Digital marketing is all about understanding human behavior and accordingly developing robust strategies. To succeed in your digital marketing campaigns, understanding customer psychology is essential. If you cannot understand customer behavior and psychology, even the most expensive paid campaigns cannot bring results for your business.

What is a Marketing Strategy?

According to Aha, you need a precise marketing strategy to ensure the success of your business. It's essential to create a long-term plan to achieve and maintain a competitive advantage in a predefined market. It includes aligning your organization around how you will reach your target audience, explaining the benefits of your products and services, and encouraging the audience to become your customers.

Marketing is exceptionally crucial for the survival and growth of your business. These are the two significant aspects of a successful strategic marketing plan:

A. The selection of the best marketing techniquesB. The knowledge of how you can implement these techniques for marketing your business

This blog post will discuss the five most powerful digital marketing strategies brands can use to produce the best ROI.

1. Set a Goal and a Budget

You are more likely to achieve success in your marketing campaign strategy if you have specific and measurable goals tied to it. You should also set a specific budget for it to evaluate your performance.

Always set SMART goals, i.e., Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound. These five factors decide the dynamics of success.

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You should choose up to 5 KPIs to evaluate your performance, which includes traffic, leads, and direct revenue. You can put aside a 7-8% budget of your total revenue for your online campaigns.

Moreover, it would be best if you focused on achieving your goals and not the goals themselves. You should create a plan and a process for reaching your goals.

KPIs should be used to track and monitor your performance and to know where you stand regarding your goals.

2. Leverage Influencer Marketing

High ROI primarily depends on your campaign performance. Building influence is the key to supercharging your marketing strategies. Influencer marketing is a powerful and effective strategy that achieves a return of $6.5 for every dollar spent. Some top-performing brands also reported earning up to $18 per dollar spent.

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Therefore, for achieving better results in a limited time frame, influencer marketing is getting popular among small business owners.

Here are some of the most rapidly growing customer acquisition methods.

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Following are the steps to create a successful influencer marketing campaign.

A. Identify Your Target Audience

With the growing number of social media users and communities, influencers are also increasing in leaps and bounds. Every influencer targets a particular demographic and psychographic segment. So, first, identify your target market. It will help you to choose the right influencer.

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B. Define Your Goals and KPIs

Knowing your goals is the key to success while choosing the right influencers. Also, identifying the KPIs will make it easy for you to track your campaign. You can set several goals to ensure sales, and some of these goals can be as follows:

• Increasing leads
• Increasing brand awareness
• Increasing referrals
• Becoming a thought leader
• Increasing customer value of your products
• Growing your social media presence
• Building a community
• Earning media value

C. Choose the Right Social Media Platforms

Apart from the major social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, numerous emerge every year. All of them have specific target audiences and interest groups. You can tap the following social media platforms for influencer marketing.

• Instagram
• Facebook
• TikTok
• YouTube
• Twitter

Instagram is a popular social media platform where you can find numerous influencers according to different niches. These influencers create and post content for their target audience with a high engagement level. There are different segments where influencers dominate the social media space, such as fashion, meditation, yoga, beauty, health & fitness, travel, business, making money online, lifestyle, minimalism, animals, gaming, relationships, etc.

Find influencers whose audiences match yours. Only then you'd be able to derive some benefit from such partnerships. Also, don't stick to any single platform; instead, go for multiple platforms to explore various opportunities to tap new audiences.

D. Consider the Types of Influencers

You can find all types of influencers in the social media space, including small and big influencers. Here we have listed four prominent types of influencers in terms of their followers.

• Nano influencers (1K–10K followers)
• Micro-influencers (10K–100K followers)
• Macro influencers (100K–1M followers)
• Mega influencers or celebrities (1M+ followers)

The top benefit of using small influencers is that their engagement rates are pretty high even though they have less reach than the mega influencers. Another advantage of collaborating with small influencers is that they charge much less than big influencers.

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So, you can simultaneously collaborate with multiple influencers and increase your reach. Sometimes, small influencers enjoy a highly engaged audience, but they don't experience working with brands. It might be one of the reasons why they exercise so much influence.

Their audience and friends have a high degree of trust in them, so you can hire them to build trust. Do some research, check their content and engagement levels, and ask for recommendations from brands before you shortlist influencers. You can use direct messaging and post comments on their feed to reach these small influencers.

E. Create Great Content

Last but not least, great content leads to great results. When you collaborate with an influencer, share your product with them to exhibit it in front of the camera. Unique unboxing experience often entices the prospects.

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Apart from that, you can use promotions and discounts. Promote your influencers' posts about your products. Don't forget to use the popular hashtags to boost sales and conversion.

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Brands can showcase their influencer generated content on website, like embedding Instagram feed on website. This improves authenticity of your brand, get more likes and followers, increase public testimonials and brand credibility.

F. Track Your Campaign

To run a successful, influential marketing campaign, you need to regularly track your campaign. Choose the metrics based on your KPIs. For example, to track the reach and engagement of the influencers' posts, you can use metrics such as page views and clicks. The tools you can use to track these metrics can be UTM code and Google Analytics.

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3. Focus On a Single Social Channel

Since social media is vast and powerful, it could be unproductive and overwhelming to focus on multiple social media platforms at a time. Nobody has the time and resources to focus on multiple social media platforms.

Here is the 12 step strategy suggested by Social Media Merkato to champion one social media platform:

• Define target audience
• Create buyer persona or customer avatars
• Research influencers using BuzzSumo
• Identify the social media platforms used by your audience
• Also, consider your competitors’ favorite social media platforms
• Address your audience’s pain points through your content
• Create your pillar content or content bank
• Engage with your audience and nurture relationships
• Publish consistently and regularly
• Focus on getting more followers
• Automate social sharing using tools like Hootsuite
• Track your performance and tweak your strategies

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4. Leverage Email Marketing

Email marketing is still the most effective go-to marketing strategy for various brands, especially for revenue generation.

Here are a few ways to build your email list:

• Create a content strategy to drive organic traffic and clicks
• Capture visitors’ email addresses through popups
• Offer valuable resources and tutorial videos in exchange for email addresses of the visitors
• Ask people to subscribe to your email list using a banner in your business signature
• Tools like the Designhill Email Signature Generator can be a great help to build your email list using banners links and call to action.

5. Focus On SEO and Content Marketing

Content marketing has the immense potential of driving sales for your business. Let's discuss how content marketing fits into your overall digital marketing strategy. Content marketing acts as a double-edged sword. Apart from attracting prospects and visitors, it also helps you move them through a marketing funnel for maximum conversion and ROI.

The same is true for SEO which is extremely useful for increasing your visibility on search engines and driving tons of traffic to the website. Learn how to optimize your blog post for SEO to drive targeted organic traffic.

Content marketing aims to provide the appropriate information to the prospect at the right time during the customer journey to help them move ahead in the marketing funnel.

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For example, pricing information is needed once the prospect is aware of the product and its features. It is required in the consideration stage in the marketing funnel. So, the pricing page of a product helps the prospect make an informed decision.

Here is the pricing page of BuzzSumo:

So, content is any piece of information that helps you move the prospect in the marketing funnel. Many people confuse blogging with content marketing, but content marketing is much broader in scope. You can use our content marketing checklist to ensure that you are on the right track.

Conclusion

There are many digital marketing strategies you can try, but in this blog, we have listed the five most powerful strategies that can be the game-changer for your digital marketing campaigns. We sincerely hope that through these five strategies, you will be able to increase your ROI and ensure the success of your campaign.

If you know any other marketing strategy that is equally powerful, please mention it in the comments. Share this post with your friends to achieve even more success with their campaigns. If you need a platform to monitor all your campaigns in one place, and improve your performance, sign up for free for the white-label platform at DashClicks.

It is crucial for you to increase traffic to your website to succeed as an online business or digital marketing agency. It works in multiple ways and benefits your business by increasing brand awareness, sales, and revenue.

However, it is easier said than done. If you are running an online business and have ever tried to bring traffic to your agency website, you must be aware that it hardly works without a clear strategy.

It would help if you kept on doing a/b testing to check what works and what doesn't. This article will discuss different tactics and strategies to boost traffic on your agency website so that more and more people can find you through organic and paid searches. But before we discuss that, we would like to share some significant SEO mistakes that could cost you traffic.

What are the Major SEO Mistakes That You Should Avoid?

Here are some serious mistakes that will neutralize all your efforts to improve SEO and site traffic:-

1. Slow Page Speed

Slow page speed is not only bad for customer experience, but it also negatively affects your rankings. Google has added page speed as a significant ranking factor. There are several steps you can take to boost the speed of your site, such as optimizing the graphics and design elements on your website and removing unnecessary code. You should also work on your page redirects. When you speed up your site, you immediately see its benefits, such as increased engagement and improved search engine ranking.

2. Duplicate Content

Avoid similar content on multiple pages of your website. Google will not immediately penalize your site because of the presence of duplicate content, but it can hurt your SEO ranking. Google is committed to showing the most relevant results to searchers, so make sure that every page on your website has unique content.

3. Stuffing Keywords Unnecessarily

You should get rid of this old-school SEO practice if you want your website to rank high and attract web traffic in 2022. It is no longer recommended, and it may lead to a severe drop-in ranking. Occasionally sprinkling relevant keywords is not a deplorable act. Keyword stuffing refers to deliberately inserting short tail or long-tail keywords that don't look natural and negatively affect user experience on your website. According to Google, you should find a balance between creating valuable content for your readers and optimizing it for search engines. Google generally flags any repetition of long-tail keywords used deliberately.

4. Building Poor Quality Backlinks

Contrary to old-school SEO practices, a few backlinks from authority websites are far better than numerous backlinks from websites with low domain authority. The focus should be on quality rather than quantity while cultivating backlinks. A few backlinks from news and magazines sites, *.edu domains, and reputed websites like Wikipedia are better than dozens of links from ordinary websites.

5. More Pages With Poor Quality Content

Contrary to popular belief, more pages don't mean that they will receive tons of traffic. If your pages lack quality content, it will bring down the overall SEO ranking of your website. Always create a website with a sitemap to organize your content. It will make it easier for you to focus on quality rather than waste your time creating hundreds of pages with poor-quality content.

6. A High Bounce Rate

Besides irrelevant content that doesn't match the search query, a high bounce rate also signals a lack of engaging elements on a web page that capture visitors' attention. So, the first step to fix a high bounce rate is utilizing site elements to engage and capture users' attention and add content that increases site time.

7. An Unresponsive Design

If a website isn't optimized for mobile and has an unresponsive design, it is less likely to rank high on search engines. A responsive design ensures that the website looks perfect on all devices. Previously designers used to make different versions of a website to fit in various screens, but that is no more in practice now. Some of the elements may not be visible on mobile screens if the website is designed for desktops. As a result, you may miss potential leads and sales.

Some SEO tactics change with corresponding changes in Google's algorithm. However, creating high-quality content that adds value and answers users' queries is an evergreen tactic to rank high on search engines.

A good user experience is another essential requirement to rank in organic searches and attract search traffic. Sometimes, agencies don't have experienced SEO professionals on rolls. In that case, outsourcing white label agency solutions can be the best way to lead to high customer satisfaction and client retention.

How to Drive Traffic to Your Agency Website?

As an agency, your journey to earning profits starts from getting found online and goes through the funnel, converting visitors to leads, and finally converting those leads to paying customers. Driving traffic is, therefore, a crucial factor for the success of an online business. When you get traffic, you get new visitors, lots of eyeballs, and potential buyers. So, let's begin with the first step, and that is to get found by customers online.

Here are a few popular tactics to drive traffic to your website:

1. Advertising (Google, Facebook, Instagram, & Twitter, etc.)
2. Using social media to promote your content
3. Mixing different content formats (such as short-form blogs, news articles, long-form blogs, infographics, videos, and podcasts.)
4. Writing irresistible headlines
5. Fixing On-Page SEO (Metas, title tags, etc.)
6. Targeting long-tail keywords (to bring the desired and specific type of traffic)
7. Leveraging guest blogging
8. Implementing schema microdata and internal linking
9. Trying email marketing and posting on LinkedIn
10. Interviewing experts and thought leaders in your industry

How to Get Found by Customers Online?

People go to search engines to fulfil a need or to solve a problem. They type in a search query on a search engine or a social media site to find a solution for their concern, and the search engine returns relevant results. That is how they see the link to your website. You can employ several strategies to get found online and ultimately increase search traffic to your website.

The leading tactics marketers use to boost online visibility are as follows:

1. Search Engine Optimization and local SEO to generate traffic from organic searches
2. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or pay-per-click (PPC) to drive paid search traffic
3. Organic traffic through social media channels
4. Paid social media traffic through advertising on Facebook, Instagram, and other social platforms

How to Get Targeted Traffic to Your Website?

You cannot drive organic traffic to your website unless you appear on top in organic searches. You need to research keywords that are relevant to your niche to achieve high rankings. To start with, you can target keywords with low competition so that you can rank early on.

The second step is to create high-quality content that offers value to your users. Headlines and titles also play an essential role in attracting web traffic to your site and getting clicks from users.

Once users come to your website, you can use internal linking to guide them to visit other parts of your site that might be useful for them. It would help if you also had quality backlinks from authority websites to rank higher on search engine result pages (SERPs). It sends a signal to search engines that your website is a trustworthy and authentic source.

Besides quality content that is optimized, here are some of the factors that affect your SEO ranking:-

• User experience on your website
• Relevant and quality content that solves users’ problems
• Faster loading pages
• Backlinks from high domain authority websites
• Site structure
• A responsive design
• Mobile-friendly SEO practices
• Web server and mail server issues
• Domain age and authority

Pro Tip: If you have expertise in content or backlinking, better outsource website design and SEO from pioneering white-label services such as DashClicks. This way you will save a lot of time and money. SEO experts usually charge around $100-$150 per hour for various SEO services, and a startup agency may find it exorbitantly high. You can contact DashClicks SEO fulfillment services today and get this done at a much cheaper rate.

How to Attract Customers Through Content Marketing?

Content marketing is not new. It has been prevalent for many centuries now. However, it was commonplace in other non-digital forms such as street art and print media, etc.

It is the simplest and most affordable form of marketing in the modern era. According to Inbound Writer, you can generate a lead through content marketing with an average cost of $143. In contrast, the cost of generating leads through outbound marketing is $373, which is twice as much.

You can create custom content through blogs. Blog posts offer 434% more indexed pages and twice as many indexed links. It clearly means that blogging provides you with more opportunities to attract potential clients than any other form of content on the web.

To attract more web traffic through content marketing, you can follow these tips:

1. Make Your Content Easily Navigable

Create relevant content for your target audience. Create various content pieces and make them sticky so that the customer can find a link to similar or related articles on the same page for further information. Use targeted keywords in your content, but don't stuff them. You can also add keywords in the right places to boost the visibility of your content, and these places include the URL, H1 tags, main title, first paragraph, and, if possible, the subheadings. You can also use them in image file names and meta descriptions.

2. Create Shareable Content

Offering value to the reader is the best way to create shareable content. Here are some of the features that make content shareable.

A. Be Informative and Helpful

People love to share informative and helpful content. It means that besides providing the required information to the reader, it should also resolve frustrating issues they are facing.

B. Supersede a Popular Theory

The second most effective way to create shareable content is to create content that disproves or supersedes a popular theory and promotes some offbeat idea. People love to share ideas that are against common beliefs and views.

C. Spread Kindness, Generosity, and Humanity

Use emotions, create humanitarian content, and show that you care for your audience. You can also use nostalgia. People love to share such content.

D. Follow Current Events and Trends

Current events always generate curiosity and have the potential to make your content shareable.

Use attractive graphics, images, and memes, and don't try to sound salesy. You can use your content to ask your visitors to buy from you. Always focus on quality rather than quantity because that's what makes a difference.

E. Use Content Repurposing

Repurpose your content and use it over and over again. You can convert a blog post into a podcast, a video, infographics, and a slide deck presentation. You can break the slide deck content into small chunks and use them on your social channels as posts. So, a single piece of content can be published on different platforms for an amplified reach, and a wider audience will consume it in their preferred content format.

F. Focus On Long-Tail Keywords

Focus on long-tail keywords in your blogs because they are responsible for 50% of the Internet traffic. The prime reason you should focus on long-tail keywords is that it's easy to rank with long-tail keywords. Furthermore, you receive the desired traffic through these keywords as they reflect a high purchase intent.

Long-tail keywords point to precise intent, allowing you to target specific demographics and increase conversion rate. Besides that, the competition is comparatively much lower in the case of long-tail keywords than short-tail keywords.

Long-tail keywords are effective in all the stages of the sales funnel, including the initial stages. If you sprinkle long-tail keywords throughout the body of the post, they help you keep your brand top of mind throughout the buyer's journey.

Pro Tip: Again, if SEO and keyword selection seems to be a Herculean task, don't do it yourself. Doing it poorly will not benefit you or your client, and it may increase the churn rate. Hire a white-label SEO fulfillment service today and get this done by experts at a fraction of the cost of hiring SEO experts.

How to Get Paid Traffic to Your Website?

Advertising is one of the best methods to attract visitors to your site. The people who click your ad have a high buying intent because they look for the same products and services you are selling. You only pay when the user clicks on an advertisement, so you can constantly refine your campaign if you are not getting quality leads.

Google offers rich metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of your PPC campaign so that you can judiciously use your marketing budget. If you are looking for immediate exposure, especially when you are not ready to attract visitors through organic search, PPC can be one of the best online marketing strategies.

It's hailed as the best tactic to drive instant traffic when you have new products and services to promote, even if your brand is already known and established.

A. Research of Your Target Audience

Paid advertising allows you to optimize the campaign after receiving the campaign data for even better results. To initiate a successful PPC campaign, you need to research your target audience in terms of their location and their expectations when they are looking for your products.

B. Research the Keywords

It's crucial to discover the keywords that your buyer personas might be using to locate your business and look for similar products.

C. Choose Different Themes

Themes can inspire your keyword selection and content creation. So, choosing a few will be pretty helpful.

D. Determine a Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

It's crucial to determine a USP for each product or theme for continued improvement through A/B testing. Create different versions of 100-character ads for each USP to highlight various features of your product.

E. Create a Conversion-Focused Landing Page

You need a user-friendly and conversion-focused landing page and a flexible ad budget to ensure your success at conversion. The budget should be flexible as you might need to stretch it when you see that your ads are working and successfully increasing visitors to your site.

Pro Tip: If creating a professional landing page is not your cup of tea, and you feel you need external assistance, better use the Agency Website Tool, save time and see your conversion rate soar.

How to Get Traffic Through Social Media Marketing and Facebook Advertising?

Focus on the social media channels where your audience spends their time. Create a Facebook page where you can regularly update your services, products, and offers. Engage with your audience through polls, surveys and questionnaires.

Perform influencer marketing on social media to promote your services. Research your target audience according to demographics and other personal characteristics such as age, buying habits, location, attitude, etc. It will help you design tailor-made ads.

Do A/B testing consistently for the paid advertisements to spot the best performing ad versions.

Keep track of the changing preferences of your target audience and design your ads accordingly. Update your Facebook page by adding new information.

Try to build relationships on social media and create communities on it. Remember, people don't go to social media to spend money or buy something. The prime objectives of social media are to join communities with shared interests and goals, catch up with friends and relatives, participate in conversations and share your thoughts, etc.

Conclusion

If you want to know what to choose between SEO and PPC, you must be aware that you might need to wait for some time to rank on the first page of Google, especially for your targeted keywords that will drive business and attract targeted customers to your website. So, until you work on your website content to organically appear on top of SERPs, it is desirable to use PPC and social media advertising to drive traffic, convert visitors and make sales.

Ideally, a marketer should aim at different strategies, i.e., SEO, PPC, and social media. However, your marketing strategy shouldn't be based entirely on the sales numbers. Brand building and gaining trust should also be on your to-do list.

These two factors can be crucial in the long run for driving consistent business as they influence the purchase decision of your customers.

Your marketing strategy should also strive to achieve a loyal fan base that you can count upon to sell your products and services.

Last but not least, you may need to hire SEO experts to implement various SEO tips mentioned above, which many agency owners simply can't afford. Hiring white-label services have become a trend in the US. Many smaller agencies, solopreneurs, and content marketers use these services to offer core SEO services to their clients. You can also use it as a strategy to scale your business and increase your revenue.

301 redirects are a standard part of the modern world wide web. However, there are uses beyond the basics that can positively impact your SEO and help you dominate search rankings.

In this comprehensive guide, we hope to help you navigate the world of 301 redirects and learn about the following topics:

• What is a 301 Redirect?
• Do 301 Redirects Affect SEO?
• How to 301 Redirect a Page
• Old Page to New
• Old Domain to New
• Non-www to www
• HTTP to HTTPS
• Use 301 Redirects to Improve Your SEO and Website Content
• Common 301 Redirect Errors to Watch Out for

What is a 301 Redirect?

A 301 redirect is a permanent type of redirect that sends users from one page URL to a designated URL.

When a user enters a URL in their browser or clicks on a link, the browser sends a request to the website server. The server then recognizes the request and transmits the data associated with the URL back to the browser. With a custom redirect in place, we add a step in the process by forwarding the user from the entered URL to your preferred URL.

As an example, let's use the analogy of calling someone on the phone. When you enter a specific number, you're requesting to make contact with a specific individual. If the connection is successful (the person picks up), the request is successful. If they are not available or the number is no longer active, it will redirect your request to voicemail or automated message.

In either case, the user can access an available destination and gain some feedback regarding the request. This is preferable to receiving no feedback, or in the case of the internet, receiving an uninformative 404.

When Should I Use a 301 Redirect?

You should utilize a 301 redirect in the following instances:

• You updated a page with a new URL
• You deleted the page from your website
• You want to send users to a newer, updated page
• You are consolidating two similar pages to alleviate duplicate content issues

You should not use a 301 redirect for temporary changes. If you need to temporarily take down a webpage for an undetermined amount of time, you will want to utilize a 302 redirect instead. These two processes are similar, but the latter tells users and search engines that the change is not permanent.

Do 301 Redirects Affect SEO?

When making significant changes to your website, there's always a reasonable concern that it will negatively impact your SEO. You would be completely justified in this concern as it takes months to achieve meaningful progress in improving your page ranking.

You can breathe a sigh of relief because 301 redirects do not negatively impact your SEO when implemented correctly.

Google understands that 3XX requests are a standard part of today's browsing experience. It also wants website owners to improve the user experience by ensuring that a user finds themselves at their desired destination. Knowing this fact, not only does a 301 redirect get users to the new location, but it also transfers all accrued page authority to the new URL.

• 302 Redirects and SEO

302 redirects operate a bit differently, however. When you implement a temporary redirect, you will forward the user from the previous URL to the new one. The difference is that the accrued page authority stays with the old page. This way, all of your SEO efforts remain intact and are not impacted by the temporary alterations.

In both instances, website owners maintain total control over the value of their website pages. You should readily take advantage of 301 and 302 redirects when applicable to provide your users with a better browsing experience.

How Redirects Impact Your Backlinks?

Your backlinks profile is another key segment of SEO you'll want to be mindful of when considering 301 redirects. Backlinks are links from external domains that direct their traffic to your website. Having a healthy backlinks profile can improve your SEO and domain authority when you associate with other trusted domains.

When a backlink links users to a page on your website that cannot be found, you effectively lose all the benefits of that backlink. That traffic has no way to access your content and the website linking to your domain will receive a negative hit for directing them to a nonexistent location.

While a failure to redirect a backlinked page doesn't count against you, it doesn't allow you to reap your hard-earned benefits, either. By setting up a 301 redirect, you'll continue to receive any SEO benefits from being associated with that domain. If you cannot set up a redirect, you should supply the external website's webmaster with the updated URL.

How to 301 Redirect a Page?

Implementing a 301 redirect is a straightforward process. However, this process will vary depending on the types of pages featured within the redirect process.

1. Simple Redirection - An Old Page to a New Page

This is the most common type of redirect and likely the one you wish to use for your website. Note that if you are utilizing a traditional or hybrid CMS like WordPress, there are plugins that can effectively do this process for you. If this applies to you, check out SEO Redirection.

WARNING - Before configuring your site's root directory, backup files of all of your existing website pages. In the event of a critical error, you'll be able to quickly restore your existing site and get back online.

To do a common 301 redirect with Apache servers:

1. Access your website's root directory. What you're looking for is a file titled .htaccess.

1a. If you do not have a .htaccess file, create one by using Wordpad or Notepad. Save it as an empty text file with the name .htaccess. Upload this to your root directory.

2. Open the file. Enter the following lines into the document:

Redirect 301 /old-page-name.html http://www.yoursitedomain.com/new-page-name.html

Note - If your redirect does not work properly, your old page name may require you to enter the full file path in front of the text provided above.

3. Save the updated file in the root directory.

Bonus Step: Test that your 301 redirect works for yourself. If it is not successful, it can be for one of the following reasons:

• There is an error in your code or pathway names
• Your site is not hosted on an Apache server. If this is the case, contact your host provider for specific instructions on how you should implement your redirect.

2. Redirecting Your Entire Domain to a New Domain

Website migration is not uncommon, but you should not attempt to do so unless both websites are live and functional. Even with your new site live, your old site will still need to host the .htaccess file to enable domain redirects.

This process will only work if you are changing the domain name only. Your site navigation and page pathways will remain the same. For example:

www.olddomainname.com/contact

301 Redirects to

www.newdomainname.com/contact

1. Access the old website's root directory. Locate your .htaccessā  file.

2. Open the file. Enter the following line into the document:

Redirect 301 / http:newdomainname.com

3. Save the file in the updated root directory.

Bonus Step: Test that the new domain redirect is working properly. If it is not working, the cause is likely:

• An error in the code. Double-check your .htaccess file
• The page pathways on the old domain are not identical to the new domain. If the site navigation is not the same on your new domain, you will need to create 301 redirects for each page.

3. Redirecting Your Non-www Site to www

Whether you utilize a naked domain or a world wide web domain, the differences are negligible when it comes to SEO benefits. Your choice to switch to www will amount to a few technical improvements that may provide small improvements to your website operation.

To set up this redirect:

1. Access the old website's root directory. Locate your .htaccess file.

2. Open the file. Enter the following line into the document:

RewriteEngine OnRewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^olddomain.com [NC]RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

3. Save the file in the updated root directory.

4. Redirect an HTTP Site to an HTTPS Site

Similar to the domain migration section, you will need to have both versions of your site live and active for this to work. You will need the original .htaccess file to run the redirect script necessary to access the new site. You must also purchase and implement an SSL certificate on the new website.

1. Access the old website's root directory. Locate your .htaccess file.

2. Open the file. Enter the following line into the document:

RewriteEngine OnRewriteCond %{HTTPS} offRewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

3. Save the file in the updated root directory.

Bonus Step: Manually verify that every page on your site now utilizes the HTTPS protocol. If the above is not working, double-check your code.

Use 301 Redirects to Improve Your SEO and Website Content

Now that you have a strong knowledge of when and how to utilize 301 redirects, let's take a look at a specific use case. Knowing when to replace existing web pages and utilize a redirect can yield substantial positive impacts for your domain authority.

• Combine Two Similar Pages into One Super Page

Despite our best efforts and countless requests to implement a content calendar, it's almost inevitable to run into content on your site that's too close in similarity. One of two things typically happen in these instances:

• One or both pages receive a penalty for duplicate content
• One or both pages see a decrease in ranking and authority due to keyword cannibalization

All websites should strive to feature one primary page as their source of information on a particular subject. If two topics are similar and related, but can ultimately be distinguished as unique, this should not be an issue. Both individual pages should focus on exploring the elements that differentiate them to avoid content-related issues.

On the other hand, it's not uncommon to see two blog posts with titles such as: X Tips to Improve Your Link Building Strategyā  and Link Building Strategies for Local Businesses. You can see the attempt to appeal to potentially different audiences, but these pages might better users as one complete page that offers comprehensive data on link building.

This is where a 301 redirect strategy comes into play.

First, your content creation and SEO teams should work together to create a brand-new website page. There, you can incorporate the content from both pages to create one super page. We recommend treating this as a new source of content so that you can still target the correct keywords and structure your data in a user-friendly way.

Then, you can set up 301 redirects on both old pages so that they both point users to the new and improved page. Not only does this better serve your audience by collecting all of your content into one place, but all of the SEO benefits from both pages pass to the new, single page.

This means that two middling pages with decent authority can combine to effectively double the page ranking benefits while simplifying your site navigation by removing an unnecessary page.

Common 301 Redirect Errors to Watch Out for-

With the hard work of setting up our redirects out of the way, we can finally relax.

Throughout this article, you gained valuable insight on how to properly use 301 and 302 redirects. You understand the specific use cases for different types of 3XX redirects. You even know specific errors that can happen when implementing a 3XX redirect and how to address them.

Unfortunately, nothing with website development and marketing is ever so simple.

All that's left is to explore the common redirect errors that occur and what you can do to preserve your website's user experience.

1. Remove Your 3XX Pages from Your Sitemap

An XML Sitemap is a tool that you can use to explain your site's layout to search engine crawlers. Manually creating a sitemap also gives you the benefit of highlighting your important pages as well as choosing which pages you wish to exclude for any number of reasons. Among the pages you should exclude from a crawl are your 3XX redirect pages.

We understand two key points regarding Google's relationship with 3XX pages. The first is that they do not impact SEO. The second is that page authority gets transferred from the old page to the new one. Therefore, including the redirect page serves no purpose and can potentially confuse crawlers when navigating the site.

To ensure that Google excludes your 3XX page as requested, keep an eye on organic traffic metrics for that specific page. Users should not be able to discover your redirect page through organic means.

2. Identify and Eliminate Redirect Loops

This type of error generally occurs when there are multiple steps in a redirect chain. The more steps you need to incorporate in the process, the greater likelihood there is for user error. If you accidentally redirect back to a previous step in the chain, it creates a neverending loop.

This can negatively impact your SEO as it ruins the user experience. Your visitor is left waiting only to be greeted by an error message as a result of too many redirect attempts from the server. Double-check your redirect scripts and ensure that they each point to the right destination.

3. Eliminate Unnecessary Steps in a Redirect Chain

Multiple redirects in succession are annoying for the user and are often unnecessary. Ideally, you want a one-to-one relationship between the old page and the new. Even if four variations of a page existed at different points, you should strive to redirect one version of a page to the latest variation.

4. Keep an Eye on Your External Links

While our other tips encourage you to look out for your own redirects, you also need to be mindful of others' mistakes. If you provide a backlink to an external domain, there is no issue. If that external domain needs to set up a 301 redirect for that page to a new page, there is a potential for a problem on your end.

The reason for this is that you do not know what will appear at the new location following the redirect. If the webmaster updated the URL or switched to a new domain, your external link is secure. If the redirect now points to irrelevant or low-quality content, it can harm your SEO.

Conclusion - Using 301 Redirects Can Positively Impact Your SEO Strategy!

301 redirects are not ranking factors in the eyes of Google's search algorithm. Rather, using 301 redirects correctly can allow you to continue reaping the SEO benefits of older pages that are now outdated.

It's also important to remember that there are different use cases for 3XX pages. We utilize 301 redirects for permanent relocations and 302 redirects for temporary changes. Which one we choose determines how Google handles the transfer of page authority within a website. Understanding how page authority can shift as a result of a redirect can allow you to grant even greater SEO benefits to your website.

However, your redirects must work properly so that you can provide a quality user experience to your visitors. Triple-check your scripts, be mindful of common error indicators, and everything should be smooth sailing. Feel free to utilize 301 redirects liberally whenever applicable to improve your website experience.

If you're new to online advertising and SEO, you may be unaware of the website traffic types and their importance. This guide emphasizes direct traffic vs organic traffic as well as their definitions, their purpose, and the importance of tracking both.

To better understand why you would want to compare these two traffic sources, let's begin by examining what organic traffic is.

What is Organic Traffic on a Website?

Organic traffic is any traffic that comes to your website naturally via a search engine query and is not the result of a paid advertisement.

The primary benefit here is that by increasing your organic traffic, you increase your chances of discovering new leads and closing sales at a fraction of the cost you would use for a paid ad campaign.

However, you won't be able to receive any organic traffic unless you learn how to improve your rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs). A study from Backlinko suggests that the top three results on a SERP receive 75.1% of all clicks. Without a plan, Google will relegate your website to another page, essentially making you invisible to your target audience.

How Do I Increase My Organic Traffic?

Our primary recommendation for increasing organic traffic is by implementing a long-term SEO strategy. Effective SEO practices see website owners modifying and improving their websites to better satisfy Google's search algorithm. This algorithm looks at hundreds of ranking factors to determine the overall value of a website for its users.

Among these page ranking factors includes:

• Content length and quality
• Effective keyword mapping for the site
• Positive user experience including loading speed, site navigation, layout, etc.
• Matching content to user intent
• Clear meta descriptions, URLs, alternative text for media

Google also recommends organic traffic based on website update history. This is why an SEO specialist will also recommend strategies such as blog writing. A blog allows you to consistently create new and engaging content for users that also boosts your SEO and organic traffic.

What is Direct Traffic?

Direct traffic is any traffic that comes to your site directly without the use of a link from a referring website. The standard way for users to directly visit your domain is by entering it into the URL field in their web browser. In other words, someone who enters www.dashclicks.com into their browser instead of searching DashClicks on Google is considered direct traffic.

Direct traffic is an important metric for several reasons. The first is that it communicates a strong interest in your website. The user enjoyed their experience with your site enough that they choose your domain as their exact destination for help with a specific problem.

Second, it can be an indicator that leads are taking your recommendation or the advice of another to use your website. This can be an indicator that your brand is establishing a positive reputation among your audience, which will lead to long-term SEO and marketing benefits.

Finally, direct traffic bears an implicit intent to do business with your company. Organic searches yield a variety of results and require a deeper investigation into the keywords used to understand the user intent. A direct visit demonstrates the user’s need to seek out your company specifically. You want to use this understanding of intent to drive future interactions with the individual.

• The Problem with Direct Traffic Figures

Direct traffic tends to trend high for many websites in Google Analytics as a result of software errors. Whenever it is unable to accurately identify the source of web traffic, it automatically defines it as direct traffic.

If your direct traffic numbers are higher than 20%, we bring the unfortunate news that your website isn't as popular as the numbers claim. Rather, much of this is likely organic traffic that's been incorrectly categorized. This can happen as a result of broken tracking codes, unclear pathways from email or social media, or spambot visits.

For this reason, many experts go as far as to nickname direct traffic as unknown traffic. However, we do not recommend potentially disqualifying any potential legitimate direct traffic. It is important to understand the likelihood of error so that you can better investigate and qualify your traffic sources accurately.

How Can I Accurately Categorize My Traffic?

You won't be able to completely fix the issue with misidentifying direct traffic. However, there are simple steps you can take to improve the quality of your traffic data.

1. Convert Your Website to the HTTPS Protocol

By default, websites utilize the old HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol). This protocol facilitates the request and delivery of information between a browser and the website server.

HTTPS is an improved protocol with the “S” standing for “secure.” It’s an extension that utilizes a TSL (Transport Security Layer) to encrypt and protect information transferred between both parties. Google also weighs HTTPS sites over HTTP sites as a ranking factor.

The HTTPS vs HTTP distinction matters for classifying traffic. If your site still utilizes HTTP, it will not be able to extract identifying data from a protected browser. Switching to HTTPS not only protects you and the visitor, but it ensures that you're able to gather as much usable data concerning your traffic as possible.

You can learn more about HTTP vs HTTPS here.

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2. Utilize Tracking Codes Such as Google Tag Manager and Facebook Pixel

Google and Facebook both assist clients in overcoming the issue of traffic categorization by providing easy-to-use tracking codes. You can generate new code for specific projects or campaigns and add them to the HTML code on a webpage.

For example, your new Google ad directs users to your sexy new landing page. Then, the page will likely direct users to the main website for more information or to complete a transaction. The tracking code gathers data from all traffic that visits your landing page and presents it to you in a usable form.

Direct Traffic vs Organic Traffic - Does the Distinction Matter?

When it comes to potential leads and sales, traffic is just traffic, right? Is there truly a purpose in categorizing my traffic sources, especially when direct traffic can be so misleading?

The problem with this approach is that misunderstanding your traffic sources impairs your ability to make the most out of potential customer interactions. Understanding a traffic source can instantly provide insight as to where the buyer's intentions are when discovering and/or accessing your website.

1. Understanding User Intention Associated with Traffic Types

When a person accesses your site directly, it is safe to assume that the person possesses loyalty to your brand.

For example, let’s say that your company is landscaping business. A particularly satisfied customer requires your services once more. Instead of searching for “landscaping services” within Google, they’ll more likely to type in your website’s URL from memory or a business card. Therefore, that direct traffic is closer to the end stage of the buyer’s journey, and the expectation to close the deal is already present.

Conversely, organic traffic does not imply this sentiment nor does organic traffic imply the intent to purchase at all. There are three primary keyword types used in organic searches that we use to help further categorize organic traffic:

• Informational Keywords – These express a desire to gather information about a topic, product, or service. These typically come in the form of a question. This lead will likely require some nurturing before moving to the deal stage.
• Transactional Keywords – These express an implicit desire to buy, but not with any particular brand. Using our previous example, a user might organically search for “best landscaping service.” The traffic you receive this way comes with an intent to purchase, but there is no established loyalty to your brand.
• Navigational Keywords – This is an organic search in which the user is looking for a specific brand or destination. Like true direct traffic, the user demonstrates loyalty to a brand by searching for it specifically. They’re like utilizing navigational keywords due to the inability to remember the actual site URL.

As you can see, categorizing our traffic gives us insight into the user's intentions before we ever interact with them. This data gives us a beautiful marketing opportunity to deliver content that caters to their specific needs.

2. Categorizing Traffic Can Help Drive Conversions

Successful marketing is not a guessing game. The highest-converting companies are able to do so by understanding how to effectively gather important data and utilize it effectively. When you have an accurate pool of data regarding your traffic sources, you are better able to investigate:

• How does the user find your website
• The keywords used to find the website
• The direct intention behind the keywords used (informational, transactional, navigational)
• Websites that refer users to yours
• The performance of paid ads or landing pages that link to your site

This leaves you with two options. You can ignore the data and approach each new lead encounter with no usable knowledge. This leaves your sales personnel in a reactionary state without the ability to target their messaging to this unknown individual.

The second option is to arm your team with as much data about the individual as possible. Depending on where the traffic originates from, you can learn about the customer's interests, their pain points, and the particular aspects of your brand that attract them to your products and services. With this data, you take a much more proactive approach with your deals, which provides a greater likelihood of success.

Are There Other Traffic Sources I Should Be Aware of?

Now that you understand the importance of categorizing your traffic, we'll let you know that there are three other sources you should be aware of.

One is known as referral traffic. This is any traffic that your site receives as a result of a backlink from another domain. Obtaining referral users allows you to gather insights regarding the user's interests outside of your brand. This is one of the many reasons that building a healthy backlinks profile is vital for SEO.

The second is social traffic and refers to any users that visit you through sites like Facebook or Twitter. It's easy to think of this as referral traffic, but GA drops it in a distinct bucket for more in-depth analysis.

The final type is paid campaign of paid search traffic. This is the traffic you receive from paid advertising sources that feature special tracking parameters set up specifically for that campaign. This is essential for gauging the performance of your paid marketing campaign.

Start Categorizing Your Traffic for Better Marketing Opportunities!

Whether you're happy with your current business status or intend to grow, distinguishing your traffic sources is essential for creating success. Understanding where your users come from gives you access to key data points that you can use to drive future targeting and sales endeavors.

If you need assistance in growing your organic traffic, be sure to look into the SEO and content marketing fulfillment services offered by DashClicks. For additional tips on how to optimize your website and improve your traffic from all sources, keep an eye on our blog for informational articles and updates posted regularly

More local businesses are turning to digital marketing strategies to generate leads and traffic than ever before. At the same time, the technologies and tactics being employed are rapidly changing and will continue to evolve into the year 2022 and beyond.

Your business needs a strategy to stay a few leaps ahead of the competition. If you're wondering what digital marketing techniques you should employ in 2022, continue reading through our list of insights and tips below:

1. Start Optimizing Website Pages for Voice Search

While not a brand-new technology, AI assistants and voice search tools are present everywhere and are changing the way we discover information on the web. More users are turning to these virtual assistants as their accuracy and reliability become more improved with each new iteration. Today, a person can find a local business in seconds by simply asking their mobile device for the best solution to their problem in the area.

The question becomes - how do you optimize a website page for voice search technologies? If you've already implemented an excellent SEO strategy based on the best-known practices, you're already off to a good start. This includes adding a healthy amount of high-quality, relevant content to the page, focusing on primary and tertiary keywords, and optimizing your metadata.

To understand how voice search impacts SEO, we need to examine how a person typically employs voice search. When you type a query into Google with a keyboard, you typically truncate your entry into the minimum number of keywords necessary. For example, you might search for the best Thai restaurant in the area by typing “best thai food.” Google already knows your location through your device and generates all of the relevant businesses local to your area.

When we search with voice search, we typically ask a question as if we were talking to a real person. Instead of the above query, the user might ask “Where can I get Thai food?” The technology actually works by taking that spoken query, converting it to text, and performing the search automatically. In other words, a voice search typically sees users focusing on long-form questions and long-tail keywords that might not currently be a focus in your SEO strategy.

Finally, consider creating an FAQ page that accounts for common concerns presented to you by your customers. Because voice search is so commonly in the form of a question, providing quick, succinct answers on this page can be a recipe for success if you want your responses to be chosen.

Accounting for this conversational way of gathering information should be a focus of your content now and into 2022. You still need to ensure that your content is clear, accurate, and tailored to your audience. However, customers are looking to get more familiar and personable with brands. Optimizing your content to present a more conversational tone can not only help your SEO, but build authenticity and rapport with your customers.

2. Implement Structured Data

Structured data, otherwise referred to as schema markup, is an advanced SEO tactic that effectively classifies the content on a page with relevant tags. These clues help search engines quickly identify what sections of content mean, so that they can better deliver the best information for highly-targeted searches. Structured data will also help you to better deliver your content in the voice search queries discussed above.

Google offers helpful documentation to assist webmasters with understanding structured data and how to properly implement it within your site's HTML code. There are three types of notation you can use to implement structured data, but JSON-LD is the recommended format for most websites.

Structured data not only classifies snippets of a webpage, but can actually nest other items in groups to demonstrate how these variables relate to one another. Instead of necessarily looking at the content itself and attempting to make sense of it, it can employ this outline and quickly understand the full picture.

If you look at an example search, you will see examples of structured data already being used by other major websites and publications.

If you search for Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy film, Google is automatically able to identify the right result with relevant information thanks to the clues provided in the page's HTML. It understands that we want to find the 2014 film. Without a markup that classifies the content as a film, Google may have pulled up results pertaining to the comic books instead.

Below the meta description, we see additional data highlights that likely do not appear in a search result for one of your own web pages. This page nests additional structured data within the film classifier and tags the budget, production company, box office, and producer. Google is able to grab these key data points and generate them in the search result snippet because the structured data helps it understand what this data is and how it is relevant to the original search query. This results in a much more attractive and highly valuable search result to attract more clicks.

By marking up your pages with structured data, you can help Google deliver the best information to your inquiring customers. If they want to know if you sell a product, that product will appear immediately along with any additional nested data. If they want to know your specific pricing, they can find the answer to that question with a search through keyboard or voice search with ease. This reliability builds customer confidence and will push your conversions to new levels in the coming year.

3. Start Employing AI-Automated Marketing Tools

The top business owners and marketers are already accelerating their workflow by employing artificial intelligence and machine learning tools. These allow you to effectively automate countless tasks that would otherwise require additional time, effort, and budget that your team could be devoted elsewhere.

Platforms like DashClicks offer software that can automate the process of managing your sales pipelines, gathering analytics, and communicating with the contacts in your CRM. Instead of manually gathering new leads from your latest landing page, organizing them, and qualifying them, you can utilize these automated tools to qualify your leads from the start, add the worthwhile ones to your contacts, reach out with templated emails, and assign them to the best sales representative without pressing an additional button.

This machine learning is especially vital when it comes to analyzing and optimizing your latest campaigns. Every marketer worth their salt is employing tools and platforms such as Google Analytics or Facebook Ads to automatically gather metrics and insights regarding their creatives and audience engagement. These types of platforms generate millions through ad revenue and are eager to provide you with all of the data you need to ensure your marketing efforts are a success.

With all of these tedious elements taken care of by machines, your experts will have more time and freedom to focus on the things they do best. Your salespeople will have a list of the hottest leads along with qualifying data that can better help them close the deal. Your paid ads managers will have access to information such as demographics, clickthrough rate, custom goal conversions, and heat maps to understand what aspects of an ad are connecting with audiences and which need to be improved.

All of these tools allow your team members to be more agile and produce better content and media as a result.

4. Start Segmenting Your Audience

While your broader audience is made up of individuals interested in your products or services, not all of these people will be exactly the same persona. There are a lot of factors that naturally segment your audience into smaller groups such as household income, age, sex, race, education, or interests that can impact the exact way that a consumer chooses to engage with your brand.

Because no two people are the same, it makes sense that you shouldn't market to different groups the same way, either. This is why we recommend that every business begin to take efforts to further qualify and segment their overall audience for improved marketing success in 2022. This digital marketing technique will aid you in creating highly personalized, tailor-made ads and content that will improve your conversion rate within that specific audience segment.

Your current ads may feel cold, robotic, and designed simply to get your name out there. By taking the time to closely approximate who you may be sending your message to, you greatly increase your chance of converting. A segment-targeted message will feel much more personalized and evoke the feeling of having a one on one conversation with a representative from your brand.

5. Create and Promote More Video Content

Audiences are demanding more high-quality video content from brands and the statistics are there to support that fact. A near-unanimous 93% of marketers expressed that video content is now an important part of their marketing strategy. Regarding the actual ROI, 86% of website owners said that video improved traffic, while 78% said that it played a direct part in increasing sales.

Video content can include content for YouTube, social media, your website, or specifically for ads and landing pages. You can also effectively repurpose existing content you've created for your blog or an eBook to create compelling video that appeals to broader audiences. You don't necessarily need to spend thousands on professional equipment, either, as most mobile phones support audio and video quality that's more than sufficient for a quick video.

Creating video content is also the ideal way to capture the attention of audiences in an era where such a thing is becoming more of a rare commodity. Your average consumer is not as likely to engage with high amounts of text that require careful attention to extract key details. However, a video provides much more dynamic engagement that allows the user to feel as though you are speaking and presenting to them personally.

There are also AI-assisted tools and platforms like Synthesia that can generate personalized videos from only a script. Video creation and editing is more accessible than ever, and it will be a vital strategy for you to add to your list of the latest digital marketing techniques for 2022.

6. Place More of an Emphasis on Local Search

Local search is always a high priority for small, local businesses, but the events of the 2020 pandemic are continuing to ripple throughout everything we do to this day. While more consumers started to do their shopping online for the first time, we are now feeling a whiplash effect that sees buyers once again looking for local alternatives to purchase products and services.

There are a number of ways you can utilize SEO tactics to boost brand awareness among those in your immediate geographic location. Be sure to leverage your location whenever possible in your content to appeal to those nearby. Additionally, look into creating and optimizing your business profile within online directories, particularly Google My Business.

Your GMB profile should contain your address, phone number, email, hours of operation, shop images, and a description of your products or services. Be sure to always keep this profile up-to-date if you change your hours to comply with local or state regulations regarding pandemic hours. Keeping your profile accurate and optimized will make your business much more likely to appear near the top of search results. Users will have everything they need to make immediate contact with your business.

7. Partner with Influencers That Can Elevate Your Brand

Every business needs someone to be their face, so that there is a person rather than a faceless organization for customers to connect with. A popular strategy that businesses are using more than ever is partnering with online influencers to gain additional publicity and traffic.

These influencers are individuals that have already cultivated a notable online following for a number of reasons. The most common reason is that these individuals are existing content creators that represent themselves and are able to make one-to-one connections with other like-minded individuals around the web.

You can take advantage of the trust this person has with their community and grant the influencer the opportunity to promote your brand. Brands will generally agree upon a form of compensation for the promotion as well as access to your products or services for them to try before agreeing to the deal. In fact, it is a federal regulation that an influencer cannot promote something that they do not have actual experience in using.

Regulations also mandate that companies and influencers clearly disclose the nature of the advertisement. However, these influencers always have the option to refuse to promote something that they do not believe in or support. Because the influencer already has rapport and trust with their audience, their audience is more likely to trust any brands that they happen to feature on their various channels.

Influencer marketing is inexpensive but effectively allows you to take advantage of built-in audiences that are already qualified and show interest in what your business offers. For this reason, you should primarily look to partner with influencers who already create content that's either directly or tangentially related to the nature of your business. This type of marketing can work for unrelated brands, but there's a greater chance that the promotion will feel disingenuous or stilted due to the lack of relationship between your brand and the content the influencer creates.

Take Advantage of the Latest Digital Marketing Techniques for Success in 2022!

Leveraging these cutting-edge strategies will aid your brand in staying ahead of the competition in the year to come. Take advantage of the increased focus on local businesses by tailoring your content around the way people ask questions and search. If you have yet to do so, be sure to create and complete your Google My Business profile to ensure that your business is listed among your local peers.

Streamline your workflow by taking advantage of the countless AI-driven automation tools that are now available to marketers and businesses. These types of tools can even allow you to create compelling video content for little to no cost that drives both traffic and conversions. If your business lacks the resources or ability to accomplish these tasks, consider using the DashClicks platform, where our team of experts can implement these techniques on behalf of your brand.

Your marketing efforts are pointless without strong digital branding.

It's an all too often occurrence that companies consult us for marketing services, yet lack an identity, a voice, or unique value propositions that differentiate them in any way from their numerous competitors. Still, they try and exhaust their valuable marketing budget only to realize too late that their strategies just aren't working with no understanding of why.

We want to help your company find its voice. Below, we'll examine seven principles for strong digital branding strategies in 2022 that can help you find your audience, achieve your goals, and establish a reliable pathway to future success.

1. A Brand Represents Real People and Communities

A company's primary purpose for existing is to generate profit and provide income to its employees. However, these are basic needs for every person on the planet and hardly a convincing motive to encourage others to spend their hard-earned dollars on your products or services. If you spend all of your time trying to hard-sell your audience without appealing to any sort of motive or emotion, they're going to walk right past you.

This is the reason why branding exists. A digital media branding strategy allows a company to be more than a cold, money-making vehicle. It's an opportunity to represent the unique and talented individuals that make your services possible. Audiences are just as interested in who provides the service and why as they are in the product or service itself.

More importantly, the people that embody that brand are an extension of the communities they aim to service. When you build a company, it's likely around a shared belief that others can benefit from what your team provides. To confidently know what a community need is to know why they need it and what types of problems they face on a daily basis. Because you understand those problems and face them yourself, you are a part of that community as much as you are the people providing the solution.

Instead of aiming for mass appeal to generate maximum profit, understand that your company exists to find its niche. The individuals and the collective that make your brand have a place among real people in your community. Your job is to understand exactly how your company complements those people and uplifts them as opposed to simply taking.

This type of genuine connection is the sort of thing that fosters the trust and loyalty that lays the foundation for a successful brand. No one can appeal to everyone and it's a wasted effort to ever try. Instead, look at the individuals who embody your company, understand their values, and look for those in your community that can connect with those ideas on an emotional level.

2. What Distinguishes You from the Competitor?

A vital part of analyzing your community is closely examining other local businesses. Particularly, you want to focus on direct competition that markets the same products or services that your brand does. You cannot create a realistic or dependable plan without understanding the strategies that others use to be successful with the same target audience.

Not only does competitor analysis help you with strategy development, but it can illuminate key areas that you can utilize to elevate and distinguish your brand from others.

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As a basic example, two brands might exist to sell a piece of technology. Brand A emphasizes its branding to support the everyman and promote value, while Brand B utilizes branding that emphasizes luxury and status. What typically ends up happening is that both brands are able to find their niche and succeed even though they are competitors in the same industry. With effective branding, both are able to further segment audiences with similar needs to focus on their unique community.

Of course, your brand can emphasize other unique elements depending on the communities you aim to serve. Understanding what you can use requires you to understand the real problems that your audience faces, how your competitor aims to solve them (or fails to understand them), and what your brand values over the opposing solution.

3. Tell a Story and Find Your Voice

If you look closely at how the top brands market themselves online, you'll find that storytelling lies at the heart of their success. That storytelling not only applies to the ongoing history of the minds that make up your brand, but of the people that buy your products and keep your success going.

You'll quickly discover that even with a strong sense of branding and a great strategy, it's easy to get lost in the flood of digital marketing. Despite your best efforts, every person on the web is absolutely inundated with marketing emails, display ads, interruption ads on videos, and much more. In the age of media overload, an impression may only last as long as it takes to see another ad from another brand.

Understand marketers need to find new ways to penetrate the noise. One of the most successful ways of doing this is to foster an emotional connection with the audience. While someone may not remember the words written or spoken in an advertisement, they will remember a profound feeling if there is one to be had.

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Telling a story is not only an effective way of forging emotional connections, but it is a guaranteed way to authenticate and differentiate your team. No two people are the same, and even competitive entrepreneurs in the same industry may have two completely unique stories to tell in how they got to where they are. That journey along with the understanding of their hard work and passion to serve others will go a long way in helping your audience to connect an emotion with your brand. When there's brand storytelling, there's a feeling a person will forever associate with your brand identity as opposed to forgettable words that change with the times.

It's also not just what your story contains, but the voice you use to tell it. Does your brand foster a no-nonsense, professional, get-it-done attitude? Or, does it promote a relaxed, humorous tone that reminds the audience to laugh and enjoy the little things? While something like a brand voice might seem simple, that's exactly why it's so effective. Simple is easy to understand and absorb. Be sure that your story and voice are authentic to who you are and people will thank you for it.

4. Content Defines a Brand's Digital Marketing Strategy

If you spend any time at all studying digital marketing, you will inevitably learn the phrase Content is king. This is because the content is the driving force behind every digital marketing tactic from paid advertising campaigns to blogging. However, it's also a powerful tool for promoting and growing your brand in an effort to engage with more prospects and customers.

Your content must always contain a consistent, reliable voice for your audience to identify. In this way, your audience connects with the brand in a similar way that we all do with people. If someone presents oneself as a trustworthy, dependable, and funny individual consistently, we will eventually trust that the individual is who they claim to be. Conversely, if that same person fluctuates in personality upon each meeting, it makes us hesitant, distrusting, and uneasy in their presence.

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Regardless of how you choose to voice your brand, consistency is ultimately the key. The repetition gives you a better opportunity to create a following with the right community and will ensure that your brand generates highly-qualified leads instead of connecting with disinterested persons.

Furthermore, content marketing is a strategy that will not only boost your SEO and website ranking, but gives your audience further opportunities to discover and explore your brand. Longform blog posts provide a unique platform for you to express new stories, ideas, and information that fosters the connection you want between brand and audience.

Not only will unique, branded content builds brand awareness, but it will also foster loyalty among those who identify with you and play a large part in driving future conversions.

Remember that content and how it defines your brand applies to everything you publish online. Don't try to present a sudden shift in personality or tone in an effort to capture more leads on that new landing page. Stay true to who you are, what your brand values, and the value you can provide to the audience that needs your company's products or services.

5. Marketers Don't Define Your Brand, They Support It

This idea is not necessarily about developing your brand identity, but how you can most effectively express it throughout the digital media landscape. If you choose to leverage the help of expert marketing agencies, understand that it is not their role to create or define your brand, but to expertly present it to your target audience online.

What occurs at an alarming rate is that businesses will solicit the help of marketers to begin scaling or driving conversions. However, when it comes time to complete their onboarding, they have no brand identity of note to express. What we're left with are a cold list of products or services or an offer that promises nothing of note aside from discounts or savings.

While it's not necessarily your responsibility to know exactly how to leverage digital marketing tactics, it is your responsibility to understand how you want your brand to be represented. Leaving an outside source or partner to define your brand for you is the definition of unauthentic, which goes against the previous principles discussed in this article. What results is tension and conflict between two partners that should be elevating one another toward greater success than they could not otherwise achieve on their own.

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Instead, you need to be an active collaborator in your own marketing success. While you won't be the one creating your ad sets or writing your landing pages, you should be highly critical of any elements that do not meet the image and voice standards that you and your team have set for your brand. Your marketing collaborators will feed off of this critical feedback and further improve their processes as they become more understanding of your branding.

You will retain creative control and work with your new partners to communicate what your brand needs to express. The marketing experts on the other side can then synthesize that messaging into well-written articles, highly-engaging ads, and high-converting call-to-actions that get actual results. When those leads arrive at your door, you seal the deal by doing what you do best - being the embodiment of your brand.

6. Always Manage Your Reputation Online

When you start to promote your brand online, you become something tangible for audiences and other businesses to act upon. You'll quickly discover that if you do not take the initiative to define your brand, others will be more than happy to do it for you. What results is that new audiences will make pre-determinations about your brand and company values regardless of what you have to say otherwise.

You can find examples of this even at the top level when using the Google search engine. We typed in what's in McDonald's meat? and looked at the top results. What we found is that the website Mashed takes the top result in answering this question with the McDonald's brand itself falling second.

The clear and pressing issue for McDonald's is that an outside identity now has the power to define one of their products, a major element of their branding. Curious parties will generally select the first result in Google, meaning that this website gets the opportunity to create their image of the McDonald's brand instead of McDonald's itself.

Effective digital branding and marketing tactics require you to stay in control of the narrative at all times. This example not only illustrates the importance of utilizing strong branding principles, but also emphasizes the need for a complete digital marketing strategy including great content and search engine optimization. While this niche example likely has very little impact on this giant corporation's bottom line, it can definitely harm smaller businesses that have yet to cement their footing in the digital landscape.

You not only need to look out for external content sources, but also the opinions of previous or existing customers. Word of mouth spreads quickly in the age of social media and users can find data quickly about your business within online directories, aggregator websites, and social media platforms. Several mediocre or low-star reviews can also impact brand perception without so much as a word for others looking for a quick solution.

However, you can fight back and retain control of the narrative by managing your reputation among customers. Part of your digital marketing and branding strategy should be to respond to and oversee reviews and testimonials regarding your business online. If a customer expresses dissatisfaction or a clear issue, make an honest effort to understand and solve the problem. Not only can the overall interaction boost positive perception for that one individual, but your actions will be seen by every other user scrutinizing your reputation.

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Don't forget about your positive reviews, either. Let your satisfied customers know that they are valued and appreciated, and watch as they spread the good word about your brand to others.

7. Continue to Evolve

Finally, it's important to know that the land of digital marketing is a rapidly evolving landscape. The strategies that were effective five years ago are long outdated, and what works today may not work at the same time next year.

While your core branding, identity, and values won't change, the manner in which you deliver your message will. To ensure that your company is able to establish generational success, you'll need to constantly be aware of how new and existing audiences are able to discover information about the brands they choose to do business with online. If there's a more convenient way to learn, audiences will find it. It's the brands that not only stay on top of, but ahead of these trends that leap ahead of the pack and claim the number one spot.

Conclusion - Take These Digital Branding Strategies with You Into the New Year!

The brand identity is not just a box you need to check to start marketing online. It's the single most powerful tool you'll use to both identify yourself to audiences and distinguish yourself from the competitor they may also be examining. It represents both the individual and the collective that embody your company's values and its desire to aid the community with its unique solutions.

Identify who you are, decide upon the voice and tone you want to use, and look for engaging ways to tell your personal story. Manage your reputation and don't let others define your brand for you. By remaining consistent and authentic with whom you want to appeal, you will find naturally discover your niche and your audience will come to you.