Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most crucial things to consider in your digital marketing strategy. As per the latest statistics, 61% of marketers are of the view that SEO is the key to online success.

For those new to the term, SEO is the process of improving your website to boost its visibility when individuals search for services or products related to your business in search engines such as Bing, Google, etc.

As SEO is something people spend a lot of their time on, they are often left thinking ā how long does SEO take to work for a website?

After all, we all want to see positive results from our SEO efforts, as quickly as possible.

So, does it take a couple of days, months, or years for SEO to work? Well, there is no one answer to this question. SEO is a long process; it doesn't happen overnight. Plus, various factors impact the results you get from your SEO efforts.

But still, we can tell you an estimated amount of time it will take to notice good results from your SEO efforts.

SEO, if done right, can take at least 6 months to start working. To see positive gains from your SEO strategies, 6-12 months is considered an ideal time frame.

Want to know more on the subject? Keep reading!

Why Does It Take So Long for SEO to Work?

Before discussing how long it takes to see good results from your SEO efforts, let's first look at why SEO takes so long to show results.

We all are well aware of the fact that Google updates and improves its search algorithms pretty consistently. Also, it has constantly worked to optimize algorithms so they can no longer be tricked with shortcuts, such as keyword stuffing. It even keeps on improving the search engine's functionality.

Owing to all of this, it has become more challenging to rank. And as a result of this, SEO takes a long time to show results.

Keeping all of this in mind, here's what we recommend you do when it comes to SEO.

You need to think of SEO as an investment that demands consistent work and maintenance. This is the only way you will notice sustainable growth in results.

How Long Does SEO Take To Produce Results?

Now, coming to the more important question that both digital marketers and business owners commonly ask:

How long for SEO to take effect and show results for a website?

As we mentioned, a lot of factors impact the results you get from SEO efforts. If you are working with an experienced digital marketing agency, you can expect to see results within the first 6 months. But if you are working with a newbie, you would have to wait longer.

Note: Some websites even get results within 3-4 months!

How to Tell if SEO Is Working the Right Way?

Fortunately, there are some ways to check if your SEO is working. You can use a variety of tools to understand your rankings and check for areas of improvement:

• Keyword research tools
• SEO plugins
• Link building tools
• On-page SEO tools
• SEO software platforms
• Technical SEO tools

The Key Metrics of SEO

When you use the tools we talked about above, you will come across certain metrics. Here's what these metrics mean:

1. Clicks: The count of times a user has clicked on your content, links, or ads.

2. Impressions: The count of times a user has seen your content, links, or ads.

3. Organic Traffic: The traffic that comes to your site via a search engine after a search query is inputted.

4. The Number of Backlinks: The links from outside domains which point to web pages on your domain are called backlinks.

5. Domain Authority: The relevance of your site for certain industries or subject areas.

6. Referrals from Other Sites: The traffic coming on your site from links on other sources/web pages.

7. The Number of Ranking Pages: The total number of pages on your website that currently rank high on search results.

8. Conversions: The number of actions site visitors take on your website. Examples of such actions include ā adding email id to a mailing list, filling out a form, or simply clicking on a link.

9. Brand Mentions: References from other sources or sites that mention your brand, services, products, or company in a direct manner.

10. Page Authority: The relevance of a site page for certain industries or subject areas.

What Are the Expected Results From SEO?

This is another commonly asked question. But again, there is no fixed answer. The kind of results you can expect from SEO and how soon you notice them depends from project to project.

Tip: These questions help in determining the results you are likely to see from SEO:

• How search engine friendly or optimized your site is already?
• How competitive is the market?
• What is the type of optimization you plan to carry out or are currently carrying out?

Note: Some of the reasons you may not be seeing results include:

• You produced substandard content.
• You optimized your content more than it was required.
• You tried a few things here and there and didn’t have a strategy at all.
• You worked hard for some weeks and then just waited for quick results.

9 Things Your SEO Strategy Needs to Succeed

An SEO strategy is a comprehensive plan to increase the search engine rankings of a site in order to get more organic traffic. If you want to know what you should do to succeed in your SEO strategy, then read on:

1. Know Your Audience

Your content will gain trust and authority if you write for your audience. This means, you need to know and understand your audience. Here are some tips that will help you know your audience better:

• Create buyer personas
• Define your value proposition
• Learn how your offerings benefit your audience
• Learn from your competitors
• Check if you are targeting a national or a local audience
• Take the help of analytics to learn about your traffic and demographics

2. Use Keyword-Rich Phrases

Today, implementing SEO “hacks” such as keyword stuffing in your content doesn’t signal algorithms that your content is of quality. However, you can still scrape Google to identify the most relevant keywords and phrases to incorporate into your content in a way that will get the attention of search engine algorithms.

3. Create Impactful Headlines

You can see your rankings soar if you dedicate time and effort to creating headlines that pack a powerful punch. Headlines that are catchy and possess the relevant keywords are the ones that are more likely to rank high.

4. Take Care of Website Issues & Optimize for Mobile Devices

If you notice that people are not finding your site, check the technical SEO aspects of it. One of these aspects includes mobile optimization. This means, apart from desktop, your website should be optimized for mobile browsing as well.

5. Know the Content Types That Rank Well

Ensure you create content keeping these two things in mind — the intent of your site and what your users want.

Here are the types of content you can create:

• Product listings
• Repurposed content
• Long-form content
• Direct answers
• Video and image carousels
• Tools and widgets

6. Add Images

You should add images to your content to:

• Let the search algorithms know that your content has relevancy regarding your target audience’s search intent, and
• Communicate information visually to your audience.

Tip: Learn how to optimize images for better search results in 2022.

Note: When you incorporate images in your posts, ensure you do the technical SEO on the backend, such as sourcing and alt-text, to rank higher on search engines.

7. Get More Reviews

Today, more and more individuals are reading reviews before they decide to purchase the offerings of a business. As per the latest statistics, 93% of consumers read online reviews before going for a purchase.

An increase in reviews for your business means an increase in ranking for you.

You can always contact your past or current customers to get more reviews to help your new customers trust you.

8. Structure Your Posts Carefully

The layouts and structures of your posts play a huge role in SEO rankings.

Hence, always structure your posts with the best practices. We recommend that you format your posts with things such as:

• Short paragraphs of text
• Numbered lists
• Subheaders
• Important Keywords
• Bullet lists
• Related Links
• Infographics
• Videos

Image Source

9. Add Interactive Elements

You can also consider adding interactive elements to your site pages. Examples of interactive content include calculators, quizzes, interactive ebooks, and polls. Such elements help readers thoroughly engage with your content.

Wrapping It Up

If you want to know how long it takes for SEO to take effect and give results it can take at least 6 months to start working (if done right!).

In order to get large gains from SEO, we recommend that you be consistent with it. You need to understand that SEO is something that gives long-term results. And hence, you need to do it just right to achieve success from it.

In case you are looking for short-term gains, you can always concentrate on other digital marketing disciplines like social advertising and paid search.

Now, start optimizing and trust the process!

The success of a marketing campaign heavily depends on tracking the right data points, eliminating the less useful stats and insights, and creating a marketing report that doesn’t take hours from your productive time.

Choice of metrics is crucial to your results because it decides what data points are relevant to your needs and what you want to measure.

The presence of fluff baffles the marketers even more. If you want to measure engagement on your website, “average time spent on your website” is a more relevant metric than the “click-through rate.”

What Is Metrics Reporting?

Metrics reporting quantifies and tracks the most relevant data points that help you assess your performance in the campaign and what it takes to hit your business goals.

When you have real-time access to these data points through a dashboard, you can measure your performance in real-time and know what’s working vs what’s not. It will help you to divert your marketing dollars in the desired direction and minimize wasteful practices.

How to Do Metrics Reporting?

You can do metric reporting in multiple ways, but most methods require manual inputs. You may need to source data from various channels and perform complex calculations to track the desired metrics.

However, thanks to increasing automation in this industry, you’ve platforms like DashClicks that provide integrations with numerous third-party apps. You can easily track the desired metrics through the marketing reporting software in one place.

How to Create a Metrics Report Saving Time and Money?

You might need to track numerous metrics. If it takes a lot of time tracking those metrics, there are chances that you may miss many of the insights.

You can sign up for a robust metrics reporting tool like DashClicks to automate reporting, and it will throw the actionable insights in no time. The Analytics app helps you monitor and report all your marketing campaigns in one place, whereas InstaReports generates the report within a few seconds.

DashClicks platform provides you with real-time updates about your campaigns. It helps you boost client satisfaction and build your brand. Here is what the dashboard looks like.

Here is a software tour of DashClicks explaining how you can use our dashboard to manage your campaigns and get multiple data points as per your needs.

It provides you a snapshot of the various metrics that will help you in decision-making meetings.

How to Choose the Right Metrics?

Choosing the right metrics is not a child's play. Combine them with the wrong ones and it will soon become a maze of confusion with a lot of fluff. Before we discuss the most relevant metrics, let's explain the difference between metrics and KPIs.

While metrics are created around processes and activities required to achieve a business goal, such as traffic or engagement, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are related directly to business goals.If you compare the two, metrics provide more context than KPIs and tell you how close you are to your commercial objectives. Metrics are the superset of KPIs, so each KPI must be a metric, but a metric isn't necessarily a KPI.A single KPI can have multiple metrics. So, metrics are mostly tied to business processes and their efficiency, while KPIs tell how you are faring against your business goals.

Metrics => Used to assess the performance of specific business processes

KPIs => Used to ensure that you are hitting your business goals

To achieve your business goals, you need to find the closest metrics. For example, if you want to achieve a high-quality standard, you can use metrics that tell you the number of faulty products and the number of units produced every month.

You must also know how many defective products are delivered to the customers and how many are detected and screened out by your Quality Control professionals.

How to Use Analytics App in Dashclicks for Metrics Reporting?

DashClicks' Analytics application allows you to integrate all your analytics and tracking tools into one central dashboard. With the Analytics app, you can track a quick overview of each service and detailed breakdowns for each integration, such as SalesForce, HubSpot, Facebook Ads, Unbounce, Google Ads, etc.

Our Analytics app currently supports the following analytics and tracking tools:

• Facebook Ads
• Google Ads
• Google Analytics
• CallRail
• SEO
• Listings Manager (an add-on subscription)

If your online marketing campaign primarily depends on these tools, the analytics application is for you. The following video will walk you through the basics of the application.

How to Access the Analytics App?

To access the Analytics application, follow these steps:

Step - 1: Click on the app drawer icon in the top right corner of the screen.

Step - 2: Click on the Analytics icon within the app drawer.

How to Update the Tracking Period?

Finally, you can easily track your performance by updating the tracking period in the top right corner of the page.

Click on it to see a mini-menu where you can select the specific period for your analytics to display. You can click on any of these preset periods from the left side column.

Final Words

Metrics reporting is inevitable while improving your marketing campaigns. It allows you to assess your campaign performance and achieve your business goals.

Each analytics and tracking tool in DashClicks' Analytics app features unique metrics and in-depth customization tools. It's instrumental in ensuring high precision while tracking your performance.

DashClicks' automation tools simplify your life through easy integrations with numerous tools and software programs. Sign up today if you want to achieve your business objectives with more precision and certainty.

Optimizing is a necessity. It means there is always room for improvement, and the current state is not your final destination. For instance, if you study your business website, you may find that you can optimize it further. However, the real question is why and how to optimize a website.

Below are the benefits and best tips to optimize your website for success!

Benefits of an Optimized Website

Some common benefits of an optimized website include:

A. Organic SEO

Search engines, like Google, consider various factors when determining a website's ranking. Yes, they think beyond keywords. They consider other aspects too ā page load speed, site mapping, metadata, experience on different browsers and screen sizes ā and much more. A well-optimized website nails all these aspects and can quickly secure a high ranking on Google.

B. User Experience

A well-optimized website offers a seamless experience to the users. Your website must have a logical structure, no broken links, consistent displays across all devices, and provide effortless browsing. Remember, a poorly optimized website will push away your users, and your bounce rate will go up. Plus, all your ad spending will go to waste.

C. User Actions

The ultimate aim of many websites is to persuade users to take an action - fill out a form, set up a meeting, make a call, or download something. However, is your website optimized enough to attain this goal? For instance, several websites still depend on those annoying pop-ups to drive more customers or include ineffective CTA that either completely misses or confuses the visitors. An optimized website ensures that the user performs the intended action by including relevant CTAs and zero archaic stuff.

D. Brand Positioning

One of the main objectives of a website is to give a good impression of your brand. We cannot stress this enough, but a well-optimized website gives a long-lasting positive impression. On the other hand, a poorly-optimized website will do the exact opposite.

How to Optimize a Website?

Website optimization has a wide scope, however, you can do so in two simple steps:

A. Analyze

Study your website's performance. Analyze the user behavior and determine what path the user is following and why they bounce to other websites. Look out for broken links, incorrectly named images, and missing pages.

Image Source

B. Optimize

Follow these steps:

• Ensure that the on-page optimization is on point. For instance, meta tags and URL slugs should be there.
• Check the loading speed of the pages.
• Make your website mobile-friendly.
• Analyze the backlinks and look for more opportunities.

Tips to Optimize a Website

Some common website optimization tips include:

1. Follow a Holistic Approach

It is one of the most common tips to optimize a website. Don't jump straight into the complexities. Understand all your digital marketing efforts and analyze how they fit with other aspects, such as social media pages. Then, move to auditing your website, examining the on-page elements, off-page elements, technical factors, and user-facing areas.

2. Test Again and Again

Optimization and testing go hand-in-hand. Effective website optimization is based on data-driven results, with the latter based on testing using the correct methodology.

Remember, Website optimization is a continous process. It starts with investigating and then deciding what you want to change. Then, you test/try out new things and analyze the results of the change. The cycle goes on.

3. Analyze the Data

A single slice of data may not be able to offer you much information. However, if you collect and analyze a lot of data, you will get tons of valuable input and may also observe some patterns.

For instance, if a few people visit your site and ignore your CTA, it might not be a major concern. However, if many visitors fail to take action on your CTA, you must make some changes.

Look for pages that get the most traffic and conversions. Then, reverse-engineer those pages' success to get traffic across the entire site. It is one of the most valuable tips for website optimization.

4. Conduct Thorough Keyword Research

There was a time when you could pick up any random keyword and write a 300-word article to rank for it. However, SEO does not work like that anymore; it is much more complicated and refined now.

Use reliable tools to find business-related keywords; make sure they fit your business's ideology and the potential customers' user intent. Try to understand why the user would search for this keyword and what they would look for.

5. Produce Long and Value-Rich Content

SEO experts believe a blog post should ideally be around 1600 words. It can be, of course, more than that.

Before deciding the content length, search the keyword, check all the top 10 blogs in the SERPs, and aim for a word count similar to those blogs.

However, remember length is not everything. The length signifies how much information you are providing to the users. The user should spend a long time on your content and read it to the end. Therefore, ensure your content is also of good quality and has valuable information. It is one of the top tips to optimize a website.

6. Optimize for On-Page SEO

If you are deciding on how to optimize your website, invest in on-page SEO. It will help you optimize your website when developing certain pages. Properly place URL slugs, headlines, subheadlines, and meta tags. Your headline must contain the primary keyword as close to the beginning as possible. The keyword must also be present in the slug and at least one subheadline.

Maintain a keyword density of upto 2.5 percent in the content. Make sure you do not go overboard with the keyword usage, instead, sprinkle the keywords evenly throughout the content and image alt text. Also ensure the keyword is in context with the body text so that Google understands just what you are talking about.

Image Source

7. Optimize for Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO refers to optimizing your website through external aspects like guest blogging, social media activity, brand mentions, and influencer marketing. You should know that backlinks can significantly improve your SEO. However, do not get links from small sites with low authority as it can negatively affect your SEO score. Instead, aim for well-respected publications.

8. Make it Mobile-Friendly

With more and more people browsing the internet through their mobile phones, it's imperative to target those potential customers. Plus, Google also prioritizes mobile-friendly websites and gives them a higher rank. You can choose the route of responsive designs. You can download free WordPress themes with responsive design templates which allow you to not worry about adding any extra code.

Image Source

9. Speed up the Pages

If you are thinking about how to optimize your website, you should know that page speed significantly impacts your SEO and conversions. If your website doesn't load in a few seconds, you will likely lose your visitors to another, faster website. Similarly, if the contact form does not get submitted in one go, the user will give up and not submit the form a second time. Take the help of Google's PageSpeed Insights to know how fast your site loads and what pages you must fix to make it even faster.

10. Ensure the Website is Secure

Hackers and spammers are always out for their next target. Therefore, secure your website so that you can continue offering valuable content to your audience without fearing being attacked by outsiders.

Image Source

You can take the help of a well-established marketing or white-label agency for this, as they have an army of developers and security enthusiasts to weed off any potential security threats from your website. They also run regular security checks on your website to ensure its safety and uncompromised status.

11. Keep Your Website Updated

You must be wondering how to optimize a website. Well, do not underestimate the power of keeping your website updated. It will improve your Google rankings, increase conversions, and reduce the bounce rate. Remember, no one wants to read an outdated blog and buy products that are not relevant anymore. Every person visiting your website should get only the latest that you have to offer in terms of both solutions and products.

In Conclusion

As a business owner, website optimization should be your top priority for ensuring success. It will help you position your business better than your competitors and allow you to offer a smooth user experience to your visitors. Additionally, an optimized website is bound to have higher ranking in search engine result pages. You can optimize your website by following the above-mentioned tips or hiring a white-label agency to do all the difficult tasks for you, while you sit back and do what you do best, run your business!

Do you know one of the most effective ways to successfully build your business?

It's keeping an eye on your competitors. Yes, you read it right! In order to create smarter marketing strategies, you need to know your competitors really well.

Now, we all know that there are plenty of ways to spy on your competition. You can check their activities on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms. You can even subscribe to their digital newsletters in order to stay abreast with the latest updates and promotions.

But all of these methods are extremely time-consuming and don't offer in-depth data on what your competitors are doing to increase their customer base and build their business.

So here's what you can do instead!

Stop wasting your energy on methods that don't offer enough output and take the route of technology. What we mean is ā use the best tools for spying on your competitors. Some of the tools out there also tell you if your competitors are spying on you.

In this post, we discuss the list of 19 best tools you need for the purpose of monitoring your competitors closely. Let's discuss each one of them in detail.

How Can I Spy on My Competitors?

As you operate in a competitive landscape, it's important to analyze both the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. Here's a list of the top tools you can use to get a comprehensive view of where you competitors stand:

1. SEMRush

SEMRush is a famous SEO tool that helps you:

• Know about potential competitors
• Gather data on the marketing strategies of other businesses
• Analyze the paid traffic of your competitors

You can also use the tool to improve your current campaigns by recognizing content gaps and researching keywords. SEMRush also helps you perform competitor keyword research.

Image Source

As far as the pricing is concerned, SEMRush offers different packages between $119 and $449 a month, based on the number of brands you want to track. You can also check the broad range of add-ons they offer, such as market research tools, leads channel, etc.

2. Ubersuggest

Backlinks are crucial for any winning SEO strategy. Ubersuggest is a free tool that sheds light on how your competitors fare in this regard.

But why should YOU use the tool?

The answer is simple ā To build a foundation for a link building strategy that gets you ranked. Here's how you can leverage the tool for the same:

• Type in your competitor’s URL and click “Search.”
• Choose “Backlinks,” located in the sidebar.
• Go through the overview of the link profile of your competitor. Also check detailed data such as URLs, domain score, referring pages, and anchor text.
• Choose the “Traffic Analyzer View” to view domain score, number of incoming backlinks, and so on.

Image Source

After viewing this information, you can also make a list of sites that link to your competitors. Then, you can target these websites to get backlinks to your content as well.

3. Buzzsumo

One of the most popular tools for spying on your competitors is Buzzsumo. It provides you with some incredible ideas for your content marketing strategy by keeping a track of your competitor's content. It shows what content has gained popularity among your competitors' audiences.

Now, how to use it?

Simply open the tool and type in a URL in the search bar. It will display the most popular content for that website. You can even filter down your results by content type, date range, etc.

Image Source

After you use this tool and get to know what's working for your competition, you can adapt the same for your own target audience.

4. SimilarWeb

You also require a tool that effectively gauges the overall web performance of your competitors. SimilarWeb is one tool that offers you an overview of your competitor's traffic analysis. With the help of this tool, you are able to find out their monthly traffic, where these visitors come from, and which channels bring in the most visitors.

Here's how you can use the tool to spy on your competitors:

• Open the tool and enter a website of your choice.
• An overview of its traffic will appear. Here, you can check the traffic sources. Looking at the information, you will also come to know which is the most impactful channel for them.

Image Source

Another great feature of this tool is that you can compare traffic for different competitors.

5. Fanpage Karma

Fanpage Karma is a tool that allows you to track social media activity of brands on a simple-to-use dashboard. With the help of the tool, you can dive deeper into your rival's social strategy as you get to measure their engagement, response time, growth, and much more.

Another noteworthy feature of the tool is that it allows you to measure the success rate of the social media campaigns of your competitors. You can even view the posts that increased their followers.

Image Source

6. Adbeat

Adbeat is one of the best tools for spying on your competition. It helps evaluate the digital marketing strategy of any brand. Here's how the tool can benefit you:

• You can check which ad campaigns of your competitors perform well with their customers.
• You can learn how much your competitors spend on advertising.

The tool is perfect for brainstorming ideas for your future ad campaigns as well.

When it comes to pricing, Adbeat offers a standard package for $249 a month and an advanced package for $399 a month.

They also offer customer-tailored enterprise packages, which they provide to big companies that have specific business needs.

7. PlagiarismCheck

PlagiarismCheck.org is an easy-to-use online checker that helps you know if your rivals copy your content. In other words, you can use this tool to check if your competitors present your writings as their own.

Basically, this tool finds rearrangements in word order, poor paraphrasing, and any indirect matches of your content. All in all, it's a great tool to have in your arsenal.

Image Source

8. Copyscape

Copyscape is another effective tool that checks if someone has stolen your content. It even checks if your content is original enough to publish.

If you choose the premium version of the tool, you gain access to more powerful detection. This version even provides extra services like API, private index, batch search, and copy-paste checks.

Another noteworthy thing about the tool is that it scans the internet on a day to day basis and emails you in case it detects copies of your content.

9. Followerwonk

Next in our list is the Twitter research tool called Followerwonk. The tool offers you insights into the kind of audience your competitors have.

Now, you may be wondering how the tool can benefit you?

It lets you access demographic data about your competitor's followers and helps you find new followers. You can also use the tool to understand how to create content that strikes a chord with your customers.

Image Source

10. Hootsuite

While researching different ways on how to spy on your competitors, we recommend you use a popular tool called Hootsuite. It is considered as the best tool for tracking social media analytics.

The incredible thing about this tool is that it integrates with more than 35 social media networks. Pretty cool, isn't it?

To use the tool, set up streams and follow your competitor's activity. You can also track specific hashtags and keywords.

11. Moat

Moat Ad Search is a tool that helps analyze the ad creatives of your competitors. You can call it the largest digital-ad search engine.

To use the tool, open it, add a brand, and check and analyze the ads they have used in the past.

Here are the results when you search for Coca-Cola.ā

Image Source

Also, when you hover over a particular ad, you can know the dates during which it was active and its dimensions.

Note: The tool also allows you to create deals alerts every time your competitors create a new ad.

12. Sprout Social

When you talk of the most famous social media spying tools, Sprout Social deserves a mention. It monitors your competitors' campaigns and helps you improve your social media strategy.

Here's what you can do with the help of this tool:

• Know the recent changes/trends in your industry.
• Get valuable insights from your rivals.
• Research upcoming trends and sharpen your marketing plan.
• Manage your social campaigns from a single platform.

Image Source

When you talk of pricing, Sprout's premium packages start at $89 a month, enabling you to monitor five social profiles. If you need to track more accounts, you can choose their enterprise packages for $149 and $249 a month.

13. Ahrefs

Next on our list of tools for spying on other brands is the widely known tool Ahrefs. You can use it for every aspect of competitor analysis.

It provides you with all this information on your competitors:

• Referring domains
• Domain authority
• New referring domains

Image Source

Armed with this information, you can check how long it is taking for your competitors to gain new links. If they are gaining 90 links in a day, for instance, then you can set your own goal accordingly.

14. Kompyte

Kompyte helps you learn about any changes on your competitor's website. It also enables you to know about their ads and digital marketing campaigns.

If you go ahead and register for this tool, you will get an alert every time your competitor puts up a fresh banner, posts ads, or makes even the smallest modification on their site.

Another noteworthy feature of the tool is the hidden updates a feature. It monitors the changes that aren't even visible on your competitor's site. An amazing feature, isn't it?

Note: The pricing of the tool is not known, but you can always request a demo to know more.

15. Ontolo

While looking for effective ways on how to spy on your competitors, consider using a tool called Ontolo. It provides useful graphs and reports to let you easily understand the information it shows.

Essentially, Ontolo is a tool that lays key focus on content marketing. But, it's also a helpful backlink tool. With the help of this tool you can:

• Prioritize your content and get improved results
• Discover authors who link to your content
• Get tips and recommendations for link building opportunities

Image Source

16. SpyFu

SpyFu offers you detailed insights into the marketing campaigns of your competitors. For instance, you get to look at their Google Ads activity. This means, you can see every ad variation, every organic rank, and all the keywords they bought on Google Ads.

If you want to get a detailed rundown of your competitor's Google Ads campaign, all you need to do is open the tool and enter the brand you want to analyze.

This helps you check what they are doing correctly. You also get to see any improvements that they need to make.

Image Source

All in all, SpyFu offers you some great ideas you can use to improve your advertising campaigns.

SpyFu packages start from $39 a month. They increase according to the number of keywords you need to research.

17. iSpionage

iSpionage is one of the most powerful competitor analysis tools for spying on your competitors. It helps research keywords and examine your competitors' marketing campaigns.

Basically, this tool helps you dive deeper into the marketing activities of your competition. You can use it to obtain data on your rival's paid advertising budgets and check the keywords they are using for their pay-per-click ads.

Image Source

When you talk of pricing, iSpionage packages are priced between $59 and $299 a month. Companies requiring advanced competitor reporting features can contact iSpionage for custom subscriptions.

18. Serpstat

Serpstat is a highly reliable SEO competitor tracker tool out there. Top brands such as Shopify and Samsung use it to keep a check on their rivals and hone their SEO strategies.

Apart from this, businesses also use the tool to keep a check on their competitors content strategies. One can even access it to know any upcoming keyword trends.

Image Source

As far as pricing is concerned, Serpstat's packages are priced from $55 to $399 a month, based on the number of daily searches you require.

19. KW Finder

KW Finder helps you carry out competitor analysis on the SEO strategies of other brands. All you need to do is type in the domain of a brand, and the tool will present you a breakdown of its top-ranking keywords. This data comes in handy to produce SEO-driven content that helps in getting more users to your website.

Image Source

When it comes to the pricing of the tool, packages fall between $29 to $79 a month, depending on the brands and number of keywords you wish to research.

Wrapping It Up

In this day and age, you need to stalk your competitors to find out ways to outsmart them. The tools we've discussed will allow you to keep an eye on your competition more closely. All these tools offer quick and smart insights, giving you the latest data on your rivals. Use the valuable insights you gather from these tools to create a plan that sets your business up for success. Ensure you use a combination of the tools we've discussed to connect the dots and view the bigger picture.

Now that you are armed with the knowledge of the top tools for spying on your competitors, you are in a well-informed position to move ahead in the game.

Get cracking!

Ever wondered why most agencies fail and only a few succeed in digital marketing?

In the agency business, your success lies in your ability to effectively optimize systems and processes. So, first, you must set up the right processes and create templates for them.

The idea is to identify the monotonous processes and create successful internal methods to boost efficiency, reduce human error and wasteful practices and build strong client relationships.

Right agency processes aren’t limited to the systems in place. They also include communications being sent, meeting schedules, and management of systems the agency uses at every level.

It ensures the effectiveness of your digital agency at each level.

In this article, we will discuss the three fundamental elements of a successful agency business, and they are:

• The agency processes
• Building optimal agency processes
• How DashClicks can help you become an effective digital agency?

What Are Agency Processes?

Consider the systems at work in a business, especially the following things.

• How are the communications taking place within the organization and with the clients?
• How do you communicate with your clients and exchange messages?
• How do you share and exchange various documents?
• How do the meetings take place?

So, these are more like the management systems we use in different fields to run operations. These include:

• Methods
• Systems
• Technology
• Human Resources

Furthermore, these elements are dynamic, so the changes have to be regular for consistent improvement.

So, setting up the processes is the desired practice the creative agency will ultimately benefit from.

How to Optimize Your Agency Processes?

Agency business is quite competitive, and if you don’t optimize agency processes, you may soon find yourself in troubled waters. Here are some of the agency process best practices.

In an agency business, your profits and revenue primarily depend on how efficiently you execute your projects and run your processes.

Agency owners confront many things at a time, including resource crunch, lack of time, looming deadlines, wasteful and repetitive practices, lack of coordination among team members, and communication issues within the teams and with the clients.

So, first of all, we need to fix these issues. Identify and eliminate unnecessary processes and ensure a smooth workflow across teams. Remove the friction points if there are any by clearly defining the specific roles of each team member.

Sometimes, employees face annoying operational challenges and complain about repetitive tasks. You can address this issue by developing robust processes.

1. Audit Your Processes and Workflow

You should begin by auditing the processes and workflow in your agency. Meet your team members and discuss the friction points to eliminate wasteful practices that cause unnecessary delays.

List all the challenges, including repetitive tasks in different processes such as client onboarding, reporting, and executing various tasks while running campaigns.

Also, identify the instances where productive time is lost in tos and fros and repetition.

For example, ‌prioritize the issue if more than two persons complain of the same repetitive tasks while running campaigns. Even account managers find themselves stuck because of inefficient practices and repetitive tasks. If it is happening consistently, you need to optimize the process.

2. Set SMART Goals

Setting smart goals in the agency business, i.e., Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Based, is crucial. Goal setting is the best strategy for productivity and success, but vague and unspecified goals won’t help you much as with such goals, measuring or tracking your performance becomes highly impossible.

Image Source

For example, if your target is to grow your agency, you should set a specific goal: “I want to reach the $3 million revenue mark by the end of this year.” This goal will motivate your entire team and push them to work harder instead of vague goals such as growing the agency’s revenue.

Your goals should be relevant. Suppose you want to achieve increased visibility for your agency; your goal should be to increase your social media followers, increase traffic on your website and boost engagement on all your social media channels. Just growing your traditional marketing budget and the number of billboards would not serve the purpose.

Last but not least, if your goals are not time-bound, your teams wouldn’t be motivated enough to achieve these goals. Therefore, it becomes crucial to attach a date to your goals.

3. Collect All the Necessary Information From the Client

You should collect all the necessary information from the clients, including project details and company credentials. It saves a lot of time wasted back and forth.

It will give your teams a precise idea of the deliverables and make the onboarding process smoother. A crystal-clear picture of your campaigns will ensure step-by-step progress and client satisfaction.

4. Get the Right Tools

Seamlessly sharing information among team members and establishing robust internal and external communication require the right processes and tools. Slack, Google Chat, and Microsoft Teams can save you a lot of hassle, but nothing is better than using a platform that offers an integrated dashboard.

DashClicks’ white-level platform allows you to have a bird’s eye view of your campaigns, manage CRM, and automate all the communications, including emails and SMSes, during the different stages of the customer journey. Even if you use third-party team management tools like Slack, DashClicks will help you with real-time updates about your campaigns, boosting client satisfaction and helping you establish your agency as a brand.

Here is the software tour of DashClicks that will explain how you can use the different white-label tools and apps to save time and effort.

5. Prioritize Tasks and Provide Creative Briefs to Your Teams

It is important to prioritize tasks and provide creative briefs to your team members. It will increase your efficiency in an agency business if your tasks are prioritized and completed in time.

To avoid confusion, repetition, or duplication of work, you need to assign specific roles to each team member. You should also provide creative briefs to your teams at the beginning of a project. Encourage them to ask as many questions as possible and keep the client in the loop so that everybody is on the same page.

You can build a highly organized agency with minimum wasteful practices if you assign specific roles to your team members and accordingly develop the processes.

It makes each person responsible for their deliverables, deadlines, and quality. You can also create a workflow chart for your organization.

Use DashClicks' project management tool to effectively manage your projects.

DashClicks' white label project management app provides the easiest and most powerful way to manage your projects, teams, customers, and more.

6. Leverage Automation

You can leverage the power of automation and boost your business beyond your wildest imaginations. You know that developing a website is a tedious task. Companies waste a lot of time creating professional-grade websites and writing content.

Apart from that, the websites should be SEO-friendly and offer a good user experience. They should be eye-catching and should download quickly. Businesses have a tough time getting such websites developed by the developers as they waste a lot of time.

DashClicks allows you to create instant websites through its website building automation tool InstaSites. Watch this video to know more about InstaSites.

Similarly, you can create automated reports and save much of your productive time.

DashClicks enables you to create instant reports through its report automation tool InstaReports. Watch this video to know more about InstaReports -

You can customize your reporting to suit your branding and functionality needs.

7. Automate Deals and Manage Sales Pipelines

DashClicks allows you to manage leads and deals in the sales pipeline through its Deals and Inbound Apps. Doing it manually takes time and is prone to human errors.

Deals is a sales pipeline management software that brings automation to life when managing leads and deals within your sales pipeline CRM software. Watch this video to know more about using automations through the Deals app -

With the Inbound app, you can easily manage all your inbound leads across multiple third-party platforms and distribute them to your sales team so they can instantly follow up with prospects.

Watch this video to know more about using automations through the Inbound app -

We have added six new automations recently to the Deals App -

Final Words

DashClicks is a comprehensive platform that can revolutionize your agency processes. Apart from offering you numerous crucial automation, it allows you to share your work between team members. It will help you during the auditing process, where you can identify your team's pain points and wasteful practices.

Many apps and tools included in the platform will make your tasks a cakewalk, saving you enormous time and effort. Employing SMART goal-setting, you can ensure productivity and efficiency. DashClicks' robust reporting tools will help you measure your campaign performance and your team's efficiency effectively.

In the sales funnel, DashClicks will enable you to automate your communications with prospects at different stages in their buyer's journey. Overall, DashClicks offers a platform with indispensable tools for your agency business.

In this age of tools and automation, your sales performance is directly linked to your tools and processes. With lead management automation, you can quickly increase your revenue by 10% within six to nine months.

To clinch more business deals, your sales team should consistently receive an uninterrupted flow of leads. With increasing competition, you can't overlook your lead management anymore. Businesses must fix their lead management processes, from lead acquisition to the time they are transferred to the sales team.

What Is Lead Management Automation?

Lead management automation involves everything that ensures that the leads are sales-ready before they are transferred to the sales team. Therefore, it involves acquiring leads, monitoring your prospects' behavior and online activities, and nurturing them into qualified leads. It's impossible without leveraging tools and technologies in B2C or B2B environments when you deal with a lot of sales data.

The only way to integrate sales and marketing is by leveraging technology because manual processes will not work in the current complex sales environment. It will also ensure that your sales team gets better quality leads without wasting precious time and effort.

To implement this, you need lead management and automation tools like DashClicks that will give you an edge over others. It will help you manage the sales pipeline more effectively, increasing productivity and revenue and decreasing the lead decay rate.

Here is how DashClicks' sales management & automation apps Deals and Inbound can help you!

How Does DashClicks Pipeline Management Work?

DashClicks is a popular sales and lead management software that automates your workflow with deal automations. It enables you to send custom emails and SMS messages to your prospects, taking all the manual burden off your sales team.

Moreover, with DashClicks' white-label platform, you can quickly change deal owners' information and even set reminders.

You can also customize the software so that it automatically triggers InstaSites and InstaReports formation, the other robust automation tools the platform offers to create instant websites and online marketing reports.

DashClicks' automated sales pipeline CRM dashboard lets you gain relevant insights and showcase your leaderboard. Together, it creates a truly transformational experience for your sales team.

The dashboard also enables you to track all deal automation history logs and separate the successful automations from the unsuccessful ones. So, you can retry and skip options and take even more actions.

Strategies to Improve Sales Productivity Using DashClicks Sales Pipeline and Lead Automation Tools

Known for having a direct impact on sales, the lead management and sales pipeline automation tools like DashClicks will not only boost your sales productivity but will also help you craft the right strategy. Here are a few techniques you can try.

1. Use a Robust Lead Tracking Tool

The most tedious and time-consuming task of sales pipeline management is lead tracking. It becomes even more exhausting when you have a high volume of leads from different platforms. Investing in DashClicks will make your life easier while tracking and nurturing leads.

It will help you manage your leads using a single dashboard and track your leads’ position in the sales funnel. It will also help you minimize the “leaks” and “lost leads” during this journey. The software also provides you with crucial data that will help make sales more efficient.

2. Use a Lead Scoring System to Prioritize High Intent Leads

DashClicks, the leading sales lead management software, will help you accumulate meaningful data that will provide you with solid signals about customer intent and interest. It will allow your sales team to identify the leads closer to converting, so they can make a separate list and prioritize them. It will save your salespeople a lot of time and boost conversions. An efficient lead scoring system will also help optimize your sales team's overall performance.

3. Focus On Impactful Lead Nurturing

Nurtured leads are 20% more effective in terms of the sales opportunities they provide than qualified but not nurtured leads. It is no wonder marketers emphasize engaging and interacting with prospects at every stage of their buying journey. Lead nurturing is the surest way to achieve a higher conversion rate. Besides boosting your sales numbers, it also helps increase customer loyalty, which alone pays off in the long run.

4. Maintain Constant and Effective Communication

Automation shortens the lead response time. Lead nurturing helps you understand customers' needs in a crystal clear manner so that you can plan more targeted messaging. DashClicks' sales pipeline and lead automation software allows you to send emails and SMS automatically to your prospects. Right messaging speeds up the process of conversion in the sales funnel.

Here are the four major automations that DashClicks offers –

• Email Automation
• SMS Automation
• InstaSite Automation
• InstaReport Automation

5. Monitor Campaign Performance With InstaReports

Reports are the soul of a digital marketing campaign. DashClicks’ InstaReports automation tool generates professional-grade reports illustrated with easy-to-grasp graphs and charts. These reports provide the insights you need to tweak your campaigns and eliminate the wasteful and unproductive processes and practices.

They also help you assess the performance of your sales and marketing teams. So, you can quickly identify the weaknesses in your sales plan and reprogram it to yield better results.

Final Words

With the advent of automation and a gradual phasing out of manual processes, you can quickly increase your sales team's performance using robust lead management and sales pipeline management software. Furthermore, it eliminates the chances of error when dealing with copious amounts of data.

DashClicks' Deals and Inbound Apps are specifically designed for high-wired sales teams and provide working solutions to the major challenges faced by them on a daily basis. DashClicks' automation tools take all the load off your shoulder by helping you automate lead communication in different stages of their buying journey.