Optimise your profile

Before you even consider sharing your content, be sure to optimise your profile with your best professional photos and a solid headline that explains who you are and what you do. Additionally, make sure that you’ve completed all sections of your profile (work experience, volunteer experience, education, and certifications, etc.) as well as included at least one quality recommendation from a trusted source.

Participate in groups

Participating in relevant LinkedIn groups lets you contribute your knowledge to like-minded people. If you become an active contributor in these groups, other people may reach out if they need services like yours. Ensure you keep your posts relevant to the group, and avoid spamming with services.

Connect with people in their niches

It’s not enough to simply sign up for a LinkedIn account and list your work history. Your profile is where you can really differentiate yourself, so pay close attention to it. Try posting a creative cover image—using an original photo of you doing your job, for example—and customise your headline with keywords that clients are likely to search for.

Post a great profile picture

A big part of what makes your profile noticeable is your profile image. Humans react to faces, so be sure to use a photo of yourself. Make sure it’s a professionally taken photo and you are wearing work attire.

Comment on industry articles

Aside from networking, another great way to attract new clients is through your writing. Commenting on industry articles with insightful questions and answers can help establish you as an authority within your niche.

The post How to strategically market yourself on LinkedIn appeared first on Hatchit Design.

A lack of personal information

It’s worth checking out the bio of any new follower or commenter to make sure it’s legitimate. A lack of personal information on an account may not automatically mean it’s a fake, but it’s worth watching or delving a little deeper to ascertain its authenticity.

Generic username

Again, not a failsafe, but some things to look out for would be a generic name, followed by a random string of letters or numbers.

Quality of posts

Quality of posts is a giveaway. If the content contains multiple pictures in which there seems to be no subject other than a person’s face (such as selfies), there’s a strong possibility it’s fake.

Quality of engagement

If you get a random, generic comment or a string of emojis, it’s likely that it’s a fake account. If posts on the account itself contain undirected comments from different people, or emoji-only comments, it’s likely that it’s a fake account.

Analyse their profile

Look at the follower’s profile; if it has a lot of posts but only a few followers, they’re probably fake; or if the followers are all low-quality with similar profiles, that is also an indication of a fake account. If their profile pictures contain images of celebrities or models, alarm bells should ring!

If you’re considering bolstering your own account by purchasing fake followers, we strongly advise against it. It’s easy to get caught up in the numbers, but don’t forget that your true followers are more important than just having a high number.

Make sure you’re checking profiles and seeing how they interact with your posts before deciding if someone is genuine or not. If it seems like most of their activity consists of liking other people’s photos while never commenting on yours, then it might be best to pass them by for now. Your time is valuable so make sure you spend it wisely!

The post How to spot fake Instagram followers and engagement appeared first on Hatchit Design.

Set up the right platforms

A crucial part of your social media presence is knowing which platforms are right for you. You don’t necessarily need to be on every social media platform—but be sure that those you do use are important to your audience. Asking customers which platforms they use is a good way of testing the water.

Find your target audience

Determining your target audience allows you to speak directly to them on social media. If you’re a restaurant, it may be people who live in your town, or foodies with disposable income. As long as you know who these people are, you can tailor your social media messaging to resonate with them.

Be consistent

As with many things in life, consistency is key when it comes to social media. If you start posting three times a week, your audience will expect you to continue doing so. Allowing your schedule to drop off a cliff can be detrimental to your following, and your business. Consistency will help you develop a presence as well as making it easier for people to find you.

Work smarter, not harder

Don’t fall into the trap of spending hours each day trying to get attention on social media. Spend 20 minutes a day working on your presence and you’ll be surprised by how many people take notice of your brand, product or service.

Build relationships

Whether you’re a small business or a one-person operation, building relationships with others on social media is key to your online success. Although some brands choose to simply push out messages, creating a dynamic relationship with your followers is far more beneficial and compelling. Try posting interesting information in your feed that will be worth sharing, remembering that reciprocity goes a long way.

The post 5 social media best practices for small businesses! appeared first on Hatchit Design.

Has Twitter peaked?
Some would argue that Twitter peaked a few years ago; it was a trendy way to meet new people with similar hobbies and interests, using hashtags to search for like-minded people and businesses, however, with the soaring popularity of platforms such as Instagram, and the shift to a more visual social media experience, Twitter lagged a little – internet analytics company Alexa’s engagement stats recorded a fall from number 11 in its engagement charts in 2018 to number 49 in 2020. But does this mean it is over, or is it simply a measure of its evolution? How strong is Twitter for business marketing, and is it worth investing time in the platform?

No, yes, very and yes are the answers. Twitter has certainly not died a death – the microblogging platform is simply evolving with the times – shifting a focus from a timeline of snippets to an algorithm-based re-ordering; crucial for businesses.

Twitter and small businesses
So, how should you make best use of Twitter for your small business? As with most platforms, engagement is key. Nothing gets you connected quicker than taking the time to interact with other businesses and potential customers. Hashtags get you there a bit quicker too. Customers often turn to Twitter to contact businesses (particularly if there is troubleshooting to do!), and the DM facility is perfect for taking them offline and out of public view. Live tweeting is invaluable; check out trending topics that are relevant to your business and jump on that trend with gusto – make sure you use the trending hashtag in your tweets to enable other interested users to connect with you if they so wish.

Engage and make use of Promoted Tweets
Find and engage with your customers. Ask for their @ when they check-out at your store or when they query on your website, that way you can tag them in tweets and further spread your brand love. If Facebook Ads aren’t working for you, Twitter has its own versions, ranging from Promoted Trends, which give you the opportunity to place your trend at the top of the ‘trending topics’ list, to Promoted Tweets, which do exactly what the name suggests, promoting a particular tweet and placing it in the feed of your target audience amongst posts from the other accounts the user follows.

Should your business use Twitter? YES! It may have been around for a long time, but we suspect it’ll hang around for a while yet; so, what are you waiting for? Let’s get tweeting.

The post Has Twitter had its day? appeared first on Hatchit Design.

However, the role of keywords appears to be somewhat changing in recent times. Search engines, such as Google, have been evolving and getting better at natural language processing (NLP), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning.

With new additions to their core algorithm, such as Google Hummingbird and Google BERT, search engines apparently do not have to rely on keywords as much as they used to do before.

In that case, do keywords still have a crucial role to play in 2020 and beyond? Are they still valuable and should be one of the first things SEO professionals should look into when optimising a web page or crafting a content marketing strategy?

Different industry experts seem to vary in their opinions about this.

Let’s explore both sides and try to guess the state and impact of keywords in 2020.

Keywords in 2020: Different opinions and predictions

According to Frédéric Dubut, Senior Program Manager Lead at Bing, SEO professionals need to switch [from keyword research] to intent research as a practice. He believes that keyword research is going to become slowly obsolete and lose its importance, starting from this year.

He shared these thoughts in a short video shot during SMX East last year.

Here is what he said:

“If you look at 2018, 2019, there’s lots of evolution in the field of deep learning [and] natural language processing. Google announced recently they integrated their BERT language model in search results. And what that means for everyone is search engines are shifting from keywords to intent at an accelerating pace.” 

He further added, “What we’re looking forward to in 2020 is that search engines are going to be primarily intent-based, so we’ll understand the core intent better. We’ll understand what the documents mean better, and we’ll be able to do better matches.”

While what he says does make a lot of sense, not everyone agrees with Frédéric Dubut. For instance, Google’s John Mueller was asked a similar question, but he shared a different opinion.

According to John, keywords still have their importance.

“There’s probably always gonna be a little bit of room for keyword research because you’re kind of providing those words to users. And even if [the] search engines are trying to understand more than just those words, showing specific words to users can make it a little bit easier for them to understand what your pages are about and can sometimes drive a little bit of that conversion process,” said John Mueller.

What should SEO professionals and content marketers focus on?

Apparently, the role of keywords and keyword optimisation in the search engine world is going through an evolutionary phase. Search engines are getting smarter, and they no longer need to rely on a particular keyword or keyword phrases to trigger a certain web page in the SERPs.

Search engines are now perfectly capable of evaluating a web page — whether or not the page has specific keywords — and displaying it to search engine users in the SERPs.

Here is an example:

As you can see, the page ranked on the top does not contain the keyword ‘infant’ in it even once. But it is still ranked on the top of the first result page. On the other hand, web pages that use that keyword multiple 18 times and 10 times are ranked on #4 and #5 spots, respectively.

This shows that keyword density no longer matters as much as matching the user intent. However, as John Mueller said, if you want to give your web pages the best possible chance of ranking for a certain query, you should ignore keywords altogether.

Make it easier for the search engines to identify your web page — by including the primary and LSI keywords in a natural way. However, instead of focusing on maintaining a certain keyword density, e.g., 3%, focus on these three things:

• Creating helpful, engaging, informative content for your readers.
• Match the content of your web page with the search intent of the users. To do that successfully, you should be able to understand your readers. Start by creating detailed buyer personas and gathering more information about your audience.
• Ensure that your website visitors have a great user experience. This includes focusing on the design of your web page, dwell time, website bounce rate, and the loading speed of your website.

Apart from these tips, make sure you are also following Google’s webmaster quality guidelines.

All these factors are now more valuable than stuffing keywords on a web page and maintaining a certain keyword density at the cost of providing valuable and informative content to your readers that don’t match their search intent.

The post The state and impact of keyword research in 2020 appeared first on Hatchit Design.

Online marketers are also using podcasts as a medium to deliver content, improve brand awareness, and increase engagement. And like with any other piece of content, there are ways to optimise podcasts for search engines and gain organic traffic.

Here are a few tips on how to optimise podcasts for search engines.

1. Create a new web page for each podcast episode

You do not necessarily need a website to start and run your podcast. However, by having a website and dedicating a new blog post to each episode, you can increase your podcast’s SEO friendliness and make it easier for search engines to find each new episode.

Many professional podcasters publish a new blog post each time they release a new episode. This technique serves a few purposes:

• First, it is a great way to create new content — especially for your podcast listeners.
• Second, creating text-based content for each podcast episode will allow you to use more keywords that could drive organic traffic to your website.
• Lastly, you can create links from your blog page to other blog pages as well as other podcast episodes, which would help keep the engagement rate high.

2. Optimise the content

While you won’t be spending a lot of time and effort in optimising the content you create to power your podcast episode, there are a few things you should do.

• Use at least one or two H2 heading tags and try to include the main keyword in one of them.
• Sprinkle LSI keywords into your content as naturally as possible.
• Insert an image — without proper keyword-rich alt text — so search engines can understand the image.
• Make sure the content is of an adequate length. For example, a blog post with less than 300 words would likely not rank on the first search engine result page.
• The content should be easily readable and navigable. Excellent user experience should be one of your core focuses.

3. Include transcripts of the episode

Earlier this year, Google announced that podcasts will show up in search results. Listeners can search for a podcast and find relevant podcast episodes on the SERPs that they can consume directly.

But since that system hasn’t been perfected yet, it could be a good idea to include the transcript of your episode. This can improve the discoverability of each episode and enable you to include more keywords to drive extra organic traffic.

This can be a time-consuming process, however, and you should decide if it’s something you can comfortably take on.

4. Select keywords for each episode

Optimising podcasts isn’t that different from optimising a blog post. The fundamentals remain the same.

One of those basic SEO concepts is to include important keywords in hot places. The title of the episode is one of the most important places you can include the main keyword that you are optimising for.

As always, a long-tail keyword might bring better results and more targeted traffic to your podcasts. When including keywords into the titles of your podcasts episodes, make sure they don’t stick out unnaturally. Contextual inclusion of keywords should be your number one priority.

5. Don’t forget to include structured data

As podcasters, you can include special Podcast Structured Data to give your podcast a much better chance to rank higher in the search engine results pages.

With structured data, you help Google discover and understand your podcast. According to Google, “You can enable your podcast to appear in Google Search results and Google Podcasts, along with individual episode descriptions and an embedded player for each.”

Learn more about structured data here.

6. Leverage Google Podcasts

Because of Google’s growing focus on podcasts, Google Podcast is becoming more important than ever. Make sure to add your podcast to Google Podcasts. It will allow you to improve your SEO presence, gain more readers, and monitor your rankings.

Conclusion

Over the next few years, podcasts will continue to grow as a popular content medium. Google is also paying a lot more attention to it — which is a testament to the future popularity of podcasts. By following the tips mentioned in this article, and by improving the overall quality of your podcasts, you will likely gain better search engine rankings and more traffic.

The post How to optimise your podcasts for search engines appeared first on Hatchit Design.

In this blog post, we highlight a few big internal linking mistakes. Avoid these mistakes to make sure you are giving your web pages and site the best chance to rank higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

1. Broken internal links

According to SEMRush, 0.27 percent of all links on the Internet are broken. There could be multiple reasons for a broken internal link. For example:

• A malformed URL
• A web page that does not exist anymore

There are three major disadvantages of a broken link:

1. It sends Google the signal that your website is of low quality and does not care about user experience.
2. It upsets your audience and negatively affects your credibility and authority.
3. It negatively affects certain metrics, e.g., bounce rate and dwell time.

2. Not having any internal links

You will be surprised to know how many blog posts do not have any internal links. That is probably the biggest mistake you can make when it comes to creating internal links, i.e., not having any on your individual web pages. Internal links pass SEO juice among web pages on your site, and they also help retain visitors for longer, therefore having a positive effect on bounce rate and other engagement metrics that Google considers while ranking websites in the SERPs.

3. Too many internal links on a web page

But you can also go overboard quite easily. While it is important to have relevant and important internal links on a web page, it is also equally important not to have too many. SEMRush did a study in which they found out that 12 percent web pages on a typical website may have too many on-page links. As a general guideline, a typical blog post should not have more than 100 links.

4. Not diversifying anchor text

You may want to create internal links to a certain web page with a specific anchor text. This technique is used to help optimise a web page for that keyword or keyword phrase. But as search engines have evolved, this technique has somewhat lost its effectiveness.

While it may still help, it is more important to keep your link profile natural. Frequently used over-optimised anchor text is the opposite of that. Instead of forcefully using a certain set of keywords as the anchor text, make the anchor text more natural and contextual. Search engines will eventually reward the natural link profile. On the other hand, over-optimised anchor texts may lead to a search engine penalty.

5. Unnecessary redirect chains

Redirects can be useful in certain situations. However, redirect chains is never a good idea and should be removed as soon as possible. A redirect chain refers to when a redirect leads to another redirect, thus creating a chain that hogs resources, frustrates users as well as search engines, and slows down your website.

Make sure that all your internal links lead users straight to the destination page. In case of redirects, redirect users directly to the final page. While you are at it, review all your 302-redirects and see if there is a temporary redirect that can be removed now. If not, make sure to use the proper 301-redirect.

6. Using the nofollow attribute

The nofollow attribute is used to tell search engine bots not to follow specific links. While users can jump to that link, search engine bots won’t pass any SEO juice to it. The nofollow attribute is mostly used on certain types of external web pages. Since you want to pass the SEO juice to all your internally linked web pages, there is no point in using the nofollow attribute here. Therefore, make sure that all your internal links do not have the nofollow attribute.

Conclusion

It is easy to neglect the importance of internal links. However, if you want to give your web pages the best possible chance in the SERPs, you will need every tool in your armoury. Make sure that you are not making any of the above-mentioned mistakes related to internal links.

The post 6 big internal linking mistakes to avoid appeared first on Hatchit Design.

1. Improved search engine rankings

Increased website security is an important search engine ranking factor. Google announced it in 2014 that HTTPS would become a relevant search engine ranking factor for all websites. Now, this correlation between higher search engine rankings and the use of HTTPS can be easily observed. Brian Dean from Backlinko analysed over one million Google search results and found a direct relationship between the two. Take a look at the following chart:

As you can see, domains with HTTPS and improved security are more likely to rank on the top position in Google SERPs. Assuming all other ranking factors are equal, HTTPS could literally be the difference between outranking your competitors and getting outranked by them.

2. Safeguarding user information

As an online business owner, safeguarding user information is your responsibility. In fact, it should be one of your top-most priorities. You do not want your website visitors to lose their private, sensitive information as a result of visiting and navigating your website. An incident like this can destroy your business.

If you are collecting personal information, such as name, email address, or credit card information, on your website, safeguarding user information becomes all the more important. E-commerce websites often have to deal with this added layer of security. HTTPS ensures that everything is encrypted and safe and that there is no chance to lose your site’s visitors’ personal information.

3. Higher credibility and customer confidence

Reputation and credibility are essential aspects of online success. You need to make a good impression — consistently — on your target audience. If your site does not have HTTPS, that objective cannot be accomplished. It’s because internet users will see something like this whenever they visit your HTTP website.

This is a major red flag that raises valid questions on a website’s security. Many visitors will quickly abandon a site after seeing this error. It can be difficult to recover and regain the trust of your website visitors with this negative impression. Using HTTPS makes sure that your website visitors do not get any notification or warning like this. This increases your website’s credibility and your customers’ trust in your online business.

4. Better conversion rate

All the points mentioned above lead to one result: increased user confident that eventually translates into a higher conversion rate on your site. When website visitors — especially first-time visitors — feel more confident about your website, they are more likely to complete transactions and buy products on your website. Otherwise, most will not even feel comfortable sharing their email address.

In today’s digital age, people are concerned about the possibilities of identity theft and credit card fraud. You need to make a great impression through the quality of your content, authenticity of your product images, and professional design. Using HTTPS and increased web security is just another part of that puzzle. That extra sense of online security will encourage more users to purchase on your website and help increase the conversion rate.

How to get HTTPS for your website

Getting HTTPS for your site is a three-step process:

• The first thing you need to do is to purchase an SSL certificate for your website.
• Next, you will need to install the certificate on your server.
• Once you install the certificate and check it for any errors, the third step is to notify Google that you have added HTTPS to your site. This is done through Google Search Console.

Conclusion

Using HTTPS isn’t optional anymore. It is mandatory if you are serious about the success of your online business. The various benefits mentioned in this article should only enforce its importance and why you need to install an SSL certificate to your website in case you haven’t already.

The post Understanding the benefits of HTTPS and how to get HTTPS for your site appeared first on Hatchit Design.

1. Pick an interesting topic that your target audience would find useful

While creating an infographic often seems the most daunting task, picking the right topic is half the battle. Understand that not every infographic gets traction and traffic. You need to have a topic that is focused, interesting, and useful for your target audience. If it is something that your readers are interested in, the infographic is more likely to get the traction and attention you want it to. Instead of going with the more popular topic, pick something that your audience would appreciate and find useful. Identify a problem for a specific group of people and solve it.

2. Make it easy to view

Next comes one of the most important and difficult parts of creating an infographic: its design. The infographic needs to have the right colours combinations. The choice of font and font size also has a lot of impact on its readability. Following is a small part of an infographic. As you can see, there are two major problems with it:

1. The font size is too small to be read easily.
2. The colour combination is making it even more difficult to read the text.

Apart from the colours, the infographic also must be of an appropriate size. While you may want to go big, you should not overdo it. The infographic should not be more than 8,000 pixels. Besides, you also want it to be of a relatively smaller size for those with poor internet connections. Lastly, make sure to add ample white space. Otherwise, the infographic will become too convoluted. Here is an example of an infographic without sufficient white space.

3. Write an attention-grabbing headline

Next comes the part where you grab your reader’s attention with content and text, and you start with an attention-grabbing headline. Just like an ad or a blog post, the headline of an infographic should hook your readers and encourage them to read further. The headline should be sort, to-the-point, promising, and interesting. 70 characters is a good length. Too long, and you won’t be able to keep their attention. Too short, and you might not put everything in it that you want to.

4. Write a blog post to accompany your infographic

Once your infographic is ready, it is time to publish it. Make sure to write a small blog post to accompany your infographic. Remember that you are trying to simplify a complex topic with your infographic. Having accompanying text will help you achieve that purpose more efficiently. Moreover, a keyword-rich blog post may also help your infographic in the search engine results pages (SERPs). With more opportunity to include relevant keywords, you give yourself a better chance to rank higher in the SERPs.

5. Use every social channel you have

This goes without saying, but you must always use all the social channels you have to promote your infographics. Infographics are more likely to go viral. Therefore, make sure to use every social channel and relevant forum when promoting an infographic.

6. Reach out to influencers

If you believe your infographic solves a major problem and is clearly superior to other infographics in your niche, you should reach out to influencers who might find it interesting. Niche influencers are always looking for good content to share with their audience. One tweet from them can help your infographic gain a lot of virality and traffic.

7. Submission to different infographic websites

There are several infographic websites that you can submit your infographic to. These websites include: Visual.ly, Visualistan, Killer Infographic, Daily Infographic, etc. Many popular publications use these infographic sites to find interesting and useful infographics for their content. If your infographic gets picked, it may help increase your authority, credibility, and ranking in the SERPs.

8. Guest blogging

Lastly, do not forget to re-purpose your infographic and use it for guest posts. By linking back to the original article and your website, you can gain targeted traffic and valuable back links. Another technique is to create a different accompanying blog post and use that to pitch your infographic. New, exclusive content is always preferred in the guest blogging world.

The post 8 tips for creating better infographics & driving more traffic appeared first on Hatchit Design.

1. Create content according to your conversion funnel

Before you start publishing blog posts, white papers and eBooks, you need to create a conversion funnel. It is also known as ‘sales funnel’. A sales or conversion funnel maps a website visitor’s roadway from first knowing about your product or service to purchasing what you are offering. A sales funnel can be of many different stages, but here is a common format that most bloggers use:

• Stage #1 — Awareness (Top of the funnel)
• Stage #2 — Research (Middle of the funnel)
• Stage #3 — Purchase (Bottom of the funnel)

Having a firm grasp on your conversion funnel will help you create better, more targeted content for each phase. For instance, for the top of the funnel, you can create informative blog posts, checklists, email newsletters, how-to videos, etc. On the other hand, for the bottom of the funnel, you can create an engaging pricing page, case studies, customer success stories, testimonials, etc. By aligning your user’s journey with the right type of content, you would be in a better position to sell.

2. Treat your blog posts as landing pages

When compared with blog posts, landing pages often have a higher conversion rate. It is because — unlike normal blog posts — landing pages are created in a way to encourage sales. Therefore, you should take inspiration from your high-performing landing pages with above-average conversion rates. Optimise the copy of your blog posts as you do in landing pages. Address your target audience. Identify a major issue that they are facing and present a solution to them. Use an engaging and attention-grabbing headline. Talk about your product and service whenever it is appropriate to do so in the blog post. Be creative and persuasive — while still being informative and engaging — to ensure a higher conversion rate from blog posts.

3. Optimise for buyer keywords

When creating content, your #1 goal should be to create maximum value for your readers. This means not obsessing about the inclusion of particular keywords. However, when you are trying to drive more sales, you would want to create — in addition to the informative and helpful content for your readers — content pieces that specifically target buyer keywords.

These keywords include:

• Reviews
• Discount
• Deal
• Where to buy
• Buy
• Download
• Cost of

The inclusion of these “buyer keywords” will help you attract the type of traffic that is willing to spend its money.

4. Always include a call-to-action

Will you ever leave a landing page without a call-to-action? No. Then why would you that in a blog post? Always include a call-to-action at the end of your blog post. That CTA could be about contacting you or signing up for an email newsletter; it does not always have to sell a product or service. Try to craft a CTA that is helpful for the readers. For example, if you have a blog post series, link to its remaining part at the end so the readers can easily find the full series and get all the information. For blog posts, the best way is to redirect users to a gated piece of content or an email newsletter. Once you establish a two-way contact with that, you can nurture leads and later sell them your products or services.

5. Improve readability

Unfortunately, only 16% of website visitors read a blog post word-for-word. This means that a lot of your content will go unnoticed. If nobody is reading what you have to say, why would they buy from you? You can overcome this problem improving the readability of your articles and make them more easily consumable. Break your posts into smaller chunks. Create several shorter paragraphs to convey your message. Use shorter sentences and easy-to-understand words. Most importantly, divide your articles by several interesting subheadings. Ideally, those subheadings should attract your reader’s attention and guide them through the entire blog post.

Conclusion

Blog posts are generally used to educate and inform readers and collect leads. But they should not be restricted to those roles. You can create blog posts that drive sales and convert people into customers. The above-mentioned 5 tips will help you with that goal.

The post 5 tips for creating content that drives sales appeared first on Hatchit Design.