Digital Marketing is a set of marketing techniques used on the Internet such as:

Content Marketing,
SEO,
Social Network Marketing,
Email Marketing,
Internet advertising,
Conversion optimizations, …

Digital marketing has become one of the most effective ways to reach consumers.

Due to the widespread use of mobile devices, many people are permanently connected.

Connecting with people you do not see may seem difficult.

In fact, the Internet offers many new opportunities to learn more about consumers.

This information will help you attract more customers through targeted marketing.
At Great Northern Marketing, we address all of these areas of marketing to make them accessible to any entrepreneur.

Our Goal is to teach you how your business can take advantage of Digital Marketing to:

Conquer new customers,
Give visibility to your company,
Promote your offer of products or services to a wider audience,
You’ll stand out from the competition.

Discover our articles about good practices of DM for a company.

Golden rules for content writing

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8 Fundamentals of Content Writing for the Web

 

Before you start your content writing for the web, discover the 8 fundamentals to know for an effective content marketing strategy!
Do you want to embark on a content marketing strategy? Are you ready to write your first articles for your professional blog?

the writing of content for the web meets specific rules, adapted to the specificity of the support. Here are the 8 basics of web writing to know to write 100% SEO friendly content.

 

1. Content writing that meets specific goals

A print reporter writes to disseminate information. A web editor also aims to inform; but he must also know how to convince his audience (to sell a product/service, to demonstrate his expertise or his customer, to encourage the reader to stay on the site, etc.) and organize his text according to the rules of SEO.

Content writing requires the mastery of multiple skills, as well as the ability to meet specific objectives, which differ according to the field of activity and the profile of the Internet users to be targeted. To entrust this mission to a web editor is not, therefore, a luxury.

2. Choose your subjects according to your targets

Content writing requires you to choose specific topics: you do not publish anything and everything on your blog! To do this, one must take into account both its area of activity and the typical profile of its potential readers.

What message (s) do you want to address to your audience? What are the topics that interest them? These questions are crucial. You will not publish cooking recipes on a real estate blog, nor offer legal advice on a platform dedicated to children. Good content is first and foremost a well-targeted topic that will likely to appeal to your readers and attract more qualified traffic.

Think about it: you write above all for the surfer!

3. Put the main information forward

Attract attention: this is the secret of writing content for the web. Not only to get the readers attention, and the desire to read based on your titles and introduction. But also the attention of search engine robots, offering titles which allow them to index the page easily.

A good structuring of its content aims to put the main information (include: keywords) forward in:

  • Titles Hn (H1 for the main title, H2 for the game titles, H3 for the subtitles …);
  • Tags (title, meta description, alt …);
  • The intro (about fifty words on average or 250 characters).

the main title and the meta description appear in Google’s results page. It is therefore essential to optimize them well!

4. Optimize the SEO of your content

Content writing aims to inform, convince … and refer to pages! SEO is an essential method for positioning your pages in the first results of search engines. Without this leverage, your content won’t be visible to users and you will not get traffic.

The on-page SEO goes through:

  • Optimization of tags(see above);
  • The keywords selection (popular but not too competitive, in line with the expectations of your target readers);
  • The placement of keywords in the content (you must reach an average density of 1 to 2% for the main keyword);
  • Optimization of the URL (containing the main keyword, and not too long).

Do not forget, too, to work the semantic field around your keyword. If your content relates to the Auto Showroom, for example, you will have to use terms like ‘car’, ‘automobile’, ‘vehicle’, ‘mechanical’, ‘four-wheel’, brand names, etc.

In any case, all these attributes are specific to the writing of content to impact the positioning of the page on the SERPs of the search engines.

5. Adapt the length of the texts to the subjects

This is a question that often comes up about content writing: do you have to write short or long content? Should we prefer the content of 300 to 400 words, quick to read, or offer expert articles that take the time necessary to explain things well, even if you know the 2000 words?

It is commonly thought that Internet users do not read, or little, the web content. However, according to a Backlinko study, the articles in first place in the results of Google are composed of an average of 1,890 words! And since Google does leave nothing to chance, it is because its users have to appreciate these long contents!

In reality, everything depends on the subject treated … and the purpose of the page. Sometimes, 400 words are enough to go around a question (if it is a page dedicated to optimization). At other times, offering content of 1,500 or 2,000 words helps to demonstrate its expertise on a given topic.

6. Make internal Linking

Once you have started writing content, you will quickly have several articles in stock on the blog. Take the opportunity to start working on your internal Links: this consists of inserting into your content links to other pages of your blog (or your website).

The internal linking has two advantages:

  • It encourages your readers to click on the links to access other pages of the site;
  • It contributes to the good indexing of your pages by the search engine robots (which, during the crawl, circulate on the site through hypertext links).

7. Set up an editorial schedule

At first, running a blog is pretty simple: you pick a topic to write an article every week, and you’re done.

But very quickly, the machine can get carried away. the Increase in traffic to your site gives you more responsibility because your readers are waiting for recent posts. In addition to the 5 weekly articles on the blog, you need to write white papers, guides, client cases, comments for your videos, etc. Topics become more and more expert, and you must manage multiple contributors internally and externally. Result: you are on the edge of implosion!

The solution? Set up an editorial planning for content writing. You will be able to organize your publications on a long-term: topics to deal with dates of publication determined in advance, topics already exploited (practice to organize the internal linking), ideas for future articles, and of course, the entity of the editor in charge of every content.

8. Share your content

Last fundamental point: a good article is a shared article. What’s the point of spending time on content writing if it is to wait for people to find you a little by chance on the search engines?

Go get your readers: distribute your content to your prospects and customers via all channels available to you (website, emailing, SMS). And do not forget to adopt a communication strategy on social networks to share your content … and push your audiences to share them in their turn!

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Landing page optimization tips

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9 tips to optimize your landing pages

Implementing a digital marketing strategy is a significant investment for your business. Despite the variety of channels you use, research has shown that 98% of visitors will not complete a transaction on your site. But, it is possible to remedy this problem.

A landing page by target

In a web-marketing strategy, looking for ways to gain traffic is a priority, converting this traffic to real prospects is even more important. Landing pages are made for this: it is the marketing tool that will convert this visitor traffic into customers and prospects. Having a home page landing page is a common mistake.

A homepage is a general, informative page where the visitor is likely to browse or search for more information. A landing page is a page with a persuasive action on the web on a specific target and relative to a specific offer. The landing page aims to convince this target to perform a specific action: registration, contact form, etc …

The content of your landing page must be coherent with your action of acquisition. For example, if your landing page is the landing page at an AdWords ad, the visitor must find on your landing page arguments that support and demonstrate the title you had on your AdWords ad.

The design of a landing page should not be taken lightly. You must take into account many parameters to convert a maximum of visitors into prospects. With a neat and professional landing, know that you can increase your conversion rate (CR) by up to 300%. The strategies you will need to put in place are based on digital marketing techniques. Here are the essentials to optimize your landing pages.

Identify the purpose of the landing page

This step is fundamental because it guides your strategy. To determine the reasons for your landing page, first, identify the type of conversion you want to achieve. Is it to encourage users to buy your product? Is your jump page a tool to increase your e-reputation? Once you have clarified the final goal of your landing page, you will now be able to define your target audience and adapt the content according to the ‘personas’ frame of reference.

Optimize your call-to-action

Your landing page should have a call to action. Think of a goal, a single message, an action. Your basic message and call to action MUST be visible above the waterline. The call to action can be repeated throughout the page.

Are you an e-commerce site? Are you considering launching a new product? There are surefire ways to increase the conversion rate of your landing page with Call-to-Action (CTA). Highlight your offers for visitors to pass the act of purchase. In this case, you can opt for expressions such as ‘limited offers’, ‘flash sale’, ‘add to cart’ … to inform users that this is a one-time offer. To better choose the strategy, take the time to observe the behaviors of your targets. For example, it is possible to vary the location of CTAs.

If the purpose of your landing page is filling a form, you will need to minimize the number of mandatory fields to be completed by visitors. If you need a lot of data, try running A / B tests with varying amounts of input fields to know the acceptable dropout rate for the additional information captured. Note that a ‘social share’ button in a choice form, greatly increases the conversion rate.

Take care of the design of your web page

The landing page should reflect your company’s image. Make sure that the design is consistent with the Visual identity of your brand. You should also standardize the formatting of your landing page and of your site. This tip is very important so that your potential customers do not get lost. Also be careful about the choice of typography. It is best to put a simple forward, but nice font to see. In order to increase your conversions by up to 86%, it is also possible to insert video or pictures on your landing page.

Choose a catchy title

Studies have shown that 80% of Internet users interested in the title of articles, only 2 users out of 10 decide to stay longer than 5 minutes on a page. Choosing a catchy and relevant title is, therefore, essential to attract your potential readers to continue visiting the site. There are no general rules to create a captivating title. Strategies have however been proven on the web and helped to increase the CRO. The use of adverbs such as ‘how’ and ‘why’ is most often affected, because it allows responding to your readers.

Opt for a responsive design

Do you want to reach more prospects? The responsive design must be integrated into your digital marketing strategy. You must create a landing page that is suitable for all media. With the evolution of technology, mobiles and tablets are everywhere. In Canada, they are more used to connect to the internet, because more than half of users are opting for these terminals. To ensure the success of the responsive design, you must make your web page more ergonomic regardless of the tool used. The choice of the display format is essential to achieve this goal. It is also important that your web designer uses programs to allow users to quickly access the landing page.

Share consumer reviews

A satisfied customer can greatly increase your brand reputation to the general public. Prospects who do not yet know your products and/or services will be attracted to your brand by relying on the testimonials of your customers. There is nothing better than offering a way for consumers who have already tested your products and/or services to share their reviews on your landing page. With this information, you will easily optimize your landing page. Don’t be tempted to create false testimonials. By inducing Internet users to make a mistake, you will hurt your reputation.

Make the visit to your landing page more attractive

Your landing page captures the attention of visitors? This is already great news, but there is still work to be done. Internet users need to spend as much time as possible. You must, therefore, multiply your efforts to surprise your visitors. Do you know that videos always attract users’ attention? It is possible to gain a conversion rate of more than 75% through a video. For hosting this multimedia file, you can, for example, use Youtube or Vimeo. The ‘chat’ is also an interesting solution to encourage interaction with potential customers.

Track your conversion rate

It’s always a good idea to have concrete data to know where your landing page conversion rate is. Is your strategy effective? What are the points to improve? With Google Analytics, you’ll have reliable statistics on the number of monthly conversions and the conversion rate. This tool can also count the exact number of sales, downloads … With these data, you will be able to react in time.

There is no strict rule to follow to increase your conversion rate. These tips will help you make your landing page as effective as possible. Take the time to study each point and improve your strategy.

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Digital marketing trends to follow in 2018

Digital marketing trends to follow in 2018

At the beginning of the year, if you notice a drop in visits and sales on your website, it may be time for you to review your digital marketing strategy by inspiring you in particular new trends 2018!

Do you see a drop in visits and sales on your website? And if it was time to review your digital marketing strategy by taking inspiration from the new trends 2018? To continue to increase your strategy in order to meet the expectations of your customers and consumers, here are the digital marketing tools and best practices to follow this year and to adapt to your field of activity.

1 – Influence marketing

Influencer marketing that works through ‘influencers’ (bloggers, public figures …) allows brands to deliver powerful messages on social networks like Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and many others. Consumers of social networks indeed pay greater attention and more credit to the publication of products or services by an influencer than through Social Ads.

To launch a good campaign of influence, it is then necessary to mobilize the good influencers, to define your objectives, your type of visibility and image, as well as the type of adequate partnership (test of video product, gifts, sponsored articles, contests …).

2 – The GDPR

The General Data Protection Regulation, which came into force on May 25th in the whole of the European Union, is a golden opportunity for companies and their marketing managers to strengthen their customer relationship, gain more confidence from consumers and thus gaining ground on their competitors.

How? By creating, in particular, complete transparency in data collection, reinforced protection of these as well as a real experience when they are shared. Do not be afraid of GDPR, but make it a marketing opportunity!

3 – The audio content

If brands have adapted their marketing strategy and content to social networks for several years to capture the attention of thousands of users of these tools, they must continue to adapt their content to the trends that are happening on the networks…

In this 2018 year, it is difficult to do without audio and video content when we see the impressive growth that we had the ‘stories’ and more generally the video on Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, but also Youtube. The public appreciates its content and brands must also create their stories, fun content, proximity and adapted to the language of consumers. Beware, however, algorithms favor the publication’s commitment and the video content just as much as possible turns a passive reader into an active reader.

4 – Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the cutting-edge technology of the moment for marketing professionals. AI is becoming more accessible in 2018 and many digital marketing players anticipate an increase in the use of AI by more than 50% by 2020.

AI is a tool that can be part of an integrable digital marketing strategy, for example, an engagement platform. It personalizes messages and adds relevance to content sent to consumers. It also addresses real-time needs and determines the best channel for a customer experience that is ten times more powerful than statistics.

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Why create SEO content?

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SEO content is essential for a good SEO of your website. What is SEO content and why should it be produced?
SEO content is a very important factor for your website. Good SEO content will make your site visible in the search engine results, including those of Google. It will allow you to increase the organic traffic of your site and boost your visibility.

Definition of SEO content

SEO content is content optimized for search engines. All the texts and visuals of your website can be optimized SEO.

Search Engine Optimization is known or called (SEO). SEO is defined as the art of optimizing the positioning of a web page, the objective being is to appear in the first page positions of search engine results and especially on Google.

Why create SEO content?

Why create SEO content and why for Google in particular? With these few figures on the market share of Google in the search on the web, you will find the first answer. This will help you understand better why it is important to create SEO optimized content for your website:

In Canada, 90.8% market share for Google (Bing 5.61% and Yahoo 2.48%),
In North America, 88.66% market share for Google (Bing 6.77% and Yahoo 3.62%),

Source: gs.statcounter.com for the month of June 2018

These numbers alone illustrate why you need to meet Google’s content requirements. To get good visibility on Google, SEO content is king.

SEO optimized text content

To make your website visible on the search engines and especially on Google, it must contain optimized SEO content.

Optimized SEO content must be:

  • Original, interesting and quality,
  • Adapted to the web and the requirements of Google,
  • Concise and quickly understandable,
  • Interactive.

To this short list are added the Google’s quality guidelines:

  • Design content by thinking first of your visitors rather than the search engines,
  • Do not mislead your visitors,
  • Avoid using SEO techniques that are contrary to Google’s guidelines to help you rank,
  • Make your site unique, attractive and stand out from your competition.

SEO optimized visual content

Depending on your field of activity, visual content may be as important as text content. Since 2001 (corresponding to the birth of Google Image), the search for images is constantly increasing on Google. By using quality images related to your business activity, you can acquire quality traffic to your website. This is the case for example for communication agencies, e-commerce sites, portfolios of artists such as photographers and graphic artists, image banks, etc.

To optimize your images for SEO, it is essential to:

  • Use ‘ALT’ tags with targeted keywords to describe your image,
  • Take care of their size and weight to optimize loading time,
  • Enter the title of the image.

To learn more about SEO optimization of images:

And do not forget that Google Images has evolved. The advantage of this update allows a more quality image search.

How to value your SEO content?

Creating optimized SEO content will be beneficial for your visibility, provided you meet certain criteria on the web page that will host your content. A web page containing SEO content must include:

Title

It should contain the title of your web page and its content that will be displayed in Google’s results. It must, of course, contain the targeted main keyword.

Title tag

The title tag or H1 tag is the ‘editorial title’ of your content, it is visible on your page and must contain the keyword you are targeting.

A Meta Description

It informs Internet users of the content of the web page in the form of a short description. It is visible in the results of the search engines and must attract the user’s curiosity and encourage them to click on the link of your web page.

How to promote your SEO content?

When SEO content is added to other actions, you put the odds on your side to optimize the SEO and positioning of your web page. The SME, does it speak to you? Need a little reminder?

When you combine SEO, SEA, and SMO, the three complement each other and allow a good SEO of your website on Google.

The three main levers for promoting your content:

  • SEO, natural optimization,
  • SEA paid optimization,
  • SMO, optimization on social networks.

Indeed, a unique and quality SEO content must be relayed on social networks. Promoting quality SEO content is the best way to naturally get backlinks to increase awareness and visibility of your web page.

Who to call for SEO content?

To produce SEO content, you have several options:

  • Write content from A to Z alone by following the instructions of Google,
  • Write a first draft that will then be optimized for a web search agency,
  • Use an SEO agency or web editor.

In short,

Writing SEO content with high added value is essential to improve your positioning on Google. If despite all your efforts and following these tips the positioning of your website is not up to your expectations, do not hesitate to use the services of a web agency to conduct an audit of your website. This audit will allow you to identify and correct the weaknesses of your site to improve its performance.

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5 Questions to ask before creating a new website

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Why have a website?

Creating a website for your business is a great idea. Not having one at the moment is to take the risk of losing a large share of the market. Because the Web is now a very powerful prospecting site. Think about it! What do you do when you want to buy a product or use a service? You start by searching on Google or another search engine. Well! Know that your customers and your prospects are doing the same. Not being visible on the Internet is, therefore, depriving a very interesting clientele.

Web Design Agency: A major asset

A website is not done in a day. This is a job that takes time, but also skills. Contrary to what some platforms suggest, creating a free and easy website is not necessarily a good idea. Because of the mere fact of owning one is no longer exceptional: many companies have a website. The big challenge is to create one with real goals and a strategy to achieve them.

Applying to a web design agency is, therefore, a real asset for companies wishing to develop a good website, which will allow them to distinguish themselves from their competitors and to be important on the Internet. Thanks to Great Northern Marketing, you can enjoy the benefit from the expertise of our Web professionals who will realize for you an effective communication and marketing strategy.

Website creation: The 5 questions to ask

Creating a website is not an innocuous gesture for companies. It requires careful thought, even before it starts. To help you, GNM Web Design agency has decided to take up 5 questions that you must ask before starting your project.

1) What are the goals of your website?

For an Internet site to be effective, the first thing to do is to determine its role, that is to say, the objective (s) it pursues. Based on these objectives, you will then create an adapted and measured communication and marketing strategy that will allow you to reach them easily.

What goals can be attributed to a website? They are many and varied and can, in some cases, be combined.

  • Selling your products and services online
  • Increase your brand awareness
  • Present my company and my products/services
  • Acquire new customers
  • Build customer loyalty

For each of these objectives, a specific strategy must be put in place. For example, if you want to retain your customers, you can create a blog on which you regularly publish relevant tips that will make them want to come back regularly to read new ones. Or you can set up a personal account system that allows customers to identify themselves to follow an order or have benefits.

2) What are the important keywords for your business industry?

In order for your website to be visible, it must be well positioned in search engine results like Google, Bing or Yahoo. And for that, two solutions, usually worked together, are available to you: you can optimize your site with SEO and create SEA campaigns (Google Ads).

For both, it is necessary to determine keywords relevant to your industry. What is it about? A keyword (or a key phrase) is a set of words typed by a user in the search bar of Google, Yahoo, Bing … It allows the user to navigate among thousands and thousands of internet sites that exist on the Web and thus obtain the most relevant answer for its query. It also allows search engines to understand the content of a site and, thus, to reference it when someone searches on the subject.

But how to determine the useful keywords for your website?

You have to put yourself in the shoes of your customers and determine what they could type in the Google search bar to find your services or products.
There are tools created specifically to do this work, some of them are free, others are paying (examples: Moz, Keyword explore, Google Ads …).

3) How does the competition work?

Another important point is to follow the level of competitors on the Web. Are they real competitors, hard to beat? Or, on the contrary, going past them will not be so complicated? These are questions you need to ask yourself. The interest of a web design agency is that it can achieve for you a competitive study. The objective is to determine the best and worst practices of your competitors and ways to distinguish yourself from them.

It is therefore important, even if you use a web design agency, to think about the competitors of your website yourself. Be careful, however, not to limit yourself to the competitors you know. The best referenced on important keywords are not always the ones we think about in the first place. Broadening your competitive analysis is therefore essential: you must also find out about companies that you do not know but which are well referenced on the keywords that interest you because they are also part of those you have to beat.

4) What budget do you want to spend on your website?

By going through a website agency, you will necessarily have to pay a certain amount for your website. One of the very first questions you have to ask yourself is about the budget: how much are you willing to pay to have a good website? The price of a website depends on many different data: the type of website it is about (e-commerce, showcase site …), the number of pages, the writing or not of the website content, hosting or not the site, the chosen features, etc.

And what about price differences between agencies? How is it that some web agencies request a larger budget than others to do the same job? If it happens sometimes that the price is indeed excessive, it may also be that it is a question of quality. There are agencies that are lowering their prices, but they are also less efficient. While others are more expensive but get better results, sometimes simply because they spend more time on the project than the less expensive ones that must still be profitable.

5) Are you ready to get involved in the project?

Creating a website, even though a web agency, takes time and asks for your inputs and some of your staff. Why? Because there will be meetings and exchanges of emails, that you will have to devote time to write or re-read the contents of the site, to check if you like the design of the site … And the implication does not stop only in the project. Digital transformation inevitably leads to changes within your company. Even when your website is online, we must continue to work on it:

It must be updated because a website with outdated information does not inspire trust and therefore cannot be effective. You have to answer the leads, the orders … that the website provides you so that the SEO of your website remains optimal, it must be constantly reviewed: it is necessary that your home page moves regularly, hence the interest of having a blog whose latest news can be found on the home page; if you have a blog, you have to keep it with short and long articles at a steady pace; depending on the competitors, you must also change your own pages a bit to stay on top; etc.
All of this requires the implementation of an internal strategy, which you must keep to ensure that your website meets the objectives you had previously set.

Conclusion

If your company wants to be as efficient as possible, neglecting the Web is a serious mistake. The Internet is now a great source for prospecting and if you don’t have a website is to risk not touching a large part of your target audience. Not only do you need to own a website but you must also make it effective. It must, therefore, fulfill specific objectives and follow a long-thought-out strategy to achieve them.

However, a website remains an investment in time and money. Before creating or using a web design company, you must ask yourself different questions that will allow you to see more clearly in your project.

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