Developing a keyword strategy is crucial to create powerful SEO campaigns. Your keyword strategy should involve targeted keywords that drive the right traffic to your website. Having the right keyword strategy can really make all the difference in your campaigns, they influence how well you rank on SERPs and how useful search engines think your content is.

In todays article, we will be detailing our top tips so you can develop your own keyword strategy.

1. Place Your Keywords Strategically

Don’t place keywords in your content when they don’t fit.

Aim to naturally include keywords in your content, and if you can’t fit them in — then review the ones you’re using and possibly select new ones.

For more information about keyword placement, check out our blog post, Where to Place Keywords For Website Optimisation.

2. Use a Mix of Keywords

Don’t just stick to singular or short keywords, mix it up with long-tail ones too.

Short keywords are often incredibly competitive, and you might find it difficult to have your content ranked highly on SERPs. For example, a lot of people search for “swimming lessons”, but less people search for “how to learn backstroke” (an example of a long-tail keyword).

The more you understand about your target audience, the more you can use long-tail keywords to bring in targeted traffic to your website.

In short, don’t concentrate all your efforts and tools on targeting one style of keyword. If you do, you could get no results.

3. Don’t Overdo it

It can seem like a smart idea to target a tonne of keywords. But you might see better results from refining your list and putting all your effort into optimising a handful of them.

Even if you don’t narrow down your list, its important you always check the keywords you’re using still have a good search volume. Keywords go in and out of popularity all the time, so keep reviewing them regularly.

The Bottom Line

Your keyword strategy needs to be reviewed regularly.

The greatest keyword strategies are regularly updated and rely on highly targeted keywords, which are terms that closely reflect your business and products / services.

We’re Here to Help

Leave your keyword strategy to us. Get in touch for a free, no obligation consultation!

E: contact@differentgravy.digital

Tel: 0161 706 0004

By the end of this blog post, you will know how to create a signup form for your website. Including our best design tips, what you should include and what should be avoided.

Signup forms on your website are a simple, effective way to generate leads and increase conversions. They don’t take long to make and can be placed anywhere on your website.

The whole point of a signup form is to provide a way for users to contact you, gain more information about your business, enquire about a service or opt-in to your communications. Whatever the reason behind your signup form is, there’s a few key things to keep in mind:

5 Top Tips for Your Signup Form

1. Keep is Simple

Just gather the necessary information and cut the extra fields. A good opt-in form makes the process simple and the more fields you have the less likely people are to complete the form.

Do you need to know their birthday? If you don’t, then don’t ask.

Are you going to contact them by telephone? If not, don’t make them fill it out.

In fact, one company found that reducing their form from 11 fields down to 4 increased conversions by 120%.

2. Stick to One Field Per Line

You want to make the user experience as simple as possible.

We think there is only one exception. First and last name fields can go on the same line, they’re so closely related there’s little room for confusion.

3. Remove Distractions

Your signup forms should be clean and plain.

Keep your users focused by eliminating ads, unnecessary wording and graphics.

4. Design is Key

Like any other part of your website, users will stop engaging if the content and the layout is visually unappealing.

Ensure your form looks professional, is inline with your brand identity and leaves a long-lasting positive impression of your business.

5. Keep Them Informed

What happens once they’ve completed the signup form? Let them know what’s going to happen next. Whether it’s a welcome email or a phone call, every user should know when and how they will be hearing from you.

Conclusion

With a simple and attractive signup form, you will increase conversions.

The most important thing to do is to test. Taking on board our top tips is a clever move but without testing whether the signup form converts with your customers — you’re not taking full advantage.

In this article, we will be dispelling common Instagram myths and providing you with the truth about using Instagram for business.

Being one of the most popular, influential social media platforms in the world, Instagram is one of the greatest methods for businesses to conduct digital marketing. But even though there are over 25 million business profiles using Instagram, there are still many businesses who want to promote their business but question whether Instagram is the right way to go.

Take a look as we dethrone the common Instagram myths and equip you with the correct information about using the social media platform as a means to further your brand.

1. Instagram is Only for Product Based Businesses

Some believe that Instagram doesn’t work for service-based businesses, but that can’t be further from the truth. Any style of business can succeed with Instagram — as long you know how to reach your target audience and capture their interest.

While Instagram may seem easier to use if you have a product to sell, there are plenty of innovate ways brands can utilise the power of Instagram to better their business, find out more:

• – Introduction to Instagram for Business
• – Making the Most of Instagram for Business

2. You Don’t Need a Solid Plan

Like any form of marketing, you need to have a plan. Instagram isn’t just a platform to post random photos whenever you feel like it. Every post should have a purpose, you should use Instagram to promote and advertise your business professionally.

It’s important you take Instagram seriously, using a social media scheduling tool might help. Take a look at our blog post, Social Management Head-to-Head: Buffer VS Hootsuite to discover which tool we would recommend.

It’s important you’re active on Instagram and that you’re posting regularly. If you appear to be inactive, your followers will unfollow you and possibly go to one of your competitors.

3. You Can’t Measure Your Results

In fact, you easily can. Instagram Insights is a built-in feature for business accounts, where you can access data about your reach, impressions and so on. Learn more:

• – What Instagram Insights Tells You
• – How to Use Instagram Analytics to Improve Your Marketing

4. Instagram Only Works for Big Accounts

You don’t need a huge follower base to make money. You don’t need to be a big, well-known brand like McDonalds to see success.

Small businesses have just the same chance as major brands to engage their target audience. If your posts are engaging, are of high quality and reach your target market, then your account will grow as will your success.

5. You Can’t Make Any Money

There are plenty of ways to generate leads through Instagram — which should hopefully lead to conversions, then to clients or customers.

One way to extend your reach and generate leads is through hashtag marketing — using relevant hashtags will help you to extend the reach of your posts to your target audience, which increases your chances of people clicking on your profile and enquiring about you.

Quick Tips for Success

• – Ensure you use clear CTAs
• – Post regularly
• – Ensure you’re reaching the right audience
• – Use eye-catching, high-quality images
• – Keep inline with your brand image

Hopefully know we have provided you with the correct information and dispelled the popular Instagram myths, you should feel reassured about creating your own account.

The huge volume of terms, acronyms and lingo surrounding PPC is enough to confuse both beginners and those experienced in the field. Whether you’re new to PPC or you just need a refresher, use our list of beginners PPC definitions to help you keep up-to-date with the constantly-changing industry.

Ad Delivery: a setting that lets Google and other search engines know how to use your set budget each day. You can choose whether they spread it through the entire day or spend it quickly.

Ad Group: a collection of keywords, ads and bids that are crucial to how your account is organised. Each campaign feature one or more ad groups, each group includes around 5–10 keywords.

Ad Scheduling: how advertisers can control and specify which hours and days they want their ads to feature.

Average Cost-Per-Click: the average amount the advertiser will be charged when a searcher clicks on their ad. It’s decided by the total cost of your clicks by the total number of clicks.

AdWords Editor: a software application designed by Google that allows advertisers to make changes to their account without posting live until they’re ready. It’s free and allows you to make big changes, add new campaigns, ad groups, keywords along with much more.

Bid: the amount of money the advertiser is prepared to pay for a search keyword click.

Bounce Rate: a % of people who visit your site but exit without visiting another page.

Click: when someone clicks on your ad and through to your landing page

Click-Through-Rate (CTR): a way to analyse the success of a PPC campaign, A CTR is calculated by dividing the number of users who clicks on the ad by the number of times the ad was seen (impressions).

Conversion: when a user completes a specific task, whether it be completing a signup form, buying a product or downloading an eBook.

Cost-Per-Click (CPC): the amount of money the advertiser pays the search engine each time their ad is clicked on.

Cost-Per-Lead (CPL): the amount of money the advertiser pays for every lead generated through their ad.

Geotargeting: also called location targeting, this setting allows advertisers to target geographical countries, regions, towns and so on.

Impressions: the number of searchers who see your ad on search engines.

Invalid Click: also referred to as click fraud, is when the clicks on ads are flagged as illegitimate, like clicks made by mistake or for malicious reasons.

Keyword: is a single word or a string of worst that advertises use to display their ads in SERPs.

Landing Page: the webpage that searchers are directed to after they click on your ad, it’s specified by the destination URL.

Lead: (the same as a conversion) the completion of a specific action by a searcher that the advertiser intended for them to do.

Match Types: are parameters that can be set on your keywords to determine when they appear. Learn more here: Choosing the Right Keyword Matches for Your PPC Campaign.

Negative Keywords: ensures ads do not display when customers users a certain keyword in their query. Learn more here: How to Build a Negative Keyword List

Pay-Per-Click (PPC): is a form of marketing where an advertiser pays the search engine a fee every time their ad is clicked on SERPs.

Quality Score: is the search engines rating of the quality and relevance of your keywords and PPC ads — it’s used to decide bid price.

Return on Investment (ROI): usually a percentage that measures the efficiency of an investment. It measures the amount of return on a certain investment, relative to the investment cost.

Have we missed any crucial PPC definitions? Let us know in the comments.

If you’re confident with your PPC definitions, check out our PPC blogs.

There are many misconceptions about Pay-Per-Click, more commonly know as PPC. It can be disheartening for business owners to invest in PPC marketing when they’re unsure what it is, what it entails and why you must spend money on ads to generate quality traffic to your website.

Before you think about launching a PPC campaign, it’s important you understand what PPC is.

1. PPC Is Not SEO

PPC and SEO are not the same thing, they’re different sections of SEM (search engine marketing). But it’s understandable why people do sometimes get them mixed up.

SEO, search engine optimisation, is all about getting your website ranked highly on search engines like Bing and Google. It’s an organic strategy — so you don’t actually pay Google or any other search engine to rank your website highly.

Learn more about SEO:

• – Complete Beginner’s Guide: What is SEO?
• – A Beginner’s Guide to Local SEO
• – SMART and Setting Goals for SEO
• – Beginner’s Guide: SEO and Keywords

PPC, however, is paid advertising. Unlike SEO where your pages ranking highly on SERPs for organic reasons, PPC means you pay a fee each time a user clicks on your ad on SERPs.

• – Beginner’s Guide to PPC Advertising
• – The Benefits of PPC
• – How to Plan a PPC Campaign

2. PPC Can Deliver Results Straightaway

If you’re looking for fast results and immediate traffic to your website, then PPC is certainly for you.

You can run a campaign straight away and see an increase in website traffic, conversions and leads almost instantly.

3. PPC Is Not Just About Google

While Google has 89.1% of the search engine market share, you could still be missing 10.9% of your target audience.

Google is the most popular search engine to launch a PPC campaign, but there are other rewarding search engines you can use too. One of which is Bing — learn more about Bing PPC .

4. Facebook PPC Is Worthwhile Too

PPC is always immediately associated with search engines, but you can use social platforms too.

More commonly known as Facebook Advertising, advertisers can create their own PPC ads within Facebook Ads Manager.

Its basic functions are pretty much the same as Google’s — advertisers pay a certain amount each time their ad is clicked. The CPC (cost-per-click) is determined by how many people your advertisement reaches, and how competitive your target market is.

5. It’s A Flexible Form of Advertising

Unlike other forms of advertising where once the ball’s rolling it’s hard to stop — PPC platforms allow you to have complete control right the way through.

If you don’t know exactly who your target audience is yet, for example, you can always set your ads to reach a wide audience and refine it whenever you want.

Set your ads to only appear at specific times of the day, take a break from advertising whenever you want or make your ads location based — the choice is up to you.

Would You Like to Know More About PPC?

We’re happy to answer any questions you have — just let us know in the comments section below.

Businesses should tread carefully when it comes to sending their customers texts. Our texts are a personal space — far more personal than emails or receiving letters in the post.

Just because you can send texts — doesn’t mean you should. Text message marketing can be a great marketing method, but if done incorrectly it can cause a lot of damage.

Take a look at our dos and don’ts of text message marketing to help you decide whether it’s the right strategy for you.

5 Dos of Text Message Marketing

1. Do Get Permission

Just because a user shares their phone number while completing a signup form doesn’t mean you have permission to bombard them with marketing messages. Consumers must opt-in to receive your communications.

If they opt in to receive the latest offers by text, don’t send texts about your latest news.

2. Do Consider Timing

It may seem obvious, but no one wants to receive a text message in the middle of the night.

3. Do be Personal

Don’t send your messages to everybody if it’s not going to be of interest to everybody.

Remember, using their name can go a long way too.

4. Do Include a CTA

Including a clear call-to-action in any form of marketing is a big must.

Tell your recipients what you want them to do, or else your message has no point at all.

5. Do Keep it Short

Unlike in email marketing, you only have 160 characters per text to work with.

5 Don’ts of Text Message Marketing

1. Don’t Use Slang or Abbreviation

While you only have a short amount of space, you should still avoid being informal in business communication.

Not everybody understands jargon, so don’t risk confusing your customers.

2. Don’t Send too Often

Your frequency will depend greatly on how effective your text message marketing is. How much value does each message bring? Do your messages trigger a response or conversion?

3. Don’t Bulk Send

Remember, text messaging is considered a personal platform — so it only suits that you send message tailored specifically to the recipient.

4. Don’t Send Without a Reason

If your message is not urgent or time-sensitive, then there really isn’t any need to send it.

5. Don’t Forget to Let Them Know It’s You

It’s important you introduce yourself. Ensure your recipients know who is texting them to ensure brand recognition. Once you identify yourself, your message becomes relevant.

Conclusion

Every marketing campaign is unique to the business running it. So if you think text message marketing is for you, then stick to our dos and don’t and give it a go.

For further information, you can head over to our previous blog post: A Beginner’s Guide to SMS Marketing

If you run a website, you should know how important backlinks are. It’s not that hard to find backlink opportunities — you just need to know where to look.

What Are Backlinks?

Backlinks are formed when one site links to another. Backlinks are external links to your website, they show a transition from one website to another or from one webpage to another.

Why Are Backlinks Important?

Link building is a crucial part of your SEO strategy.

Each backlink you earn is part of a ranking puzzle. Backlinks to your website act as signals to search engines that other websites vouch for your content.

They’re crucial for SEO because they indicate to search engines that your website is valuable, trust-worthy and that your content is worth linking to. As a result, backlinks can positively impact your ranking on SERPs, which can boost your organic website traffic, conversions and ROI.

How to Find Backlink Opportunities

1. Build Internal Links

Internal link building is a key factor of running a successful website. They pass link juice, which also helps your web visitors to navigate through your website and better their user experience.

If you regularly produce blog content, for example, then find helpful ways to link one blog to another. If your latest blog covers the benefits of SEO, then consider linking to one of your previous blog posts that details what SEO is.

2. Get Your Content Seen

Let the links come to you.

You’re missing out on backlink opportunities if you don’t promote your content. Share your content on social media, through newsletters and get the world out about your best articles.

3. Be a Guest Blogger

Reach new audiences and boost your SEO at the same time.

Reach out to other popular websites and ask to be a guest blogger. Create relationships, expand your audience and give your website valuable backlinks.

Not all websites expect guest bloggers, so cut your work load in half by finding websites who you know already accept them:

In your Google search bar, try typing something like:

• – Your keyword + guest post
• – Your keyword + guest post opportunities
• – Your keyword + guest bloggers wanted / needed
• – Your keyword + become a contributor

For more information on finding guest blogging opportunities, take a look at our previous blog post — Beginner’s Guide to Guest Blogging

4. Check Out the Competition

Your competitors are looking for the same organic traffic as you.

Take a look at how they find backlink opportunities and pinch their best methods.

Subscribe to their email newsletter, follow them on social media or create a Google Alert so you never miss a new piece of their content. This will help you to improve your understanding of how they promote their website and how they boost their SEO.

Try sites like SEMrush to see who your competitors are linking to so you can find new link building opportunities.

5. Look for Broken Links

This popular technique involves reporting to websites that they have a broken link on their site and recommending your website replaces the link. They’ll be grateful you found their broken link, and the chances of them taking up your offer to replace the link is rather high.

Again, SEMrush is an excellent tool to help you find broken links. Run analyses on websites you’d like to link to you, and SEMrush will show you if there are any broken links.

Or, try the Google Chrome extension Check My Links.

While this method can be effective, it can take some time to find broken links.

Conclusion

There are endless ways you can find backlink opportunities, but hopefully our 5 methods give you the right framework to get started.

Finding backlink opportunities isn’t a quick process and you might find it challenging. But with our recommended methods and resources you should be able to find some excellent

Starting from September 2019, advertisers on Facebook will no longer be able to turn off campaign budget optimisation for new and existing campaigns.

This means that you will need to set one central campaign budget across all your ad sets.

The new campaign budget optimisation will “generate more results and lower costs”.

At the moment, campaign budget optimisation is an optional setting, so advertisers have the freedom to set budgets for specific ad sets. But with the coming change, campaign budget optimisation will be a default setting that cannot be turned off, instead of an being an option.

In their recent blog post, Facebook told us what we can expect:

• – Advertisers will have the ability to set central campaign budget to optimize across ad sets and Facebook will automatically distribute the budget in real-time to your top performing ad sets
• – Facebook will capture the most results from your budget, which will also lower your total cost per result
• – Advertisers can achieve the lowest cost per result for their overall campaign, not for any given set ad.

What Your Next Steps Are

September is still a while away, so we suggest experimenting with the campaign budget optimisation feature now to test your results and get familiar with it.

If it’s a success for your ads, campaign budget optimisation will simplify your campaign creation process — saving you time. Budget setting can be a struggle and sometimes it can become a guessing game to distribute your budget, so Facebook will be taking that stress away.

If your unfamiliar with setting budgets or you don’t have much experience with setting budgets on Facebook advertisements, this will be good to help you achieve results.

What do you think? Is Facebook’s campaign budget optimisation a good idea? Will it help or hinder you?

Why are your campaigns getting tied up in spam filters? It could be because the words you are using in the subject line are spam trigger words.

Your subject line can often make or break your campaign? Is it too pushy? Is it too vague? Too short? Too long? Is it engaging?

Once you’ve decided on a compelling subject line, the worrying doesn’t stop there.

Will it even arrive in inboxes? Or will it trigger SPAM filters?

Your emails can land in the spam filter for a number of reasons — which means your content skips the recipient’s inboxes and goes unseen and in to their spam folder. Which isn’t exactly ideal …

One of the simplest ways to avoid SPAM filters is by evaluating the words you choose in your subject line. There are triggers words you can avoid. By avoiding these words in your subject lines, you should hopefully prevent yourself landing in the spam folder.

To help you create the most compelling subject lines that land in inboxes, we have compiled a list of the typical spam trigger words that you should avoid.

116 Common Spam Trigger Words

• – $$$
• – Affordable
• – Auto email removal
• – Bargain
• – Be your own boss
• – Beneficiary
• – Best price
• – Big bucks
• – Bulk email
• – Cash
• – Cash bonus
• – Cashcashcash
• – Cents on the dollar
• – Cheap
• – Check
• – Claims
• – Click
• – Click below
• – Click here
• – Click to find out
• – Click to remove
• – Collect
• – Compare rates
• – Cost
• – Credit
• – Credit bureaus
• – Direct email
• – Direct marketing
• – Discount
• – Earn
• – Earn $
• – Easy terms
• – Email harvest
• – Email marketing
• – Expect to earn
• – F r e e
• – Fast cash
• – Financial — General
• – For free
• – For just $XXX
• – Form
• – Free and FREE
• – Free installation
• – Free leads
• – Free membership
• – Free offer
• – Free preview
• – Free website
• – Full refund
• – Get it now
• – Giving away
• – Guarantee
• – Here
• – Hidden
• – Hidden assets
• – Hidden charges
• – Home employment
• – Income
• – Increase sales
• – Increase traffic
• – Increase your sales
• – Incredible deal
• – Insurance
• – Internet market
• – Internet marketing
• – Investment
• – Loans
• – Lowest price
• – Make $
• – Mass email
• – Million dollars
• – Money
• – Money back
• – Month trial offer
• – More Internet Traffic
• – Mortgage
• – Mortgage rates
• – No cost
• – No fees
• – One hundred percent free
• – One-time mailing
• – Online biz opportunity
• – Only $
• – Pennies a day
• – Potential earnings
• – Price
• – Profits
• – Pure profit
• – Quote
• – Refinance
• – Satisfaction guaranteed
• – Save $
• – Save big money
• – Save up to
• – Search engines
• – See for yourself
• – Serious cash
• – Solution
• – Special promotion
• – Subject to credit
• – Subscribe
• – Success
• – The following form
• – They keep your money — no refund!
• – This isn’t junk This isn’t spam
• – Undisclosed recipient
• – Unsecured credit
• – Unsolicited
• – Unsubscribe
• – Urgent
• – US dollars
• – Visit our website
• – We hate spam
• – Web traffic
• – Why pay more?
• – Will not believe your eyes
• – Work at home

So, when you next create your email subject line, look at our list and avoid using any of the trigger words!

Take a look at our previous blog post, “6 Excellent Tips for Your Email Subject Lines” to discover our top tips.

Have you heard of Google Data Studio?

What’s Google Data Studio?

For those of you don’t already know, Google Data Studio is a dashboard and reporting tool, where users can easily use, customise and share their data. Users can turn their data into visually appealing, informative reports that can help to monitor KPIs and business objectives.

It helps businesses to identify and share insights from their data, to improve their business and reach their goals.

What You Can Do with Data Studio?

1. Connect Your Data

Does Google Studio sound familiar? It’s similar Google Analytics — but a lot better.

Reports in Data Studio collect their information from other data sources, such as …

• – Google Marketing Platform Products — Google Ads, Analytics, Display & Video 360, Search Ads 360
• – Consumer products — Sheets, YouTube and Search Console
• -Databases — Big Query, MySQL, PostgreSQL
• – Flat files via CSV file upload and Google Storage

2. Visualise Your Data

Data studio transforms your data into customisable, easy to read and shareable dashboards and reports. There’s a simple drag and drop report editor so users can:

• – Tell a story with their data through a range of charts, geo maps, area and bubble graphs, tables and much more
• – Feature view filters and data range controls to make reports interactive by using a flexible template
• – Create product catalogues, video libraries and other hyperlinked content with the use of links and clickable images
• – Brand reports to reflect your business
• – A selection of styles and colour themes

3. Share and Collaborate

You’ll find your reports and data stored as files on Google Drive — it’s simple to share your files with your colleagues, clients or anyone in the world. If you share a report or data source with a fellow editor, you can seamlessly collaborate in real time and work on the same files.

How to Access Google Data Studio

Currently the only way to get Google Data Studio access, is to physically request an account directly from Google. You can get started with your Google Data Studio account here and simply follow the instructions provided by Google.

Is it worth the hassle? absolutely. The best thing about Google Data Studio is that it’s succinct — you can seamlessly turn your data into meaningful