Despite what you may have heard over the years, SEO is still here to stay.

In fact, in an era of inflated marketing budgets and boundless technical innovations, the art of maximizing your presence on search engines matters more than ever.

The long and short of it all is that SEO is still vital for spreading the word about your business, particularly if you’re trying to connect with local audiences. It’s one of the most consistent ways to drive traffic to your site, increasing your brand’s visibility and helping to generate warm leads over time.

But – and, we know, there’s always a “but” – just thinking about SEO won’t make it start producing results for your brand. Instead, you need to understand SEO – what it does, how it works, and what types of audiences it will bring to your site.

For one thing, it’s vital to understand the type of audience driven to your site via search engines – which digital marketers call organic traffic. In simplest terms, organic traffic refers to the volume of visits to your site that come through queries on search engines.

And now, more than ever, it’s important to recognize that your organic traffic consists of hyper-local audiences, mobile users on the go, and people looking for quick solutions to complex problems. These are all users prime for conversion – if you know how to help guide them into your funnel in the first place!

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When it comes time to get serious about an inbound marketing strategy, many brands start to hesitate, or lose heart. On one level, we understand their worries – launching a comprehensive and multi-faceted digital marketing strategy can be a daunting undertaking!

In particular, we’ve heard – and assuaged – one concern from many different parties over the years (even among other professionals in our own industry). It goes a little like this:

“Can my content actually directly generate revenue? Is creating content only good for spreading my brand messaging, or can I actually expect it to create conversions and sales?”

The answer? Of course your content can create direct value in the form of conversions – if you’re creating the right kinds of content!

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Businesses of all sizes, from across many different industries, can benefit from turning their attention to generating and curating positive reviews, as part of a process that we call online reputation management.

Time and again, studies have highlighted the remarkable power of positive reviews. For instance, did you know that 92% of customers read online reviews, and 68% trust a local business more if it has positive reviews? Or that brands typically see a 5-9% increase in revenue by improving their Yelp rating by just one star?

And one of the most important benefits of cultivating and sharing glowing reviews is (almost) as old as the internet itself. We’re talking about our geeky bread and butter: search engine optimization, or SEO.

What do positive reviews have to do with search engine success? Where do stars and SERPs overlap? How does getting more five-star reviews equate to greater rates of organic traffic – and more conversions – for your business?

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As recently as a few years ago, we had a better grasp on what “content” meant online. It referred to individual posts – blogs, vlogs, infographics – typically stored on your site and discovered or shared through different channels, including search engine rankings, social media, and email.

But today’s internet works differently. There are more social channels, more types of media to pick from, more content creators than ever before. And as a result, users’ preferences have changed over the years. The ways in which we consume content have changed fundamentally, for example; we multi-task more than ever, and are more likely to “skim” articles than read them in their entirety.

More broadly speaking, even the ways we think about content have changed fundamentally in recent years. It’s no longer discrete, but omnipresent, built into the very fabric of the way that we use the internet now. Readers and searchers have grown more savvy and media literate, and your approach to content creation needs to be as sophisticated as they are – crafted in a way that consumers find appealing and made accessible on the channels that your audience is already using.

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It’s hard to overstate the importance of having a website for your brand. Today, your next customers are connecting with businesses and doing their product research online, via search engines, review platforms, and social media networks - which can all help funnel users directly to your personalized landing page. 

Having a unique, handcrafted website that is functional, responsive, and optimized for search engines can go a long way in helping your business stand out from the crowd. Your brand website is also a powerful marketing tool. It’s your calling card, your elevator pitch, and your sales funnel, all rolled into one. Your website can help your brand reach new audiences on search engines like Google, and help convert curious visitors into lifelong customers. 

If you’re nearing the end of your website design and development process, you’ve probably been over all this - and then some! You’ve talked about design. You’ve discussed creating compelling calls to action and functional conversion tools. You’ve thought long and hard about the importance of UX. 

Now, it’s time to move into the last phase, and start fine-tuning your site so it’s ready to launch. It’s time to look over the little details, to make sure your website is going to appeal to audiences, and rank highly with search engines. Before your site goes live, it’s also important to start planning for the future, and develop a strategy for all of the maintenance, performance, and security tasks to come. 

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We've defined the importance of quality content on this blog before. Long story short? We believe that creating high quality content can help your business truly stand out on search engines and social media - making content creation the single most important thing you can do to get customers to your site.

But before you get cracking on that latest blog post, it would help to make sure it’s primed and ready to add value for your business. It’s important to always create content with a strategy. You should take time to identify the specific goals of your writing, and organize it in a way that will let you accomplish your chosen goal - whether that’s to expand your brand reach, to retain your existing clients, or, perhaps most important of all, to attract warm leads.

A lead is a party interested in your product, who is also able to eventually make the purchase. Sounds pretty critical to the success of your brand - let alone your content marketing - right?

Let’s look at how you can create content that helps you gain leads, from two different angles. First, we’ll dive into how you can make sure that you’re reaching an audience that’s eager to hear from you, and ready to sign on the dotted line (or at least fill in that lead capture form).

Then, we’ll focus in on the types of creative content you can craft to help sway different audiences, guiding them down your conversion funnel and helping create real value for your brand.

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In an age of fake news and clickbait content, authenticity for your brand on social media is is more important than ever. It may sound like a no-brainer, but there are missteps you can take that can turn consumers off, and stop your next customers from choosing to engage with you online.

But what does brand authenticity even mean when it comes to business?

Defined by the Journal of Consumer Psychology, brand authenticity refers to:

“the extent to which consumers perceive a brand to be faithful toward itself, true to its consumers, motivated by caring and responsibility, and able to support consumers in being true to themselves.”

The meaning is right there in the name: if your content marketing and social media efforts remain authentic, people will recognize you. The more they recognize you, the more likely they’ll be to engage with you. The more they engage, the more likely they’ll be to recommend you to friends and followers. We could keep going!

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In terms of the online buyer’s journey, a landing page works a bit like a gateway, guiding your prospective customers to take the all-important steps that get them from “curious visitor” to “lifelong customer.”

Whether your users find you from search, social media, or email, the landing page is a critical keystone – so it’s important to make sure that yours are up to scratch.

Here are three huge things to keep in mind as you begin the process of designing and optimizing your landing page for maximum impact:

1.) Know the Goal of Your Landing Page

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As anyone who knows us Geeks would tell you, we’re huge movie fans (as if our multiple posts about Star Wars weren’t enough to make that clear). And we’re from Chicago, home to some of the greatest movie critics ever, including Roger Ebert.

One of the most amazing things about the late, great Ebert was how much power he held with his reviews. His writing could make or break a film’s opening weekend. But more than that, he wielded influence with just his thumb. A simple “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” could forever cement the reputation of a movie, forever.

Well, today, critics like Ebert are everywhere. And they’re not just professionals reviewing movies - they’re everyday people, turning their texting thumbs to businesses like yours.

Across industries, reviews matter more than ever for the success of your brand. Reviews, rankings, and testimonials are crucial for getting your next batch of customers in the door, and they’re coming from more sources than ever.

So, what can you do to get more online reviews for your business? And how can you help ensure that these reviews are working in your favor? Read on!

The Importance of Reviews

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Whether you’re a big fish in a small pond trying to cultivate your own niche industry, or a small business looking to bring your own unique approach to an existing field, it’s important to stand out - for the right reasons.

The secret to standing out? It all comes down to one key – branding. More than a buzzword, branding is at the heart of what we do here as digital marketers, and developing a strong brand is one of the most important things you can do to ensure that your business finds and keeps customers.

There are many aspects to “branding” today; for our purposes, we’ll think of in terms of the content that your business produces, and how that content reflects who you are and what you represent. Practically speaking, when we discuss branding with our clients, we’re referring to logo design, photography, graphic design, and copywriting, all of which should be consistent and unified across your website, your email marketing, and your social media profiles.

So, why is having strong branding so important to your small business? Here are three big reasons to focus on creating your brand right now:

Stand Out in a Crowded Field

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