3 Reasons Your Business Needs a Multichannel Marketing Approach Including Google Ads and Local SEO

For small businesses in South Carolina, the ability to reach potential customers is more important now than ever before. As competition has risen, so have consumer expectations for online experiences. That’s why having a multichannel marketing approach – one that includes PPC and SEO – is essential for success.

At Fu Dog Media in South Carolina, we understand that PPC and SEO are two of the most efficient digital marketing channels available. PPC, or pay-per-click advertising, allows you to quickly and easily reach customers through Google Ads and other platforms. SEO, or search engine optimization, is a long-term strategy designed to improve your website’s rankings in organic search results over time. By combining PPC and organic search efforts, your business can be more effective and efficient in reaching customers.

Here are three reasons why PPC and SEO should be party of your digital marketing approach:

Reach More Customers

PPC provides an immediate opportunity to reach potential new customers. Through PPC you can target specific keywords that fit with your products and services. PPC helps to put your business at the top of search engine results, ensuring that your website is seen by a larger audience. Through PPC, you can also gain insights into which keywords are performing best so you can optimize campaigns.

Drive Conversion

PPC and SEO both help drive conversions on your website. PPC helps you to quickly drive traffic to your website and ensures that potential customers find it more easily. SEO helps to link relevant content on your website with searches, driving organic traffic over time. Both PPC and SEO offer opportunities for conversion optimization by testing different campaigns and targeting the right keywords.

Increase Brand Awareness

PPC and SEO can help you establish your brand and increase awareness of your company. PPC can be used to target new markets, while SEO helps bring more organic traffic to the website – both of which help boost your visibility and credibility in the marketplace. PPC also helps to create brand recognition through targeted ad campaigns that are seen by potential customers.

At Fu Dog Media in South Carolina, we understand how powerful PPC and SEO can be when it comes to marketing your business. PPC and SEO provide an effective way to target new customers and increase conversions on your website. With PPC and SEO working together, your multichannel marketing efforts can help you reach greater success.

If you’re looking for help with PPC and SEO, contact Fu Dog Media. We’ll work with you to develop a multichannel marketing strategy tailored to your business and its needs. Let us show you how PPC and SEO can help you reach more customers, drive conversions, and increase brand awareness.

Four Surefire Ways to Hire the Right SEO Company

Although anyone can technically call themselves an SEO pro, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they actually are. With COVID behind us and the economy returning to full speed ahead, now is an excellent time to increase your presence on the internet. That takes more than a do-it-yourself approach to SEO. It takes hiring an SEO company in Charleston, SC that not only knows what they are doing, but has a proven track record for getting results.

Do you know the signs to look for that you are hiring the right SEO company in Charleston, SC? Knowing what to look for can make the difference between mediocrity and mastery.

The Benefits of Hiring an SEO Company in Charleston

Many business owners dabble in SEO practices. Why dabble? Just like every other part of your business practices, SEO is one of the most critical components to gaining local exposure on the web. Outsourcing your SEO means that you don’t have to pay someone full-time, and it also means that you are hiring a company that specializes in one thing: doing SEO right.

Any smart business-minded person knows that the key to success is doing what you do best and delegating the rest to the best in their respective fields, which includes SEO. When you hire an expert SEO company in Charleston, they can:

  • Begin implementing a targeted and highly effective SEO campaign from day one
  • Save money by spending your resources only on strategies that get the most for your advertising and marketing money
  • Broaden your brand’s online reach by using all channels available
  • Prevent the potential of being flagged by Google or other companies for SEO errors that can end up with huge penalties
  • Explain what your analytics mean in practical and useful terms that translate
What Are the Best Tips for Hiring an SEO Company in Charleston?

As with any service you need, the key is finding a true expert. Sometimes that is harder than it might seem. Many SEO companies claim to be the best, but the proof is in the results, statistics, and leads or sales. Actions and results speak way louder than words, so make sure that your SEO company can deliver what they say they can!

Online Reviews and Ratings are Real

Often people wonder if online reviews and ratings are real or if there is some way to fabricate them. Sure, you can go to some pretty great lengths to mess with online reviews and ratings, especially those generated by Google. But an SEO company, however good they are, is still guided by the same rules as everyone else, and there is really no way to manipulate what customers are saying, have said, or will say besides by doing a good job and earning good reviews and for people to actually rate you highly.

As any SEO professional will tell you, it is critical to build your reputation online, and that can only come from doing the legwork, putting in the hard work, getting results, and above all, making good on promises. If an SEO company is rated highly, it is because they are getting their clients the traction and exposure that they promised.

Is the SEO Company Ranking Highly?

Following this logic, if the key to hiring an SEO company is for them to rank you highly so people see you first, what does it say for them if you can’t even find them through an organic search? An SEO company that knows all the ways to gain exposure and get their clients ranked highly would definitely do SEO for their own website.

Statistics tell us that 98% of all internet searchers will not go beyond page one to find what they are looking for. If you have to be the 2% that goes to page two to find them, then you might want to rethink your choice of SEO companies. Fu Dog Media not only tells our customers that we can increase their rankings so that they can be found on the first page; we are front and center ourselves.

We not only help to teach our clients by getting them testimonials and reviews to drive rankings and using content and other mediums to enhance exposure; we also do all of those things ourselves because we know that they work. If an SEO company tells you how to do something, but it isn’t working for them, find a company that has proven results. They are easy to find – on page one!

Ask for Client References

Charleston might be a highly populated city, but we are a close-knit one that likes to stay local. In the end all you have is your reputation, whether it is online or verbal. If you know that someone is crushing it in their internet process, look at the bottom of their website to find out who designed it. Better yet, reach out and ask who is doing their SEO marketing.

As a business owner your time might be limited, but really take the time to investigate who you hire to outsource your SEO. Often, SEO companies that want to gain exposure for themselves as well as the clients they serve will put video testimonials online so that you can hear from real-life customers – not just about how they liked the company that they worked with, but how their business profited and gained the exposure they needed to take it to the next level.

Also, if an SEO company is putting testimonials on their own page, they understand the value of video and letting people tell the story, which is an emotional grab that works every time! Don’t just assume they have the playbook; check out their actual playbook.

Case Studies and Portfolios

It is always good to see how something has played out. An excellent SEO company can show you how they took a small business from the ground floor to some amazing heights. They do that not just through testimonials, ratings, and reviews, but through real and quantifiable numbers.

SEO companies should be able to tell you how much exposure there is in real numbers, traffic conversions, keyword target results, and Google analytics. When all is said and done, people might be able to bend the truth, but numbers don’t lie.

Hire the Right SEO Company in Charleston

SEO is one of those industries where claims can be easy to make but harder to prove. The best way to know how good an SEO company in Charleston is, and to know if they are the right one for you, might take a little legwork – but if they can produce the right results and gain you exposure, then the time and energy putting into seeking them out will be well worth it.

At Fu Dog Media, we don’t just throw out vague promises or generalities about what we can do. We provide the case studies, reviews, testimonials, and analytics of our success stories so you can see what we can do for you. Contact us today to discuss how we can far exceed your SEO goals.

Top SEO Trends for 2022 – How Well Are You Keeping Pace?

Many things are beginning to return to pre-pandemic normalcy, but some things will forever be changed. The internet is just one of them. The internet has continued to grow as the leading source that people use to research everything from medical conditions to hair and makeup products, which is mind-boggling when you think about it.

With millions of different sites out there to compete with, you need as many tips and tricks as possible to get your page seen. In a new post-COVID age, what businesses quickly learned is that SEO services in Charleston are where the biggest chunk of your marketing energy and budget should go. Sure, having a user-friendly website is part of it, but if no one ever uses it, what’s the point?

According to recent statistics, search engines are responsible for as much as 69% of all digital traffic. Although Google is continually changing algorithms to stay ahead of the SEO cat-and-mouse game, SEO remains the most valuable tool that you have at your disposal to win. These are the seven biggest trends to try for your SEO strategy for the rest of 2022 and beyond from our top SEO services in Charleston, SC company!

Optimize Search Intent Using Long-Form Content

One of the most important aspects of your SEO campaign is going to be your content. Ranking for the correct keywords is the only way to push higher up in the rankings. Quality content has always been a must, but long-form content is the focus now.

Long-Form Content Has Many Benefits

  • Higher Conversion Rates – Calls-to-action, when strategically placed, can help to generate more leads that ultimately lead to a better conversion rate
  • More Social Shares – If you have value-added content, it is more likely that people will share it with others
  • Higher Website Authority Rating – When you provide in-depth and value-added content, you make yourself a trusted and authoritative voice within your industry, which helps to further your EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness)
  • Enhanced Visibility Online – Long content pieces of 2000 or more words rank higher in SERPs than shorter pieces
  • Better Opportunities for Link Building – When visitors find your content useful, they are more likely to reach out with backlink opportunities

The key is to optimize your content for search intent. User or search intent is a phrase that is used to describe the purpose of the visitors’ search online. There are four different types of intent searches:

  • Navigational – This is where the user is in an awareness phase. They are not really exactly sure what they are looking for or what specific things are called
  • Informational – Users utilize informational intent just in the interest phase of their search. The more they search, the more refined their keyword search becomes
  • Commercial – This is where the intent of the user is to make a decision. They are aware of the solution they need and they are comparing one against another
  • Transactional – Users in this phase are ready to act by either starting a transaction, purchasing, or subscribing (starting free trials, requesting demos, etc.)

When you understand the difference in what your content is targeting and at what phase, you can use the right keywords to increase your SEO rankings.

User Experience

In 2021, the new kid on the block became Search Experience Optimization, which is continually growing in significance. Google’s Page Experience Update, a US update, is meant to measure the experience that users have when they interact with a website in more depth than just purely informational.

Google Page Experience Update Factors:

  • Metrics of Core Web Vitals
  • Mobile-First Design and Optimization
  • Popups and Ease of Use Related to Interstitial Behavior
  • The Security Measures of the Site

One of the most essential elements of Mobile-First Indexing is Search Experience Optimization (SEO). It is expected to continue growing in importance. Because on-page visitor experiences are a direct signal that Google uses to rank websites for their SERPs values, a user’s experience is even more important on platforms such as User Engagement Metrics in GA4 and User Stickiness in Google Analytics.

What Does That Mean for SEO Services in Charleston?
  • Optimize videos and images
  • Your website should have operational Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
  • Implement lazy loading
  • Optimize CSS code
  • Optimize the execution of JavaScript
  • Allow for dimensions of embeds and images
  • Speed your server up

Users having a good experience on your page doesn’t override the quality of your content and link building, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t pay attention to it, especially as it grows in significance. Improving your Core Web Vitals score is even more critical if you have competing pages with content that is similar to yours and you are vying for the number-one position. Optimization of your mobile performance and page engagement are going to be trends to continue to watch.

Internal Linking and Content Framework

Internal linking, the flow of authority, and informational architecture will be more heavily weighted for ranking factors as authority competitiveness becomes more challenging. One of the things to watch for is topic optimization over keyword optimization.

What is Content Framework?

Although it’s a catchphrase, all “content framework” really means is better organizing your content with a full strategy. You want content that is sensible and easy for users to navigate, while also attracting Google’s automated page-crawling tools.

Google not only works to match search results with keywords; it also tries to find contextual meaning and intent to deliver the best-matched results. A good content framework should have an effective mapping strategy for keywords. It is no longer about putting keywords on a page; they have to be mapped related to topics, and topics have to be structurally organized.

And it all needs to be tied to an internal linking strategy that has an authority flow to the correct pages with content that makes sense. Therefore, content frameworks have to be topic-relevant with an authority flow of internal linking. If you can manage that, you will have a powerful strategic SEO campaign.

Search Accessibility

SERP features are not new, but recently they have grown in significance. Accessibility settings and features were recently added to Android’s platform, along with ways to help people with disabilities; some are Talkback, Live Transcribe, Sound Amplifier, Live Caption, and others.

Bing, now the third-largest search engine, has added the snippet, which is a feature for people with disabilities to interact with a search engine’s content by using voice search for the vision impaired and annotations posted on video for the hearing impaired.

Currently, websites get additional ranking for SERP features that are inclusive for more users. So including them on your website is just one more way SEO services in Charleston can help with your overall ranking campaign.

Inclusion and Diversion in Charleston SEO Services

There is a new metric being introduced into the accessibility field, which is language inclusivity. Being more socially and politically inclusive with your content is gaining traction and is something to keep in mind with your content. When writing, be careful of using gender-specific labels like “gentlemen,” “ladies,” and “sir.” Instead, use inclusive labels like “friends,” “everyone,” etc.

Conversational Voice Search

Google’s new BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) was added in 2019 and was an update targeting the relationship between search intent and words. It aided Google with searches that were voice assisted by giving more credence to conversational speech. There is a continual move to semantic search with AI over simply keyword matching. That AI technology will only grow. New algorithms will support result and query processing by using:

  • Multitask Unified Model (MUM), which is a new language processing tool slated to be 1000 times better than BERT. It can analyze images, video, and 75 languages by answering complex search questions
  • Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA), which has human-like modeling for speech

Google is targeting algorithms that evolve to be more like how we actually communicate with one another by using increased intuitiveness and communication skills. They will aid in targeted long-tail keywords when using speech recognition for searches. In 2017, only about 15% of searches used long-tail keywords.

EAT (Expertise, Authority, & Trust)

EAT is not a new concept; it came from the update to Google’s algorithms in August 2018. The theory of EAT has its origins in Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines (SQEGs), which are used to rate SERPs’ page quality. In a nutshell, EAT is a score of how well a website provides value to a visitor. The best way to enhance your EAT is:

  • Back up your content with facts and statistics
  • Give author bios
  • Get great reviews
  • Provide backlinks from credible sources
  • Give ways to get in touch

Conclusion

Despite all the different ways that Google has changed the rules and factored in other things for SEO, organic traffic is still one of the major ways that customers find businesses, which is why SEO is critical to help your potential clients find you. When you factor in all of these different ways to enhance your SEO rankings, it might seem a bit overwhelming. The good news?

You don’t have to worry about your SEO if you find an SEO services company in Charleston, SC like Fu Dog Media to take the guesswork out of it. If you hire us to be your SEO expert, you can sit back and focus on the bigger picture: your bottom line. Contact us today to get started.

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