Month: November 2019

What is the reason behind your SEO efforts? Let me answer the question for you. The reason behind your following search engine optimization is to make sure that the traffic in your website increases. Whether your SEO efforts are showing result or not can be understood if you track your ranking and the search traffic. Better ranking and more traffic mean better revenue as well.

However, the problem is that you can’t really decide upon a particular amount that will determine your success in SEO. So, how will you get return on investment or ROI from your SEO effort? And how will you understand that you have reached your target?

The simple answer is that you have to calculate the ROI to determine whether your SEO technique is working or not. Here, I have discussed a few steps that you can try out to get an ROI from your SEO effort. So, let us get started.

Ecommerce website vs. lead-based website conversion:

You have to understand that conversion tracking and ROI of an ecommerce website is not similar to a lead-based website. Ecommerce websites are different from lead-based websites. While you can sell products or services directly through an ecommerce website, you can collect potential customer leads through lead-based websites.

So, an ecommerce website will collect customer data from the transaction that is happening on the website. On the contrary, a lead-based website will have to depend on paid tools to find out the conversion rate.

There is simply no doubt that it is easier to determine and increase the ROI of an ecommerce website. However, it is also possible that a lead-based website can determine and increase its ROI. How? Here’s how:

Track conversion:

You have to create a set-up for measuring the conversion rate. The process for measuring is different for lead-based website and ecommerce website.

• Lead-based website

When it comes to lead-based website, tracking the conversion becomes a bit complicated. You don’t really have any transaction happening on your site. However, the approach in this case is different. You have to check out what actions the visitors on your site are taking. So, suppose some of your potential clients are reading your blogs while some are filling up the contact form to get more information.

We will mark each lead having a worth. So, if someone signs up for your newsletters, that person will be worth $50. Someone who wants you to contact him/her is worth $100. There is a simple technique to determine the worth of your clients. Let’s check that out.

Since it is easy to calculate with a round figure, we will assume that you get 100 fresh newsletter subscribers each month. If 20 among them hire you for your service, you can say that the conversion rate is 20%.

Image courtesy: https://bit.ly/34WCNVE

Now, suppose each of these 20 people is spending around $300 to avail your service. So, the average value of each of these 20 sales will be $300. The final step is to determine the value of each of the leads. You have to divide the total number that you make from the amount spent by your converted clients with the total number of leads.

So, the total amount that you get in this example is 20 (people) X 300 (dollar each) = $6000.

Now, divide the total amount with the original number of leads, which are 100 people in this example. So, the average value of each of the 20 clients will be 6000/100 = $60.

So, once you have chosen the worth of each of the potential clients, you have to treat them as your goals. There is a section in Google Analytics, which is named as ‘goals’. Include your ‘goals’ in Google Analytics ‘goals’. You will see a value marker in ‘goal details’. Once you start including each of the ‘goals’, it will become easier for you to calculate the return on your investment because you will get some tangible data with you.

• Ecommerce website

Tracking your ROI for ecommerce website is much easier. You have to take help from Google to track your website. Even if you haven’t invested in SEO and nor do you plan to do so, enlisting your website on Google will help you in measuring your success or failure.

Once you have set your tracking details, all you have to do is check out the information regarding the conversion rate. Follow this by the transactions, the average value of orders and the total amount of revenue.

This process will allow you to find out the exact number as in revenue generated by your SEO efforts. If you need help with the process, Nico Digital is always there to help you out.

Analyzing the data:

It takes a couple of months to track the conversion on your website. Now, you can start examining the collected data to see the ROI that you are getting from your SEO efforts. Google Analytics conversion report will let you know the exact number of conversions that you have gotten from organic search, social media, paid search, referrals, newsletter and any other source.

Google Analytics will not only show you the number of conversions but also the value of the generated revenue. Now that you have a real number, you can compare it with the amount that you have spent on SEO for this particular time span. Even though this will not give you an exact number that you can term as ROI from SEO, you can obviously start to notice the acceleration.

Suppose your total revenue is $100,000. You have spent $25,000 in paid search, keyword research and content generation. So, your ROI is $75,000. Now, you have to find out the revenue that has come from organic search, from social media from paid search, individually.

It’s time to calculate now:

This is the easiest part of the whole process. You just have to follow a simple formula to calculate the percentage of your ROI. Here is the formula that you need to follow:

{(The amount you gained from your investment – The amount you spent as your investment)/ the amount that you have spent as your investment} X 100

So, the equation will look like:

So, the percentage of your return on investment is 300.

While the percentage may or may not be satisfactory to you, it is definitely not the time to stop, right? You have to keep growing and increase the return on your investment. Now the question is how you can increase your ROI from your SEO efforts. We’ve got you covered in that. Here are a few things that we recommend doing:

Location-wise audience targeting:

No matter what type of business you own, you first need to target the local audience. SEO works best when you apply it locally. Even if your target is to go global, you must take baby steps. Believe me most big companies have come to realize that a business can’t grow big without targeting the local audience. When you dedicate your SEO efforts to targeting a specific location, the results of the efforts will show better.

Try and improve the Click-through Rate:

Click-through rate is the proportion of people who click on a particular link on your page in comparison to the total number of people that have viewed the page. The click-through rate determines the success of your website. The better your CTR is the more your SEO efforts will show results.

Image courtesy: https://bit.ly/2YjM1sL

So, one of the most effective ways of improving your ROI from SEO efforts is to ensure that the CTR increases. You have to design your SEO efforts in such a way that more and more people, who visit your website, click the links that you share. Try changing the title of your blog; try and make the call-to-action button clearer and understandable; use an updated SERP snippet, etc.

You need to research on what the ways are that can help you improve your SEO efforts.

Where can we help?

Whether the whole process sounded simple or complicated to you, you have to follow the process attentively to get the best possible results. You need to calculate the ROI properly. You also need to conduct a thorough research on how you can improve your CTR. You also have to find out why your SEO efforts are not giving the desired results and act upon that to ensure that you get the best ROI possible.

And that is where we come to help you out. We not only conduct a thorough research but we also make sure that we keep improving the content on your website. We keep your website updated and keep on looking what improvements we can make. The best part is you can rest assured about the success of your SEO efforts when you hire us. Your ROI is our responsibility. So, what are you waiting for? Contact us for more information in this regard.

There are many companies which use WordPress to create their business websites. However, if you are new into the world of WordPress, you may ask the necessity of using this platform. You may think that your old custom-coded website is working fine and you can carry on with that. But if you want to re-design your website and make sure that you add something fresh, you can give WordPress a try. Why? Check out the reasons why WordPress is the answer for your website design.

WordPress is completely free:

 Believe me when I say that WordPress is completely free. The software allows you to download, modify, install or use any of its features without any cost. However, there’s one thing that you have to remember. While WordPress is free, you have to purchase a domain name and web hosting to install your domain on WordPress. You can also get the paid version of WordPress to get more benefits.

What is a domain name? A domain name is the name of your website. It is the name that people search you with. So, the name that appears on the address bar is what the name of your domain is.

Web hosting is the place where the files are stored. There are many webhosting sites. However, Bluehost is the most popular among those and for good reason. So, I would recommend you to invest in Bluehost. If you are lucky enough, you can end up getting a cheap deal as well.

Image courtesy: https://bit.ly/2RmU9Hg

Since you get to choose from a number of themes in WordPress, you can create a customized website with zero investment. On the contrary, you may need to invest additional amount on a custom-coded website to create a theme as per your requirements. WordPress is also custom-coded website. However, the codes are already written for you.

If you are not confident about hosting your own website on WordPress, we are here to help you out with that.

Saves time:

When you are designing a website from scratch, it takes time. The developers need to code your website as per your requirements. The website needs to go through trial and error to see whether every feature is working or not. Usually, it takes weeks and sometimes months to make your website go live depending on how extensive a website you want. Besides, it also requires that you hire at least a website designer and a website developer.

On the contrary to this, WordPress allows you to make your website live within minutes. You can make moderations as you wish. Since the coding is already done, all you need to do is use your content.

Get SEO benefits:

I will try to explain in simple words why WordPress offers SEO benefits. As I mentioned earlier, WordPress is created with pre-written codes. Now, these codes are high in quality and they allow search engines crawlers to crawl easily. Hence, it is much easier for WordPress websites to rank on Google.

If your website is made on WordPress, chances are your website will rank higher than usual given that the content you provide is also superior. So, you can understand that WordPress websites are SEO friendly and they provide the best SEO results that you can expect from your website.

The best part is that you don’t have to settle with what you get. You can further optimize and get even better SEO results with WordPress plugins for SEO. If all of these are overwhelming for you, you can always look for help.

Multiple themes to choose from:

Most of the websites that you see when you search are made on WordPress. And trust me, most of the owners of these websites are neither programmers nor are they web designers. So, it can be assumed that these owners don’t know how to design a website. So, how do they manage to create the outstanding websites that not only look good but also work well?

WordPress has many themes to choose from. No matter what type of website you have, WordPress has at least one theme on that. I mentioned before that WordPress allows you to customize without any cost. So, you can customize your website depending on what you want it to look like. You can change the colors, the background, your company logo, etc. You can add sliders, hamburger menu or other details that you want.

Image courtesy: https://bit.ly/33WndIe

You can also add contact forms, blog page, career page and many other pages within your website. Depending on the plugins that are available on WordPress, you can add more functionality.

Safety is pivotal:

When you are creating an official website, the last thing that you need to be worried about is the safety of the website. However, as we all know, internet is not a safe place to be. Many websites have been hacked and important information has been stolen. But when you use WordPress to create your website, you can rest assured about the safety of your website.

I recommend checking the security guide on WordPress to know how you can ensure safety of your website. The security guide on WordPress will allow you to keep malware and Trojan horses at bay.

Include different media:

If you have been thinking that WordPress is about adding written content only, I am sorry to say that you are not right. You can also include audio files, images and even videos. WordPress also allows you to embed YouTube videos, Tweets, Instagram profiles, SoundCloud audio files etc. You just need to paste the URL of the video or audio or photo that you want to use in the editor in WordPress.

Ease of using:

If you are looking for website that is easy to manage, WordPress allows you the same. It has an update management system which is built-in. Hence, you cannot only update themes but you can also update the plugins that you use. WordPress keeps updating itself and it keeps notifying you about the updates. As a result, it takes just a click to update your website on WordPress.

As I mentioned already, WordPress is secure to use. If you are worried about keeping your data secure, you can also create a backup using a plugin. You can store the backup somewhere safe so that you don’t have to afraid of losing anything.

Conclusion

No matter whether you have a simple website or you want to build an ecommerce website, WordPress allows you to do anything, yes anything. So, what are the ways you can explore WordPress? Here are a few examples that you can try out.

Firstly, you can start an online store where you can offer products or service directly. Secondly, start a business website that allows you to connect with people without selling your product or service directly. If you like writing or you are passionate about something that you want to share with the world; you can start blogging on WordPress. There are many types of websites that you can create on WordPress.

If you are not sure whether you can design your own website on WordPress, you can always contact us – Nico Digital. We have professionals with years of experience working with us. So, you get the best support possible from our side.

Would you believe that people actually read and enjoy reading emails that have good email signatures? It is true that good email signatures can create an impact on your target audience. Now, you might be thinking whether your email signature is good or not, whether it is compelling or not. Well, worry not. I am here to show you what good email signature looks like. I will also give you some examples of bad email signature so that you understand what you should avoid. If you want to know how you can create email signatures that create an impact, check out the article here.

Coming back to where we were. I will give you examples and explain why certain email signatures work and why the others fail. So, let’s not waste any time and get started with the email signature design. I will show you one good example and one bad example so that it’s easier for you to compare them.

GIF email signature:

The first thing that you can do is to create a GIF email signature design. Why would you use a GIF, right? Well, you can include a couple of photos of the products or the service you offer. People who get an email from you can get a glimpse of what you do. The best part about this is that the email doesn’t become heavy since the photos will appear in the form of GIF. Take a look at the email signature below.

Image courtesy: https://bit.ly/2L4He9g

Here’s one more example that you can take a look at. It’s amazing how delicious the chocolate looks when used in the GIF format. Isn’t it mouthwatering?

Image courtesy: https://bit.ly/2OyLKyZ

Even though I don’t recommend linking all your social media handles in the email signature, the above example is an exceptional. Do you see how seamlessly the social media handles merge in the design? It doesn’t even look like the owner has cramped the space. On the contrary, it appears that you can connect with the owner of the email at different social media platforms.

Besides, you can see all the necessary information placed properly along with an image of the sender. Since the owner of the email signature doesn’t belong to a hardcore professional background, her perky image doesn’t even look out of place.

Image disaster in email signature:

While I just informed you that you can use multiple images (like the images above), make sure that you use the images in the right way. Take a look at the example below and then I will explain you what the problem is and why you should avoid doing the mistake.

Image courtesy: https://bit.ly/2XZEE9r

There are two images in the above example. While the left (your left hand) image is an image only, the right one is the RIGHT one! Pun intended!

The left side example has all the necessary information in an image form. It seems a good idea, right? Wrong. Why? The first problem with this design is that it may take long to load if the internet connection is poor. So, people may not even get to know whom they are receiving the email from. Besides, it may make the email heavy with an additional image.  Secondly, the social media links or the website address that you share in the image form is not clickable. So, if someone liked your email and wants to visit your website, they can’t click on the links. The same problem will occur if someone from your contact list wants to copy paste the name or contact info of your company. Moreover, if you ever need to change anything, whether it is address or the contact number or anything else, you won’t be able to do that. You have to create an all-new image with the new information, which to me is unnecessary time consumption.

So, what is the right way of doing this? Instead of creating an image file with all the information, it is better if you create individual images along with texts. Your headshot should be an image. The social media links that you share should be imposed on individual images so that each of the social media links can be clicked.

However, your name, designation, contact information and other necessary info should be written in text format. It will allow you to change the info quickly and will also allow the recipients to share the information by copy-pasting.

Include images and video links:

You might be thinking that I just told you not to use image in the email signature and now I am asking you to use images. I asked you not to include the essential information in the image format. However, it depends on you whether you want to use images in your signature or not. Suppose you are a photographer or an interior designer or a makeup artist. You can show off some of your outstanding work examples using a couple of images. Don’t use images that are too large to load. Take a look below:

Image courtesy: https://bit.ly/33u9I2t

As you can see, this is an example of an interior designing company. The company shows some of the works that it has done in the past. Since there are images in the email signature, the rest of the design is kept as simple as possible.

You can also share some of your video links. It will work just how you share your social media handles. However, I recommend hiring an email design agency to get a professional design. Let’s see how it will look if you share the links of your videos.

Image courtesy: https://bit.ly/37MHcfD

The images with video symbol are actually nothing but thumbnails. However, each of the images contains the links to the related videos.

Too large social media icon:

Sharing your social media handles is necessary to create an email signature. However, in some cases, you may see that the social media handles are too large. The design not only looks bad but it also doesn’t serve the purpose of being an email signature.

Image courtesy: https://bit.ly/2L4b39M

Image courtesy: https://bit.ly/2Dtlu2w

Your email signature should highlight your name, designation, the name and the logo of the company that you represent. The social media links are secondary. However, creating large social media icons takes away the focal point from the company name and logo.

Short and precise email signature:

Your email signature should never be more than three or four lines. The more precise you can keep it the more attention it will grab. You don’t need to include too much information. Primarily, adding your name, company name, designation, address and phone number is all you need. You can add the address and the phone number in the same line.

You can experiment with the alignment. Keep the logo of the company on the left and the information on the right. You can try out placing the information in such a way that it doesn’t look clumsy and yet all the necessary information can be added. Check out the example below to draw inspiration from it.

Too long signature:

There are some people who like to break the information in multiple lines. While it may seem a good idea, it makes the email signature look too long. Some companies follow the long structure. But I don’t recommend using that structure.

Image courtesy: https://bit.ly/35HCLRB

I agree that the font used is quite big. But even if you reduce the size of the font or you use a different font, the email signature is too long. Just imagine someone reading this in their mobile device! It will be such a pain-stricken situation. If you really need to include so many sections, take idea from the above example. Align the pieces of information in such a way that it doesn’t look too long and yet you can share the necessary info.

Mobile-friendly design:

Most of us check our emails from our mobile phones or tabs when we are one the go. So, the email signature that you use should be mobile-friendly. By mobile-friendly I mean that it will be short and compact. You don’t have to skip any piece of information and you don’t have to add any additional piece of information.

As you can see from the image above, there are multiple ways that you can use to place all the essential information. These are templates that you can follow. Each of the templates is mobile-friendly as they don’t take much space. You can hire a graphic design agency that will help you to create email signature that is good for mobile devices.

Long disclaimer:

I have received many emails from various companies where the disclaimer is placed right below the email signature. Even my own company email signature contains a disclaimer just to make sure that I am legally safe. However, there are some companies that write disclaimers that are too long. In some instances, even copyright information is shared!

Image courtesy: https://bit.ly/2Otjmy3

I agree that the disclaimer helps in keeping legal issues at bay. But you have to understand that disclaimers at the end of your email signature won’t really help you much. So, you don’t need to include all the legal messages in the email signature design. Instead, use a line or two if you really need to include disclaimer. If you don’t want to include disclaimer, that is fine too.  You can skip that part.

What is the best way to create email signatures?

You can use the free tools to create an email signature for your personal use or your company. However, the free tools don’t provide a unique finish that you look for. On the other hand, hiring an email signature design agency can give you a professional email signature.

Nico Digital is a full service digital marketing design company that handles any type of design related work. You can be rest assured that your email signature will look classy and will have every piece of information that you want to share. If you have been planning to create an email signature of your own, this is the right time to do so.