Posts in category: SEO

With companies investing more and more in Content Marketing, it is essential not only to establish means of communication but to ensure that this relationship between consumer and company is good and lasting.

There is a lot of talk these days about the digital presence of companies. As the Internet and its features advance, consumer behaviour changes, and the market must adapt. According to data from the Center for Studies on Information and Communication Technologies (Celtic), Brazilians connected to the Internet grew by more than 30% in less than ten years, going from 39% in 2009 to 70% in 2018.

The publication further shows that the number of users who buy products or hire services over the Internet has been growing since 2012. In 2018, the estimate was already 44 million people who purchased products or services. All data obtained by Cetic’s research can be checked through the online publication on its website.

This data shows us what is already easily detectable: the Internet, its applications, programs and functionalities have increasingly captivated the Brazilian public and, as a result, have been exerting significant influence at the time of purchase. In this sense, we can already note the importance of companies’ digital presence and how their business is invisible to all these potential customers.

How can I gain visibility on the Internet? Find out the first steps towards an efficient digital presence for your business:

1. Have a website: To gain space in a particular place (virtual or physical), we must first be present there. Having a website marks the existence of companies of different segments or sizes active in the Internet market. Even if you have social networks, create pages or advertise your products on e-commerce platforms, your business website is essential. It presents a figure of authority and does not hold you hostage to other platforms.
2. Social networks are not the enemy of your business, but work together with it, serving as a showcase for your services or products. The question you should keep in mind is: “Where will customers interested in the products on my virtual storefront be directed?” and then begin to understand the relevance of the existence of your business website.
3. Having your website makes it even easier for customers to find your brand and products, and it is possible to measure the data and results obtained with advertising campaigns, investments in SEO, Inbound Marketing and all other strategies that favour your business results. Business.
4. Consider the User Experience (UX), User Interface (UI) and responsiveness of your website: After starting to exist in the virtual environment through the creation of the website, it is essential to strengthen your company’s digital presence, taking into account the parameters of Google, the leading search engine worldwide. Through robots that scan your website, Google will rank your pages based on the relevance of the content produced and the user’s browsing experience.
5. As a result, two areas gained the attention of Digital Marketing and Design and, therefore, should be given due importance: UX (User Experience) and UI (User Interface).
6. UX is in charge of all issues related to the user experience, focusing on an intuitive layout that facilitates and directs the individual towards conversion. The entire information architecture involving your website’s functionalities and tools must organically prepare the user to become a customer, with prior studies on the target audience and persona.
7. In turn, UI is responsible for factors related to graphic design, relating to the appearance and usability of your website. The UI considers menu, submenu, colours, fonts and all other visual aspects that directly and indirectly influence user decisions and also contribute to the quality of your business’s digital presence.
8. There are still responsiveness standards established by the W3C that make pages load faster and adapt to different formats (desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones), playing a decisive role in the user experience and at the time of purchase. The W3C is an association that creates, regulates and interprets web content standards, so following its parameters is essential for a successful website.
9. Produce quality content, considering Google and W3C parameters: It is essential to have a good definition of the work carried out by the company, what its products and services are and how customers can purchase them (phones, chats, WhatsApp, email for quote quotes, among other means of contact).
10. To do this, texts must be prepared with a focus on SEO about the products and services offered by your business, aiming to attract customers. Readers focused on SEO follow parameters established by Google, considering word density and keyword repetition standards.
11. By developing textual content considering SEO standards and combining this with responsiveness, UX and UI, you will not only guarantee your company’s digital presence. Still, you will also bring significant visibility to your business on Google, a search engine that receives around 100 billion monthly searches.
12. Research more and more about Digital Marketing to strengthen your business’s digital presence. Like any area directly related to technology, Digital Marketing goes through constant adaptations and innovations, aiming to provide the best user experience and allowing them to find the desired products and services quickly, intuitively and qualifiedly.
13. To offer this on your website, it is essential to adapt to Google’s parameters, which are revisited with a specific frequency, depending on the user’s behaviour and needs. Knowing and investing in Inbound Marketing, Google Ads campaigns, and social media management are also decisive factors for your company’s efficient digital presence. As you can see, there is a lot of work to be done, so it is ideal to have a digital marketing department in your business or hire an agency specialized in this same segment.

Discover seven advantages of content marketing for your company!

Understand how content marketing on their websites and digital social media has positively impacted thousands of companies.

If you want your company to stand out in its segment, having a consolidated digital presence is no longer a differentiator but an obligation. In a study released by the Institute of Applied Research (Ipea) in 2019, it was found that more than 120 million Brazilians over the age of 10 had access to the Internet, representing around 67% of the country’s entire population.

Bringing it to the reality of digital marketing, this data means that more than half of Brazilians are users on the network and can become leads for your company. Leads are potential customers who come into contact with the contents of your marketing strategy and decide to take a step forward, providing email, telephone or some other type of contact and thus establish more direct and private communication with the customer. Your business.

To achieve this goal, it is essential to adopt content marketing in your digital strategy, which is the primary source of Inbound Marketing.

But what is Inbound Marketing?

In literal translation, Inbound Marketing means Inbound Marketing, and, in short, it consists of attracting potential customers to your business instead of you going to them. The main strategies adopted in Inbound Marketing to make this happen effectively are:

1. Content marketing;
2. Social media marketing (Social media marketing);
3. Search engine optimization (SEO);
4. Brand management (Branding).

Although there is a distinction in defining the strategies that must be adopted, they all complement each other and work harmoniously in practice. Therefore, in social media marketing, for example, SEO and content marketing techniques are adopted, and brand management must also be considered.

Speaking specifically about content marketing involves producing rich and valuable content for Internet users, who can become qualified leads for your business. At this point, it is essential to leave the company’s position and think like an ordinary person: where do you turn when faced with a simple everyday question? Indeed, most people’s answer will be “to Google”, of course.

Understand how “using Google” is essential to content marketing and how this strategy differs from traditional advertising.

Nothing is more uncomfortable – and inefficient than offering your product or service to someone uninterested. This situation worsens when you operate in a more specific segment, such as an industry that manufactures material x or distributes product y. But how could sales be made without active and intrusive communication in people’s lives?

It is a fact that, before the popularization of the Internet, the consumer profile was much more passive in advertising. Commercials bombarded people on TV and radio between programs, advertisements in newspapers and magazines, and advertising on billboards and flyers, and the advertisements could have been more efficient in reaching precisely the interested people.

Nowadays, customers have become “empowered” over the Internet and digital social media in general, in the sense of having a more active voice – both to praise and to complain. Target audience segmentation has also been made easier with metrics, data and tools that allow a filter for your company to be found by people genuinely interested in your product or service.

Considering the information described above, we have separated seven advantages of content marketing in your company’s digital strategy:

1. Attracting your potential customers: With the advent and popularization of the Internet, the way of acquiring products and services has changed a lot. Search with the desired term, and Google will provide millions of results in milliseconds, and that’s where content marketing comes in.
2. Through a study of your target audience and competing companies, essential keywords for your business are defined, and from there, work is carried out to position your website, using SEO techniques in the production of articles and texts so that your company appears on the first page of Google.
3. Consolidation of the relationship with consumers: It is not enough for people to find your service or product; it is necessary to develop a work known in Inbound Marketing as lead nurturing, which consists of relating to your buyer (or potential client) so that he purchases (or continues to purchase) products or services from your company.
4. This consolidation of the relationship can – and should – happen at all stages of the sales funnel, identifying the pain points (problems) of these people and providing practical and necessary solutions for them. Furthermore, producing rich and valuable content contributes to our third advantage: brand authority!
5. Creating an image of reference for your company: By offering practical and necessary solutions to people’s pain points, they will begin to see your company or brand as an authority figure in that segment since you have invested in producing prosperous content marketing with the creation of texts, blog posts, videos, infographics, landing pages, podcasts and other content that generates value for your brand.
6. This way, they can resort more often to their website texts, blog posts, social networks, videos and other resources used in their content marketing strategy.
7. Consolidating the relationship with the consumer beyond “buying and selling”: In the current context, with interaction that is only growing on social media, people no longer want a brand based only on buying and selling relationships and have nothing else to offer. They look for companies that provide experiences, interactions and sensations with their services and products and also with the creation of a close and humanized relationship.
8. Some startups, for example, invest not only in their products and services but also in direct efforts to ensure that any customer problems are resolved quickly so that the entire experience with the brand is positive.
9. Possibility of the emergence of “brand defenders”: Who has never liked a service or product so much that they left talking about their positive experience and doing word-of-mouth marketing?
10. According to Sprout Social, an American social media marketing software company, these people are brand advocates. These customers defend and promote your brand spontaneously because of their great experience. This experience can occur through offering valuable content on your website, a helpful product or service or good service when faced with a customer difficulty.
11. Still, according to the article, brand advocates provide a series of benefits, helping, for example, in the organic growth of the brand and demonstrating the (non-financial) value of its products and services.
12. It is a way of educating your customer when making a purchase decision. By paying attention to all factors related to the sales funnel and the buyer’s journey, it is possible to guide, educate, entertain and influence your customer in decision-making, indicating which product – and the right time – for purchasing it.
13. Therefore, content marketing must have well-defined parameters to monitor the sales funnel. A top-of-the-funnel text, for example, should have a much more educational character since the person still needs to prepare to learn about your product or service, just as bottom-of-the-funnel content should show that your company is the best alternative for the customer.
14. Creating a traffic network on your website and blog: Finally, the more content produced for your business, the more keywords will be indexed by Google and the greater the chances of people finding your company.
15. Creating a good network of links in the texts is essential, directing the user to other articles on your website or to reliable external websites, which can increase your relevance. The more questions your potential customer has answered through your content marketing, the less likely they are to have to look for answers on another blog or website.
16. We hope we have shown some of the many advantages of content marketing for companies. We have also prepared another series of articles about the importance of digital presence and teaching how to use SEO to attract more customers!

Please find out the purchasing journey and how it helps your digital marketing strategy!

There is no doubt that Google is the primary tool for ensuring visibility for your business website: the search engine receives billions of searches per month worldwide, connecting people and companies mainly through Inbound Marketing, a digital marketing strategy in which the user/ customer is “attracted” to your product/service. Thus, Inbound Marketing challenges traditional advertising methods, which work with intrusive and interruptive advertising to attract attention and persuade people using various resources to make them buy.

For Inbound Marketing to be well applied in your digital marketing strategy, it is ideal to know who is producing the content and which content is most appropriate according to the stage of your brand/company’s relationship with the consumer, and that is where you enter the purchasing journey.

What is the purchasing journey?

Regardless of who you are, it’s very likely that you’re in one of the phases of the buying journey (even if you don’t want to buy anything!). This is because the journey covers not only people considering purchasing a product or service but also people with needs and problems in general.

It is essential to know that some consumers have yet to be ready to buy a product or service, but they are still crucial to your business. Inbound Marketing consists of producing educational and valuable content so that your company can influence behaviour and decisions in a didactic way, positioning itself as an authority figure for its prospects and customers throughout the purchasing journey.

The purchasing journey directs users gradually and indirectly through the content of your website to convert them into customers and is divided into four essential steps:

1. Learning and discovery: the person is not fully aware of their problem or need and wants more information about something;
2. Problem recognition: after doing some research and reading materials, identify the existence of your problem/need;
3. Consideration of the solution: upon identifying the problem or need, the consumer begins to evaluate possible solutions;
4. Purchasing decisionFinally, after analyzing the options available on the market, the consumer makes a decision.

Realize that by providing rich and valuable content on your website, you will actively participate in each phase of the buyer’s journey, creating links between the stages and using different resources so that, in the end, the consumer considers your products and services as the best alternative.

The purchasing journey in practice: learning and discovery stage

Suppose you own a gym and want to increase your results using Inbound Marketing and content production considering the purchasing journey. A good theme for texts focused on the first stage, learning and discovery, would be: “The health benefits of physical exercise” as:

1. This content is didactic and helpful and provides valuable information to the user;
2. There is no publicity for your academy at this time. Remember that the person is not looking for a service or product yet;
3. You demonstrate the benefits of your service without even promoting your brand or company.

The purchasing journey in practice: problem recognition stage

After reading the text “The health benefits of physical exercise”, the person may realize that they are leading a very sedentary life and, therefore, will delve deeper into this subject. In the problem recognition stage, your blog may suggest content that teaches how to perform some physical exercises at home, for example, again offering rich and helpful information:

1. You provide the customer with more information about their problems and needs and even suggest some alternatives for them;
2. It feeds the need for your service indirectly by telling them how they can exercise at home.

The purchasing journey in practice: solution consideration stage

Continuing the purchasing journey, we reach the solution consideration phase. Some people who read the content may realize that doing exercises at home can be a lot more work, whether due to the available space, the need for equipment and devices or the absence of a teacher to guide them.

When considering the solution, you begin to exercise greater power over the user’s decisions and will be able to provide more prosperous and more detailed material (such as an ebook) that will have the theme: “Is it better to do physical exercises at home or the gym?”, always highlighting the benefits of physical exercise at the gym.

Because the ebook is more descriptive and takes longer to produce, you can ask for something in return so that the user has access to this content (name and email, for example), which will help in capturing leads, ensuring means to contact the person and start offering your service. In this step:

1. The relationship with the prospect is already more solid, and if it has reached this stage, they see your brand as an authority figure within the segment;
2. They will probably be fine providing information such as name and email, as they already know about your blog.

The purchasing journey in practice: purchase decision stage

Finally, the long-awaited stage of the purchasing decision arrives: at this stage, you show all the differences between your products and services and use various tools, such as CTA’s (Call To Action) and mental triggers, to convert the prospect into a client. Still talking about the gym, you can offer benefits such as a free period with trial classes, discounts on monthly fees or exemption from registration fees.

Note that, to be efficient, it is necessary to align with the stages of the sales funnel, which speak directly to the purchasing journey and, to produce this content, a humanized language is essential (creating a closer relationship with the consumer), in addition to adopting SEO standards that will benefit you when positioning your content on Google, ensuring the necessary visibility for your blog and website.

It is essential to know that people can find you at any stage of the sales funnel, so the content must be well-linked, always guiding your prospect so that he becomes a qualified lead. Thus, the purchasing journey will help identify the right time for the sale, who is eligible to receive your offer, personalize customer relationships and optimize your sales team’s strategies.

To further deepen your knowledge of digital marketing strategies, see the advantages of implementing content marketing on your website here!

Inbound Marketing or Outbound Marketing? Understand the best way to attract customers!

According to the “Connected Brazil – Media Consumption Habits” survey by IAB Brasil in partnership with comScore in 2014, it was found that the Internet is the most crucial channel for Brazilians and has even surpassed offline media (e.g. TV, newspapers, magazines and radio). Another study, released by Ancine, demonstrated a significant retraction in open TV in the audiovisual sector, according to the article in Correio Braziliense, recording a drop of more than 20 percentage points.

With this, it must also be considered that traditional advertising, widely used as an Outbound Marketing resource, has a different effect on the public than it did 15 or 20 years ago.

In the past, when watching soap operas or TV shows, we had nothing to do other than change the channel during the commercial break. Nowadays, several tools distract the public: we can look at the Instagram feed, Facebook feed or chat on WhatsApp, which leads us to reflect on the efficiency of this type of advertising nowadays.

It is a fact that this strategy still provides significant results for companies and brands, which justifies millions of reais invested in advertising campaigns. Among other factors, this is because the consumption of television media has become a habit in our country, especially among older people. Still, it is possible to observe that this scenario has been changing and losing space to the Internet and digital marketing over recent years, especially among young people.

Rise of the Internet and Inbound Marketing as a tool to attract more customers

Inbound Marketing is an alternative to the traditional advertising methods used in Outbound, in which the brand plays an active role in prospecting new customers, requiring a high average cost to acquire these customers and being unfeasible for small and medium-sized companies. It also provided tools to segment the audience more precisely. It enabled the emergence of content marketing as we know it today, making customers come to your business rather than you going to them.

In itself, Inbound Marketing is a key to attracting more customers through digital marketing and can be defined, in free translation, as “Attraction Marketing”. Using a set of keywords relevant to your business, content marketing work is developed (based, in large part, on the production of textual content – blog posts, texts for websites and e-books) so that, when users search for these specific terms, your website will be well positioned in the search rankings and gain the necessary visibility.

To attract customers using digital marketing resources and Inbound Marketing, it is necessary to produce rich content that generates value for the user, considering SEO standards and the principles of the purchasing journey.

What are the main differences between Inbound and Outbound Marketing?

Outbound Marketing (in literal translation) consists of disseminating promotional actions and campaigns of the company, brand or product mainly through conventional media, such as TV, radio, billboards, magazines, pamphlets, and newspapers. Still, it can even be used on the Internet, depending on how this action is constructed.

The critical thing to know about traditional advertising used in Outbound Marketing is that it is characterized by being massive (that is, it can reach thousands or even millions of people at the same time) and imposing (even if you are not interested in that product or service, it will appear through advertisements on your home TV, in the newspaper you are reading or in the introduction of the YouTube video you are about to watch).

Inbound Marketing, in turn, consists of a series of strategies aimed at mobile devices, computers, notebooks and tablets to obtain customers in an organic, didactic and personalized way based on four steps: attract, convert, close the sale and delight the customer. Customers, considering this as a cycle that must be repeated, nurture the relationship so that the customer buys and, if they have already purchased, repurchases your products and services on other occasions.

Among the main Inbound Marketing tools are content marketing with blog posts, email marketing, websites, podcasts, e-books, infographics, whitepapers, social networks and SEO. These resources must be combined and structured, guiding the user through the purchasing journey and the sales funnel in parallel to achieve success in your strategy.

After all, what is the best way to attract customers, Inbound or Outbound Marketing?

It is essential to know that none of these strategies is right or wrong, as both generate results, each in its own way. What must be considered is which one best suits your business, your brand and your products or services and for this, you must keep in mind what type of relationship you want to build with your audience if you wish your brand to have good engagement, how it wants to interact with its customers and which way will generate better results.

In Outbound Marketing, you can even have a large audience at your disposal with TV and radio, but, on the other hand, you don’t only direct your efforts to people interested in your product or service; interaction with the public is shallow, as they are passive in front of the advertisement; communication becomes less and less personalized, as it is mass-marketed and when it comes to advertising on billboards and other “out of home” media, it is impossible to measure the effectiveness of these actions in isolation.

Going against this model, Inbound Marketing proposes optimized, segmented and assertive strategies, proving to have the best cost-benefit when compared to traditional marketing; as the Exame article points out, it is estimated that Inbound Marketing generates savings of more than 50% compared to conventional methodologies and an ROI (Return on Investment) of more than 250%.

Why is Inbound Marketing the best cost-benefit?

Inbound Marketing is usually much more accessible and viable than a TV commercial, especially at a time of high audience. Furthermore, on the Internet, with big data, it is possible to segment your product according to gender, age group, location and other specificities, avoiding a heavy and massive investment in which there is a high chance that people will not be interested in the product in the advertisement shown.

As content is developed according to searched keywords, this is not an imposing strategy: users will only find your website if they search for related terms. Measuring results in Inbound Marketing is also easier. It can be done in real-time, making it possible to track which referrers are on your website and how many clicks you got and translate this data into formulas and metrics.

Communication with the public in Inbound Marketing also occurs more openly and horizontally. With the different means of communication available, building lasting and horizontal relationships and generating greater customer engagement is increasingly more accessible!

Why include email marketing in my digital strategy? Discover the advantages

Email marketing, in short, is the use of email as a company’s connection and advertising tool with its consumers and leads. You’ve probably already received an email like this with offers on airline tickets, hotel accommodation, promotions and even confirmations of online purchases.

By establishing direct contact with their customers and potential customers, companies can also have greater control, with greater predictability of reach and communication in personalized formats. It’s another way to strengthen the relationship with the customer, nurture your leads, and promote content in general, such as blog posts, infographics, webinars, e-books and other rich and valuable materials, boosting, albeit indirectly, your brand and its sales.

For a long time, email marketing was not a resource well used by companies, serving only for mass shootings, which, in turn, began to be frowned upon, both in the eyes of the public and by the email servers themselves. Email. Currently, some standards must be followed to develop an efficient and constructive relationship with your customers and leads using this resource, even so that your email marketing is not penalized.

Before anything else, creating a good network of contacts with email marketing is essential!

Remember to never, under any circumstances, buy email lists. Some companies use this alternative to boost sales or publicize a new service/product. Still, it is essential to know that, in addition to this practice being considered a crime provided for by the Penal Code for violating people’s privacy, it is also a bad strategy for gaining customers or leads.

This is because your email list must be built with the consent of the people holding those respective email addresses. By having this permission, you are also certifying that the user is, in fact, interested in receiving your content and that they are part of your target audience (even if, in principle, they have no interest in purchasing your services and or products).

This organic construction of the email list can occur in different ways, as we will see below, with the most common resources for this capture.

How do you consolidate an organic and assertive email list?

We already know that in Inbound Marketing, the famous “Attraction Marketing”, the customer or lead comes to you, not the other way around. Email marketing couldn’t be any different: generally, on blogs, to have access to more valuable content that demands more significant commitment in its development, it is common for companies and brands to request the customer’s or lead’s email so that they can receive these materials.

Generally, this content is e-books, infographics, webinars, video lessons, spreadsheets, templates and a series of other materials that may be valuable to your persona. You may notice that it is widespread to use landing pages or pop-ups while reading an article and, most of the time, these tools are located in strategic parts: they can appear when opening a report, in banners at the end of articles or even in specific excerpts of the text, providing more information about a subject that was cited comprehensively.

With this, customers and leads are won over and usually permitted to receive your emails, as they will receive a “reward” for having granted this information. In addition to helping to capture and convert leads, email marketing is a fundamental tool for establishing lasting and valuable relationships with people.

After consolidating the email list, what type of content can I send to registered users?

Email marketing offers a series of possibilities so that you can provide rich and valuable materials to customers and leads. You can initially send a welcome email and, subsequently, periodically, promotional emails about your products or services and informative emails, always personalizing the content and directing it to people who may be interested more quickly in that material.

It is essential to pay attention to the frequency of sending these emails, not filling up users’ inboxes and creating intervals that are too long for them, not even to remember that they signed up to receive your content. It should also be considered that the frequency is standardized and that these emails are customized in some way so that the people who receive them establish a more humanized and personal relationship with your brand/company.

Email marketing is still essential for nurturing and educating your leads, preparing them to become customers on future occasions. It is also necessary in the post-sales phase so that consumers return to purchase your products and services more often.

Furthermore, it is worth highlighting that it is an excellent cost-benefit tool, as having many resources to put email marketing into practice is unnecessary. You will only need the email marketing tool, a domain and a professional to develop these emails.

You can, for example, send emails weekly to promote new content published on your blog, newsletter and other materials you want to promote.

What are the characteristics of good email marketing?

In addition to email marketing having a very characteristic and unique formatting, it is natural that they usually present short texts, a cleaner visual interface and a language that suits your audience perfectly, in a friendly, conversational tone, you know?

To build good email marketing, it is essential to have information about your persona, establish what type of content will be sent to each customer profile with the segmentation of your email base, and define goals and objectives, in addition to having a calendar for shipping. To contextualize your emails, you can take advantage of commemorative dates (Christmas, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, and Black Friday, among others).

This way, your business can succeed using email marketing strategies, consolidating a lasting, humanized and close relationship with your audience, converting and qualifying your leads, and establishing contact with consumers in the post-sales phase.

What is a Black Hat? Discover the set of techniques that can harm your website’s positioning!

In an increasingly competitive and aggressive market, companies and brands on the rise that wish to increase visibility in search engines like Google tend to adopt equally aggressive techniques to ensure good organic positioning in the short term. However, care must be taken so that the “rebound effect” doesn’t occur and these search engines penalize your website, so my first tip is: avoid Black Hat!

But what is Black Hat, after all?

Do you remember the Bang Bang movies, with bad guys and good guys on top of their horses in the Wild West of the USA? Well, the villains were generally represented wearing black hats, while the good guys wore white hats, right?

Bringing this into the light of digital marketing and, above all, SEO, black hat SEO is read as the aggressive use of SEO techniques without proper contextualization, with the sole and exclusive intention of positioning the website well, without considering the user experience. User, whether in the visual or textual aspect, while white hats refer to good practices in SEO.

Practices such as excessive repetition of keywords, duplicate Content, spam in comments, purposeful creation of websites that link to yours to gain positioning and many others are harshly condemned by Google, which has been increasingly improving its algorithms to detect (and punish) companies that act this way.

Adoption of SEO techniques x user experience: how to please your persona while meeting Google’s parameters?

Robots have been increasingly used in companies and industries across all sectors. Imagine how useful they are in technology in companies like Google.

Every time you upload Content to your website, Google takes time to index it and uses robots that “scan” the texts, images, links and other resources used on the pages to check the Content. How relevant that Content is to the keyword in evidence.

As these robots are not human, some SEO techniques that Google establishes to define whether a website is relevant are more accurate than abstract. One is based on keywords: if you are talking about white blinds, this term must appear a few times in the text so the search engine understands that your text contains relevant Content about white blinds.

Based on this principle, people believe that repeating keywords excessively in texts can guarantee good positioning, but this is not the case: in addition to this excessive repetition leaving your reader with a heavy appearance and not favouring reading, Google also penalizes this practice, establishing a rate of, at most, 2% of keywords about the rest of the Content.

In reality, we can say that one thing is a consequence of the other: if your website does not provide a good user experience, Google will penalize it, so say no to Black Hat!

Find out the leading Black Hat practices and learn the respective white hats!

1. Too many keywordsAlready described previously, the first technique is keyword stuffing, which consists of excessive keyword repetition throughout the text to guarantee positioning. This practice is one of the oldest used since the relationship “relevance of the text — use of keywords” became known.
2. By providing a negative experience to the user who receives this Content, Google condemns the practice, and your text may even gain positioning for a while. Still, when search engine robots detect an excess of keywords, your website will be penalized and may even be banned from the biggest search engine in the world.
3. As an alternative to this, the ideal is to use keywords in a quantity that makes sense to your text, avoiding excessive repetition in the same paragraph. It is also worth using synonyms for the keywords, ensuring more fluid reading for the user and guaranteeing Google’s approval.
4. Copied Content is condemned in academia and even subject to penalties under the law; copying Content violates copyright principles, in addition to being a form of Black Hat that brings no relevance to your website, quite the opposite: it guarantees positioning to a site that published that Content first while penalizing the site that copied the information.
5. We often encounter exciting pages on the Internet, with content aggregating and bringing references, data, research and testimonials. However, you must get original information for your business, even to give greater authority to your persona.
6. Try to read about the same subject from different sources and extract information from reference sites for that topic, linked to national agencies, regional councils, national data and research institutes, among others. It is also important to always cite the sources from which that data came, giving greater credibility to the information and creating a good network of links that direct the user to reliable and relevant sites, which is also well-regarded in the eyes of Google.
7. Hidden Content or linksMany websites not only use Black Hat techniques but also try to hide this produced Content, camouflaging it with tiny fonts or leaving texts and links with the same background colour as the website’s layout.
8. Hidden texts or hidden links may even go unnoticed in the eyes of the user, who may only see an ample blank space. Still, there is no way to deceive Google: the search engine has enough mechanisms and robots to detect these practices, which will bring no good result for your business, penalizing it.
9. Insert reliable links on your website, and do not direct your user to malware (malicious Content with spam, Internet scams, adware and viruses that harm your user). This way, your website will gain relevance, and users will give credibility to your brand and business; after all, if even the German BMW was already penalized for the practice of Doorway Page in 2007, it’s better not to risk it, right?
10. Doorway Pages e Cloaked PagesStill in an attempt to manipulate search engines, Black Hat practices can go further, creating pages that are mere “gateways” with no value to the user that unduly direct them to another page that needs to gain visibility, which, in turn, it will be overly optimized without providing relevant Content to the user as well. This technique is known as the doorway page and is firmly rejected by Google.
11. In the same direction as the Doorway Page, there are cloaked pages, hidden pages that show one type of result to the search engine and another to the user to deceive search engines and gain good positioning. Cloaking and creating doorway pages are Black Hat SEO practices that should be avoided on your website.
12. Create pages that direct to correct links, and do not try to deceive or manipulate search engines. When this is detected, your site will significantly drop in positioning and may suffer punishment or even ban from the platform.
13. Paid or exchanged links between websites, paying for another website to publish your website’s link somewhere, or making exchanged disclosures (promoting site x on your website and site x promoting your website on theirs) are also Black Hat SEO practices that are not well regarded by the Google search engine, which penalizes such procedures and has tools to identify them.
14. As SEO work is based on organic results, there is nothing like creating an organic network of contacts and receiving publicity naturally due to the quality or relevance of your product or service.

Many people might tell you it’s easier to do it the “wrong” way, but those rules don’t apply to SEO. Before anything else, you need to know the 

SEO, discover how to use it to attract more customers!

In 2015, the then senior vice president of Google Inc., Amit Singhal, stated at the Code/Mobile Conference that, for the first time, Google searches on mobile devices surpassed desktop searches, which represented a significant change in the way people relate to technology – and, above all, the Internet. In the same interview, Singhal brought measurable data on the number of these searches: per month, more than 100 billion searches are made on Google.

Amid this exorbitant number, there is an infinity of research carried out by people worldwide. Focusing on the Brazilian public to expand only a little, these searches range from the BBB vote, the latest season of Game of Thrones or the launch of the iPhone 11, as shown in Brazilian Google Trends 2019. To “separate the wheat from the chaff”, as we know it in popular expression, Google defines a series of mechanisms based on studies, algorithms and metrics, assigning relevance to the results and ranking them, and that is where SEO comes into action.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is, in literal translation, search engine optimization and, in practice, consists of a set of techniques applied in the construction and development of websites that make it organically relevant in this race for recognition. And visibility within digital marketing. As the leading search engine used worldwide is Google, these techniques are applied according to the parameters established so that your website has good positioning in front of many potential consumers.

SEO techniques include the textual content of your website (created from a list of keywords read as relevant to your segment) and the website’s development (using resources that make the user experience more fluid, safe and efficient on desktops and mobiles). Therefore, there must be coherence on both sides.

Considering this scenario, we have put together some tips on how to use SEO in your business and boost your company’s results when defining keywords and improving your website’s interface:

1. Define your target audience: Most mistakes in digital marketing strategies come from a need for more knowledge of the companies’ target audience. To illustrate, let’s assume that you have a company that maintains elevators. Therefore, your target audience is not people who want to buy elevators but those who already have elevators and are suffering from operating problems or want to carry out maintenance. Periodic to identify possible failures, right?
2. The definition of the target audience will comprise a group that supposedly has common interests as consumers and relates to the products and services offered by your company; therefore, factors such as age, gender, location and consumption habits must be considered. Considered. This further helps with the SEO-oriented sales funnel because if your company only serves the state of São Paulo and does not intend to expand its work, it is not advantageous for the pages to be well positioned in Belo Horizonte.
3. Know your target audience for keyword definition: Still talking about the elevator maintenance company, you could imagine that the most important keyword in this business would be “elevators”, right? Well, not exactly.
4. In addition to these searches with generic terms (called short-tail keywords) being difficult to position organically due to the high competition, they are not effective, as someone who searches for “elevators” is not necessarily looking for elevator maintenance: This person may be interested in knowing who invented elevators, where to buy elevators, or how the elevator system works.
5. Note that even if your website was well positioned with this word, it could receive several hits that would not generate practical conversions (people who do not need elevator maintenance and, consequently, would not hire your service).
6. Pay attention to your website’s speed, fluidity and responsiveness: Do you remember that, at the beginning of the text, we obtained the information that, in 2015, access to Google via mobile devices surpassed searches made on desktops? Therefore, your business website must perform well, regardless of whether it is being viewed on laptops or smartphones.
7. The concern with the website’s performance on desktops or mobiles is known in digital marketing as responsiveness. It translates into the perfect adaptation of resolutions in different interfaces, adapting the size of fonts, images and resources to facilitate reading. Sites like PageRank or PageSpeed from Google Developers allow you to evaluate the relevance and speed of your website, respectively, being good references to know if you are going in the right direction.
8. Keep in mind that SEO work is gradual: Unlike Google Ads (pay-per-click campaigns), in which there is a direct investment in keywords with established deadlines for them to remain on the first page of Google as ads, SEO texts gain relevance progressively, considering all the factors described above and also the length of time your website has been domain.
9. However, when thinking about the medium or long term, SEO techniques offer the best cost-benefit since the pages on your website will be well positioned for an unlimited period, and regardless of the number of hits obtained, you will not have to pay a proportional value.
10. If your business does not have a digital marketing department, hire a specialized agency. Outsourcing involves transferring some departments’ management and activities to specialized companies. Generally, the outsourced sectors have no direct relationship with the company’s core business. In the banking sector, for example, activities related to cleaning and security can be outsourced, facilitating the management and control of expenses.
11. Following the outsourcing trend, there are digital marketing agencies dedicated to providing solutions and innovations, developing the entire strategy for generating leads and increasing results, guaranteeing ROI (Return On Investment) and leveraging your sales through the use of techniques SEO, Google Ads, social media, inbound and email marketing.

E-commerce: find out what it is, its importance and advantages for your business!

E-commerce, which was already undergoing progressive expansion over time, has recently been leveraged by factors such as the global pandemic and social isolation, which require adopting strategies to reinvent itself in the market so your business survives. Therefore, if you want to know more about e-commerce, let’s try to explain.

What is e-commerce?

In summary, e-commerce (in free translation) consists of sales made through electronic devices, such as notebooks, smartphones, tablets and others.

The consumer can access products and services through your company’s website or application, including their information, values ​​and technical characteristics. They can make payments with credit cards, bank slips or other online payment methods, such as PicPay and Mercado Pago.

Why has the use of e-commerce grown so much?

Only a few years ago, having access to this type of trading was very expensive, bureaucratic and inaccessible. Still, over time, the Internet has led to the emergence of platforms and tools that facilitate negotiations via electronic commerce.

We can credit the growth of e-commerce to the increase in Internet access and the consequent popularization of smartphones, especially in our country. Companies and developers, year after year, improve their existing e-commerce systems, reformulating them or creating new ones, always working on updates that provide the security and privacy of customer’s data with fraud prevention.

Nowadays, older people no longer have the same fear of making purchases over the Internet as they did before, as applications such as Uber, iFood and others have become popular, becoming efficient, fast and safe alternatives when considering mobility services—urban and food delivery, respectively.

According to an article by UOL, the global pandemic and social isolation boosted online shopping in Latin America compared to countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States of America and China, where this method was already prevalent.

The quarantine, which initially catalyzed electronic commerce, could represent a definitive change in how people consume, considering this system’s safety, ease, convenience and efficiency.

What are the advantages of e-commerce for my business?

Now that we know what e-commerce is and what accounts for the growth in using this platform let’s explain the advantages of e-commerce for your business.

1. Full-time operation: Have you ever thought about having your physical stores closed and continuing to sell at any time or day of the week? With e-commerce, it is possible to trade inside and outside what we know as business hours, and sales will depend much more on your strategies and the visibility of your website than on anything else.
2. When you have a well-structured e-commerce and a dynamic and intuitive virtual store, customers can place their products in the cart and complete the purchase without any significant problems, and, often, they will not even need virtual assistance from a professional. However, it is essential to have chat support for any queries or to assist older customers who are not used to e-commerce.
3. Ease of monitoring and assisting customers: Behind efficient e-commerce, there is undoubtedly a platform that has tools and mechanisms to measure your website’s traffic (how many people access the website daily, weekly, monthly and annually); the lead conversion rate (of the total number of visits, how many people complete the purchase), referrers (how the user arrived at your website – organic search, social networks, Google Ads campaigns, among others ).
4. Great value for money: In the same way that e-commerce has facilitating mechanisms for quick, safe and efficient purchases, the initial investment in this strategy is relatively low compared to physical stores. This is one of the main reasons why people need to get their businesses off the ground or remain informal.
5. With e-commerce, you start your business by making low investments. Over time, and with the adoption of new customers, you will be able to adapt your strategy and expand e-commerce, always based on traffic metrics and data and conversion rates. Leads.
6. Safety in the storage and delivery of products: Because you are not working directly with the public, it is possible to avoid some of the main recurring problems in physical stores that generate significant losses for their owners: theft and theft.
7. By investing in e-commerce, you can store your products in safe locations with restricted access, only available to authorized professionals for orders. The delivery of these products is also usually very safe, carried out by third-party companies that include insurance for their transported loads, avoiding losses to customers and businesses.
8. Just-in-time production: Widely used for on-demand and specific presentations, just-in-time makes e-commerce possible, even without stock. You can allow customers to place orders for a product available in your online store with customizable dimensions and features, and upon purchase and demand, the product will be developed.

Investing in e-commerce is preparing yourself for the future in sales!

In addition to the advantages highlighted previously, we can also highlight the possibility of integration with other channels and social networks, a variety of payment options and the chance of extinguishing geographic borders: your company may be located in São Paulo (SP), for example, and a customer makes a purchase in Salvador (BA).

Therefore, if you want to gain customers and expand your market presence, e-commerce plays a fundamental role in your business. To start selling, you can invest in easy-to-use platforms that will be updated and configured by yourself or hire companies or agencies specialized in e-commerce, which provide consultancy and develop e-commerce according to your needs.

Why invest in e-commerce for my business? Discover the advantages of the virtual store!

Increasingly, companies, industries and brands operating in different market sectors have been looking for ways to expand their work. To overcome physical barriers quickly, safely and with a relatively low initial investment, e-commerce has been adopted as one of the main strategies due to cost-benefit, security and convenience, all on a single platform, which benefits both customers and entrepreneurs.

Internet shopping is here to stay. Is your business prepared to meet this demand?

For those who don’t know, e-commerce consists of electronic and digital means (such as websites and applications) that enable the sale of products or services over the Internet. This vast trade can include products, equipment, accessories and structures for residential, commercial or even industrial use or go beyond commercializing services, such as online courses, airline tickets, accommodation, consultancy and many others.

E-commerce is a viable alternative to boost and expand your work if you already have physical stores or start a new business with a more restricted budget. By dispensing with the bureaucracy and tenders that physical stores require, e-commerce can go live less quickly and require less investment and expenses. You won’t have to deal with IPTU, rent, water and electricity bills, or even the licenses operating a physical store requires.

To maintain a physical store, whether small or medium-sized, it is ideal to have employees, salespeople, cashiers or even security guards and stockists, depending on your segment. In e-commerce, you can adapt e-commerce to your reality and expand as your demand increases. Furthermore, e-commerce platforms are intelligent, safe and intuitive, allowing many customers to start and finish their purchases alone.

Say goodbye to long lines in physical stores!

Queues are a reality in physical stores, especially on commemorative dates, such as Black Friday, Christmas, Mother’s or Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Children’s Day, Easter and others. As a result, establishments become overloaded, providing a terrible experience for consumers, who may even give up on completing the purchase due to impatience or willingness to wait.

In e-commerce, the consumer will not suffer from these problems, being able to make purchases from the comfort of their home without having to wait to make payment. The company, in turn, will not have to use several cashiers to register purchases and fees, as the e-commerce platform will do all of this alone.

Track data and results in real time!

E-commerce consists of more than just a virtual store. It is a fact that what is visible to consumers is the website interface, but in the “backstage”, there are intelligent platforms that control and record all accesses obtained per day, week, month or year, the lead conversion rate, which are the referrers on your website (URLs, search engines, social networks and keywords that took the user to your website) and a series of other information.

This way, you can prepare for your demand, calculating average rates, observing days of the week and times with the highest traffic and other statistics that can even guide you if you are going the right way, if you need to expand your platform or if the customers are requesting new products or services.

The virtual store puts an end to geographical barriers!

Suppose you want to reach customers from different neighbourhoods. In that case, even if they belong to the same city where your company or brand is located or expand to include customers from other states or regions, e-commerce can boost your sales and eliminate geographic barriers to marketing your products or services.

With a physical store, the entrepreneur is sometimes restricted to geographic factors, and it may only occasionally be located in a commercial region. On the other hand, if you want to be found in good points of sale, you will have to make significant investments, as buying or renting these spaces tends to have high prices.

Personalize your customer service and experience, even from a distance!

Anyone who thinks that, through e-commerce, it is impossible to personalize the customer experience is mistaken. Humanized relationships are an increasingly popular topic among large companies and brands: with a highly competitive market, entrepreneurs with differences win, be it in the product, delivery times, prices or service.

In e-commerce, it is ideal to have a multichannel service and a chat that assists with possible questions, suggestions, complaints or problems that consumers have (such as in cases of product exchange or return). Transmitting security and trust is essential for the customer to create a lasting relationship with your brand, and to achieve this, it is necessary to provide all the support they need, from any doubts before purchasing to the post-sales phase.

Conclusion: e-commerce has the best cost-benefit!

With a low initial investment, no costs for renting physical spaces to receive the public, the need for a lower number of employees (about physical stores in the same segment and size), greater security, convenience and efficiency, having e-commerce with a high-quality virtual store is essential to boost your business results.

Therefore, if you want to invest in e-commerce for your business, you can hire companies specialized in digital marketing, which not only provide a good platform for your website and a good experience for consumers but also guarantee ideal visibility for your customers. Find it on search engines like Google and social networks with ease!

How can I minimize the impacts of COVID-19 on my business?

Masks, alcohol gel, social distancing, prohibition of gatherings and closure of businesses in Brazil and several countries worldwide have been the scenario of 2020. How do we survive the global pandemic?

COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, has already affected more than 6.4 million people worldwide and caused more than 380,000 deaths at the time of writing this text (06/05/2020). Going beyond the disease itself, COVID-19 represented a drastic change in people’s behaviour as a society, upended the economies of countries around the world and generated data that can be frightening.

Schools were closed, airports had destinations blocked, and airlines and the tourism sector suffered severe impacts… by far, it is not the most encouraging scenario. Considering the entire socioeconomic context, treating this issue with the responsibility and truth it demands is essential. However, not everything is scaremongering and bad news: if, on the one hand, some sectors have had their numbers, data and estimates overturned, streaming platforms and companies that sell over the Internet have grown a lot.

Out of curiosity, during this period of global pandemic, Netflix, the series and film streaming giant, gained over 15 million subscriptions, doubling the projected estimate for the year, which was 7 million new subscribers. (With people isolated at home, there’s only a little left to do in our free time other than binge-watch a series we like, right?)

We also have some encouraging results when discussing online sales (the famous e-commerce). According to an article on the E-Commerce Brasil website, internet sales increased by 81% during social isolation, with revenue exceeding R$9.4 billion. This factor is also easily explained: people continue to need to purchase goods and services, even when isolated at home.

Okay, but everyone wants to know: how can you reduce the impacts of COVID-19 to survive the pandemic?

The first answer to this question is that there is no recipe to be followed: each company is inserted in a context, encompassed in a particular sector and has its income and expenses. As previously mentioned, sectors focused on airlines and tourism companies are being directly affected, and, in principle, there is no way to resolve macro problems (that is, those that are international in scope and depend on government decisions and recommendations from institutions such as the World Health Organization).

However, suppose the quarantine and the mandatory closure of businesses impact you. In that case, there are ways to circumvent and beat this system, ensuring that your business does not stand still and you have the means to make your sales. Contexts like this put companies against the wall, taking them out of their comfort zones and making entrepreneurs rack their brains.

The quickest and most obvious answer is e-commerce. Even before the spread of the coronavirus at a global level, this method had already been adopted by companies of the most varied segments and sizes as it has a relatively low initial cost, adapts to the reality and budget of each company and eliminates the costs that a company with physical space is in demand, click here and learn more about the advantages of e-commerce).

By relying on the e-commerce platform, your customers will be able to find your products or even services and hire them online, which ends up being an important tool to minimize the impact of the coronavirus on your business.

More is needed to have an e-commerce platform. She needs to be found!

Think about it with me: you open a physical store with a good structure, and your product supply is up to date, but it is located in a primarily residential neighbourhood without a large flow of people. Indeed, you may need help being found or achieving a significant amount of sales.

The same way happens in the virtual world. Numerous e-commerce platforms on the Internet are often adequately equipped with a good layout and products. However, they need to be better positioned in search engines. Working on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) so that your website is organically placed on the first page of Google is equivalent to taking your physical store out of the residential neighbourhood and onto the city’s main avenue.

Therefore, it is necessary to have an e-commerce platform and online store and work on search engine optimization simultaneously so that your website is easily found.

Have social networks as allies in your work, using Inbound Marketing strategies!

The use of social networks such as Facebook and Instagram, which are already prominent in an everyday context, was even more intensified with social isolation. These tools end up being one of the few ways to connect and interact with friends in a period in which shopping centres, restaurants, bars and clubs cannot open, and large shows give way to lives that, although they have a more intimate character, can connect thousands of people at the same time.

Investing in managing and creating posts on your social networks helps build a lasting bond with your customers. It is a simple and quick way to identify possible problems, preventing your consumer from waiting in service queues via email. Telephone. Furthermore, it is essential to post content that is relevant and valuable to your persona and not just talk about your products and services.

Providing rich materials to your target audience makes engaging and garnering likes, shares, comments, reactions and followers much more accessible. In this sense, it is essential to consider even users who are not necessarily interested in purchasing a product or service, as it is necessary to understand that each person is at a stage in the purchasing journey. You can educate them, transforming your qualified lead on the client.

Last but not least, value online sales!

Much more than an escape valve to minimize the impacts of COVID-19 on your business, e-commerce, SEO, Inbound Marketing and all other digital marketing strategies must be implemented into life. Once people who, at first, were afraid of buying online have good experiences with this method, e-commerce will grow more and more and represent a transformation in how products and services are acquired.

If you want to prepare for high performance and good results on the Internet, understand the importance of companies’ digital presence or contact agencies specializing in digital marketing that can help you!