for physical store shopping:

The passersby spot your store while walking on the street. They are considered top-of-the-funnel prospects. A few of them decide to step in; it is the next stage of the funnel. A customer spots a rack of casual shoes with discount offers. He decides to have a look, taking the next step. He then selects a pair of shoes and heads toward the checkout. He is at the last stage of the funnel now. When he makes the payment and finishes the purchase, he is at the funnel’s bottom.

A similar process plays out for online businesses. The steps involved in online sales funnels are:

Step 1: Analyze your audience’s behavior pattern using various tools
Step 2: Capture their attention through compelling offers
Step 3: Build a landing page with a specific CTA and conversion goal
Step 4: Run an email campaign to educate your audience about your brand and current offers for recurring sales
Step 5: Keep in touch

Your sales funnel represents the path your prospective customers take when making a buying decision. If you understand the funnel, you can find the exact stages where your prospects are moving out of the funnel, never to return. A close analysis will help you find the key issues and resolve them. You can’t optimize a funnel for conversion if you don’t understand it. It’s crucial to know how your website visitors walk through the funnel and are they likely to convert.

Sales Funnels vs. Landing Pages

The prime difference between a landing page and a sales funnel is that the sales funnel includes many landing pages with different CTAs throughout each stage in the buying cycle. You can use both tactics based on your marketing and ad plan.

How Do Sales Funnels Work?

A sales funnel is an essential element of the sales process marked with a series of well-defined stages, where businesses choose and monitor their interactions with the prospects from the first contact to the last stage of the purchase decision.

Here is a walk-through of how a sales funnel works in an online marketing and sales ecosystem:

1. Lead

As soon as a user clicks on an ad or a link on social media or Google search results, they enter into your sales funnel as a prospect. They may browse through some of your products or check out your blog posts. You can seize this opportunity and ask them to sign up for a newsletter using a pop-up or opt-in form on your web page. If they show interest and fill out the opt-in form, they become a part of your email list. In other words, they become your business lead, which you can nurture over time through regular messaging.

2. Sales Call

Once you have their contact information, you can expand your sales interactions beyond your website through calls, text messages, and emails. For example, you can make an introductory sales call or send them an email to initiate the process.

3. Follow Up

You may use all three communication channelsā€”email, phone, and text messagesā€”to follow up. If you've already had an initial interaction with your prospect and didn't receive a clear, definite no, then follow up as long as it takes to receive a response.

4. Conversion

Answer their queries and dispel doubts to remove obstacles in the funnel that might be preventing them from moving further and make a purchase decision.

5. Sales

Many of these leads are likely to revisit your website if you contact them with a compelling offer or a coupon code. As a prospect moves through the funnel, it narrows down, so the people near the bottom are often fewer than the top. Therefore, it's crucial that your messaging is highly focused and targeted during all these stages.

How to Run Ads According to Various Stages in the Sales Funnel?

The average customer engages with three to five pieces of content before talking to a sales rep. So, you can start your ad campaign by building email lists and asking users to subscribe to your newsletters. Once they become a part of your email lists, you can share with them your best and most appropriate content according to their stage in the funnel by inviting them to the specific landing pages on your website.

Tip: Content plays a vital role in conversion, and users need different kinds of content at each stage in the sales funnel to move toward a purchase decision. You can use your ads to divert users to such pieces of content.

Right Messaging and Timing

Each of these stages requires a different marketing approach. A wrong message is not only wasteful but can potentially interfere with the entire sales flow. The paid ads you run can be the strongest channels for messaging and communication. You can tweak the messages in your ads according to these stages in the funnel.

The timing of a message is also essential. You don't want a dessert in a restaurant before you order food and drinks.

What are the Stages of a Sales Funnel?

A sales funnel's various stages can be defined with AIDA, the acronym for Awareness, Interest, Decision, and Action. You can identify these four stages after a deep analysis of the sales process and customer's mindset.

1. Awareness

Use messages at this stage to catch the attention of your prospects. The objective is to make them aware of your business and what you offer.

• Tips for creating ads at the “awareness” stage

You can explain the features, benefits, and USPs of your products through your ad messaging at this stage. You can also use your ads to direct the visitors to relevant content such as blog posts, sales videos, podcasts, infographics, and social media updates, to create product awareness.

2. Interest

At this stage in the sales funnel, the user is already familiar with your brand and products, but they need more information and education. Your prospects must be researching, comparing, and weighing the various available options.

• Tips for creating ads at the “interest” stage

At this stage, you can use your ads to invite visitors to attend educational webinars, videos, informative blog posts, and ebooks. You should tweak the ad script accordingly.

3. Decision

At the decision-making stage, the prospect is ready to buy and has narrowed down their options to just two or three you can be one of them. Here, you need to give them a compelling offer such as a discount code, free shipping charges, or a bonus product.

• Tips for creating ads at the “decision” stage

At this stage, use your ads to make a compelling offer, such as discount codes, lifetime memberships, etc. Make it so irresistible that your prospect can’t say no to it.

4. Action

At the action stage, the customer makes a purchase and becomes part of your network. It is the bottom of the funnel, but your job doesn’t end here. You need to work towards building a lifetime relationship with your customer and aim for recurring sales.

• Tips for creating ads at the “action” stage

Aim for retention at the action stage and use your ads to offer tech support. You can also use them to show other products that might be of value or interest.

All these actions at various stages in the sales funnel bring the visitor one step closer to the buying decision. You can use many software programs such as ClickFunnels and GetResponse to build sales funnels and streamline the entire sales process. You don’t require any technical skills to use these software programs.

Conclusion

The ultimate objective of both landing pages and sales funnels is to build a relationship with potential customers and convince them to make a purchase.

However, a sales funnel significantly reduces the conversion cost and increases the conversion rate. It also provides you multiple opportunities to upsell and downsell customers.

If you want to be successful with your conversion funnels and landing pages, keep on testing, optimizing, and re-testing your funnels and ads and focus on your messaging.

High search engine rankings add immense value to a business as they can generate increased traffic, visibility, and revenue. Appearing on top of organic search results also boosts your brand awareness. However, it requires consistent efforts and continued investment of time and money.

Most digital marketing agencies pay hundreds of dollars every month as subscription fees for expensive SEO tools. But many startups and small businesses can't afford that. To boost your sales and outsmart your competition, you need an SEO tool that is affordable yet robust and effective.

Here are nine affordable and result-driven SEO tools that you can use to achieve higher search rankings.Ā

1. Ubersuggest

Popular serial entrepreneur Neil Patel's Ubersuggest has almost similar features as BuzzSumo, but since the outbreak of COVID-19, Ubersuggest has been made available for agencies and marketers free of cost.

Just enter the keyword or phrase you are targeting, and it will return the most popular articles and blog posts containing those words. It uses various metrics to curate a list of blog posts with the highest number of backlinks, social shares, and traffic. It will tell you what's trending and give you an idea about the content that resonates with users. You can use this tool to generate topics for your content marketing campaigns.

Ubersuggest also allows you to reverse-engineer your competitors' SEO and digital marketing strategies. It provides you research-backed insights into the SEO strategies that other companies have successfully implemented and how you can also adapt them for better results.

It is also a great tool to get keyword ideas. It provides hundreds of suggestions, including short-tail and long-tail keywords and other useful metrics like competition data, volume, and even seasonal trends.

Ubersuggest can also generate a list of keywords that your competitors use based on Google's user queries. It provides you comprehensive backlink data and niche-based content that people are linking to. You can contact these sites and ask for the relevant backlinks to save your time. The tool also offers an action plan to improve your link profile and a list of the best backlinks that will have the maximum positive impact on your rankings.

2. Google Analytics

Google Analytics utilizes comprehensive website data to help you make smart decisions. It tracks your every action and measures its impact on traffic and conversion. It also gathers user data about email sign-ups, downloads, clicks, conversions, and keywords. If you want your pages to rank for specific keywords, no other tool can provide better insights than Google Analytics.

It also helps you understand user behavior on your website so you can tweak your marketing strategy, content, and products accordingly. Furthermore, it utilizes Google's machine learning capabilities, which generates reliable data that you can use to convert insights to tangible results.Ā

3. Google Page Speed

Webpage speed is a crucial and direct ranking factor. It applies to both mobile and desktop sites. Google Page Speed calculates your website's loading speed and provides suggestions to improve it based on Google's guidelines.Ā

4. Google Keyword Planner

The best things in life are for free, and the same is true for Google Keyword Planner. Google offers this tool free of cost when you sign up for a Google Ads account. It helps you explore popular search terms and also the ones that are easy to rank. It can be a handy resource for marketers and businesses, especially if they are relatively inexperienced. The tool uses Google's artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities to offer suggestions based on the keywords you enter. The suggested keywords include the necessary metrics and data.

5. Google Search Console

A few years ago, website owners used Google Webmaster Tools to gain crucial performance-related insights and fix SERP issues. But on 28 May 2015, it was rebranded as Google Search Analytics, and in 2018, it was rechristened Google Search Console when Google made significant changes to the platform.

Google Search Console can quickly identify undesirable crawl errors and broken URLs. The platform also gives your backlink profile's complete picture. It helps you gain deep insights into the website's performance on search engines using vital metrics like a number of unique impressions, click-through rate, and average ranking position. Since it is Google's proprietary tool, it uses the data stored on the Google servers to reveal information about your webpage's average ranking in any country.

The tool also allows you to track how your rankings have changed over time. Google Search Console may not strictly be an SEO tool, but the data it provides can help you rank high on SERPs.Ā

6. SEO PowerSuite

SEO PowerSuite is a multi-purpose SEO tool that can help you with all the aspects of yourĀ  SEO campaign. Although it is a paid software, the free version is as good as some other best SEO tools.

SEO Powersuite's free version helps you do the following:

• Find ways to divert traffic from competitor websites.
• Improve your search engine rankings.
• Identify the right keywords based on online searches.
• Perform a detailed SEO audit on your site.
• Optimize your site with the most popular and low competition keywords.
• Gain insights into your competitors’ backlinks and formulate a link-building strategy.
• Build new partnerships and discover guest posting opportunities.

7. Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is a comprehensive SEO analytics tool that also acts as a website crawler. It analyzes the site-wide SEO for your and your competitors' websites. It will also provide you vital information about the various errors on your webpages, such as broken links, faulty redirects, and duplicate pages.

The tool helps generate an XML sitemap, review meta robots and directives, and analyze page titles and metadata. Screaming Frog has both paid and free versions; the free version analyses up to 500 URLs. It extracts crucial data about your competition and fixes common SEO issues to improve your website.

8. Check My Links

Google does not like broken links as they hinder user experience on your website. Since manually checking broken links is time-consuming, Check My Links allows you to perform an audit on your site to locate broken links within minutes. It will help you to quickly repair broken links and improve your SEO across the website. Check My Links highlights the valid links in green and broken links in red. It also highlights links in yellow to indicate potentially problematic links.

9. Open Link Profiler

Link building is a tedious task, but Open Link Profiler simplifies it by providing comprehensive data about your backlink profile. Engineering high-quality links can significantly boost your website's SEO. Visit their website, enter your URL, and it will give you access to a list of all the links that point to your site.

Open Link Profiler also gives you information about the quality and origin of backlinks. It helps you get rid of toxic links and adds higher-quality links. The free version allows you to export up to 1000 links.

Conclusion

You don't always need expensive tools to get high search engine rankings. Many SEO tools offer incredible value at a relatively low cost. The user-friendly tools discussed above will help you enhance your website's SEO profile, increase loading speed, fix broken links, perform website audits, and efficiently handle other digital marketing tasks.

To receive the maximum traffic from Google, you need to know what people are looking for and the search terms they are using the most. If you want to outperform your competition, you need to know how to perform keyword research and rank for those keywords.

Keyword research becomes even more crucial when running PPC campaigns as their success depends heavily on your ability to choose the best keywords that can result in conversions.

What is PPC Keyword Research?

It is the process of finding popular search terms and queries that people use on search engines such as Google to look for products and services they need. Reverse engineer this process, and you can optimize your website by adding relevant keywords to your content. It will help you to target potential customers.

You can't rank on keywords overnight and start getting traffic from the next day. Technology is changing fast, and the only way to rank on top of search engine results is to create content on the latest topics. Search Google for trending topics in your niche and create content on it. Soon your website will start ranking for those keywords.

What You Shouldn't Do When Selecting PPC Keywords

Finding new keyword ideas can be challenging. It can be trickier if you don’t know about keyword competition. So, don’t select only broad terms such as “burgers,” “travel,” or “Miami.” You shouldn’t use redundant phrases such as “social media,” “YouTube marketing,” and “directory listings” either.

There are two reasons why you shouldn't choose such keywords:

1. They give vague results as search engines can’t understand the user intent.
2. These short-tail keywords have high competition and CPC. Visitors who come to your website via long-tail keywords are more likely to buy. Click here to know more about long and short-tail keywords and how to find them.
   

You should also focus on region-specific keywords. The infographic below compares long-tail and short-tail keywords and why the former is a better choice.

Courtesy: SEO Pressor

Though you can rank for primary keywords on Google, most of your revenue-generating traffic will come from long-tail keywords that people are using with purchase intent. These keywords will bring your business the most revenue. For example, queries like agencies that offer long-form article writing services near meā  reflect a high purchase intent. If you use them on your static website, you'll attract potential customers.

Find User Queries through Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is an SEO tool that gives you the exact questions people ask when searching for products and services similar to yours. For example, if you are looking for tips on minimalism, Ubersuggest will give you questions like "How can I declutter my home as a beginner minimalist?"

You can use tools like Ubersuggest to find long-tail keywords. Since Google loves long-form content, create detailed content (3000-6000 words) around these keywords to make your article start ranking on Google.

After the Hummingbird update, Google has stopped ranking content from popular sites or with the highest number of backlinks if it offers little or no value. Meanwhile, it puts on top of search results articles or videos that provide comprehensive and industry-specific content. It is why Wikipedia ranks on top.

Look Up Quora for PPC Keyword Ideas

If you want to know interesting, trending, and informative questions and their answers, you can go to Quora and type in your search keyword.

Quora is an excellent platform for social listening and discovering trending topics. You will find a list of user-generated questions related to your niche on it. You must use them to explore PPC keyword ideas. They provide a wealth of information about what people are looking for and their pain points.

Use Google Keyword Planner

It comes free of cost with a Google Ads account and helps with keyword research when you set up an ad campaign on Google. You need to sign in to your Google Ads account to get the best results from Google Keyword Planner. Among other features, it gives you cost-per-click pricing of each keyword and keyword ideas for your static website.

To create an account, you need to follow the instructions and enter your business information. Click on “Tools” and choose “Keyword Planner.” You will see two other tools under keyword planner—“Discover New Keywords” and “Get Search Volume and Forecast.”

These will help you generate thousands of potential keywords and keyword ideas in a single click. However, be mindful that the tool is built for PPC advertisers on Google. Many of its features, such as the keyword building feature, are for people interested in setting up ad campaigns. They will not help you want to find keywords for SEO purposes.

PPC Keyword Research for Google Ads vs. SEO

There is a difference between keywords for SEO and Google Ads. Since Google Ads clicks expensive, you need to target the keywords with a low cost-per-click to get relevant traffic. Moreover, Google Ads keyword research is restricted to a small subset of all the possible keywords, including those offering the highest ROI.Ā

How to Research PPC Keywords for Successful Google Ads?

You can follow these steps to find relevant keywords and create ad groups for your campaigns:Ā

1. Brainstorm

The first step of PPC keyword research is to find suitable and relevant phrases for your business. Brainstorm to discover these search terms. Jot down the keywords you come up with. Use a spreadsheet for optimal results. Use Google Keyword Planner to work on these ideas and find relevant keywords. Divide them into sections and create a list. It will serve as a solid groundwork propelling you to discover the best keywords for your ad campaigns.Ā

2. List Branded Keywords

To create branded keywords, divide your keywords into two parts. The first set should represent your brand, and the second should be related to competitor brands.

For example, if you are selling dog food, your customers must be familiar with Royal Canin and Taste of the Wild. You can use "Royal Canin'' as a keyword to target the customers looking for Royal Canin or similar products. Using keywords to include well-known rival brands will help more people find you online, especially if you are relatively new in the market. It will also help you narrow down your target audience and win customers.

You must also use your own branded keywords. You can try different combinations. For example, you can add your product or service's name with the brand and develop several relevant variations, such as Nescafe gold, Nescafe coffee, Nescafe cup, Nescafe coffee price, and Nescafe cheeky mug pack.

3. Find Product and Service-Specific Keywords

Sometimes customers are not looking for any particular brand, but specific products and services. Therefore, you should prepare a list of product and service-specific keywords and try their different combinations using Google Keyword Planner.

For example, if you have a store selling designer clothing, you may use the following keywords:

1. Designer sequin dresses for parties
2. Designer sequin dresses for women

Specific keywords are more effective than generic keywords because high-intent consumers use them.

4. Use High-Intent Keywords

When a user goes deeper into the sales funnel in the final stages of the buying process, they want to find the information they are looking for relatively quickly to complete their purchase. You need to target such users because they are actively shopping and not browsing the internet just for information. Using high-intent keywords can help you do it.

Here are a few examples of high-intent keywords:

1. Winterwear sale
2. Jackets sale
3. Fashion stores with 50% discount

These keywords are not product-specific, but they reflect that the user has a buying intent and is looking for discounts and sales.

5. Get Competitor Insights

Before you start using a keyword tool, try to get insights into the strategies used by your competitors to attain high SERP rankings. Find the keywords your competitors are bidding the most on and include them in your campaign.

Discover the keywords they are ranking for with the help of SEO tools such as SpyFu. Along with providing in-depth research about competitor keywords, SpyFu also gives the following insights:

1. CPC keywords your competitors are using
2. The price they are paying per click
3. Their monthly ad expenditure
4. Ad position and searches they appear in  

You can use this data to outbid your competitors. List the keywords you get through competitor insights and add them to your brainstorming list.

6. Use Left-off Keywords

You can use Google Keyword Planner to expand on your left-off keywords. Add the search term your audience may be using and incorporate suggestions given by the tool.

At this stage, you should have finished your keyword research. However, you should still add those keywords which you think are expensive or have high competition. We will cut and refine the list in the next step.

7. Refine Your Lists

When you are ready with your lists, start refining them. Go back to the Google search bar, click on "Upload a file," and upload all the lists compiled in a file format. Access the keywords according to the following metrics:

1. Estimated click-through rate
2. Potential impression
3. Monthly searches
4. Average CPC you can afford

It will help you find many "low competition" and "low-cost" keywords with high search volume. You should select high-value keywords even if the cost per click is a little more.Ā  They will bring in more conversions and add to your campaign's effectiveness.

8. Bundle PPC Keywords Into Ad Groups

Now you have powerful PPC keywords shortlisted. Before you start targeting them, divide them into different ad groups. These are groups of keywords that you can combine in one ad campaign. For example, you can have a headline such as "end of season sale winterwear." It can include keywords like "jackets on sale," "pullovers on sale," and "woolen clothes on sale." Do not include keywords like "stockings on sale" in this ad group as it is an entirely different product range.

Add PPC Keywords in Google Ads Using Ad Groups

Another advantage of using Google Keyword Planner is that it allows you to directly select the keywords you want to target and make ad groups. It doesn't require any copy-pasting.

Apart from subject relevance, you can also make groups according to user intent and their stage in the buyer's journey. If you create more ad groups with custom copies to target different audiences based on their needs, you will receive more clicks and conversions.

Conclusion

PPC keyword research is an extremely crucial part of your overall digital marketing strategy, so it's essential to get it right. Even though it might look tedious and complicated, you should create many ad groups to target different customer segments and reap long-term benefits. But if all of this feels too time-consuming or cumbersome to you, hire a professional to run your Google Ads to achieve maximum ROI. You should try DashClicks' white label PPC services.