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What Does a Digital Marketing Agency Do? (Hint: It's Not Just Drinking Coffee!)


Ah, digital marketing agencies. The mysterious entities that seem to have a never-ending supply of caffeine and an uncanny ability to make websites appear on the first page of Google.

But what exactly goes on behind the scenes at these mystical establishments? Grab your favourite coffee (or tea, we don't judge), and let's dive into the world of digital marketing agencies!

The Wizards of SEO

At Matter Solutions, we like to think of ourselves as digital wizards. And no, we don't mean the kind with pointy hats and magic wands (though we wouldn't mind one of those). Our magic lies in something called SEO—or Search Engine Optimisation for the uninitiated.

Imagine Google's search results as a giant library. SEO is like giving your website a neon sign that says "Pick me!" so it stands out among the endless rows of books.

We fine-tune your website's content, structure, and numerous other elements to ensure it ranks high on search engines. It’s not magic—it’s science. This covered in more detail on our Technical SEO page. Okay, maybe a little bit of magic.

How You Can Do It

Google Ads: The Art of Paid Persuasion

Next up, we have are Brisbane based Google Ads Managers.

Think of it as the paid VIP pass to the front of the line. If SEO is the long game, Google Ads is the quick hit.

Our Google Ads experts craft irresistible ads that appear right when potential customers are searching for products or services like yours. It’s like having your billboard pop up at just the right moment—except it's digital, smart, and way cooler.

How You Can Do It

Content Marketing: The Storytellers

But wait, there's more! Content marketing is our next stop.

Ever noticed how some websites just seem to "get" you?

That's the magic of great content. Our team of wordsmiths and creatives craft compelling stories, articles, videos, and posts that engage, inform, and entertain. Think of us as the modern-day bards, weaving tales that captivate and convert.

How You Can Do It

Time and Money: The Investment That Pays Off

Let’s get down to the nitty gritty — time and money.

We know that every dollar counts and every minute is precious. That’s why we’re committed to providing strategies that deliver real value. Solutions that MATTER!

Digital Marketing isn’t a quick fix; it’s a strategic investment but some things can happen quickly, while the strategic work is being honed and refined. Whether it’s SEO, Google Ads, or social media marketing, we ensure that every effort counts and leads to measurable results.

How You Can Do It

Individual Strategies: One Size Doesn't Fit All

Every business is unique, and so is every Digital Marketing Strategy.

We don’t believe in cookie-cutter approaches. Instead, we tailor our services to meet your specific needs. You could be a healthcare provider looking to expand your client base, an ecommerce brand wanting to sell more products or a technical engineering business aiming to increase leads.

We will create a custom Digital Marketing Plan that aligns with your goals and budget.

How You Can Do It

Social Media Sorcery

Oh, social media—the land of hashtags, likes, and viral dance challenges.

Keeping up with the latest trends can be exhausting. That’s where we come in. Our social media experts manage your profiles, create engaging posts, and even handle those pesky comments. It’s like having your very own social media superhero squad.

How You Can Do It

Facebook and General Marketing: The Social Landscape

Facebook isn’t just for keeping up with family and friends anymore. It’s a powerful marketing tool.

 We harness the power of Facebook Ads to target your ideal audience and drive engagement. From creating eye-catching ads to running campaigns that convert, we cover all the bases. But we don’t stop at Facebook. Whether it’s LinkedIn, Instagram, or Twitter, we’ve got your social media marketing covered.

Take a look at our Facebook Ads Brisbane page for details about our Brisbane based team of Instagram and Facebook Ad Specialists.

How You Can Do It

Content and Optimisation: Perfect Partners

Creating great content is only half the battle.

Optimising that content ensures it reaches your audience effectively. At Matter Solutions, we combine engaging storytelling with strategic content optimisation. This means your content not only captivates but also converts. From keyword research to on-page SEO, we optimise every piece to perfection.

How You Can Do It

Email Marketing: The Personal Touch

There's something special about a well-timed email.

Done right, it’s like receiving a letter from an old friend - the secret is to write this way, one to one, not like a news broadcast. Our email marketing campaigns are designed to nurture leads, build relationships, and keep your audience coming back for more.

We'll make newsletters that get opened, read, and loved—not relegated to the spam folder.

How You Can Do It

Web Design: Building Digital Homes

Your website is not just a pretty face. It is your business' Digital Home.

It must be beautiful and functional.

From sleek designs to user-friendly interfaces, our Brisbane WordPress Web Design team ensures your site is a joy to visit and use. After all, first impressions matter—even online.

How You Can Do It

*UX impacts upon SEO. Read the SEO tip Usability, User Experience, and how they affect SEO for more info.

Workshops: Sharing the Knowledge

Knowledge is power, and empowered customers are the best kind.

That’s why we offer workshops to share our expertise with potential customers. Whether it’s mastering Google Ads, understanding the mysteries of SEO, learning how to manage your WordPress Website, or crafting killer content, our workshops are designed to empower you with the skills you need to thrive in the digital world.

Our Digital Marketing Workshops are on offer in Brisbane with plans to bring them to Sydney and Melbourne. We cover a range of topics tailored to your business needs and skill level.

We also offer training. Insights from our own team on how to

We pride ourselves on making sure attendees leave with actionable insights and practical skills they can apply immediately to improve their online presence. These training services all dovetail nicely into our managed services, e.g. Technical SEO, Website Maintenance, WordPress Security & Hosting.

How You Can Do It

Website Hosting, Security, & Maintenance: Keeping Your Digital Home Safe

A beautiful, functional website is essential, but its performance and security are just as crucial.

At Matter Solutions, we ensure your site not only looks great but also runs smoothly and stays secure. Our WordPress Security & Hosting, and website maintenance provide peace of mind so you can focus on running your business.

Reliable hosting and robust security measures are the backbone of your website’s functionality and safety. We offer top-tier WordPress hosting solutions that guarantee fast load times, minimal downtime, and strong protection against cyber threats.

Our website services include updates, backups, performance monitoring, and troubleshooting to ensure your site remains in peak condition.

How You Can Do It

A Team That Cares

At Matter Solutions, we’re not just about the numbers.

Sure, we love seeing our clients on the first page of Google (who wouldn’t?), but we also care about building lasting relationships. We work closely with healthcare and technical businesses, e-commerce sites, and everything in between, ensuring our strategies align with your goals.

Don’t just take our word for it—our clients’ success stories speak for themselves.

Nick's Story of Our Comprehensive Approach

And we have a whole page of testimonials from our many happy clients.

If you're curious how we can help your business grow, we’d love to chat!

Want to have a Chat?

So, what does a digital marketing agency do? A little bit of everything, with a lot of passion and a dash of humour. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’re off to grab another cup of coffee.

I've had a website promoting my services as a web designer and then later as an SEO since April 2000.

Yes, really 24 years ago! Check out the history section of our about page for more info.

In this post I'll look at the following.

Contents

Introduction to Form Spam

In today's digital age, maintaining a clean and efficient online presence is crucial for businesses and individuals alike. One of the significant challenges faced by website owners and their website designers is the issue of form spam.

Form spam occurs when automated bots or malicious users submit fake or irrelevant information through your website's forms, e.g. contact forms, registration forms, or comments on blog posts (like this one).

This type of spam can lead to various problems including cluttered databases and wasted resources.

In this blog post, we will look at web form spam, its impact on your website, effective strategies to prevent and manage it and how we keep a handle on it for us, and for some of our Digital Marketing clients.

Understanding web form spam and implementing robust (yet simple to manage) countermeasures, you can protect your website and ensure a seamless experience for your genuine users, and potential customers.

The Impact of Form Spam

Form spam can have far-reaching consequences for both your website and your overall online strategy. While it may seem like a minor inconvenience at first, the cumulative effects of web form spam can be detrimental in several ways:

  1. Database Clutter: Spam submissions can quickly fill up your database with junk data, making it difficult to manage and analyse legitimate entries. This can lead to increased storage costs and more significantly reduce the efficiency of data retrieval.
  2. Database Load: If the volume of submissions hitting your database is very heavy then it has the potential to degrade the user experience (UX) for legitimate visitors. The main reason for this is that saving data into a database table (a write) is over 10x as much work as loading information (read)  from a database table. This is the classic input output problem aka i/o.
  3. Resource Drain: Aside from i/o resources are needed for processing and filtering spam entries. This effort can consume valuable server resources, slowing down your website and potentially affecting the performance of other critical functions.
  4. Email Overload: If your forms are set up to send notifications for each submission, spam can flood your inbox with irrelevant messages. This can make it challenging to identify and respond to genuine inquiries in a timely manner.
  5. Emails ALL Marked as SPAM: An horrific situation can occur when the webmaster's email decides that the spammy looking form submissions are so bad that ALL email from the websites ends up being treated as spam. This is a disaster! We've fixed this for many clients.
  6. User Experience: Excessive spam can degrade the user experience by cluttering comment sections, forums, or review pages with irrelevant content. This not only frustrates legitimate users but can also make your site appear unprofessional and poorly managed.
  7. Security Risks: Some form spam may contain malicious links or scripts intended to exploit vulnerabilities in your website. This can lead to data breaches, malware infections, or other security incidents that compromise the integrity of your site and the safety of your users.
  8. SEO Implications: Search engines demote or even penalise websites that are poorly maintained. This especially includes comment sections. When comments sections and via submissions are filled with spammy unsavoury content (think porn, pills and poker/gambling), this can negatively impact your search engine rankings, reducing your site's visibility and organic traffic - and therefore leads.

When you realise the impact of these issues, you can appreciate the importance of addressing form spam promptly and effectively.

Why & How Form Spam Happens

Form spam is a widespread issue on the internet, and understanding why it occurs can help you develop more effective strategies to combat it. Here are some of the primary reasons form spam happens:

  1. Automated Bots: A significant amount of form spam is generated by automated bots designed to crawl the web and submit fake information to forms. These bots can be programmed to find and exploit vulnerabilities in web forms, flooding them with spam entries.
  2. Advertising and SEO Manipulation: Some spammers use form spam as a way to promote their products or services. By submitting links and advertisements through your forms, they aim to drive traffic to their websites or improve their search engine rankings through backlink generation.
  3. Data Harvesting: Malicious actors may use form spam to harvest data from your website. By submitting forms with phishing links or malware, they can trick users into providing personal information or infect their devices.
  4. Disruption and Vandalism: Some spammers engage in form spam simply to disrupt your operations or vandalize your website. This type of spam can include offensive or irrelevant content intended to tarnish your site's reputation and frustrate users.
  5. Competitor Sabotage: In some cases, competitors may use form spam to undermine your business. By flooding your forms with spam, they can drain your resources, distract your attention, and create a negative user experience on your site.
  6. Testing Security: Some attackers use form spam as a way to test the security measures you have in place. By probing your forms with various spam techniques, they can identify vulnerabilities that they might later exploit for more serious attacks.

Understanding these motivations helps us anticipate the types of spam that each site might encounter and tailor anti-spam strategies accordingly.

How I deal with the worst Form Spam at Matter Solutions

Ben Maden

Every (LEGIT) ENQUIRY IS (SUPER) VALUABLE

For me the primary issue is that of ensuring my team or I must see every single legitimate enquiry.

It is my view that even just one valid enquiry that I don't see because of a rule or spam filter is a disaster. This is because each of those valid enquiries represents:-

For these reasons it is my position that wading through some web-form-spam is worth it to never miss a legit enquiry.

I know this isn't the case for all my clients but as many of our clients get a manageable volume of enquries and form spam, most of them follow the same (or close to the) process we use.

KEEP IT SIMPLE (KISS)

I've been working with WordPress since 2008 so I've seen lots of products to handle spam come and go. The original gangster is Akismet, owned by the brand behind WordPress (Automattic). We're big fans of Akismet and have had an agency license for many many years, more on that below.

My initial attempts over the years have involved using recaptcha and honeypots, explained below in more detail.

These days I let almost anything in (after using GravityForms linked to Akismet) and handle the resulting messages with hand-written filters, defined by me.

My EMAIL FILTERS

Our inbound communications come to my email address primarily. It is worth noting that other team members have visibility over my inbox but we stick to rules about who follows up each lead.

The sort of rules I put in place look like this... in Google Mail > Settings > Filters, or do a search, then use the dropdown below the advanced search to "Create Filter". In this case I've been spammed enough times by brandbuildingassistance@outlook.com to realise they're just wasting our time, every-single-time!

As a result this rule just silently takes any enquiry that mentions their reply email (1) applies a label - like a folder, and (2) skips past my inbox so I never have to see it. The best thing is that I can scale these simple rules for many of the spammer who complete our forms over and over again.

One could say it is a game of cat and mouse, they get ignored so they move on to another email address or brand. Yes, probably, but it doesn't quite work that way.

They're in business and need leads so they use a website, a brand, or an email address over and over. For example "Monkey Digital" are in my inbox 48 times, but it just doesn't matter to me, because they're silently filtered and therefore only ever seen if I go and check the (hierarchical) gmail label that I call "X-Bad/Form-Spam"

If you'd like a list of the current offenders let me know and I'll share it with you.

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT

This method works fine for the day to day management of inbound leads, but... it doesn't handle the Elephant in the room for us as Digital Marketers. How do we take these "spam" submissions off the KPIs when judging the performance of the enquiry forms.

This is best handled in another post as it involves some technical details about utm parameters, and transferring those to the gravityforms entries.

Implementing CAPTCHA and Other Verification Methods

One of the most effective ways to combat form spam is by implementing verification methods that distinguish between human users and automated bots. CAPTCHAs (Completely Automated Public Turing tests to tell Computers and Humans Apart) are the most common and widely used verification tools. Here’s a closer look at CAPTCHAs and other verification methods you can use to secure your forms:

  1. CAPTCHA:
    • Traditional CAPTCHAs: These typically involve distorted text or images that users must decipher and enter into a form field. While effective, they can sometimes be challenging for legitimate users to solve.
    • reCAPTCHA: Developed by Google, reCAPTCHA is more user-friendly and often requires users to simply check a box that says "I'm not a robot." Advanced versions analyse user behavior to determine if the interaction is genuine, minimizing the need for user input.
    • Invisible reCAPTCHA: This version operates in the background, analysing user interactions with the site and only prompting for additional verification if the behavior appears suspicious.
  2. Honeypots:
    • Honeypot Fields: These are hidden form fields that human users cannot see and therefore will not fill out. Bots, however, will usually attempt to fill in every form field, including the hidden ones. Detecting entries in these fields can help identify and block bots.
  3. Time-Based Challenges:
    • Submission Timing: Bots typically submit forms much faster than human users can. By tracking the time it takes for a form to be completed and submitted, you can flag submissions that occur too quickly as potential spam.
  4. Email Verification:
    • Double Opt-In: Require users to verify their email address by sending a confirmation link to the provided email. This ensures that the email is valid and the user is genuine.
    • Domain Whitelisting/Blacklisting: Block form submissions from known spam email domains and prioritize submissions from trusted domains.
  5. Behavioral Analysis:
    • Mouse Movement and Click Patterns: Analyse the patterns of mouse movements, clicks, and other interactions to determine if the user behaves like a human. Bots often have predictable and mechanical interaction patterns.
    • Keystroke Dynamics: Monitor the typing patterns of users. Humans have unique typing rhythms, whereas bots typically have uniform keystroke timings.
  6. Third-Party Anti-Spam Services:
    • Akismet: Originally developed for filtering comment spam on blogs, Akismet can also be integrated into your forms to detect and block spam submissions.
    • CleanTalk: A cloud-based anti-spam service that provides spam protection for forms, comments, and registrations, using algorithms to filter out spammy submissions.

By implementing a combination of these methods, you can significantly reduce the amount of spam that reaches your forms, thereby protecting your website's integrity and ensuring a better experience for legitimate users. In the next section, we will discuss how to use honeypots to catch spammers effectively.

Regular Checks & Maintenance

Weekly
  1. It is important to keep an eye on the folder/label used to silently ignore spam.
  2. I go in and have a look every week or two to feel comfortable that no legitimate leads are being sent their by mistake.
  3. I might even look through the recent submissions and check whether a particular IP address appears often. If it does I'll note it down.
Monthly (ish)
  1. I log into WordPress, go to the Dashboard > GravityForms > Entries list.
  2. Here I can mark any egregious spammy submissions as SPAM.
  3. I will often have a quick look in this SPAM folder in WordPress to double check nothing valuable is being incorrectly flagged as SPAM, this is known as a 'false positive'.

Ad-hoc / Quarterly

IP Blocking - Every so often I'll collate any IP addresses that have been recorded against multiple spam submissions and go add them to a the DENY section in our web server config. This literally stops anyone visiting from that IP from seeing anything, they can't even load the website.

ASIDE - NEVER PRESS "SPAM" IN INBOX

Never never ever press the SPAM button in your inbox. You will cause way more issues than it can solve. You'll tell your email program that the email that came FROM your website is SPAM.

The best case scenario is that your email program thinks you're a silly goose and ignores you.

The most likely, and horrifically bad scenario is that your email program treats ALL the email from your website as SPAM and so you NEVER ever see it, even the legit ones... and if you read what I said above about how valuable enquiries are you'll understand why I'm YELLING about this!

I have often been asked to rescue clients, or even new prospective clients from this disaster. It is possible to solve, and not especially hard... but this mistake is a major pain in the proverbial that I recommend everyone avoids.

 

What do you do? Comment below.

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If you want some help doing this for your website then speak with a web team member. Use this button to book a call back with a web specialist.

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UPDATE (+3 days later) - Everything got resolved and we’re happy. Credit where credit is due, a big Bravo Zulu, aka “Well Done!” to ClickCease’s Customer Success Team. Thank you for sorting things out and most importantly getting on the phone.

What happened? We had a nightmare.

The service we paid for seemed to have been downgraded. We couldn’t add clients to our account.

We contacted the support team and after 20 messages back and forth they told us yes, the plan was limited to 5 domains... bear in mind we have almost 20 already present and we’d pre-paid for “unlimited domains” for a whole year only a few weeks ago, this was a shock.

I specifically asked the support rep to escalate the issue, but no dice, this was how it worked on our plan. Good grief!

This echoed a recent problem, exactly the same in nature, with Uptime Robot. They literally took our money for a service, changed their plan structures and removed all the features we pre-paid for. I was very concerned that the (almost) 10x we’d spent on ClickCease for 2023 had gone the same way.

Thank goodness I turned out to be wrong, in the end.

Once of the team called me directly on my mobile. When I saw a NYC number appear on my mobile at 7pm while cooking dinner I thought, I wonder if that’s clickcease as I’d just replied to the support email thread.

I answered and yes, it was the best answer to a bad situation. Make a call, cut past the miscommunication in the chat, and discuss what is and isn’t wrong and give some assurance that things will be put right. Thank you clickcease, this was *the* call I needed.

Apparently it was a bug in the system, I write software often enough so after a good sleep I replied on Wednesday morning with...

Software isn't perfect - we know that.

I'm more concerned that in the face of our surprise and frustration your software's mistake/bug was taken as the source of truth by your support staff over a customer asking for an escalation.

Provided we're in agreement that that needs attention we're happy to remain.

We were all in agreement that the system wasn’t right, and it needed fixing. They fixed it, far more quickly than I expected, and we tested the fix yesterday, Thursday.

I’m updating this post and leaving the original context to show grandfathered plans *are* a good idea. Even if they do have to be phased out, giving people what they paid for is absolutely essential if you want to maintain trust with your customers.

Lastly, I’ve often noted (and sometimes said) that the test of a great company really comes when something goes wrong. How do they handle it? Do they refuse to apologise, ignore emails, retreat into a bunker mentality and treat customers like dirt.... I’m looking at you UptimeRobot... or do they get on the phone, provide reassurance and put things back on track.

At the very bottom of our original post (below) we’d asked for a refund, but now, we really are happy to remain ClickCease customers, especially knowing that their team can fix problems effectively.

Well done ClickCease, well done.

Original Post - Tuesday 7th February 2023

 

That time the ClickCease Annual Deal Felt Like a Bait & Switch

It isn't just naive old pensioners that get duped online. Nope, we digital agency types make mistakes too. How so?

Background - SaaS & Grandfather Plans

Well, we buy a lot of Software As A Service (SAAS) products and over time those things change. The great news over the last 15 years of buying this way is that software companies have a lot of flexibility. In general, this means the company concerned just adds new plans/packages and generally they provide a "grandfathered" or "legacy" plan to the existing clients.

In a nutshell, early adopters, get a good deal because they carry on getting what they paid for - unless or until they change the plan. In my experience, this is a fairly well-known unwritten rule in the world of SAAS.

Fast forward to 2022/2023 and things are-a-changing.

 

A New Normal?

Twice in the last few months, I've discovered suppliers offering sweet and enticing offer to switch to annual billing, and then they declare that the plan changed so you get less because.... reasons.

Their position becomes about the plan change, the plan change that was never mentioned when they offered the annual deal, but because “the plan changed” if you happen to want what you used to get, then now you pay more.

Hmmm. I have some strong feelings about this.

The most egregious example is ClickCease. It is a super service that used to bill based on the number of clicks (in a large pool) that it monitors and because we could add unlimited domains, we could use one large account to manage our portfolio of clients.

We mentioned to clients that we were paying for this for them and all they needed to do was give us a nod, and we could connect the client’s Google Ads to ClickCease. Once in place, we could easily report on the benefit to their Google Ads campaigns.

Win win win.

It was a win, win, win.

We loved this pricing structure and the way it worked for us and our clients so much that I (Ben) had a chat with our account manager at our call tracking company. I explained that if they could bill us this way we could roll out call tracking (even trial options) for our small and medium enterprises giving their call tracking a chance to prove it’s worth, and therefore the potential to upsell to more sophisticated options.

The call tracking company said no, it was a stretch too far away from their pricing model. Okay, we understood. No worries.

But, meanwhile unbeknownst to us ClickCease must have crunched some numbers and decided they too would no longer offer a pool of clicks across unlimited domains.

Archive.org clearly shows that sometime in late 2022 they removed the “unlimited domains” from their pricing page and in 2023 added “limited to 5 websites” in their pricing page.

The annual deal.

We (mistakenly) took them up on their offer to "upgrade" the account to an annual plan, at no point did they explain that the plan changed. They just focused endlessly on money saving.

Here we are some weeks later to find that our unlimited domains is gone and we can no longer add any new clients.

What now? 20 emails back and forth with support about why this isn't an upgrade, this is not, as they still claim "change plans for the better"

I've had enough. Just like a duped pensioner, I want my money back and to put clickcease in my rearview mirror.

UPDATE - See the top of this post. ClickCease managed to turn what looked like a complete disaster around in just a couple of days... and picked up the phone to boot.

Voice search and recognition is not a trend anymore but an adoption that is on the rise. By 2020, it is estimated that they will make up at least half of all the searches that on the internet.

It has been on the rise with Apple having Siri, Amazon having Alexa and Google having Google Assistant. We are evolving into a Voice Recognition world, and many people already use it on a daily basis. So, why is this technology gaining such a rapid acceptance today? How will it impact SEO in 2019?

What Is Voice Search?

Voice Search is defined by a conversational tone and queries that are question phrased, it tends to be more conversational than traditional searches due to the AI system that is at play. When you ask Google, “What day is Thanksgiving this year?”, you are doing a voice search. These searches are conducted with a voice assistant instead of manually typing the search onto the phone or computer browser.

Who Uses Voice Search?

The group that has been found to utilise voice search on their phones the most frequently are teenagers that are between the ages of 18-29.

Why Do We Use Voice Search?

Voice Search Example (Video)

In this video about SEO in 2019, we show an interesting example on how we use both Voice Search and Local SEO.

How Voice Search Will Change SEO In 2019

Interrogative Statements

These are question statements that answer the why, how, where, and when. People want immediate solutions to their problems, and in response to this, search results will also change in the way they are calculated and formed.

Google may start to favour the most straightforward answers to these questions asked. SEO for voice search will therefore lean towards getting and exploring responses to the why, when, how, and where requested.

Devices

The devices that use voice recognition and voice search will be on the rise in 2019, such as smartphones and home speakers. Therefore, websites and their content will need to be suitably optimised for these devices.

Increase In Longer SEO Keywords

Websites will need to include phrases and keywords that are in the question format in their headings, subheadings, and the body of text. Examples of voice search enquiries include, “Where do I get the best painter near me?” and “Where should I eat pizza tonight in this area?”, to name a few.

Searches Will Be Localised

It has been concluded that many voice searches are done when one is on the go. In response to this finding, Google is matching these consumers with those companies that are in their vicinity and can answer the question that is at hand. Businesses should ensure that they are registered with Google My Business, in order to show up when consumers are searching for local services.

Mobile-Responsive Websites

Websites must be mobile responsive so as not to be left behind and should be utterly interactive in their user experience. If for instance, a consumer is not able to engage, without difficulties, on a mobile device with a website that Google has listed as an answer to the question asked, then their site will be demoted in its algorithm, which will not be good news for any business.

Semantic Search Will Become More Important

Google relies on a user’s patterns of searches and previous searches to produce the best search result rankings. This is what semantic search is all about. Websites will need to account for semantic searches due to the increase in more conversational searches and questions.

Radio Test

Brand names will need to pass the radio test. This refers to people being able to hear the name of the brand clearly, such as on the radio. Potential customers need to understand and be able to remember it later. Any new brands will also have to have names that a voice assistant can pronounce correctly ensure consumers understand it. Companies that have unpronounceable names and those that are hard to remember may face problems.

Scramble For The Zero Position Via Featured Snippets Will Continue

Featured snippets appear in response to search queries before the usual search results. This is known as position zero and content can be optimised for these snippets by framing the questions and search queries in header tags and answering them as fast as possible.

Tables and structured and unstructured lists are also great optimisation strategies since these formats are frequently used for featured snippets. These snippets are more attainable since the aim is to make it to page one and not position one. Websites that are already on the first page only need a few changes to the page structure as opposed to those in the other pages that have to redo their whole SEO strategy. These snippets are typically pulled from any website on the first page of the results.

In 2019, optimising your business for voice search will be vital. This will be accomplished by use of long tail keywords, claiming a Google My Business listing, and also having conversational keywords. Business should adapt to these changes in order to stand out among competitors since voice search is here to stay.

About The Author

Gary has been active in the SEO space for years, and typically works with small to medium-sized companies in the UK & Ireland that are looking for an edge over their competition in the online business world.

Branding is one of the most important marketing strategies nowadays. Branding helps businesses stand out in a crowded market and also help them establish more personal relationships with their target audience. That's why marketers put a lot of effort into building brand awareness so that they'll manage to reach every person in their target audience and encourage them to engage with the brand.

Furthermore, many business owners measure the success of their marketing campaigns and other efforts by calculating the return on investment (ROI). But, when marketers report successful improvement in brand awareness, CFOs (Chief Financial Officers) don't see it as an actionable result, especially since the impact of awareness on ROI cannot be directly measured. However, brand awareness does affect the success and the outcome of every marketing effort that has an impact on revenue. Therefore, here's how brand awareness increases ROI.

The effect of brand awareness

Developing a brand means standing out in the market and offering customers something unique and something of value. However, no one will engage with a brand if they don't know that it exists in the first place. It's important to understand that online consumers want to know who they’re dealing with before they decide to make purchases. You can have well-designed marketing campaigns and promotions, but if no one knows about your brand, they simply won't engage.

That's why brand awareness plays a vital role in a brand's marketing efforts. It serves the purpose of informing your target audience that your brand exists. Moreover, it tells your audience about the brand, who you are, what you do and what's your company's mission, as well as its core values. The more your audience knows about your brand, the more willing they'll be to embrace your marketing promotions and engage with your brand, not to mention make purchases.

Awareness influences customers

Even a bit of awareness can go a long way in influencing your target audience to engage with your brand. For instance, promo goods can spark awareness for a low cost and a high impact. What's more, in the U.S. alone, brands spend well over $20 billion on promotional merchandise.

As a matter of fact, 84% of consumers state that receiving branded products from companies helps improve brand awareness, while 94% of consumers will remember the brand they received a gift from. Consumers that are more aware of your brand will more likely check out your offers and even make purchases. This leads to the conclusion that promotional items of a company are one of the most effective means of improving awareness. This can positively affect the brand's bottom line and ROI.

Builds brand's equity

A brand's values are called equity. It's a sum of positive experiences customers have with a brand that encourages them to become engaged and even loyal. However, brand equity starts with brand awareness. Your audience needs to notice your brand and to familiarise themselves with your brand before they engage, which is a crucial first step in your marketing funnel.

After you've built enough awareness, your customers will start to recognize your brand and try out what you have to offer. If your brand delivers on customers' needs and expectations, you'll build more positive experiences and thus have more valuable brand equity. Brands with positive equity can ensure customer loyalty and retention. In addition, they can even charge more for their products and improve their stock prices from equity alone.

Lowers customer acquisition costs

The costs of acquiring new customers are significantly high for all businesses. In the modern digital world, consumers are more cautious and savvy, which means they won't engage with the first business they come across. That's why businesses spend a lot of resources on marketing to attract and convert new customers. However, brands can greatly reduce the customer acquisition costs through building brand awareness.

As mentioned before, brand awareness builds brand recognition, which can easily encourage prospective leads to try out your brand for little to no cost at all. What's more, brands with a loyal consumer base don't have to spend a lot on new customers, especially since loyal customers will always return for more business. Moreover, these same loyal customers will often become brand ambassadors and further recommend your brand to their friends, family and other online consumers.

Even though it's difficult to measure, brand awareness does help increase a brand's ROI. By helping a brand become more recognizable, awareness can influence customers to check a brand out and make purchases. Furthermore, brand awareness makes other marketing efforts more successful and more impactful, which ultimately leads to more sales and repeat business. The more awareness a brand builds, the higher their return on investment will be.

About the Author

 Lauren Wiseman is marketing specialist, contributor to bizzmarkblog.com and entrepreneur. She helps clients grow their personal and professional brands in the fast-changing and demanding market, strongly believing in a holistic approach to business.

Local businesses rely on a variety of different tools and techniques to bring in customers. One of the most popular and often most effective ways to bring in customers is through local SEO. If you want to drum up interest in your business and draw more customers to your storefront, then a good place to start is with your local SEO efforts.

Forming an effective local SEO campaign isn’t always an easy task, especially if this is your first crack at it. You want to be sure you get it right the first time, but how can you do that? That’s exactly why we’ve put together a list of ways you can achieve the very best local SEO campaign out there that improves your local rankings, and in turn, your business.

What is Local SEO?

For those who are new to local SEO and find the topic a bit vague at best, it can be described in a pretty simple manner.

Local SEO is a targeted online marketing tool that will help your business’ online presence. You can use it to promote services and products that you are offering through a variety of key proven strategies and tools.

Statistics show that in the course of just one day millions of customers are searching for local businesses online. Local SEO tools give you a way to tap into this potential and appear in those search results. According to the numbers, 46% of the searches done on Google are local, 96% of people who own PCs conduct local searches, 50% of mobile users look for local businesses online, and 78% of local mobile searches end up as an offline purchase.

Techniques to Improve Local Rankings

Now that you’re convinced that a local SEO campaign is right for your business, the question is what techniques will generate the most results. Here’s our breakdown of the top five tips you can use.
Be sure you take advantage of online citations and directories.

Because so many people go online to conduct local business searches, you want to be sure that your business is consistently ranked high and correctly. It's up to you to find local directories where your business can appear and take a look at where you are on such directories as Citysearch, Yelp, and Merchant Circle.

Give thought to your meta description tags and title. While these may not seem important, they actually appear in the search results. Experts suggest you think of these as a "mini-ad" for your business, which should help you to pick the best wording.

Don't discount how important online reviews from customers are. Online reviews act like a personal recommendation and can help to build your reputation and customer base. You can work on getting reviews from the Google My Business page and your company's Facebook page.

Speaking of Google My Business, this free tool is imperative to your website's success. There are all kinds of ways to optimise it and take control over the narrative that exists for your business.

Local structured data markup can also prove to be incredibly useful. This is sometimes called schema markup and is ideal to add to your actual website's code. It gives search engines information about your product and service listings, information on your business, and even reviews.

Don’t Leave Your Local SEO Campaign to Chance

At the end of the day, it takes a lot of practice and knowledge of local SEO tools in order to pick the right ones to use and go about implementing them. Rather than leave the success of your campaign to chance, contact the professionals at Matter Solutions for your Brisbane SEO services, and take advantage of our top-notch SEO expertise.

You may find this hard to believe, but YouTube is the second biggest search engine right behind Google, and we all know that is saying something important. Every minute, there are more than 300 hours of videos being uploaded, so if you want to be competitive, you need to understand how to use YouTube's SEO ranking factors to set yourself apart from all that competition.

Just like Google uses algorithms to rank websites, YouTube has its own set of algorithms to rank videos and channels. If you want to rank highly in YouTube’s SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for organic searches, you must understand the ten key SEO factors in how YouTube uses search engine optimised keywords when ranking videos.

 

YouTube SEO Ranking Factors

Your Channel’s Keywords

In the same way that you would use Search Engine Optimisation for your web pages, you must use SEO keywords for your channel. Remember, these are the terms that viewers will search when looking for videos, and you need to employ the right amount of competition so that the crawlers find and rank you highly for those terms.

Keywords in the Title

In the same way that Google ranks websites and landing pages by using keywords in headers and sub-headers, YouTube ranks videos by the effective use of keywords in the video’s title. Employ competitive keywords in your video’s title to rank highly with their crawler, as well as with other major crawlers like Google.

Keywords Contained in the Description

The description of your video is another place the crawlers will look for keywords. This is that short bit of content where you describe your video. If you underestimate the importance of writing a description, you will lose a huge factor in how your video is ranked.

While YouTube allows an amazing 5,000 characters in your description, you would do well to keep the important keywords (the same as used in your title) in the first 157 characters of your description. That is the maximum number displayed in the meta description on the SERPs.

Video Tags

While not as important as the keywords in your title or description, the tags you use are still beneficial to the crawlers seeking information on what your video is about. Try to use one or two-word tags which can quickly identify the topic of your video and help both viewers and crawlers to easily find your video.

Subtitles and Closed Captions

The 5th factor used by crawlers to rank your video is one that too many video producers fail to utilise. Not only will the crawlers find your subtitles and closed captions to better understand the content of your video (to rank it), but those written words are highly appreciated by viewers who like to read along while they’re watching.

Sometimes background noise interferes with the quality of what they are hearing, and those closed captions enable them to follow along without repeatedly hitting pause, scanning back and replaying from where they lost track.

Five Additional Ranking Factors

Above we discussed the strategic employment of SEO factors but there are other factors which YouTube uses to rank videos. These include:

  1. The video’s quality
  2. User Experience
  3. Bounce rate and watch time
  4. Total views
  5. Quality of thumbnails

Understanding these 10 factors can help gain your video the rank it needs to be found and enjoyed easily.

If you require additional advice or services regarding optimising video or web content, contact the SEO experts at Matter Solutions today.

The goal of SEO is to raise a website’s profile and prominence in search engine results. To do this, businesses need to understand how search engines work and how they rank the results that they return.

With this information, it is possible to devise strategies that take advantage of the way that search engines work, in order to 'convince them' to rank a website higher.

The SEO techniques that search engine operators approve of are known as 'white hat' techniques; these are the ones that you want to use. The other type of techniques are the black hat techniques, which will incur severe penalties from companies like Google if they catch you doing it. The tools that Google can use to root out websites who are cheating the system are becoming ever more sophisticated, so it simply isn't worth the risk for any reputable website owner.

It is much easier to avoid these errors and the serious consequences that they can bring if you have some idea of what kind of techniques are likely to land you in trouble.

Common mistakes which will incur a penalty from Google:

Too Many Links from Low-Quality Sources

Backlinks are one of the key metrics that Google uses when determining a websites SEO score. Put simply, a backlink is when one website links to another within its own content, usually within the context of a citation. Every link back a website receives is treated as a vote of confidence in the website being linked to, however, not all of these votes carry equal weight. A link back from a site considered to be reputable is worth much more than a link that has been generated artificially and spammed to multiple web pages.

Buying Backlinks

If you are caught paying for backlinks, then you will be penalised by Google. Buying backlinks involves paying other websites to link to yours, it might sound harmless, but Google has been very clear in their stance against it.

Too Many Links From Irrelevant Sources

Google doesn’t place much value on links to your website from sites that share little or nothing in common with the site that they link to. If, for example, your site is sports related, yet the majority of your linkbacks are not coming from other sports sites, or from sports sites that cover multiple topics, then they will not be worth nearly as much.

Plagiarised Content

Google wants to make sure that the websites it puts forward most prominently are not only the most useful but also of the highest quality. Google doesn’t discriminate against the subjects or themes of websites, but it does take a fun view of plagiarism.

If you are generating artificial interest with plagiarised content then Google will penalise you.

Not Following Best Design Practices

This isn’t exactly a penalty per se, but Google does reward websites that, for example, are formatted and coded correctly for mobile. Given that the majority of internet browsing is now done on mobile devices, it hardly seems surprising that Google would be encouraging it. Remember, it is even more in your interests than it is in theirs!

It is also important that your website runs efficiently and quickly, slower websites will slip down the Google rankings. Again, this is a good habit to get into anyway, but it will have a tangible impact on your SEO score.

The easiest way to avoid being penalised by Google is to have your SEO handled by professionals, such as Matter Solutions.

Contact us today to discuss your SEO needs.

Brand awareness is increasingly important for your business and especially so for your Search Results in Google.

First, it generates a positive impression with people that your brand is popular even before they see your direct marketing.

Second, search engines give priority in search results to brands with strong brand “awareness” online, regardless of your SEO.

Third, brand awareness helps you stay engaged with your customers without over-selling to them.

Here are 5 unique ways to increase your brand awareness in 2024.

Host a Webinar

 

Webinars are a great way to promote your brand. If you’re a subject matter expert, many people will connect to a webinar for the free information while learning all about you as a subject matter expert.

Your customers, whether you sell books or services, will reconnect with you and be reminded of why they value your advice in the first place.

What if you don’t have a topic for a webinar? Look for key personalities in the industry and interview them in a webinar; put your banner prominently behind the interviewer or have the team wearing your branded clothing. Don’t forget the opportunity to cross-promote with professionals in the industry.

Referral Programs

Another way to build brand awareness is to incentivize word of mouth marketing by setting up a referral program. A painless way to do this is to offer your customers discounts if they get someone else to sign up via unique referral links.

Utility and phone service providers do this often, giving customers a 5% or 10% discount on their bills for every new customer they get to sign up.

Advertise your referral program to your existing customers by offering them discounts on their overall bill or significant discounts on their next order if someone else makes a large purchase. When you promote a referral program, it builds brand awareness with the public without actively selling your product or service – your customer will do that for you.

Give Incentives

Coupon codes are an amazing way to boost brand awareness. For example, social media posts with coupon codes will travel through freebie sites and coupon blogs to reach people who otherwise never would have heard of you. Consider including brand name hashtags and product mentions in the coupon code announcement.

For example, instead of saying “Get 10% at Company Name with coupon code 123”, share on social media “Company Code coupon 12310offBrand #companyname #brandhashtag”. Now your coupon codes will show up in searches on social media for company news and brand-related posts, as well as in bargain shopper discussion boards.

Do the same when announcing discounts on specific products. You can create a sense of urgency and widespread sharing with posts like “30% off product X by company Y through 31 January 2018”.

Infographics

Infographics are an attractive brand promotion technique. First, they cannot be copied by content scrapers and put up elsewhere. Second, they’re too complex for someone else to summarize in a tweet to eliminate the need for others to read it. Third, they keep the viewers’ attention for a long time while being much more memorable than skimmed content. The key is to create infographics that answer a question or explain a complex topic while keeping the audience’s attention.

Contests

Contests are another way to tap into the natural excitement and buzz that comes from a sense of urgency and opportunity at the same time. You can give away company branded swag to generate engagement with your customers while they create great images they share on social media that promote your brand, all as part of a contest for the best-branded image.

Hold a contest asking for the most amazing use of your product with the reward being a free version of your latest product. Now you’ll see a wave of content and discussion about how people use your product, and you can claim the intellectual property rights to the submissions and publish it later as useful “how to” advice to your general audience.

 

All these methods will allow you to build awareness and gain more recognition. If you want to use the power of Brisbane SEO to increase visibility for your products and services, digital marketing experts like Matter Solutions can allow you to optimise your presentations and content, as well as integrate brand related search engine optimisation into your existing websites and social media profiles to boost your brand awareness.

Nowadays, online consumers have more options than ever. They can interact with various businesses wherever they choose, and they can also gain as much information as they need before they make their decisions. Businesses that operate online are beginning to realise that they must be where their customers are. What's more, single or even dual channel marketing is no longer sufficient to truly capture their customers' interest. That's why many businesses leverage multichannel marketing in order to expand their reach and gain as many customers as possible.

What exactly is multichannel marketing?

As its name suggests, multichannel marketing is focusing your marketing efforts on multiple channels to target each audience member willing to purchase your products or services. Audiences on various channels prefer different approach and behave according to the platform they use. By implementing multichannel marketing, businesses can reach out to their audience based on consumer preferences and effectively deliver their messages across various channels. Here are a few advantages of multichannel marketing.

Helps expand your reach

One of the primary goals of every modern business is to attract as many customers as they can. With single channel marketing, that goal would be very difficult to achieve. For instance, if you're only communicating with the audience on Facebook, you're missing out on an opportunity to reach out to your customers who prefer Twitter, Instagram or some other social media network. Moreover, if you only own a brick-and-mortar store, the only opportunity your customers have to procure your products is to visit the store in person.

This approach significantly limits your possibilities. Today, there is an abundance of touch-points marketers can use to reach out to their audience and it would be a shame not to capitalize on that potential. Multichannel marketing allows you to deliver your messages to audiences across various channels in the way they prefer it. Also, it allows your customers to make a purchase how, where, and when they want it.

Increases sales and revenue

Multichannel marketing can help businesses reach financial success much faster. The main reason is that customers acquired via multichannel efforts spend four times more than customers acquired via single channel campaigns. Not only that, but multichannel campaigns can also generate 24% more ROI than single-channel marketing. Businesses that implement this digital marketing strategy are supporting the customers' choices and are better at driving engagement from their audience.

As a matter of fact, 72% of online consumers prefer to connect with businesses across various channels. Through multichannel marketing, businesses have an opportunity to connect with their customers on various stages of the buyer's journey. That way, they can identify the right moment to engage and help convince customers to make a purchasing decision. What's more, by making themselves more available on various marketing channels, businesses have more opportunities to increase their sales.

Drives more engagement from audience

Multichannel marketing allows you to build your presence across various channels and connect with your audience wherever they might be. The fact of the matter is that online consumers today are more tech-savvy and they prefer to explore both different channels and various new devices. Businesses that plan on implementing multichannel marketing need to have a clear insight about their customers and their behaviour across multiple platforms. That way, you'll be able to design content for different purposes and tailor your messages so that they yield the best results.

However, your customers' behaviour, preferences and needs will vary based on the platform they inhabit. Therefore, you need to adjust your approach and way of communication to meet their specific expectations. For instance, you can use free business photos to enrich your visual content and drive the most engagement from your audience. But you can't have the same approach on all platforms. Instead, you must adjust your content to suit the needs of customers on different platforms.

Improves marketing potential

With multichannel marketing, you're not bound to a specific marketing channel or time, meaning that you won’t be marketing only via TV ads at 2pm when your audience is watching. What's more, you're not limited to a single market either. For example, you can have a retail store and an e-commerce store, which gives your audience an opportunity to make purchases both online and offline. Also, you can sell your products through different retailers, while still having your own store. This expands your marketing potential and gives your customers multiple choices to engage with your brand whichever way they choose.

Moreover, you're available to your customers on different devices, such as desktop, laptop, mobile, as well as on different channels, such as social, retail, email, and so on. More importantly, customers from almost anywhere in the world can reach you at any given time. This allows you to build cost-effective strategies that will both drive engagement and sales. In addition, you'll be able to expand your customer base and lower the costs of customer acquisitions.

Gains competitive advantage

It's no secret that online market is highly competitive and overcrowded. With so many options at their disposal, customers can easily choose your competitors if you don't get to them first. Multichannel marketing allows you seize the opportunities as soon as they present themselves.

That can help you gain competitive advantage, especially if your competitors lack presence on a specific channel. Furthermore, you can monitor your competitor's activity and efforts in order to gain valuable insight into their operations. That way, you can improve your own efforts and capture your audiences’ interest before anyone else does.

Multichannel marketing is a highly effective strategy. It helps businesses build their presence on various channels, devices, and platforms. Not only that, but it helps businesses support their customers’ decisions, as well as help them interact and connect with audiences on whichever channel they prefer.

About the Author

Lauren Wiseman is marketing specialist, contributor to  bizzmarkblog.com and entrepreneur, currently based in Melbourne. She helps clients grow their personal and professional brands in fast-changing and demanding market environment, strongly believing in holistic approach to business.

Articles about What Does a Digital Marketing Agency Do? (Hint: It's Not Just Drinking Coffee!)

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