Posted on August 19, 2017July 18, 2017

How a business can benefit from Search Engine Marketing?

Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of online marketing that involves the use of search engine result pages to promote business websites. Search engine marketing increases the visibility of websites through search engine optimization (SEO) or through paid advertising with the intent of increasing traffic to the website.

SEM is a broader term than SEO. SEM refers to all marketing activities that use search engine technology for marketing purposes. These include SEO, paid listings and ads, and other search engine related services and functions that will increase reach and exposure of the website, resulting in greater traffic.

Search engine traffic consists of consumers who are interested in and searching for a particular term that is associated with the website. To leverage this tool and draw traffic to a company’s website, marketers must understand how to effectively use both paid and organic SEM and determine the potential exposure they can gain through both approaches.

Advantages of Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing is advantageous in the following ways:

Unlike other major sources of online marketing, SEM helps businesses connect with consumers at a time when the consumer is interested in purchasing the product or service. Email marketing, for example, involves sending emails to a database of consumers with the hope of inciting some of these consumers to purchase. However, the consumer receiving the email may not be interested in the product or service being sold, or the consumer may be interested in the product or service, but he or she may not be interested at that precise moment. Furthermore, email marketing can be seen as invasive to some customers and may lead to a loss in reputation. SEM catches the consumer at a time when he or she is actively looking for the product or service, resulting in a more engaged consumer and typically a more receptive response.

Search engine traffic originates from a voluntary, audience-driven search. This means the visitors from a search-results link have not only selected your listing from among your peers, but have chosen the search query that resulted in your listing being shown. As a result, the audience is more engaged, relevant, and often ready to make a purchasing decision.
The article has originally been posted at https://www.smstudy.com/freeresources/articles
SMstudy is the global accreditation body for Sales and Marketing certifications. For more details visit https://www.smstudy.com
Important links:
Visit https://www.smstudy.com/dmbokguide/download-dmbok-guide to download the Digital Marketing Body of Knowledge for free
Visit https://www.smstudy.com/certification/digital-marketing-associate for free Digital Marketing Associate certification and course

Posted on August 5, 2017July 18, 2017

Learn How to Structure Your Site for Optimal User Experiences

When building a website, one of the first things to be considered is its structure. This is fundamental to the success of a site and, if planned properly, can avoid many issues further down the line. Website architecture design involves planning the layout and design of the website, identifying the pages to be included, determining how consumers will navigate the site, and planning how these pages will link together. Based on the learning from market research and competitor website performance, the marketing team—along with subject matter experts, such as website developers—is responsible for ensuring the optimal website architecture design.

One of the factors that the marketing team must consider when planning the website architecture is click-depth. Click-depth or crawl-depth refers to the minimum number of links a website visitor must click in order to get from the “root” web page to a particular desired web page. The root web page is the page that displays when only the domain is in the URL (no path information). Businesses must ensure that the click-depth is kept as low as possible, so that users and search engines can reach any point on the site within a minimum number of clicks.

The marketing team analyzes how each page will be linked internally and externally, creating categories and subcategories within the site. While creating the website, search-friendly URLs should be used to increase the relevance of the links and help the organic ranking for the website. As well, duplicate meta tags, meta descriptions, and titles should be avoided to prevent confusing web crawlers.

In short, the website design architecture should assure visitors they are on the right page; ensure visitors can easily find what they are looking for by providing a clear navigation path and search feature; properly link together and by ensuring the various pages; and ensure that the website is easy to navigate not only for customers, but also for web crawlers, so that they can be detected by search engines.

The article has originally been posted at https://www.smstudy.com/freeresources/articles
SMstudy is the global accreditation body for Sales and Marketing certifications. For more details visit https://www.smstudy.com
Important links:
Visit https://www.smstudy.com/dmbokguide/download-dmbok-guide to download the Digital Marketing Body of Knowledge for free
Visit https://www.smstudy.com/certification/digital-marketing-associate for free Digital Marketing Associate certification and course

Posted on August 4, 2017July 18, 2017

What are the technical skills required for developing a mobile app?

Generally, a company assigns a dedicated team to develop mobile applications for the organization. This team might be in-house, or the company may choose to assign the development work to an external firm. In either case, it is essential that the team has the necessary skills to develop mobile applications with the features that the company has determined are required.

A company may have fewer features in its first few apps, but it should ensure that the application development team has the requisite skills to create apps that have more advanced features as well, in case the company decides to add features at a later time. Given increasing mobile usage among customers across all industries, companies will, in all probability, need to constantly adapt to consumer needs and create more advanced mobile apps to keep up with mobile app trends and changing demands.

Also, several mobile application development platforms exist, and the team should ideally be able to develop applications across those platforms. However, if the team is able to identify and create apps for the most popular platform used by its target audience, then the company can test customer acceptance of its apps on the most frequently used platform before developing similar apps for other platforms.

The performance of mobile apps even on the same platform may differ based on the device type (tablet or phone) or the device model. Thus, the application development team must create apps that can perform equally well across device types and device models.

Some of the specific skill sets that a mobile app development team must have are as follows:

User Interface (UI) design—This skill refers to the ability to design an app that has an attractive, easy-to-navigate, and responsive design. It requires both creative skill and knowledge of best practices in UI design for mobile apps.
Database and hardware computing—This knowledge refers to the ability to create databases with an optimal data structure, specify interaction of the app with the device hardware, minimize power requirements, ensure security of the app against external threats like viruses and hacking, and allocate memory efficiently.
Programming—Programming languages translate business logic into a machine-readable language. It is important to write programming code efficiently and in modules so changes to the code can be implemented easily. The team should have knowledge of using Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for various mobile application platforms. These APIs allow programmers to create apps without requiring access to the proprietary underlying code developed by the mobile application platform companies. Preferably, the team should also know how to use interfaces that allow one to create mobile apps that can be deployed across different mobile application platforms.
Business understanding—The app development team should have a basic understanding of the business’s overall Marketing Strategy and how the app fits into this strategy. This understanding will give the team a sense of the target customers, which may further enable them to create an optimal UI and ensure the final product supports the intended positioning of the app in the mobile app store.
The article has originally been posted at https://www.smstudy.com/freeresources/articles
SMstudy is the global accreditation body for Sales and Marketing certifications. For more details visit https://www.smstudy.com
Important links:
Visit https://www.smstudy.com/dmbokguide/download-dmbok-guide to download the Digital Marketing Body of Knowledge for free
Visit https://www.smstudy.com/certification/digital-marketing-associate for free Digital Marketing Associate certification and course

Posted on August 3, 2017July 18, 2017

Learn How an Effective Website Can Boost Your Business

An effective website is a critical component of a company’s overall online success. Company’s website serves as the central hub and foundation for its online activity. With a plethora of available website designs, the digital marketing team must determine the appropriate and optimal design and message.

Besides having a basic understanding of the technology on the website, the digital marketing team must also consider the following facets of creating a website.

Consumer Perspective

Relevancy—Age, cultural nuances, geography, and other demographic factors of the target audience will influence the type of content on the website.

Usability Design—The digital marketing team must take into consideration how technically savvy its target customer is. If the target customer does not generally have the appropriate comfort level with technology, the team should design a simple, text-based layout with easy navigation and basic features. If the target customer is comfortable and familiar with the Internet and computer use, a more intricate, interactive, and information-rich website can be implemented. The design of the site should depend on the expectations of both the users and the company. In some cases, the development might focus on consumer engagement, while in other cases, the design might be oriented toward supporting task-oriented behavior such as the ability to make changes to one’s account, purchase a product or service, and so on.

Site Development Perspective

Purpose—Companies maintain a web presence for a variety of reasons. While some companies use websites as their main method of selling their products, other companies have an online presence just to support their business, message, and brand position. There are companies that use websites as a public relations (PR) tool, to enhance brand value in the minds of their customers, or to evaluate product feedback from customers that may help in understanding customer needs, general communications, product updates, and sales. The digital marketing team is responsible for ensuring that the website is designed to meet the overall strategic objectives outlined in the Marketing Strategy.

Planning—The digital marketing team must work with the website development team to plan the execution of the website, beginning with creating a storyboard for the website; listing functional requirements; building the database structure; developing wireframes; and determining hypermedia linkages, search engine key words, graphical design components, user interface designs, audio/video sources, animation, and text requirements and formats.

Performance— The digital marketing team also must consider the logical design of a good website, compare the performance of competitor websites to identify best practices, check for effective performance across browsers and operating systems, and perform usability testing of the website to ensure that it is easy to use.

Maintenance—Websites create an online presence for a brand, so the marketing team must ensure that the website is maintained and tested regularly. Downtime on a website may adversely impact the direct online sales of products and may also taint brand reputation in the minds of consumers.

The brand messaging on the website has to be in-line with the overall brand message and must stay relevant to the target audience.

Posted on August 2, 2017July 18, 2017

Mobile Devices Playing a Key Role in Planning Marketing Strategy for a Business

Since the demise of newspaper’s great hegemonic grip on advertising, news media minds have been banging their big brains together, trying to come up with ways that not only monetize their content, but also generate some of the sweet ad revenue they used to have the luxury of enjoying. This is, of course, much harder in the infinite space and freedom of the internet. (limited space and information gatekeeping was a true friend to print news)

It’s been a bit of a slog and news outlets have been in “trial and error” mode for a while and still haven’t quite gotten it fully figured out. That being said, over the last year or so, user trends have been offering great nuggets of insight that are changing the way marketers and news sites are adapting to trends in mobile news consumption.

The landscape for mobile news outlets was important enough to make it to the front page of The Pew Research State of the Media 2015. What was the big deal? That 39 out of 50 legacy news outlets get more traffic from mobile devices than from desktop computers!

Full list (stats provided by comScore)…http://www.journalism.org/media-indicators/digital-top-50-online-news-entities-2015/

In the digital-only “newsscape,” a similar trend was noted.

The report states, “similar to the larger list of top 50 digital news entities, just a minority of these digital-only sites, 11 in all, had audiences that spent more time with them via a mobile device than a desktop.”

Here’s the complete list of digital native sites… http://www.journalism.org/media-indicators/digital-top-50-digital-native-news-sites-2015/

This preference for mobile news consumption is only mildly tempered by the fact that longer times were spent on news sites when being read on desktop computers.

Nevertheless, it matters.

Believe it or not, tracking consumer behavior has been one of the main problems with news outlets and marketers alike when considering ad dollars for mobile. Now we know that people are preferring their mobile devices for their news both while in on-the-go situations as well as in the down time of “Netflix and chill” moments.

In addition, we appear to be in a “mobile ad desert” where despite a rapid increase year over year in mobile advertising spending, there’s still a gap between advertising dollars spent on TV and other marketing channels and those spent on mobile. It seems that marketers haven’t quite picked up on the huge leap mobile viewership has taken. As an example, Adobe Digital Index reported in July 2015 that media has risen by two hours a day over the last five years, but advertisers have been slow to respond.

The article states, “Just as internet advertising once experienced a lag between the number of unique users and advertising spend, a gulf now exists between the growing amount of time consumers spend viewing content on mobile devices and the relatively small investment brands are making in the channel. But it’s just a matter of time until the numbers match.”

When confronted with new information, a new approach is often required. And this positive mobile news usage data begs for new solutions.

One of the more interesting examples of calculating an accurate measure was put forward by the Financial Times. The FT has switched to a time-based metric, one that places attention front and center in their value assessment. Other news outlets are also recognizing the truer value of an attention-based metric, as well. I’ve begun calling this the “after the fold” ad as it appears when I’ve stayed on a story long enough to show I’m committed. This strategy bets squarely on the contents ability to hold attention. And so far, so good.

Although various solutions abound, no silver bullet has yet been discovered (and perhaps never will). Serious impediments to accurate metrics (and hence, the flow of ad dollars) include bots that inflate the numbers and the easy accessibility to, and preference for, ad-blocking. This trend is particularly noted among millennials.

But even so, a new approach based on time as opposed to volume (number of clicks) could be the way forward for news outlets. Getting a handle on what they have to offer marketers may be the thing to lead news outlets out of the red and back into the black.

Posted on August 1, 2017July 18, 2017

Learn How You Can Increase Online Reach of Your Business

As a seller, your website or ecommerce webstore can bring you a good amount of traffic and sales. It offers a great way to attract new customers and increase the reach of your products and brand. However a small company typically may not have the resources to create a comprehensive website, set up a payment gateway, or invest on online marketing efforts. Even an existing seller could face a roadblock when it comes to increasing reach, as online marketing spends become progressively higher. This is where alliances or relationships with online marketplaces can help.

Strategic alliances or relationships with online marketplaces are very effective for increasing reach. An online marketplace is a type of e-commerce website where product and inventory information is provided by multiple third parties, and the transactions are processed by the marketplace operator. The product offered could be a physical product, such as clothing, furniture, books, or electronics. Or it could even be an intangible product, such as an online training course, downloadable game, or streaming video.

The marketplace processes consumer transactions and the participating retailers or wholesalers fulfill and deliver the products and services; thus, the online marketplace or site is really the middle-man. Some marketplaces may also handle order fulfilment and delivery management services, for which they typically charge a premium. Because marketplaces offer products from many providers, they offer a wider selection and more competitive prices than those offered by the e-commerce sites of individual businesses.

For a small manufacturer that does not have a large enough brand to attract brick-and-mortar retailers and does not have sufficient money to gain and manage a critical mass of visits on its own website, partnering with an online marketplace makes perfect sense. It helps the manufacturer save the costs involved in online marketing and enhancing customer experience. For the online marketplace, it means an additional product or brand available for its customers to choose from, thus becoming a win-win relationship for the marketplace operator and the small manufacturer.

These companies benefit by paying a small percentage of their revenue to the marketplace operator who can provide those services. Since the marketplace operator typically has multiple—sometimes thousands of associated parties promoting their products on the website, it is cost effective and scalable. These online marketplaces are often the primary destination people choose to purchase a particular product. If you’re looking to increase reach, marketplaces offer you a quick and easy access to new markets.

Small publications and authors often use the online marketplace (companies such as Amazon) to sell their books. These small publications do not have the resources to reach a global audience on their own. Thus, strategic partnerships with online booksellers or websites that have a huge reach will help them promote their books effectively.

Posted on July 31, 2017July 18, 2017

What Architecture is right for your Mobile App?

To determine the right mobile app architecture, a company needs to understand the following:

Categorization of Key Features—The company can employ use cases in this process to determine the key features that customers require from the app. Then, the key features should be classified as informational, transactional, or device-oriented.

Informational features are those where information is being consumed by a user, such as reading news on a subject.

Transactional features are those where a user carries out a transaction with the application, such as sharing, buying, or downloading.

Device-oriented features are those that enable a user to utilize device-specific features, such as using the camera or the gyroscope.

If a mobile app primarily has informational features, such as consuming news, then a web app might be sufficient. If, however, a mobile app primarily uses device-specific features, such as scanning codes using the camera, then a native app or a cross-platform app may be necessary.

Type of User Experience Desired—If the type of customers a company is targeting for its app demands a high-quality user experience from the app, the best approach is native app development, followed by cross-platform development. The best user experience generally comes with utilizing the best that the operating system and the mobile device have to offer, which is what a native app can deliver. For customers who are fine with basic functionality, even a web app may suffice.

Need for Multiplatform Compatibility—If the target market uses a wide variety of mobile devices and operating systems, it is important for a company to develop apps for each of the mobile platforms. Unless complex features are required for the apps that will require native app development, a company may be better off developing apps using a cross-platform framework or developing web apps. Where the target audience uses a limited range of devices and/or operating systems and requires complex features, native apps are the best option.

Need for Offline Usage—If the target market has intermittent Internet connectivity, or does not use mobile Internet very often, it may make sense for a company to make an app, or important parts of the app, available for offline usage. If the app primarily acts as a means for a user to stay updated on news, offers, or other real-time information, then the need for offline usage will be much lower.

Once the mobile app development method is decided, the company then selects a specific mobile app development tool that should ideally fulfill all of the following criteria:

The mobile app development team should know how to use the tool. In the absence of in-house knowledge, external resources should be easily available to use the tool for the company.
Developers should be able to use the tool to create all the features desired by customers.
The cost associated with the tool should be within the budget specified by the digital marketing team.
The time taken to create an app using the tool should be within the timeframe specified by the digital marketing team.
The tool should not be based on technologies or languages that are likely to decrease in popularity or become obsolete in the near future.
The article has originally been posted at https://www.smstudy.com/freeresources/articles
SMstudy is the global accreditation body for Sales and Marketing certifications. For more details visit https://www.smstudy.com
Important links:
Visit https://www.smstudy.com/dmbokguide/download-dmbok-guide to download the Digital Marketing Body of Knowledge for free
Visit https://www.smstudy.com/certification/digital-marketing-associate for free Digital Marketing Associate certification and course

Posted on July 28, 2017July 18, 2017

Paint an Image for your Marketing Activity

An image is worth a thousand words. Image-centric social networks are generally very popular and have an impressive retention rate. These sites focus on the posting and sharing of images and short videos. For a successful social media marketing campaign, it is important to stay up-to-date on trends, and image marketing is one of the biggest trends.

The consumer attention span is ever shrinking. In today’s information age, audiences are flooded with content available at a single touch. This abundance of content makes it harder for good content to cut through the clutter and get noticed, but images capture the attention of consumers. They must be presented with engaging content quickly, or viewers will quickly move on to the next item.

If a social media post has multiple paragraphs of text, there is a chance it will be ignored by people who feel they do not have time to read it. However, images stand a better chance of capturing people’s attention, and therefore, a post with an image has a much better chance of engaging readers just long enough to pique their interest. Once viewers have noticed the image ad, they may then want to learn more and consume the content in more detail.

Here are two examples of Image Marketing:

Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr, and Snapchat are some of the popular image centric social networks which focus on the posting and sharing of images and short videos. These image-centric networks have millions of users and a loyal user base.
Facebook ads are a great example of image marketing and native marketing at the same time. The ads, or “Suggested Posts,” are seen by Facebook users within their news feed and are presented in a way that is woven in with their friends’ posts and shares. They provide a large image and brief line of text that is visually appealing and engaging, and hopefully well targeted to be of interest to viewers. The result is an ad that really does not look or feel like advertising, which is arguably the best kind of all.
The article has originally been posted at https://www.smstudy.com/freeresources/articles
SMstudy is the global accreditation body for Sales and Marketing certifications. For more details visit https://www.smstudy.com
Important links:
Visit https://www.smstudy.com/dmbokguide/download-dmbok-guide to download the Digital Marketing Body of Knowledge for free
Visit https://www.smstudy.com/certification/digital-marketing-associate for free Digital Marketing Associate certification and course

Posted on July 27, 2017July 18, 2017

Mobile App Development Methods: Part 2

A number of factors make developing a mobile app difficult, such as the existence of multiple mobile app platforms, various operating system versions for each platform, and multiple device types, each with its own set of unique features. Given this variety, there are also many ways to design a mobile app, but the three most common methods are native app development, cross-platform development, and web app development. The company must decide which of these types of development methods is most suited for its needs. This decision should be guided primarily by what makes the most sense for the customer.

Let’s now discuss Cross-Platform Development along with key characteristics and situations in which this type of method should be chosen.

Cross-Platform Development—This method involves developing the app once on a cross-platform app development framework and then running it on multiple platforms after making suitable adjustments for each platform. The apps are listed in the mobile app store of each platform and can be accessed and downloaded.

Key characteristics of this method are as follows:

Ability to Use Operating System and Device Functionality—Apps that are developed using the cross-platform development method do not have as much ability to use the operating systems and device functionality as apps developed using the native app development method since some features are made available only to native app developers by a mobile platform in order to promote the platform. In addition, any new upgrades to the operating system of a platform or additional device features are not immediately available to cross-platform frameworks—and sometimes are not made available at all.

Ability to Be Used Offline—Because cross-platform apps are installed directly on mobile devices, just like native apps, some or all features may be used even when there is no Internet connection because the app can use data stored locally on the device. Once an Internet connection is restored, the mobile app can synchronize new data with a central server.

Cost of Development—The cost of developing apps for multiple platforms using a cross-platform framework is much lower than the cost for developing native apps for each platform. The cost savings are a result of the fact that the basic code of an app built using a cross-platform framework is the same across platforms with only small adjustments being required for each platform. Most of the development effort for one platform can be reused for all other platforms.

Level of Skills Required—If a company wants to create apps for multiple platforms using a cross-platform framework, the app development team only needs to know how to create apps on one framework. Thus, even moderately skilled resources might provide enough expertise in app development if the company chooses this method of development.

Here is an example of Cross-Platform Development:

Most gaming apps use cross-platform development, which helps them function on one or more operating systems. Creating an app using cross-platform development has enabled these gaming companies to target the entire mobile, tablet, or other device market, which uses different operating systems. Such cross-platform apps have a larger customer base than native apps.
The article has originally been posted at https://www.smstudy.com/freeresources/articles
SMstudy is the global accreditation body for Sales and Marketing certifications. For more details visit https://www.smstudy.com
Important links:
Visit https://www.smstudy.com/dmbokguide/download-dmbok-guide to download the Digital Marketing Body of Knowledge for free
Visit https://www.smstudy.com/certification/digital-marketing-associate for free Digital Marketing Associate certification and course

Posted on July 26, 2017July 18, 2017

Mobile App Development Methods: Part 3

Finally let’s discuss Web App Development along with key characteristics, and situations in which this type of method should be chosen.

Web App Development—Web apps may be accessed through an Internet browser by any device and on any platform. The app runs on a central server and generally does not need to be customized for different platforms. For a long time, web apps could not use any features of the device or operating system, or run offline, but recent developments have made this functionality possible. However, the performance and user experience is generally not as good using this method in comparison with apps developed using the native app development or cross-platform framework methods.

Key characteristics of this method are as follows:

Ability to Use Operating System and Device Functionality—The ability for web apps to use the device operating system and functionality is quite limited and has only recently been made possible. Use of upgraded features of either the operating system or devices is even more limited than that of apps built using the cross-platform framework.

Ability to Be Used Offline—Recent developments have made it possible for web apps to be used offline in a limited manner. While users are online, data is stored in local memory and can then be accessed while offline, to be later synced once a network connection is restored.

Cost of Development—The cost of developing web apps is low because the app generally needs to be created only once, regardless of how many different platforms or devices access the app.

Level of Skills Required—If a company wants to create web apps, the mobile app development team must know the markup language being used by most web app development frameworks.

Here are a few examples of Web App Development:

Document viewers and builders, spreadsheets, chat applications, and webmail are some examples of common web apps. They are primarily accessed through an Internet browser and are functional irrespective of the operating system or device on which they are used. These apps require an Internet connection to work and can also be used offline with certain limitations.
The advent of HTML5 has made it possible for web apps to use any features of the device or operating system, or run offline, Hence, HTML5 is the language used by most web app development frameworks.
Another common web development framework that is also used for web app development is Ruby on Rails. If a company is using Ruby on Rails to create its web app, it will require resources skilled in the use of this framework.
The article has originally been posted at https://www.smstudy.com/freeresources/articles
SMstudy is the global accreditation body for Sales and Marketing certifications. For more details visit https://www.smstudy.com
Important links:
Visit https://www.smstudy.com/dmbokguide/download-dmbok-guide to download the Digital Marketing Body of Knowledge for free
Visit https://www.smstudy.com/certification/digital-marketing-associate for free Digital Marketing Associate certification and course

Posted on July 25, 2017July 18, 2017

Mobile App Development Methods: Part 1

Let us discuss Native App Development along with key characteristics, and situations in which this type of method should be chosen.

Native App Development—This method involves developing apps directly on a specific mobile app platform using the platform’s programming language and native code. The apps are listed in the mobile app store of a platform and can be accessed and downloaded.

Key characteristics of this method are as follows:

Ability to Use Operating System and Device Functionality—This ability is high for native apps as they are built directly on a specific mobile app platform that provides access to all features of the operating system of the platform and devices that run on the platform. Whenever there are changes to the operating system or when additional features are supported on newer devices, native app developers are able to upgrade their apps quickly.

Ability to Be Used Offline—As native apps are installed directly on mobile devices, some or all features may be used even when there is no Internet connection because the app can use data stored on the device. Once an Internet connection is restored, then the mobile app can synchronize new data with a central server.

Cost of Development—The cost of developing native apps for multiple platforms is relatively high primarily because developing the same app for different platforms requires almost the same effort for each platform. There are only a few components (e.g., user interface design) that can be leveraged across platforms. Most of the programming must be done from the beginning for each new platform. For this reason, some companies choose to create an app for only one platform.

Level of Skills Required—If a company wants to create native apps for multiple platforms, the app development team must be skilled in developing apps for each of the platforms. Thus, highly skilled resources are needed for multi-platform app development. If a company does not have technical resources skilled in multiple platforms, it may need to invest time and resources in training existing resources or hire external resources for the app development effort.

Here is an example of the Native App Development:

Many native apps are included with the factory version or manufacturer’s version of a mobile, tablet, or other device. The camera, e-mail, and settings on a smartphone are a few native apps that can be used offline and then synced with other devices. These apps are created using native code and the platform’s programming language. At times, an update of the operating system is needed to upgrade the functionality or the version of these native apps.
The article has originally been posted at https://www.smstudy.com/freeresources/articles
SMstudy is the global accreditation body for Sales and Marketing certifications. For more details visit https://www.smstudy.com
Important links:
Visit https://www.smstudy.com/dmbokguide/download-dmbok-guide to download the Digital Marketing Body of Knowledge for free
Visit https://www.smstudy.com/certification/digital-marketing-associate for free Digital Marketing Associate certification and course

Posted on July 24, 2017July 18, 2017

What is Search Engine Optimization and how it can Benefit Your Business

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves a number of activities and initiatives that businesses can implement to achieve high search engine rankings. Such activities address factors that can impact a website’s or web page’s search engine rankings for specific search terms, resulting in a high placement in a search engine’s organic (unpaid) search results. It is important to note that the position at which the company appears in search results is a result of both SEO activities and paid advertising.

Consumer perception is impacted by the position at which a company appears in the result of a search. A high rank in search results helps build trust in the minds of consumers as they generally associate a higher ranked website with being a strong, more established brand with greater reliability. This perception in turn leads to greater conversions on the company’s website and supports the fulfillment of the objectives for the product or brand. Most consumers will not click beyond the search results on the first or second page and the potential diminishes the further into the list that the company appears. A website that is search engine optimized will appear higher in search results resulting in a greater number of visits to the site.

Search Engine Optimization is an Internet marketing tactic that takes into consideration how search engines function and “rank” websites, how people search for keywords, the keywords that are most frequently searched, and the type of searches (text search, image search, video search) that consumers are likely to use to learn more about a product, service, or business as a whole. Keywords are typically defined as either short tail (also known as head keywords) (e.g., women’s clothing) or long tail (e.g., best store to buy women’s clothing). Short tail, or head, keywords usually consist of two words, while long tail keywords usually consist of three to five words. While short tail keywords are generally more popular, long tail keywords are more targeted to specific searches and come with less competition. Less competition is particularly important when developing a pay-per-click campaign as less competition generally means the company does not have to bid as much money for a particular keyword or phrase.

Typically when a business adds a page to its site, the various search engines send a spider, or web crawler, that stores the page on the search engine’s server and then indexes the page (i.e., gathers relevant information on the contents of the web page and the links that it contains) for fast and accurate information retrieval when an online consumer registers a search query on the engine.

Optimizing a website for online searches involves editing the site content and tagging or coding pages to increase the relevance of the website content relative to specific keywords that are key to the business. The objective is to ensure that the site appears in search engine results for the keywords that are most relevant to the business. SEO also involves removing any barriers that would prevent search engines from indexing the site, as well as promoting the site to increase the number of back-links, or inbound links.