SEO vs PPC: What are the Differences?

There has been a lot of debate for quite a long time between SEO vs PPC, which one is the best option for your business.

So if you are still finding it difficult to decide which one is best for your business, then this article is your best bet.

But before we dive right into the whole concept of SEO and PPC, you should know that there is no definite answer to the question of which is the better option for your business.

And we have so many reasons for this. Some of them are your business objectives, the kind of business you run, prospective customers, and the market. Many of these reasons are great determinants of the choices you are going to make.

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What is PPC?

The acronym PPC stands for pay-per-click. This means buying traffic to your site rather than growing them organically. It is also a kind of advertising pattern where there is a cost for each click on the ad. 

A good example is the regular ads you see anytime you are watching a video on Facebook and an ad pops up for a few seconds. then the video you are watching continues.

The purpose of these ads is to create awareness for your business and buy visits to your website.

Now, each time any of these ads is clicked, the advertiser gets to pay a certain amount.

PPC marketing strategy

This is a marketing model that involves advertisers intelligently targeting web users with keywords that they search for on the web in form of ads prompting them to visit the advertiser’s website.

Here are some reliable PPC marketing tips for you.

  • Create a PPC budget
  • Launch PPC campaign
  • Design model-friendly landing page
  • Write compelling ad copy

 What is SEO?

It stands for search engine optimization. This is the process of optimizing the quality and quantity of organic traffic on your website. In other words, optimizing your web pages or website to get ranked in search engines like google for visibility is known as SEO.

This process is actually free and you don’t get to pay for it like the PPC. Search engines get to crawl and scan through different websites and deliver the most relevant results for certain searched keywords.

So unlike PPC where web users get to see your business through advertising models, SEO works by creating effective and engaging SEO-focused content.

SEO marketing strategy

This is a step-by-step approach focused on improving your website search engine ranking in order to get more visibility and drive traffic to your business.

Here are a few SEO strategies suitable for traffic building.

  • Improve user experience
  • Competitive analysis
  • Research your keywords
  • Link building
  • Content strategy

Now that you know how both work and the strategies to use to generate traffic on your web, let’s discuss when you should use the PPC or when you should use the SEO for your website.

Optimizing your website and using paid ads both have a significant impact on driving traffic to your website.

Goals                                                                                       What you need

Improve on organic traffic SEO
Build high targeted traffic PPC
For immediate result PPC
Stable search traffic SEO
Cost-effective SEO
Promoting a time-sensitive  product PPC

 

The verdict on SEO vs PPC

So, between SEO and PPC, which is better? Well, before you can answer this you have to put into consideration your business situation.

They have both their benefits and disadvantages but work best when you put the two into use for your online business.

Whether you choose to use SEO or PPC ultimately depends on your business goals, as both marketing tools are useful for the growth of your online business.  

For high converting SEO and PPC services, click here to contact our team of webmasters today.

 

 

How Inbound Link Building Can Increase Website Traffic

If you go online today, you will find many great articles out there discussing the importance of websites for your business.

 While this is good advice for every business be it a startup or existing business, most times the greatest challenge is not setting up the website but how to drive traffic to it.

After setting up your website, what are the next steps to take to make sure that search engines like google can easily find your website?

One of the many strategies you can employ for optimizing your website is inbound link building.

I’m sure you must now be wondering what is the whole thing about the inbound link or link building.

Link building is the process of connecting links from other websites and placing them on your website. Since you know that links are vital for web crawlers as that is the only way they discover websites, and placing links on your website is a great way of getting ranked in search results.

How does inbound link building work?

They work with specific and strategic keywords as a lead for those links.

So in a nutshell, inbound links are links from other websites that drive traffic to your website.

And the more inbound link a website can secure, the higher it ranks on google search which is very healthy for your SEO.

We have put together some helpful nuggets when working on your website’s link profile so that you can improve your online presence.

Researching your competitors

Have you discovered your competitors are doing great with their website, and you are wondering how they are going about it? Then you need to research them.

Do you know your competitors can be of great help, to you only if you would allow them? The beauty of competition is being able to study your competitor’s weaknesses and strengths, and being able to fashion out a way to utilize both for your own success.

Get the strategy they are using that is working for them, and then adopt and improve on them. 

Make it your goal to analyze your competitor’s online presence, gathering information, and improving your marketing.

 

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Generate your internal links

These are links that users use to navigate through your site to find the content they are interested in.

Oftentimes, most businesses tend to underestimate the importance of internal links on their website. With internal links, you can determine which keyword you want to use for your text anchor.

With your internal links, you can place relevant keyword suggestions on your website thereby positioning yourself strategically to meet your target user’s inquiries.

Link out to other websites

This is also called outbound link which is simply giving out links to other websites from your website. Make sure you have a diversity of other sources linking to your website.

You can obtain links from websites that you are in the same market, blogs, news, social media, and many more.

Now, the higher the number of links you have to your website, the higher the chances of greatly improving your SEO ranking.

Don’t stop at getting a few links, make it consistent and continuous, and give out links from your website as well and you will be pretty amazed at the result.

Be relevant on social media

Having an account on social media alone is not enough, how relevant are you? Perhaps you heard the word before that “you need to be social on social media”.

Social media is a great platform to interact with your audience. How much are you responding to messages on your social media and are they timely?

Social media is a great tool for keeping your presence in the market and also for churning out quality content that can drive traffic to your website.

If you carefully follow through this process we just discussed in this article, you can be sure that site rank will greatly improve and your website link profile will become stronger.

The exciting part of these strategies is that you don’t even need finance to start implementing them, all that is required is your time, and will be amazed at the result.

Do you want to drive more traffic to your website through link building? Click here to contact our team at ducehost today for a free consultancy.

 

5 SECRET FACTS GOOGLE SEARCH DOESN’T WANT YOU TO KNOW

We all know that Google leads when it comes to search, but aside from this statistics, there is hardly any research out there about how internet users are actually using the top search engine.

Of course, Google will sometimes feed digital marketers with statistics and updates like, how many people in a location searched for a particular topic or how many videos were uploaded to YouTube including the stats for each video which is very helpful to Digital Marketers.

By having access to the daily searches, it makes it much easier for businesses and marketers to understand the changing landscape of search engines and how internet users are really using search engines to find information.

While Google doesn’t really provide this type of data, we have searched high and low to bring you some top-secret statistics on how consumers are using the power of the internet to search and find products.

By having access to this data, you can use it to help boost your SEO c

Here is what we found when it comes to how internet goers are using search engines like Google-

Secret Fact #1: The Average Person Conducts 5.5 Searches Every Single Day 

We discovered that the average person conducts around 5.5 searches every single day. That equates to around 2 trillion searches on Google alone just in Nigeria every single month. This is also not counting voice searches or searches using the Google app or Google Home.

What does this mean for your business? Your average customer is making at least 3-4 queries every single day, which means that you have very few chances for people to find your site.

This statistic really stresses the importance of SEO and having your website or landing pages rank well for your most desirable keywords.

SEO is important, but this statistic proves just how important it is to ensure that your customers know exactly where to find you.

Secret Fact #2: More users perform one or more searches on Social media platforms in a day 

Earlier we talked about how the average person searches for around 5.5 things every single day on Google. When looking a little closer, we found that really only 15 percent of people were performing one more than one search.

This means that the percentage of people searching for more than one thing per day on Google is extremely low.

While Google is definitely the most visited search engine in the world, it is clear that not many  people are solely relying on it for navigating around the web.

The reason for multiple search volumes being so low may also be contributed to the fact that social media is now a hot spot to find information.

Platforms like Facebook and Twitter offer trending news sections and plenty of ads. With the average person spending at least 15 minutes on Facebook per day, it just goes to show that being present on this platform is a good way for clients and customers to find your brand.

Secret Fact #3: Only 3.4 percent of Adwords ads are clicked during a search 

If you are wondering what percentage of Adwords ads are clicked versus regular listings the answer is somewhere around 3-4 percent.

Adwords is known to be highly competitive and this just proves how competitive it can be. Out of 100 searches, only 3, maybe 4 people are clicking on an Adwords listing.

While it may seem that hardly any Adwords ads are being clicked on a daily basis, it helps to remember that Google processes billions of searches every single day. When you look at it from this angle, there is a lot of potential to be had from using Adwords.

Adwords is definitely one of the premier CPC campaign platforms and every business should know the basics of how to run an effective Adwords campaign.

Secret Fact #4: 18 percent of users click on the change search query suggestions at the bottom of search results

We have all seen the alternative search terms located at the very bottom of search results. It’s been discovered that a whopping 18 percent of users were clicking on these alternative suggestions.

In order to use this to your advantage, type in your most common keywords and see what alternative suggestions are offered. Try catering to these suggestions through your copy and headlines.

These alternative search queries are often a result of a lot of data collected by Google over the years and what the most popular search terms based on the keyword you are looking for.These alternative suggestions are therefore extremely valuable to your SEO strategy and for funnelling more traffic your way.

Secret Fact #5: 8 percent of search queries are asked as Questions

Through a research, It was found that 8 percent of search queries were questions; this means that 8 out of 100 searches started with the words- who, what, where, when, why and how.

Using questions as keywords may be something you want to experiment with based on these findings.

You may even want to write more questions in the headlines of your ad copy or on your blog posts to see if you can capitalize from this trend.

Conclusion

So there you have it-  5 secret facts about Google that should help to support your SEO efforts, copy and the keywords you should choose to focus on.

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5 things we must know before building your website

Your website is the foundation of your internet existence. It is the bridge that connects your great products and services to the online community that is your market and audience. In today’s world, it is almost impossible for a business to succeed without a firm web presence.

Even if you already have a website, reviewing these points may shine a light on that one thing you overlooked. Use this guide as your resource to make the process of creating your own website a whole lot easier.

Establish the aim of your website

It’s always important to ask crucial questions about why you’re building the website. Is the aim of your site to inform people that your business exists and encourage them to get in touch? Is it to sell your products online? Or how about to showcase your creative work? Having a clear focus will help you as well as your visitors.

 Know your target market

Make sure you clarify this early on as it will affect your theme, design, content, usability, networking efforts and search engine optimization. In short, everything revolves around your target market.

Choose your domain name wisely

Pick something that’s short, easy to remember, and reflects the nature of your site. It’s not easy to change it at a later date, so now’s the time to get it right. Of course, if your site is for your business, then it only follows that your domain name to it.

Be informed about SEO

Search Engine Optimization is going to play a big part in attracting people to your website. As well as incorporating keywords or search terms that your audience is likely to be typing into Google, you need to provide the search engines with a succinct explanation of what those visitors will find when they get there. In the meantime, Google Adwords is a great tool for researching keywords in your subject area.

Set yourself a deadline

Web design can take more time if you don’t manage your time properly. Set yourself daily or weekly targets of having certain areas of your site done – this way you won’t get tired and frustrated doing too much at once. It is important you build a process that is efficient enough to bring results. If you can answer the first question of establishing the aim of your website, it will provide you with knowledge on what functions you want for the website.

Planning out your content on your website gives you an edge of optimizing the features of your website for your prospective clients. Important questions to ask are how do you want your customers to feel when they come to your website (i.e. User Experience). Another important question to ask is, how easy will it be for users to navigate your website (i.e. User Interface)

Designing a website is more than having a lot of functions, you always want your customers to come back and engage with your website. Planning how your site looks, along with the features will make you reach your target audience at a faster rate and in turn improve on your Sales or leads or any other form of Data you will want.

You still have a chance of getting your website up and running with our team at ducehost. We offer planning strategies that make your website a sales machine for your business. This includes us knowing who your ideal customers, what they like, who they are etc. Which all become data in building your website.

You’re also more than welcome to contact the design experts at Ducehost on Instagram to get a free, completely customized quote about making your site with high performance and Responsive!Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram at Ducehost.

How does responsive design help your website?

You may have heard the phrase ‘responsive web design’ thrown around a lot over the last few years. If you are unsure whether or not your business should be implementing a responsive design to your site, learning a bit more about it might help you with your answer!

Responsive design can help you solve a lot of problems for your website. It will make your site mobile-friendly, improve the way it looks on devices with both large and small screens, and increase the amount of time that visitors spend on your site. It can also help you improve your rankings in search engines.

The ultimate goal of responsive design is to avoid the unnecessary resizing, scrolling, zooming, or panning that occurs with sites that have not been optimized for different devices. It is often very difficult to navigate these sites, and it may even cost you potential customers who become frustrated with trying to figure out how to do something.

Responsive website stats suggest that it’s wise to appeal to both desktop and mobile viewers. The number of mobile viewers now outnumbers desktop, and this number will only continue to rise as global smartphone accessibility increases.

Here are some of the major benefits you get when your website is responsive

  • Cost effectiveness
  • Flexibility
  • Improved user experience
  • Search engine optimization gains

Cost Effectiveness

If you had the idea of creating a website for your desktop audience without your mobile audience in mind, please drop it. Majority of users would view your site on their mobile especially if you offer ecommerce services. Your can reach your sales goals when your site appeals to all your users on all devices.

Flexibility

When you have a website with responsive design, you can make changes quickly and easily. You do not need to worry about making changes on two websites. This flexibility is a huge advantage when you just want to make a quick design tweak or fix a typo on your site—you only have to do it once.

Improved user experience

User experience is crucial to website owners. You want people to enjoy using your site, and you want it to be easy to use which in turn makes it easy for you to convince them to come back. If someone visits your website on a mobile device, and it takes forever to load or your pictures do not have the proper resolution, it can make your company appear very unprofessional.

Being unprofessional with your site design will in turn affect how your customers perceive your brand. Having a responsive site will make it easy for visitors to trust your brand and engage with your content online.

Search engine optimization gains

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a strategy used by many companies to help boost themselves in Google’s search page rankings. The closer you are to the top, the better the chance potential customers will find you.

Responsive design can help with SEO because Google gives preference to websites that are mobile-friendly. In combination with other SEO factors, responsiveness can help give you a big boost in search engine results.

If responsive website success stories don’t convince you to make the change to this way of designing, then let the cost and time savings convince you. Responsive design is an important part of any modern web strategy—and it should be part of yours, too.

If you’re ready to invest in a responsive website, check out our responsive design page and our web domain and hosting platform to learn more about how much a new design will cost, as well as some other additional benefits we didn’t cover in this article. You’re also more than welcome to contact the design experts at Ducehost on Instagram to get a free, completely customized quote about making your site with high performance and Responsive!

WHY ISN’T ANYONE VISITING YOUR WEBSITE?

When you open up your website’s analytics and see that no one is even visiting your website, how does it make you feel, pretty disheartening, right? It’s a moment when you may feel you’ve wasted your time. All the time, energy, and money you’ve invested into your website has had no impact.

The fact is, there are a lot of people online who want to connect with you and want to visit your website. They are online, researching solutions, and yes they want your services. The issue is not with a lack of people but the lack of a direction to you

Here are 5 Reasons why Businesses aren’t visiting your website

You’re missing on Social Media

Most businesses focus on building a website to make money and return on investment. They fail to build a corresponding online presence on social media. Your online community is the force you need to drive traffic to your website. If you can be found on social media, you can be found on your website

You’re not exploring Backlinks

Backlinks are simply links that link back to your website. They are good for both search engines and humans too. A great strategy to getting quality backlinks is guest posting, writing a column, getting featured in the media, or having such awesome and compelling content that everyone links to it.

Your site loads slowly

Statistics shows people will wait 7 seconds for sites to load before they hit the back button. Not only that, various studies show that website visitors are more likely to return to websites that load fast. That been said, it is very important to say that as a website or business owner, you are constantly optimizing your page speed and looking for ways to improve your page speed. The faster it loads, the more prospects you’re likely to retain.

Your website isn’t mobile friendly

Responsive website design is vital. One of the great features of a responsive website is that it can be optimized for speed. 

With the rise of mobile use, your website needs to support them. Google ranks mobile sites higher in mobile search results. This means you could really be missing out.

Search engines aren’t indexing your site

You don’t need to invest buckets of money into Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but you do need to have a website that is, at the very least, technically visible to search engines. On top of that, if you can do further on page, off page, and local search engine optimization, it can certainly help you get found based on searcher’s queries.

Making more awareness of your business online and what you do will take time. There’s no shortcut to building online relationships and getting known but once you’ve really reached out and connected, you’ll have solid and diverse traffic sources for your website.

And some of it is strategy and technical too. Getting backlinks, SEO, proper design, and having a website that is mobile friendly will all play a part in increasing traffic too.

What do you think of this list? Can you see where your website might be improved? As always, We’d love to know your thoughts. You can learn more about us or follow us on instagram. Would love to hear from you.