Whether you are a marketer or a business owner running your own website, you have already heard the phrase “content is king.” In the world of SEO and digital marketing, that is true. Content is not just text, however. It is video, images, audio, and all other formats that can be added to a web page. Understanding what formats convert better is key to boosting your own conversions. Today, we will be focusing on the crucial content marketing trends you need to consider this year.

Target Niche, Long-Tail Keywords

When you are first starting out in SEO, it can be easy to want to focus on keywords that have the greatest number of monthly searches. Unless you are the most authoritative website in your niche/industry, that might not yield the results you want. Instead, you have better chances at ranking and boosting your traffic by targeting niche-specific, long-tail keywords.

Repurpose Content

This doesn’t mean copying an article you published on your blog and pasting it into a directory or your social media. What you can do is repurpose that blog and turn it into a visual minigraphic, summarize it into a tweet, or even a short video for your Instagram account. You have many options! Keep in mind, however, that different platforms call for a different engagement approach.

Understand Consumer Intent

Before you create any type of content, always ask yourself, “what does my prospect want when they type [keyword] into Google?” If Google has made one thing obvious, it is this — the top-performing pages are those that understand consumer intent and have content that is useful, relative, and tailored to meet that particular need.

To get an in-depth understanding of all trends this year, check out our 2022 Content Marketing Guide.

Digital marketing is at the heart of most successful businesses in the modern world. While word-of-mouth and using marketing collateral to advertise your products and services are still highly effective methods, nothing beats the efficiency of digital marketing. So, how do you create a winning digital marketing strategy for your small business? The four ideas below are the perfect starting point!

1. Evaluate Your Resources

In other words, assess and strategize first. Before you start adapting other people’s strategies to your business, take a step back and evaluate your resources and what you can realistically afford to do. As a small and medium-sized business, you probably view your marketing as a patchwork effort to try and tap into as many channels as possible with the smallest investment you can get away with. Diversity is key here. Consider improving your website, using social media to promote your services, focus on Search Engine Optimization, and consider giving paid advertising a chance.

2. Maintain a Blog Section on Your Website

When it comes to having a long-term marketing strategy, you need to understand that its backbone is content. If you want to have a powerful and effective strategy, you should focus on content marketing. In simple terms, that means you need to dedicate a blog section and regularly publish useful content to your audience. This is an opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge and experience in your industry by offering sound advice to locals looking for solutions to their problems.

3. Research Your Target Customers Online

As a small business, you probably already feel like you know who your target customers are. Still, if you want to be effective online, you need to go the extra mile and do additional customer research. There are a ton of free sources available, like the Pew Research report on social media, to help you better understand how and where your audience is most engaged online.

4. Set and Track Metrics

Any successful strategy requires you to find measurable metrics to track its success. Yes, digital marketing is not a perfect science, and finding key performance indicators (KPIs) to track progress is difficult but not impossible. If you’ve never done that before, start small and simple. For example, one of your metrics can be the number of followers on your Facebook page or the engagement percentage of your social media posts. Set realistic goals, however humble they may seem, and build on your progress as time goes on.

Stay tuned for our next topic!

When it comes to getting traffic to your website and securing leads for your business, digital marketing is the most effective way to achieve your goals. Twenty Twenty-One saw a number of changes on a global scale, and that affected the way we advertise our products and services online. These are the most important digital marketing trends to look out for this year.

1. PPC and SEO Go Hand in Hand

As more and more businesses move online, the competition to capture leads becomes more intense. To maximize your ROI, it is important to invest both in paid advertising (PPC) and organic search engine optimization (SEO). Given that more than 30% of people click on the top result on the first page of Google search pages, you simply must get on there. Appearing on the first page will guarantee that you grab the attention of your target audience.

2. Adopting Automation in Digital Is Imperative

One of the major digital trends this year is the rapid increase in the number of consumer interactions. More and more people are choosing to contact you online, through your website, social media, or via phone. To avoid getting overloaded, you can set up a chat bot on your website to greet customers and handle standard communication. In addition to that, you can also invest in an online review management system and get notifications whenever a customer has given you their feedback.

3. Tap Into Interactive Content Forms

When the world shut down last year, everyone went online. Proactive businesses were quick to understand the need of people to communicate with companies not only before but also after using their services. Tap into interactive content forms like Facebook live, Instagram Stories, and TikTok challenges. It will make you more likable, more “human,” and likely more popular in your area. It is a form of free advertising that allows you to bring customers closer to your business. Showcase the completed landscapes you have designed, the houses you have remodeled, or another project you have worked on based on your industry. The effort today will surely pay off tomorrow.

The list of digital marketing trends of 2021 is long, and it keeps increasing every day. The most important trend, however, is to make your business as easy as possible to find. We can help with that.

Stay tuned for our next topic!

Bounce rates may have a name that makes you want to jump and dance but if you are an online retailer, for example, and the success of your business depends on the amount of time people spend on your site, then the notion should make you sit down and read this blog instead. That is right, in today’s 411 Locals blog, we are explaining the notion of bounce rates and how to deal with them.

(more…)

411 Locals was awarded Best Local SEO Company in Nevada in February 2019. The recognition comes from the ranking agency TOPSEO’s – an independent authority on search vendors. The evaluation method includes a sophisticated analysis and methodology.

(more…)

Social media is all around. It has the two things people need most — the social aspect and the media factor. Therefore, it will continue to thrive and change as technology evolves. Keeping up with what is trending is crucially important for businesses/brands if they want to stay relevant and continue to connect with their audience. In today’s 411 Locals blog, we will discuss the main trends in social media for 2019. Keep reading!

(more…)