Apex Gifts And Prints LLP: November 2021

Tuesday 30 November 2021

Yoast SEO 17.7: Introducing a free configuration workout

These past couple of months, we’ve brought you several innovative SEO workouts. Our workouts help break down specific SEO tasks so that you can follow a step-by-step process to fulfill these tasks. They are easy and practical, targeted at getting your work done without issue. In Yoast SEO 17.7, we’re introducing a new configuration workout to help you set up the Yoast SEO plugin properly from the get-go.

What are SEO workouts?

There are a ton of things you need to do to optimize your site for search engines. After installing Yoast SEO, some of the technical work is done for you, but there is still so much you need to do yourself. Yoast SEO is not a set-it-and-forget-it solution. You have to put in the work and do it regularly.

But there are hundreds of things you can do with SEO. Different routes lead to the same goal. Different ways of thinking and doing. Where do you even start? That’s one of the reasons we came up with the SEO workouts in Yoast SEO Premium. The workouts are actionable exercises focused on a particular task, like fixing your site structure by proper internal linking. Or, cleaning up outdated content. Let us take you by the hand!

Our newest SEO workout is all about getting the basic settings of Yoast SEO right and it is free to use for everyone. This helps you properly introduce your site to Google, helping them quickly get to know you. This workout replaces the old configuration wizard and, of course, you only have to do this workout once.

You can find three SEO workouts in Yoast SEO

Getting the basic settings right in Yoast SEO

Getting the basic setup right is very important — it’s like handing your business card over to Google. It’s nothing fancy, but it does a lot to help search engines’ understanding of your site. Unfortunately, many people forget this all-important first step. Or, they haven’t filled it entirely or maybe haven’t looked at it for quite some time. That’s unfortunate because now you might hand Google a business card with outdated information — or nothing on it at all!

The new configuration workout in Yoast SEO 17.1 aims to fix this problem quickly. We’ve identified the key steps you need to take to set everything up correctly. Here’s the rundown:

Run the SEO data optimizer to help Yoast SEO build an understanding of your site.

Choose the site representation for Schema.org structured data. Google uses this structured data to identify who you are or what your business is.

Choose whether your site represents a person or an organization

Fill in the name of the person or organization

Upload a logo or an avatar

Fill in the tagline of the site

Fill in the corresponding social profiles for this site or person

The final two steps ask if you want to share data with Yoast that we can use to improve our products. Plus, you can sign up for our newsletter.

That’s it, you’re good to go!

Yoast SEO will use the information you enter about your site in its structured data output. We tie every part of your site together and serve that to the search engines in that output. The more you provide to search engines, the better they can understand it! Need more insights into that process? Join our resident SEO expert Jono Alderson for his free webinar Boost your organic visibility with structured data.

Of course, there’s no need to run the configuration workout if you already filled everything out before. But, it can’t hurt to check your settings. Your existing settings will remain active until you run the configuration workout — we won’t override anything unless you tell us to do so.

Simply follow the steps and you help Google understand your site better

What else is new in Yoast SEO 17.7?

Every new release of Yoast SEO comes with a round of fixes and enhancements. In Yoast SEO 17.7, we improved several things, including two language-related improvements. We’ve added more French transition words to the list so the transition words assessment in the plugin can recognize these. We’ve also fixed a bug where non-passive Greek words ending in -ου or -είτε were previously identified as passive.

Update now to Yoast SEO 17.7

Yoast SEO 17.7 comes with a new, free addition to our SEO workouts. The SEO workouts you can find in Yoast SEO Premium help you get your SEO tasks done in a structured way. The newest one is available for everyone and allows you to set up your site data correctly from the start. Try it!

Get stuff done with Yoast SEO Premium

Unlock powerful features and much more for your WordPress site with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin!

Get Yoast SEO Premium ▸Only Original price: $89 USD Sale price: $62.30 USD / per year (ex VAT) for 1 site

The post Yoast SEO 17.7: Introducing a free configuration workout appeared first on Yoast.

source https://yoast.com/yoast-seo-17-7/

In this blog you will find out about SEO news, tools and tips from different SEO companies and experts, which will helps you to grow your business.

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source https://www.facebook.com/108818354838599/posts/136762845377483/

How To Build a Content Operations Framework (and Why You Need One)

It’s not good enough to only focus on your content marketing efforts. To meet evolving expectations, you now must construct, implement, and administer a framework for content operations throughout your brand. Continue reading →

The post How To Build a Content Operations Framework (and Why You Need One) appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

source https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2021/11/create-organizational-content-operations-framework/

11 Creative [Copy & Paste!] Holiday Customer Appreciation Messages to Send This Year

To our valued customers,

As the end of the year draws near, we'd like to take this opportunity to extend a heartfelt thank you to all of you for your support. Thank you for choosing us and we wish you a wonderful holiday season and happy new year!

How about sending something to your customers this year that is authentic—something they'll want to read and that actually makes them feel valued? Today I'm sharing with you how to write a creative holiday message to your customers, with:

The dos and don'ts of happy holiday messages to customers.

50 non-boring words and phrases to use.

11 copy-and-pasteable examples and templates.

Read on so you can write a holiday customer appreciation email or social media post this year that actually means something.

Dos & don'ts of a holiday customer thank you email

I know, I know. It's one small blurb, how much can there be to say about it? Lots, actually. In such a short piece of content as this, small details have big effects. Here are some vibes to aim for and how to get it right.

Simplicity

DO keep it short and use a conversational tone. This is an e-toast!

DON'T use sarcasm.

Positivity

DO share good vibes and warm (inclusive) holiday wishes.
We wish you health and happiness this holiday season and beyond.

DON'T be overly hyped; the holidays can be difficult for many people.
It's everyone's favorite time of the year! We hope your Christmas is as amazing as you!

Visual appeal

DO use a picture of your team, or of you, or a tasteful graphic.

DON'T use memes (impersonal) or gifs (unless you can stop it from repeating).

Funny? Yes. Personal? Not so much.

Growth

DO give customers a reason to stay confident in your business.
This year was a big one! We launched a new site, brought on five new team members, and started some exciting partnerships.

DON'T give customers a reason to roll their eyes.
We crushed it this year. We hit a record with our website traffic and met all of our sales goals early!

Achievements

DO share what you achieved this year with the help of your customers.
Thanks to your referrals, we're now serving twice as many artists as last year!

DON'T just talk about yourself.
We hosted 38 webinars, wrote 152 blog posts, and doubled our customer base!

Gratitude

DO be specific
Thank you for the kindness and energy you bring into our office each day.

DON'T overdo it (patronizing) or be generic.
We appreciate your support.

Inspiration

DO refer to your mission.
It is through your feedback that we find new ways to help seniors stay active each year.

DO NOT sneak in your selling proposition
We renew our commitment to you to provide the lowest-priced photography packages in the New England area.

Future focus

DO speak to an ongoing relationship
We look forward to another great year together! Until then, enjoy your holiday season.

DO NOT include a CTA or sales promotion
We look forward to another great year together. Book your January appointment now!

How not to do a customer holiday greeting.

Words & phrases to make your holiday customer appreciation letter genuine

Take a gander through these words and phrases you can use that the other gajillion businesses out there aren't using.

Delete "valued customer" right now

Gag. Don’t call them valued, make them FEEL valued through your messaging.

Dear customers

To our awesome customers

To our customers near and far, old and new

To all of you

To each and every one of you

To the Baker & Co. family

To the SparkLife community

To you and your families

Dear customers, partners, and your families

Friends

First name (if you have a small list and can MANUALLY do it).

Nix "exciting year"

"It's been an exciting year!" And you've just killed the vibe by calling it such.

It's been a...

Lively

Rewarding

Exhilarating

Electrifying

Wild

Zestful

Refreshing

Bustling

Bright

Spirited

Rousing

Rigorous

....year!

"As we approach..." <--end it

Any "as we." As we approach, enter, wind down, you know them all. How about:

Every year, I/we

If you’re like us, you are...

As the saying goes...

One of my favorite quotes is

Ask a question

Whether this email finds you ___ing, ____ing, or ___ing, we hope it finds you well!

As I sit here listening to [unique/meaningful/inclusive song name]

Exactly 11 months ago, we were…..

When we started out this year we _____. Little did we know...

Here at ___ we believe in ____, so...

One of our core values here at ____ is ____.

As I write this email, I’m watching the snow falling outside my window for the first time this year.

As it turns out...

Do not "take this opportunity to..."

Take THIS opportunity to remove yourselves from the mileu by using phrases like:

Words can't describe our...

We're reaching out to say...

We want you to know that...

We extend our deepest...

It is with pride and joy that we...

Thank you for your support [yawn]

Nothing wrong with this statement, but make it better with specifics.

Thank you for...

how much you've [taught us, inspired us, encouraged us, etc..]

choosing us as your ____ provider

giving us a reason to come into work each day

showing up to our events

your reviews, social shares, votes

positive vibes, enthusiasm

trusting us with your ____

using ____ for your ____ needs.

confidence and loyalty to _____

Holiday customer thank you message templates

To make your life easier, I've compiled some templates that incorporate the tips and words above. Check'em out.

Template #1—achievement-focused

To our customers:

Without your enthusiasm and energy, we wouldn’t be where we are now.

Thanks to your feedback, we added eight new features to ProductName this year and earned our highest rating on ReviewPlatform yet. And because of your referrals, we helped twice as many small businesses get online this year than last. And because of you, we love our jobs!

Not only are we excited for 2022 with you, but we also have some big goals and big ideas that we can’t wait to share. So stay tuned! But for now, enjoy the holiday season!

With many thanks,

The ProductName Team

Template #2—fun & grateful

To the BusinessName community,

As the saying goes, “Gratitude is like gravy—put it on everything!” So we pour out our thanks to you for choosing BusinessName as your PainPointSolver.

Your patronage, your presence, your reviews and shares—all of this keeps our business alive and makes our line of work a pleasure each day.

We wish you all the best this holiday season and look forward to another great year with you!

With thanks,

All of us here at BusinessName

Template #3—from the owner

To each and every one of you,

As I sit here listening to InclusiveMeaningfulSong, I am reminded of how grateful I am to have you in my circle.

StudioName is rooted in relationships, health, and growth and you are the ones who bring it to life. Every day I am blessed with the new energy, new perspectives, and new friends you bring to our studio each day.

I wish all the blessings returned to you during this holiday season and the year to come. Can’t wait to grow with you in 2022!

See you soon,

YourName

Template #4—mission-centered

To our work out warriors,

Whether the holidays make you happy or sad, giddy or stressed, one thing we can all feel is gratitude.

And that is why we extend our personal thanks to you—for showing up, for trusting us with your health, for your smiling faces, and your feedback.

We are on a mission to make fitness fun and accessible to all and it is dedicated members like you who help us make this possible.

However you’re feeling this holiday season, know that we appreciate you and we can’t wait to see you next year.

Stay well,

The GymName Team

Template #5—wrap-up with thank you

So...how do you wrap up a fantastic year in X words? We figured it out:

32,695 orders

200 blog posts

84 five-star reviews

5 new employees

2 awards nominations

1 HUGE thanks...

To YOU!

None of this would be possible without all of your shares, likes, comments, and confidence in our resources. This is what keeps us eager to find new things to teach you each day. You are the lifeblood of BusinessName and together, we’re helping more and more people find jobs they love.

Thank you for playing such a pivotal role in our growth. We wish you the best this holiday season and the year to come.

Let’s do it all again next year!

The BusinessName Team

Examples of holiday thank you email to customers

Here are a few real holiday customer appreciation email examples with non-generic intro sentences and attractive design.

Patchwork—a poem!

You can have a lot of fun with this one!

Big thanks

Lots of text but once you start, you can't stop.

Visually appealing—although a face would be nice.

BuildOn—super specific

Consider something like this if you're a nonprofit.

Just the right amount of gratitude and inspiration

Visual with smiling face

Shares specific achievements made possible by YOU

Image source

This season, we’re thankful for your support!

With your help, buildOn has empowered thousands of students and strengthened hundreds of communities across the globe.

In the U.S., tens of thousands of urban students have invested nearly 1.4 million hours of service into transforming their communities and empowering themselves. Today, 674 schools are bringing quality education and a chance out of poverty to 90,000 children and adults in the developing world.

None of this would be possible without you. THANK YOU!

WE—v. versatile

WE has some inspo in store for you.

Positive without overdoing it

Conversational and inclusive messaging

Attractive visual, although a face would be nice

Sincere appreciation, could use some specifics

Image source

“With the new year comes a sense of renewal: an opportunity to bring out the best in ourselves, moving forward with positivity and purpose. Thank you for being part of the WE Movement this year—whether you’ve been with us every step of the way or have just joined, we truly appreciate having you in our community.

Together, we change the world.”

Office Luv—faces!

Office Luv nails it.

Actual employee faces!

Short and sweet

No "we'd like to take this opportunity to.."

Later—future-focused

The thank you section of Later’s 2020 December newsletter is one to model after.

Conversational tone, with emojis

Specific thank yous

Future-focused

Has a CTA, but just to Instagram profile

2020 has been full of challenges in the social media world and beyond, and we wanted to take a quick moment to say thank you. <3

Thanks for turning up, reading our emails, joining the conversation, sharing the love on social - you’ve made all of our days a little brighter this year.

We promise 2021 is going to be bigger and better than ever - so stay tuned for more new blogs, training, and of course, exciting new Later features!

[Stay tuned]

Chiropractor—super-personalized

Try out something like this if you're a solopreneur.

First name personalization

Inclusive graphic and smiling face

Fun poem

Sense of community

Sincere thanks

Happy Holidays Kristen!

I know by this point everyone is nestled in and hopefully enjoying friends, families, and holiday cheer! Yet I didn't' want this season to go by without an official Merry Christmas from our home to yours!

We count you among our friends and thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your dedication to your health and in creating your healthy home and life. It means more to us than you know, so thank you!

Wishing you joy and peace,

Dr. Lizie

It's time to send a holiday customer email they'll actually want to read

You now have all the words, phrases, tips, and templates you need to send an authentic holiday email message to your customers. You have no excuses!

source https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2021/11/29/holiday-customer-appreciation-letter

Cyber Monday sale at Yoast: 30% discount on all products!

It’s Cyber Monday, and the Yoast Black Friday deals are still going strong! Did you already claim your 30% discount on any of the Yoast products? If not, hurry! Your time is running out! Ready to go green? Do you want those red bullets to turn all green and outrank your competitors in Google? And are you looking to save time and get access to easy tools and practical tips on boosting your rankings? Yes?!

Then getting Yoast SEO Premium is a must! Buy the Yoast SEO Premium plugin today with an incredible 30% discount! And if you decide to go green on Cyber Monday, Yoast will plant one tree for every order we get! We’ll go green together.

Get Yoast SEO Premium ▸Only Original price: $89 USD Sale price: $62.30 USD / per year (ex VAT)

Not convinced to go green yet? In this post, I’ll tell you all about the benefits of Yoast SEO Premium and why your site can’t do without it. Interested in one of our other plugins? Check out this post!

Help Google to understand your site

Google is amazingly smart. But it needs help understanding the structure of your site. Always bear in mind that Google’s bots follow your internal links. That’s the way Google crawls through your site. That means that you can’t have any dead ends, any 404’s on your site. Otherwise, Google will get lost. Yoast SEO Premium will help you to take care of all 404’s with the redirect manager.

Posts with many will appear more important to Google than posts with little or no internal links. This means that you’ll need to optimize your internal links so that Google knows what the most important content is. Yoast SEO Premium offers practical SEO workouts that’ll help you to easily improve and optimize your internal linking structure. Also, within every post, you’ll get internal linking suggestions to further improve your internal linking structure.

The cornerstone content workout in Yoast SEO Premium helps you to link to the most important articles

Manage the SEO of a growing website

If you keep adding content to your website, Google will have more trouble crawling through a big site. And what to do with outdated content? You shouldn’t have old stale content on your site. How do you keep track of it all?

Yoast SEO Premium will help you with your SEO maintenance. We will remind you to update those stale articles, and we’ll tell you if you don’t update your most important pages regularly. Our SEO workouts will help you to keep track of your SEO and solve all kinds of problems you’ll encounter if your site is getting large. If you follow the steps in our workouts, we’ll make sure to keep your website crawlable.

With the SEO workouts, we help you get the work done. We’ve made it incredibly easy to stay on top of your SEO, saving you precious time and effort.

Write the best SEO-friendly content

In order to really stand out in the search engines, you have to write high-quality and SEO-friendly content. SEO is still king (or queen!). You need to make sure to optimize your text for the right keywords, without over-optimizing. Your text should be easy to read. You definitely should add keywords in a text, you should definitely optimize your text. You need to get those green bullets, right? However, optimizing for the search engines should never compromise the readability of your text. That could hurt your rankings.

That’s why Yoast SEO Premium recognizes different word forms and synonyms. It’s able to recognize plurals, past tense, different word orders. You can add related keywords too. With Yoast SEO Premium, you’ll be able to optimize your text for SEO without compromising the readability of the text.

An example from a text optimized with Yoast SEO Premium for [puppy training] with the synonym [obedience classes]

Learn EVERYTHING about SEO with Yoast SEO academy

Buying Yoast SEO Premium will give you access to all of the online courses of Yoast SEO academy. And you want that! We’ll help you to get started with keyword research and how to set up an internal linking strategy, but we’ll teach you everything about structured data as well. Everything you ever want to learn about SEO is covered in one of our courses.

Each course consists of multiple short videos, reading materials, and quizzes. We’ll share a lot of practical tips that you can put into practice right away.

A small sampling of what’s available in Yoast SEO academy

Only a couple hours left to go green on Cyber Monday!

What are you waiting for? Make sure to go green today and buy Yoast SEO Premium with a 30% discount. And start outranking your competitors! But be quick, as this sale won’t last forever…

Buy Yoast SEO Premium now!

Unlock powerful features and much more for your WordPress site with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin!

Get Yoast SEO Premium ▸Only Original price: $89 USD Sale price: $62.30 USD / per year (ex VAT) for 1 site

The post Cyber Monday sale at Yoast: 30% discount on all products! appeared first on Yoast.

source https://yoast.com/cyber-monday-sale-at-yoast/

Monday 29 November 2021

17 New, Newly Updated, and Timeless Books Content Marketers Love

Fill out your wish list or decide on a gift for a team member with this list of books about content marketing, creativity, writing, artificial intelligence, personal branding, and more. Each title comes with the recommendation of someone in the Content Marketing Institute community. Continue reading →

The post 17 New, Newly Updated, and Timeless Books Content Marketers Love appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

source https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2021/11/timeless-books-content-marketers/

How to Use the Right Type of Product Video to Boost Your Sales

Every marketer and business owner out there is constantly looking for the most effective way to sell. And while there’s no single definitive answer to that, in this day and age, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better alternative than video content in most situations.

Video lets us deliver our message in a compelling way while bringing the audience closer and nurturing branding, trust, and appeal— not bad for a single piece of content!

However, as great as video marketing can be, it doesn’t mean that just any video will do.

The thing with video – and doubly so for product videos – is that for it to deliver, a lot of effort and care needs to go into their planning and production stages. And that starts with understanding and choosing the right type of format that fits your message best.

Today, we’ll cover everything you should know before creating fantastic product videos that actually help you sell more, lives up to your expectations, and deliver the returns you are looking for.

Understanding the Best Types of Product Videos:

There are already a handful of popular formats out there that have gained favor over the past few years when it comes to product videos. As video grows increasingly more ubiquitous for digital marketing strategies, consumer trends and preference patterns become more easily identified, revealing the type of content more liable to bring results.

These formats resonate well with most audiences and are likely to prove to be an asset for companies looking to boost their product marketing strategy through videos.

Character Animation Videos

A favorite to business owners and marketers alike, character animations provide many alternatives for companies to portray their products and services to an audience.

This format’s major advantage comes in the way of budgeting, as they can be effectively put together without breaking the bank or sacrificing visual quality and still work marvelously as one of your pieces of content that converts the most in your marketing campaign.

One key insight you should keep in mind when it comes to character animation videos is to ensure that your main character is a carefully researched mirror of your target audience.

This seemingly small but crucial detail can be the difference between just a pretty video and one that’s continuously helping you convert viewers into buyers.

Whiteboard Animation

Likely one of the most effective types of marketing video formats out there when it comes to the early stages of the buyer’s journey, whiteboard animated videos resonate with most audiences across all kinds of niches, as they appeal to a basic human want: The desire to understand.

They act as the ideal medium to communicate complicated topics in a way that anybody can understand, using a style that can capture anyone’s attention with ease.

The most appealing feature whiteboard animation brings is that the action of what is being described by the narrator develops right in front of the viewer’s eyes. This makes it relatively easy to lose yourself in the video’s explanations without effort, which makes for an ideal situation to have the rest of its marketing elements – brand reinforcement, subtle CTAs, etc. – to take place that much more effectively.

By combining the appeal of educational videos with subtle but powerful visual marketing techniques, whiteboard animations dominate that ideal niche of content capable of helping you sell more while bringing audiences closer to your brand — all in one go.

Motion Graphics

Usually reserved for more complex types of products, motion graphic videos tend to be the ticket whenever you are trying to explain highly technical or involved products and services in great detail.

Here, you use animations and digital footage to showcase your product while creating the illusion of real-time movement and rotation. This visual dynamic helps you explore every detail of the component parts and inner workings of something in an interesting way that can retain the viewer’s attention.

This particular format is often used to present complex hardware or tech gadgets, help people visualize it, and showcase the features and processes of software platforms and apps without losing the viewer’s attention.

Live-action Videos

Possibly the most easily-recognized and resource-intensive format on this list, live-action marketing videos usually refer to the classic type of TV commercials we’ve known for years but adapted to the online arena.

In reality, live-action product videos comprise a much broader category, including in-depth reviews, unboxings, versus videos, and many other seemingly user-generated content.

By their very nature, live-action videos are appealing for most physical products – as opposed to software solutions and apps – since you get to portray them being used and enjoyed by people in real-life situations. These types of videos help establish connections between your potential customer’s pain points and how your product addresses them.

There’s a reason why this format has remained a popular choice for marketers through the years, and that’s because when done right, it’s easy to have potential buyers see themselves reflected in the video and making a connection to your product.

The tricky part, though, is to translate this format to work as well on an online platform.

That is, to make sure you are meeting the expectations and working within the constraints of the medium (like the format, lengths, SEO, etc.), which is something we’ll discuss a bit more about in the next section.

Important Things to Keep in Mind when Working on Product Videos

So, now that you understand – and have hopefully settled for one of – these popular product video formats, it’s an opportune time to briefly go over a handful of crucial things you need to consider (and keep present) when working on your company’s own product videos.

Precision Over Spread

When you set out to cover one of your products in a video – especially if this is your first one – it can be difficult to resist the temptation to include as much as possible (usually every single one) about your product’s different features and characteristics. More often than not, this is a mistake.

Nine times out of ten, you’ll want to use concise videos (usually under 90 seconds long, sometimes even shorter than that) as part of your marketing campaign. This means that figuring out precisely the feature, or handful of features, you wish to focus on is one of the most important decisions you’ll have to make as far as the content of your videos goes.

One main feature followed by two or three supporting ones seems to be the sweet spot for most of these short videos. Keep your audiences’ pain points in mind at all times, and work to match your product’s features to them; after all, there are other – and better suited – video styles to promote the rest of your marketplace catalog.

Script and Production

Your script needs to work as a marketing piece, period. Even in whiteboard animations (and maybe even doubly so in those) where subtlety is paramount, your script needs to be cleverly written to lead the viewer on a short adventure that addresses their needs and how your products solve them. This means that you need to find a way to convey information in an exciting way and in a short amount of time, which can be reasonably challenging, and that’s precisely where your storyboard comes in.

Use a storyboard to complement and develop the work you already did on your script from a visual standpoint. Most of the points you make on the script will need to be either reinforced or expanded upon on the visual content of your video. And making good use of your storyboards is the only way to one, make sure the whole is cohesive, and two, that your script’s narrative is working towards convincing your viewers alongside transmitting your message.

Voiceover, Music, and Sound Effects

Once everything else is done, it’s necessary that the audio part of your video works well to bring it all together.

The voiceover provides a perfect opportunity to further the video’s marketing appeal. Most of the time, you’ll want to pick voice actors that resemble your target demographic.

Music is a big part of your video’s overall sentiment and needs to match the developing events in the video. Side note, avoid music with lyrics as it overlaps with the voiceover.

Lastly, we have the FX, which can have a powerful effect on helping your video with achieving its ultimate goal of furthering your branding and converting people. For example, a common use of sound FX on product videos revolves around adding discreet cheers and clapping effects when your brand makes its first appearance on the video. And on that note…

Brand your Product Videos

Whichever format you settle for, you need to ensure your branding is coming through in your video.

This can mean a lot of things. Using your company’s colors and aesthetics in your video or including your motto seamlessly as part of the script are all common strategies that can help you keep your company’s image at the forefront – even when it is not being stated overtly.

Here’s an excellent example of how a video can use branding effectively without being outright evident about it:

Not Just Any Video, but the Right One

As you can see, when it comes to video marketing, making sure your video effectively fulfills a few characteristics comes as part of the deal.

Videos can be a powerful element to incorporate into your product’s marketing campaign to complement other strategies like link building and email outreach, but for you to see the results you want, you need to make optimized pieces like the ones we discussed.

So, take a look around YouTube for product videos you think fulfill most of these characteristics, that inspire you, that you think are effective, and share them with us in the comments below as you start working on your own!

source https://www.business2community.com/video-marketing/how-to-use-the-right-type-of-product-video-to-boost-your-sales-02443710

How to Use the Right Type of Product Video to Boost Your Sales

Every marketer and business owner out there is constantly looking for the most effective way to sell. And while there’s…

Source: https://www.business2community.com/video-marketing/how-to-use-the-right-type-of-product-video-to-boost-your-sales-02443710

Organic Search vs Pay Per Click advertising: go sustainable with our Black Friday sale!

It’s Black Friday weekend and at Yoast, our Black Friday is all about going green. Getting those bullets green and getting that green, organic traffic to your site. Why is organic traffic so important? And why will organic search and SEO continue to be important in the future? Isn’t it much easier to advertise in order to attract traffic to your website? In this blog post, I will explain the importance of SEO and organic traffic. I will also dive into the differences between SEO vs Pay Per Click advertising (PPC) and the advantages of SEO over a marketing strategy that is focused solely on advertising. Let’s get to it!

Don’t forget to go green and buy Yoast SEO Premium. You’ll get a 30% discount! And because Yoast is going green, we’ll plant one tree for every order placed during our Black Friday sale weekend.

Buy Yoast SEO Premium now!

Unlock powerful features and much more for your WordPress site with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin!

Get Yoast SEO Premium ▸Only Original price: $89 USD Sale price: $62.30 USD / per year (ex VAT) for 1 site

To make sure that we’re on the same page, I’ll shortly explain what SEO and organic search is and what Pay Per Click advertising looks like. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it’s the practice of optimizing your pages to make them reach a high position in the organic search results of search engines like Google.

Pay-per-click advertising are the advertisements you see at the top of these search results pages, and this is an advertising model in which an advertiser pays whenever someone clicks on the ad.

Example of advertisement and organic result on Google’s search result page

SEO can result in sooooo much traffic

A successful SEO strategy can result in SO MUCH organic traffic. If your site ranks high in Google’s result pages, that’ll result in a lot of organic traffic. Overall, organic search results have a much higher click-through rate than advertisements in Google. Organic search actually drives 53% of website traffic, while paid search drives only 27%. That might be because lots of people (25,8%) use ad blockers and don’t even see the advertisements on Google. Also, the ‘normal’ search results might just be a better fit to the search query or feel more trustworthy.

You should try to rank on the first page of Google and preferably as the first result. The first page of Google organic search results accounts for about 92 % of all the traffic. Almost one-third of all clicks go to the first result on the organic search pages. When you get to the 10th (last) result on that first page, the click-through rate actually drops to 2.5%. This shows us that being the number one result, or one of the top ones, really pays off!

SEO has a high Return on Investment

SEO can be a lot of work. You need to write kickass content, you need to do keyword research, you need to make sure your internal linking structure is top-notch. But, any effort you put into SEO is always an effort that pays off! SEO has a really high Return on Investment (ROI). Not only is the average conversion rate higher when it comes to SEO, but it’s also an investment that keeps paying off. SEO is always ‘on’ and although you’ll have to update your content from time to time, you won’t have to pay to keep it in the search results. If your content is good and you’re making sure that your website is accessible and easy to use, Google will show your content in the results. This means that you’ll continue to see ROI long after your investment.

You’ll need to have great content in order to convince people of your product or service anyway, even if you get your traffic through advertisements. It’s not that much work to turn great copy into SEO-friendly copy that’ll help you rank in the search engines! And, once you turn your blog into a traffic-generating asset, you may start to get tens or even hundreds of thousands of unique visitors every month without much additional effort.

SEO is very sustainable

Advertising is never a sustainable (hey, that’s green too!) way to attract traffic to a website. You’ll need to keep doing it, you’ll always need to keep paying in order to keep attracting traffic. SEO is a long-term strategy and it takes time, but it is also a solid and sustainable strategy. A good website, with high-quality content and brand authority, will not stop ranking overnight.

SEO is straightforward

Advertising can be tricky. In the future, it could very well be that advertising will become even harder and more expensive. Attracting the right audience and retargeting audiences are profitable advertising tactics. However, chances are that these kinds of advertising tactics will become more difficult as privacy laws will become stricter. SEO as a strategy is a rather straightforward strategy, that will not be altered by privacy laws as much. It would be a good thing to start investing in SEO now, so you’ll have a headstart over your competition that is still (only) doing ads.

SEO is important because it impacts the buying cycle!

The most important difference between SEO and advertising is the search intent. If people are searching in Google, they are looking for something specific. If a person searches for a specific type of jeans or for a certain shampoo, they’ll probably want to buy those jeans or get that shampoo. The audience you can reach through search is a highly motivated audience, an audience that is prone to buy. They are much easier to convince to buy your stuff if they’re searching for it than if they happen to run into an ad.

SEO is important because the people you’re trying to reach with an SEO strategy are the highest motivated people. Make sure that if people are looking to buy, if they’re searching for products you sell, that they can easily find your website. And make sure that you’re ranking with the right page!

SEO is getting more important, because Google is getting smarter

SEO has always been important, but it is getting more and more important. That’s because over time Google is getting smarter and smarter in understanding text. You’ll need to have texts that are well optimized and, at the same time, implement a kick-ass schema.org implementation in order to get those awesome rich results. These rich results actually have a 58% click-through rate, in comparison to 41% for non-rich results.

In order to have a chance to outrank your competitors in the search engines, you need to do your very best! Using an SEO tool can help you get started. In fact, research tells us that 73% of content marketing teams use an SEO tool in their marketing efforts. Our Yoast SEO plugin can be one of those tools, helping you climb the search results and attract more visitors.

Did I convince you that organic search is the way to move forward? Make sure to buy Yoast SEO Premium now and profit from a whopping 30% discount!

Buy Yoast SEO Premium now!

Unlock powerful features and much more for your WordPress site with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin!

Get Yoast SEO Premium ▸Only Original price: $89 USD Sale price: $62.30 USD / per year (ex VAT) for 1 site

Conclusion: SEO is a sustainable and longterm marketing strategy

SEO will be a bit more work than setting up an advertising campaign. It will not get you immediate results. But in the long run, it is the most important strategy to attract traffic to your website. So don’t underestimate its power and start working on your SEO right away!

Read more: WordPress SEO: The definitive guide to higher rankings for WordPress sites »

The post Organic Search vs Pay Per Click advertising: go sustainable with our Black Friday sale! appeared first on Yoast.

source https://yoast.com/seo-vs-pay-per-click-advertising/

Sunday 28 November 2021

Black Friday sale weekend: Go green with sustainable SEO

This year’s Black Friday sale at Yoast is all about going green. Getting green bullets in order to outrank those competitors in the search engines! And, going green also has to do with sustainability. How do you keep doing SEO in an efficient and successful way? How do you keep ranking in the long run? If you’re not in it for the short-term success, but for the long haul. And is Artificial Intelligence (AI) a sustainable SEO solution? Read all about sustainable SEO in this blog post!

Don’t forget to buy your Yoast SEO Premium plugin with 30% off this Black Friday weekend! And in the spirit of going green, Yoast will plant one tree for every sale we make this weekend.

Buy Yoast SEO Premium now!

Unlock powerful features and much more for your WordPress site with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin!

Get Yoast SEO Premium ▸Only Original price: $89 USD Sale price: $62.30 USD / per year (ex VAT) for 1 site

What is sustainable SEO?

Ranking in search engines usually doesn’t happen overnight. It’s hard work. So, if you do succeed in ranking high in Google, you want to keep ranking that high in Google. A good SEO strategy takes time and effort and is always focused on long-term results. In order to do that – in order to have a sustainable SEO strategy – you need to comply with Google’s mission. Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Google wants to give people the information they find accessible and useful. That means that you need to make sure that your website provides just that.

No games and no tricks

In the old days, SEO was all about tricks. You could write a text and mention your keyword in every other sentence. That would help with your ranking. Writing white text on a white background could fool Google. But Google has gotten amazingly smart in understanding texts. The algorithm of Google is trying to mimic a human being. It tries to read texts like human beings. And texts that are awful to read, because you use your keyword in every other sentence are not liked by Google. The many different updates of Google – Panda, Hummingbird, BERT- have all shown us that Google ranks texts that are easy to read. Google wants to serve its users with accessible and useful information.

SEO should not be a game. SEO is not a trick. We often joke that the acronym of SEO actually stands for Seriously Effortful Optimization. Writing high-quality content, providing a good user experience (UX), and building a beautiful and accessible website is a lot of work. Shortcuts often lead to suboptimal results. Games and tricks lead to a bad user experience and penalties by Google.

Is Artificial Intelligence a trick? And is it a bad trick?

Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to write content is a shortcut. You don’t have to do the hard work. Does that mean that using AI cannot be part of a sustainable SEO strategy? Will it be bad for your rankings? Not necessarily. The latest AI tools are actually quite good. They use natural language processing and actual draft readable en findable texts, optimized for the search engines without overdoing it at all. I tried out a couple of tools and was not disappointed at all. My favorite so far (although I haven’t done extensive research yet) is copymatic. You can do a free trial and see what a text could read like. I don’t think these texts will hurt your rankings. These tools can actually help you write texts that are nice and easy to read.

This does not mean, however, that writing is not an important skill. Nor that AI can take over writing blog posts altogether. Texts written by AI don’t provide any original ideas. If you want to write a text about guinea pigs, the AI tool uses information that’s already out there on the internet to draft a text about guinea pigs. The AI isn’t able to come up with new information about guinea pigs. Perhaps that isn’t a big deal if you write about guinea pigs or if you draft a lot of product descriptions. But, for a lot of websites, original ideas are important.

I always state that high-quality content has three major demands. It should be original, it should be readable and it should be findable. The AI tools can help you make your content more readable and findable. But, your content will not be original if it is written entirely by AI. You should write content because you have a story to tell or a vision to share. Writing is a means to get a certain message across. It should be more than just some generated information about guinea pigs.

So, is Artificial intelligence a bad idea?

Using an AI tool to write your content is not necessarily a bad idea. It could even fit well into a sustainable SEO strategy. It all depends on how you use such a tool! Make sure you always think for yourself. You should be the architect of the story you want to tell. The idea, the message, the originality should come from you. But if you’re the architect, you design the building. Someone else can do your construction work. If you use an AI tool to do your construction work for you, it could probably work out just fine! Just make sure to design an awesome story!

Some tips on how to do sustainable SEO

What should you be doing if your focus on ranking in Google in the long run? Let’s check out our three top tips!

1. Write some awesome cornerstone content

Make sure to write some really good articles on your website. Really put an effort into writing articles with content that is evergreen and valuable for years to come. Make sure to update that article regularly. Those articles should be lengthy, well-optimized, readable little gems.

2. Get your internal linking structure in good shape

Google has a hard time figuring out which content is the most important. Your internal linking structure is really important to help Google figure out where the most important content on your website is located. Internal linking is something you need to maintain and update regularly.

3. Regularly do keyword research

You need to make sure you’re writing about the topics your audience wants to read about. And that could very well change over time. So, every now and then you need to get inside the heads of your readers again. Which topics do they like, which words are they using to search and find your content? Is your keyword strategy still up to date or does it need refinement?

Conclusion: Sustainable SEO needs to be part of your routine!

In order to really have a sustainable SEO strategy, you need to have a routine. You just need to make sure to regularly evaluate what you’re doing. You can definitely use tools like Semrush for your keyword research or even an AI tool for your content. But you should never stop thinking and evaluating yourself. Sustainable SEO has to do with carefully thinking about what content would benefit your user most. If you keep your audience in mind, you’ll always be on the right track.

And don’t forget the Yoast Black Friday sale, which allows you to get Yoast SEO Premium and all of the other premium plugins at a 30% discount! This will really help you take your SEO to the next level.

Check out our products and get a 30% discount this weekend!

The post Black Friday sale weekend: Go green with sustainable SEO appeared first on Yoast.

source https://yoast.com/go-green-with-sustainable-seo/

Saturday 27 November 2021

Live Streaming Video Tools for Brands

Today I have some live streaming video tools to help you improve your brand presence online.

Video content is now the number one way to building a brand online. With an interactive broadcast you can quickly attract an interested audience. By taking advantage of live streaming tools you can host your own podcast or webinar. Would you like to get your live video off to a successful start? Take advantage of these resources, and let me know how these work for you!

1) Professional quality streaming – Wirecast by Telestream

Broadcast your live videos in a high quality format. Wirecast by Telestream is a great way to capture, produce, and stream your videos without the need for a high end production studio. In addition to your video camera you can also turn your iPhone into a live recording device. Share directly on social media as well as save recordings for later viewing.

2) Live video meetings – Google Meet

Reach your viewers and customers instantly with this free resource available for Google Chrome or through your account. Google Meet allows users to start a group conversation, have private video chats with customers, and more. Use this tool to create a better connection with your prospects as well as your team in an encrypted and safe portal that helps stop hackers from breaking into your conversations.

3) Connect with your audience in real-time – Facebook Live (Meta for Media)

Build a larger brand audience with live video from your Page or profile. Facebook Live can help your business stand out with broadcasts such as a teaching webinar, interviews, and more. This is a great way to attract more followers and create a meaningful conversation.

4) Open source live streaming – Open Broadcaster Software

Would you like to start a broadcast without expensive software? OBS is free software for PC, Linux and Mac users, which allows for recording and broadcasting your live videos. The developers have also created an API, which allows other developers to create their own plugins to better control the streaming experience on social media. Features include screen capturing, simultaneous scenes, an audio mixer and more.

Hopefully you will find these live streaming video tools useful to your digital marketing strategy. Are there any that you would like to add as well?

Have fun with these tips and tools.

source https://www.business2community.com/video-marketing/live-streaming-video-tools-for-brands-02443472

How Are Companies Looking for Digital Marketing Services?

How do your future clients search for marketing agencies? We examined the top 100 keywords related to “marketing agency” by volume to find out.

from Semrush blog https://www.semrush.com/blog/looking-for-digital-marketing-services

Black Friday sale at Yoast: 30% discount on all products!

BOOM! It’s Black Friday and that means the Yoast Black Friday deals are here! It’s the biggest sale of the year! Are you ready to go green? Buy Yoast SEO Premium or one of the other Premium plugins and benefit from a whopping 30% discount! And because we’re focusing on sustainability this year, Yoast will plant one tree for every sale that we make during our Black Friday weekend. How’s that for going green?

Browse all Yoast products with 30% off!

Not convinced yet? Let me tell you all about the products and why you need them to outrank your competition in Google!

Improve your rankings with Yoast SEO Premium

Skyrocket your rankings with Yoast’s best-seller and biggest plugin: Yoast SEO Premium! If you take your SEO seriously, Yoast SEO Premium is a must-have! It makes SEO easy and helps you get more visitors to your website. With this plugin, you’ll be able to write great and readable content that’s ready to climb the rankings. But Yoast SEO also handles a lot of the technical SEO stuff for you. Avoid 404’s and dead ends on your site. Automatically add structured data to your website. Get your site indexed even better with our internal linking functionality. And don’t forget about our new workouts! These workouts take you by the hand and save you loads of time by helping you clean up your site. Why? Because it helps Google understand what your site is about.

And to top this all off: a Premium subscription gives you access to our 24/7 support team (they are the best and nicest bunch of people you’ll ever meet) and the online Yoast SEO academy courses platform. You’ll learn everything you’ll ever need to know about SEO!

The first step in one of the SEO workouts in Yoast SEO Premium

Get Yoast SEO Premium ▸Only Original price: $89 USD Sale price: $62.30 USD / per year (ex VAT)

Get more visitors to your online store with WooCommerce SEO

When you have an online store, you want people to easily find you online right? And you want your products to look great in the search results. That’s why you need the WooCommerce SEO plugin to unlock extra tools and get the SEO of your store in top-notch condition! The structured data that the plugin generates helps you to get rich product results showing the price, rating and other information about your product. In addition, we’ll help you to optimize your product pages, improve your breadcrumb navigation, and much, much more!

Example of a rich product result in Google’s search results

Get WooCommerce SEO ▸Only Original price: $69 USD Sale price: $48.30 USD / per year (ex VAT)

Increase your online presence on a local level with Local SEO

The Local SEO plugin helps you optimize your website for people in your area. Which makes it easier for them to find you. So, if you own a local business you most certainly need the Local SEO plugin in order to stand out in the local search results! Among many other things, the local SEO plugin helps you to set up all the necessary Schema to help you outrank your local competitors. It also embeds Google Maps and easily creates full-fledged contact pages.

Easily add all of your business details in our Local SEO plugin

Get Local SEO ▸Only Original price: $69 USD Sale price: $48.30 USD / per year (ex VAT)

Drive more search traffic to videos on your site with Video SEO

Video is becoming more important than ever, even in the world of SEO. But simply uploading them to your pages isn’t enough. Do you have videos on your website and do you want to drive more search traffic towards them? You’ll need our Yoast Video SEO plugin for sure! Help Google to uncover your video, with the schema we automatically add to your videos. Among many other things, you’ll also profit from faster loading times and responsive sizing. And ensure that video previews appear properly if someone shares your videos on social media!

Help Google uncover your videos with our Video SEO plugin

Get Video SEO ▸Only Original price: $69 USD Sale price: $48.30 USD / per year (ex VAT)

Optimize your news articles with News SEO

Are you aiming for that top stop in Google’s news carousel? Help search engines discover and understand your news articles right away. To do this, you’ll need our News SEO plugin! The plugin immediately pings Google whenever you publish a new post. In addition, it adds all the relevant Schema.org markup and does a number of other things to help you to outrank your competition in Google News!

The plugin allows you to do a more advanced News SEO

Get News SEO ▸Only Original price: $69 USD Sale price: $48.30 USD / per year (ex VAT)

What about a bundle for even more discount?

Are you thinking about buying more than one product? Bundle the SEO plugins and save even more money! Check out the 4 bundles or the biggest bang for your buck: the plugin subscription which includes all Yoast plugins! And start optimizing your site for SEO! Good luck!

Our product bundles and plugin subscription!

Check out all of our products and get a 30% discount!

The post Black Friday sale at Yoast: 30% discount on all products! appeared first on Yoast.

source https://yoast.com/black-friday-sale-at-yoast/

Friday 26 November 2021

PPC Affects After BERT Update; Impact on Promoters

Google makes constant updates to the algorithms every year for increasing relevance in the SERP. As an online marketer, you are already aware of this fact. So far, BERT has been one of the most significant algorithm updates rolled out by Google and is considered the most significant change since the search engine giant released Rank Brain.

How PPC Affects After BERT Update; Impact on Promoters

Not to mention, this update has left the advertisers curious as to what exactly BERT is and how PPC affects after the BERT update. What impact will this update have on the search results now? To get answers to all these questions, you need to read the article.

What Is BERT Update?

BERT stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers. This algorithm uses a neural network to facilitate a contextual understanding of the content through Natural Language Processing.

Previously, Google’s search processors analyzed the words in a search query in the same order they were entered in, i.e., left to right. But, under the BERT algorithm, the users’ search queries are processed bi-directionally.

In other words, the BERT update helps Google to understand the use of prepositions in a search query or comprehend the words that have double meanings. This enables the search engine to produce better results by understanding the users’ context, intent, or words in the query.

Thus, we can say, Google is getting smarter for search day by day. So should you!

Let’s discuss how the BERT algorithm update will affect the PPC or paid search advertisers.

How Will PPC Affect After BERT Update?

While most digital marketers are discussing the impact of the BERT update on SEO, some are concerned about the effects of BERT on PPC. However, since SEO and PPC go hand in hand, thinking that BERT won’t affect paid advertising isn’t wise.

Let’s have a look at what the BERT update implies for paid search advertisers.

BERT Implications For PPC Advertisers

BERT algorithm update will force the advertisers to shift their focus around users’ intent-based strategies. Let’s see how!

With the BERT update, Google has become even more determined to translate the users’ needs based on their search queries. Thus, paid advertisers also need to prioritize the users’ intent. Therefore, they need to understand and address the users’ plan and provide them with the most relevant results rather than irrelevant promotions.

So, advertisers need to become more skillful at understanding the intent of the searches based on the keywords of paid campaign targets.

BERT Update Impact On Promoters

Suppose a user searches, ‘how to change the oil in your own car.’ They will see numerous adverts for car oil changes in the search results. Some of the adverts may also offer special deals. But, these offers and specials aren’t what the user is searching for. As a result, the advert becomes irrelevant to the users’ search query.

As the user wants to know how to change the oil in their car on their own, the paid search advertisers need to remain relevant to the search query by adjusting or changing their strategy. For example, one can add additional informational content or offers on tools required to carry out the process.

Aside from adjusting the Ad strategy for getting CTR, you also need to ensure that your landing page copy and Ad match the changes.

What If You Don’t Embrace Intent-Based PPC Strategy?

Well, it won’t offer the best customer experience. If you fail to target the intent of the search phrase and present a series of irrelevant Ads, the user might not be interested in, your Ad’s relevancy score will drop.

As a result, the CPC will increase, and the clicks you have managed to gain will drop. Moreover, Google may not display your Ads in the search results. So, it won’t be wrong to say that paid search needs to align with the users’ intent or face the impact of BERT.

What Does the Future Hold For PPC Under BERT?

As BERT will affect content marketing and SEO, it is likely to impact PPC marketing too. However, it might take more time to see the most meaningful impact of BERT on PPC. Therefore, the best way to approach this new arena is to start slowly.

An intent-based strategy is the most scalable starting for future growth. While implementing this strategy at every stage all at once is quite hard, you can take it as an expansion plan for the future.

Furthermore, if the use of long-tail keyword phrases continues, there will be an excellent chance for the marketers to mine new keywords and boost the existing Ad groups.

Below is what PPC advertisers can do to leverage BERT update-

Focus more on Dynamic Search Ads. It helps you take advantage of Google’s AI to automatically create Ads based on the users’ search queries. These dynamically generated Ads will work well with BERT, allowing better ROI on the PPC campaign.

Align your intent-based strategy with budget, campaign, or metrics with all the users’ intent stages.

Retailers should craft adverts to reach the consumers’ intent at every stage of the sales funnel. If you don’t have enough budget to build such a strategy, you can target intent instead of keywords. In addition, you can partner with a pro PPC service provider to navigate the challenges this tactic may present.

Run a test campaign by expanding the previous keywords; it will help you become more precise in intent.

Conclusion

Thus, Google has become smarter. But, unfortunately, marketers also need to get smarter to respond to it. BERT update provides the search engine with a better opportunity to understand what people are seeking. While it is good news for the users, it is a bit challenging for PPC advertisers, SEO professionals, and content creators.

So, it’s high time to adopt an intent-based strategy for delivering the information that users want. Once you become capable of carrying an intent-based advertising campaign that aligns with BERT changes, you will start generating better ROI in no time.

The post PPC Affects After BERT Update; Impact on Promoters appeared first on ReadWrite.

source https://readwrite.com/2021/11/25/ppc-affects-after-bert-update-impact-on-promoters/

7 Mistakes to Avoid While Implementing Conversational AI Solutions

Conversational AI solutions are one of the most effective applications of AI and machine learning. Additionally, the progress in natural language processing has improved the quality of text generation and speech processing in machines. Conversational AI solutions lead to efficient use in cases like Chatbots and Virtual Assistants. Although the growth in this field has been significant in the past years, still the slightest of mistakes in deploying these solutions can downgrade the results and outcomes.

7 Mistakes to Avoid While Implementing Conversational AI Solutions

Let’s explore the 7 common mistakes while implementing conversational AI solutions:

Starting a Conversational AI Project Without a Proper Strategy and Planning

The objective of implementing the conversational AI project shapes the process of developing the solutions like chatbots, smart bots, and virtual assistants. As these solutions completely depend on the users, dataset, and machine learning algorithm, proper planning of a development strategy is necessary to achieve the target goals.

A good strategy should focus on a particular objective addressing specific user intents. The best way to build a strategy is, to begin with, analyzing the audience’s behavior. Depending on the results of the former techniques, behavior, the tone of the conversational AI can be adjusted while developing the solution. This leads to optimized targeting and appropriate segmentation of the audience for conversational AI solutions.

Example: Conversational bots with a generalized library of words should not be used to implement every conversational solution. Instead, an optimized strategy backed by proper research should be implemented to choose the library of words.

Not Identifying the Correct Use-Case

Identifying the correct use case is crucial especially in the starting phase. The best way to go about it is to start with a narrow use case with a limited set of intents. Once deployed, the user behavior can be analyzed to further scale the conversational ai solution. This approach helps identify and address the implementation and deployment challenges at an early stage.

Targeting too Many KPIs in the Starting Phase

It is always good to focus on a few areas of KPI for strategic implementation, and it can help achieve the primary objectives of a business.

As they say, “Too much is too bad”, thus targeting too many KPIs in the starting phase inhibits the potential of the primary objectives. Also, focusing on various KPIs may lead to intervention in the AI strategies for completing too many goals in a short interval of time. Additionally, the starting phase is defined as the crucial part of a solution, and thus exploiting in every way can make the business vulnerable.

There are various KPIs to evaluate the role of Chatbots. Every parameter associated with the KPIs of the chatbots can help bring in a new insight to the table. Some of these KPIs are user experience, conversation duration, engaged users, new users, chat volumes, fallback rate, activation rate, and many more. Targeting each one of them at the start might lead to chaos as it takes some time to interpret the insights generated from KPIs.

Example: Targeting on new users and engaged users might lead to conflict in the strategies, as the strategy to increase new users is to impress through selling points of the business, but for increasing the value of engaged users, the content has to be engaging in terms of describing the points on which a particular user might be interested in, else the user will lose the attention and interest in the business.

Additionally, targeting activation rate while focusing on the former two KPIs can further create more chaos. Activation rate is the evaluation of the number of activities performed by users which are suggested by chatbots. The strategy for implementing this goal involves the chatbots pinging the users to perform actions. Thus there is a possibility that a new user or an existing user may divert from the website or application.

Isolating Stakeholders in Planning and Implementation Phase

Not involving all the stakeholders is one of the crucial mistakes during the planning and implementation phase. Building an intelligent virtual assistant as a conversational interface can automate various redundant and repetitive tasks. Thus input from every stakeholder is necessary for designing such an assistant. Also, automating a task might affect a particular stakeholder indirectly. Thus it can lead to mismanagement of the business operations.

It might be difficult to consider every opinion from all the stakeholders for planning a strategy, but updating the strategy later due to change requests from stakeholders who were not included in the planning phase becomes even more difficult. Hence, including all the stakeholders for planning the conversational AI project eases the business operations.

Poor Conversation Designing

The backend algorithm for text generation and speech processing is the foundation of conversational AI solutions. So, an inappropriate algorithm and dataset lead to a poor conversation design, making the conversational AI solution a bit less interactive. This drives away the users and defies the purpose of automating tasks and conversations.

Having No fallback strategy for the Conversational AI Solution

Conversational AI solutions are software programs integrated to form widgets like chatbots and virtual assistants. Hence, any technical glitch or unaddressed intents can fail the processes or create errors, thus having a backup in case of failure ensures reliability and makes a great impression on users. Therefore, backing up a conversational AI solution is very important for businesses.

Example: Most of the chatbots or virtual assistants are built to address a set of intents and work with API requests. In case of an out-of-scope intent or failure of an API, there should be a provision to handle the error. This could redirect to a new application or a human agent. This makes the business look more professional and ensures that users come back to the website.

Lack of Feedback Loop Built into the Solution

There is a scope of improvement in a business strategy or operation only when there is feedback. Otherwise, it is difficult to rectify the mistakes and understand what is not working for an organization. As conversational AI solutions are an interactive way of being in touch with the users or customers, the conversational data and user feedback can be gathered to further analyze and use to improve the conversational application.

Conclusion

Stay abreast with the latest AI trends and avoid making these mistakes while implementing conversational AI solutions.

The post 7 Mistakes to Avoid While Implementing Conversational AI Solutions appeared first on ReadWrite.

source https://readwrite.com/2021/11/25/implementing-conversational-ai-solutions/

Black Friday weekend sale: Yoast goes green

Let’s go! The Black Friday sale at Yoast has started! Buy Yoast SEO Premium, the #1 WordPress SEO plugin, or one of our other premium plugins now and get a whopping 30% discount! Now is the time to put some extra love and attention into your site! Give your website the love it deserves and benefit from the biggest sale of the year!

Buy Yoast SEO Premium now!

Unlock powerful features and much more for your WordPress site with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin!

Get Yoast SEO Premium ▸Only Original price: $89 USD Sale price: $62.30 USD / per year (ex VAT) for 1 site

Or check out all of our plugins and bundles with a 30% discount!

Go green with the green bullets of Yoast SEO

This year’s Black Friday sale at Yoast is all about going green. Getting your bullets green in Yoast SEO can be hard work! Yoast SEO Premium makes it just a bit easier. And, those green bullets will help you write better texts and rank higher in those search engines. So get serious about SEO and go green with Yoast SEO Premium!

Go green with a greener planet

Going green is about getting your bullets green, but those bullets are not the only thing we care about at Yoast. So, in the spirit of going green, we’ll plant one tree for every order we receive during this Black Friday Weekend. That way, you’re not only getting more green bullets, we’re also making the world a bit greener. If you buy your Yoast SEO Premium plugin now, you’ll benefit from higher rankings and from a greener planet! That’s a no-brainer!

Go green with organic search and sustainable SEO

This weekend at Yoast, we’ll go green all the way. Stay tuned and read all about our amazing products that’ll help you to get all those bullets green. Above that, we’ll tell you about sustainable SEO and the pros and cons of artificial intelligence. And, we’ll dive into the importance of organic search. It’s all about going green!

And don’t miss out on the biggest discount of the year, which gives you a 30% discount on all of Yoast’s plugins and bundles. Make sure to check them out!

Browse all our products with 30% off!

The post Black Friday weekend sale: Yoast goes green appeared first on Yoast.

source https://yoast.com/black-friday-sale-yoast-goes-green/

Thursday 25 November 2021

Explaining Google’s November 2021 Core Update

Google has announced a broad core update has started to be rolled out. We at Semrush have monitored changes within both mobile and desktop stats and are ready to share the results: check which industries and websites seem to be SERP winners and losers.

from Semrush blog https://www.semrush.com/blog/google-november-2021-core-update

SEO certification: How can you get it and why should you?

Once you finish a Yoast SEO academy training course, you get a shiny certificate of completion and a badge you can embed on your site or share on social media. This way, you can let everyone know about your newly acquired SEO expertise. Awesome! But how useful is an SEO certification, really? Does it make a real difference? The honest answer: it sure can, but it depends on your needs and expectations.

Why getting an SEO certification matters

An SEO training certification can help in several ways. Obviously, the actual proof of certification matters most to those of us who actually work in the fields of SEO or web design, or are trying to get there! In this case, you can use your SEO certification to build trust among your customers and help advance your business. However, you can also use it to improve your resume when you work in a different field.

Go Premium and get free access to our SEO courses!

Buy Yoast SEO Premium and get FREE access to all Yoast SEO academy courses:

Get Yoast SEO Premium ▸Only $89 USD / per year (ex VAT) for 1 site

But honestly, the most important reason to get SEO certified isn’t the piece of digital paper you get at the end. It’s the skills you build while getting your certification. These skills are the real value you get from taking an online SEO course. That said, let’s go through the reasons why you may benefit from getting an SEO training certification one by one.

1. SEO certification helps you build trust with your customers

If it’s important to you that others know about your SEO skills, you can use your SEO certification to prove this. You can embed your badge on your website and share your certificate on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media. Of course, where you follow a training course makes all the difference. Especially within the world of WordPress, Yoast is a well-known, and trusted brand, which stands for quality and world-class SEO knowledge. Embedding a certificate on your website means showing that you’ve learned from the best.

2. Show that you do SEO the right way

By getting certified, you’re showing others how they can expect you to tackle SEO. At Yoast, we have very clear ideas about how you should practice SEO. We advocate a holistic and sustainable SEO strategy, built to last. And we’re known for this.

Of course, we think the world would be better off if everyone implemented a sustainable SEO strategy. In our training courses, we preach what we practice. We don’t like tricks. We want sites to rank by being the best result. By completing a Yoast SEO academy training course, you make clear that you do SEO the right way, and have the tools to do it!

3. SEO certification can boost your resume

SEO skills are very valuable! Lots of companies depend on good rankings for their revenue. A capable SEO can make a big difference. Employers know this, but how can they be sure you’re up to the task? Precisely because SEO is such a practical field, anyone can claim they’re an expert. With an SEO certificate, you can back up your claims. You’ve put in the hours, and you’ve completed a challenging training course on SEO copywriting, keyword research, or ecommerce SEO. That will improve your resume for sure!

4. You’ll learn a whole lot along the way

All of the previous arguments are aimed at impressing or persuading others. But the best reason to value an SEO training certification is that taking a good training course helps you become a better SEO. Your certificate should not be a goal in and of itself, it should be a nice reward. There’s no better feeling than having worked hard to improve your skills, and seeing the confirmation that you’ve finished a training course successfully.

And when it doesn’t…

As I mentioned before, SEO is a practical field. Our SEO certification probably is not a guarantee that you’ll get hired as an SEO expert without any previous experience in the field. You could see our training courses are the first step towards expertise, but you’ll still have to apply the principles you’ve learned in the real world.

Fortunately, Yoast SEO academy excels at preparing you for this real-life context. Our training courses allow you to practice actual SEO skills. You can practice writing code and apply your knowledge to realistic example cases. Because of this, there’s only a very small bridge to gap between the theory and actual real-life SEO. You’ll be confident in your abilities, and deservedly so. And the results will bear that out!

Conclusion

There are a lot of good reasons to pursue an SEO certification. It helps build trust and, more importantly, you’ll learn a great deal along the way. On the other hand, don’t expect an SEO certification to magically open doors. The real world asks for real skills. Fortunately, our SEO training courses make sure you’re as well-prepared as possible.

Check out all of our online SEO training courses ▸

The post SEO certification: How can you get it and why should you? appeared first on Yoast.

source https://yoast.com/seo-certification/

Present and Future of Blockchain Social Networks

Blockchain has taken the world in many areas. This technology has evolved tremendously a few decades young and is continuously revolutionizing many areas of modern human lives.

Today social media with more than 3 billion users, has become a critical part of our life. However, people are increasingly becoming skeptical of it as concerns arise regarding the flaws inherent to modern social media, including privacy issues and advertisement frauds.

Blockchain technology appears to have the potential of mitigating common issues that make people wary of popular social platforms. But can it leave a significant impact on how digital networks operate and trigger a new era for social media?

In this article, we will explore how blockchain can attempt to mitigate common problems associated with conventional social media and shed light on some of its shortcomings. So, stick around till the end to see if blockchain-based social networks are the next big thing.

An Introduction to Blockchain Technology

If you are tech savvy and know about blockchain technology and are only here to see if you would be using a blockchain-driven social platform ten years from now, feel free to skip ahead. But for the uninitiated, we will begin by explaining blockchain technology because, from our research, not many people truly know what it is.

In simplest terms, a blockchain is a chain consisting of blocks of information. Blockchain technology enables the secure sharing of digital assets over a peer-to-peer network, where the files are stored within the nodes present on a network.

The distribution of data across several nodes is what makes blockchain distributed or decentralized ledger technology. Being a P2P technology, it eliminates third-party involvement. The data is secure, distributed along with several nodes, and immutable.

These features make blockchain a suitable choice for many areas that influence human lives, especially social media, as we will discuss.

Blockchain is one technology that is definitely worth keeping an eye on. The pace at which it is evolving and the scale at which it is transforming conventional processes makes it a force to be reckoned with.

Let’s go ahead and see how blockchain technology can change the way we think of social media today.

Blockchain and social media: The inception of decentralized social networks.

Social media has quickly grown from being a set of innocent platforms helping people connect with their loved ones to monstrous overlords selling user data and altering how we think. This personality shift has led to a decline in usage of the central social media platforms, Facebook, which is notoriously involved in suspicious data mining and commodifying its users.

Blockchain has the potential of solving the following four major issues of social media and hence initiate a new era of social interaction:

Data Security and Privacy

Who has forgotten the 10-hour long “chit-chat” congresspeople had with none other than Facebook’s CEO and Co-Founder Mark Zuckerberg on user data security and usage?

Despite facing backlash and criticism, Facebook, the most significant social platform, never stopped reaching into their users’ data. However, their data collection is suspicious to the point that they have been accused of collecting users’ calls and SMS for years! And it is not just Facebook. All major social platforms, including Instagram and TikTok, are equally notorious for data collection.

Data privacy and security are some of the biggest concerns associated with social media. But, unfortunately, we don’t know the amount and extent of data that our social media platforms can have access starting from the moment we create an account.

Blockchain technology solves this problem by decentralizing social networks. So, with blockchain-based social networks, there is no central entity or a CEO who can access all their users’ data.

Each transaction that takes place over a blockchain network is encrypted and not accessible by a single entity, besides those on the P2P network, which adds to the privacy and security of digital assets and personal information.

Additionally, blockchain social networks allow users to create their profiles without revealing their identities, which reduces the risk of identifying and using this data for malicious or non-malicious purposes.

Blockchain technology also solves the problem of data integrity. Once stored in a blockchain, no data can be deleted and is extremely difficult to tamper with.

Even if a hacker breaks into one of the blocks and changes the information, this activity will alter the identity or “hash” of the entire block, which, in turn, will destroy the integrity of all subsequent blocks.

So, that’s one problem that blockchain can solve, but not without its repercussions, as we will see below.

Unbiased Content Moderation

The next major issue that users have with social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram is their biased content moderation.

You see, with centralized social media platforms like the ones mentioned above, the decision-making authority rests with a selected group of people. And these people are bound either by a code of ethics or political responsibilities to censor certain types of content.

Due to the biased censorship issues, social giants have been under fire for a while now. They are blamed for removing volatile content or anything that doesn’t “sit well” with their decision-makers under the pretense of “bugs” and “technical problems.”

On Red Dress Day in Canada, a similar issue came to view when Instagram removed the posts published to raise awareness about Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, citing technical problems.

By decentralizing social platforms, blockchain technology eliminates censorship bias and advocates for freedom of speech and rights of expression. Blockchain-backed social media removes third-party, influential moderators and their pet algorithms from the picture by returning the power of content creation, consumption, and moderation back in the hands of the users.

This freedom of expression and lack of censorship attracts silenced activists, radical voices, and even political harbingers to these platforms.

Minds is a blockchain-based social platform that advocates freedom of speech and limits censorship on its platform. This is why it became a focus of attention and attracted more than 100,000 Vietnamese activists running from government-led cybersecurity cracked down and feared being silenced.

Incentives for the Users

Social media platforms have grown rich because of the ad revenue they generate in exchange for user information. For example, Facebook’s revenue experienced a sharp rise from 2020 to 2021.

But many people are now raising voices and demanding social giants to share the revenue they generate in exchange for user information, with the users whose information they take, often without them knowing.

Blockchain-based social networks can do the opposite and offer incentives to the users while promising data security. They often pay their users with token or platform-native currencies when they post good quality content.

Minds is an example of such platforms, paying their users in the form of tokens, which they can then use to boost their posts to reach more people.

Additionally, these decentralized platforms offer users better opportunities for crowdfunding campaigns as they can collect tokens or cryptocurrencies directly from their fellow users through the platform.

Revolutionizing Advertisement

Advertisers lose billions in ad fraud. And fraudsters? Well, they can make up to $5 million per day by faking video reviews.

Thinking of switching careers? Think again.

Frauds, lack of transparency, and user trust are three of the most common issues related to digital advertising. However, with the evolution and expansions of blockchain technology into social media advertising, the chances of ad frauds are reducing, so you better stick to your current job.

Blockchain-based social networks allow digital advertisers to track KPIs and ad impressions more accurately, ensuring transparency to the advertisers that they are paying for actual human-generated and not bot-induced results.

In addition to this, as said earlier, blockchain technology offers exceptional data security and privacy benefits. As a result, blockchain advertising eliminates user mistrust that advertising companies are buying their data to target them with relevant ads.

Moreover, with platform-native currencies, these networks offer newer and safer opportunities for marketers to collect user data. For example, a marketing company can reward users in exchange for the data they share. In this way, the user gets something in return for their contribution, and advertisers and marketers have information right from the source.

Decentralization of social platforms with blockchain technology also eliminates friction from the advertising channels. Advertisers no longer have to create separate ad accounts and then wait for the central authorities (like Google) for ad verification, making it easier for companies to connect with their audience and boost their post with the tokens they can earn simply by creating great content.

At this stage we can assume, from the above factors, that decentralized, blockchain-based social platforms have a bright future from the social media sector. Of course not. Who jumps to a conclusion without reading the other side of the story? Not us!

Blockchain-Based Social Media – The Other Side of the Story

Every coin has two sides, good and bad. And decentralized social media comes with its own downsides that include:

Hate Speech and Bullying

With a lack of centralized content moderation, blockchain-driven social platforms fail to guarantee that they won’t publish racist, sexist, or religiously offensive content.

Any information once created in the blockchain stays there forever. It can’t be deleted or edited. Therefore, if a racist individual creates a culturally offensive post on social media, he will not offend people of color on his network. Still, the information created also stays there forever.

Moreover, the inability of users or platform owners to delete user data on demand also makes it non-compliant with the European Union GDPR that necessitates the deletion of data on demand.

To make matters worse, since blockchain social platforms do not necessarily tie back to the original user, therefore, it would be nearly impossible to track and punish the offenders.

Storage and Scalability

Blockchain social networks are relatively small, with Minds having only around 2.5 million users, compared to Facebook’s billions.

But if these P2P social networks were to enter the mainstream digital network, the blockchain nodes may not be able to scale and process the influx of information that will follow large-scale adoption of these platforms.

Technological Development

The ubiquity of blockchain social platforms is easily a decade or two away because we are still technologically immature to migrate entire systems that have found their grounds on centralized social media to decentralized platforms.

For example, centralized social platforms allow easy access to the user database, which supplements marketing and advertising strategies. With blockchain-based social media, this might not be so easy.

Conclusion

So, what’s the verdict? Is the next generation of social media here?

We are standing on the threshold of a blockchain-led social media revolution. However, there are many innovations to be made and many technologies to be developed before the decentralization of social media can take place at scale, and shaking the dominance of centralized social giants having love-hate relationships, and become the next big thing.

The post Present and Future of Blockchain Social Networks appeared first on ReadWrite.

source https://readwrite.com/2021/11/24/present-and-future-of-blockchain-social-networks/

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Tuesday 30 November 2021

Yoast SEO 17.7: Introducing a free configuration workout

How To Build a Content Operations Framework (and Why You Need One)

11 Creative [Copy & Paste!] Holiday Customer Appreciation Messages to Send This Year

Cyber Monday sale at Yoast: 30% discount on all products!

Monday 29 November 2021

17 New, Newly Updated, and Timeless Books Content Marketers Love

How to Use the Right Type of Product Video to Boost Your Sales

How to Use the Right Type of Product Video to Boost Your Sales

Organic Search vs Pay Per Click advertising: go sustainable with our Black Friday sale!

Sunday 28 November 2021

Black Friday sale weekend: Go green with sustainable SEO

Saturday 27 November 2021

Live Streaming Video Tools for Brands

How Are Companies Looking for Digital Marketing Services?

Black Friday sale at Yoast: 30% discount on all products!

Friday 26 November 2021

PPC Affects After BERT Update; Impact on Promoters

7 Mistakes to Avoid While Implementing Conversational AI Solutions

Black Friday weekend sale: Yoast goes green

Thursday 25 November 2021

Explaining Google’s November 2021 Core Update

SEO certification: How can you get it and why should you?

Present and Future of Blockchain Social Networks

10 Best Python Web Development Frameworks

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