June 2019 – WebKow

How to Improve your LinkedIn Profile

Tanushri Saxena / June 22, 2019

WHAT IS LINKEDIN? LinkedIn is a social media platform that often seems to work merely like an employment exchange agency, although it goes way beyond just that. The feed of LinkedIn is similar to, say, Facebook’s feed and it is user friendly just like any other social media. Whether you’ve never used LinkedIn or have been on LinkedIn for years, this blog might help you learn how to improve your LinkedIn profile. The difference between LinkedIn and other social media like Facebook or Instagram is the intention of people. People here are not for entertainment purpose – to stalk, to troll, to add spice to gossip or to flaunt, but usually for a more serious professional purpose. Here people check and view others’ profile page, which is more like a personal sales page. It is not just a regular bio where people write about themselves – what they like, what they prefer, what they hate, etc. Here people list down their skills, key interest areas, places they have worked, testimonials from colleagues; they join groups of their fraternity, follow alumni to check what they are up to, and much more. If you have created a LinkedIn profile and are baffled about what to do next after creating your initial connections, then this blog will help you determine how to improve your LinkedIn profile . WAYS TO IMPROVE LINKEIN PROFILE. 1) Join a group Yes, this is the first thing you must do to develop your profile. Perhaps after creating your account you just went on connecting to people you know from different industries, who could be your friends, relatives or colleague. Your main motive may have been just to increase the number of connections. If you join a group which is of same industry or people from the same fraternity, then it will enable you to know people and enable relevant people to know you. This will help you make a lot of useful connections and you will be able to make a strong network. You can also join the group of your seniors or classmates to stay in touch. 2) Update your profile Maybe you are very busy with your current job which never allows you to pause and think about your current LinkedIn profile. Maybe you changed 2 or 3 jobs and did not update your profile. Well great, this is the biggest mistake on LinkedIn. It is like putting a veil on your resume. There are so many recruiters on LinkedIn that are searching for appropriate employees with relevant experience. When you update your profile, you give yourself a complete chance to be discovered by these recruiters to check your profile and provide a job that you deserve. Even if you have a business, you may get potential clients or partnerships if you’ve updated your profile. 3) Check the list of your skills If you still have Good with Ms Excel, Ms PowerPoint and Ms Word in your skills then you need to filter this list. These are common skills that almost everyone on LinkedIn possesses, and is no big deal. You need to write something unique which will fetch you a job. You can write things which are the core demands of your industry, but do not write small things which will add nothing to your profile. 4) Customize your LinkedIn profile When you first created your account, you must have received a long, unappealing URL which definitely does not look great. Now is the time to treat yourself as a brand and make your own URL which is appealing. Isn’t it great to move from Neha-sharma-118996 to NehaSharma? You can customize your URL is these easy steps: Go to your profile In the right corner click to “EDIT PROFILE AND URL” Edit your URL and write a more suitable one. 5) Request for Recommendations When you apply for a job and make it to the last few rounds, many recruiters may ask for some references. Not only recruiters but also customers require recommendations for a business owner or for a service provider. Isn’t it great when people who know you and value you are ready to endorse you publicly? When you get an endorsement from your past supervisor or colleague, it shows your profile visitors that people vouch for you and for your work. A lot of people do not feel OK asking for recommendations, but if you’ve done genuinely good work there should be no embarrassment in giving a little nudge. You could ask within LinkedIn or write an email or drop a message anywhere else. Ask, and you will receive. So do it really fast, ask for a recommendation and improve your profile. 6) Update your profile picture Although I am writing this point towards the end, it does not mean that it is of the least concern. A person who is active on social media will usually keep his or her recent photo, and will update it at regular intervals. This shows a sense of interest and suggests to visitors that the person must be responsive on that social media. If you pamper your LinkedIn account by regularly updating it, then recruiters can expect a quick reply from your side. So do update your pictures regularly. 7) Follow the right people You are on LinkedIn not only for seeking a job or clients, but also to get wise and sensible advice from people around the world. If you follow people that you admire, who are from same industry and successful, then you will get a ton of knowledge and information about your industry, learn tactics, get recent updates, monitor companies and learn about various industry events. LinkedIn is more than your personal network, so always be willing to peep outside of it. 8) Stay active! Last but not least, stay active on LinkedIn by replying to personal messages, commenting on interesting posts, and making your own posts regularly. This will help your personal brand to stay top of mind for your

Facebook Ads, Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, SEO

SEO vs PPC – How To Decide

Tanushri Saxena / June 17, 2019

Search Engine Optimization and Pay-per-click (on search engines) are the ways that help you grow traffic on your website. Both the techniques are useful to fulfill your purpose but the selection depends on the type, scale and motive of the business. The end goal of both the approaches are the same but the way they work is quite different. Explore our blog SEO vs PPC to decide which technique is the best for your business. Before you move ahead for SEO vs PPC comparison and determine which one is more desirable for you, let us first understand both the techniques in brief. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO) SEO is the practice of increasing quantity and quality of traffic through organic search results. It is the organic approach of attracting visitors. Google crawls your website and with the help of its algorithm, it determines the quality and content of the site and ranks the pages accordingly on Search engine page results for different search queries. PAY PER CLICK (PPC) Pay per click is the technique where advertisers pay a fee to the search engine every time their ad is clicked. It is like buying visits for your site rather than making an attempt to earn them organically. Typically, if you put any search query into Google, the first few links are likely to be paid ads. (New to PPC? Learn how to set up your first campaign here.) APPROACHES Both the approaches are completely different but a businessman or a website owner’s objectives may differ. A businessman who can afford the cost of PPC and desires to get huge traffic to his website quickly, and demands big turnover, will opt for PPC. But a small businessman who can afford the time to boost the traffic by improving quality will opt for SEO. And a businessman who understands the importance of a website’s quality and the significance of attracting visitors that will get converted to customers will opt for both the techniques. It will be a hybrid approach of SEO and PPC and this approach is often most desirable. WHEN IS IT BEST TO USE SEO? WHEN CONSISTENT RESULTS ARE REQUIRED SEO is not a practice that will happen overnight or in a week. You need to have patience and wait to get your site show up on the first page of search result. Once your site is there, you may get to enjoy consistent and free traffic. If you continue with the same tactics and SEO campaigns, you will be able to stay there and can reap fruits for a longer period. DESIRE TO BE AN AUTHENTIC SITE It’s like building a reputation for your website on the virtual platform. When the content on your site is so relevant that it makes the other members of your niche to recommend your website. It is like the “go to” website for your niche. Your webpage will get mentions that will generate backlinks and this helps Google to determine how significant your website is in your niche. This way your website will be able to get a lot of traffic which is organic, significant and consistent. INCREASE THE VALUE OF YOUR SITE In case you think of selling the website in the near future, you can earn a higher price only when the value of your website really stands out in the market. Websites are like real estates on the digital platform. To earn a good price, you need to augment the value of your website. Some of the variables that go into determining the value of your website are: Traffic generated Consistency of traffic generated Page rank Search engine rankings over the period of time Link popularity Likes and Followers on Social Media (Check out our Link Building Guide for SEO.) These factors fall under the ambit of SEO. WHEN IS IT BEST TO USE PPC? WHEN YOUR BUSINESS DEMANDS IMMEDIATE RESULTS PPC results come very fast! The results are instantaneous. Once your paid promotion campaign is started, you can get a lot of visitors visiting your page immediately. This happens because once your PPC campaign is approved, provided that your bids are high enough to get the priority placement, your advertisement is seen by plenty of people who can click on it to visit your webpages. This works really well for product launches, affiliate marketing, seasonal promotions, event marketing and many more. WHEN YOUR SITE DOES NOT QUALIFY SEO CRITERIA For SEO, website needs to be rich in content and must be regularly updated. This is the only way to say to Google that your site is relevant and it must keep your site on top of the pile. But many websites cannot afford regular updates. Also, some keyword categories are so competitive that it seems unrealistic to be among the first few links in that niche. Also, just think about squeeze pages, what is there to update on such a page at regular intervals? (Squeeze pages are pages with forms and no other links, they force your visitors to either sign-up the form and get the offer or to leave the site. They’re usually high-converting pages.) Squeeze pages usually can’t even afford to merit themselves on the second page of Google. Such pages can grab traffic through PPC campaigns. DOMINATE YOUR KEYWORD CATEGORY. When you are very sure about the keywords which are apt and also popular on search engines that will bring paying customers to your business, then dominating that keyword is a great move. PPC results are always displayed over organic search results. And 50% of the traffic goes to the top 3 sponsored links. So if your business requires instant traffic, quick conversions, or to maximize your turnover by dominating the keyword category, then you must opt for PPC. CONCLUSION One cannot choose which method is better without knowing the motive and the website’s situation. In my opinion, you must never believe that there is a trade-off between SEO and PPC. Both the techniques (SEO vs PPC)

Google Ads, Uncategorized

How To Set Up Your First Google Ad

Tanushri Saxena / June 5, 2019

Google Ads (earlier called Adwords) is Google’s advertising system in which marketers bid on certain keywords so that their clickable ads come first on Google search page results. This blog is all about how to set your first Google ad account, Google campaign and your first Google text ad. A step by step guide for creating a Google Ad Account. STEP 1 First you need to go on https://ads.google.com and click the START NOW button. Congratulations, you are now starting the process to make your first ever Google ad! STEP 2 You can use your own Google account to sign-in, or if you want to make a different account then you can set up one. STEP 3 You will land to this page. You can skip the “goals of advertisement: because here we focus on creating a Google ad account (not the simpler “Google Ad Express” account which has limited features). So just click on Experienced with Google Ads? STEP 4 You can select any type of campaign you want. But here we are skipping that part as we will cover it later, so just click on Create an account without a campaign. Alternately, you can also create a dummy campaign and then pause it immediately after the account is created. STEP 5 Now you have to fill up all the details about your billing country, time zone and currency. Everything here is by default in the context of your country. If you want to edit any of this, you can do it here. STEP 6 Congratulations! You are done here. Just click on Explore account and you will land on the dashboard of your new Google Ad Account. STEP 7 YOUR GOOGLE AD ACCOUNT DASHBOARD HOW TO CREATE YOUR FIRST GOOGLE AD CAMAPAIGN Now that you have made your Google Ad account, your next step is to create your first Google Ad Campaign. STEP 1 You can go to campaigns at the left corner and click the blue + button STEP 2 1) Google Ads wants to help you by asking certain specifications. You can now select a goal for your campaign. You can select from the following: Sales Leads Website Traffic Product and Brand Consideration Product and Brand Awareness App Promotion Without a goal’s guidance Here I am selecting Sales because it is a common purpose for running Google Ads. You can select any of them which suits your purpose. 2) Now you have to select the Campaign type from the following Search Display Shopping Video I want my campaign to be of Search type, where the user types in a relevant search query in Google and then my add shows up. So here I will select Search. 3) You can see the 4 options given to you for selecting a way to reach your goal. Website Visits Phone Calls Shop Visits App downloads In this example, I will select Website visits. Phone Calls is a good option if your business runs mostly on phone calls – such as if you’re a service provider. Shop visits and App downloads are, of course, relevant if you have a physical shop or if you have a mobile app for which you want more downloads. STEP 3 1) Give a name to your campaign. The name is not shown to anyone else, but it is for your own use. Keep it relevant to your business and its purpose. Here I have named my campaign as Digital Marketing Services. 2) Enter your location. You can be very specific here or leave it to the default state. It depends on your campaign type and your target audience. In Search ads, it is recommended to not narrow down your target audience too much unless you have a specific niche to target to. 3) Language You can select language apart from the default language, which is English. 4) You can add extensions for Site links, Callouts and Calls. They are not compulsory but are available and can help your ads’ performance. STEP 4 Now it’s time to create your Ad Group. A single campaign can have multiple ad groups. For example, you could have a campaign for generating sales on an ecommerce site, whereas each ad group might target different types of audiences or product categories. Here I am creating only one ad group as an example. My ad group is for “social media marketing services”. This is that product or service you want to sell. You can take the help of keyword planner tool to suggest the best ideas for the ‘keywords’ for your product or service. (Keywords are what the user will type into Google search for your ad to appear.) Google Ads also provides you many ideas relevant to your business. Select the best ideas for your ad and save and continue. There are four types of keywords which you can learn in detail about on this link. STEP 5 Now is the time to create your first ever text Ad. 1) First enter the final URL of the webpage you want your visitors to visit when they click your Ad. 2) Write Headline 1 and Headline 2 (maximum 30 characters) and an optional Headline 3, and a mini-description (maximum 90 characters) which will be displayed like this: Click on save and continue button and hey, congratulations! You created your first Ad Campaign on Google Ads. Google also came up with the new ‘responsive search ads’ which you can read about by clicking here. If you faced any doubts, feel free to reach out to us. About the Author: Tanushri Saxena is pursuing her MBA from GLS, Ahmedabad. Currently, she is interning as a content writer at WebKow. She enjoys an occasional cup of coffee.