Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence are two major technologies that regulate the pace of innovation and introduce a radical shift in every industry.

Blockchain brings the major transformation in the financial sector. In fact, the companies are going for a test approach especially the banking sectors towards the blockchain technology.

If we compare the other centralized technologies blockchain makes the work safer, smoother and transparent. While there is much impact on the financial sector but blockchain can also play an important role in the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI). In general, every technical aspect has its own degree of complexity as well as business implications but the combined use of the two may be able to create the entire technological and human paradigm from scratch.

Depending on who can access and verify the information stored on it, there are many potential ways to use a blockchain, apparently, there are varying levels of security and transparency. Ultimately, it is a way of recording data, transactions, and information in a more decentralized way. AI or machine learning, on the other hand, operates on a centralized, closed system, accomplish its task.

Decisions made by AI algorithms are increasing. Those results are being utilized, and they are still being audited by humans to ensure the accuracy of those decisions. That verifies the efficiency of ongoing machine learning. This is a tedious task, as enormous amounts of data are fed into AI algorithms. Sifting through each decision point becomes complex.

Here the auditing process becomes greatly simplified by recording each of these points on the blockchain, making it more secure and easier to assess. The complete and transparent view of the decision-making process of AI technology is an important step in validating AI’s usefulness. This can be safely stored on the blockchain, yet still accessed by AI decision-making processes as necessary.

Read more about: AN UNSTOPPABLE SUCCESS OF AI TOOLS

Let’s check out an example of the Healthcare Industry: There is a mutual understanding, where technology includes safely storing medical records and checking them against current best practices to make the most accurate diagnoses and treatment plans possible. It reduces a lot of human work.

When comes to the part of the entertainment, machine learning will help in suggesting the next best enjoyable video to be watched. With the help of blockchain, our preferences and viewing history can be kept safe. Work is made easier and convenient with artificial intelligence algorithms.

Combined abilities of blockchain and AI will allow maximizing benefits. The possibilities are endless with the recently developed innovations of AI and Blockchain.

#2018Trending: Google AdWords is now Google Ads

Recent update: The Senior vice president Sridhar Ramaswamy who leads Google’s ads, explained about the rebrand. He said the reason behind the rebranding is the company has been getting constant feedback over the past few years.

As Google has acquired new ad products, to get leads it has become more complex over the past two decades. This made advertisers, agencies, and publishers hard to recognize and select the appropriate google product for their needs. With the point of rebranding, it helps in locating “where we want the product to go” Along with the latest trends of rebranding, Google is also coming up with new solutions that simplify its advertising offerings.

Going ahead, Google’s ad products will be segmented into three major brands.

1. Google AdWords is now Google Ads

2. Google Marketing Platform (A combination of Double Click advertiser products and Google Analytics 360)

3. Google Ad Manager

Read more about :  Google Ad Words is now Google Ads

Let’s know what are these three major changes and its impact:

1. Google AdWords is now Google Ads

Firstly, whether it’s a search ad, display ads, app ads or YouTube video ads etc., this serves as the front door for advertisers to buy on all google surfaces.

Google is also laughing something new as smart campaigns, which is a default mode for advertisers. It allows advertisers to identify the actions based on priorities whether store visits, purchases or phone calls. With the use of machine language the images, texts are optimized and drive to respective actions.

2. Google Marketing Platform

Google Marketing Platform assists to plan, buy, measure and optimize digital media all in one place.

Dan Taylor Managing Director for platforms said about the Google Marketing Platform as it helps in growing need for collaboration.

The Marketing Platform adds a new integrations centre. Unifying DoubleClick and Analytics 360 as a single platform has come for the advertisers who were integrating the two products on their own.

3. Google Ad Manager

The Final Change unifying DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) and DoubleClick Ad Exchange (AdX) has been a three-year process. Jonathan Bellack, the director of product management for publisher ad platforms said, “Marketer demand for addressable advertising has moved us to a place where all buying will be programmatic,”

Google Ad Manager will assist publishers to monetize at all the new places where people are engaging. For example live streams, connected TVs, Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), and platforms like YouTube and Apple News, Bellack explained.

The use of hashtags for social media marketing is not so new, yeah but we can say its “Trending” as all we wanted to say in one word. The one-stop resource that tells about the use hashtags, how many hashtags to use, where to find trending hashtags and what kind of exposure hashtags can give you across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+ and more.

The keys to your hashtag journey as follows:

The History of the Hashtag

The hashtag symbol itself came into existence sometime around the 14th century. As it was invented by a telephone technician and later in it was used on telephone keypads.

It wasn’t called hashtag until its usage became popular on Twitter. From there, hashtags gained momentum, eventually, it became a social media commodity now.

Take a look how do we use hashtags on each social media platform.

Use of Hashtags on Facebook

Hashtags on Facebook can get your posts more exposure but you have to use them in a right manner. Less usage of hashtags as it will make your business look annoying or else spammy. Try to go for a token of 2 hashtags per post for the best engagement. If you use more than two hashtags in a Facebook post, research suggests you’ll see less engagement. Make your Facebook post public and make sure to allow people to follow you. Otherwise, only friends and followers will see your posts with hashtags. When you make your Facebook post public, it will enable anyone to see the post if they search for a hashtag that you’ve included in a post.

Use of Hashtags on Twitter

Tweets with hashtags tend to see significantly more engagement than tweets without, but as usual, there are rules about using hashtags on Twitter, including how to use hashtags in Twitter ads. Tweets with a token of 2 hashtags see, on average, around 21% more engagement – The key tip here is don’t go overboard. Just a couple of hashtags in your tweet should do the trick. Be careful using hashtags in ads on Twitter as research shows that you’ll probably get more ad clicks if you don’t use a hashtag.

Use of Hashtags on Instagram

If it seems as if it smudge across all social media platforms. In Instagram using the token of 2 hashtags is not mandatory. There are so many Instagram posts have seemingly endless hashtags. Always use hashtags on Instagram – You’ll get 14% more engagement on average, so it pays to use relevant tags. More token of hashtags is cool for Instagram you can add many more hashtags on Instagram posts.

Use of Hashtags on LinkedIn

LinkedIn hasn’t always supported hashtags but, LinkedIn hashtags are back now. You can use them in pretty much the same way you’d use a hashtag anywhere else. People can search for hashtags on LinkedIn in the same way they can on other platforms, and LinkedIn uses hashtags to monitor what’s important to users so it can show them more relevant content. Add hashtags to your business’s profile as this will give more visibility to the site. The use hashtags in LinkedIn Publisher posts – If you write long-form content on LinkedIn, add some relevant hashtags to the body of your article to help LinkedIn categorize your content and show it to interested users. So it’s best to stick to a token of 2 hashtags. This will give more exposure without making you look like spam.

Use of Hashtags on Google+

Hashtags on Google+ are different than hashtags on other platforms. They’ll still help you reach more people than posts that don’t include hashtags, but that’s where the similarities end. Hashtags have a greater influence on Google+ than other platforms. To get more engagement on Google Plus, hashtags are the key. Hashtags on G+ can have SEO benefits. If you search for a hashtag on Google, you may see a sidebar that shows Google+ posts related to your search. There’s not a lot of research on Google+ hashtags, so go for a token of 3 hashtags.

Some Fewer Tips for Using Hashtags for Social Media Marketing

As with all things marketing, you should do a little research on hashtags before you go throwing them into every social media post you publish for your business.

Look at what your competition is doing with hashtags. Are they using any at all? Do they get to attack their followers with hashtags?

These Hashtag Research Tools Might Will Avail You!

Ritetag –This will help to find out hashtags with high engagement rates on the Twitter account.

Twitonomy – This will monitor Twitter hashtag analytics.

Hashtagify – This will help you find trending Twitter hashtags.

 #TuesdayThoughts

Hope this blog has been provided some guidance and intuition by helping you to give less space between you and hashtag.

In this research blog, it has been explained some of the digital marketing measurement theory and important analytic tools which help to measure digital marketing performance and its effectiveness.

Measuring the success of an engaging, exciting and effective digital marketing campaign is considered to be the most essential and the vital part. It is the key responsibility of a brand or a business to measure the digital marketing effectiveness by.

• Measuring Digital Marketing Performance
• Measuring Digital Marketing ROI
• Measuring Digital Marketing Effectiveness

Evaluation of the success rate on each platform, channel, and device will help reveal the status of a campaign. The evaluation process of a campaign includes three stages- past, present, and future. A brand should be able to perform better in the present as compared to the past, and it must have the capability to outperform the present in the future.

Let take up a Look –  

If a brand’s marketing campaign has been achieved a 20% growth in the past, is geared for another 80% in the present, and in the future, wants an incremental growth of 100%. First, they will have to leverage and effectively utilize all possible platforms, channels, and mediums to make their digital marketing campaign achieve the target.

But, to know the actual numbers and judge the success rate they would require to analyze and evaluate every aspect of their campaign. This is the most vital step to deliver the best digital marketing services. That is the reason a renowned digital marketing agency would consider this as his key responsibility while serving its client. For this every brand and decision maker needs to be aware of the procedures and processes of digital marketing measurement process:

•  Choose the correct digital marketing measurement tools.
• Get acquainted with digital marketing measurement formula.
•  Utilize the knowledge of digital marketing measurement model.
•  Consider all essential digital marketing metrics Analytics.

Digital Marketing Measurement Tools

Measuring tools are the most important elements that are used by any creator or evaluator to help evaluate the end result of a brand campaign. There are several tools that can be used effectively to measure a successful digital marketing campaign, but it is not possible to use each and every tool for every time. That is the reason, a brand has to choose tools that are best suited to judge the success rate of the brand campaign.

Must Check Out Our Recent Digital Marketing Trends and Statistics for 2017. Similarly, as a digital marketer, the choice should depend solely on the criteria of the product or service for which the campaign is designed, its time period, demography, target sales, etc.

Some of the best digital marketing measurement tools have been mentioned below:

Google Analytics:

A single tool that is helpful for data collection, configuration, data processing and reporting. It’s specialized data reviewing feature helps to analyze the performances of the website or page, apps and different marketing channels used during the campaign.

Google AdWords:

It is a unique tool of Google for designing and maintaining the PPC ads. It also enables to monitor the statistics so that brands can track the success of the ads by calculating the return on investment.

Google Webmaster :

It is a toolset to understand what is going on within the website. Google Search Console or Webmaster Tools helps to analyze contents, identify technical errors, check indexing status and optimize visibility of the websites.

HootSuite:

This tool helps to get a clear and complete overview of social media performance in real time and measure the team’s performance. Hootsuite analytics share customized reports of each social media platform’s performance.

Google Alerts:

It is good to be used as a social media tool as it allows to set alerts for a personal name, brand name, and products. These alerts help notifications to remain updated.

Webtrends:

Its analytics use simple dashboard interface to reveal the true picture of customers’ interaction with the brand across different channels.

Mixpanel:

It is an advanced analytics platform that answers the queries of reporting actions. It is apt for mobile and web functions.

Upsight:

It is an ideal tool to identify business KPIs. It is brilliant as it first explores the user database and then creates personalized user experiences for better app performances.

Bitly:

It is a unique online tool that helps to shorten the URL so that it becomes easier to share among different platforms. This is suitable not only for the brand URLs but also to track competitor’s URL.

Apsalar:

It is a tool to measure digital marketing campaigns with the help of mobile app attribution and data management procedure.

Digital Marketing Measurement Formula

Formulas are essential to calculate and realize how the brand’s campaign has fared. It helps to compute and fetch the exact value based on all the variables required.

Digital revenue can be calculated on the basis of three factors:

• Traffic
• Conversion Rate
• Product Value

By multiplying these three factors, we’ ll get to know the exact digital revenue result:

Digital Revenue = Traffic x Conversion Rate x Product Value

To generate more digital revenue, bring a significant change in one or all of the three mentioned factors.

The model comprises of five parameters, which has been set to the initial level of campaign formation on the basis of these factors.

• Objectives
• Goals
• KPIs
• Segments
• Targets

Many brands have eventually taken the support of the digital marketing measurement procedures, to evaluate their success and build a market position as leaders who have a loyal and stable standing in their industries. Some even believe that it is worth to spend more to scrutinize the marketing effectiveness than to grab visitors’ attention.

However, these factors depend and vary from one brand to another. Focusing on those key factors, it will ultimately help decision maker to carry out a successful marketing campaign in future.

The 2017 has might be an interesting year, but this year 2018 we have been witnesses of how technology is growing incredibly fast.  Moreover, YouTube Marketing has changed a lot. It passed from being focused on the product or service to be based on the experience of having it. This development has made marketing experts rethink the selling techniques.

However, even social media have experienced many changes; first, all we see was about products, it was all that matters but in these days it is far from being like that, content plays an extremely important role in the way business sales nowadays.

Virtual Content plays with illusion and feelings. As you may have noticed and maybe utilized – infographics, posters, videos, and statistics with trendy contents. Video marketing trends are becoming more strong and still, it will continue in the next coming years. They are on top of everything, almost any platform is fully filled with content videos.

Here are the most important trends of marketing in YouTube.

Video Tutorials

Video tutorials have gained a lot of fame in past few years and it will continue.Yes, now you may have an idea of how important this type of video marketing has gained ground on internet and YouTube is the biggest platform wherein you can watch and post videos. With all this movement that reaffirms that a picture is worth a thousand words, imagine how many words a video worth. Customers tend more to believe in something if they are able to watch how it works instead of only reading about it.

Once again, tutorial videos can work really well in many different areas and the combination of tutorials and influencers will boost your business to the top.

360° Videos

It follows the statement of allowing the customer to be in touch with the brand and actually interact with it through media. It is a combination of virtual reality and common videos. In this, the viewer can control several features of the content, from the perspective or angle while watching it. An important thing about this type of video is the fact that it represents an easier and cheaper way to experience virtual reality.

In fact, this type of 360° Videos had great results when talking about statistics, they catch more views, shares, and subscribers than standard videos.

This trend is going to get more developed in this year.

 Live video streaming

This area is so accessible for almost any kind of marketing. It helps to get a really good relationship between the brand and the clients, it is a new way in interact in real time; yet the importance of this type of techniques go further.

By doing these kinds of actions, your business gets more human. Clients really appreciate having a face of a brand, as it makes it more trustable. It also helps to create more engagement with current customer and to attract potential ones. Keep in mind that YouTube is a platform wherein millions of active user are every days seeking for something interesting to watch and there is your opportunity to be that something.

Different topics are available for video live streaming; from interviews to important people of the company, to tutorials of how to use some of your products, maybe the making of a production or even the behind-the-scenes of the preparation of a perform or release.

Two interesting topics that you should consider when creating your YouTube strategy for 2018 are Q&A’s lives wherein someone of the staff can interact with the viewer and answer any doubts they may have also, streaming live events are an acute way of selling, by doing this, you can make people who is not present in the event feel part of it.

Video Marketing it’s here to take over the digital point of view. While marketers need to step up their brand with video marketing. In this, we can ensure you that putting your services in YouTube marketing will convert it in winning strategy for your business.

Every New Year brings the promise of renewal and rejuvenation for everyone who works in sales. Jan. 1 presents a clean slate and a chance to do things differently reconnect with promising prospects, enhance your sales processes, improve your efficiency, and find new ways to add value for customers.

If you’re looking for new ways to take your business to new heights in 2018, you can start by looking at your sales lead management processes.

Here are few points about New Year’s resolutions that any sales organization can employ to create a more efficient and profitable 2018:

• Long range business leads:

Wondering why you have a never-ending need for new fresh sales leads? According to a recent research, only 25% of leads that are deemed sales opportunities actually close. That means that without a formal lead nurturing program, the remaining 75% of qualified leads that do not turn into short-term sales are slipping through the cracks.

Chances are your sales team – whether they realize or not they shutting the door on many older business leads. Maybe your sales team completed a follow-up call several months ago and did not receive a favorable response. This doesn’t mean that the sales leads are truly done.

Whatever the change may be, take a fresh start and pursue these old business leads to a new angle. We make sure to re-establish contact with old sales leads every six months to see if our services are now needed. A lot can change your prospect’s business in 6 months.

• Pipeline of business leads:

Make honest and realistic assessments of the condition of your sales pipeline. Establish some new benchmarks for 2018 to measure your conversion rates at each step of the sale and look beyond the simple metrics of conversion and close ratios. Finding the hidden value deals within your pipeline means you need a system of multiple marketing touches to uncover opportunities along the way.

Too many sales pipelines look great on paper or in your database reports, but in reality your projections and probabilities of closing deals may be too flushed.

Knowledge is the power we all know what if your sales pipeline needs to be expanded with additional lead generation efforts, you need to know this as soon as possible so you can react. A better-managed sales pipeline will create a more predictable sales process and a smoother revenue curve.

• Overcome sales call reluctance :

Salespeople talk themselves out of making a sales call. Whether it’s lack of confidence, lack of understanding of the prospect’s business, or lack of a compelling angle to approach the customer, sales call unwillingness is a profit killer. After all, you lose 100% of the sales that you never try to make.

This year, make it a resolution to be more open to possibilities. Be prepared for your prospects to surprise you. Prospects that may not initially fit your ideal client profile based on what you see on their website might turn out to be better suited than you expected, once you get them on the phone. It’s not uncommon to find that the website you were looking at is not up to date and doesn’t reflect a recent merger.

Sales are the business of creating something from nothing, making the calls and making things happen with customers every day. Every year is a chance to make a bigger difference for customers, companies and ourselves. I hope these New Year’s resolutions will help you get out there and have a great start to 2018!

The best thing about Twitter is that the people using it are so diverse! It doesn’t matter what your business is about, you will be able to find people almost instantly who are interested in your niche. This allows you to quickly find people who are part of your targeted audience.

There are some key points that you can use to improve your Twitter Marketing and increase traffic to your website.

 Driving Traffic From Twitter To Your Website

Let’s get to the point! You want to use Twitter to drive traffic to your blog/website. Twitter is one of the best social media tools for driving traffic to your website. It is such an amazing feeling when you tweet about a new post on your site and people start to re-tweet it, spreading the word.

Exploitation of Twitter and Blogging Together

To get the most out of Twitter, we need to promote Twitter on a website and there are a few ways to do this. The most obvious way to do this is to display a Twitter button on a homepage. This button links directly connect it to the Twitter account, allowing people to sign-up and then follow it.

Social Media Icon

Another great way to promote Twitter on the site is to display sharing links on your posts. As you can see, at the bottom of this blog posts is displaying share buttons. This allows anyone to share the posts on any of the social media sites online, including Twitter. Also, conceive by placing a ‘Recent Tweets’ box on your site. This will display your newest tweets that your visitors may be interested in. Ultimately, this is just another way to encourage people to ‘follow‘ you.

Promote Yourself

You need to make sure that you promote yourself and your blog on Twitter. If you can do this well, then you will be able to build a strong brand identity that will be beneficial in the long run.

One of the key parts of your Twitter profile is your bio. Write a bio that clearly states what your blog is about and add a link to your site. This sounds really easy, but take some time to think about this. You only have a limited amount of characters, so make them count. If after reading your bio, people don’t get what you are about, they won’t stick around.

Twitter Byline

The best way to promote your website is to tweet about it! Tweet about all of your new posts a couple of times a day and keep everyone up to date about everything that is happening with your site. Surprisingly, a lot of people think that if they promote themselves on Twitter, then that makes them a spammer. That is just not true! It is fine to promote yourself, as long as you do it the right way. Tweeting every 5 minutes about your new post or an affiliate link would be classed as spam. Mix it up a bit and you will be fine. Tweet about your new post, but then tweet about other things that might be related. If you can get the right balance and learn to promote your site in the best way, then you will begin to see results.

Shuffle Friends

Twitter is a social site, so be social! There is a whole community related to your niche out there, so get involved. Chat with people, make friends, share ideas, ask a question, re-tweet, etc. We all get amazed when we get followed by someone that doesn’t tweet. But when we checked their profile, they are following the galore amount of people, but have never tweeted a single thing. In this, we can’t expect to make friends and build your brand without tweeting.

Focus More On Your Twitter Followers

One of the best things about Twitter is that you can get almost instant reaction to your tweets from your followers. It is important that you listen to your followers as they can tell you what is working and what isn’t. A particular post that you tweet may be particularly popular, so you might want to do a follow-up post on the same subject. Similarly, if you don’t get much reaction from one of your tweets, it may be because there isn’t much interest in it.

You can just ask your followers what they like and what they don’t and why. This way you are almost treating Twitter as a tool for market research that can help you with your business.

Cracking Conversations

Twitter is full of people having great conversations with one another. The best ones are full of useful information that can be very helpful to you. Don’t be shy, jump into conversations, ask questions and contribute to the discussion, or better yet start your own. People are very helpful when you are nice to them, you can learn a lot from many different people and build a useful network of people.

Untwisted With The Factor

Be honest on Twitter. If you come across something that you really like, or that you think your followers will like, then tell them about it. If you find something that you don’t like, then also tell them about it and why you don’t like it. You may find that not all of your followers agree with everything that you say, but ultimately they will value your honest opinion, which is far more important!

Twitter Background Knowledge

Twitter allows you to customise your Twitter account, so you can change all of the colours and you can upload your own background image. Why is this important? Well, by customising your own account, you make yourself stand out from the rest of the crowd. You can make all of your account colours match your website colours.The background image is the most important part of this process. You can include a lot of important information on your background image that your followers might find useful. The most obvious would be to display your website address, but you could also show social network addresses, any products that you are promoting, company logo, etc.

Marketing yourself on Twitter can take up quite a bit of time, which you could be using to add to your website. Thankfully, there are some useful tools that you can use to help you. You can now follow people, unfollow, schedule tweets and so much more with some really easy to use applications that do everything for you.This can help to increase traffic to your website by making your online presence known. If this blog really performance good for you then please leave your comments below & feel free to ask your doubts.

You may think using SMS Marketing is old and out of date but we’re here to show you that it’s one of the best ways to engage your audience.

As marketers, we’re constantly thinking up creative ways to get our message out to existing and potential customers; whilst also ensuring we get good results from our efforts. Mobile marketing is no longer something you can afford to put on the to-do-list for the future; you need to make sure you’re on a mobile device, now.

 For those of you who haven’t considered the benefits of using SMS marketing yet, here we share a handful of ways that you can use SMS marketing to market your business.

User Mobile-friendly

Making your business mobile-friendly is no longer something to consider later. Mobile is here and it’s not going anywhere. SMS is compatible with pretty much every mobile phone so you won’t need to worry about alienating some users, or getting your customers on board with brand new technologies.

Trackable  

Most service providers will offer simple delivery reporting to check your messages have successfully been sent. If you’re looking for more intelligent tracking, the top players in SMS marketing will not only tell you when your messages have been sent successfully, but will also provide you with details on who, what and when links have been clicked ensuring you get the most from your campaigns.

Client will love it

SMS is a really simple and accessible way of engaging with each other, it is heads and shoulders above any other communication method in terms of read rate. Most people send and receive text messages on a daily basis so we know your customers will like, have access to and know how to use SMS.

Undeviating

Most of us don’t leave the house without our mobile phone, in fact it’s probably within arms-reach 24/7. Besides meeting face-to-face or calling each customer, I can’t think of a more direct way to communicate your message whilst ensuring the message is delivered straight into the right hands, at the right time.

Proximate

There’s no long waiting time for designs to be mocked up or campaigns to be printed, just decide what your message is, sending a bulk SMS to your customers takes no longer than sending a text on your own phone. So, not only will you free up some precious time, but with over 95% of messages read within 3 minutes of being received you could see results immediately.

Analyzable

As we try and fudge our busy lives, it can sometimes feel like we have too much information to take in. Emails go unread, adverts ignored and leaflets discarded. SMS is small and simple and gets the message across instantly without any messing around.

Generate Leads

Keywords are easy to set-up on an SMS shortcode and can be anything from your brand name to a memorable word. Advertise your keyword on your website, printed media or in your store, allowing customers to opt-in to your mailing list. This provide you with lots of new contacts to communicate with but it also generates an instant lead with little effort required from you or your customer.

Cost-effective

SMS campaign are affordable for all budgets of all shapes and sizes, but you’ll also see a healthy return on investment from SMS marketing.

If rise in sales and improving communication with customers are on your list of resolutions this year, but you don’t have a strong budget and hours of spare time– SMS is a small, yet powerful, marketing tool not to be overlooked.

It’s hard to believe that there are just a few weeks left in 2017. How effective were your SEO strategies and its initiatives will be? Were they better or worse or beyond than expectations? We can’t Predict!

Similar to other areas of the industries, SEO is constantly changing. The once fail-proof method of consistently landing a top SERPs(search engine results pages) became irrelevant within a few months. SEO practices that once dominated the industry quickly fell out of favor.

The Google algorithm itself changes constantly, sometimes with multiple changes happening within months. On top of that, the technology available to SEO professionals also constantly evolves, allowing us to stay informed the seemingly daily changes of what it takes to dominate search.

While 2017 has brought about the dominance of Google AMP (accelerated mobile pages), the rise of HTTPS, the importance of backlinks, the precaution of the overuse of 301 redirects and reformatting of rich snippets to accommodate the increasing popularity of voice search, some of these trends will continue into 2018 and some will fall away.

Increased SERPs Features

It is the goal of any SEO professional to achieve and maintain a high volume of traffic to a given website. Ideally, this would be the result of reaching the top spot on a search engine results page. Not only is it important to achieve this coveted position, but to also maintain it as long as possible.

However, with the latest developments in the search engines, achieving this #1 ranking may no longer be enough to get the traffic you desire. Gone are the days of the ten search results listings, highlighted in blue hypertext, and a couple of clearly marked ads.

Now, when you look at a SERP, it is cluttered with images, videos, links, social media mentions, in-depth article listings, various widgets, and ads. While keyword and key phrase optimization are still important, you now have other offsite elements to consider. Popular search engine results page features include AdWords, news block, featured snippets, local packs, reviews, tweets, video, image pack, shopping results and site links.

“Rich Snippet” Structuring needed

There are rich snippets and regular snippets. Both include a clickable title, a URL, and a meta description. Rich snippets have more condensed titles that include “|” instead of a dash (-), reviews and an image. How you structure the data, however, is important in how search engines will display the information.

Page Speed

In today’s fast-paced, on-demand society, people want things, including information, immediately. Nothing is more frustrating than clicking on a website that appears to answer your question exactly, only to have to wait for the page to load. If the page doesn’t load in 5 seconds, you’re off onto another website that can hopefully give you the answers you need. If your page is slow, your site traffic will suffer. Page speed is a user experience feature that is expected of all websites. To see how the speed of your website stacks up, you can take Google’s PageSpeed Insights. As speed has been a critical component for years, but moving into 2018, we’re going to see even more emphasis on it in the future.

Increased Page Relevance

This means that search engines will evaluate the relevancy of the content on your website. As Google assess the relevance of a website’s content is with Latent Semantic Indexing. Through Latent Semantic Indexing Google can gather content from billions of websites and parse through the content, scanning for related terms and words.

Voice Search is More Real

Just like in 2017, voice search will continue to pick up steam. Many consumers prefer the convenience of speaking over typing. Not only is it faster, but the queries can also be more detailed. More importantly, voice recognition software has reached the point where users are comfortable trusting it to understand their normal speech. The increased detail of search queries means you’ll need to go beyond the simple keyword and phrases to rank and focus more on terms and phrases people are naturally going to say out loud. People speak differently than they type, so your SEO strategy should try using conversational terms and sentences.

Mobile Will be More Important

Smartphones dominate the landscape and more & more web browsing is occurring on mobile devices. In fact, the number of people using their smartphones to browse the Internet is higher than the number who browse on a traditional desktop computer. It is no longer optional to have a mobile-friendly website. It is now required and expected by the search engines and the users. In fact, mobile friendliness is now a search ranking factor.

The Rise of “Linkless” Backlinks

Backlinks have been the tea and saucer of SEO for many years. In the past, this linking from another source to shore a webpage’s authority in the eyes of Google was abused, prompting Google to come up with the Penguin algorithm in 2012. A simple link just isn’t going to stand out from the crowd. Search engines now have the ability to associate mentions of brands, institutions, organizations, and people without the need of linking to their corresponding webpages. While links are going to still carry some weight, the other content around the hyperlinked text is going to also be very important.

SERPs Will Continue Getting Personal

Traditional search ranking factors, such as page speed, content relevancy and page authority, search engines are using information about the user, such as interests, browsing history and location, provide a personalized search results list. Pages that succeed in dominating search will not only get more initial traffic, but when a user clicks to their page, that business’s page will subsequently appear in future searches by that user.This will give you a greater opportunity to dominate that user’s SERPs in the future.

Optimize Your Strategies in 2018

SEO is an ever-changing industry. In 2018, Google will continue to enhance the web user’s experience by scanning the relevancy of a page’s content, using personalized search engine results and faster page speeds, and include additional results page features.

Websites are mobile-friendly and full of normal, conversational terms and words.It takes time and long-term care. If your company is small or new and it doesn’t have a designated Digital marketing professional, IMarks can help you out our trained and knowledgeable SEO professionals can set up and monitor a customized SEO campaign specialized just for your business’ website. Contact us now for more information.

Blog posts are the first step on the conversion path as they drive prospects towards your landing pages and forms. They are also an excellent opportunity for an organisation to show thought leadership and provide unique industry insights. But, how do you attract people to your blog feed in the first place? Unless prospects have subscribed to your blog, you’ll be unable to directly notify them when your latest post is published.

So now what?

Well, don’t fret. Blogs are a fantastic demand generation tool and fit comfy at the top of the sales funnel. This means that they are most effective when targeting prospects in the research stage of their purchase. As the prospects in question may not be able to name their exact issue at this point, they are most likely using search engines to just research their pain points. And this is when blogs become highly valuable in your lead generation activity.

Firstly, get to know your prospects, leads, and customers. Find out what their concerns, issues and pain points are. Ideally, identify the business-related keywords and phrases what they are most likely to type into a search engine or did so during the early stages of their buying process. This information can be gathered by speaking to current customers, reviewing the popularity of certain phrases on Google Adwords, or analysing the source data on your marketing automation software.

Once you have this information you can begin to create engaging blog posts that focus on these keywords and phrases. Using SEO best practice it’ll be possible to ensure your blog post ranks highly on the search engine results pages for this keyword.

Now, when one of your prospects uses a search engine to research their business issues and pain points, they are likely to see one of your blog posts which directly references their query.

It’s important to remember that blog posts are not e-books. They are not meant to be 1000s of words long. They are about providing top-level insight on a particular subject and ultimately driving the reader to convert to a lead by downloading a larger piece of content.

Be sure to only focus on one keyword or phrase per blog post, as otherwise, search engines will become confused and not rank the post as highly relevant to the prospect’s search phrase. It’s also worth noting that if you are starting a new blog, each post should ideally be 1000-1500 words long. This gives the search engines a good amount of content to digest and understand, so they can rank future blog posts more accurately.

Once the blog is more established you can reduce this to between 600-1000 words, but never less than 300. If a blog post has less than 300 words, the likelihood is that the search engines won’t even bother ranking it for their results pages.

Although SEO is an excellent way to ensure your blog posts are found on the search engine results page, there are other ways to ensure the maximum number of people see your latest post. Start by sharing the title and a snippet of text on all of your social media channels.

Only write a short teaser post on social media and link the reader to your full blog post. Also, when sending a lead generation email to your database, add a link to the blog at the bottom. All of these methods will help to increase your subscription rate and build interest in your blog.

A blog is an excellent tool, but only as part of a multi-channel marketing campaign, so to ensure you generate the best results from your activity. To learn more aboutB2B sales, comment if you have any queries.