Understanding your customers

Marketing strategies become more and more sophisticated and necessary in the market. With the emergence of various media, the access to companies has become more and more diversified, and to make a customer choose your brand and not the competition has become a challenge.

Among the marketing strategies, some steps are essential, and those companies that can learn to value the importance of understanding their customers come out ahead.

Understanding the desires and needs of the public is essential for those who seek success, because only after this understanding is it possible to develop all the other steps of your marketing planning with efficiency to achieve better results.

If you are looking to improve your brand’s performance, be sure to follow this article to the end, here you will learn the importance of understanding your customers and the best way to achieve this.

Each consumer is unique

With the strong increase in consumption linked to technology, the consumer’s power of choice has become very large, and with this grows the need for companies to pay attention to serving their customers in a personalized way.

In the past, the concept of target audience was used to determine the direction of marketing campaigns, but nowadays this concept has fallen after verifying that it is not possible to generalize the consumer.

With this came the concept of persona, that is, it became more important to detect a complete profile of a potential consumer instead of a generalization of possible consumers.

When trying to determine a persona, it is necessary to gather the smallest details of the customer’s life, it is not enough to define an age range or a level of education, it is necessary to know what he thinks, how he consumes, his daily habits online and offline, his pains and preferences, this is the only way to identify a profile and get closer to your consumer.

Several tools can be used to capture relevant and current information about consumers, and this database is essential for understanding and determining your persona.

Through this well-designed strategy, you will be closer to achieving satisfactory results and saving money in your marketing strategy, avoiding wasting time on profiles that do not match your consumer.

Advantages of understand your costumer

Optimize your products

By knowing your consumer’s wants and needs, it is possible to identify the ideal moment to make a sale, as well as define more assertively which product or service to offer them in order to achieve a conversion.

Speaking your customer’s language

For each type of audience there is a “tone of voice” that you need to employ in your campaigns, understanding what is the appropriate language to talk to your consumer is an excellent way to captivate him so that he can identify with your brand.

Finding the gold mine

There are customers and customers, some may even consume your product but never return, while others may have a higher value for your business, consuming and disseminating your brand. Knowing how to identify them will be your great differential.

Fidelizing the client

As important as winning over a consumer is to keep on winning them over time. Having loyal customers who will ensure the longevity of your brand is fundamental to the future of your business.

How to understand your consumer

Now that you know all the advantages you will gain by understanding your customer, you need to know how to enter their world and capture information about their lives.

First it is important to know that the data will never be definitive, the research about your consumer’s profile is continuous and you need to keep it updated.

To capture this information it is necessary that you have conversation channels with your customers, either through surveys, registrations, or data collection through social networks.

From these tools it will be possible to define an elaborate profile of your customer and predict their behavior, this way your actions will be more easily converted into sales.

If you want to be successful and achieve increasingly satisfactory results with your company, it is important that you always pay due attention to market trends, only then you can be ahead of the competition.

How to do a SEO planning through a SWOT Matrix

Many companies have already invested or invested their capital and time in SEO techniques, but several of these companies have failed or will still fail due to a lack of quality strategic planning. In this brief article, we will help you conduct a SWOT analysis with a focus on SEO so that you and your company do not lose the way over time, as it can be said that quality SEO takes time to obtain significant returns.

As you know there are several ways to conduct strategic planning for your business. However, we chose SWOT analysis for SEO because it is one of the most well-known and easy to perform, with the objective of creating a synthesis of the internal and external analyzes through the identification of the key elements through the evaluation of 04 points, being:

  • Strength;
  • Weaknesses;
  • Opportunities;
  • Threats;

Sometimes all we need to do to understand what is happening and what can happen around our company is to go back to two simple evaluations of where your company is and where you want to go. As we said before, we chose SWOT analysis as an efficient analysis tool where it will fit perfectly into your SEO planning.

Let’s take a brief scenario as an example.

You are the CEO of a digital marketing agency and one of your clients Alpha Company wants to have SEO techniques performed on your site. But your client is in an extremely competitive and difficult market segment in which its main competitor, Empresa Omega, is prominent in the search engines.

Being a niche segment, SEO planning is indispensable because its main group of keywords ends up offering a low amount of searches and the margins for errors are minimal. So you and your team have conducted some research where they found that both sites have similar authority and both companies do not use Sponsored Link.

After his team conducts a thorough study of the target audience, it has been ascertained that their products are leveraging emotions and driving visitors, leads, and customers on impulse purchases.

Also 06 points were separated from each company to carry out the SWOT analysis.

Alpha Company :

  1. Website developed in WordPress;
  2. Performs labeling of categories;
  3. Adds 1 page of content every 2 days;
  4. Excellent knowledge of the market in which it operates;
  5. Domain: www.AlphaCompany.com;
  6. You do not get much organic traffic;

Omega Company:

  1. It has been running the same site for a long time;
  2. Receive enough organic traffic;
  3. It is among the top 3 in the ranking for the main keyword;
  4. Your homepage attracts all traffic;
  5. domain: www.ServiceKeyword.com.br
  6. It has no SEO planning;

SWOT Matrix Scenario

Strength

  • Relatively decent domain name;
  • Easy-to-use content manager;
  • Good amount of content;
  • Experience in the actuation segment;

Weaknesses

  • The Competitor classified in the first 3 places;
  • The competitor can start an SEO planning;
  • The competitor has a strong domain name;

Opportunities

  • Optimizations enabled long-tail achievements;
  • The possibility of creating sponsored campaigns;
  • Low SERP competition due to low competition;
  • Use of social networks (leverage emotions);

Threats

  • Customer without skill in SEO;
  • Unsatisfactory use of WordPress;

The SWOT analysis of the above scenario was done in a very simple way, but it is an excellent starting point for an SEO strategy because it requires long deadlines and several technical maneuvers, so your team will not lose focus and goal in the course of planning.

How about we talk about your planning? Send us an e-mail!

How to do an SEO Audit

Auditing SEO in an existing website is one of the most important tasks that companies and SEO professionals will come across. Search engine optimization is a relatively new service and requires the collection of a lot of specific information. In addition, many developers still do not get along well with projects that are focused on this service, or even know it, so if you are to provide this type of service on a site that is not yours, be ready for the challenge.

Elements of an SEO Audit:

As we will discuss below, your website needs a solid foundation for you to get positive results in an SEO strategy. Being the first phase of this strategy, SEO auditing needs to be performed in a thorough and unhurried manner so that the information obtained is true and accurate.

In the next topics, you will identify what information your SEO audit should possess.

Although it does not have direct links to an SEO strategy, it is a great place to start because usability can directly affect the conversion and rejection rates of your site.

Verification of integrity in search engines:

Site integrity check consists of knowing how many and which pages of your site appear in the search engine index, do a site search: yourdomain.com, and then you will find out quickly and accurately. At that same point, we should also know if you are found in search terms related to your products or services.

Duplicate content verification:

Checking for duplicate content on your website is a must in an SEO strategy. Start by verifying that the domain uses a canonical relationship, that is, using the 301 redirects between yourdomain.com to www.yourdomain.com or vice versa, while you are doing this, check the pages with HTTP and HTTPS. Now, for checking the content itself, you can use inurl: yourdomain.com and name: yourdomain.com in the search engine.

Friendly URL verification:

Make sure your site’s URLs are user-friendly to search engines. Using simple, short, descriptive, and keyword-rich URLs is what you expect at this point.

Review Title Tag, Meta Tag, Alt Tag, and Content:

Review all of your pages, see if they have Title & Meta Tags and if they also have enough content for your users, check your images too, and make sure they have Alt Tag set up and are rich in keywords. If your site has many pages and images, make sure that your most important pages (those with the highest quality traffic) are reviewed.

Sitemap Files & Robots.txt:

Sitemap & Robots.txt files are essential to make search engines read your site properly. Use the Webmasters Tools tool to check them and have your canonical pages identified in the Sitemap.

Checking redirects:

Check all the redirects made on your site and if they were done correctly. Using the Live HTTP Headers plug-in can help you at this point where many errors can happen, both in your CMS and in your hosting.

Internal Link Verification:

This is to know how many links your pages have, but that’s fine, Google advises you to use a maximum of 100 links per page. Try to make good use of anchor texts in your internal links, providing in this way information with which your “linked” pages speak.

External link verification:

Knowing which sites are linked to yours is essential to a good SEO strategy. They will positively or negatively influence your competitors. Enjoying good quality links and reducing those with bad reputations will be your goal when acquiring this type of information.

Geolocation:

If your SEO strategy is geared towards some specific location, then this point is very relevant to you. Search through your site if it includes your address on all pages, thereby making that geolocation relevant and indispensable information when search engines read your site.

Code quality:

Although W3C validation is not a requirement of search engines, it is always good to know and verify your own code, avoiding undesirable impacts on your SEO strategy. Use the SEO Browser tool to learn how search engines see your site.

By following the collection of information for your SEO audit using this article as a basis, you will have an excellent pathway to your future strategies. Remember that this is only the first step of a much larger project and must be done efficiently to get positive results.

Link Building: What is it and What are its types?

Link building will always be included in any SEO planning unless you have an extremely powerful and relevant brand/company among users, but other than the link building work, it will be fundamental and should never stop.

Link Building Concept:

Link building is an active practice among SEO professionals, which involves gaining relevance, popularity, authority, and PageRank (Google algorithm to measure the importance of a page based on incoming links) through getting external links on which they will point to your site.

Types of Link Building:”

There are numerous means to do link building, however, in this publication we separate some of the most common tactics:

Creating Content for Natural Link Building:

In natural link building, the publisher must provide compelling content so that your site receives links spontaneously, as publishers need a good reason for their site with yours. Remember the quality of content is the key to getting external links.

Tips for maximizing results:

  • Create content that establishes your site as one of the experts in your subject;
  • Minimize your commercial nature on content pages;
  • Do not link your content to purely commercial pages, unless those pages merit a link based on your content;
  • Diversify the type of content to be created between articles, images, video, widgets, and even online games;

Directories:

Directories are sites where publishers group sites by categories and provide descriptions of them. This link-building tactic can be an easy way to get links, however, it is necessary to know in-depth what you intend to submit to your site, so you will not be harmed by getting low-quality links.

A quality parameter for directories is whether users exist or for manipulation of search engine rankings, otherwise move away from it.

Examples of quality directories:

Requests for direct or incentive links:

Requesting direct links or using incentives to make such a connection is a very dangerous tactic because it is a violation of the WebMaster Search Engine Guidelines, which state that participation in link exchange should be avoided. However, some professionals choose to perform this type of link building, risking a severe punishment from the search engines.

Example of a request for links:

  • Buy and sell links that pass PageRank;
  • Partnerships to exchange links;
  • Use of link creation automation programs or services;

Through social media:

The link building through social media is done through visits to websites, forums, blogs, and social media, however, the vast majority uses the “NoFollow” attribute (link attribute which does not transfer value to the destination links) to their links. However, in order to acquire links from social media that transfer Link Juice (refers to the value of a link), it is necessary to build a relationship with the media owner, thus avoiding being “framed” as an exchange of links.

Gray Hat & Black Hat:

Gray Hats & Black Hats tactics are seen as shortcuts to SEO professionals who are in the process of building links but are directly ignoring the Webmaster Guidelines, working like these techniques can easily cause a punishment of your site on the search engines.

Examples of Gray Hats & Black Hats:

  • Automatic content generation;
  • Duplication of content;
  • Use of Spam tools;

Link Building, the Endless!

It is worth remembering what we said at the beginning of this publication, that link network jobs should never stop, remember that It is worth remembering what we said at the beginning of this publication, that link building jobs should never stop, remember that quality is the key to gaining renown in the market, always avoid techniques that can cause possible punishment, as rebuilding your authority to from a “punished domain” is much more complicated than in a “clean domain”.

Always avoid techniques that can cause possible punishment, as rebuilding your authority from a “punished domain” is much more complicated than in a “clean domain”.

What is SEO and how should it be done?

Companies that own a website and/or virtual store will always want to be on the first page of Google and go even further, ranking first in searches. But with that goal in mind, some doubts arise, is there any service for that? Which is? How should it be done? This “magic” service does exist! And it’s called SEO or Search Engine Optimization.

What is SEO?

Simply and straightforward, SEO basically consists of providing information to search engines (eg Google, Bing, and Yahoo) about the content on your site, aiming to gain authority over your competitors, leading to improved search rankings and a significant increase in traffic.

An SEO project is formed by a set of techniques and professionals from different sectors, being able to find programmers, designers, copywriters, advertisers, performance analysts, among others. There must be an excellent synchrony between these techniques and professionals, because for each SEO project there will be a different competition, requiring unique forms of planning.

How to make quality SEO:

We share a basic SEO project in 16 pillars, in which we separate internal topics where you can use as a basis for study and planning.

1. Layout & Architecture:

  • Content should be clear and open;
  • Avoid ads over content;
  • Create hierarchical content;
  • Keep a clean navigation;
  • Use “nofollow” for ads and affiliate links;
  • User friendly URLs;
  • Leave contact information always visible;
  • Include the pages of “privacy policies” and “about”;

2. Keyword Research:

  • Choose your keywords wisely;
  • Keep one main keyword per page;
  • Check the competition for the title (Google “allintitle:” your keyword);
  • Take the keywords from your competitors;
  • Always monitor your clickthrough rate (CTR);

3. Title Tags:

  • Use your main keyword in your title;
  • Make it “clickable”;
  • Add your mark at the end;
  • Do not repeat keywords;
  • Formula “Title Tag”: Keyword in focus + Secondary keyword + Brand name;
  • Holds between 50 – 60 characters;

4. Meta Descriptions:

  • Write something brief and concise;
  • Include the main keyword as fast as possible;
  • Holds between 150 – 160 characters;

5. Header Tags:

  • Write a single H1 tag for each page;
  • Use the main keyword in H1;
  • Use latent semantic indexing keywords (LSI Keywords) in the H2 & H3 tags;

6. The Content:

  • Use the main keyword in the first paragraph;
  • Long content is related to better rankings;
  • Keep keyword density between 2% – 4%;
  • Write texts with latent semantic indexing keywords;
  • Add internal & external links;
  • Prioritize quality rather than frequency;
  • Configure Rich Snippets & Structured Data;

7. User Experience:

  • Decrease your Rejection Rate;
  • Use “scrollmaps” software;
  • Use “heatmaps” tracking;
  • Reduce the use of pop-ups;
  • Be careful with interstitial ads (ads before page loading);
  • Have a site optimized for mobile devices;
  • Set up friendly 404 pages;
  • Implement an SSL certificate;

8. Google Analytics & Search Console:

  • Note the keywords that your site has the most impressions;
  • Look at the keywords in which your site is best positioned;
  • Assign internal links to pages with more impressions and better rankings;
  • Check & Correct crawling errors;
  • Configure & Submit a sitemap.xml;

9. Site speed:

  • Optimize the loading time (Desktop / Mobile);
  • Enjoy the browser cache;
  • Compress the JavaScript files;
  • Compress CSS files;
  • Reduce response time with the server;

10. Image optimization:

  • Add alt text for all images;
  • Use a descriptive name for the files;
  • Compress the image size;

11. Link Building:

  • Build links from sites with large domain authority (Domain Authority);
  • List the sites by topics;
  • Add links within the content;
  • Follow the backlinks of competitors;
  • Diversify Your Links & Texts Anchor;

12. Google Penalty Recovery:

  • Be aware when your traffic drops;
  • Remove bad links;
  • Deny unknown connections;
  • Check for hacks;
  • File a reconsideration request;

13. Social Media:

  • Always be active in social networks;
  • Set up a Twitter Card;
  • Set up Facebook Like Box;
  • Set up a Google Plus Badge;
  • Add tanned and share buttons;
  • Encourage your audience to share your content;

14. Content promotion:

  • Find popular content in your niche and improve it;
  • Use sharing assets (eg infographics);
  • Disclose via Email;
  • Share content from other people, aiming at reciprocity;

15. Tips & General advice:

  • Always learn as much as possible;
  • Stay tuned for updates on “Search Engine Land”;
  • Be patient;
  • Dispense suspicious techniques (Black Hat);
  • Do not spam;