Dabrian Marketing Group

What is a Sitemap and How Do I Create One?

May 23, 2016 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

What Is A Sitemap and Why Do They Matter?

A sitemap is a page on a site that is a list of all the pages on a website that are accessible to web crawlers and users. Web Crawlers use the sitemap as a roadmap to index your site better on search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. It is important to keep the sitemap updated because having outdated links in there will result in 404 errors: these are always bad. A sitemap should contain all links on your site that you want to be accessible to a visitor. A “Thank You for Visiting” page is an example of pages that can be excluded from sitemaps.

What are the different types of Sitemaps?

There are 2 different types of sitemaps. HTML sitemaps are for your site’s visitors to help them navigate through your site. HTML sitemaps are optional; usually, they are only present on the medium to large sites. The other type is one that all sites should have: an XML sitemap. Search engines use XML sitemaps to crawl your site. Whether it is a small site, a medium site, or a large site it should have an XML sitemap. Otherwise, you will be missing out on potential leads.

When Should You Update Your Sitemaps?

In short, a sitemap (both XML and HTML) should be updated whenever a page on your site is added, deleted, or the URL is changed. By not updating your sitemap, you run the risk of search engines not finding your newly created page. If you changed a URL, the search engines will still be showing the old URL and not the new one. This will make you lose tons of traffic until the URL is updated.

How Sitemaps Impact SEO/Business (Lead Generation & Sales)

A sitemap impacts sales and lead generation if you don’t update it at least once per every 2 weeks. By updating it, you’re assuring that search engines have the clearest roadmap to all the pages on your site. Not updating either of your sitemaps can cause your site to fall lower in the search rankings. Failing to update your sitemaps could also result in links that do show up as 404 error pages – this will give the user a bad experience on your website.

How To Make A Sitemap

There are several methods that you can use for each type of sitemap. Use the method that best works for you. First are the methods for the most important type of sitemap: XML sitemaps. You can manually create these, use a generator to crawl your site for you, or, depending on your platform, it is possible to have a tool such as Yoast to auto update it for you. These methods only create the sitemap, they do not actually submit it to any search engines.

Lastly, you can manually create an HTML sitemap, use a tool that depends on your platform, or, if you or your web programmer know some database scripting, you can automate this process. This will directly pull from your database. Again, use the method that best fits your situation as each one takes a varying amount of time.

Where are the Sitemaps located?

Your XML sitemap is located at the high level directory of your site (yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml). It is also recommended to submit it to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. If you already have an account, sign into it. Click on the site you are managing. On the left drop down, click on “Sitemaps.” Here you can see your current sitemap, as well as, any errors that Google and Bing see within it. Keep in mind: submitting your sitemap is requesting them both to crawl your site, again, however, this does not mean that they will.

If you have any sitemap questions, ask away in the comments below or contact us today!

DaBrian Marketing Group Receives Accreditation From the Better Business Bureau

May 20, 2016 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Reading, PA, May 20, 2016 – DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC has received accreditation from the Better Business Bureau as of April 26, 2016. To receive this accreditation, DaBrian Marketing Group applied to the BBB and was subject to a strict reviewing process. Through this review, it was determined that DaBrian Marketing Group adheres to the BBB’s Code of Business Practices. These practices encompass traits and values such as honesty, clarity, responsiveness, and privacy.

The Better Business Bureau ensures that consumers interact with companies and agencies that both uphold strict standards of ethics in customer service as well as deliver consistent, reliable services to those consumers. The BBB encourages trust among consumers. Accordingly, DaBrian Marketing Group was granted an excellent rating through criteria that include the company’s response to feedback, the company’s level of transparency, as well as the current age of the company.

In gaining accreditation from the BBB, DaBrian Marketing demonstrates their commitment to their clients and their adherence to strict ethical values. This accreditation encourages a transparency on behalf of DaBrian Marketing Group. This transparency concerns all of the projects, tasks, and milestones of each client that are produced and facilitated by DaBrianMarketing Group. These services – as well as any products such as websites, designs, and reports – are delivered to clients with full disclosure by an agency that functions on the value of integrity.

President and CEO, Daniel Laws gave the following statement: “The accreditation is a symbol of our level of transparency and quality service to our clients and prospective clients – while reinforcing our emphasis on digital marketing and validation of our strategies that impact clients’ revenues.”

Through this recent accreditation, the Better Business Bureau has declared that DaBrian Marketing Group is a trusted company that consistently delivers informative, dynamic, and original results to its clients.

About DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC

Founded in 2008, DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC is a full-service digital marketing agency. DaBrian Marketing Group is focused on providing original and strategic digital marketing solutions for businesses that want to create digital awareness, increase return on investment (ROI), and identify insights that not only will help achieve goals but will also help to increase your business’s efficiencies. DaBrian Marketing Group’s services include email marketing, search engine optimization, website design, web analytics, social media marketing, and more. Company headquarters are centrally located at 500 Penn Street, Suite 201, Reading, Pennsylvania 19602. For more information about DMG, call 610.743.5602.

13 Digital Marketing Tips – Google Partners Connect

May 9, 2016 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

DaBrian Marketing Group recently hosted a Google Partners Connect event in which local business owners participated in a video-based seminar on effective practices of digital marketing. The video featured speakers that described important factors in constructing a business’ digital marketing presence.

Digital Marketing Strategies & Solutions

The speakers, Aditi Manwani and Frederick Vallaeys, listed thirteen goals that should be prioritized when developing a digital marketing campaign:

Be There: Mobile interactions with digital media dominate the consumer’s world. Businesses should be present at these moments to capture the attention of consumers.
Be Useful: Businesses should provide a use to consumers. The content to which a consumer is exposed must be valuable to the person’s current situation – such as a How-To video when the person needs instructions on the completion of tasks.
Be Accountable: Businesses should accompany consumers from the initial impression to the ultimate purchase through repeated exposure and interactions. Businesses should continually expose their brand’s information to consumers to build familiarity and trust – an example is a business responding to negative reviews.
Be Found on Google: Before consumers become customers, they must have knowledge of a business’ existence through its presence on Google Maps.
Make It Easy for Customers to Connect: Whether it is via a mobile device, email, or telephone, businesses should communicate their brands to consumers in ways that will create accurate expectations.
Connect at Moments that Matter: Searchers give clues to their intent through the words they use to search. Businesses should ensure that their content is focused on the searcher’s intent to lead them to the most appropriate information – such as reviews, pricing, specific products/service offerings.
Use Ad Extensions: On the results page of a keyword search, subheadings under the main link of a business offer consumers further resources that may be helpful to their current situations. This kind of ad extension is related to a 30% increase in the lead-generation for businesses.
Manage Reviews: Businesses should respond to, and not delete or hide, negative reviews. They should attend to concerns, fix problems, and grant consumers some kind of compensation for unsatisfactory experiences.
Be Found Across the Internet: Businesses should be accessible across different pages of different websites. This is possible through advertising on the Google Display Network.
Advertise When You Need It: Research on the usage of a brand will give information as to when consumers most often use it. With this knowledge businesses can better capitalize upon the current needs of consumers at any given moment.
Be Found for Product Searches: When consumers search the internet for retail-products, retail businesses should appear on the results page with Shopping Ads or Product Listing Ads that consist of images and price-related information.
Reconnect with Prospects: Advertising to existing customers of a business and previous visitors to a business’ website encourages them to return to the site with which they are already familiar.
Manage Targets: Businesses should ensure that their objectives are reasonable and measurable. Goals must align with the existing brand and be feasible according to the best practices of digital marketing.

Conclusion

The Google Partners Connect event at DaBrian Marketing Group succeeded in communicating valuable information about digital marketing to local business owners. This information was presented by a trusted source – Google. DaBrian Marketing Group’s status as a Google Partner allowed this event to benefit local businesses.

1. Video Marketing 101: Make Videos People Want to Watch

Although it appears that marketing and SEO are constantly evolving, one factor has stayed consistent, content is king. This holds true for video marketing as well. While all videos are different, they should all share the same goal of receiving sustained traffic and user engagement. To assure your video performs well, it needs to be engaging, informative, entertaining, and most importantly, shareable. In terms of how long the video should be, this differs based on the intention and audience of the video. With that being said, most viewers’ attention spans are relatively short. Get your message across concisely in the most efficient manner possible, and your video will do great.

2. Select Relevant and Obtainable Keywords

Before you upload your video it’s essential that you develop a list of relevant keywords to ensure your video is optimized. Ideally, your keywords should adhere to the three following recommendations:

Look for keywords that aren’t too difficult to rank for (or else you’ll never rank well). Choose long tail keywords (phrases typically 3-4 words) to help reduce the difficulty. This will allow you allow you to specifically target a particular audience. A great (free) tool for this is Keyword Finder.
Select keywords that are generating interest (or else no one will search for your video). A great (also free) resource for this is Google Trends. Just type in different synonyms and variations of your keywords, and see which ones perform the best.
The intent of the keywords should directly correlate with the content of your video. For example, if your keyword phrase is “Change a car tire,” your video shouldn’t be about how to fix your windshield or change your oil. Keep it it relevant.

3. Optimize Tags, Titles, and Descriptions

After you’ve composed your keyword list, you’ll need to place them within the appropriate places. The three major areas for optimization are the tags, titles and descriptions (as seen in the image below).

The title should contain your primary keyword phrase (the one you wish to rank for) and should be descriptive as to what your video is about. In terms of the description, YouTube allows video descriptions to be up to 5000 characters long. I would recommend that you use most, if not all of it. While most users are not going to read your entire description, the more keywords you naturally place within your description, the better chance you’ll have to rank for them.

Tags are individual keywords that describe your video. Similar to your keywords, make sure your tags are relevant to the content of your video. The goal of optimization is to drive the right traffic to your video. If you choose tags for the intention of visibility and not relativity, then your video will more than likely receive an influx of dislikes and lower retention rates. Thus, having a negative impact on your rankings.

4. Add Closed Captioning

Since your video is not text based, search engines have a hard time indexing it. Providing YouTube with closed captioning gives them another source of information that contains the keywords you wish to rank for. Here’s a video tutorial on how to upload your transcript to YouTube to create closed captioning.

5. Encourage User Engagement

User engagement is a huge ranking factor for YouTube. So how do you get viewers to engage? Try asking. Create a call to action at the end of your video, asking people to like, comment, share, and subscribe. With that being said, be aware that YouTube is full of trolls (people negatively spam commenting on your video). The good news is that YouTube allows you to moderate your comment section. That not only means you should delete the spam comments whenever possible, but you should also reply to comments as well. This two way engagement will help build a relationship with your viewers that will more likely cause them and others to comment more often knowing you’re actually acknowledging them.

For more information about video marketing, contact us or leave us a comment below!

By: David McDowell

Google AdWords Event

April 18, 2016 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Discover the Advantages AdWords and Working With a Google Partner Agency Can Have On Your Business

DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC will hold a sponsored Google AdWords Event for businesses to discover the many benefits of Google AdWords and learn how working with a trusted Google Partner agency can help increase their leads and sales.The Google Event will be held on Wednesday, May 4th at 11:30 am at the DaBrian Marketing Group offices located at 500 Penn Street, Suite 201, Reading PA, 19602.

During this event, those attending will hear directly from Google on how to successfully grow their business online with the help of AdWords, followed by a Q&A session with the certified team at DaBrian Marketing Group. Also during this event, the team at DaBrian Marketing Group will provide a free AdWords audit on your current AdWords account, a competitive evaluation on your current competitors, and potentially provide an Adwords credit for your business. Refreshments and parking will also be provided at this FREE Google event.

DaBrian Marketing Group started utilizing Google’s services eight years ago through Google AdWords, Google Analytics, and more. DaBrian Marketing is one of the few certified Google Partners in the Greater Reading area, and as a Google Partner, we have the expertise and the resources to help businesses in the community connect with their customers online and help increase their Return on Investment.

For more information, contact DaBrian Marketing Group to find how they can help your business. RSVP for this event at https://partnersconnect.withgoogle.com/event/dabrian-marketing-group

Social Media Advice Not To Follow

April 11, 2016 by Dabrian Marketing Group 1 Comment

When it comes to social media marketing and putting together a social strategy, there is a lot of social media advice out there, which may cause your head to spin. While some advice out there is relevant and your company should follow in that direction, there is some social media advice you should not follow. Below is some advice you may come across, but beware and make sure the advice you follow takes your company down the right path.

Your company should be on every social media platform

While this piece of advice may seem smart to you, you will want to think about if having a presence on every social media platform will truly make an impact on your business. Being present on each platform will take lots of time and upkeep, and could potentially require additional staff as well. Instead take a look at the demographics and find which platform your audience is on most, so you can start to create your social media presence and begin interacting and engaging with your audience.

You need to post on a schedule

Most companies believe that they need to post on a certain schedule. While schedules are great for a lot of things when it comes to business, social media is somewhat different. Do research on the time of day your audience is responding to your posts and interacting with them. The whole point of social media is engaging with your customers and potential customers. Also posting on a schedule may make you company seem rigid and uptight.

Followers are the only way to measure success

Your company may think a large amount of followers is the only way to measure success, but you may want to reassess how your company measures your social media success. The true ways to measure your success is by the engagement rate and with Google Analytics. By definition engagement rate is something you measure by looking at likes, shares, and comments. With Google Analytics, you can see what social media platforms, posts, or ads, are driving traffic to your website and measure success by what end goal your company sees fit.

You should delete negative comments

Instead of deleting any negative comments and trying to sweep them under the rug, people will look up to your company and even begin to trust your company when they see you responding to those comments in a mature way and owning up to them.

Everything needs to be about your brand

Your audience doesn’t always want to see everything your company has to offer or even every sale or promotion you have going on. While social media is a great tool and you should put your sales and promotions on there, you will also want to give your followers and potential customer other valuable information relating to your industry and other information that they would find interesting.