How Google Analytics helps Digital Marketing

The introduction of social media changed the perception of marketing across the world. It has given brands the power to position themselves boldly in the minds of the audience through witty and engaging content. This idea of platforms that support free-to-post and creatively liberating content has created a niche for itself. It is known as digital marketing. Digital Marketing not only encompasses social media but any form of online content published on a digital medium. Since brands have understood its importance, they approach digital marketing companies, who offer them different types of services. One of them is using analytics to measure how the company is performing digitally.

Analytics uses several metrics to gauge that. These metrics usually differ from platform to platform. However, the most popular platform among marketers is Google Analytics. It has become their go-to tool to review the performance of digital marketing agency. From analyzing website traffic to counting social media impressions, Google Analytics gives valuable insights from the data it examines. However, you may feel lost with Google Analytics if you don’t know which tools are beneficial for you. The question then arises – how to optimally use Google Analytics to boost marketing efforts? Let’s answer it step-by-step.

Traffic channels

The first information brands need to measure is their user interaction online. How much traffic does your website get in a day? Where do these users come from? What is the purpose behind their visit? These questions can be answered by utilizing tools such as Google Analytics. Here are a few parameters you should look at:

Organic – If your website can organically generate a lot of traffic, it means that your website’s search engine results pages (SERP) rank is high. It indicates that your SEO strategy has come to fruition.

Social media – Strategic social media posts can redirect traffic to your website. The higher your social media following, the more traffic you redirect.

Email – Generating traffic from the embedded links in an email is a standard tool for marketers. It also serves the purpose of generating leads.

Paid search – This is useful in tracking PPC campaigns, whose purpose is to direct traffic to the website, as well as generate leads. You can link your AdWord campaign in Google Analytics through the acquisition tab.

Referral – When a user clicks on a link to your website on another site, it refers to referral traffic.

You can find these options in the acquisition channels report.

Site Content

Upon visiting your website, users will go through several pages like the services page, product page, etc. The purpose of visiting these pages will differ from user to user. With the help of Google Analytics, you can measure how long these users stay on a particular page, or how many more pages they navigate. This helps you analyze how the content on your site is performing, which is vital if you want your website to be on the top of Google search results. The analysis is done by looking at different types of pages. Let’s take a look at them.

Home page – Landing page gives you an idea about the conversion rate of the website. It is because this page acts as a starting point for the user to navigate different pages. If the user completes the expected journey, the page where the journey started is accredited with converting the user. It, therefore, gives the impression of how important it is for the user to like the website’s landing page so that it makes for pleasant user experience.

Exit page – Exit page is where the user leaves the website. It could be because they finished their conversion or were done navigating the website. Google Analytics helps you to track and analyze your user’s journey.

All pages – All pages provide data about pages that were viewed on what date and for how long. You can access the data for a week, month or year. This helps you figure out which pages on your website receive the most traffic.

The metrics used to analyze these types of pages are:

Pageviews – Calculates each session on a particular page.

Entrances – The entry points to your website.

Bounce Rate – The rate at which users leave you the website immediately after visiting the home page.

Page Value – Calculates the money generated through pageviews.

Monitoring your audience

Google Analytics helps you monitor your audience by tracking your website’s users over a week, month or year. These users are segregated to specific cohorts (a group of people) based on characteristics and interests. It helps you isolate them and analyze their behavior. The behavior could be either an interest in the service or purchase of a product. It thus enables you to identify the benefits of your user and create your marketing strategy accordingly.

The market strategy should be designed with a key demographic in mind. Knowing the demographic helps with curating the right content. For example, if one of your products or services is very popular among a particular demographic range, you effectively advertise that service or product to the target audience. This is one way Google Analytics helps you create a detailed marketing strategy.

There you have it – the tools in Google Analytics that will help your digital marketing campaign. If you seek professional help with regards to this, look no further than SRV media, one of the finest digital marketing companies in India. Our result-oriented team is experienced in creating marketing strategies that will not only improve your digital presence but also bolster your brand awareness.

Setting Up Google My Business Page (GMB)

When you do a search, results also factor in your location. Google My Business lets your customers find information online about your business, that includes hours of operation, contact information and many other sets of data like reviews, ratings, pictures, and so many other things, that too all across multiple devices.

Your business MUST be listed in Google My Business if you want to be found online in a local search. The listing needs to be fully complete and optimizing Google My Business page can increase both your online and offline business.

Local search listing takes precedence in searches. These local listings are accompanied by markers, along with their names, addresses and phone numbers or NAP in short. Ensure that this NAP is the same across your website, Google My Business listing & any other page where your listing has been put. Google also displays a map that points to business.

Setting Up Google My Business (GMB) Page

We at VGGroups always believe in keeping knowledge simple. Please find here the link of the video which tells how to set up Google My Business listing and use it for your benefit.

In case you still need some assistance please do Contact Us.
To Know About this you may visit: https://www.vggroups.com

Why Digital Agencies Need to Diversify Quickly

You put up a query around DigitalMarketing services or Social Media services on a portal (job, social network, gig-based networks or simply a freelance network), and within minutes you are being hounded by social media “experts”. You receive calls, direct messages, messages on WhatsApp. Some of these service providers are really affordable, and from a pricing standpoint, you have hit the jackpot! There are multiple agencies/freelancers working under the garb of an agency willing to work for free, almost!

This may be appealing initially but in almost all of the cases, this model is not sustainable and cannot work for too long. The service received is poor. The ROI is minimal and the time that has been wasted in the engagement is lost forever.

The Current Digital Marketing Industry

Before we look at how to address this, let’s try to look at the history of what forced us to end up here.

The low hanging fruit – In reality, the barrier to entry for entering this profession is extremely low. Excelling is a different ball game together (which I will discuss in the latter part of this article). Anyone born in the ’80s and ’90s has a good command over technology and has seen and used these platforms, can become a so-called “digital marketer”.

No capital expenditure needed – Who does not like this? Starting a business without investment.

Design is cheap – No, the design is not cheap! In fact, I find that good design is the most expensive part. It is rather unfortunate that the way tools and software have been exploited and rampant piracy has been used. Clearly, ethics have taken a back seat.

Packaging and selling Digital Marketing courses – A lot of Digital Marketing training institutes mushroomed across India where the focus was on making a quick buck, rather than building marketers with a strong foundation. It was always quantity over quality, and these courses were not at all cheap. The graduates from these programs proudly claim to be digital marketers. We interview them for job interviews and trust me, finding a good marketer is like finding a diamond in a coal mine.

So, now we are in a situation where we have people selling services at less than $2 per hour. We have been successful in creating an extremely mediocre talent pool fighting for that $2 per hour.

How can the Agency and Brands Stay Strong in This Ever-Changing Game!

We have been observing this industry since the past decade and would like to share our observations with fellow agencies as well as brands who are looking for agencies.

You are currently over-dependent on Facebook/Instagram – Creating a graphic and posting it, writing ad copies and running simple ads; these are not going to get you too far. You need to understand that business should not be easy to replicate, hence if your client can move from you to someone else, then it is time for you to think again. If your business model revolves at the mercy of Facebook, it should be considered a red flag. We have seen a lack of consistency as far as Facebook advertising is concerned, Facebook loves to A/B test, and guess who pays for it – you or your client!

Concentrate more on original thinking – It is easy to search for similar products and services and try to copy their marketing strategy. Although I would not be completely against it as it's ok to take inspiration, your thinking needs to be original, otherwise, it will just add noise in this cacophony.

Know the Costs Involved – The bottom line is, as long as you are able to justify the costs to yourself, you will be able to justify and explain them to the client or the lead. It’s actually easy, just grab an excel sheet and estimate the following:

The number of resources required

The number of hours the task will take

Cost of the resource

That simple?!? Not exactly. Let I break down the cost of the resource (as this is what we get wrong all the time). There are various factors that come into play here while deciding this cost:

The cost to hire that resource

The cost to the company (everything goes in here, and I mean everything right down to the money taken by the janitor!)

The cost of the resource falls sick or leaves

Cost of software(s) used (you can include that in the CTC, though I would stress on the fact that even if you are small, try to follow ethics, they will take you a long way)

The cost you incur to train/motivate the resource

You cannot know these costs when you start, but keeping an eye on them and focusing on them can help you define the right price for your offering which you can back up.

One Size DOES NOT fit all – Bigger companies are no longer looking at generalists. They want people who are super-specialized. If you are still operating under the umbrella of a 360-degree agency, it’s time to rethink and focus on your core strengths.

Communication is the key – This is the part that I see most young professionals in this space get wrong, it always has to be a mix of branding and sales. Focusing on sales only may get the customer to your door but ignoring branding will not keep them engaged or encourage buying again.

The digital landscape is evolving and so should you! You need to know what the popular networks are and be there before your users show up. You need to be early adopters and have the will to experiment. This field will turn into the specialized-network-based field in the future.

If you are looking at getting your digital communication audited, do get in in touch with us at info@vggroups.com

SEO AUDITS OF 30 TOP MARKETING COMPANIES

All digital agencies say they can get their clients in top-ranking positions for their keywords – but what’s stopping them from achieving the same for their own sites?

Here at Reboot, we decided to do a technical SEO audit of top digital agencies to discover how good those in the Marketing and SEO industry are at practicing what they preach. That is- do they follow SEO best practices on their own sites?

OUR STUDY METHODOLOGY

In order to pick our list of digital marketing agencies to analyze, we did a search for the highly competitive term digital marketing agency. We popped this into the marketing tool SEMrush and pulled the top 30 marketing companies that ranked for the term (essentially, the first 3 pages of the Google SERP). Our very own site was also included in this list, so we decided to audit ourselves too!

For each website, we assessed a large number of metrics, including:

. Page speed

. Number of pages indexed

. User experience

. Meta tags

. Keyword optimization

. Internal linking

. Duplicate content

. Anchor text linking to the site

. Potential Google penalties

. Incorrect pages indexed on Google

. Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust (E-A-T) – trust signals

. Backlink quality

. Domain Authority

We outline what all of these metrics mean in our other study on SEO for Accountants which you can read here.

OUR FINDINGS

The 5 most common SEO issues found were:

70% of agencies had a poor page speed- the average score given was 41/100

63% of agencies had a lack of internal linking

57% of agencies had undesirable pages indexed by Google.

52% of agencies had pages containing thin content.

47% of agencies had pages poorly optimized for keywords

PAGE SPEED:

The vast majority of sites analyzed had a poor page speed, scoring a mere 41 from Google’s Page Speed Insights tool.

Google uses a scale of 90-100 (fast) 50-89 (average) 0-49 (slow) to measure page speed.

Since this has been confirmed as a ranking factor (and is especially important given the growth in mobile searches), it is perhaps interesting to note that the victims of the slowest average page speed among digital agencies were in fact found to be ranking on page one.

This perhaps reveals that Google has placed less importance on page speed as a ranking factor, compared to other metrics like backlinks or a sound website structure. Page speed optimization should not be neglected, however, as it may become increasingly important, considering the weight that user experience has on rankings today.

Reboot’s own page speed scored 84 – Just missing out on a “fast” rating, but still far higher than the industry average.

INTERNAL LINKING

A problem experienced by the majority of agencies audited was that of internal linking. Or lack thereof.

63% had neglected to link internally to other pages on their own site. Not only does this not help Google comprehend the structure and theme of your site, but it can also create internal competition issues if you are talking about something that is not the focus of the page but does not add an internal link to let Google know you have a more relevant page for that term.

Most of the sites that do not link internally can be found on the 3rd page of rankings, however, it is still witnessed on agencies ranking in the top 10 positions. The agency Impression, for example, has the perfect opportunity on their content marketing page to link to their PR landing page, but fail to do so.

Impression currently ranks at number 10 and could, therefore, benefit from a solid internal linking strategy.

INDEXING

Another common issue amongst digital agencies was pages that were incorrectly indexed by Google. Our study found that around 57% of agencies had pages indexed on Google that should not have been, for example, blank pages, or automatic “thank you” pages after submitting a form.

This issue was far more prevalent for websites ranking on the second and third pages of results. 70% of page 2 digital agencies displayed indexing issues, and this figure goes up to a massive 75% for page 3.

 incorrect indexing example

An example of poor indexing can be seen for the agency GenerateUK. Upon doing a “site:” command on Google, we found that these pages had been indexed by Google- even though each one only displayed a single image, without any content. It would, therefore, appear that these pages shouldn’t exist- and certainly shouldn’t be using the agency’s crawl budget to index and revisit them.

During our rigorous auditing, we also found some indexing issues on our very own site, VGGroups. We discovered that pages from our press placements had been indexed by Google (we’re talking over 60 pages). Since finding this out we have included a ‘no-index’ tag on all pages apart from the first one, in order to stop them from appearing in the search results.

We also discovered some orphan pages for ex-members of staff that hadn’t been changed to a 404 – an issue we have since resolved.

THIN CONTENT:

Almost half of the digital marketing companies we audited (52%) had issues with thin content or content that was not relevant or useful to the searcher (such as a page with no text).

Around a third of agencies on page 3 had pages of thin content, compared to only 13% of those ranking on the first page. Showing that this is certainly a missed trick that could help smaller agencies rank higher.

We can see an example of thin content upon auditing the agency Brainlabs. A page “Life at Brainlabs” was indexed and being crawled by Google, but contained no information, or content at all, as witnessed here:

example of thin content

KEYWORD OPTIMISATION:

We found out that a whopping 47% of SEO Agencies had not fully optimized their pages for keywords.

By this, we mean that they were not making the most of their H1s, or utilizing LSI keywords on their landing pages (particularly for their services).

For instance, a page on “Digital PR” should mention other words from their keyword research, such as “Digital PR services” or “PR agency”. Many marketing companies simply left their H1s at “Digital PR”- but this doesn’t fully tell Google what your page is about. Is it a guide to public relations? A service? This should be clarified using your title tags.

OTHER SEO ISSUES

Although not as prevalent as the issues listed above, we also found other technical problems with some of the ranking websites, including:

Meta tags: An important thing to consider for any business, but especially one that stated to be an expert in SEO, is your meta title. This is what appears in the SERP for your result, and should entice a click. A higher click-through rate will show Google that your content is good, and relevant for the keyword, helping you to secure those rankings. Our audits revealed that 20% of digital marketing agencies had poor meta titles, especially for service landing pages.

Duplicate content: 27% of digital marketing firms were found to have copied content across the web.

Backlink quality: One third, or 33%, of the agencies we analyzed had poor backlink quality. This meant either they had only directory links with little proof of quality organically earned links, or they had links from poor quality, even spam, sites. This figure drops significantly to just 12% of sites ranking on page 1.

THINGS THAT AGENCIES WERE DOING WELL

E-A-T: When it came to sending out positive trust signals to Google, the digital marketing agencies did a great job:

100% had a marketing blog (although 20% of agencies haven’t posted a thing since January 2019!)

100% had https

29 of the 30 agencies had a social media presence

100% had displayed their contact information

83% had an “about” or “meet the team” page

Anchor text: Unlike back in the days of rife black-hat SEO, most agencies (over 90% in fact) have normal anchor text from backlinks, revealing that they are not trying to get targeted terms linking back to specific landing pages on their sites.

Our audits have taught us a lot about how marketing agencies, including our own, need to practice what they preach when it comes to digital best practices. But, as they say, a cobbler always wears the worst shoes...!

Incredible Ideas About Helpful Strategies With Search Engine Optimization

There is no point in having a site if you get no visitors. You need to show up on the first page of a search engine's results if you want to get traffic. For top results, it's important to determine how a search engine lists sites. The following advice will help you with SEO Services.

When creating pages keeping SEO in mind, it's better to have many short articles on related topics than one very long article. Long pages will reduce the rank that you have. Also, the majority of visitors will not spend the time necessary to read something that is extremely long.

Using a product feed can really help to reach new customers. Images, prices, services, and products available can be included in feeds. A consumer site that lists good deals, or listing with a search engine can provide this help to your site. Customers interested in the area of business you represent can subscribe through a feed reader.

Talk with an education or non-profit website to see if they will provide a link on their site to content on your site. If you link yourself to a source that has a good reputation, you will climb in the search engine ranks. Publish high-quality info to encourage authoritative websites to showcase your site. Add content that these types of organizations find worthy and useful.

Do not add any SEO to Flash content. Spiders can not read it and it is slow to load. To make it so that your site is found in search engine rankings, you will need to do the work needed for search engine bots to find your website.

Your keyword phrases should appear in your titles too. The title should be both relevant and easy to remember. Although, at times an off the wall title will work if it leaves an impression on the reader. Initially, you want to cater to what the consumers are looking for, which is probably not your business name.

When you blog through your own site, it increases your search engine visibility. When you rank higher on search engine results, more people will visit your website.

Don't get too crazy with keywords because that can have a bad effect on your site. You will want to target approximately a dozen primary phrases and keywords that center on your specific site and niche. Analytical tools are great for determining which words work best.

Think about the possibilities of podcasting. Podcasts can be both video and audio, and they are often streamed live with relevant information for their audience. Take advantage of the current popularity of podcasts by videotaping or voice recording a marketing message. Having descriptions for your podcasts helps search engines find them.

As you can see, techniques for search engine optimization are vital to having a successful web presence. Fortunately, these tips have provided you with the basics essential to improving your site. You will gain more visibility, which will give more results making your website a success.

How to choose the Best Digital Marketing Agency

Half of the private companies flop in the main year and tragically, in the event that they endure, just 5% of them make past the five years. Entrepreneurs have a low spending plan, more often than not bring down income and extraordinary odds of jumping using a loan. One wrong move and it will be demolished. All things considered, they should be cautious about where they need to spend their cash on procuring new clients. Advanced advertising has turned into a need for all the independent companies out there and the majority of them don't have an in-house computerized showcasing group. This prompts them to re-appropriating all their advanced advertising exercises. 

It is significant for these private ventures to adapt totally to any computerized showcasing organization before they redistribute their advertising exercises. They ought to do the appropriate research before marking an agreement with any office and not succumb to phony showcasing tricks. There are such a large number of low quality, obscure and blackhat computerized showcasing organizations out there which stunt independent ventures into causing them to accept that they have gone to the correct spot. Be that as it may, everything they do is eat into your computerized advertising spending plan for their own benefits. 

As an entrepreneur, you ought to comprehend that computerized promoting is anything but a solitary action but instead it comprises of various web-based showcasing systems like Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Social Media Marketing (SMM), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC), Email Marketing, Content Marketing, video advertising and so on. Remember that despite the fact that each computerized advertising office out there cases to offer these administrations, it doesn't imply that you should get them all. For certain organizations, simply the essential advanced showcasing classifications like website improvement, web-based life-promoting, and email showcasing is sufficient while for other people, they may require amazing methodologies like substance promoting, a video showcasing, and internet publicizing. Everything relies upon your business and the spending you have at the top of the priority list for structure your advanced showcasing methodology. Web optimization and SMM are in every case very on the moderate side for everybody while content, video, online notices, and so on fall on the expensive side. Presently, here are a few hints for you to enable you to pick the best advanced advertising office. Keep these focuses on your psyche and you will never be disillusioned. 

How does the office present itself 

What great is a computerized promoting office on the off chance that they can't publicize themselves appropriately? Begin searching for computerized promoting offices that utilize inventive thoughts and procedures to showcase their administrations. On the off chance that an organization is offering computerized promoting administrations, you can figure out how they work from their online web nearness itself. Check in the event that they are positioning naturally in an initial couple of pages for your query items when you are searching for them. Experience their internet based life posts and evaluate their quality – is it persuading enough, are individuals connecting with them or are they simply go into the void, and so forth. 

Examine their site – is it totally enhanced for guests and web crawlers, do they have an appropriate webpage route, is the substance on their site persuading enough, how are they pitching their administrations, are they utilizing a legitimate suggestion to take action for everything, and so on. How an office presents itself talks a great deal about how they treat their clients. 

Do they have involvement in your industry 

As I would like to think, it is smarter to work with computerized promoting offices who have worked with organizations like yours beforehand. In the event that they have the learning and experience working with comparable organizations already, I'm almost certain they would have looked into about it and have a decent methodology close by. In addition, they will have a fundamental thought regarding what you will anticipate from them. It's far and away superior in the event that they can comprehend your group of spectators and your rivals. 

What's their procedure or work process 

There are such a large number of individuals out there who will request that you go with an organization that offers advanced promoting administrations at moderate costs. There's nothing incorrectly in that except for when an organization does all the hard work for you including examination and produces information-driven substance for your business which snaps with your potential clients, they are certain to beg to be spent. All things considered, it merits spending your cash as the outcomes will bring you many more benefits. Anyway, before you settle for a computerized advertising organization, investigate their work procedure – how would they plan, explore and execute their methodology. 

Investigate their past work or white papers to see how they work with specific issues. It will likewise enable you to see how they oversee web-based social networking, their procedure of getting data, how they explore their customers' organizations, how far they can go to enable customers to develop their organizations, and so forth. 

This is significant in light of the fact that a ton of organizations utilizes dark cap or malicious techniques to advertise your business, particularly with regards to third party referencing for SEO. This can give you snappy outcomes and everything looks great on reports however in the long haul, it won't be justified, despite all the trouble and you may get your site punished. When Google knows about something turning out badly with your SEO technique, it will begin pushing your site down except if you rush to discover and fix the issue. Be a player, and ensure your office doesn't go the incorrect method to manufacture backlinks quick for your site. You should realize that it doesn't satisfy over the long haul. 

P.S. Keep in mind that not all moderate advanced promoting administrations are terrible and not every expensive administration is great. Simply my input 

How would they examine their exhibition 

Another significant part of evaluating a computerized showcasing office is taking a gander at how dependable their outcomes are. You would need to ensure that the outcome reports and execution examinations you get are justified, despite all the trouble for the measure of cash you spend on them. Ensure you get some information about the instruments and administrations they are utilizing to break down the exhibition, survey your site's positioning and assess internet based life execution and check them on the web. Additionally, attempt to figure out how they typically oversee PPC crusades and the rundown of robotization instruments they use. This will enable you to see that they are so dedicated to their work. 

What are the bundles advertised 

At long last, it goes to the valuing. I thoroughly comprehend that it is hard for private ventures who are simply beginning to endure the harsh occasions when the challenge gets extremely hard. In any case, cost-adequacy is in every case superior to going for shoddy administrations. As opposed to going for an out and out bundle that offers every one of the fancy odds and ends, you can demand a custom bundle and pick just the administrations which you need. Most organizations offer custom bundles these days. In any case, ensure you do some exploration before you fill in the structure for a custom statement. Offices need to make benefits to maintain their own business yet on the off chance that they will be cheating you, it's an exacting no. That is the reason you have to appropriately comprehend what advanced showcasing is before you can talk with somebody from the organization on the equivalent. 

Tip: Never approach an advanced promoting organization with a clear personality or you'll fall prey to their alluring offers and terms which you won't get it. The greater part of the occasions, you won't require their extra bundles. Try not to surrender to their upsell pitches ever and lament later for eating into your spending limit. 

You have all the privilege to pose these inquiries so as to pick the best advanced promoting organization for the necessities of your private company. 

There are such huge numbers of advanced promoting organizations on the web and not every one of them is the equivalent – some of them overperform, some of them fail to meet expectations, some are simply alright, while some others are definitely justified even despite the cash. On the off chance that you don't have the foggiest idea of how to pick the correct organization to put your cash in, you won't endure the challenge without successful promoting.