So you’ve signed up a great SEO or digital agency to help you with your online marketing initiatives – congratulations! You’ve taken the first step in leveraging all the cool 21st century technology in the service of growing your business.
What can you expect from your shiny new marketing team? At Panoptic, the on-boarding of all new clients begins with a consultation call or meeting, followed by a comprehensive SEO Audit. [Read more…]
It’s been over five years since Panoptic first started working with small business clients – when we first started out, SEO was still like the wild West. At the time, we wanted to bring greater clarity around what online marketing means for small businesses, and we began by writing a short series of articles to help.
The content of those early articles still applies, but it’s time to revisit and update some of the details to reflect the state of SEO and online marketing for 2016. [Read more…]
One of the first things we do when we start working with a new digital marketing client (sometimes even before the actual engagement begins) is ask about their website metrics: How are they doing? Is their website effective at driving leads/sales? Do they know which pages on the site are the best at converting visitors into customers — or even which pages are most likely to keep visitors engaged with their brand?
More often than not (perhaps with the exception of e-commerce businesses) small and medium business owners have no idea how their websites are performing. That’s understandable – SMBs have so many things to worry about they may not be thinking about their website at all. A business website was just something they knew they needed (because every business needs a website) so they got one. If any additional leads or sales came their way as a result of having a website, that was a bonus.
Facebook is going live…for everyone! Similar to what Meerkat and Periscope have done to enable Twitter users to live stream events, Facebook now allows all “verified users” (so far that’s public figures and big brands) to invite any or all Facebook users to view their live broadcasts. The feature is currently in testing for the general public, though it’s not clear exactly when it will be rolled out more broadly. [Read more…]
When it comes to social media marketing, using hashtags is a must if you want to increase your chances of having your posts found outside your existing network to be seen by a wider audience.
Introduced in Twitter in 2007 as a way of tagging and grouping tweets, the famous hash (pound) symbol has made its way into almost all major social media channels. The word hashtag became so popular in 2009-2010 that it was even added to the Oxford Dictionary. [Read more…]
In recent months, we’ve been blogging about changes to the way Google’s search algorithms have impacted SEO. The increase in voice searching and the move towards semantic search (which involves understanding context and user intent), demand that businesses and bloggers change the way they approach optimizing pages on their websites. Where SEO used to be largely about identifying exact-match keyword phrases and making sure they were used liberally throughout page titles, headings, and links, those tactics – like many other methods that have become outdated over the years – are no longer useful, and may even detract from the site’s rankings in Google search results. [Read more…]
It’s been eighteen months since I posted this article about Using Schema Microdata for Better SEO and while nothing has changed around what scheme markup is or how it can help boost your website traffic, the need to set your business apart from your ever-increasing online competition is more pressing than ever. [Read more…]
Just as the way people shop (from in-store to online) has changed drastically over the last few years, the time people allocate for product/project/service research has also been altered by available technologies. These days, people dedicate less time to researching things ahead of time and rely more on “pop-up” knowledge they can access through their hand held devices.
February 2016 will mark the five-year anniversary of Panoptic. Anyone that runs a small business will appreciate the tremendous effort involved in keeping things growing and moving in the right direction, and as a New York City-based online marketing agency we have the extra challenge of making sure our clients’ businesses are moving in the right direction, too — at least as it pertains to their online presence.
The work we undertake is time-consuming and requires highly skilled people that are dedicated to this mission. As the owner of Panoptic, I want to close out the year by thanking the amazing people that make up our core team – and a few of the individuals we partner with regularly in the service of our clients. [Read more…]
Before we can talk about Conversion Rate Optimization (or CRO) we need to understand what a “conversion” is. In very simple terms, a “conversion” happens when a visitor to your website takes some sort of action – for example, makes a purchase, subscribes to your email newsletter or requests information. Each one of these actions “converts” the visitor from being a passive reader of your message to actively engaging with it in some way.
By analyzing data around conversions on your website, you gain insights into what is working to draw in leads or customers so that you can replicate or leverage tactics that bring conversions. The reverse is true as well: understanding what doesn’t convert a visitor can help you correct or improve problematic issues on your website. [Read more…]
Creating and sharing visual content has been a marketing trend for several years now and it’s not about to fade anytime soon. In fact, it has now become a MUST for any businesses that wants to be noticed on the internet. These statistics testify to … Continue reading →
