Google's ultimate business objective is to improve its search results, and it achieves it through its complex algorithms. So, Google constantly rolls out algorithm updates to prevent poor search results from appearing on top of SERPs.

What Is Black Hat SEO?

Google Webmaster guidelines are compiled to help website owners and businesses to stick to the best practices and avoid the shady ones.

Despite the clear guidelines from Google, many businesses try to manipulate and game the algorithms. The objective is to achieve a higher rank in a short span of time. To achieve this end, they won't even shy away from engaging in unfair practices. And that is known as Black Hat SEO. Hollywood movie-makers showed the bad guys wearing black hats in the old cowboy movies. That is the reason why these dubious practices are termed Black Hat SEO.

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The standard way to win the SERPs is to create high-value, high-quality content that solves people's problems. You should also engage in deep keyword research to make yourself visible in front of the people searching for the products you sell.

Google is constantly improving itself while identifying and penalizing Black Hat SEO strategies. So, when a practice becomes prevalent, Google rolls out an algorithm update and penalizes the websites engaged in such malpractices. But this does not stop people from inventing newer Black Hat techniques.

Signs That Your SEO Agency Is Implementing Black Hat Tactics

Here are the nine signs that indicate that your SEO agency might be hurting your website with black hat tactics.

1. They Are Engaged in Link Exchange and Buying Links

High-quality backlinks are extremely important because Google takes them as a signal of your site's authenticity, trustworthiness, and reliability. Backlinks from high-traffic websites also drive huge traffic to your website.

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It prompts some webmasters to buy the backlinks; however, that is completely against Google's guidelines. Google goes one step further and says that it doesn't work. It means that Google is aware of it, and its algorithms can penalize the site if they ever find out it's engaged in buying links.

In some instances, Google can impose an automatic or manual penalty that can impact specific pages or the entire website.

Google specializes in identifying deliberate actions and abnormal patterns to easily identify black hat SEO.

2. They Participate in Link Schemes

Google also despises link schemes such as exchanging links, free products, or discounts. To prevent such links from appearing as a link scheme, make them a no-follow link. You can do it by using the rel= "nofollow" tag. When you use this tag, your backlink will not impact the SERP rankings.

3. They Hide the Links

There are many ways to hide a link, and the prominent ones among these are:

• Placing the link on the footer
• Using it as anchor text
• Hiding it in the background color
• Keeping text off-screen
• Using font size ‘zero’

The easiest way to insert a link is to place it on the footer because there is enough space out there, and people have been doing it since the dawn of the world wide web.

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The worst thing is to use the commercial anchor text, which Google takes as a way of suggesting to rank the web page for the text used in anchor text. Google doesn’t like anyone to tell which site to rank higher. It’s manipulative, and Google hates it.

The worst part is to try to hide the links in the background color or the website text. Google will identify it both ways and penalize your website. The message is loud and clear, “Don’t try to game the system.”

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Another way to hide the backlinks is to post the link in the same color as the background, but you can't fool Google as they immediately detect it.

You should also not try to keep text off-screen using CSS or font size 0.

4. They Have No Activity to Show

If your agency has no genuine activity to show in the first few months, chances are they are involved in black hat activities. What you can expect at this point is:

• A comprehensive website audit.
• Detailed website analysis & optimization report.
• Identification of the target keywords.
• A list of targeted keywords per month.
• The articles or content created and published on the website and elsewhere for organic SEO.

If they have no clue who has done that, it means they are not seriously working on your project and might be doing Black Hat SEO for rankings.

5. Utter Lack of Communications

A professional SEO agency will regularly communicate and update you regarding the necessary accesses, reports, website errors, potentially harmful things on the website, a list of targeted keywords, and previous work on the website.

They might need access to CMS, Google Analytics, previous SEO and audit reports, Google Search Console Tools, and social media handles as part of their regular digital marketing activities.

If they are not doing that, it strongly indicates that they are relying on spammy backlinks creation, which can be potentially harmful to your website.

Most of the digital marketing work requires collaboration between the client and the SEO agency. At times, an SEO agency may suggest you take certain actions or complete certain tasks. It can also be a big red flag if they do not give you any suggestions or recommendations.

6. They Maintain a Layer of Confidentiality

If they don't disclose their tactics and maintain a high level of confidentiality around their activities, it can signal that something fishy is going on.

And when you ask something about the project's progress, their response is, "We are doing a lot of activities, so we can't share them with you at this point. However, you will soon learn about them and their impact on the website."

True SEO involves legitimate activities such as local SEO, guest posting, on-page optimization, and Google My Business listings. There should be nothing to hide if you are implementing it. Only scammers keep things secret. If such a thing happens, this is high time you should fire your SEO agency.

7. Your Website Is Penalized

If you signed the contract barely a month or two ago, and you see your website getting penalized, it may or may not be the fault of your SEO agency. However, there's a strong signal that they might be going in the wrong direction, i.e., practicing Black Hat SEO.

In this case, you should perform your research and try to know the reason for the penalty.

Some of the types of penalties that you might receive are as follows.

• A manual penalty
• A sudden drop in rankings
• A noticeable drop in the traffic

If you receive a GWT notification or an e-mail regarding a manual penalty, it's certainly not good news. If it has been just two or three months since you commenced work with your SEO agency, you can't be sure, but it's a potential red flag.

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Google's algorithms are constantly updating, so a drop in rankings doesn't always indicate that it's your agency's fault. However, if you notice a consistent fall in the rankings, use your analytics tools to know why.

A sudden drop in traffic is a strong signal of an algorithmic penalty. Investigate the reason for such a fall. It doesn't indicate that it's your SEO's fault, but you need to be cautious. Get a list of all your SEO agency's activities on your website and check if these activities might be the reason behind these penalties.

8. Your Website Starts Receiving Traffic From the Wrong Keywords

Suppose Google Analytics tells you that you have started ranking for the wrong keywords or are receiving traffic from the wrong keywords. In that case, it's a strong signal that your SEO agency is practicing spammy activities. In that case, ask your agency to furnish details of its actions on the website in the last few months.

Also, share with them the list of the wrong keywords your site is ranking for. If it is an error, they will rectify it, and if it is because of some spammy practice, you should immediately fire your agency.

9. Rise of Suspicious Backlinks

A spike in the number of suspicious backlinks to your website indicates something fallacious is happening. Check your link profile. Your link profile shows how Google should rank your website. In general, if you are an education technology business, you should not receive backlinks from gambling, textile, or spa websites. And if you are a US-based company, and you start receiving links from Chinese-language websites, your link profile is messed up.

It means that your digital marketing agency is using some tools that create spammy backlinks. These backlinks will not help increase your site's authority but will devalue it. In this case, you should immediately discuss it with your SEO agency and share the spammy links that your website has received. So, even if you don't get an honest answer, at least they will do something to fix the issue.

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You can use Google disavow tool to disavow those links or get your agency to do it.

Final Words

When you work with an agency, you need to keep patience, especially when it has been just a few months since they began working on your website. White-hat SEO takes a considerable amount of time to deliver results. Even if you outsource services from an agency, you should constantly research and keep yourself updated with the current market trends.

Signing a contract with an agency does not always mean you are not supposed to do anything. Instead, a professional agency will work with you as a partner and recommend several things you should quickly implement.

These tasks are generally not mentioned in your agency's scope of work but are crucial to getting the desired results.

To summarize, SEO is crucial for your website, and you cannot afford Black Hat SEO. Sometimes the success of your business depends on the SEO. You should give some time for your agency to deliver results, but you should constantly monitor them. If you notice something fishy, discuss it with them, try to conduct your research, and then make a decision.

Digital marketing is as dynamic as it gets. Devices, platforms, popular social media channels, technology, and social trends keep changing and evolving. Furthermore, it’s about online visibility and presence, attracting a target audience, generating leads, and converting your prospects into paying customers.

To survive in this continuously evolving marketplace and stay relevant, businesses must keep themselves abreast of current trends and practices. That’s why there is a surging demand for digital marketing coaching programs. Many agencies are offering mini-courses, webinars, and boot camps to fill this gap in the market.

The education and training programs help you drive these four major benefits

• Generate a new revenue stream
• Build authority
• Build a brand
• Increase social exposure and online visibility

Benefits of Participating as a Speaker in Your Industry Events

When you attend highly advertised and hyped industry meetings, seminars, webinars, podcasts, and interviews, you gain trust as an expert and elevate your agency’s branding. Moreover, as people start mentioning you on different forums and social channels, you also increase your online visibility, earning a lot of free backlinks en route.

Pro Tips:

• Look for opportunities to participate as a speaker at business conferences, industry meetups, and seminars.
• Pitch to event organizers and get into the circuit.
• Prepare for your speech, raise burning issues, and offer interesting solutions.

Speaking opportunities and engagements of this sort will skyrocket your agency business. It also helps in business expansion, conversion, and retention as you position your agency as a credible service provider.

Supercharge Your Coaching Program With DashClicks

If you want to supercharge your coaching program, here is some good news. You can now leverage the DashClicks ecosystem in your core coaching offerings. It will help you offer a ton of value to your clients!

Another advantage of bundling your coaching program in the DashClicks white-label platform is that it provides a perfect combination to your clients – that of learning and leveraging the various tools to further their business. If you provide standalone coaching like other coaches, this immense value might be missing.

With state-of-the-art marketing and automation softwares, your clients will have the best training experience to help them boost their business to the next level. Here are a few tips to supercharge your coaching program with the DashClicks platform.

1. Bring the Ideal Sales Process to Life

Sales is about familiarity with the pipelines, unique stages in the funnel, the right messaging, and automated tasks. If you can help your clients visualize the sales process and model it in real life with the help of a robust deals management system, they will easily become sales superstars.

2. Help Clients Achieve Their Business Goals

Sales have always been a challenge for businesses. It’s also a double-edged sword, as no business entity can survive without sales.

DashClicks has developed a platform to help entrepreneurs and agency owners earn additional income and attract lifetime customers.

The white-label platform is easy to use and can make your business goals a reality with smooth processes, transparent and quick sales pipelines, and contact management abilities.

3. Optimize Workflow and Task Management

As an agency owner, you may have to create several subaccounts. Often, it becomes difficult to track them all and stay up-to-date with their performance.

DashClicks white label agency software allows you to automate numerous tasks and send out notifications per your schedule. It helps streamline workflow and accomplish tasks on time.

4. Build Employee Accountability

DashClicks platform also allows you to track performance at the individual employee level. It generates accountability among your staffers and thereby improves the overall performance of your team.

Tracking employee performance is integral to developing a robust employee management strategy. A successful sales process involves rapidly managing sales rep assignments and optimizing operations, as you constantly need to tweak the process to ensure success. As a planner and sales supervisor, your job is to instantly notify the sales reps of new leads.

A near-perfect analytics software helps you identify opportunities for improvement and capitalize on recent accomplishments to move forward with full momentum.

5. Offer Coaching Programs

Coaching has become indispensable for the transformation and success of all businesses, including startups and agency businesses. Besides that, you can also offer your clients the necessary tools to help them implement your instructions.

6. Monitor, Measure, & Improve With Analytics

Constant measurement and assessment are vital to improvement. Using the DashClicks ecosystem, you can provide clients with an all-in-one solution compatible with third-party analytics software. DashClicks provides 65+ integrations that make working with third-party analytics software a breeze.

DashClicks' Features

Here are some of the features the DashClicks agency software offers. They will help you understand how the platform works.

1. A White Label Platform

We help agencies increase their revenue with our white-label platform. This platform allows you to automatically generate sub-accounts for every new sign-up so they can get full access to the platform. It also helps you generate additional income.

2. Business Management Solutions

DashClicks' white label platform comes with many useful applications that offer powerful business management solutions. For example, the Analytics App offers you real-time analytics and campaign tracking.

Website development is a time-consuming and tiring process that includes a lot of back and forth with the developers. InstaSites App enables you to build niche websites in bulk, that too in seconds. These websites usually comprise 30+ pages and are content-ready. So, the tool saves you a lot of hard work and hassle.

Projects App helps you manage your projects. It provides you a bird's eye view of all the campaigns you run in a single dashboard.

DashClicks has designed each application to help businesses improve performance, manage tasks, decrease churn, and increase sales. So you can provide your clients with the tools they need to take their business to the next level.

3. Services

The DashClicks ecosystem is known chiefly for its white-labeled marketing solutions. You can resell our digital marketing services, all under your own brand.

4. Our Team

The DashClicks ecosystem comprises a large fulfillment team to help you scale quickly and efficiently. Besides that, it also comes with a dedicated support team. The support content (both text and videos) is immensely useful for beginners.

5. Veteran Marketing Experts

DashClicks' marketing team has some renowned veteran marketing experts who have over a decade of experience helping hundreds of industries. These experts ensure your success as an agency and startup when you're hardly familiar with the nitty-gritty of digital marketing.

6. Our Process

We at DashClicks have simplified delivery protocols to do the heavy lifting, so that you, the user, never have to lift a finger. Just let us know what you are looking for, and we'll deliver it.

DashClicks Education

DashClicks offers digital marketing education through its blog and YouTube channel.

The idea is to help agency owners succeed in this challenging and shifting marketplace. The blog section on the DashClicks website and DashClicks' YouTube channel provide "no-nonsense" digital marketing education with valuable tips for you to succeed as an agency.

The training videos guide you about what works and what doesn't and are as entertaining as they are educational. They simplify the complicated stuff without making you feel overwhelmed with too much information at once.

You can also refer to DashClicks' Facebook page for valuable tips and videos by experts like Chad Kodary, CEO, DashClicks.

DashElite Coaching Program

DashElite is an exclusive coaching program for serious entrepreneurs and agency owners. It's a paid program that includes access to the DashClicks software, personalized support, live weekly training, and much more.

Final Words

With numerous software applications, personalized attention, fulfillment teams, and a group of mentors and experts to support you, DashClicks offers an ideal ecosystem to supercharge your coaching program. Make DashClicks your partner in your coaching business and reap the unmatched rewards the education and training industry provides.

Google My Business (GMB) is a Google tool that lets you manage as well as improve your business profile on Google. It even utilizes the widespread adoption of Google Maps by people when deciding to use a local product or service.

In a bid to position Google My Business as the ideal tool for local businesses wanting to reach more customers online, Google has added multiple new features to it. The move will help simplify the way people access their business listing on the search engine. Another significant notable change was the renaming of Google My Business it is now called “Google Business Profile.”

Given how subtle Google is about the changes to its platform, it’s likely that you, as a business owner, may still be unaware of the latest features of Google Business Profile. Keeping track of the updates of this free tool is essential to growing your business manifold. In this post, we’ll discuss what has changed in 2022 when it comes to this powerful tool so that you can continue reaching more customers and set your business up for success. Let’s begin:

What Is the Purpose of Google My Business?

Today, countless people rely on Google to find products and services. A GMB profile provides most companies with the opportunity to list detailed and specific business information on Google to get increased visibility on it.

Here’s a closer look at the other important benefits of Google My Business:

• Boosts Credibility: When a business appears on a search engine, people perceive it as a credible brand.
• Business Growth: As more people notice you online, your customers increase, and you, in turn, generate more business.
• Know Your Audience Better: With the help of Google Business Profile, you are able to profoundly understand your target audience.

The Changes to Look Out For

Let’s discuss the latest Google My Business updates and changes you need to know to stay ahead in the game. Let’s begin:

1. Google My Business Now Has a New Name

We have already discussed the name change Google My Business is known as “Google Business Profile” now. It was less of a surprise to many people, as GMB help documents started using “profile” instead of “listing” a while ago.

2. The GMB App Will Retire

In order to encourage business managers to access their profiles through an upgraded experience on “Google Maps” or “Google Search,” Google has decided to retire the GMB app this year. All you would need to do now is simply type in a search for your business name and click on the profile that shows up.

The Changes to Look Out For

Let’s discuss the latest Google My Business updates and changes you need to know to stay ahead in the game. Let’s begin:

1. Google My Business Now Has a New Name

We have already discussed the name change Google My Business is known as “Google Business Profile” now. It was less of a surprise to many people, as GMB help documents started using “profile” instead of “listing” a while ago.

2. The GMB App Will Retire

In order to encourage business managers to access their profiles through an upgraded experience on “Google Maps” or “Google Search,” Google has decided to retire the GMB app this year. All you would need to do now is simply type in a search for your business name and click on the profile that shows up.

Note: You need to follow a separate process in case you are already logged in. In this case, you just need to type the phrase “my business” and then click on the profile that appears.

3. You Can Claim and Verify Your Listing Directly on Maps and Search

Google announced this update because it wanted small businesses to manage their listings directly through Map or Search results. Owing to this update, you can directly verify your listing or sort other issues on your profile in Google search, along with editing your information.

Google has also communicated that a person claiming or creating a listing on Google can finish their setup directly on Maps and Search. They will also be able to see if their profile is publicly visible.

Apart from this, Google has even made certain metrics associated with your listing available for easy access in Search results, which include:

• Analytics and insights
• Business information update options
• Post options
• Latest reviews and star ratings

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4. Update Regarding GMB Web Portal

Another change you need to know is that the GMB web portal will transition to primarily support larger businesses with multiple locations. Google will offer more detail on this in the coming months, so we all would just have to wait it out.

5. Access to Enhanced Messaging Options

You may already know that business owners can chat with customers through Google Maps. But now, Google Search has this feature as well. Yes, you read it right! Business owners can view and reply to messages directly from their listing.

How to Optimize Your Business Profile Through Google My Business?

Here's a complete Google My Business optimization checklist that you can follow:

A. Fill Out Every Section: Ensure you include all vital information about your business like the company name, website, address, working hours, and phone numbers.

‍B. Add Your Business Description: Summarize your business in 2 lines. Write what your business is about so that a potential customer understands what your business stands for.‍

C. Set Your Business Category: Remember, categories describe your business and not what it sells or does. Select a primary category that describes your business in the best possible way.

‍D. Add Relevant, High-Quality Images: Include photos that will appeal to your potential customers.

‍E. Answer Questions: Sometimes, people may not get answers from your listing. Therefore, they would want to ask you questions. Google provides a feature where the searcher can ask questions related to businesses. Staying proactive in answering these questions is highly important. After all, you would want only accurate information about your business to be present on Google, wouldn't you? And responding to the searcher's question will also leave a positive impression.

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Keeping Your Listing Up-To-Date in 2023

Here's what you need to keep in mind to fully leverage Google Business Profile for your business:

1. Google Business Profile Categories

To help businesses represent their offerings and business in their listings, Google provides a plethora of categories for them to choose from. Although you have the option to select a number of categories for your business, the primary category you select should be a precise and clear reflection of your business. Selecting the correct primary category is also critical because it dictates which other listing options you get. For instance, if you choose “restaurants”, you will also get the listing option “menu options.”

We suggest that you stay abreast with the latest categories that Google adds every now and then to keep your listing up-to-date.

2. Google Business Profile Attributes

Another element we recommend you monitor for any updates is Google Business Profile attributes. Attributes have gained prominence in recent months to provide users a quick idea of what they can expect from a business, regardless of the kind of services or products they offer. You can also think of it as a convenient way to share your business offering and what makes you stand out. The attributes available to you are based on your primary business category.

To better understand attributes, let's consider the relatively new attribute category ā Google's Health & Safety attributes for instance. It provides an idea about the measures being taken for the health of customers by a business in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

All said and done, it's easy to see how tracking any update to this element can prove to be immensely helpful. The at-a-glance information it provides about a business can make or break a deal.

DashClick's Reputation App

DashClicks' Reputation app helps you manage your reviews across multiple sources from a single dashboard.

The good news is, you can integrate your Google My Business reviews into the Reputation app.

Here are the steps to do the same:

1. Sign up for the DashClicks platform.

2. Open the app drawer on the top right corner in your DashClicks Dashboard and click on the Reputation App.

3. Once the app opens, select the + icon next to the Source filter. Or, you can choose the same icon present in the top-right corner of the app.

4. From the list of sources, choose Google My Business. Select Continue.

5. A login modal will show up in a secondary tab (make sure your AdBlocker is disabled). Log into the account that controls the GMB page and allow permission to continue.

6. Next, choose “Location.” And you are all done!

DashClicks' White Label Listing Services

If you are a digital marketing agency, you should sign up to DashClicks' white label local listing management services to create local awareness for your clients.

With these services, you are able to syndicate your clients' business location to over 70+ local directory listings. You can also integrate Google My Business listing into the DashClicks' platform.

Note: DashClicks' Listings Manager is completely self-serviceable. There is no onboarding required!

The Bottom Line

Keeping listings active and up-to-date is important to dominate your target local search results and draw in new customers. Needless to say, Google My Business plays a critical part in increasing local ranking of any business. But another thing that is just as important is ā tracking every feature and update that's related to Google My Business. It will help you fully utilize the potential of this effective digital marketing tool and pave your way towards successful business growth.

If you observe the present social media landscape, you will see how difficult it is for a brand to maintain a strong social presence. Owing to the ever-changing and ever-evolving nature of social media, marketers face different social media challenges from time to time. Overcoming these challenges is extremely important in order to move ahead of your competition and get noticed by your customers.

But how to tackle these challenges? A lot of marketers end up fretting over this, ignoring actual growth opportunities in the process. How about taking these challenges and turning them into advancements to grow your brand and further establish your name in the industry? In this post, we'll discuss how you can turn social media challenges into opportunities. These are surefire ways that will help you move forward in your industry, gain more customers, and generate business for your brand.

Without further ado, let's talk about social media challenges and how to turn them head on into opportunities.

1. Encouraging Organic Conversations About Your Brand

Today, a social media challenge you may be facing is ā increasing the number of customers talking about you or your brand.

Now, an effective way to get more and more customers to talk about your brand is to receive more positive comments from your targeted audience or customers on social media. This would encourage other potential customers to also check out your business and perhaps even leave a good word of mouth themselves.

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Here’s precisely what you should do to accomplish this:

• Ask customers for a review.
• Promptly reply to social media comments and mentions.
• Share feedback from customers on social media. Don’t forget to take their permission before you do so, however.
• Create posts that ask for your customers’ opinion.
• Sponsor giveaways and contests.
• Offer top-notch customer service.

2. Stagnant and Declining Engagement Rates

The majority of brands out there have gone through this – stagnant and falling engagement rates on their social media posts and pages.

Engagement numbers impact the visibility of your content on different social media channels. Hence, you need to keep a tight check on them.

In case you are currently facing this challenge, you can turn it into an opportunity to know more about social media marketing and your audience. Here’s what we recommend you do:

A. Check Your Existing Social Media Results

Evaluate your existing social media status. Understand what’s working for you and what’s not. Also, don’t forget to check your top-performing posts to know what’s getting you more engagement with your audience.

We also recommend that you search for connections between these:

• Content types (Is video showing better performance than text?)
• Content themes
• Voice/tone
• Post timing
• Formatting

When you check your content’s performance across your social media accounts, you get to know about your audience and take steps to improve your strategy.

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B. Talk to Your Followers, Current Customers, and Online Communities

Yes, we know one of your objectives on social media is to gain new IG followers. But, you should also dedicate a major portion of your content marketing strategy and time talking with your followers, online communities, and current customers.

But how to speak directly to them? Here are some ways:

• Create campaigns to receive more UGC (user-generated content).
• Conduct quizzes and polls.
• Always monitor and respond to comments and kudos from your audience.

C. Keep Track of Consumer and Industry Trends

Keep on checking the latest consumer and industry trends. When you do so, you eliminate guesswork and get to know exactly what your audience prefers to see in your posts.

D. Collaborate With Other Brands and Influencers

To boost engagement, you can opt for an effective way to increase your reach: Collaborating with other brands and influencers.‍

Tip: Find influencers with a follower demographic similar to your target audience. They should also have authority in your niche. You can use tools such as Buzzsumo, Followerwonk, and Buzzstream to find such influencers.

3. Measuring Social Media Marketing ROI

Another challenge that many brands face today is measuring and determining the ROI of their social media marketing efforts.

Why so?

Basically, certain goals are more abstract than others, which makes it difficult to measure them and prove ROI. An example of such a goal is “boosting brand awareness.”

Now, the question is ā How to overcome the challenge of measuring and proving ROI of your social media marketing efforts?

After all, you need to see some solid results in order to efficiently deploy your marketing budget and time on future marketing efforts.

The answer lies in determining which metrics to track to better measure and prove your ROI in future. For this, the below-mentioned metrics could come in handy:

A. Bounce Rate

Imagine this: One of your Facebook posts brought a lot of visitors to a web page of your site, but they left after a few seconds. The result of this? It increases your bounce rate.If you see that you have a high bounce rate, it indicates that your posts may not be relevant to the specific web page content they are leading consumers to. Ensure you use this information to produce your future posts accordingly.

B. Engagements

Tracking engagements such as saves, mentions, shares, and comments is important for the purpose of showing a gradual increase in your authority. It helps you track your performance and improve campaigns and posts in the future.

C. Referral Traffic

We recommend that you utilize UTM parameters and keep track of the amount of traffic coming from your chosen social media networks.All you need to do is embed these parameters in all the links in your social media accounts, individual posts, or campaigns. Take the help of Google Analytics and you are all set!

D. Return on Advertising Spend

If you are looking for a metric measuring the effectiveness of your digital advertising campaigns, then your search ends here. It's called Return on Advertising Spend. Track this metric to know what's working and what improvements to make to your social media advertising for upcoming campaigns.‍

Note: Use DashClicks' Analytics app to monitor and report on all your marketing campaigns in a single place. The best part about using the software is that you can integrate all your third party marketing and analytics integrations with it from an ever-increasing list. You can also view granular data insights from your dedicated dashboard.

4. Maintaining a Consistent Brand Voice

Your brand voice a unique tone of communication that you adopt at an earlier stage of marketing must reflect in every content piece you produce. Otherwise, it can negatively impact your engagement.

Today, maintaining a consistent brand voice is yet another challenge a lot of brands face. Businesses often face this challenge because of a lack of long-term content planning.

Now, the question is, how to convert this challenge into an opportunity? How can you eventually overcome it?

We suggest that you craft a brand guide that details your tone, do's and don'ts, language usage, causes you stand for, etc.

Tip: As your brand voice sets your brand's personality, it's important to keep it impactful and relevant.

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5. Time Lost Due to Managing More Than One Social Network

From interacting with followers and strategizing over post ideas to cross posting and juggling content deadlines, there are plenty of tasks involved in managing different social platforms.

As a result of all of these tasks, productivity and time management can suffer. If you notice that you are facing this challenge, check to see if you can do without one or two social media platforms. This will also work as the perfect opportunity to streamline your social media marketing plan.

Here's what we recommend you do when faced with this challenge:

A. Conduct an Analysis of Each Platform

Check which social media platforms perform the best for your business. For this, you need to ask yourself the following questions:

• Which social media channels align more with your voice, goals, vision or brand image?
• On which social platforms do you see growth occurring for your brand?
• Where are the most meaningful engagements happening?
• Which social media platforms do your targeted audience frequent the most?

Finding answers to this question will help you know if you can stop using one or two platforms that aren't benefiting you in any way.

B. Hire White Label Social Media Services

If you are a digital marketing agency that's currently struggling with social media management for your clients, you can think about outsourcing. We recommend you hire reliable white label social media services from a reputed agency such as DashClicks. These services help you, the agency owner, leverage different social media platforms to increase social engagement for your clients.

Wrapping It Up

Since the beginning of social media marketing and advertising, marketers have come across many challenges that either make or break their marketing efforts. The fact is, social media challenges will always come up in one form or another. So, whenever your brand is faced with these challenges, you should look at them in a positive light. What we mean is, think of them as opportunities to improve your strategy, steer ahead of your competition, and boost sales.

For instance, if you face the challenge of declining engagement rates, then look at it as an opportunity to speak to your followers, online communities, and current customers to determine what they want. Or, if you face the challenge of time loss due to managing more than one social network, check which social platform you should pay the most attention to and direct all your efforts towards it.

In all, ensure you implement the pointers we discussed above to effectively interact and engage with your audience on social media and build your brand. Good luck!

In this digital age, you ABSOLUTELY need a mobile-friendly website for your business.

Why?

As you read this post, your potential customers may be searching for your business on their mobile devices.

A mobile-friendly website means a site that's created and optimized for smartphones and tablets.

There are even stats that point towards the importance of a mobile-friendly website:

• 55.4% of web users use mobile devices to purchase online.
• Moreover, 61% of users will never return to a site that isn’t mobile-friendly.

The number of global mobile users is also expected to grow with each passing year.

All of this points to one thing: the need to have a mobile-friendly website in order to offer the best user experience to mobile users visiting your site. It plays a crucial role in helping them decide whether or not they should purchase from you.

In this post, we'll discuss all the important things you need to know about mobile website design, the process in which you take steps to optimize the web experience for mobile users. Here's what you should keep in mind when creating a mobile-friendly website.

1. The Text Should Be Large Enough to Read

This is one of those mobile website design tips that may seem obvious, but deserves a mention because it plays a huge role in making your website mobile-friendly.

Your mobile site must have text that's large enough to read comfortably. The users should never have to scroll left/right or zoom in to read something.

Check this example where the text shown on the site perfectly fits the screen size of a mobile:

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2. Use Large Buttons

Your business' mobile site needs to have buttons large enough for users to tap on. They should never have to zoom in while tapping on the buttons.

Note: Never place hyperlinks too close together. This is because a user attempting to click on one link may end up clicking on another.

3. Go for a Simplistic Design

One of the best mobile website design tips to follow is to go for a simple and clean design. As you only have a few seconds to convey information about your business when a user visits your site on mobile, you need to opt for a simplistic design.

Tip: Too much copy, graphics, and videos can hamper the loading speed of your site when a mobile user visits it. So, an uncomplicated design with a focused copy is the way to go.

4. Think With Your Thumb

Ensure your mobile website is such that a user is easily able to navigate your site with a single thumb (or index finger). They shouldn't feel the need to pinch to zoom or use any extra fingers. This way, you know you have designed a site that users can easily use on their mobile devices, on the go.

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5. Create Attention-Grabbing Calls-to-Action (CTAs)

A CTA is a banner, an image, or simply a piece of text, that prompts users to take a specific action. For instance, Your CTA can tell users to learn more about an offer, sign up to your mailing list, or buy a product.

Now, you need to create a CTA for your mobile site that catches the eye of the user. Otherwise, it would defeat the entire purpose of placing the CTA.

But how to design an eye-catching CTA for such a limited screen space?

An easy tip would be to place your CTA above the fold where it's easily visible to the user. They would not have to scroll down in order to see it.

6. Create Simple Forms

Users almost never face a hard time filling a large form on a computer. This is because using a keyboard to enter information in a large form that's already displayed on a big desktop screen is extremely easy. But, on mobile devices, forms need to be shorter for the user to easily fill them. These forms also need to have large buttons and text fields for the user to comfortably fill the form.

Here are some best practices you can follow to offer a smooth form-filling experience to the visitors on your mobile website:

• Ask only for the first name and email address of a visitor if you want them to sign up to your mailing list.
• If you need to include more than two fields in your form, ensure you make them easy and quick to answer.

Tip: Use DashClicks' Forms app to create user-friendly forms for any kind of data collection.

7. Make It Easy for Users to Contact You

If a customer searches for your contact details, chances are they might be facing some kind of an issue or question. This means, they may already be somewhat frustrated or confused. So, ensure you make it extremely easy for users to get in touch with you while designing a mobile-friendly site.

Here's what you can do:

Place a chat icon at the bottom-right. Or, if you can't offer this, provide a contact form in a Contact link that a user can find in your menu. You can also link to a Facebook chatbot if you aren't able to go for any of these options.

8. Provide an Intuitive, Simple Search Feature

Your site's search feature is relatively more important to mobile users. To make it seamless for mobile users to carry out a search, make sure you put in place an intuitive, simple search feature. For this, ensure you position it front-and-center for your users to quickly spot it. This is one of the most important mobile website design tips to follow for providing a great user experience to visitors on your mobile site.

9. Use Simple Menus

Desktop website menus have plenty of space. They can take up a complete bar at the screen's top. And the good thing is that it never hurts the user experience. But when it comes to smartphones, you just don't have that much space.

But then how to design menus for mobile sites?

We recommend that you use simple menus that show your website's overview. You can then add the search feature, filters, and categories to help users find what they are searching for.

You can even use the hamburger symbol that's used in the example below:

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This symbol comprises two or three horizontal lines, signaling that a menu is present. This menu can then show large buttons and text upon opening.

How Do You Know if a Website Is Mobile-Friendly?

If you are wondering whether your existing website is mobile-friendly, you can run a test to know for sure.

To do so, we recommend that you use Lambdatest’s mobile-friendly test tool. All you need to do to use the tool is input your website link and click Test URL.

About DashClicks' Sites App

If you wish to build an attractive, mobile-friendly site for your agency, you can use DashClicks' Sites app. The website builder software lets you access different site views including mobile, desktop, and tablet at all times. This will help you provide a quality UX to your potential customers, regardless of the device they use.

Here are some more features of the Sites app:

• Select the template of your choice and get your new custom site built within a matter of seconds.
• You can use the app to create, manage, and optimize your site, no tech experience required.
• You can access exhaustive website analytics to see the stats of your site and know how it is performing.
• Sites include hosting that is done on AWS and an SSL certificate to ensure your site is protected.

Wrapping It Up

A mobile-friendly site is created to work well both on tablets and smartphones. From creating eye-catching CTAs to using text that fits perfectly on the small screen of a mobile, there are many mobile website design tips you can follow. Another way to deliver a sound user experience is to create a mobile app for your business. AppMySite's mobile app maker enables you to build an app in minutes without writing a single line of code.

Now that you know what a mobile-friendly website is and how to create one, you can begin building your site with confidence knowing that you will provide only the best experience to your potential buyers if they visit your mobile site. Good luck!

Hiring a digital agency can be your most significant investment in a business; ensure you are getting the best out of it. Also, remember that hiring an agency does not guarantee success, so check that your business fundamentals are strong and you have a robust business plan.

Furthermore, it is imperative to keep logical expectations and not to get disappointed or drive the agency owners crazy with your unrealistic expectations.

To ensure success, you should know what to expect from a digital marketing agency.

Here are the 11 tips to consider when engaging a digital agency to drive the best results -

1. Do Your Homework First

You can't expect your agency to do everything for you. So, before you hire an agency, do your homework and finish the prerequisites. For example, before hiring an agency for a paid advertising project, build a website with all the necessary landing pages. Conduct on-page optimization to easily convert customers when running paid campaigns.

Similarly, while onboarding new clients, your responsibility is to provide your credentials, such as logos and business information, give access to software, create customer profiles, and so on. Also, be ready with high-quality product photos, niche keywords, USPs, previous ad clips, and the terminology used in your industry.

2. Conduct a Business Feasibility Study

Before hiring a digital agency to promote your business, check your business fundamentals. If you don't have a business plan and haven't performed market research, you are doomed for failure. Assess your market size, competition, and people interested in your products or services. The lack of strong demand and a large targetable market indicate that your business has weak fundamentals. It can be risky to invest in marketing for such a business.

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3. Evaluate Your Agency's Expertise

Signing a contract without due diligence and evaluating your agency's capabilities and expertise is like jumping into a dark well. You will engage with the digital agency to assign them the crucial task of your brand's marketing and conversion. You should get some upfront value in exchange for the money you will invest in the services.

So, it is a good idea to check their proposals. A professional agency would always share a well-prepared presentation highlighting its strategy and execution. You can also give them a test project, but it doesn't work with every service, especially SEO, because search engine optimization doesn't yield any results in the short term.

Some agencies also offer a free website audit and plan to improve the SEO and web design for improved visibility and user experience. It proves that the concerned agency is serious in its approach.

4. Assess Your Agency's Work Culture

There are no standard benchmarks for digital agencies, varying according to their work culture and processes. You must also understand that they work with multiple clients, so they can't entirely focus on your project and might not use all of their resources and tools for your project.

So, you should have at least one person to manage your project in-house who knows the nitty-gritty of the project and monitors the results delivered by your agency. This ensures that both of you are on the same page. Make sure that the content and graphics your agency provides are as per your branding and convey the right messaging to the audience.

5. Stop Taking Daily Feedback and Doing Micromanagement

Marketing takes time to deliver results. So, stop pricking agency owners daily, as it can be counterproductive and annoying. Similarly, micromanaging everything is certainly not a good business practice.

Be focused on the results and avoid interfering with the tasks assigned to your team members. There should be just one point of contact in the agency, most preferably the account manager, so you don't have to contact random people about your queries.

Your point of contact should be an expert in the field and have access to your project's real-time updates so that they can provide satisfactory answers to your queries and clear confusion if any.

6. Make Sure That Your Agency Specializes in Your Niche

If you have worked with a specific niche earlier, you would be familiar with its nuances, such as the product life cycle, market trends, and customer psychology & preferences. Similarly, different marketing channels require different kinds of expertise and strategies.

If your agency hasn't ever dealt with your niche, it can be a red flag because they'll likely not be familiar with the channel-specific strategies needed to succeed in the tough marketplace. So, prefer an agency that's experienced in your niche and adequately understands your market.

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7. Check the Contracts

To prevent nasty surprises and unpleasant experiences, you need to be careful about the legal side of your relationship with your agency.

Here also, a few things can be a red flag. As nobody can commit to a contract with guarantees and own responsibility for any damage to your brand, you need to be doubly cautious about your agency choice.

Choose a prudent and competitive agency and go for a time-bound contract.

8. Estimate the Project Costs

Hiring an agency is technically much like outsourcing. However, cost-cutting is not always the objective behind outsourcing. Quality products and services are necessary to compete in the market, and they don't always come at a low price.

You might hire agencies who will charge less for the same project, but you can't be sure of the quality they will deliver. There must be indeed a logical reason if someone demands a premium amount in this tough marketplace.

To decode this problem, you need to do some math. Calculate and compare the price difference between setting up an in-house team and hiring a premium and experienced agency. Research the salaries experienced professionals charge in your field and what it would cost you if you hire an agency. Here is an example of price difference

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9. Identify Project Scope

All projects are not the same. Some are longer and more complex; in some projects, you get the actual picture only after working on them. For example, you received an SEO project, but soon it dawned upon you that you need more quality content on your client's website first. So basically, it's content marketing plus an SEO project focusing on content marketing.

So, you need to clearly understand your project before you decide to hire an agency. It includes the timeline of the project, its evolving needs, and how far its budget can stretch.

SEO projects normally take longer to achieve any concrete results regarding search engine visibility, but paid ads or PPC projects provide immediate results. However, paid advertising is considered extremely risky. So, you must be very careful about your paid advertising projects because the budget may soon skyrocket.

10. Be Realistic

Marketing has many more variables than other business processes, such as design, development, and operations it is not easily predictable.

Given the competition and the market dynamics, things change rapidly, affecting the results. Furthermore, the first few months are the testing phase in every business relationship, which may last even longer. The agency business is no exception. Be ready to face this, and keep patience.

Failure is also an integral aspect of marketing; failure management takes time. If such a thing happens, get in touch with your agency and try to understand the underlying reasons. Bigger successes stem from failures. We need to learn from our failures rather than get disappointed and quit.

11. Hire Multiple Agencies if Needed

Adding multiple agencies is not bad because every agency specializes in one area. If we focus on delivering the best results to our clients, we may consider hiring various agencies.

For example, if a digital agency is proficient in SEO and another is popular for paid advertising, you should hire both for hybrid projects. Sometimes it is difficult to manage different agencies, but the rewards far outweigh the hard work. If you can't handle more than one agency, stick to one only.

Final Words

Having realistic expectations is crucial when engaging a digital marketing agency. It will help you get the best results and maintain an excellent relationship with your agency.

You should know what an agency is capable of and what it is not. Despite their proficiency and expertise, they can't ensure success with a poor business plan and weak fundamentals.

Once you are ready with a business plan and demand forecasting, you can hire an agency to scale your business.