Digital Marketing

Generative AI-Led Search in 2024: How Healthcare Organizations Should Refine Their Strategies for Improved Search Visibility

Posted on December 14, 2023 - 10:30 AM by admin

We are a lead generation company with specialized expertise in organic search and paid search for healthcare and B2B verticals.

We are seeing some significant changes in search results, especially for healthcare, led by generative AI, propelling search engines, such as Google & Bing, to improve their search results in order to be more meaningful and personalized for their users.

In this article, we focus on competitive search strategies for healthcare organizations in the age of generative AI.

What are some of these search trends and how will they affect your ability to attract patients?

Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) – Google (and Bing) are working to bring generative AI capabilities into their search engines. Generative AI is poised to change the way search engines work and is the biggest search technology breakthrough in 25 years!

Google says: “With new breakthroughs in generative AI, we’re again reimagining what a search engine can do. With this powerful new technology, we can unlock entirely new types of questions you never thought Search could answer, and transform the way information is organized, to help you sort through and make sense of what’s out there.”

Google is not the only search engine experimenting with gen AI in search models. The new Bing, powered by ChatGPT, is already in business.

What does Gen AI-led Search mean for you as a healthcare business?

Earlier, if you typed in ‘how do I find a doctor who truly cares in Santa Clara, CA’ Google would provide you with the ten best sites and would expect you to sift through the websites to find the best doctor for you.

With SGE, Google will save you the trouble of sifting through results. Instead, it will rely on real-time information and Large Language Model-led AI analysis to provide search results so “you’ll be able to understand a topic faster, uncover new viewpoints and insights, and get things done more easily.”

Let’s see what an SGE will produce for the same search: ‘how do I find a doctor who truly cares in Santa Clara, CA.’

As you can see, Google’s SGE has done an analysis of content and produced a compilation of results to provide you with guidance on:

Ways to find a doctor who truly cares in your location. There are websites that Google considers important and lists them. You want to appear here!
A carousel of the top 3 websites that provide specific guidance on this topic, with the ability to click right on the carousel to see more websites. Another real estate on SGE that you would want to target.
Google SGE also offers ‘Perspectives’ which allows user-generated content (UGC) from forums and discussions, including social media, to appear on SGE results. This, interestingly, is also a growing feature Google search currently. We expect perspectives to gain more importance in the coming months.
Finally, with SGE, you can have a follow-up conversation with generative AI by typing in a follow-up question.

How do you go about appearing in Google’s SGE?

If you truly consider the impact of Google’s SGE, it is a paradigm shift in search. With generative AI capabilities, powered by Med-Palm 2, Google’s large language model trained to provide high-quality answers to medical questions, Google search for healthcare will be positioned to provide many healthcare-related informational questions on Google search itself, without the need to directly visit your website.

However, this does not mean that you cannot attract high-quality transactional search-led traffic to your website. Here are steps you can take to position your website high on generative AI-led search engines in the near future:

A good foundational SEO strategy – First of all, you need to ensure that you appear high on organic search results currently. In that sense, a good current SEO base is your defensive strategy. This means authoritative content and the E.A.T. strategy should still be your foundational strategy!

Let’s talk about your offensive strategy next.

2. Clear content that is easy to read – SGE favors readability. Look at your readability score and summarize your page info into simple sentence structures followed by a clear call to action. This means presenting your information in a clear and easy-to-understand language.

3. Well-researched, current, and well-sourced content – Additionally, since healthcare websites fall in the ‘ Your Life, Your Money’ (YLYM) category, it becomes acutely important to put forward well-researched and well-sourced content on your website. This is because search engines are particularly demanding of the trustworthiness of your content if you provide advice regarding money or health. The more current, well-sourced, and trustworthy the content (as in quoted by a reliable healthcare site), the more likely it is to appear on SGE results.

4. Featured Snippets – A related offensive strategy, that is relevant not only for SGE but also current organic search results, is the creation of deep content and developing high authority backlinks to appear as a featured snippet on search.

This begs the question – What are featured snippets?

Featured snippets are valuable answers to search queries that are displayed at the top of search results. Featured snippets aim to provide quick and direct answers to questions being asked. SGE, in that sense, is an extended featured snippet with a summary of the most important information taken from a variety of sources, as opposed to a single source, as in the current featured snippet.

So, how do you go about being featured in the current Featured Snippet or the extended SGE of tomorrow?

First of all, according to Google, it will source featured snippets only from authoritative sites, like government & healthcare sites. So that’s good news for healthcare businesses

Create deep content. What do I mean by deep content? In short, I mean content that meets professional compliance requirements and is medically vetted, so readers get valuable, up-to-date, and factually correct information. It also means creating dynamic and real-time content as far as possible. This is because Google favors “fresh and recent information sources.”

Further steps include getting valuable links from reliable sources in the healthcare industry. To this end, a few things we do for our clients is to have a digital PR strategy for them by getting their content published in high authority industry sites, joining sites like HARO and Qwoted to get them published in reputed journalistic pieces, and building backlinks from local organizations, such as the Chambers of Commerce, professional associations, and local media.

Focus on adding structured data that enables Google to easily parse markup data on your site & brand authority. For healthcare sites, make sure you include frequently asked questions (FAQs) related to healthcare services, article bylines & author schema markups.

5. Digital Reputation – As early versions of SGE become available for personal use, our experience shows that your digital reputation will be paramount in getting links within SGE.

While most healthcare practices think this means getting high ratings and laudatory reviews on Google Business Profile, Healthgrades, Yelp etc. digital reputation is a bigger goal than just getting good reviews.

Digital reputation can be built by combining good reviews with authorship. Ensure your practitioners are authoring articles, appearing on podcasts, and being quoted by reputable local and industry sites.

What Hasn’t Changed

As generative AI-led search becomes prevalent, foundational search strategies remain the same.

E.A.T. Still reigns Supreme – Use content to build brand authority and authorship. Gen AI is even more likely to look at expertise, authority, and trustworthiness to decide which content links to include in its SGE search results.

Local SEO Remains Important – Most healthcare organizations have a local focus. They tend to serve individuals in a certain locality. Building a strong local SEO strategy that includes building high authority local citations, will continue to be important for your business.

Good technical SEO Still Matters – Using a crisp site structure that follows a clean and intuitive navigation structure. Use structured data to mark up the content of your website. For healthcare organizations, we strongly recommend healthcare service FAQs, medical organizations, and authorship markups. Maintain easy readability scores and summarize the information on your pages at the top in clear and concise language, followed by a call to action.

In conclusion, make sure you work with a forward-thinking marketing team that stays ahead of their domain curve, so you don’t have to.

Here are two examples of strong digital reputation management for our clients that have led them to appear prominently in Google’s SGE:

In that sense, some things never change. Search engine optimization (SEO) has never been about tricking Google through paid links or keeping up with algorithm changes. It is about improving user experience (UX) and providing value to your users – if users and influencers find your website relevant and useful they will keep coming back and Google will notice! And that’s the reason we don’t lose page rankings to algorithm changes.

Learn more about our healthcare patient generation services and our other digital solutions for healthcare organizations.

Healthcare Digital Agency

Why You Should Consider a Virtual Outsourced Agency for Your Marketing Needs?

Posted on October 6, 2023 - 2:09 PM by admin

Forrester Data indicates that B2B organizations “have really expanded their in-house agency, their centers of excellence, but that trend has really peaked in 2020.”

Reason? In times of downturn, companies are finding it hard to justify the costs of maintaining large, in-house marketing teams.

Downturn or not, experienced and vetted outsourced agencies are an excellent option for companies looking to step up their revenue and build a better-known brand. In the aftermath of COVID, where work-from-home has become more acceptable, there has been a rise of outsourced ‘virtual’ agency, which offers additional benefits when compared to a traditional outsourced marketing agencies.

What is an Outsourced ‘Virtual’ Agency and Why It Works so Well for B2B & Other Clients?

An outsourced, virtual agency is boutique agency comprised of partnered professionals and full-time staff. This means full engagement from experienced team members which continues beyond initial few months of the project. Unlike traditional, brick-and-mortar marketing agencies, our partners and employees work from their own spaces. And unlike many big name agencies, we do not hand-off work to juniors and are fully accountable to our clients’ needs at all times.

Looking for an analogy? At Webtage, we consider ourselves a digital version of George Cloney’s ‘Ocean Eleven.’ Instead of specialist conmen, we are a group of specialist digital experts who are on top of their game.

What does this mean to you, the client?

Stable network – Unlike agencies with high turnovers and high costs, a virtual agency works lean and works well because we have a shared work history, deep trust, and common work ethic that enables us to regularly & successfully work together. Many of us work full time on your marketing campaigns, while “our partners” join us for specific project needs.

For instance, you may need a specialized motion graphic production team for an sales-enablement video. We’ve got you covered with our partners. Need a ad strategist who specializes in Demand Side Platforms (DSPs)? We’ve got you covered as well!

Whether your outsources team consists of our employees or partners, you can always be assured of professional work process, non-disclosures, timely deliverables, and world-class services.

Highly vetted & Highly Experienced – Our network consists of experienced and highly specialized experts and you never have to worry about your project being handed over to a junior staff at a traditional agency.

We have a very rigorous process of vetting our partners and employees. Just like you have full control over your recruitment process and do your due diligence, so do we.

Our global team is comprised of creative, fun, passionate, and analytical minds and we love the work that we do. Our work is world-class, out of the box, and has always succeeded in moving the business needle. Along the way, we’ve won the admiration of our industry peers and deep appreciation from our clients.

Amongst the adjectives our clients and partners have used for us: professional, prompt, effective, polished, delightful, patient, gracious, skills nonpareil, amazing, dedicated, sharp, attentive, responsive, knowledgeable, the best and we could go on but here is the more important part. We have more years of combined work experience than we would like to acknowledge, lest we feel ancient!

A globally distributed team with deep agency experience and a keen ability to assess business situations and create out-of-the-box hooks to capture the imagination of the audience, you can be assured that only the very experienced and brilliant minds will work on your projects. We work lean and work passionately.

Flexible and scalable – Our extended network of fraternity members allows us the ability to scale up and down.

During downturns, we can scale back our operations to support your operational continuity. We also switch from a retainer model to a project or hour-based invoicing, if a situation so demands.

Cost Savings – here’s our value proposition: for the cost of one full-time employee (FTE), you have the skills and services of an entire marketing team working for you!

How do we do this?

Well, to begin with, we work lean. We work out of our own spaces, eliminating the real-estate and utilities costs associated with having a physical location.
We also rely on cost-differentials between different teams spread across the globe. That being said, we always are fair to the expectations of our employees and partners. We are a highly ethical and empathetic organization and we believe in a win-win situation.
Finally, we distribute our time between multiple clients, while compromising on none. This means, we work hard and we deliver, every single time.

Long-term Revenue Growth – We analyze marketing strategies, marketing operations, and marketing returns through the lens of revenue generation.

Due to our lean process, lean pricing structure, smart strategies, impeccable execution and tight project management, we are consistenly able to bring multi-fold returns on marketing investment. We love to show the results via our clean and interactive marketing dashboards as well as deeper insights by providing lead intelligence and lead reports.

So How Do We Keep Up With Our Clients’ Internal Teams & Develop a Nuanced Marketing Strategy?

We understand that clients may have a sense of unease about bringing in an outside team to manage their marketing efforts. However, we have perfected a process that allows us to become an integral part of your organization. This process involves:

1. DISCOVERY SESSION
  
  This is where we define your marketing objectives (i.e., establish thought leadership, increase prospect database, raise awareness about a particular solution, promote an event etc), identify buyer personas (what are their needs and motivations) and buyer journeys. This helps us craft a strategy that is closely aligned with your business needs, your competitive market and buyer persona.
2. SUBJECT MATTER KNOWLEDGE EXTRACTION
  
  We follow a knowledge extraction process where we interview Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) on a regular basis, identify influencers, study hashtags and develop fluency in topics of interest, conversation nuances, industry jargon, as well as gaps in conversation.
  
  And we do this through weekly, bi-monthly or monthly meetings. We also work closely with our clients’ sales team to ensure there is common ground and mutual understanding between marketing & sales.
3. INVENTORY & AUDIT
  
  We perform a quantitative and qualitative assessment of your existing marketing campaigns, content pieces & collateral that you already own. We evaluate the current state of affairs, returns on investment and compare it to your business goals. How are the campaigns performing? Are they generating engagement and conversions? We conduct trend analysis of assets that are performing well & poorly.
  
  This process allows to work in a contextualized space.
4. GAP ANALYSIS & CONTENT STRATEGY
  
  Based on the discovery, knowledge extraction, and audits, we create a core strategy that will be the grounding point that all stakeholders will agree upon. Then we will create hooks and themes, followed by a marketing plan mapped to objectives and buyer’s journey.
5. CRAFT & MARKET
  
  Here is where we craft your content, marketing collateral and your campaigns, lending to them the levers required to strike a chord with your audience, build your thought leadership, and compel them to engage with your brand.
6. REGULAR CHECK-INS –

We practice a well-thought out, modular process that helps you get the maximum returns on your investment. There is always scope to omit certain areas if you already developed those in-house. Conversely, we may want to dive deeper in certain other areas, if that’s seen necessary by all stakeholders.

Regular check-ins via regularly scheduled virtual meetings, email and phone conversations always keep us looped in and available for our clients’ needs.

Still on the Fence?

See many of Webtage’s outsourced web technologies & marketing success stories here. Read our testimonials, see the awards we have won, and see the industries we service.

Our digital build & market experience spans multiple industries, but our strongest strengths are B2B/technology, education, healthcare, B2C, and professional services. Our clients achieve sustained visibility because we conduct online campaigns the solid way. We are here to build a relationship with your business and work with you as your creative, marketing & technology partner.

Digital Marketing Agency in Naperville

Local SEO Vs National SEO

Posted on May 16, 2023 - 7:55 AM by admin

In a competitive digital world, businesses now need to focus on their online presence more than ever before. A digital presence builds trust and relationships with your customers and allows you to be found easily online.

There are many strategies and tactics that you need to consider when building and promoting your business online.

To reach more people online, the Search Engine Optimization process plays a major role. SEO boosts your content online, making your website rank higher in search engines, and increasing qualified traffic to the website. Within SEO, there are two categories: National SEO and Local SEO. The two seem similar, there are different reasons for undertaking them and different strategies to help promote your organization on search engines.

Local SEO Vs National SEO

When it comes to marketing a business online, several different strategies and tactics can be used. However, one of the most important is search engine optimization (SEO)—and, within that, national SEO and local SEO. Local SEO is a strategy that helps to get more visibility for local search-specific keywords. National SEO is aimed at companies with a nationwide reach. It’s the strategy that focuses on promoting your business to rank for broad, highly searched keywords.

What is the Difference Between Local SEO and National SEO?

There are some distinct differences between the Loacl SEO and Nationa SEO strategies.

Key Differentiation 1: Target Audience

Businesses that engage in National SEO generally target a broader audience. National SEO is best suited for businesses with a national or global target audience. If your target audience is national or international, then ensure that you optimize all the pages on your site with the right titles, meta descriptions, headings, and content that’s suited to the needs of your audience.

Local SEO businesses’ websites are designed to attract customers in a specific area. Optimizing your website for local searches is an important step to increasing location. Make sure that all your locations are listed correctly on your website so that customers can find your business easily.

Key Differentiation 2: Keywords & Targeted Search Real Estate

National SEO campaigns target various keywords and phrases that relate to the product and services without any geography. Important Search Engine Ranking Position (SERP) features include organic listings, People Also Ask (PAA) boxes, and featured snippets.

In order to get featured on search engines, optimize the website content with broad keywords and long tail keywords. If ‘running tights’ is a broad keyword, ‘best breathable running tights’ would be a long-tail keyword.

Broad keywords are highly competitive and may be harder to gain visibility for. Try to target long-tail keywords that use a different strategy. These phrases are longer and more specific than broad keywords and therefore may allow you to gain visibility for highly relevant keywords faster.

Second, use semantic keywords (words or phrases that are related to each other conceptually) properly to get visibility for organic listings, PAA boxes, and featured snippets. For example, if we were to speak about “digital marketing,” a semantically related keyword might be “SERP” or “SEO.”

A PAA box includes similar questions that people have asked on the topic that the user is seeking more information on and appears like this on search engines:

You might find more PAA questions about your brand or related to your industry. Make sure to answer all of those questions on your FAQs page on your website. In order to rank in a PAA box, your content must include the most relevant answer for your target query.

A featured snippet, on the other hand, is a reversal of typical search results where the descriptive snippet appears first, followed by the website link:

The content that appears inside of a Featured Snippet is automatically pulled from web pages in Google’s index. Optimize the content on your webpage so Google chooses to use your content in the Featured Snippet. The key to scaling this up is to add lots of definitions, ordered lists, tables, and other formats that Google loves to put into Featured Snippets on your page.

Local SEO Campaigns, on the other hand, are best suited to target location-specific similar keywords and terms that individuals are likely to be searching in their local areas.

Important SERP features that businesses can get visibility on include the local map pack, Google My Business cards (that show photos and other information about your business), and organic listings. To start, you need to conduct some research on local search engines and understand what types of queries people are using in your geographic area. You can use tools like Google Keyword Planner or Ahrefs Keywords Explorer to get an idea of what keywords people are searching for in your area. Once you have a list of all relevant target keywords, you can start optimizing your website for them.

A local map pack is a great real estate to appear in on search engines for local businesses as that’s what appears right under paid search results.

If you’re looking to appear on positions 1-3 of Local Pack listings, work on optimizing your Google My Business listing as that provides more than 25% of ranking success in Google Local Pack. Pay attention to your Google My Business listing by verifying it first and optimizing it.

Key Differentiation 3: Content

In National SEO, top-of-the-funnel content should be emphasized.

Your content should be of unique and high quality and should be able to solve user problems. For instance, awareness stage keywords, such as ‘WordPress vs Drupal,’ where the user is trying to figure out a problem, is a great keyword strategy to adopt when creating a content strategy for a National SEO.
Consider submitting your content on niche or industry-specific lists for higher quality and relevant links.
National SEO strategies rely mostly on high-quality content creation, including blog posts, white papers, and product, industry, and location pages. An important consideration here is whether to leave your white paper ungated to allow search engines to index the content or gate it for valuable lead information.
Ensure your website has a proper structure so you can easily access your important pages with as few clicks as possible. This allows people to navigate to your page easily and also signals to search engine bots that the page is valuable when it is not deep inside a complex navigational hierarchy.
Remember to create attractive and useful content that can engage maximum users as Google refers to user engagement and signals as determinants of web page relevancy.
The main content marketing goal should be Traffic × Conversions = Sales.

Location-based content is emphasized in Local SEO. You should create content that is targeted toward local customers.

These could be blog posts about events or attractions in the area or reviews of local businesses and services.
Additionally, make sure that all of your content is optimized for local SEO by including location-specific keywords throughout.
Ensure that the Name, Address, and Phone (NAP) usage is consistent across owned, paid, and earned channels. This is referred to as NAP Consistency.
Ensure that you optimize location-specific pages.
Build backlinks from niche or location-specific citations.

In general, you should let content fuel your SEO strategy.

Key Differentiation 4: Backlinks

Both Local and National SEO campaigns can benefit from having effective high-quality backlinks, which could be built using content marketing, niche blog postings, link building, and guest blogging.

While building backlinks for National SEO, invest time in building trustworthy links from genuine websites in your niche. Moz Pro SEO, SEMRush, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Tag Manager, and WordPress CMS are a few important platforms that help in improving National SEO. These platforms help analyze traffic, backlinks analysis, competitor analysis, and visibility of websites in the search results.
An important aspect of local SEO is claiming and managing profiles on directories like Google My Business, Yext, and Yelp. These profiles help customers discover your business online and provide an opportunity for you to manage the information about your business that appears in search results. Make sure all the information listed is accurate and up-to-date, as this will help improve your ranking in search results.

Citations

Creating local citations won’t help national SEO campaigns at all. Instead, focus on creating and optimizing informative and valuable content, which helps in boosting the domain authority of the website.
Maintaining NAP consistency throughout the citations is very important in Local SEO Campaigns. Any inconsistency can lead to dropping the keyword positions in the local search results. Include a map with directions or contact information on each page of your website so potential customers can find their way to your location easily.

Competition

National SEO has a lot of competition, and it is expensive to build top search visibility. If your website has informative and valuable content, it can attract high-quality inbound links that will boost the domain authority of the website and drive search engine ranking positions. To gain traction in search engines create high authority content (focuses on building your brand’s credentials in an industry), ebooks, how-to content (videos, blogs, infographics), and standout opinion pieces(platforms like Medium and Huffington Post have made it easy for thought leaders to share their ideas), original research pieces (whitepapers, case studies, interviews), and more.
Generally speaking, local SEO has less competition compared to businesses looking for national search visibility, but the approach to building local search visibility relies on building local citations, getting content published in local, industry-specific directories, maintaining NAP consistency, and creating content that is useful, relevant, and local. You can improve your website’s visibility and reach new potential customers organically by creating a city-specific landing page, FAQ pages, hosting local events, and more.

Key Differentiation 5: Reasons to Choose National vs Local

Reasons to Choose National SEO

Target Market: National SEO is an excellent technique for enhancing your brand recognition across locations and positioning yourself in the crowded marketplace.
Established Expertise: If you have a national SEO campaign in place, establish your brand expertise by developing thought leadership articles.
National Level Brands: If you have become big enough on a national level, national SEO can help you penetrate even the international market.

Reasons to Choose Local SEO

Local Area Focus: If your company is relatively new in the business and targets local clientele, it’s better to target local customers.
Local Competition: If you are only competing against local businesses that offer the same products and services as you do, then go for local SEO.
Nature of Business: Local SEO can definitely improve your chances of attracting people who might need your business in your area.

Conclusion

Having a solid SEO foundation should be a priority for your business. Every business is unique and requires a unique approach to marketing its campaign online.

The key ranking factors for local SEO are quality local backlinks, google my business optimization with high-quality images, frequency of listings, business updates listings, and review quality and quantity.

While a high-quality result for National SEO primarily depends on the authority, expertise, and reliability of the content.

With the right SEO strategies, you can increase your website’s visibility and rankings, as well as boost your keyword’s searchability and annual revenue. The best SEO company in Chicago can help in developing and implementing SEO campaigns for your business.

SEO Agency in Naperville

How to Increase Traffic to Your Website in 2023 Using A Results-Driven SEO Strategy

Posted on February 24, 2023 - 10:54 AM by admin

Are you looking for an SEO strategy that will help boost your rankings and visibility in 2023? If so, then this blog post is for you.

SEO is one of the key pillars of all marketing strategies. 2023 brings with it a rapidly evolving SEO landscape. If you want to reach out to potential customers, you must be in sync with users’ search behaviors and continually develop your SEO strategy and efforts.

Here are the biggest 2023 SEO trends that you need to know as it’ll help you change the way you strategize and develop an action plan this year.

Embrace Chaos

Expect lots of chaos and dynamism as SEO undergoes a major overhaul this year. We’ve been seeing traces of this trend last year with Google rolling out even more updates than it ever did.

Google will continue to roll and finish fresh updates as the year progresses. It’s wise to stay on top of these search updates. It might seem chaotic at the outset, but it’s what will precisely bring the much-needed order to the SEO landscape.

At Webtage, we’d like to add the caveat that while it is our job to stay on top of search algorithm updates and Google’s guidance, great SEO is about improving user experience – if users find your website relevant and useful they will keep coming back and Google will notice! And that’s the reason we don’t lose page rankings to algorithm changes.

Get Acquainted With ChatGPT

Talking of Google, ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer), the new AI-powered chatbot, has revolutionized search engine optimization.

The potential of ChatGPT is huge with its easy, human-like conversational interface with users that answers all their queries. It’s no surprise that Google has recently announced its product Bard to compete with ChatGPT.

If you’re an SEO professional who’s not using ChatGPT, we highly recommend using it for your business’ benefit. From keyword research, writing meta descriptions, and using it as a search assistant, to a generic brainstorming tool.

At Webtage, we use ChatGPT to consolidate research on topics, create meta tags for search engine visibility, and boost our copy creation process for blogs, ads, and the web. However, we strongly advise against using ChatGPT to create content without bringing in your first-hand experience, deep expertise, pointers, evaluation & refinement to make the output useful.

But you can use it to aid you for insights and even outline your content marketing strategy with a bird’s eye view of tactics for content related to your niche. However, if your competition is also using ChatGPT for their content strategy, then they would follow the same thing and create similar content like you.

Google search engine’s stance on AI-generated content continues to evolve with time. Initially, Google was against any kind of AI-generated content. Now Google’s stance has been that it will penalize any “spammy automatically-generated content.”

Curious if the content you generate can trigger a spam (read “fake content”) alert? Check it here: https://openai-openai-detector.hf.space/

Create Content For People, Not Robots And Spiders

Google released its first “helpful content update” in 2022, urging marketers to create web content that prioritizes people and offers users with a meaningful experience. Google prefers content created for people by people and it views AI-generated spammy content a violation of the company’s guidelines. It states you can use AI for insights and optimization, not long-form content such as articles.

In 2023, Google is going to favor unique, fresh, relevant, purposeful, and user-centric content. The search engine algorithms are highly sophisticated, quickly spotting content that doesn’t satisfy the readers and has been spun by automated tools. Don’t go that route as there are high chances of getting penalized.

Google also made an addition to its popular EAT (Expertise, Authority, Trust) acronym in December 2022. The updated acronym reads EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trust). This makes sense in a digital world where there’s an influx of AI-generated content. Showcasing the experience of the author or creator builds trust and credibility that it’s written by humans for humans. So, create content that projects your expertise in your subject area. Display an author bio with their detailed experience, a separate author page with a list of all their articles or content, and social profiles. But it’s not just the experience of the author or creator that counts, but also topics of their content should be related to their experience.

With Google’s new guidelines showing a clear preference for long-form resourceful content, fix pages and posts with thin content. For example, product pages can have more details such as dropdown menus, FAQs, and testimonials apart from descriptions.

Focus on quality and not quantity with content creation in 2023.

Focus on Technical SEO

In 2023, companies that focus on the improvement of the technical aspects of their websites will grow significantly. Google is incentivizing sites with better user experiences. Better user experience (UX) means higher ranking on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

There are other key SEO metrics that mean more than ranking and that’s organic traffic via Google Analytics and lead conversions (Leads / Revenue). Unless ranking is affecting a company’s bottom line, it’s not the most important SEO metric to report to your clients. So, organic traffic and lead conversions are standard go-to SEO metrics to focus on. Other factors to measure your SEO performance include indexability, search visibility, time spent on the site, and the bounce rate.

However, which SEO metrics to measure depends on your marketing goals. Have a bigger picture when analyzing SEO metrics and track a few related ones only. For example, a long time spent on the site might look impressive at the outset, but if it’s not leading to conversions, you’re probably attracting the wrong audience.

Keep an eye on and stay on top of Google’s Page Experience Update, Core Web Vitals, and Link Best Practices to fix technical SEO issues regularly within a certain time threshold. These include monitoring the page loading speed, browser response time, and content stability during loading for a seamless user experience.

Like content, you’ll see many SEO automation tools and platforms that you can use to perform routine tasks and track technical SEO metrics.

The Rise Of Visual Or Multisearch

With the increased popularity of TikTok and Instagram, people are steering towards visual content.

Multisearch was announced in April 2022 to help people view images and text at the same time when they search for something online. Multisearch, powered by Google Lens, allows people to use their phones to search images and text, and get the most relevant results. We can expect more advancements in Google’s AI development and Multitask Unified Model (MUM), a modern technology for answering complex questions that don’t have direct answers. It will provide users with a rich, interactive, and engaging experience as graphic cards of imagery and auto-complete features are directly tied into every search result.

You’ll need to balance the content, i.e. text with images and videos. Also, focus on the mobile optimization of these visual elements as it will become the norm in 2023.

Shoot More Videos

There’s an increased amount of attention to video results when searching for something online.

2023 will be the year of videos and if you haven’t included it in your SEO strategy, we urge you to do so this year.

The best part is that you don’t need fancy equipment to shoot your videos. Videos taken from your mobile also perform as well as professionally shot videos. The focus is more on the content of the video than the production quality.

Conclusion

We’ve shared our SEO predictions and insights for 2023. To apply this SEO knowledge to yield results, you’ll need a dedicated SEO expert team, either in-house or by hiring an agency.

At Webtage, the best SEO Company in Chicago IL, we excel in delivering one of the most comprehensive, realistic, and proven SEO strategies plans with an excellent and consistent track record of implementing the SEO requirements to help our clients achieve their desired results.

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Top 5 Reasons Your B2B Company Should Consider LinkedIn Marketing

Posted on July 15, 2022 - 2:52 AM by admin

LinkedIn has come a long way from being just a portal for job seekers. LinkedIn started as a job search engine. But it has now grown into a powerful and integral tool for B2B marketing.

B2B marketing or Business-to-Business marketing, like the name suggests, refers to marketing products and services to another business, instead of consumers.

Why Is LinkedIn A Crucial Platform for B2B Marketing?

Let’s explore LinkedIn marketing for B2B businesses and what makes it the perfect social platform for B2B marketing.

We explore LinkedIn marketing for B2B businesses, and also share our top reasons why you must consider LinkedIn for your B2B marketing.

LinkedIn Is A Gold Mine Of Business Professionals

If your B2B company is not on LinkedIn, you’re missing out on enormous opportunities.

What makes LinkedIn different from the other social platforms is the context. While platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have social leanings towards family, friends, and casual connections, LinkedIn is built for business connections only.

Consider this! There are 750+ million users on LinkedIn across 200 countries at the rate of 3 new members every second and counting.

As per LinkedIn, 71% of professionals use the platform to convey their business decisions. That should convince you how active business professionals are on the platform, promoting their brands.

It is smart marketing to meet up with other businesses on the platform where they are the most active. If you’re a B2B company, LinkedIn is the place to be.

So, if you’re not on LinkedIn yet, we strongly suggest you set up your company page at the earliest. You could meet your next business client, partner, employees, influencers and whoever you want to target for your business.

Social Media For B2B Is Unlike B2C companies

Unlike B2C or Business-to-Consumer businesses that are aimed at attracting a wider audience of consumers, B2B businesses have a niche audience of other businesses.

A typical B2C marketing requires a lot of visibility, where the emphasis is geared towards the awareness phase of the buyer’s journey. We measure B2C marketing success more in terms of metrics, such as followers, likes, comments, shares, etc.

However, B2B marketing runs deeper than just being known to your target audience. There is emphasis on not just brand building, but also on business networking because:

B2B audience spans multiple departments: strategic, financial and operational decision
B2B sales cycles are much longer, so regular communication to provide value for decision makers is critical.

Building a powerful brand gives your B2B business a competitive advantage. Brand building should be a strategic priority to speed up business growth.

B2B Marketing should be distinct and authentic since there is a demand for purpose-driven brands that fosters trust in the long run among the target audience. Any brand that’s inauthentic and skewed more towards commercialization instead of purpose may not sustain for long.

Competition is out, and collaboration is in. Brands that are authentic, purposeful, and collaborative are on the right track.

However, this is easier than done, as most B2B businesses today are blindly following the B2C marketing template. This lack of creativity is damaging to your B2B brand’s success. At Webtage, our approach is to balance brand building and business networking. We carve our clients’ distinct brand personality, and convey it creatively to their audience, building trust, empathy, differentiation, and loyalty.

LinkedIn provides many useful business networking and lead generation tools, including LinkedIn Sales Navigator and LinkedIn Advertising that allow for deep targeting of your audience for best business networking opportunities.

When you’re on LinkedIn, think of the relationships as less as connections and more like collaborative business partnerships. LinkedIn B2B marketing is about building long-lasting partnerships with your relevant target customers.

LinkedIn Is The Most Effective Platform For B2B Marketing

There are several substantial reasons LinkedIn is so popular with B2B marketers.

LinkedIn is an excellent place for businesses to promote their products and services and gain relevant business leads. Research has backed the claim of LinkedIn being an effective lead generation platform. An overwhelming 97% of business leads from social media platforms come from LinkedIn.

Clearly, LinkedIn out beats other social platforms and works for B2B lead generation. When you dig further and look at the reasons backed by research findings, you’ll find that it all makes perfect sense.

It’s highly likely that you will be in direct contact with high-level decision-makers of the companies you are targeting on LinkedIn. LinkedIn B2B marketing is a faster way to reach your targeted audiences and gain high-quality leads.

Another reason that makes LinkedIn a popular choice for B2B marketers is that it is viewed as a trusted platform.

LinkedIn B2B Marketing Helps In Building Thought Leadership

As per a recent study by the Content Marketing Institute,

97% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn for their content marketing.
78% of B2B marketers say LinkedIn is an effective tool for content marketing.

So, LinkedIn is not just a networking place for business professionals, it’s also an active community that’s sharing relevant content. Consider these statistics by LinkedIn internal data:

There are nine billion content impressions on LinkedIn each week (LinkedIn study).
Around 45% of LinkedIn article readers are in upper-level positions, such as managers, VPs, Directors, and C-level positions.

So, as a business brand, you can build thought leadership with your LinkedIn short form posts, videos, and long form articles. There are high chances that the decision makers of your target audience will read them, and even approach you if they are original, high-quality, and well-written.

LinkedIn is A B2B Centric Platform

While this might come across as stating the obvious, what most people don’t realize is how LinkedIn is built for B2B marketing. Whether it’s building business relationships, developing your brand, or doing business, LinkedIn is the place to be.

We can use precise and virtually limitless targeting tools and options provided by LinkedIn to reach your audiences. We also use strategic testing to determine which of your audiences and targeting parameter combinations can generate the optimal results.

There are several strategic actions we can take to improve your LinkedIn B2B marketing efforts. For example, we add the LinkedIn Insight Tag to our client’s website so that we can re-target the website visitors with relevant content in the future.

We Can Help You Gain Leads With Our LinkedIn B2B2 Marketing Services

LinkedIn is the platform to be on if you have a B2B business. Whether it is to attract relevant, high-quality leads, influencers to promote your products and services, or employees to join your workforce, LinkedIn is the strong dark horse of social media platforms.

Our article has you covered all the benefits that LinkedIn offers for your B2B business. If you want to know more about how we can help leverage LinkedIn for your business, get in touch with Best Marketing Agency in Naperville & Chicago area.

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How B2B Social Media Marketing Can Take Your Business To The Next Level

Posted on June 2, 2022 - 11:36 AM by admin

Social Media Marketing (SMM) is typically seen as beneficial for B2C companies. But this couldn’t be far from the truth.

If you don’t have a social media plan for your B2B business, you are missing out on huge benefits. Social media is the top distribution method for B2B marketers, with 89% using social tools.

We break down how social media is a fantastic platform to promote your B2B company and when done right, it can have multifold benefits.

What is B2B Social Media Marketing And How Is It Different?

While B2C companies use social media marketing to reach out to their audience and influence purchases, the social media marketing goals for B2B is to sell their products and services to other businesses.

B2B social media marketing entails strategizing, drafting, promoting, and analyzing content to engage your target audience on social platforms.

While it might look simple at the outset, there are several nuanced factors including staying abreast of rapidly evolving social platforms and features that make it both challenging and exciting.

The social media marketing approach for B2B differs from B2C companies. Typically, B2B social media marketing tends to be more strategic to influence business founders and decision makers. It involves relatively more nurturing of business relationships to influence large order purchases. Even the nature of content mix will look different for B2B social media marketing. For example, insightful, and informational videos, case studies, reports, white papers.

Also, consider these statistics to understand how different the B2B buyer from the B2C customer:

B2B customers spend 27% of their purchase consideration time conducting independent research online.
44% of millennial B2B customers prefer not to interact with a sales rep at all.

B2B buyers are more proactive in their research and enjoy more autonomy in their purchasing decisions. It’s vital that your digital presence and social media marketing are strong for astute B2B buyers.

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Top 3 Ways Your B2B company should utilize social media marketing for maximum benefits

B2B social media marketing is one of the best ways to build a strong brand presence and customer loyalty.

Here are the top benefits of B2B social media marketing.

Build And Boost Brand Awareness And Repute

Leverage your company’s social profiles to provide useful information about what your B2B company has to offer for your clients.

Publishing relevant and high-quality content consistently on social media and engaging with your audience via comments and messages helps in improving brand awareness and trust with your customers.

Sharing your industry expertise and insights by leveraging social platforms establishes you as a thought-leader and helps you stand out from your competition by attracting qualified partners. We are already seeing the benefits of employee branding, especially the increasing digital presence of C-suite leaders, such as the improved trustworthiness of your B2B company.

Create An Engaged Community And Improve Customer Experience

Social platforms help you tap into a ‘mostly online’ audience to gain their trust and improve customer experience.

Your business clients are on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, making it easier for you to build connections and collaborations with them.

You can interact and help answer your clients’ queries, solve their problems, or thank them for their reviews online whenever possible. It shows them that you’re paying attention to them and are invested in their growth. It makes your brand more humane, approachable and authentic.

Drive Traffic, Generates Leads, And Increases Sales

Social media marketing helps achieve your search engine optimization (SEO) goals. Being active on social platforms can improve your company’s positioning in Google’s organic search results, and can help in improving your ranking indirectly.

“Social platforms are no longer add-ons to a business’s communication budget; they should be central to its marketing strategy, and used in coordination with other marketing efforts.”

– Richard Branson

Social media marketing helps drive the relevant traffic to your website, generate qualified leads and increase sales.

The ultimate goal of all marketing efforts is to promote sales. Social media marketing entails identifying potential clients, positioning their products and services to the targeted prospects, building relationships and trust with them, and nurturing leads.

It’s Time To Get Social

Social media marketing is a powerful marketing channel for enabling brand authenticity, trust, community and sales.

As much as it presents a massive opportunity, it is also getting increasingly competitive.

Looking to improve or initiate social media strategy for your B2B organization? Follow the streamlined 1-2-3-4-5 foundational steps to start your social media marketing on a solid footing!

Contact us to learn more about how Webtage can help you with our innovative and focused approach to social media marketing that can help you stand out from a sea of competitors.

Social Media Marketing Company in Naperville

Why is building a brand image so important?

Posted on May 26, 2020 - 8:54 PM by admin

Why is building a brand image so important? It’s because this is how your customers/clients will remember you. And if there is no brand consistency, there will be only chaos and confusion. Nobody wants to deal with more chaos and uncertainty. Especially now.

Why do we remember brands like Coca Cola, Google, Apple? It’s because they invest in developing and promoting their brand identity. You cannot piece together a brand like a patchwork quilt from a dozen different sources just because it was the cheapest. This isn’t how you create brand loyalty.

Why do people pay more for a MacBook Air when they could get basically the same no-name brand for less than half the price? It’s because of Apple’s carefully constructed branding and image. Their message and their branding is not ONLY carefully constructed, but it’s consistent. It’s not about saving a few pennies or dollars here and there. It’s about an investment in a potentially amazing future.

There is a probably a LOT of competition in your area. What do you want to do to make your business stand out? What is important about YOUR image? What is the image you want to present to the world? You might think that, say, business cards are just a small, meaningless detail, but they are part of a foundation that is building your brand and even something as small as a business card is part and parcel of a consistent message: and part of that message is that YOU pay attention to EVERY detail: not only in your products or services, but your office setting, your website, your branding, your everything. Your image is what is working for you.

Spend the time, discipline and dollars now to perfect the image. Every single thing you put out there is representing YOU. This is the area where you can outshine every other mediocre and same-o same-o-business in your industry. Your business has a lot of potential to be unique and amazing with the right plan. This can be an exciting and creative time, getting your business off the ground or getting it to grow further by putting together a great brand with a good creative and marketing plan! So get out there, form a great team to elevate your brand, and create something amazing.

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[mk_padding_divider size=”100″][highlight_box style=”fade2″ textsize=”20″ iconsize=”18″ id=”01″ text=”You cannot piece together a brand like a patchwork quilt from a dozen different sources just because it was the cheapest. This isn’t how you create brand loyalty.” clr=”#091315″ bgclr=”#b0b948″ hoverbg=”#92c847″ icon=”fas fa-bullseye”][mk_padding_divider]

Get Your Brand Out - See How We Can Help!

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About the Author

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[mk_circle_image src=”https://www.webtage.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/sandra_circleprofile.png” image_diameter=”150″]

Sandra Mui shines in her role as the Creative Director at Webtage. With over 15 years of experience in creative writing and visual arts, she gets the pulse of the consumer and creates content that strikes a chord.

Having previously worked for advertising agencies, such as Leo Burnett and other boutique creative houses, she has successfully launched Fortune 500 ad campaigns, including those for Procter & Gamble, Kodak Professional Division, Phillip Morris, FILA, Aki Italia & Champion Sportswear.

Sandra has a passion for reading, writing and researching. Her love of words and art gives her a unique vision and ability to put things together in ways that will make your brand pop!

Contact her at sandra@webtage.com

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Are you a Healthcare Provider That’s Offering Telehealth Services? This is What You Need to do Right Now!

Posted on April 14, 2020 - 6:26 PM by admin

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and shelter-in place orders in many areas of the country, many healthcare providers, including hospitals, doctors, and mental healthcare providers, are now providing virtual care. Google has recently rolled out tow new features in Google Search and Maps to allow users to conveniently find telehealth options, “whether it’s to a doctor’s office down the street, the hospital across town, or a national telehealth platform.” You can also clearly communicate your COVID-19 information with your intended audience.

So how do you, as a provider, access these features? Let’s talk about Google Maps first (if you are not familiar with the significance of Google Maps for your healthcare business or have not claimed your Google My Business listing , learn why it’s critical that you do so now and while you’re at it, also learn foolproof tips on optimizing your GMB listing):

1. - Google My Business now offers URLs dedicated to COVID-19 and telehealth services. Make sure you add the URL links to your Google My Business Page listing. After your edits have been reviewed and approved, it’ll appear in Google Maps listing and your detailed Google Maps listing as well. Here’s how you can add the URLs: Sign in to your GMB listing by visiting business.google.com. Next click on ‘Info’ on the left-hand side panel. If you are a healthcare organization, you will see two additional URL options for COVID-19 info link and virtual care link. Add the links as applicable and click Save.
  - List Telemedicine Services on your Business Profile on Google. Google adds that “you can choose what to offer from suggested types of services. If the type of service isn’t listed, you can add your own custom services, like “telemedicine,” “telehealth,” “video visits,” or “house calls.” Once the services edit has saved, patients will be able to see the services you have listed, including online visits or telemedicine.
2. - Finally, in the Attributes section, add video visits to the offerings, if you do provide video visits. This will also help display your telemedicine option to your patients when they search for your services in Google.

I’d be amiss if I didn’t mention that Google is also helping healthcare providers with technology infrastructure and support via “HIPAA-compliant G Suite products (including using Google Meet for telehealth or virtual visits), deploying virtual agents to field questions related to COVID-19, and helping with capacity-planning and demand forecasting of key medical supplies to better manage their supply chains.”

If you need help planning your transition to virtual care, contact us at Webtage where we have facilitated the transition to online visits for healthcare providers, developed the capacity to communicate high quality and credible information in the midst of the health crisis, and marketed online visits to continue solid revenue generation for our client.

[mk_page_title_box page_title=”Healthcare Digital Marketing Done Right” page_subtitle=”Grow Quickly & Effectively” section_height=”150″ font_size=”24″ title_force_font_size=”true” sub_font_size=”16″ subtitle_force_font_size=”true”]

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Why Google My Business Optimization Should Be #1 on Your Local Marketing Agenda AND Foolproof Optimization Tips

Posted on April 14, 2020 - 1:59 PM by admin

Why is local marketing big business? According to Moz, there are “approximately seven billion unique local searches per month on Google in the United States.” More than 50% of mobile searches have a local intent. If you are a local business and haven’t invested in local digital marketing, you should be thinking about it now.

So how do you market your business for local visibility? In this article, we will focus on strategies to optimize your Google Business Listing to increase your chance of appearing on positions 1-3 of local pack listings (also known as Google Map listings) . These listings appear below paid Ads, but above organic listings. As an example, we searched for “digital marketing near me” on Google and as you can see, at the top of the page are the paid ad listings, followed by Google Map listings. Organic listings appear even further below. So unless you’re running a paid ad campaign, local pack listings are your best bet for Google page 1 visibility.

Main Idea: If you’re looking to appear on positions 1-3 of Local Pack listings, work on optimizing your Google My Business listing as that provides more than 25% of ranking success in Google Local Pack!

So how do you go about optimizing your Google My Business Listing?

Claim Your Listing and Get it Verified – While you can still post content on your GMB listing even if you’ve haven’t claimed it, claiming your listing will provide you with a lot more control, including responding to client reviews, create posts, or reach out to GMB customer service to resolve issues. So make sure you’ve claimed your listing. If you listing does not exist, create one at by going to google.com/business and select “Start now” in the top right-hand corner. Once you’ve claimed your listing, make sure you verify it by clicking on the “Verify” tab in your GMB dashboard. next, you will be asked to verify your mailing address. An postcard will then be sent to the mailing address you entered. Follow the steps on the postcard to get your listing verified.
Craft the Business Title Well – Add Business Name. Remember that by adding your product or service keyword improves your chances of ranking for those keywords. Notice that all three local pack listings for “digital marketing near me” (and that includes Webtage as well!) include “digital marketing” in their business name. While this is not a guarantee for a top position, it is certainly a big plus.
Make sure your profile is as close to 100% set up as possible – This includes vital information such as hours, website URLs, services or products, highlights where you can add sttributes such as, “veteran-led” or “women-led,” descriptions, photos and phone numbers.
Choose Your Category Well – Do not dilute the impact by choosing too many categories. Try to limit to 1-3 categories.
Gather Testimonials from Your Customers – GMB makes it very easy to collect reviews if you don’t have enough reviews. Simply share the ‘Review Form’ link from your GMB dashboard with your clients. Also, ensure you respond to reviews posted to your GMB listing. Do not ignore negative reviews. Best ways to respond to a negative review is to acknowledge the negative sentiment and provide solutions to your customer.
Post often – GMB Posts show up in search results in the Knowledge Panel and Google Map search results. You can post about events to promote events at your location. You may also post promotional offers, highlight products, or post announcements.
Communicate With Your Audience – Answer any questions posed by the general audience. To answer a question posed, navigate to your listing via Google Search and see all questions listed under Q&A section. Navigate to the question you want to answer and hit “answer.” Once you’re done, click “post.” Answering questions posed will help you build customer’s trust and improve search visibility.

Here’s a simple to use infographic on ways to optimize your Google My Listing:

Digital Marketing Agency in Naperville

Older posts

What are some of these search trends and how will they affect your ability to attract patients?

What does Gen AI-led Search mean for you as a healthcare business?

How do you go about appearing in Google’s SGE?

What Hasn’t Changed

What is an Outsourced ‘Virtual’ Agency and Why It Works so Well for B2B & Other Clients?

So How Do We Keep Up With Our Clients’ Internal Teams & Develop a Nuanced Marketing Strategy?

DISCOVERY SESSION

SUBJECT MATTER KNOWLEDGE EXTRACTION

INVENTORY & AUDIT

GAP ANALYSIS & CONTENT STRATEGY

CRAFT & MARKET

REGULAR CHECK-INS –

Still on the Fence?

Conclusion

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