All posts by root

What Should You Do To Increase Your E-commerce Sales?

January 2, 2020e-commerceroot

The internet has thrown open a lot of opportunities for businesses, both big and small. And, one of the verticals that have seen tremendous growth in the last few years is the e-commerce business. No doubt, e-commerce is a growing industry, but not everyone with an online store is laughing their way to the bank.

Starting an e-commerce business is not all that difficult. Anyone can start an e-commerce business. The challenge, however, is to generate the right kind of sales so that you can make your business a successful venture.

Without a doubt, generating the right amount of sales should always be your priority.

If you have an e-commerce store, you sure would want to boost your traffic and sales. But how should you go about increasing your traffic and sales?

If you want to improve your traffic and increase your sales, you need to make sure that you have a smart marketing strategy.

Here are some of the smart marketing tactics that help increase your e-commerce sales. But before getting there, let us try to understand what is e-commerce marketing.

What is e-commerce marketing?

So, what is e-commerce marketing?

E-commerce marketing is the process of using the right kind of promotional tactics to increase traffic to your online store, converting them into paying customers and retaining them after the purchase.

To put in place a comprehensive e-commerce marketing strategy, you need to work both on and off your website. When you have a smart marketing strategy for your online store, it helps you build brand awareness, increases customer loyalty, which in turn improve your overall sales.

An effective e-commerce marketing can be used to propel an online store on the whole, or you can use it to increase sales for specific products.

9 smart ways that can increase your e-commerce sales

As the owner of your e-commerce business, it is your responsibility to see to it that your store does well. And, the only way to succeed in this business is to make sure that your products sell and sell more.

To increase your e-commerce business sales, here is what you need to do:

Concentrate on upselling and cross-selling products – Believe it or not but Amazon’s 35% revenue comes from upselling and cross-selling. When you encourage your customers to buy a comparable or better product than the one in question it is known as upselling. And, when you suggest your customers to buy related or complementary items, it is known as cross-selling.
For example, in the case of cross-selling, if your customer is buying a blow dryer, you can suggest a comb. And, if your customer is buying a printer, it would be upselling if you convince them to buy ink as well. The two terms are often used interchangeably. In the e-commerce business, you need to prioritise upselling and cross-selling because it can generate a lot of sales, and hence revenue for your business.
Reduce cart abandonment – Every time a visitor abandons your cart without making a purchase, you miss out on a selling opportunity and lose money. It is a usual phenomenon, people add items to their carts, but abandon it during the checkout process.
There are many reasons for cart abandonment, and some of the prominent ones are – price considerations (could be due to shipping, fees, taxes, etc.), asking visitors to first open an account, complicated checkout process, unable to calculate total order cost upfront, visitors not willing to share their credit card details due to lack of trust in a site, website crash, slow delivery, unsatisfactory return policy, few payment method options, and credit card declined.

If you want to have a successful e-commerce business, you need to make sure that you address the concerns of your visitors so that you can reduce or eliminate cart abandonment.

One of the most effective e-commerce marketing idea to reduce cart abandonment is to send them follow-up emails. You can do the following to optimise the emails:
You can remind your customers of what was there in their cart.
Use catchy headlines to grab their attention.
You can also send them a discount code.You can also hold their items for a while.
Use and spend on social media – You cannot ignore social media these days. If you want to increase your sales, you should start using social media at the earliest. And, when we talk of social media, you cannot ignore Facebook. Other platforms which you should use are Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Reddit, among others. But it is important that you select social media platforms that suit your business niche.

For example, you can set up your Facebook store. Also, you can add products to your Instagram posts and stories which gives your followers a path to buy directly from the social platform.

If you are hesitant of spending on social media, you are making a big mistake. The sooner you jump on the social media bandwagon, the better it will be for the sales of your e-commerce business.
Look for affiliates – Using affiliates to sell your products is yet another way of improving your e-commerce sales. Affiliates work on incentives, and you only have to pay them the commission if they facilitate the selling process. Affiliate marketing is a kind of free marketing for your products and business because you pay only when a sale is made. There are several ways to make your affiliate program a success, and some of these are:Find out whether you will benefit from leveraging an existing network like commission junction or you need to start tracking a system of your own.
You can leverage the pre-existing networks and find affiliates selling products in your niche.

Also make sure that you pay your affiliates well. What you end up paying your affiliates would be less than what you have to spend on advertising.

You should make it easy for your affiliates to sign up with you. Also, you can implement tracking links on their landing page, blog, or website. When you make it easy for your affiliates to work, then they can perform better for your business.
Be more creative – When it comes selling on the internet, you need to make sure that your product description and presentation are up to the mark. Do not use standard descriptions from a database. Create concise, clear, human, and SEO optimised descriptions for your products. Also, ensure that your product photos are professional so that they generate trust and improves the look of your site.
Gather as many email subscribers as you can – Email marketing is undoubtedly the most effective way to reach out to your prospects for making a sale and generating repeat customers. While social media is a cluttered space, email marketing offers a personalised interaction. Generally, people are more responsive to messages that are sent directly into their mailboxes than on their social feeds. Also, when you send an email, you can say things that otherwise would not fit into a social media post.When it comes to email marketing, you should promote your newsletter, blog, and other email gathering avenues to the fullest so that you gather as many subscribers as you can.
You also need to ensure that you improve the standard of your email campaigns – It is not enough to have a subscriber base; you also need to ensure that your email campaign is effective. To make your e-commerce marketing campaign effective, you need to send regular and valuable emails to all your subscribers.
Make sure that you send your subscribers email on every occasion.

You can send a welcome mail when they first make a purchase.

You should send your subscribers newsletters so that they remain current on new discount offers, product tips, and your company news.

You can also send your subscribers promo codes and gifts.

Keep your high-value customers happy. Send them personalised emails thanking them for their renewed support.

It is also important to share the relevant content with your customers. Send them emails so that they can make the most of their purchases.

You can also send them an email soliciting their feedback. When people leave your site without making a purchase, you can ask them about their experience, and you can make things better for them. You should also take feedback from your regular customers on how to further improve their experience.
Make sure that you send wishlist reminder emails – You also need to ensure that you add the wishlist reminder email to your scheme of things. The wishlist reminder email and abandoned cart email are closely related to each other. Both serve the purpose of convincing the shoppers of buying the product they had shown interest to buy.
Whether it has been a while since your prospect last checked on their wishlist or an item on sale is running out of stock which has been there on your prospects wishlist, you can send them an email informing the status of the product.Wishlist email reminders can provide the thrust to your prospects and customers to finally make the purchase.
You need to have a content marketing program in place – If you have an e-commerce store, you should start blogging to connect with your prospects and customers. Regular blogging also helps you improve your search engine rankings. In case you create content, then make sure that your blog features on your online store.
Apart from blogging, you should consider starting a podcast. It helps you build a stronger community and allows you to feature your expertise.

You can also start writing guest posts on other websites and blogs which helps you build awareness, backlinks, and improves your SEO efforts.

You should ensure that you create long-form content and guides so that it helps your customers in using your product more effectively.

There are various other things which you can do to increase your e-commerce sales. You should generate as many customer reviews as you can. Another thing which you can do is to make sure that your customers get what they want easily. You can also start engaging your visitors with live chat. You should also optimise your site for mobile.

For a smart and comprehensive e-commerce marketing strategy, you can get in touch with vStacks Software Solutions now. We will make sure that your e-commerce sales increases to your satisfaction. Digital marketing is our forte, and we know what it takes to streamline your online operations.

ERP Software Solution

December 27, 2019ERP Solutionroot

With competition on the rise, businesses need to utilize their resources properly to maximise their profits and stay relevant. To achieve this, you need to make sure that you efficiently manage your business processes. It is not all that easy to physically and manually manage your resources to streamline your business processes.

But how do you ensure that your business processes are run efficiently?

You need smart business management tools to make this happen. And, one of the tools that help you run your business processes efficiently is ERP software.

Yes, you need an ERP software solution to manage your business processes efficiently. Regardless of the size of your business operations, you stand to gain a lot if you use an efficient ERP solution. An ERP solution facilitates the flow of information between all your departments, assimilates the information in one place, and helps you make an informed decision so that you run your processes efficiently and improve your profits.

However, to get the most out of your ERP system, you need to make sure that you choose the right ERP software solution.

Let us take you through what you need to consider so that you select the best ERP solution for your business. But before getting there, let us try to understand what is an ERP solution and the benefits of an ERP solution.

What is an ERP solution?

An ERP software solution is a set of applications that helps businesses organise and streamline their business operations. It automates your back-end processes like HR, production, customer support & services, technology, etc., thereby improving the functioning and efficiency of your organisation.

An ERP software solution helps integrate your day to day activities by sharing and coordinating data from different verticals within your organisation in real-time. It improves the functioning of your organisation because it brings all the relevant data on one single platform, which allows you to make an informed decision in real-time.

It allows you to make decisions on facts and figures because you have hard facts in front of your eyes.

Benefits of an ERP solution

An ERP software solution offers several benefits to businesses, both big and small. Some of the major benefits of an ERP solution includes:
An ERP solution provides real-time data and information.
It improves collaboration.
It gives you a 360-degree view of your business operations.
It helps improve productivity.
It simplifies reporting and allows you to send quotes instantly.
It improves your customer service.
It offers seamless integration.
It improves your overall efficiency, reduces your operational costs, thereby helps improve your profits.

How to select the best ERP solution for your business?

If you want to get the most out of ERP solution, you need to make sure that you select the ERP software solution carefully. Some of the important things to consider when selecting an ERP solution for your business include:

Assess your needs and evaluate the ERP options carefully – It is vital to assess your needs first. You need to know what you want your ERP solution to deliver. For that to happen, you have to assess your needs properly. Make a list of your requirements. After assessing your needs, you need to do a bit of research. With so many options available in the market, it is your research that will help you pick the right solution for your business. With a list of requirements in hand, you can easily shortlist some ERP options for consideration.
Consider the deployment type – on-premise or cloud – Another important consideration is the type of deployment option you want for your business. You can opt for an on-premise ERP system or take a cloud ERP solution. Both have their pros and cons. But a vital consideration for most of the businesses is the price, and cloud ERP solutions are much cheaper than on-premise ERP systems. On-premise ERP systems require huge initial investments.
Consider mobility – It is important to consider mobility in today’s time. Whether your organisation has adopted BYOD or not, it is vital to select an ERP solution that offers mobility. While it is crucial to select an ERP that is mobile-ready, it is also important to consider that the ERP solution you select offers robust security features. You need to make sure that all your sensitive data is encrypted and secure.
Think about integration and customisation – You, of course, cannot forget about integration and customisation. Make sure you buy an ERP system that integrates well with most of your existing applications. It is not a feasible option to change all your applications just to accommodate one application. Hence, always look for an ERP system that integrates well with your existing applications. Also, you need to ensure that the solution you select can be customed to suit your needs and requirements. Your needs and requirements can change with time. Therefore, you also need to ensure that you select a system that can be customised to suit your changing needs.
Don’t forget your budget – It is also vital to consider your budget. Money is an important consideration for organisations, both big and small. You need to consider the return on investment your ERP solution will bring for your organisation. You need to consider the implementation, installation, and maintenance costs that you have to pay for the solution.
Select the right implementation partner – It is crucial to select the right implementation partner. If you don’t select the right implementation partner, it is difficult to roll out and adopt the solution seamlessly. A right implementation partner can provide you with a skilled resource set to smoothen your transition.
If you want a reliable ERP solution for your business, you should get in touch with vStacks Software Solutions now. Our ERP offering, eZnetERP, is a cloud-based ERP solution that is easy to use and mobile-ready. eZnetERP can be customised to suit your needs. Also, eZnetERP can integrate well with most of your existing applications. Our solution is scalable and competitively priced. You can contact us for a free demo and a free trial today.

CRM Software Service

December 27, 2019CRM Softwareroot

With customers becoming intelligent and smarter by the day, businesses need to do everything they can to keep them happy and satisfied. If you don’t provide excellent customer experience, it is difficult for you to survive in this fiercely competitive business environment.

So, what should businesses do to improve customer experience?

You need to take the help of technology. And, when we talk of technology, one tool that helps businesses tide over most of their customer’s woes is the CRM system.

Yes, it is vital these days for businesses to use CRM software. If you want to look after the interests of your customers and do well in the world of business, you need to use a CRM system.

But to get the best out of your CRM system, you need to choose the right CRM software for your business.

So, how do you select the best CRM software service for your business?

Let us take you through what you should consider when choosing a CRM vendor. But before getting there, let us find out what CRM software can do for your business.

Why do businesses need CRM software?

CRM software is known to build and maintain strong relationships with current and future customers. But CRM software is much more than just a simple contact management system. It helps businesses manage sales, marketing, point-of-sale transactions, business partners, and other operational data.

A CRM system helps you keep track of all your customer interactions.
CRM software helps fine-tune your sales and marketing efforts.
It allows you to sell more products and services.
It helps you find and keep new customers.

How to choose the right CRM for your business – what to consider?

Before you get down to shortlisting CRM software service providers, it is important to evaluate your own needs. Think about who all will use the CRM, what is your budget, and other applications that you need to integrate with your CRM system. You need to have your goals and priorities well in place before you set out to buy a CRM system.

Some of the things that you should take into account when choosing a CRM system are:

Choose the CRM deployment option – cloud vs. on-premise – The first thing you need to consider is the CRM deployment option. What do you want – cloud CRM or on-premise CRM. If you opt for a cloud-based CRM, you don’t need to buy a server. You also don’t need to have an IT infrastructure or team to manage your system. What you need is an internet connection, and all your data reside in the cloud.
When you opt for an on-premise CRM system, you need to buy the software. The server is physically hosted at your premises, and you need people to manage the system. The data in on-premise CRM is stored internally.While on-premise CRM requires a high upfront investment, cloud-based CRM is a much cheaper option.
Assess your features and functionality needs – Every business has its own set of unique needs. That is why you need to assess your needs carefully in terms of features and functionalities you want for your business. You don’t need to get fancy features just for the heck of it. It is always advisable to consider a scalable solution. Your CRM needs will grow as your business grows. That is why scalability is such an important parameter.
Don’t forget about user experience – Without a doubt, this is one of the most important aspects that you need to consider. Make sure that the CRM system you buy is an intuitive one and is easy to use. If the CRM solution you buy is difficult to use, you will not be able to achieve much out of it. Ensure that the CRM system you buy has a friendly user interface so that your employees don’t run away from the system.
Think about integration – Integration is an important aspect; hence consider it carefully. You buy a CRM system so that it streamlines your business operations. But if it doesn’t integrate well with your existing applications, how will you streamline your business operations. Hence, always make sure that you buy a CRM system that integrates well with your existing applications like ERP solution, HR software, billing & e-commerce platforms to register transactions, your website, and your other marketing solutions.
It is always good to select an industry-specific vendor – If the vendor you select has worked with other companies in your vertical, it means they can better understand your requirements. Hence, it is important to select an industry-specific vendor.
Always request for a demo and take a free trial – Most reputed vendors will give you a live demonstration and subsequent free trial without any problem. It is important to take a free trial so that you know what is in store for you. During the demo, the vendor will take you through the important and salient features of the CRM. You can also clear all your doubts during the demo so that you are sure that you are buying the right system. When you use the trial version of the CRM, you can look at things like ease of use, functionality, and other specific features related to your business.
Don’t overlook customization and training – You should ensure that you buy a CRM solution that is customised to suit your business needs. If the CRM system is not customised to suit your business needs, it will not help you achieve much.
Training is also an extremely important aspect to consider. If you want your employees to use the CRM solution properly, you need to make sure that they get the proper training.Hence, it is always vital to select a CRM vendor who can customise the product to suit your needs and offer adequate training so that your employees can use the solution properly.

If you are looking for a reliable CRM software service provider, you can get in touch with vStacks Software Solutions now. Our CRM offering, eZnetCRM, is an intuitive and user-friendly CRM that can be customised to suit business requirements in most of the verticals. Our solution is scalable and can integrate well with most of your existing applications. You can contact us for a demo and a free trial today.

On Page SEO – What You Need To Understand?

November 28, 2019Digital Marketingroot

There is a lot of competition on the internet. If you don’t make a concerted efforted, it is difficult to do well in the online landscape. So, what should website owners do to make themselves more visible on the internet? In case you want to get on top of the competition on the internet, you need to make sure that you have a sound SEO strategy in place. And, a sound SEO strategy typically starts with on-page SEO.

The process of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results is known as SEO or search engine optimisation. SEO is divided into two main parts – on-page SEO and off-page SEO. And, if you want to get the best results for your website in terms of traffic, you need to work on both aspects.

So, what is on-page SEO, and how to make sure that your on-page SEO strategy works perfectly for your website?

So, what is on page SEO?

According to Moz, the process of optimising your web pages to rank higher and earn relevant traffic in search engines is known as on page SEO. As opposed to off page SEO which is all about link building and other external signals, on page SEO deals with both the content and HTML source code of a page which can be optimised.

On page SEO is an evolving phenomenon; hence it is important that website owners keep up with the latest practices. Search engines especially Google are getting smarter by the day; hence you need to keep pace with the changing times.

How to make sure that your on-page SEO strategy works?

Being the owner of the website, you would surely like to rank on the first page of the search engine results. But with the kind of competition that is there on the internet, not every website can make it to the first page. Search engine algorithms are complex, but they are certainly not rocket science. There are ways you can adopt which will help the search engines take note of your website.

What you need is a smart SEO strategy to improve your rankings on the search engines. And, on page SEO is the building block of your SEO strategy.

To make your on-page SEO strategy a hit, here is what you need to do:

Your URLs should be SEO friendly – According to Google, the first 3 – 5 words in a URL are given more importance. Also, a Backlinko study reveals that short URLs can have an advantage in the search results. Therefore, to make your URLs SEO friendly, they should be short and crisp. Also, make it a practice to include the target keyword in your URL. What you need to do is avoid unsightly and long URLs.
Your title should start with keyword – Another important SEO strategy is to make sure that your title starts with your chosen keyword. It helps you on two fronts – it helps the search engines to learn quickly about the content of your page, and it also allows the users to pick up the content they are specifically searching for on the internet.
Make sure that your post title is wrapped in <H1> tag – Another vital on page SEO strategy is to ensure that your title tag is put in <H1> tag. The process allows the search engines to understand better what your is content is about as it helps to highlight some text on your webpage. But what you need to keep in mind is that there should only be one H1 tag per page and that it should contain your target keyword.
You also need to ensure that you include modifiers in your title – You need to understand the importance of putting in modifiers in the post’s title. A modifier is a word that makes your keyword more precise. For example, using words like best, 2019, checklist, guide, cheap, review, and fast can help you rank higher on the search engines. Modifiers help your target audience know what your post is specifically about as it makes the heading clearer.
Also, you need to wrap your subheadings in <H2> tags – There are several header tags that can be included in a post. You should include your target keyword in one of the subheadings and ensure that you wrap it in a <H2> tag. The <H2> tags are reserved for subheadings, and it should support your main <h1> tag. When you wrap your keywords in header tags, your post becomes more structured, and the search engines, as well as your readers, can understand it more easily.
Use multimedia as much as you can – Text alone cannot take your website too far. If you want to decrease your bounce rates and increase your users time on your site (two important user interaction ranking factors), you should add engaging images, infographics, videos, and diagrams to your webpage. Doing this makes the quality of your content better. And, as your content becomes more valuable people most often like to link to such websites.
Make sure that you include your keyword in the first 100 words – This again is an important one. You should ensure that you include your keyword in the first few lines, more specifically in the first 100 words. So, if you love to write meandering intros before getting down to the subject, then you should cut the practice and make sure that you include your keyword in the first 100 words.
It is also important that you use responsive design – You should be aware that if your website is not mobile friendly, then search engines like Google penalise your site. What you need is a mobile optimised site if you want to climb the search engine rankings. Hence, what you need to do is make your website responsive. To improve the user experience of your visitors, you need to make your website responsive.
It is also vital to use internal links – If you want to do well on the search engine rankings ladder, you should start using internal links in your post. Internal links are hyperlinks that your users can click and reach elsewhere from your post on the same page or to some other of your webpage. What you need to do is add 2 or 3 internal links in your post.
You also need to link to other sites – As it is important for you to link internally, you also need to link to other sites that are in your niche. Outbound links are hyperlinks that your visitors can click and visit a different website. Linking to other websites helps the search engines to understand better which niche your site belongs to, and this, in turn, can improve your search engine rankings.
Make a habit of writing lengthy posts – Another vital on page SEO strategy is to write lengthy content. Content length is an important ranking factor, and it can improve your search engine rankings. A SEMRush study of ranking factors reveals that the length of the content is among the top nine most important ranking factors.You, of course, do not want your visitors to leave your site in a hurry. When you post long, lengthy, and meaningful content, you give your visitors the reason to engage more with your content.

Make sure that the load speed of your site is optimised – In case your page takes too long to load, your visitors will leave your site. Also, sites that take too long to load do not fare well on the search engine results. Hence, you need to make sure that your website loads faster. You need to work towards improving the user experience of your visitors.
Ensure that you include the keyword in the image file name – By now you must be aware of including images in your post. You also need to make sure that you include your keyword in the file names of the images and the alt text. Ensure that one of the images you use has a file name that accommodates your keyword. Also, you should include the keyword in the image alt text.
You also need to use LSI keywords – Acronym for latent semantic indexing, LSI keywords are words that are related to the keyword you choose. Search engines especially Google uses LSI keywords to determine the relevance of your page. To find the LSI keywords, you should search your keyword on Google and then head to the bottom of the page. When you reach the bottom of the page, you will find “searches related to” section and those are the related keywords.
Using social sharing buttons also helps – Though it does not affect your ranking directly, but social sharing is bound to generate more eyeballs. And, when your content generates more eyeballs, people are more likely to link to it which increases the value of your content. Hence, it is important that you use social sharing buttons. Place them prominently on your website so that more and more people can share the content.

If you think there is a problem with your on-page SEO, you can get in touch with vStacks Software Solutions now. We are a digital marketing company, and we know what it takes to formulate an effective SEO strategy. From on-page SEO strategy to off-page SEO activities and more, we can help make your website more visible in the online circuit.

8 Sure Shot Ways To Improve The Load Speed Of Your Website

October 30, 2019Web Developmentroot

It is difficult to beat the competition and climb the success ladder these days if you don’t have a website in place. But just having a website on the internet does not guarantee you success. To do well on the internet, you need to make sure that your website ranks high on the search engine result page and it offers an excellent user experience. And, one factor that can surely impact your website ranking and user experience is the load speed of your site.
If your website load speed is slow, it can negatively impact your performance on the internet. It (slow load speeds) not just adversely affects your website rankings, but it can also dent your conversions and sales. Therefore, it is vital to ensure that businesses work hard to improve the load speeds of their websites.

Here are some load speed statistics that prove our point beyond any doubt.

Load speed statistics

According to the 2017 Akamai Technologies State of Online Retail Performance report, a 100-millisecond delay in website load speed can hurt your conversions by as much as 7 percent.

A 2-second delay in web page load time increases bounce rates by 103%.
In case your website takes more than 3 seconds to load, 53% of mobile site visitors will leave the page.

So, what should you do to improve the load speed of your website? But before getting there let us try to understand the importance of website speed optimisation.

Importance of website speed optimisation

A web performance metric, page load time shows the time needed for a webpage to load on the screen of the user. And, here is how the website speed optimisation influences the main factors of website success, namely conversions, visibility, and usability.

Conversion – It is important for businesses to bring their visitors to a point where they do what you want them to do. Website conversion is an important metric for the success of your business – be it for buying your product, subscribing to your newsletter, registering for a webinar, or downloading a guide. The more time it takes for your webpage to load, the lower conversion rates it will have. Hence, if you want your conversions to improve, it is vital that your website loads faster.
Visibility – The time it takes for your website to load also determines how easily visitors can locate your website. Load speed of the website is one of the factors that Google takes into account when ranking sites. A website that takes a lot of time to load offers a poor user experience which results in a drop in the rankings. Also, websites that do not load fast and are not responsive do not do well on the search engine results page.
Usability – Just like website page speed, website responsiveness, and website load time, website usability also impacts customer loyalty. If your website loads faster, it makes your users more satisfied. And, when you provide a great user experience, it allows you to build a large customer base and a robust brand.

What is a good load speed?

But before you set out to improve the load speed of your website, it is vital for businesses to know what is good load time.

The best practice according to Google (in 2018) is three seconds, but most sites are not up to the mark when it comes loading time. Google in an analysis of 900, 000 mobile ad landing pages found that 70% of them took about seven seconds for the visual content above the fold to load. In the analysis it was found that it takes about 15 seconds to load a mobile landing page fully.

Also, as page load time increases from one to ten seconds, the bounce rate possibility goes up by 123%.

How to assess your website speed?

It is also vital for businesses to first assess their existing website speed before getting down to how to improve it. Fortunately, there are numerous performance evaluation tools available on the internet to assess the speed of your website. Some of these are:

Google Pagespeed Insights
Pingdom
YSlow
Performance Budget Calculator

Ways to Improve the load speed of your website

After testing the speed of your website, you should get down to optimising it. There are various ways of increasing the load speed of your website. Here is the list of 9 most effective ways that can improve the load speed of your website:

Implement a content delivery network or CDN – A CDN is a set of web servers which are distributed across numerous geographical locations, and they provide web content to the end user per their location. When the website is hosted on a single server, all the user requests are sent to the same hardware which increases the processing time of each request. Moreover, when users are physically far from the server, it increases the load time. But when you use a CDN, user requests are redirected to the server that is closet to the user which allows the content to be delivered to the user quickly and the website starts working faster. CDN, therefore, is an effective way of increasing the load speed of your website.
Move to a better host for your website – Make sure that you choose a fast web host so that your site loads faster. Mainly, there are three types of hosting, namely shared hosting, a virtual private server (VPS) hosting, and dedicated server hosting.
The most popular type of hosting is shared hosting. It is also the most cost-effective way to get your website online. But it is vital that you select your web hosting service provider with a lot of caution. A fast web hosting service provider is what you need to select if you want to ensure better optimisation. Typically, shared hosting is not as fast as VPS or dedicated hosting because in shared hosting you have to share the disk space, RAM, and CPU with other websites.VPS and dedicated servers are faster in comparison to shared hosting. Multiple servers are used in VPS hosting for content distribution. In VPS hosting, you only need to share the server with other users, and your configurations do not influence other websites. VPS hosting is ideally suited for websites that have average traffic with traffic spikes in some periods.And, dedicated hosting is the most expensive hosting option where all the resources belong to you.
Make sure you optimise the images on your website – Images are important for an attractive layout of a website, and it is known to generate better user engagement. Also, images are essential if you have an e-commerce site. But the negative effect of having too many images is that it slows down your website because they are large files. What you need to do to reduce the size of the images is to compress the images. You can search the internet and use the tools that can reduce the size of your images without compromising their quality.
You should also decrease the number of plugins – Plugins are a common component of websites which add specific features suggested by third parties. But more the plugins, more are the resources you need to run a website which slows down your website. The number of plugins grows over time, but not all of them are used all of the time. That is why it is important that you check all the plugins you have installed, and remove those that are not required. To start with, you should run the performance test to find out which plugins are slowing down your website. The website speed depends on the number of plugins as well as their quality. You should avoid deleting plugins that load a lot of scripts or generate a lot of queries. Make sure that you only keep plugins that are necessary, and it is also important to keep them updated.
You also need to use website catching – When there are many users accessing the page at the same time, servers go slow and need more time to deliver the web page to every user. The process of storing the existing version of your website on the hosting is known as caching, and it presents this version to the users until your website is updated. It means that the web page does not render every time for each user. Since cached web pages store copies of documents; hence it does not need to send database requests every time. The stored document is rendered to the user which increases the load speed of your website.
It is also important to reduce the number of JavaScript and CCS files – When your website contains too many JavaScript and CCS files, it generates a large number of HTTP requests when your visitors want to access specific files. Due to these requests, which are treated individually by the visitor’s browser, it slows down the website speed. Hence, if you decrease the number of JavaScript and CCS files, it is bound to increase the load speed of your website. You can group all JavaScript into one and do the same for all the CSS files which bring down the overall number of HTTP requests.
Use Gzip compression – You can use Gzip compression to reduce the size of the files which minimises the HTTP requests and cuts the server response time. Gzip compression is used to compress the files before sending them to the browser. A browser unzips the files on the user’s side and presents the content. Gzip compression can work well with all the files on your website.
Minimise redirects and decrease the use of web fonts – Website redirects negatively impacts the performance of your website because it creates additional HTTP requests. It is, therefore, advisable to either minimise them or eliminate them completely. You can run a site scan to identify all the redirects on your page and barring the critical ones you should eliminate the rest.Web fonts are increasingly becoming popular these days in website designing. But the use of web fonts can have a negative impact on the load speed of your website. Web fonts create additional HTTP requests to external resources. To reduce the size of web font traffic, you can use modern formats for modern browsers, select only the needed styles, and include only those character sets that are used on the site.
If there is a problem with the load speed of your website, you can get in touch with vStacks Software Solutions now. We will make sure that your site starts loading faster on all the devices. We are a digital marketing services company specialising in web design and hosting.

Off-Page SEO – What You Need To Know & Why Is It Important?

October 3, 2019SEOroot

Off-page SEO or off-site SEO are the techniques used to improve your search engine results page ranking or SERP outside of your website. If you think off-page SEO is just about link building, then you are wrong. Minus the website design, off-page SEO activities are promotional methods that are used to improve your website’s search engine rankings.

If you have a website on the internet, you would certainly like it to rank high on the search engine results page. But there are only a few websites that can rank on the first page of the search results.

So, what should you do to ensure that your website climbs the search engine rankings and lands in the top search results?

In case you want your website to rank high on the search results, you need to make sure that you have a smart SEO strategy in place. But don’t forget that you cannot have a sound SEO strategy without factoring in off-page SEO.

What is SEO?

style=”float:left; “>You need to have a complete SEO strategy in place if you want your website to rank among the top search results. According to Moz, search engine optimisation or SEO refers to methods used to increase the traffic, including qualitative as well as quantitative, to your website through unpaid or organic search engine results.

Search engines use complex algorithms for indexing and ranking purposes, and you need to work out ways that allow them to get the requisite information about your website. And, that is what SEO helps to achieve.

There are two main parts of SEO – On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO. And, to have a complete SEO strategy in place, you need to work on both.

Before getting into the details of off-page SEO, let us briefly touch upon on-page SEO.

On-page SEO

On-page SEO refers to the measures that are taken directly within the website to improve its search engine rankings. Some of the important on-page SEO tips are:

You need to optimise titles and descriptions.
You need to have proper URL structures.
Your website should have user-friendly navigation.
You also need to optimise internal links.
You need to optimise the images and format the text.
You need to have user-friendly 404 pages.
Your website should be mobile-friendly.
Your website should have a fast load speed.
You need to have top quality and fresh content.

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO, unlike on-page SEO, refers to the activity undertaken outside of your website to improve your website’s search engine rankings. Off-page SEO mainly revolves around these three activities:

Link building
Social media marketing
Social bookmarking
But before getting into these, let us try to find out the importance and benefits of off-page SEO.

Why is off-page SEO important?

For long the search engines have been trying hard to find out a way of throwing up the best results for the searcher. And, to get the best results, the search engines take into account the on-site SEO factors, a few other quality aspects, and off-page SEO. And, off-page SEO activities give the search engines a fair idea of how your website is perceived by others on the web.

A high-quality and useful website would have links (references) from other websites. Also, such websites are likely to be mentioned more by others on social media. And, these websites would be bookmarked and shared more among communities.

Benefits of off-page SEO

If you have a successful off-page SEO strategy in place, it has several benefits to offer to the website owners. And, some of these are:

It improves your website’s rankings – a successful off-page SEO strategy can improve your website ranking on the search engine results page.

It increases your traffic – A successful off-page SEO strategy can also increase the number of people visiting your website. As your rankings improve, your traffic is bound to increase.

It also increases your website’s PageRank – It is an algorithm which is used by Google Search to rank web pages on its search engine results. A successful off-page strategy can increase your page rank.

It gives your website more exposure – A successful off-page SEO ensures higher ranking which means more exposure for your website because it then gets more links, visits, and social media mentions/ shares.

Let us now look at link building, social media marketing, and social bookmarking.

Link building

Link building forms the core of off-page SEO activity. It is by far the most popular and effective off-page SEO method. When you build external links to your website, you get positive votes which help you climb the search engine rankings.

The more good quality links your website gets, the more search engines learn that your website contains relevant information which boosts your search engine rankings.

As mentioned earlier, link building is at the heart of off-page SEO. Depending on how you earn the link, they are categorized into three main types – natural links, manually built links, and self-created links.

Natural links – These are links when other website owners or bloggers link to your content (could be in the form of blogs, videos, images, products, etc.) because they find it useful and relevant for their readers.

Manual link building – You get these links through deliberate link-building activities. A manual link building exercise is a process of actively trying to increase links to a website. You get these links by asking customers to link to your website or requesting influencers to share your content.

Self-created link building – These are links that are created by adding a backlink in an online directory, blog comment signature, a press release with optimised anchor text, or forum. A few self-created link building strategies meander towards black hat SEO which search engines don’t approve of; hence you should tread cautiously.

Irrespective of how you get the links, those links that pass on maximum link juice (or link equity) to your website generally work well for your SEO strategy. And, some of the things that positively contribute to the link juice passage are:

The popularity of the site that you are linking to makes a big difference.
How relevant the linking site’s topic is to your site also makes a difference.
How the anchor text is used on the linking site also makes a big difference.
Another thing that matters is the freshness of the link.
The reliability or trustworthiness of the site that you are getting the link from also makes a difference.
The number of other links that are present on the linking site also makes a difference.
Another thing that makes a difference is the authority of the linking domain and page.

Social media

Social media is also a form of link building, and it is a part of the off-page SEO. What you need to understand is that almost all of the links that you get from social media sites are nofollow links, but it is not that they don’t have any value. Social media is gaining traction, and if done in the right manner, it can improve your rankings on the search engine results page.

Social bookmarking

Despite social bookmarking losing some ground of late, it is still an effective way to increase the number of visitors to your website. You can promote your content on websites like reddit.com, scoop.it, and stumbleupon.com, etc.

To get the desired results you need to work on both – off-page SEO as well as on-page SEO. Both have their relevance.

If off-page SEO activity is bothering you, you can get in touch with vStacks Software Solutions now. We will make sure that you have a smart off-page SEO strategy in place so that your website can rank high on the search results. You can also contact us for a complete SEO strategy.

10 e-commerce Website Design Mistakes You Should Avoid In 2019

August 29, 2019Web Design Companyroot

Digitisation has made the world a small market place. With the growth in the e-commerce vertical touching new heights, you can now buy and sell things you want from the place of your choosing by simply clicking on the mouse. More than half the world population now uses the internet, making it the most profitable market. However, it is not all that easy to climb the success ladder in the e-commerce business due to stiff competition.

If you want to do well in the e-commerce industry, you need to make sure that you do a lot of things right. And, one of the most important things that you need to concentrate on is the website design of your e-commerce platform. If your e-commerce website design is flawed, then it is difficult for you to climb the success ladder in the e-commerce industry.

You need to ensure that the design of your website is flawless because it is the face of your organisation. In case the quality of your website is poor, it is bound to disappoint your customers, which, in turn, will decrease your conversion rates. With so much competition in the e-commerce industry, you cannot survive if you don’t have an attractive, responsive, and flawless website design.

According to Statista, worldwide retail e-commerce sales amounted to 2.3 trillion US dollars in 2017, and the revenue is expected to touch 4.88 trillion US dollars in 2021.

The B2C e-commerce sales as a percentage of total retail sales in the United States in 2017 was 9% (Statista).

Online sales of physical goods in 2018 amounted to 504.6 billion US dollars which are projected to cross 735 billion US dollars in 2023 (Statista).

To climb the success ladder in the e-commerce business in 2019, the first thing that you need to do is avoid making these common e-commerce website design mistakes.

10 e-commerce website design mistakes you should avoid in 2019

A poor website design can adversely affect your e-commerce business. Customers these days have become smart, intelligent, impatient, and aware. And, if you don’t look after their interests well, they don’t think twice to shift to your competitor/s. After all, nothing is more important than offering a good user experience to all your customers. If your customers are not satisfied with you, they will stop doing business with you.

And, that is the reason why you cannot ignore your e-commerce website design. Good website design is the integration of function and appearance that leaves a lasting effect on your customers and prospects. But even today some businesses are not using user-friendly web designs, and the result is they are missing big time on revenue.

Here are top e-commerce website design mistakes you need to avoid if you want to beat the competition in the online arena:

1. Not making a responsive design – One of the biggest e-commerce website design mistakes is not to make your website design responsive. With the usage of mobile devices on the rise, if you don’t have a responsive web design, your customers will not do business with you. Responsive web design means that your website page should resize itself to fit the size of the screen of your customer’s device. Hence, your e-commerce page should fit the same way on all the mobile devices as it appears on the desktops and laptops. Also, if your website design is not responsive, it is difficult for you to climb the search engine rankings.

Therefore, make sure that your website design is responsive so that it does not frustrate your prospective customers.

2. Not paying attention to the load speed of your website – If your website takes too long to load, then it is a problem. Customers/ visitors don’t like websites that take too long to load. Moreover, search engines also have a special dislike for websites that take long to load. If your website takes more than 2 seconds to load, then you need to find out ways to improve the load speed of your website. Slow load speeds affect your rankings, conversions, and hence your overall revenues. A lot of things can hamper the load speed of your website like internet speed, hosting server, images on your website, etc. But one thing that can make a huge difference to the load speed of your website is the way your website is designed. It is while making the website that developers need to take care of the load speed.

Hence, you need to make sure that the load speed is taken into consideration from the start. You also need to ensure that your homepage loads much faster as compared to other pages because Google gives more importance to your index page.

3. Not having a trustworthy design – Trust is the backbone of e-commerce business. And, if you can’t instil trust among your buyers, they are unlikely to do business with you. One thing that can instil confidence and trust among your buyers is a trustworthy design. It is extremely important to have a trustworthy design.

You should hire a professional web designing company if you don’t have the necessary expertise in making a trustworthy design. Selecting the correct colour scheme for your online store, choosing the right animations, and design elements for your website are vital for making it trustworthy. You need to remember that your potential customers are smart enough to differentiate a trustworthy website from an untrustworthy one.

4 .Having an empty About page – The About page should have all the necessary information. It should provide information about your company, website, and your vision. Many e-commerce buyers are known to visit the About us page before proceeding further. If the About us page is incomplete or empty, then it is not possible to do well in the e-commerce business. Information on the About us page can instil confidence among your buyers.

Ensure that the About Us page has all the information that makes it look trustworthy. You should also put your contact information on every page. But make sure that the information is correct. Putting in multiple contact mediums like phone number, email, and fax is also helpful.

5. Having poor website navigation – Another e-commerce website design mistake is not to offer seamless website navigation. When it comes to the e-commerce business, offering your customers great website navigation is a must. Website navigation can directly affect your search engine rankings, and hence your traffic. If the navigation of your site is poor, it renders your high-quality content useless and can also increase the bounce rates. Hence, what you need to do is make sure that your website offers seamless navigation.

You should have a user-friendly navigation strategy to boost your conversion rates. Make sure that your product categories are very specific so that your customers find it easy to locate what they want. You can also include a recently added tab and a recently viewed product tab.

Not having a search option – If your e-commerce website does not have a search option, then it is a problem. Having a search feature on your e-commerce website can boost your conversion rates, and it also keeps your customers satisfied. With a search feature in place, your customers find it easy to locate the product of their choice quickly. And, if you don’t have a search feature in place, it can adversely affect your mobile conversions, search engine rankings, and organic traffic.

Always have a search option for your customers, and place it prominently on your e-commerce site. Having a search feature improves your customer’s user experience.

7.Having a complicated checkout design – Your e-commerce website should always have a simple checkout process. A complicated checkout process can frustrate your customers, and it can adversely affect your conversion rates.

Hence, your checkout process should always be simple. Showing the current information on your visitor’s shopping cart with complete fee and cost breakdown they need to pay is one way of simplifying your checkout design. Also, to avoid cart abandonment, make sure that the load speed of your checkout page is fast.

8 .Not paying attention to social media integration – Social media integration is a necessity these days because it helps build trust, boosts traffic, and improves your search engine rankings. Social media integration can help increase your sales as well. It is one of the most cost-effective ways of advertising your products. You can display your products on social media and insert a link to your e-commerce website to improve user engagement and increase sales.

Make sure that you prominently display your social buttons on your product pages to improve user engagement.

9. Unclear and confusing product descriptions – If you want to improve the user experience of your customers, you need to make sure that you don’t confuse your customers. The content you use to describe and explain the products on your e-commerce site is known as product description, and it is showcased in a manner that it appeals to the buyers. Your product description should not confuse your buyers; it needs to be clear and concise. If your product description is not clear and concise, it adversely affects your conversion rates.

If you want your conversion rates to increase, you should make sure that you have proper images and written text to describe your product. If that is not the case, your prospects can leave your site without buying anything from your e-commerce site.

10. Not having high-quality images – In the e-commerce industry, images play a crucial role. You, therefore, need to make sure that your website has high-quality images. That is the reason why you should hire a professional photographer so that they can pick high-quality images for your online store. To give your customers a clear insight of the products, you should make sure that you provide a magnifying feature inside your product page.

If you want a flawless e-commerce website design, you should get in touch with vStacks Software Solutions now. We have the necessary experience, expertise, and exposure to design a modern, trustworthy, responsive, and attractive website for your e-commerce platform. vStacks Software Solutions can also help you on the e-commerce hosting front.

Ways To Boost Your Website Visibility On Google Search Results

July 31, 2019SEOroot

It is difficult these days to climb the success ladder without a website. Businesses now understand the importance of having a robust online presence. But a website alone cannot guarantee you success. To do well on the internet circuit, you need to make sure that you rank high on the search engines. Talking of search engines, one search engine that you cannot ignore is Google. Google is the leader in the search market.

According to Search Engine Watch, Google has 72.48% of the world’s search market, which makes it the undisputed king in the search market. Whether it is a paid campaign or organic reach, you cannot do well as a marketer if you ignore Google.

If your website is not ranking high on Google search results, then you are missing big time on opportunities. Studies show that the first page of Google gets most of the web traffic, and the subsequent pages get very little traffic. It is, therefore, important for businesses to try and reach the first page of Google so that they can do well on the online arena.

So, what is it that you need to do to improve your website visibility on Google search results?

Google algorithms keep changing at regular intervals. Hence, if you want your website to rank on the first page of the Google search results, you need to be creative, persistent, and you should know how to utilise the resources smartly.

Here is what you should do to improve your website visibility on Google search results.

How to improve your website visibility on Google search results?

Though it might seem difficult initially to climb the search engine ranking and reach the top, if you work diligently, you can realise your goal sooner rather than later. Here is what you should do if you want to improve your website visibility on Google search results:

Try to understand the Google ranking algorithm – As mentioned earlier, the Google algorithm keeps changing at regular intervals. According to Moz, there are around 500 – 600 changes every year. You do get to know some of the major changes which Google makes in its algorithms, but the exact working is still in the realm of speculation by the industry professionals. Some of the major Google updates that it has announced in the recent past are the mobile-friendly update, Pigeon, Hummingbird, and Penguin.

You can check out Moz’s Google Algorithm Change History which organises updates in chronological order. Google Webmaster Central and The Webmaster are the other two places you should check out for the updates.

Make sure that your website is mobile-friendly – Estimates suggest that 60% of searches take place on mobile devices, and it is a growing trend. It is not surprising then that in the US more searches take place on mobile devices than on desktops. Though some of Google’s algorithms remain in the realm of speculation, Google is pretty clear about its mobile policy. If your site is not mobile-friendly, it cannot rank high in the Google search results.

You can check your site’s mobile-friendly status on Google’s Mobile-Friendly checker. In case your site is not mobile-friendly, then make sure that you get a responsive web design ASAP so that you can rank higher on the Google search results.

There is also a connection between mobile and local SEO search results. Google is very systematic when it comes to mobile and local search because it wants to connect consumers to brands without any hassle. Hence, you need to ensure that your Google My Business profile is current and that it offers the complete information.

Check out your present search ranking – If you want to improve your search ranking, you need to know where you stand currently. There are a lot many resources and tools available on the internet to check this out.

You can use SERPs.com to find out your website’s keyword rank. If you are using specific keywords in your page content, you can use SERPs.com to find out your rank. You can type in your keyword along with your site URL. There are various other options available as well like viewing at Yahoo results, selecting the device type like mobile or desktop, and checking out on local rankings by putting in your zip or city code.

You will get the following things on the results page – your site ranking for that particular term on search engines, your first website page that throws up in search results for that particular keyword, your average searches on a monthly basis, and the average cost per click for the keyword.

Find out your site speed as this is a major ranking factor for Google. You should not expect a high search position if your site speed is slow. Slow site speed also adversely affects your conversions and sales. Google is harsh on sites that have slow load speeds. You can run your site speed test to find the load speed of your website. Again, there are a lot of resources available on the internet that can help you out in checking the load speed of your website. You can check it out on Google PageSpeed Insights, WebPageTest, or Rigor.

You need to make sure that the load speed of your website is less than two seconds and for mobile devices, it should be less than one second.

You also need to find the health of your site. Do you think there is a sudden drop in your organic traffic? Or, is the thought troubling you that Google might have banned your site? Again, the internet offers you the resources that can check out details on five major categories – general site problems, mail server, blacklist, DNS, and web server. You can try MxToolBox Domain Health Report to check out the details. Click the boxes for each category to find out the errors in your website. If there are errors and problems, you can resolve it one by one.

You can also find out if you have been penalised by one of the major algorithm updates. You can try FE International’s Website Penalty Indicator tool.

One of the other factors that affect the site health is the domain age. In a study by SerpIQ, it was concluded that domain age does contribute to site ranking. What you need is a bit of patience because your search engine ranking should increase as your domain ages.

Keep a tab on all the right metrics – Keeping a tab on all the right metrics is yet another factor that affects your ranking. It gives you an idea what you need to improve on. Some of the vital metrics to check are:

Check out the organic traffic. You need to know the number of visitors that come to your site via Google. Organic search is the highest source of revenue for most of the verticals barring the media and the entertainment industry. In these verticals (media and entertainment), email, display, and referrals have a slight edge. You can go to your Google Analytics account to find out (check the acquisition channels report) the number of visitors coming to your site via Google.

Also, check out organic traffic conversions. It is important to keep a tab on the keywords that generate maximum traffic for your website. You can use SERP Scan to find out the keywords that convert organically for your website. When you do a SERP Scan, you get a 12-month report of the keywords that have generated organic traffic for your site.

Keep a tab on keyword ranking for commercial keywords. It is vital here to note the difference between informational keywords and commercial keywords. Informational keywords can generate organic traffic for your site, but it is difficult to convert them into buyers. Hence, the need to pay attention to commercial keywords. Generally, visitors for informational keywords are not in the mode to buy. For example, “home remedies to clear acne” is an informational keyword and “best acne products” is a commercial keyword. The bottom line is that commercial keywords are more likely to convert.

You can set up an SEO dashboard in Google Analytics so that you can keep track of all these vital metrics.

Work on your backlinks, and find out your present penalties and fix it – You should not expect your site to rank higher if it is not healthy. Link building has changed over time. Bad links will hurt your site irrespective of on-page SEO which also results in a penalty. It is therefore vital that you generate your links in the right manner. Links should not just appear to be natural; they need to be natural. What you need to do is identify unhealthy links and get rid of them.

The first thing you need to do is analyse your inbound links. Again, you have a lot many tools that will help you analyse the links. For example, you can use SEOprofiler or Majestic to analyse the links. The result will throw up some interesting facts about your backlinks:

Unique active backlinks – The result will tell you the number of links that affect your Google ranking directly or indirectly.
Nofollow links – You need a combination of dofollow links and nofollow links. Dofollow links are those that pass ranking value and nofollow links are that don’t pass ranking value.
Industry – The analysis gives an insight into which industry you belong to, and it helps you identify the relevant links that improve your backlink profile.
Link influence score – You can get to know how your links are influencing your search engine ranking.
Anchor text – It is the text that turns into your link and points to your page. It is recommended that you diversify your anchor text.

You also need to identify and get rid of the harmful or unnatural links. You can use Monitor Backlinks or Linkquidator to identify the links. You can get rid of the harmful links in two ways. You can get in touch with the site owner from where the link is coming from and request them to manually remove the link or ask them to add a nofollow tag. Or, you can use Google’s Disavow tool to remove the unhealthy and unnatural links successfully. But, doing this authorises Google to stop passing on the value from these links to your page.

Improve your on-page SEO with keyword research – Keyword research is an integral part of an inbound marketing strategy. Find out the keywords your audience uses to reach your site. Use your Google account and visit Google Keyword Planner. Next, you need to click “search for new keyword and ad group ideas” on the dashboard. Now, put in your main keyword and click on the “keywords” tab. A table gets displayed that will show your keywords and the search volume that it generates over a month.

Keyword research helps you to understand your target audience in a better way. You get to know what they (your target audience) want and how you need to present it to them. It is always helpful if you know your target audience well. And, when you give them the content that is relevant to them, it helps you climb your ranking. You can use Alexa to assess your audience demographics. With the help of keyword research, you can easily find out the intent of your buyers which helps you address conversion issues.

If you want to improve your Google rankings, you should always use a mix of informational and commercial keywords in your page content. You can use commercial keywords to target your buyers and use informational keywords to build a strong rapport with your audience who are yet to become your buyers.

Another thing which you should not ignore while researching keywords is long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords not just increase your traffic, but it also improves your Google rankings.

Also, if your competitors are ahead of you on the Google search results, then you need to check out the reason. And, it will not harm you in any way to copy their strategies and surge ahead on the Google rankings. You can use Google Keyword Planner because it gives you on the spot estimate of competitors’ keyword targets.

You can use keyword analysis to improve your content. The basis of keyword analysis is to know which are the right keywords to target. Keyword analysis is the starting point of the search marketing campaigns. When you know what qualified visitors type in to search your website, you can customise your landing pages to increase your conversions.

Work on on-page SEO to improve your Google ranking – You should do some meaningful on-page SEO changes to climb the search engine rankings. What you need to do is optimise your title tags. You need to ensure that all your title tags are unique, descriptive, and it should cater to your targeted keywords. Try not to repeat the keywords and title tags over and over again. When it comes to title tags, avoid using all caps and use pipes and dashes between terms to maximise its effect. Also, you should not overuse your keywords. Title tags that are relevant, contextual, and natural are valued more by Google. It is not recommended to use default title tags like “Home” or “Product Page” as these are viewed suspiciously by Google, and it is also not too convincing from your user’s perspective.

Though meta descriptions do not have any significant impact on your Google ranking, still they help in determining your search snippet and adds uniqueness which in turn can influence your click-through rate.

You should also use structured data markup or schema markup. It (schema markup) helps Google to understand your website in a better way, and it also drives additional traffic to your site. You can use Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper to implement schema markup on your website.

You can also build a search engine sitemap. It helps Google to know about the organisation of the content of your website.

Create good content by using your keywords – It has long been known that your content should be of high-quality, useful, and valuable to your visitors, and it ought to target a particular set of people. You should write resourceful, descriptive, and detailed content to improve your search engine rankings on Google by optimising informational keywords add descriptive meta description and title tags. With this process, you can attract many fans who share your content on the social media platforms which ensures that you get relevant and authoritative links. So, how can you write resourceful and detailed content? Here is how you should do it:

Back up your articles with accurate data to increase your traffic and improve your search engine rankings.
Storytelling is another way of captivating your audience which also increases your conversion rates.
You can also start your content with something that has a unique flavour which resonates well with your target audience.
You also need to share your experience, be it good or bad.
You also need to ensure that you add a call to action or CTA at the end of your content.
Also, make sure that your headline is catchy, attractive, and sharable. Shareable headlines are not only shared, but they are more likely to be clicked.
You should also try to add a number to your headline.
You can also invoke curiosity, create a multimedia experience for your readers, and get rid of duplicate content to increase your ranking on Google.
Always ensure that you build the links in the right way – You should focus on building your links in the right manner. You should use anchor text linking, which are links in between your text.
You should also use image links in your content.
Also, you can use editorial links in your content.
You also need to concentrate on scale link building. You can use link diversity to generate Google-friendly links and improve your rankings.

If you want to do well in the game of search results, you need to make sure that you work on all these factors. However, if you think you need help at any stage, you should get in touch with vStacks Software Solutions now. Our dedicated team of experts knows how to take your website up the search engine ladder.

vStacks Software Solutions has been working with clients in almost all the verticals, and we have delivered what we had promised, and we can surely do the same for your website.

Top Online Marketing Tips For Small Businesses

July 1, 2019Business Developmentroot

The internet has thrown open a lot of opportunities for businesses, both big and small. But it is a big boon for small businesses who have limited resources and budget to spend on their marketing activities. These days there are several ways of promoting your products or services, but without a doubt, the online method is the most effective way of marketing them. However, it is important for small businesses to allocate their budget to campaigns that give them better results.

Even small online marketing budgets can produce great results. If you want to succeed on the online circuit, you should have a smart online strategy in place and know the right channels that deliver great results for your campaign.

Both traditional, as well as online marketing strategies, have similar goals and objectives. Both strive to increase brand awareness and improve conversions. But when it comes to a successful online marketing strategy, you need to be bang on from content creation and delivery to sales. And, if you falter in any one of these, you should not expect to get great results.

So, what is it that you need to do to make your online marketing strategy a success?

Here are the top online marketing tips which you should follow, more so if you run a small business.

Top online marketing tips for small businesses

If you want to increase your reach and boost your revenues, it is vital that you have a smart online marketing strategy. Follow these online marketing tips to improve your business prospects and climb the success ladder:

Don’t forget to target the right kind of audience for your brand – As the owner of the business, you need to know who and which is your target audience and market. It is no doubt one of the most basic online marketing tip for small businesses. If you don’t target your online activity to your audience, all your advertising money can go down the drain. You should know the people who will be interested in buying your product or service. Based on the nature of your product, you can carefully determine your target audience. Keeping in mind the age, gender, social position, and financial condition of your target audience, you can find out to whom you can offer your product or service.

Define your business goals and create a budget – It is vital for small businesses to define their business goals first and then create a budget. As the owner of the business, you already have to keep an eye on sales, expenses, cash revenues, KPIs, and profits. Add to your list of things digital advertising milestones. It is not too difficult to track results for your website on the internet. Once you decide on what you want to promote, you can work towards achieving your goal by considering various metrics like the total number of visitors, channel-specific traffic, bounce rate, and customer retention rate.

When it comes to allocating budget to your online marketing activities, make sure that you select activities that complement each other and enhance the overall result. For example, SEO and content marketing can work well for your website. Discard the strategies that are not giving you positive results. You can even distribute small budget wisely so that it gives you the best results. The budget for digital marketing need not be a big constraint, what you need is careful selection of activities. Try to make materials that are multipurpose. You can also distribute social media and blog posts on different platforms with minimum tweaks which works out to be very cost-effective.

Make sure you build a smart brand – Customers today are wise and smart, and unless you offer them value for their money, it is difficult for them to do business with you. That is what most of your competitors are doing on the internet. If your social media accounts are sitting idle and your website is poorly designed, it will create a negative impression on your audience. Ensure that your website is impressive and your social media accounts are active, and you should also respond to the comments on your social media account quickly. Half your battle is won on the internet if you can do smart branding.

Also, ensure that you have a smart SEO strategy in place – You cannot think of an effective online marketing strategy without SEO. It is vital for businesses to rank high on the search engine results to improve your traffic, conversions, and sales. You should optimize the URL, add target keywords in your content, work on the local SEO, do proper link building, and write relevant blog posts to rank high on the search engine results. It is difficult to successfully climb the online marketing ladder without a smart SEO strategy in place.

Don’t forget social media – The importance of social media should never be underestimated. If you have a small business, and you want to use the online medium for maximum returns, then you need to have an effective social media strategy in place. Social media is the place where you can interact with your customers freely and frankly. You can also use social media to build a strong relationship with your customers. Try to find out what your customers have to say about your product or service, take their feedback, and try to work on it so that you can satisfy your customers. This is also the best way to improve the experience of your customers.

Pay attention to blogging – Blogs are an essential aspect of online marketing. You need to provide relevant, informative, and useful content to your customers. Blogging is one way that can help your readers know more about you and your product or services. If you keep writing relevant blogs, it can establish you as an expert in your specialty which, in turn, will promote your brand more effortlessly.

Use email marketing to increase your traffic – Email marketing is yet another aspect of online marketing which you need to leverage to your advantage. Social media and blogging alone will not help you; you need to get in touch with your prospects and customers on a one on one basis. And, email marketing is the best available option to keep in touch with your customers and prospects. You can offer a subscription to all those who are interested in knowing about your upcoming sale, updates, and special discounts.

Try to work out ways to get more local customers – Small businesses generally cater to the local audience. And, if you want to target your local audience, then make sure that you use Google Maps to your advantage. Provide your updated company details so that Google can track your business. Also, ensure that you have several positive customer reviews to attract local customers. You should also ensure that you publish local information on your blog which can include local news and gossips, hotel or restaurant reviews. You can also include geo-specific content where ever you can which allows people in a certain geographic location to see it first.

Make sure to optimize your Google My Business page for local SEO – You can use Google Maps to make your business more visible. People now can locate your business by simply typing in the name of your brand on Google search which provides them with a map that can take them to your location by revealing the best route.

You can use Google My Business to make your business more visible. You can get better rankings in the local search by optimising Google My Business page. With Google My Business page, you can also connect your YouTube account and keep your customers posted on your working hours as well as share images to brand your business. Also, you can use Google My Business to respond to the user reviews, handle adverse reviews, communicate with your customers, and do various other things.

Make sure you use PPC advertising – Businesses that are just starting their operations should use PPC advertising. It is difficult for newbies to generate visitors organically. And, that is where PPC comes in handy. You can select keywords that are closely linked to your product and display your ads in the sponsored links of the search engines.

Ask for online customer reviews and use it to your advantage – Online reviews can improve your search engine rankings. Customers on the internet have a habit of selecting products and services that boost rave reviews. This helps grow the reliability of your brand automatically. Positive customer reviews can also encourage other users to either buy from you or check out the details of your offerings. You should ask happy customers to leave a review about their experience. This can boost your search engine rankings and help attract more customers.

If you want an effective online marketing strategy for your small business, you should get in touch with vStacks Software Solutions now. vStacks Software Solutions has been in the digital marketing business for long, and we know what it takes to formulate an effective online marketing strategy.

vStacks Software Solutions is a one-stop for all your digital needs. Whether you want a smart SEO strategy, climb the Local SEO ladder, or optimise your Google My Business page, we can deliver on all the fronts and make your online campaign a roaring success.

What Should You Do To Improve Local SEO Ranking?

June 3, 2019SEOroot

People in the digital space are well aware of the importance of local SEO. And, if you are a local business owner, it is in your interest to rank high in the Google Local SEO and on Google Maps. When you rank higher in the Google Local SEO and on Google Maps, it can improve your website traffic and increase your conversions. As the search on the mobile devices increases, it becomes increasingly valuable for local business owners to rank higher in the Google Local SEO and on Google Maps.

Here are some statistics that prove our point beyond doubt:

According to Google’s local research findings, 50% of customers who do a local search on the smartphone visit a store within a day. And, 34% of customers who do a local search on their computer or tablet visit a store within a day.

Hence, if you are not getting the desired results on the Google search results, you need to worry a bit because you are missing out on opportunities. And, if you are not ranking high in the local Google search results, then there might be something faulty in your strategy. You need to fix the problem urgently so that you start getting visitors in hordes.

There are many reasons why you are not ranking high in the Google search. But before getting into the reasons, let us first understand a thing or two about local SEO.

What is local SEO?

Local SEO increases your business’s visibility on location-based searches. Local SEO has a geographical element which organic SEO might not necessarily have. You need to build signals of relevance around a particular location – a brick and mortar store. Organic SEO is a practice that more or less revolves around a website.

A Forbes study says that 95% of smartphone users use their device to perform local searches of which 59% visited them and 61% called them.

According to SearchEngineWatch, 70% of mobile users directly call a business from Google search results using their phone.

These figures prove the point without a doubt that local SEO is vital for businesses who want to generate quality leads.

Why you need to strive to put your business on Google’s local 3-pack?

If you work on a smart local SEO strategy, you can also appear on the Google’s local 3-pack. When it comes to search engine results, Google’s 3-pack is considered a coveted position.

Google’s local search results earlier used to show the seven most popular businesses related to your search in the form of a snippet. Referred to as the local 7-pack, it used to have the addresses, phone numbers, and direction links of businesses who found the place in the coveted position. But, for better user experience after the advent of smartphones searches, Google reduced its 7-pack to three results. And, this is now referred to as 3-pack.

A Moz study has found that 44% of the people who perform a local search clicked on a local 3-pack, while only 8% went ahead to load more local results. It is a clear pointer that most people get what they want from the 3-pack listing of Google.

Hence, if you want to improve your traffic and revenue, you need to make sure that you work on your local SEO strategy so that you find a place in the Google 3-pack listing.

But, if you are not finding a place in the top three spots in the local search results, then you need to slightly change your local SEO strategy so that you can beat the competition.

What you need to do to improve local SEO ranking

The local SEO follows most of the same cues as that of your main SEO strategies. However, you have to make some changes to the geolocation part of your SEO strategy to make things work in case of local SEO.

This is what you should do to improve your local SEO ranking:

Listing accuracy is important – Across all local listings, listing accuracy is important as it helps Google understand your location better, and this, in turn, provides quality signals towards Google map geolocation search queries. You should be bang on when it comes to listing accuracy with your name, address, and phone number (also referred to as NAP). While these are central to the listing accuracy and consistency, a few other items like website address, categories, reviews, and photos also provide quality cues to your listings.

If you want to create consistency, you should make sure that you sign up for primary networks and create listings for all of them. Though time-consuming, this can give you the control and flexibility to manage the listings. You can use a listing service to manage these listings. Taking the help of a listing service can help you if you have multiple locations because it submits to all the primary sources, both direct as well as indirect networks.

Get relevant local inbound links – Links from sources like media outlets, local sponsorships, local blogs, etc. can qualify as relevant local inbound links. Make sure that the local SEO links are geographically relevant to the place from where you do your business, topically relevant to the service you offer and are from websites that have a high-value natural link graph. But, ensure that you get links from trusted local media outlets, and try to earn links from authoritative websites and blogs that are relevant to your business/ product/ service.

Make sure that your website is authoritative on all the fronts – You should ensure that your website is authoritative qualitatively as well as quantitatively. On the qualitative front, you should make sure that your website design is appealing, it provides an excellent user experience, your content is valuable, and it is informative. And, on the quantitative front, you should make sure that the inbound links are relevant and authoritative and domain and page are also authoritative.

Make sure that your website design is great and it offers excellent user experience – If you want your visitors to mature, you should make sure that your website design is good and that it offers an excellent user experience. If your website design is not good, it lacks trust which will not impress your visitors, and they will leave even if they visit it. Your website should have an appealing design, which should be based on a sound strategy, it should include on-site SEO, good and informative content, and needs to have social integration.
Make sure that you get local citations and get it linked to your website – You should also ensure that you get local citations which need to link to your website. With local citations, Google can better understand your involvement within your local community which helps it define your business goals.

Ensure that your Google My Business Page is accurate and complete – Local ranking factors take a cue from your Google Business page which improves your SEO rankings and your overall rank on Google Maps. Ensure that your page is complete and that it is associated with an owner verified profile. You can request your clients to give you a review on your Google Business Page and copy it on your website for maximum mileage. You should also add photos of your business, employees, and products and ask your customers to add these photos if possible to your Google Page.

Make sure your website contains locally targeted content – Creating high-quality local content for your website can improve your local SEO rankings and earn local links and citations. You can create local guides for events or neighbourhoods, report on local events, take local photos, and interview local business owners. Your website content should be impactful and exhaustive and remember generic content is not of much use. After creating the local content, you can get in touch with local media outlets and blogs by tagging them on the social media and Twitter as and when you share your content.

If you are a business based out of Dubai, UAE and you want to boost your local SEO ranking, you should get in touch with vStacks Software Solutions.

vStacks Software Solutions is a digital marketing company, and we help businesses in local SEO and organic SEO.

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