Posts

When I was heading off to college, my parents purchased a used Pontiac for me to drive to school and work.

“Here,” my father said, handing me the keys, “this car is now your responsibility.”

My dad showed me how to pump my own gas, how to check the air in the tires, and even how to jumpstart a car’s battery safely. What he forgot to teach me, however, was the importance of general maintenance, such as routine oil changes and tire rotation.

It wasn’t until a friend pointed out my bald tires that I drove to a service station and timidly asked about maintenance. Fortunately, the mechanic simply handed me a list of things that needed routine maintenance on my old car; he didn’t try to sell me new brakes and a muffler in the bargain!

Once I understood the importance of routine maintenance on my vehicle, I was a bit fanatical about it and never missed an oil change, lube, or tire rotation. Perhaps that is why I clocked over 130,000 miles on that old Pontiac and today drive a 14-year-old car in excellent condition except for the slightly dented bumper. (Blame the dented bumper on a post that jumped out at me in a parking lot.)

Like automobiles, websites need routine maintenance, too. They are never ‘set it and forget it.’ Unfortunately, many business owners, like the young driver I once was, just don’t know this fact. They build a website and pay their hosting bills and never check “under the hood.”

What’s “Under the Hood” of Your Website?

Websites consist of a domain name (the URL), the platform that hosts the files, and the actual files themselves that contain the images, text, and other components of the website.

If your website is built in WordPress, the ‘gold standard’ of websites today and what Dashboard Internet Marketing uses almost exclusively to build websites, you may be running special sets of computer codes called plugins on your site. Plugins are often third-party applications that perform specific tasks on a website. Some provide unique image features, such as creating a slideshow of images, while others help your site run faster.

Like all computer software, the platform hosting your site, any attendant plugins or added code, and any third-party software is updated periodically. These updates aren’t just for show. Often, they are in response to known security faults in the software reported to the developers. The updates close these loopholes or help your site run more smoothly.

No Maintenance Spells Trouble

This is where many site owners get into serious trouble. If they ‘set it and forget it’ with their website, they may find that:

• Parts of the website are outdated, such as the theme or plugins, leaving a possible security breach
• Google’s search engine crawlers cannot access pages properly, resulting in delisting pages (and possibly the whole site)
• Over time, the site’s search engine rank drops because Google and other search engines perceive the site as abandoned

Frequently updating the site’s content, tweaking text, and ensuring that all components of a site are properly updated can help prevent many problems. Some updates may be easily undertaken by the site owner, but many require a professional’s touch to ensure that the update does not jeopardize the site’s search engine potential.

Possible SEO Roadblocks from Poor Site Maintenance

Site owners often do not understand that you cannot simply delete a web page, for example, without potentially experiencing some SEO consequences.

Deleting a webpage isn’t just like removing a book from a library shelf. The gap left in the shelf, so to speak, signals the search engine crawlers that something is wrong with the site. If the message sent by the website back to the search engine crawler is incorrect, the crawler may move off and ignore the site. And that means your site’s rank and traffic, and possible leads and sales, drop too!

The Importance of Professional Website Creation and Maintenance

This is why we often stress the importance of professional website development and maintenance to our customers. We have seen many times how a neglected site becomes infected with viruses or malware or drops in search engine rank. Trying to fix a long-neglected site often leads to frustration and may even reach a point of no return. It is like trying to change the oil in a car whose engine has seized from dirty motor oil. If you neglect oil changes for years at a time, just doing one oil change won’t fix the seized engine. The car may need a whole new engine.

Old code can often reach the point where updating it is impossible because the interim updates to bring it from version 1 to 17 (or whatever version it’s on) are no longer available. Or there may simply be too many updates to run without compromising the site’s appearance or functionality.

Regular maintenance on a website includes such things as updating code, checking for broken links and missing pages, and so on.

It’s time consuming, but as we’ve mentioned, well worth it for your site. A well-maintained site runs smoothly and loads quickly, which search engines love. It returns the appropriate messages to the search engine bots, so it communicates in the language that the bots understand. And, perhaps most importantly, it has the latest patches against security breaches, keeping you and your customers safer.

Dashboard Interactive may be able to help if your website hasn’t been maintained in years. We don’t judge or criticize. We assess and will do all that we can to assist you with your digital marketing initiatives. Give us a call to discuss your website challenges: 763-242-2454.

Not just nice to have, but necessary to stand out from the online crowd

Jan searches for a plumber to replace a leaking, outdated shower fixture. She types into her mobile device, “plumber near Minnetonka” and a series of websites appear on screen. As Jan scans the list, she notices one name, Professional Plumbing.

Something about the name rings a bill. “Oh, I know that name. Where have I heard it before?”

Was it at church last weekend when she casually mentioned to a friend in the ladies’ group that she was looking for recommendations for a good plumber? At the salon while she was getting her hair cut, listening to the chatter among the stylists and their customers?

Frowning, she suddenly remembers — she’d printed an article from a home decorating website.

Sure enough, after rummaging in her kitchen drawer, Jan finds the article she printed out last week. It’s a recent online article about redecorating outdated bathrooms and she loved the ideas in it for changing her clunky 1950s showerhead to something new.

Yes, there it is – Joseph Smith of Professional Plumbing, Minnetonka, is quoted in the article. She reads more and thinks to herself, “I’ll call him first. He seems to know exactly what I’m looking for.”

Joe ends up getting the business thanks to his savvy use of public relations as part of his digital marketing strategy.

What Is Public Relations?

Call it PR or public relations: just what is PR in the modern age of Google?

In the dinosaur era of B.G. – before Google – public relations consisted of pitching traditional media on story concepts. Newspapers, magazines, radio and television journalists received information from public relations professionals who carefully crafted story concepts for their clients and matched them to the journalists’ beat.

Today, a digital PR strategy is that, and much more.

A digital PR strategy now includes similar tactics, but to a much bigger audience. Modern public relations professionals are more likely to reach out to a blogger, YouTube video channel producer, or social media influencer than to traditional journalists, but they still craft their stories just as carefully, matching the business to the journalists’ beat.

Pitching, or the art and science of reaching out to a carefully cultivated list of potential journalists, is a large part of the role of the modern digital PR strategist.

Unlike cold calling, pitching isn’t “once and done” to a list of strangers. Instead, it is a conversation, a relationship cultivated over years, sometimes decades, of providing valuable leads to sources and their expertise.

Journalists always seek new, fresh ideas and experts to bring those ideas to life in interviews and feature stories. Public relations professionals know just who to connect with whom to get their clients’ stories before the most receptive audience.

A PR specialists’ value lies in both their extraordinary knowledge and in the extensive contact list they have built up over years of matching sources with journalists.

Digital Strategy and Public Relations

A healthy digital marketing strategy should include public relations as part of the overall plan. Although challenging to quantify, the awareness effect should not be underestimated, as in the example of Jan, our fictitious homeowner who needed a local plumber and ended up hiring one who not only had a website optimized for online search but who had also worked with a digital PR expert to gain online exposure.

Small and mid-sized businesses can reap many benefits by incorporating public relations into their digital strategy:

1. Exceptional link-building benefits. This is the addition of valuable earned media and backlinks to a website that Google values very highly. Link-building boosts a site’s place in the search engine results page.
2. Awareness among the target customers, who after seeing, hearing and reading about a business, are much more likely to patronize it.
3. Consolidated boost in overall online recognition. Once one journalist covers a source, other journalists are more likely to quote the original piece or seek out the source to interview for other pieces. This builds an overall wave of positive recognition online.
4. More web pages with positive mentions of a business or business person means fewer mentions of competitors, whose websites are driven further down in the SERPs by the positive mention of others.
5. The potential for exceptional exposure, which can be expensive to achieve through paid advertising alone. One press release sent through a respected newswire may yield over 1,000 placements on various digital news outlets, which can lead to massive traffic to a site.

As you can see, there are many exceptional benefits for small to midsize businesses who include public relations in their digital marketing strategy. If you’re interested in finding out what a PR strategy can do to boost your company’s online awareness and, by extension, its website traffic, leads, and sales, give Dashboard Internet Marketing a call: 762-242-2454.

In April, Apple unleashed a new update called Apple iOS 14.5 for iPhone users. The update requires apps to allow users to opt-out of tracking when they download an app from the iStore.

Data is money — and tracking users’ movements and actions online is gold to many companies, especially Facebook, which uses this data to improve ad targeting.

Here’s what the Apple iOS update means to your social media advertising and the potential ramification of Apple’s first strike in the battle for user privacy.

What Is the Apple iOS 14.5 Update?

Like all companies, Apple periodically updates its software to accommodate changes, fix bugs, and shore up its security. The iOS 14.5 update focuses on privacy issues by updating Apple’s app Tracking Transparency Framework (ATTF). The update is intended to provide greater clarity and transparency into companies’ monitoring, tracking, and use of consumer data.

Apple iPhone users always had at least some measure of control over their privacy, if they knew how to go into their settings and set it so that tracking was disabled, but few people had an awareness of just how much and what kinds of data was being tracked. Now, however, every time they download an app to their iPhones, they will be prompted with a message that shows all the types of data that the app will have access to. A pop-up box will appear prompting users to actively accept tracking. The default is now to block tracking on apps installed on iPhones.

What It Means for Social Media Marketing (Especially Facebook)

More control over personal data is a good thing, right? Well, to most consumers, it certainly is a good thing. Consumers were spooked a few years ago when the sheer volume and detail of Facebook’s data tracking activities became known. This, coupled with European GDPR requirements and similar pro-privacy ripples across the world may have encouraged Apple to focus on user privacy in their latest update.

What’s the big deal, then? Consumers may herald this as a ‘win’ for privacy rights. But companies are viewing it with trepidation.

The Impact on Facebook Advertising

One such example of the possible negative impact of Apple’s new privacy stance is with Facebook advertising.

Facebook currently tracks users’ movements through the placement of pixels. Pixels are small pieces of code stored in an app or on a website. When a Facebook user visits a website and takes an action (such as adding a product to the shopping cart or moving on to page or another website), the pixel captures that information and sends it to Facebook. This adds data to the Facebook campaigns which advertisers can use to assess how well various Facebook ads perform.

With the new iOS 14.5 update advertisers will now only be allowed to set up eight prioritized and ranked optimization events for a pixel on a single domain, choosing which event is most important for each campaign, rather than tracking all activity from each visitor to a website. According to Facebook, “Only the highest priority event will be sent whenever a customer takes multiple actions during a conversion window, all other events may report numbers that are lower than expected, even if they are within the 8. These events may still be happening, but they might not reflect in reporting.” That’s going to limit the data that sites are allowed to collect. What if a site has 100 product pages? That will severely curtail the amount of data that can collect from a Facebook campaign.

Another way this will impact marketing is to decrease companies’ abilities to personalize ads. Without data, companies cannot show visitors personalized content. Marketers know that personalized ads work better than impersonal ones.

If advertisers know you’ve been shopping on pet product websites for dog food and toys, showing you ads for dog training products provides you with an ad focused on something you may want. But without the data that shows you own a dog (because you shopped on websites related to dog products, and advertisers track that information), you may see advertisements for rugs instead.

Perhaps you need a new rug (a new puppy in the house?) But it’s just as likely that you’re satisfied with your current rug. It would have made much better sense to show you dog training ads after you visited an e-commerce pet store to purchase dog food, but without the data, advertisers cannot target customers’ interests as effectively. The result may be ads that aren’t as effective because they do not target consumers’ current interests and needs.

Without the relevant and timely data collected from tracking activities, advertising online returns to the digital equivalent of billboard ads: untargeted, generic ads shown to a large number of people in the hopes that one among many is interested in the product.

Revise and Rethink Digital Advertising Strategies

As you can see, the new iOS 14.5 update is likely to have a major impact on digital advertising strategies. We recommend contacting Dashboard Interactive Marketing immediately for a consultation to review and adjust your digital advertising strategy.

There are specific steps that we can take to refine and retarget your ads so that they continue to get you the best possible ROI for your advertising dollar. But we need to take action on your behalf now to prevent the update from negatively impacting your advertising response.

It is likely that other companies will follow Apple’s lead, or that social media sites, that depend on the wealth of data they collect from their users to fill their bank accounts, to push back in other ways against the new privacy updates. This continues to be an unfolding and evolving situation, so we will keep you apprised of any developments.

We welcome your calls to schedule an advertising check up to ensure maximum ROI for your digital ads. Call Dashboard at 763-242-2454 today.

Almost everyone understands the term “vital signs.” When a doctor examines you, she’s looking for specific metrics that assess vital organs. Your blood pressure should be below 120/80, your temperature near 98.6, and so on. If your vital signs match the established baseline for the average human being, you’re considered healthy.

Now take this concept and apply it to websites and you’ll understand the gist of Google Core Vitals. Google announced the Core Vitals Initiative in mid 2020, but you’re forgiven if you may have missed it (hey, there was a pandemic going on.) But now, as the launch date of May 2021 approaches, may websites face the frightening consequences of ignoring critical site infrastructure updates.

Here’s what you need to know about Google core vitals and how your site may be impacted.

A Primer on Google Core Vitals

The new Core Vitals Initiative uses three metrics to assess websites:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
• Cumulative Layout Shift
• First Input Delay

These metrics look more closely at a website’s architecture and technical setup. Other criteria such as user experience, quality content, conversational writing, and appropriate use of keyword phrases continue to be an important part of the (secret) Google equation to determine which pages rank on the first page of search results.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

There are several ‘givens’ when it comes to websites and the qualities in websites that Google values. Google’s search engine is in the business of matching a user’s inquiry with the best webpage that meets their needs. To do so, it must index millions of pages and serve them into all types of devices – smartphones, tablets, laptops, computers, you name it – within seconds of making a match between inquiry and webpage.

In the case of Google search, seconds count. One of Google’s Core Vitals is website speed. Google measures this using a metric called Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). The ideal LCP is less than 2.5 seconds.

Goodness, but that’s fast. How can you help your website be speedier than a NASCAR driver? Site speed depends on many factors including the hosting server and the framework or programming your site is built upon, but it also depends on the content uploaded on the site, too. Images can bog down your site if they aren’t sized properly, as well as video and audio files and even PDFs.

Cumulative Layout Shift

Have you ever tried to click on a link or a button on a website and you ended up somewhere else? This can happen on a smartphone if the page is resizing to the screen or if the site’s theme doesn’t support a mobile-first approach. The technical term is a cumulative layout shift, and Google has stated the ideal is 0.1 or less.

First Input Delay

First input delay measures how long it takes a website, after loading up, to become interactive. If someone clicks on a link on your site, how long does the site take to respond?

Are You Ready for Core Vitals? Contact Dashboard Interactive for Help

It may seem like Google is really picking at little things here, but little things, as we all know, really do add up. As more and more people navigate the web using smartphones and other handheld devices, the need for sites to be mobile first, not just responsive, has become paramount.

So too has the need for speed online. The new 5G network promises faster delivery speeds, but can websites keep up with them?

Only time will tell how your site will be affected by the Core Vitals Initiative, but one thing is sure – it will be affected, for good or for bad.

We can assess your website’s overall health in a site audit and provide recommendations to get the site to the “peak of health” to pass Google’s new Core Vitals Initiative. If your site is an important lead generation tool for your business, call Dashboard Interactive today to schedule a site audit with a focus on Google Core Vitals. Call 763-242-2454.

When I first heard about Google Analytics 4, I had the same reaction as I did when my cellphone provider announced they were switching to G5 and my old phone wouldn’t work anymore on their network.

“Why do companies always take a good thing and change it?”

But just as the move to G5 on the cellphone service is all about improving user experience (fewer dropped calls), so too is Google’s move to the “G4” platform. Here’s what you need to know about the shift in how Google collects and displays your website data.

Google Analytics 4: It’s All About the User

Google Analytics 4 launched in October 2020 after nearly 15 years of the old Google Analytics platform. The previous Google Analytics platform collected and linked metrics based on the session. This groups all interactions with a website in a time frame.

What’s the difference? Sessions were all about the site: how long people were on the website, where they went, what they clicked. Users, on the other hand, will focus on what people actually do when they come to your website.

By focusing on the specific actions that each user takes, the goal is to add further details to the rich repository of information already available in Google Analytics. It’s all about what the user does on the site rather than what the user does during a specific timeframe.

Capture Data About Interactions

What interactions will the new G4 record? Several important pieces of information including downloads, video views, site clicks, scrolling, outbound clicks and page views, for example, will be captured on the new Google Analytics 4 platform.

This information can be used in many ways. Site owners can see which content encourages click throughs to products or leads visitors deeper into their website. Combined with the existing data in Google Analytics (which remains visible on the updated platform), site owners can now gain a much clearer picture of the actions that people take when they visit their website.

Reflects How Users Visit Websites Today

The original Google Analytics platform was added in 2005. As you can imagine, the way people use the internet has changed dramatically since then. Today’s site visitor is more likely to land on a site from their mobile device or tablet than a desktop unit. Some people switch back and forth among devices. The older platform could not capture cross device visit history. The new Google Analytics 4, however, can track users no matter what type of device they use, and gather consistently useful data on site visitors no matter where, when, or how they visit your website.

Improved Predictive Analytics

Google has always seemed a little uncanny in its ability to predict future actions based on a user’s past behavior. Now, however, the company has improved its machine learning functions in Google Analytics and promises that G4’s improved predictive intelligence will be better able to help marketers serve their customers. We’ll see how accurate it is, but sources say it is a big improvement over past predictive capabilities in Google.

No word on whether or not it can predict the weather, but knowing Google, they’re working on it!

The Bottom Line: Adding Google Analytics 4 Is a Must to Stay Competitive

Smart business owners know that understanding consumer behavior is an important step toward increasing sales. The more information you have about your customers’ behavior once they land on your website, the better you’ll be able to leverage that information to help them find the products and services that they need.

The Dashboard Interactive Marketing Team is already completely up to speed on the transition to Google Analytics 4 and is ready to transition your website to the new reporting method. We’re here to help you both use and interpret the fresh new data available to users of G4. Schedule a consultation now with our team to learn more about how we can help you benefit from the wealth of data available through your website. Call 763-242-2454 today for a consultation.

Among the top trends we’ve seen from the world of content marketing this year is the trend towards refreshing and renewing content. Companies with established blogs are discovering the many benefits of updating old blog posts.

Sure, they’re adding new content – that’s always a smart move. But they’re also taking time to examine older posts and find ways to improve them.

Here are the top 5 reasons why refreshing content is a smart move to kick off your digital marketing program in 2021.

Why You Should Update Your Old Blog Posts: 5 Reasons to Refresh Old Content

Companies who blog get 97% more search engine traffic than companies who do not blog. Many companies have several years of content published to their blogs but haven’t revisited it in quite a long time. They continue to publish new materials, but fail to update older ones.

One truism of blogging is that it’s your older posts that tend to drive the most search engine traffic to a website. Search Engine Journal calls it the “power law” but it’s a fact: on average, 80% of a blog’s traffic is driven by a handful of posts. Most of the time, these are older posts.

There’s gold to be mined from older posts for sure. By reviewing, revising, and refreshing older blog posts, you’ll enhance existing content and make it better able to compete in today’s SEO world.

Why update old posts? Our top five reasons:

1. Fix outdated information and make posts evergreen

When I was a kid, the school handed out our textbooks. New textbooks were ordered on a rotating annual basis: one year the English textbooks were replaced, the next, the math, and so on. Well, in 7th grade I received a social studies textbook that was falling apart. The spine was taped and, worst of all, the text read, “Maybe someday, man will go to the moon.”

Mind you, I was handed this textbook in 1980.

Of course, your blog posts probably aren’t as outdated as my old social studies textbook. But there’s a good chance that your older blog posts contain:

• Industry-specific information that’s outdated
• Best practices that have been replaced by newer methods
• Pre-pandemic advice, such as attending meetings, meeting face to face, etc.
• Outdated statistics
• Broken links

And that’s just for starters. Fixing older blog posts allows you to correct all of this and more and to transform old, outdated posts into evergreen content pieces you’ll be proud to share!

2. Google loves updates and fresh content

Google’s search engine algorithms (the programs that decide whether your page ranks first, second, or 70th in their search engine results for a user’s query) count site updates as activity. While changing one word here or there probably won’t grab the bot’s attention, changing 50% or more may ping the indexing system to take another look at your page. And, with that look comes the chance to boost your post higher in the search engine rankings.

3. Updating keyword choices

Changing the keyword phrase on the page and revising the text for the new phrase enable you to better communicate with search engines what your site is about and rank for new phrases. It’s a chance to go after a particular niche, to stand out from the crowd, and to get visits to your site on search engine queries you may not have ranked for before. Keep in mind that you should always keep the URL of the page the same because changing it can cause massive headaches unless the redirects are set up properly.

4. Improve the competitiveness of your posts

Have you looked at what posts are ranking higher than yours in several search engines? Now is the time to input keywords into search engines and see which posts come up higher than yours in the search results. Then, take a close look at them. Do they contain more information? Better images or videos? Why do you think they rank higher than yours?

Now’s the time to change your older posts to make them more competitive with the posts that are beating yours in the SERPS. The first position in the search engine results page yields 31% of all click-through rates. That’s a lot more traffic than other first page positions. If you’re on the second page or lower in the results, you might as well be invisible. Refreshing content may well enable you to improve your website’s visibility through a better-ranking page.

5. Improve user experience

Let’s face it; some blog posts aren’t as good as others. Some are cluttered with jargon or corporate-speak while others contain boring images. By updating and refreshing old posts, you can replace those boring images, explain jargon clearly, and improve the user experience. The more readers love your blog, the longer they’ll stick around, and the more opportunities you have to cultivate a relationship with them and, ultimately, a lead or a sale.

The Prerequisite to a Blog Refresh: Content Inventory

The first step towards a full blog content refresh is to conduct a content inventory. A content inventory means listing of all the pages on your website. This is similar to a list of all of a company’s products. Next, a content inventory looks for opportunities to improve and refresh older posts, fix broken links, and add links among related posts. It’s a wise step to organize a major content refresh project.

Let the Pros Handle Your Content Refresh

Refreshing older content sounds easy until you roll up your sleeves and dive into it. Then, you realize that updating 1,000 blog posts isn’t as simple as it sounds.

Well, we have a solution for you – let the pros do it! If you are interested in a professional content inventory or refreshing old blog posts, call Dashboard Interactive Marketing. Our content professional has over 20 years of experience working with all types of websites, blogs, and online content. She can conduct a content inventory, identify posts for improvement, and prioritize updating posts based on their potential to boost SEO.

Get your digital marketing off to a strong start in 2021 with a content refresh. Now is a great time to revisit the blog posts you’ve invested in and take them to the next level.

Call Dashboard at 763-242-2454 today.

Websites often display symbols or badges that immediately impart trust, quality, and reliability. A Better Business Bureau symbol, for example, tells customers that you’re willing to have your company’s performance scrutinized and put its reputation on the line for all to see.

A new symbol has emerged as an important trust indicator in the digital age. It’s called the Google Guarantee, and in today’s digital age, it’s an important emblem of quality.

Here’s how to participate in the Google Guarantee, what it means to your company, and what it means to your customers.

What Is a Google Guarantee?

Companies interested in participating in the Google Guarantee program must first be registered with Google local search, then go through a rigorous screening process. The screening process includes a background check, license check and confirmation (if applicable), and an insurance check. Lastly, Google combs through reviews and ratings to ensure the company provides excellent service.

Once Google confirms that your business meets or exceeds their quality standards, they’ll add your business as a Google Guaranteed business to the search engine results. Google Guaranteed businesses appear at the top of search engine listings, so they are the first thing someone sees when they type a query into Google.

For example, a local HVAC contractor who receives the Google Guarantee may appear at the top of the organic search engine results above other companies in their area. The addition of the Google Guarantee means that customers see the guaranteed company’s listing first, resulting in more clicks, calls, and potentially, business.

People looking for local services such as plumbers, HVAC contractors, electricians, painters, gardeners, locksmiths, plumbers and others often search Google when they have a pressing need of such services. They are likely to click on the first listing they see and if you are a participating and approved Google Guarantee business, your business tops the list, making it much more likely to be clicked. The more clicks you receive, the more leads; and the more leads, the more potential business.

Dramatic Results

Google ran a beta test of the program in San Francisco, San Diego, Stockton and Sacramento, California, in February 2020. Businesses participating in the program saw dramatic increases in calls and revenue.

Businesses who participated in the February test received 1800% more leads from Google Guarantee ads than from other types of advertising. Such results could result in higher profits for your company, too, if you participate.

Customers Receive Benefits, Too

It’s not just businesses who benefit. Customers also receive the added assurance that the company they are entrusting with their business has been screened by a third-party.

Google also puts its money behind the guarantee. Work booked with a Google Guaranteed business is backed by a $2,000 warranty. If the customer claims (and can prove) that the job was not done correctly, Google will reimburse the customer up to $2,000.

Getting Started – Call Dashboard Interactive Marketing

As we mentioned earlier, the Google Guarantee program is part of Google’s Local Search Advertising. Dashboard Interactive can create an effective Local Search campaign that includes Google Advertising and other digital marketing methods for maximum return on investment for your business.

Please call Dashboard today to speak with a digital marketing expert. Adding the Google Guarantee listing to your Local Search program can translate into plentiful leads and higher sales.

Call 763-242-2454 to begin the Google Guarantee process or fine-tune your Local Search marketing.

Amazon welcomed 2.63 billion shoppers to its site in January 2018 through February 2019. And, with the global pandemic forcing people to find online retailers for everything from diapers to flour, the company experienced exponential growth throughout 2020. The second-quarter earnings for 2020 were $75 billion.

As people begin considering their holiday shopping needs, Amazon, with its enormous catalog of products and third-party vendors, is likely to become even busier. And with that rush of customers flocking to the site to buy presents for friends and family as well as household staples and supplies, come enormous opportunities for savvy retailers (that’s you.)

Starting on Amazon Can Be Challenging

If you’re already selling on Amazon, you know that the Seller Central dashboard challenges even the most tech-savvy individuals. Setting up product categories, adding images, optimizing text with high traffic, and relevant keywords…it’s enough to make many sellers take their products and try elsewhere.

Stop! With so much opportunity available, maximizing your presence on Amazon as a valued Amazon Seller can mean a lucrative year for your company. Here’s what you need to know to be successful as an Amazon third-party seller.

Amazon Is a Search Engine

First, it’s important to understand that Amazon acts like a giant search engine, only instead of returning articles, videos, and images like Google or Bing does, it returns product listings. Because Amazon functions as a giant product search engine, sellers must apply expert search engine optimization tips to their Amazon listings. This includes discovering keywords, both through keyword research and Amazon research, competitive analysis, and customer feedback.

Utilize Amazon’s Pay Per Click Advertising

Sellers who are serious about maximizing revenues on Amazon also take advantage of the site’s pay-per-click advertising. PPC advertising on Amazon is set up and run similarly to other paid search engine advertising and requires the same research and keyword-based approach.

Amazon Sellers Must Maintain Appropriate Inventory Levels

Another important fact to note is that Amazon dislikes it when sellers constantly run out of inventory and post “back-ordered” notices on their pages.

Why? Because it’s frustrating to customers, and frustrated customers shop elsewhere, which takes them off of the Amazon website and over to competitor websites like Walmart, eBay, and the many other internet shopping options available.

Since the pandemic increased demand in almost all product categories, Amazon has been quick to warn or even temporarily delist companies that fail to maintain adequate and steady inventory levels. Therefore, if you plan to become an Amazon Seller and maximize your Seller presence, you must have a plan to maintain steady inventory levels, even during the holiday season when product demand could be at its peak.

Plan to Space Out Shipments

Amazon also prefers that Sellers space out their shipments instead of sending all of their inventory at once to a distribution center. Although Amazon continues to build new warehouses and distribution centers nationwide, the unprecedented demand has strained their resources. By requiring third party Sellers to space out shipments, the company is hoping to take some of the strain off of their centers.

Late with Shipments? Be Careful

Lastly, if you’re constantly late with shipments to your customers or Amazon for distribution, be careful. The company takes late shipping seriously and prefers to have a steady pipeline of products to offer their customers. Failing to adhere to this system may get you removed from the site.

Amazon Seller Central – We Have a Solution!

As you can see, there’s enormous potential for revenue growth, and looming pitfalls, for those wishing to sell through Amazon. Amazon Seller Central can be challenging to navigate and use. Maximizing product listings and maintaining inventory levels takes skill and experience.

Fortunately, Dashboard Interactive Marketing has a solution. We are now offering experienced Amazon Seller Central consulting that can enhance and improve your Seller presence on Amazon. Our consultants review your Amazon Seller Central presence to maximize revenues. The results: improvements that lead to higher sales, enhanced Seller reputation, and repeat customers.

If you are interested in speaking with a Dashboard Interactive Marketing, Amazon Seller Central Consultant, give us a call at 763-242-2454.