Local Web

Is your business ready for life after COVID-19?

Australian businesses are gearing up to get back into business as Australia’s federal, state and territory governments are gradually easing restrictions around how businesses can operate in a “COVID-safe environment”.

But getting back to business is going to require some truly innovative digital marketing campaigns. How do you know which marketing methods work best in a post-COVID-19 world? Keep reading to discover our top digital marketing tips!

Reach Out To Customers

Our first post-virus marketing tip is nice and simple: you need to reach out to your existing customers right away!

This can be as simple as sending everyone an e-mail. Tell them details about your business, such as your hours,  new products, procedures or what to expect when they step inside the venue. Such an e-mail is important because they may not realise that you’re getting back to your normal routine, with appropriate extra precautions.

If it’s financially feasible, consider sending a digital coupon in that same e-mail. Nothing brings customers in like a chance to save money!

Dust Off Your Analytics

If you’ve never installed Google Analytics, now is the time to do so. And if you’ve already installed it, now is the time to review how your customers have been interacting with your website.

Among other things, analytics can tell you which sections of your website have gotten the most traffic during the quarantine. This can provide valuable clues about what customers want, including the products they are most interested in.

Many businesses are changing up their products and services in the wake of the virus. By diving back into Google Analytics, you can find out exactly what your customers want and then deliver it to them.

Conduct An SEO Audit

It’s not an overstatement to say that COVID-19 changed the entire world. And among other things, it changed exactly what your customers are searching for when they go online.

That’s why now is the time to conduct an SEO audit. Consult with Google Trends and other tools to understand how customer searches and buying patterns have changed in recent months.

While an SEO audit is never fun, it’s ultimately a “win/win” for your business. You can save money by ditching stale keywords for the new hotness, and you’ll attract more customers than your competitors by focusing on the right trends.

Social Media Campaign

Internet behaviour during quarantine was a curious thing. Organic SEO was down thanks to widespread economic uncertainty. However, social media flourished because consumers wanted some kind of escape from their daily worries and stress.

That’s why it’s more important than ever for you to focus on social media. You can offer customers a multimedia experience by showing them images of your store and your products as you gear up for a grand re-opening.

Social media is also a great way to offer special referral programs. Customers will jump at the chance to get a coupon or a free product, and social media makes it easy for them to tell their friends and family about your business.

Digital Marketing Tips: Are You Ready?

Now you know our top digital marketing tips for life after COVID-19. But do you know who can help you with each of these?

We specialise in all things digital marketing, including SEO, Google Ads, and Social Media. Before you start your next digital marketing campaign,  contact us for a free consultation!

COVID-19 has complicated things for small businesses.

A lockdown like this makes it really hard to run a business that relies on customer interaction. If you’re a hands-on service provider, or in other industries like dining or retail, a lot of your usual business is done with people physically engaging with you, your products and/or your services. When customers can’t physically interact, your business suffers.

That’s why it’s important to have a valuable online presence that promotes your business and reminds your customers you are still there. Today, we’re going to discuss how you can establish one so that you can still capitalise on your strong customer base. By doing this the right way, you can stay afloat and even thrive during the drastic changes we’re experiencing.

Make Sure You’re Listed Correctly

If you’ve got a great website that you’re proud of, that’s a great start, but you need to make sure people can find you. Optimising your website should be a major priority.  You can do that by ensuring that you’re listed correctly on Google and using Google Ads to boost traffic to your site.

Obviously, many businesses have been forced to close their doors during the pandemic, but that shouldn’t stop you from keeping your customers informed. Make sure to update your listings to reflect your hours and whether or not you’re doing things like curbside pickup or delivery. They may not be able to physically go into your business, but you can still do business with them, so you should clearly state how you’re currently operating.

SEO and Content

To keep your customers and followers engaged, you should be even more active than usual with your content. Since you aren’t going into work, you might have some extra time to produce informative, relatable content during the pandemic. Optimise your content with a strong SEO strategy and you could very well see your online presence grow during the lockdown.

Remember, everyone’s at home spending more time on their computers and smartphones. This is a great opportunity to build your brand and make new customers aware of your company. You may even consider hiring a digital marketing agency to help boost your reach.

Building an Online Presence on Social Media

Brand building can also be very effective via social media marketing. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and many other platforms can be used to advertise COVID-specific promotions you might have, as well as giving you the opportunity to connect with your audience. Instagram stories, for example, are great for giving your followers a behind-the-scenes look at what you’ve been doing during the pandemic.

When you build up a strong social media presence, it helps all other aspects of digital marketing grow as well. You can use social media to link to your content and promote your products very effectively. 

COVID-19 Doesn’t Have to Take Your Business Down

COVID-19 has been a life-changing phenomenon that no businesses were prepared for, but you don’t have to let it win. If your online presence is powerful enough, you can make subtle shifts in how you operate and continue to thrive in 2020 and beyond. 

To get help with boosting your online profile, speak to us at Local Web. We specialise in social media, SEO, and other forms of digital marketing. Contact us to find out how we can help your business during this trying time.

The Dental Industry & Covid-19

What can the Dental Fraternity do:

1. Have a Robust Online Presence

Digital Attention is at an all time high with most people staying home. As people practice social distancing and avoid visiting brick and mortar stores, your website/online presence becomes a very important tool to keep your Dental Services top of mind and also create a sense of brand recall, whenever a need arises. 

Continue with your SEO, Google My Business, Google Ads & Social accounts to the best of your economic ability. Even if the budget is not much, let them run. Pausing your campaigns may seem to be the right solution at this point in time, however, do note that your competitors are still running their campaigns. Also, this will make it more difficult for you to acquire patients, when normality resumes. 

Finally, keep in mind that any major changes to your SEO campaign such as pausing it can make months of work futile and when you do resume, you would end up starting from scratch. 

2. Providing Effective Communication

This is a great time to build and retain your customer relationships. Hence, effective and efficient communication plays a very important role. 

Since your service is affected, update your business hours and description in your Google My Business profile. Aside from letting people know when they can stop by your clinic, you can also update your description to give more information regarding any additional precautions you are taking or if there are changes in services.

A good practice would also be to provide clear and up to date information in your FAQs on how your company is dealing with the impacts of the virus.

3. Continue Engaging your Patients on Social & Other Online Platforms

With most businesses closed, and most people staying at home in order to reduce the potential spread of the virus, social media usage is surging. Keep your audiences engaged with the latest news about your service and highlight how they can help you during these times with activities like:

• Showcasing any new promotions/discounts.
• Writing positive reviews online.
• Purchasing service cards that they can avail later
• Connect more with your audience through Facebook, YouTube and Instagram live. 
• Make use of live chat/phone/video/other online resources.
• Schedule live events/chats/videos on useful information such as better oral care, brushing the right way, resolving minor dental issues themselves etc.

4. Miscellaneous Ways for you to Maximise this time

Online/Video Consultations: Since patients will still exist with ailments and some of these ailments can be resolved through visual examination, this is a good time for Dentists to take up online/video consultations for issues that might not require direct contact. Appointments and Payments can be made using online portals. This way, even on a small scale, you get to offer your Dental services to patients. 

Availability in case of Dental Emergencies: In case you are permitted to offer this service, subject to Government regulations and permissions, communicate the same to your patient via the various tools of communication you have. 

Invest in Organic Growth & SEO: If it has been a while since your website has had a revamp, this is the right time to analyse and modify it. Some of the changes to think about include:

• Putting in more information sharing your subject expertise
• Updating introduction write ups about the Dentists & the team
• Introduction of new patients
• Highlight any new services/treatments that you offer etc
• Overall health of your website, not limited to Content, On Page SEO, Link Building etc. 

What to do with your Google Ads Campaigns:

Google Ads Benchmarks During Covid-19

Here are some statistics for the Health & Medical Industry. Although it is primarily US data, the trends and behaviour could still apply to the Australian market and give an indication of how things are looking. Looking at the data it is evident that the cost per clicks might have increased, however, the Clickthrough rates and Cost per Acquisitions have gotten better. 

(Source: Average of 15,759 WordStream US PPC Campaigns)

Observations that can be made from the above data:

• Many advertisers have paused their campaigns keeping in mind the circumstances. Hence the competition is much reduced and there is scope for the advertisers currently advertising to see better performance and more traction. 
• People will continue to look for professional help with minor ailments like check ups, tooth pain, teeth cleaning & repairs etc. 
• Search terms like emergency dentist, dental emergencies continue to see traction in the past month. Dental emergencies will continue to be there; the onus is on the Dentists too to be available at the right time. (Subject to Government regulations & Permissions of course). 

Inferences that can be worked on:

• Reduce your campaign budgets to an amount you are comfortable with, if you are in a position to advertise your services. 
• Modify your messaging based on the current circumstances. Have messaging around “Available for emergencies” or advertise for “Online Video Consultations.” 
• Update your keyword list to focus on terms that you are going after and also ones that are trending during this time. 
• Update your landing page to share information on any changes that have happened due to the lockdown and are there any steps patients can take before they come to meet you. 

COVID-19 has thrown the entire world into a crisis, but unfortunately, you can’t put your business on hold forever.

While certain aspects of your practice may be halted, you still need to be doing a bit of work behind the scenes to ensure that you stay afloat. How can you ensure that you’re doing everything that you can? 

While it might not seem like the most “cool” or “hip” niche, dental social media marketing is remarkably helpful for keeping dental practices alive and popular, even during non-pandemic times. 

If you haven’t been utilising your social media to the best of your ability before, there is no better time to start than now. 

Read on to learn 7 top tips to market your dental practice on social media during the coronavirus crisis.

1. Use Live Videos to Connect

Video is the best way to hold the attention of your clients and patients on social media. During a time where everyone is maintaining social distance, everyone is also spending a lot of time watching videos online.

Video content was already one of the most popular types of content in 2020.

Live videos give you an extra benefit: connection. 

Right now, the world is feeling remarkably disconnected. People are looking for ways to communicate with real people when everyone is trapped inside their homes. 

Going live allows people to reach out to you specifically, especially in a time where they might not feel safe or comfortable calling in for a visit that might not seem essential. A quick Q&A live session could be what the doctor (or dentist!) ordered. 

2. Be Visible

Like we mentioned, everyone is spending a lot of time looking at screens right now. Many people don’t have much of a choice but to be confined inside their homes or apartments. 

Your visibility online needs to be up right now. 

You don’t have to post on every social media platform every day, but you should schedule posts and have someone responding to comments frequently to allow yourself to show up in people’s feeds. 

This is a great time to get some eyes on your practice. 

3. Think Locally 

If you work in dental care, your dental social media marketing has probably been largely focused on a local audience. 

This is more crucial now, though, as everyone is unable to move from city to city (or in some areas, even place to place). 

Invest in local SEO tactics and strategies to ensure that you’re targeting the right people. If you live in Sydney, you don’t need to be targeting customers in Melbourne. 

4. Be Sensitive

A lot of companies are pushing their advertisements right now, and it might result in a bit of social media burnout before the quarantines are all over.

If you don’t want your customers to get angry or annoyed with you, make sure that you’re not over-advertising. 

When you do advertise, do it with sensitivity in mind. Many people are suffering financially from this pandemic, and others are dealing with serious health situations or loss in their families or friend groups. 

Being sensitive to people’s situations will make you feel better about advertising and make other people feel better about your advertising. Everyone wins if you act with sensitivity. 

5. Offer Discounts or Deals

Again, many people are suffering financially from the COVID-19 crisis. 

If there’s any time to offer any kind of affordable care plans, discounts, or financing options, this is probably it.

While you might not be operating at your normal potential right now, offering something extra to your customers when you resume normal operations will help your business and your social media presence. 

Everyone loves a sale and a bargain, and everyone is going to be in a bit of a financial rut. This helps you retain your customer base and helps your customers access the care or products that they need. 

6. Encourage Reviews

Facebook offers a review section right on-site. Encouraging your previous customers to tell the world about their favourite experience with your practice could help boost your business with a few good reviews.

People who are left unemployed are sitting at home right now with less going on than they’re used to. With the right motivation, they will likely be happy to write up a cheerful review of your practice provided that you gave them excellent service.

7. Provide Honest Information

You’re working in the healthcare field. While you’re not on the front lines, per se, you are trusted by the public to be educated on issues that you choose to talk about on your social media platforms.

Providing honest information on COVID-19, including prevention and care tips, will help build customer trust. It’s also just a good thing to do. Dentists know better than the average person about cross-contamination and disease. 

Make sure that you can cite your sources and that you’re not spreading misinformation with your platform so that you can be a trusted member of your medical community. People love to share information about the virus as it comes up, so make sure what they’re sharing from you is as accurate as you can make it. 

How Are You Managing Your Dental Social Media Marketing During COVID-19?

These are strange times, and it’s not entirely clear as to what you should or should not be doing with your marketing strategy. It is important to be honest, be gentle, and be available for your customers, especially when you work in healthcare. 

For more information on dental social media marketing, or to talk to a professional for marketing assistance, visit our site. 

Working from home can be challenging but also very rewarding.

At Local Web we have all worked from home in the past and sometimes for lengthily periods. Here are our 5 tips for getting the most out of working at home. – Who knows, this may be your opportunity to work from home more often when you get back to the office. 😉

1. Get Organised.

2. Clear your workspace.

3. Stay Professional.

4. Separate home from work.

5. Check your technology.

 

1. Get Organised.

Make sure you are organised and ready to work at home. Have everything you need in order to get your work done. Your laptop, notepads, calculator etc. You don’t want to waste time looking for things you need or wandering around the house tying to find a pen or stapler. Make sure your team mates are also organised and on the same schedule as you. You should start and finish your day the same way you would at work and take the same breaks you would if you were at work.

If you are organised you should actually be more productive than when you are at your office. In fact if you can be more productive than normal, you may have a chance at persuading your boss to let you work from home once a week when things get back to normal.

2. Clear your workspace.

Ideally you should be doing this once a week in your office anyway. Having a clear workspace helps you clear your mind and stay focussed. You should be able to have everything you need fit into a carry on suitcase and take it out and set it up as needed.

Find a space at home that you can work in undisturbed. A spare bedroom is best but if you don’t have one just allocate a space. Put a small desk and chair in the corner of your room and make that your workspace. Try find a spot where you won’t get distracted.

Set up your desk as you would at work, don’t turn on the TV or other distractions and if possible try and use the same space each day, even if you have to pack it up at the end of the day.

3. Stay professional.

You wouldn’t rock up to work in your underwear so don’t do it at home! Keep your routine. This is critical. Wake up at the same time, follow your normal morning routine and sit down at your desk, dressed in the same clothes you would wear to work and start work. Even if you are working at the kitchen table. Don’t roll out of bed 5 minutes before your start time and start eating cornflakes as you say good morning to your colleagues online.

By the same token, don’t keep wandering off to the kitchen and opening the fridge or watching Ellen on TV while you have a “quick coffee” If you follow your normal routine, working at home will be much much easier.

4. Separate home from work

Not watching TV or peeking into the fridge is one thing but not letting others disturb you is another.

You need to set boundaries with your flat mates, husbands, wives, children and even your pets. Be firm here and let them know you are working and not at home on holiday.

This will be hard at first as they will want to have casual conversations, ask you for help with something, or want you to take them for a walk. (in the case of the pet that is) Your children will want to play or engage too.

Again if you have a separate room, this will help. Remind your family that you have a lot of work to get through and you will see them in your breaks. Let them know when your breaks are to make this easier. Taking more shorter breaks is also a good idea and then get back to your workspace.

5. Check your technology

If you are working from home, you need to make sure you have the right tools to get the job done. Make sure you are with a reliable internet provider, especially as the networks will start to get overloaded now. Make sure your internet is unlimited and that your family isn’t draining the network with all the Netflix they are watching and online games they are playing.

Make sure your team is also on a solid network. We just changed providers for our team to have more reliable connections at home.

Its also a good idea to start using meeting technology like zoom meetings and getting used to using this technology so you can invite your customers to meetings seamlessly.

Make sure you redirect your landlines from the office to your mobile and are available to your customers.

Conclusion.

Working from home can be a blessing or a curse. Setting the space up right from the get go will help you a lot, and if you can be more productive, who knows  you may just be able to get to work from home more often when you get back to your regular work routine. Its a great time to try working from home and finding a way to make it work for you.

One of the best things about online marketing is that even if you are working from home, your website, your Local SEO, Google Ads and Social Media marketing are still working for you 24/7.

If you have any other tips for working from home, please leave us a note in the comments below.

“S.E.O”…

These are probably the three most important letters for your business.

Your website is your storefront.  It’s your contact point with customers or clients, your means of reaching new people, engaging with them, and letting them know what you have to offer.  In the digital world, your website is the focal point of your brand and the face of your operation.  They’re important to us.  We put time and effort, heart and soul into a site, and we want to make sure it actually gets out there to the people that we’d like to reach.

What is SEO?

SEO, Search Engine Optimisation, is the process of making that your site shows up in the search rankings when people enter a search related to your product or service.  It’s the key to organic traffic.  When your SEO is good, you show up higher in the search rankings for a given keyword or phrase, and people are more likely to visit your site.  More traffic – especially the right traffic – equals more potential for conversions.  To put it simply, good SEO means your site is working.

So, what is an SEO Audit?

An SEO audit is when a website is reviewed thoroughly to determine how effective its SEO is.  There are more than 200 ranking signals used by search engines to assign your site a position in a search for a given keyword or phrase.  Each ranking indicator is assigned its own weight; some have a huge impact on where you show up in the rankings, and some just a small impact, but every single indicator is factored in with every single search.  An SEO audit will show where your site is strong ad where it’s lacking.  It shines a light on what can be tweaked and refined to make sure your site is performing as well as it can.

There are basically two ways to perform an SEO audit.  You can either perform it manually, going through a comprehensive checklist of all the ranking indicators for a particular keyword.  As you can imagine, there are some challenges here.  First, Google’s ranking algorithms are shifting all the time.  If you work off of last year’s list, you’ll be getting limited results.  Second, it can be both time intensive and confusing.  You have to look into your metadata, backlinks, design elements, and other factors that you may or may not have the tech savvy to know how to get to, much less to assess.

Here’s where option 2 comes in.  You can use an advanced website tool that automates the process.  Just type in the URL of your site and you get the results in a flash.  Once you have a clear idea of what’s working and what needs attention, the rest is a straight shot.  Just make the shifts and you’re golden.

An SEO expert can take the results of your audit and go through every element of your site that needs work, adding metadata, optimising for keywords, improving interlinks and backlinks, optimising the length of meta descriptions, and basically working with a load of the behind the scenes aspects of your site.  The result – more people see your site when they search.  And, if you planned your keyword strategy right, that boost in traffic means a boost in results.

Why is an SEO Audit so Important?

As you can see, there are many aspects to an SEO audit, and to SEO in general.  Here are just a few benefits that you’ll get from regularly auditing your site:

1. Highlight Weaknesses in your SEO

It may seem like this would go without saying, but there’s more to it than there appears on the surface.  There are some pretty straightforward aspects to it, like exploring certain on page elements to see that they are optimized effectively.  You can make sure your meta descriptions are the appropriate length, review content to ensure that it is created around target keywords, that sort of thing.

The challenge is that, as the ranking algorithms continue to evolve.  Site performance is assessed on many levels, including the quality of your content and technical performance, like loading speed.  With each advance in technology or upgrade to how Google performs searches, additional elements are added.

For example, one of the most powerful elements of top notch SEO these days is the featured snippet, a short, clear answer to a specific question that’s often asked.  When your content is crafted around featured snippets, it allows your site to be featured in the answer boxes that show up directly below the ads on the first page of a search.

This is one of the reasons that it’s so important to work with an SEO professional.  Given how fast search algorithms change, it’s a full time job to keep up with the current best practice so that you can implement it effectively.  An SEO specialist makes sure that your site receives the benefit of up-to-date expertise and know how, delivered with quality ad experience.

2. Measurable Results

One of the best things about an SEO audit is that it can give you a before and after picture of the SEO work done on your site.  Whether you optimise your website yourself or work with a professional, you want to know – in quantifiable terms – how much benefit your site has received from the process.  The audit is the first step of the job.  It highlights what needs to be changed to boost performance.  It’s also the last step of the job, showing you how much that performance has improved.

3. It helps you to prioritise your efforts

Have you ever heard of the 80/20 rule?  Basically it states that 80% of the effectiveness of a given project comes from 20% of the details involved.  The rest is refinement.

When you perform an SEO audit, you’ll often find many areas that need improvement.  Some of them will have more of an impact on your search ranking than others.  So, rather than going through all of the required optimisation shopping list style, you can look at what will give you the most bang for your buck and take care of those elements first.

For example, you may find that you could improve the site with favicons, customised 404 pages, and structured data markup.  However, if you address the technical bits first, like crawling and indexing issues, you’ll immediately improve your search rankings far more than if you focused on the other elements.  Plus, in taking care of technical issues, the improvements that you make later in other areas will have even more benefit.

Another element to consider is how your traffic measures up against conversions.  If you get loads of traffic but no conversions, or if people land on your site and spend little time before navigating away, then your landing pages need to be optimised for conversions.  After all, being seen is great, but the goal is to engage your customer and market your product or service.  When you prioritise the elements that have the most impact, you see more results, more quickly.

This is another huge benefit of working with an SEO consultant.  They will highlight the high priority elements so that you can plan your efforts strategically.

4. Keyword Analytics

Keywords are a huge element of SEO.  In essence, they are the search terms that your site is crafted around.  As you refine and optimize your site, the keywords will move up in the analytics.  This helps you to determine the effectiveness of these keywords and correlate it with site performance or conversion rates.  It’s important to keep an eye on this movement, as drops in the performance of keywords can suggest critical SEO issues or ranking penalties.

5. Compare your Site with Competitors

One of the great things about site audits is that you can do them on any site.  So, if you have heavy competition in your niche, for example, you can look into the site of your competitor.  If you look into their strengths and weaknesses, it will guide you in refining your site.

There are a few elements to look at in your competitor’s site.  For one, look into their keywords.  There is a degree of competition for high ranking keywords, so if you see that your competitor has dominated certain terms, you may wish to focus on other terms that they have overlooked.  You can also explore their backlinks and either target these sites to get backlinks of your own, or even replace those of your competitor.

One major element to explore is the overall strategy.  If they have a solid approach for getting backlinks or are creating content that attracts attention, it might be worth your while to include similar content on your own site.  You can also explore their social media engagement to see if you can pick up a few tips to boost your own social media presence.  Another major consideration is whether or not your site has been optimised for mobile devices.  If your competitor has and you haven’t, you’re at a disadvantage from the start.

Final Words

The SEO audit is an essential tool to monitor your site performance and keep it developing the right way.  It shows you what’s working well, what you can improve, and how you stack up against your competitors.  If you’d like to know more about SEO audits or look into an audit for your site, feel free to contact us.  Local Web is your #1 solution for Local SEO in Sydney.

How to Get the Most out of your Pay Per Click Marketing

It’s tempting to overlook PPC when setting up your campaign.  After all, it’s a high competition area, and you want to have the best ROI, the best bang for your marketing buck.  But PPC is a powerful tool for outreach.  If done correctly, it can massively increase your site traffic and percentage of conversions.  So here are a few tips from your Sydney online marketing gurus to help you get the most out of your pay per click campaign:

1. Use Target Outranking Share to Outshine Competitors

Most SEO services focus on boosting your search ranking, on showing up higher in the search for basic keywords.  While this is important, sometimes it’s better to focus on beating out one or two key competitors, to show up higher in the search rankings than they do.  Target Outranking Share is a tool that helps you to analyse your key competitor’s approach and adjust your bids for ad space strategically.

Basically, with Target Outranking Share, you can modify your ad space bids based on your competitors domain name and the target, which is how often you want to beat out your competitors for ad space.  You can automate the process, so that your campaign automatically outbids your competitors for high value spaces, and set a maximum bid limit, so it doesn’t go too far.  Finally, you can look into low quality keywords and choose not to spend on them.  This helps to focus your investment where it gets the most results.

2. Focus on the Local Market with Google Search Ads Location Bids

If you have a brick and mortar store or a local audience, then location is a key factor to bridge traffic and conversions.  In fact, local SEO should be a central element to your site design and digital outreach.  But you might not have realised that it’s just as important for your PPC campaign.  By using location bid adjustments, your campaign will bid more on spaces that are seen in your location.  You focus your outreach on the target area that’s likely to result in conversions.

3. Look into Target CPA Bidding

CPA means cost per acquisition.  It basically looks into how much it costs you to get a conversion.  This is a great way to run analytics on your PPC campaign and find out how effective it has been.  Then, as you refine your strategy, you can look at the CPA impact.  An Adwords Agency looks into your conversion rate and offers a Conversion Optimiser tool to adjust bids on spaces and keywords that have given you the best return.  CPA Bidding works best when you have been running your campaign for a few months and have at least 15 conversions in the last month.  The more historical data you provide, the more effective it will be at providing at optimising your bidding strategy.  Be careful with seasonal products or services, as this can skew the CPA results.

4. Focus on Remarketing

If you’ve been in business for a while, you know that it’s much easier to retain customers than to get new ones.  The great thing is that you can use Remarketing Lists to drive connect with existing customers and drive repeat purchases.  Remarketing Lists allow you to adjust bids higher for people who have visited your site and automatically bid on keywords used by site visitors.  You can increase bids for search users that have made purchases previously, or develop customer combination lists to customise ads based on website behaviour.

5. Consider Negative Keywords

If you’ve worked with a Google AdWords Agency, you already know about keywords and how they work.  But another factor to keep in mind with your PPC campaign is negative keywords.  Here’s how it works.  Your keywords help to determine who will see your ads.  They point you to the interested parties, the users who are likely to move from traffic to conversions.  Negative keywords modify the search to show the users who are not likely to buy.  So, for instance, if a search includes words like “free” or “review”, it’s likely that the user is not ready to purchase the product or service.  You can adjust your bids based on these negative keywords, saving money by targeting the most interested customers.

These tips are great for getting you started, but they’re just the beginning.  A properly run PPC campaign can help to build brand recognition, boost search rankings, and significantly increase your profits.  If you want to know more about PPC or about any aspect of high quality SEO, feel free to contact us.  Local Web is your #1 local Sydney SEO services, and we can help you to get your local business on the map.

Your website is your digital storefront.  And, as any SEO expert will tell you, your #1 priority is to create a site that your target audience finds beautiful, easy to navigate, and simple to understand.  This is the key to transforming traffic to conversions.  And, unlike a brick and mortar shop, your digital storefront is never closed.  Ideally, it will be accessible to your customers at all times.  It should reflect your brand and be informative.  And finally, it should engage your customers, offering value and featuring clear CTAs.

No matter what niche you occupy in the market, there are some basic aspects of a successful website.  So, when you’re planning your website, here are the basics to keep in mind:

1. Negative Space

How often have you been to a site that’s so busy, you don’t know what to press or where to go?  Typical response: overload.  It’s just too much.  So you bounce away from the site and surf somewhere else.  Negative space or white space is the key to overcoming this challenge.  With a bit of blank space, you can direct the customer to what you want them to see.  This gives contrast and balance to the page, giving it a more professional feel.

2. Colour Scheme

The colours you choose for a website are important.  You don’t want your site to look like a rainbow.  From the beginning, you want to choose a simple, direct pallet that reflects your product or service.  Here are a few tips to making that happen: 

• Keep it consistent, matching your pallet to your logo.  Make sure it reflects your branding.
• Make sure you choose complementary colours.  Too much contrast will clash and increase your bounce rate.
• Limit your pallet.  You don’t need every colour out there.  Just a few that will do the job effectively.
• Mark your CTAs with bold colours that draw the eye.
• Use subtler colours for backgrounds and less important portions of the site.
• Make sure that the font and background colours match.  Avoid excess contrast and focus on making the content easy to read.

2. Simple, Clear Navigation

A good SEO consultant will tell you that easy navigation is an often overlooked key to good search rankings.  Navigation is all about how a visitor gets around on your site.  How they find what they’re looking for.  How the menu is arranged.  As mentioned above, when a site is too busy, it can be challenging for your customers.  Make it clear how to get where they want.  Here are a few tips for ease of navigation:

• Make sure that the menu is present on each page.
• Put the menu where your visitors will expect it to be.
• Mark your buttons and menus clearly, in distinct colours and with simple, clear descriptions.
• If you have a massive site, include additional aids to getting around.  Think sitemap, subheadings, and breadcrumbs to help keep people on track.

3.  Alignment and Positioning

When people visit your site, you’re leading them through a flow of information.  So, where you put your content and other site elements makes a huge difference.  Try to make the flow of information orderly and logical, so it makes sense to someone who isn’t familiar with the site.  Try to make the positioning intuitive.  Think about a funnel, addressing the broadest topics first and then leading the user to more specific topics in a way that’s clear to follow.

Alignment is a little bit trickier, but it’s all about consistency.  If you move from one page to the next or from the top of the page to the bottom, you don’t want the alignment to be different from one element to the next.  This gives a scattered feeling and increases your bounce rate.  Keep the size and spacing uniform throughout the site.

4. Optimised for Mobile Viewing

This is one of the most important factors for any digital marketing agency to consider.  Mobile is exploding.  As of 2015, as many views came from mobile viewing as from desktop, and the trend has been increasing since then.  The takeaway: Every site should be created from the ground up to be mobile friendly.  You don’t want smartphone visitors to have to scroll back and forth or zoom in just to see your site.

5. Font and Typography

Here’s another element which is easy to overlook, and one that you want to get right from the beginning.  Just like your colour pallet, your font sends a message.  If offers a visual tone.  Choose the right one, and it can complement your design, strengthening the aesthetics of your site.  Keep in mind the style and size of your font, as well as the colour of your text.  Other important typography elements are paragraph style, length of your lines, and text spacing.

6. Site Usability

If you’ve managed to make your site easy to navigate, uncrowded, quick loading, and pleasing to the eye, this should take you a long way towards site usability.  You want it to be easy for your visitors to find what they want, purchase what they want, do what they want on your site.  Think about what your customers will expect.  Make sure to keep things consistent and standardised with your CTAs.  A good tip for this is to have friends and family visit your site.  Make sure that they know you’re open to constructive criticism.  You want feedback to make sure that they find the site easy to use.

If you’d like to know more about web design or SEO, feel free to contact us.  At Local Web, we have the tips and experience you need to make your site visible, boost traffic, and increase conversions.

“Should I create a social media page for my dental practice?”

As a dental professional in the modern society, you may have asked yourself this question one-too-many times over the past years. You’ve probably wondered if it’s worth your precious time and resources as well, didn’t you?

While it’s true that social media dental marketing can take time and effort – and sometimes, a colossal leap of faith – to produce the expected results, you can’t deny the fact that social media platforms have contributed to the success of many newer practices and startups.

It is hard to quantify the value of social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to a practice. Apart from their commercial and promotional benefits, these platforms can foster trust and loyalty between a business and its clients.

Should your dental practice engage in social media? Absolutely!

Here are the reasons why:

1. Gives your practice a face and creates awareness around your brand.

While having a website is essential in introducing your dental practice and the services that you offer to the general public, it can only contain so much information. You have to its content if you want it to look as organised and polished as possible.

On the other hand, social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter allows you the freedom to post whatever you want without the fear of making your page look too chaotic. And since social media has a generally fun and casual vibe, you can use it to really capture who you are as a company. It’s the perfect venue to paint a candid picture of the brand and make it more appealing to people.

2. Helps you build trust and grow your client base.

Even the most random things that you post on social media — like pictures of your staff or short office tour video, can be a big leap towards establishing credibility with the audience.

Anything you do on social media can go a long way. Writing simple but sincere replies to comments and chat messages or creating a thread that encourages conversation about dental health can foster a sense of trust between you and someone who has not heard of you before.

Social media platforms let you meet people where they are so that you can address their issues in a setting they’re comfortable with.

3. Keeps your dental practice competitive.

Your practice may have the best dentists for miles, but if you’re not using social media to gain exposure, other local practices can outshine you and lead patients away from your doorstep.

With most of your existing and potential clients on social media, you need to work on improving your presence to stay on their radar. If you don’t have the slightest clue on how do go about it, you can always hire an experienced digital marketing firm for a well-planned and well-executed social media strategy.

With the help of targeted advertising, your brand can reach the feed of local consumers actively seeking for the services you provide. You get a good chance of converting them into followers and then patients later on.

4. Showcases the authority and authenticity of your practice.

There’s no better tool for spreading your brand’s message than social media. By using these channels to give out expert dental health opinions and sharing engaging original content, you can confirm your authority in the field. But as much as you want to only the best of your practice on display, being authentic allows people to get to know you better.

Any potential patient would want to find out more about you and confirm the quality of your services before they choose to work with you. Showcasing you the knowledge and expertise of your dentists, as well as the goals and personality of your practice, on social media lets them know that they’re in good hands.

One of the best things about the internet is that it’s global.  Just punch in a search, and you have an entire world of information at your fingertips.  And, this is awesome, no doubt about it.  But sometimes, you want a specific product or service, and you’re really looking for something you can find in your area.  That’s what going local is all about on the consumer’s end.  And, for the supplier of a particular product or service, it’s about reaching these consumers.

When you work with an SEO company, the goal is to make your company visible.  A SEO consultant in Sydney will find out what your target demographic is searching for, and they’ll optimise your site so that it shows up when you search for those terms.  And, if you have a local business, you don’t want to spread your audience across the whole world.  You want to reach out to a focused demographic that will find you in your area.

So, for instance, when you’re looking to outsource SEO, and you have a local company in Sydney, the best way to find the ideal SEO service for you is to search “SEO services Sydney,” for example.  But why?  Even with a local company, you could get a solid return from an SEO consultant halfway across the world, right?

Well, yes and no.

Theoretically, an SEO professional should be able to do a fair job of mechanically optimising your site for a given list of keywords.  They’ll also make sure to provide quality content, backlink, and excellent site speed.  All of this is important, but there’s more to it than that.  To take your site to the next level, you also want it to appear on local listings.  You need to appeal to the local market, and this is a bit of an art form in itself.

First of all, not all links established in your site are created equal.  When you have a local business, you want to include local links or those that are relevant to your target demographic.  Most huge companies will automate their link-building process and generate them more or less randomly.  But, with a local SEO company, you can be sure to have higher quality local links, such as those for your local chamber of commerce and including your business information on search engines..  This helps to legitimise your business and dramatically boost visibility.

Another huge element of SEO is content creation.  Fresh, unique content is regularly evaluated by Google algorithms, so it’s important to get new articles, blogs, and other information on your site.  When you work with a local company, they’ll be able to speak to the people in your area.  They’ll be aware of the nuances of your community, so the content can be tailored rather than generic.  Local references give you a local edge and boost your market strategy.

This is just the tip of the iceberg.  Local SEO:

• Increases local search rankings;
• Boosts conversions in local advertising channels;
• Helps mobile users find your business through search engines, directories, social media channels, and voice searches;
• And ensures that your business shows up on Google maps and other navigational apps.

If you’d like to know more about how to boost your site visibility or make the most of local SEO, feel free to contact us.  At Local Web, we know how to speak to the Sydney community and we are dedicated to providing you the highest quality of SEO service.