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Mauricio Pina

AI Digital Marketing Featured Google SEO

Lawyers Rejoice: SEO and AI Are Here to Help You Win the Case of the Missing Clients!

SEO, AI, LAWYERS
SEO and AI used for law firm digital marketing

Search engine optimization (SEO) and artificial intelligence (AI) are two cutting-edge technologies that can significantly enhance the digital marketing efforts of law firms. By leveraging the power of these technologies, law firms can improve their online visibility, attract more clients, and stay competitive in today’s digital landscape.

One of the most critical aspects of SEO is keyword research. By conducting thorough research, law firms can identify the keywords and phrases that their target audience is searching for. Once identified, these keywords should be strategically incorporated into the website’s content, meta tags, and other on-page elements to assist search engines in understanding the website’s purpose and offerings. Additionally, ensuring that the website is mobile-friendly and has a responsive design has become an essential ranking factor for Google.

Another crucial aspect of SEO is link building. Backlinks, or links from other websites that point to a law firm’s website, play a crucial role in determining a website’s search engine rankings. The more high-quality backlinks a website has, the higher it will rank in the SERPs. Law firms can acquire backlinks by creating valuable content that other websites would like to link to, such as informative blog posts, whitepapers, or infographics. Law firms can also reach out to other websites in the legal industry and request backlinks in exchange for linking to their website.

AI can also be used to improve the digital marketing efforts of law firms. By analyzing large amounts of data, AI can make predictions about customer behavior, such as identifying which customers are most likely to convert into clients. This information can be used to target marketing efforts to the most promising leads, increasing the chances of conversion.

Additionally, AI can automate repetitive tasks, such as responding to customer inquiries. Law firms can implement AI-powered chatbots to respond to customer inquiries 24/7, improving customer service and increasing conversions. AI can also be used to analyze customer data and create personalized marketing campaigns that are more likely to be successful.

By integrating SEO and AI, law firms can achieve a more comprehensive and effective digital marketing strategy. For example, AI can be used to analyze website traffic data and identify the keywords that drive the most conversions. This information can then be used to optimize the website’s content and meta tags for those keywords, resulting in higher search engine rankings and increased conversions.

In the end, SEO and AI are two powerful technologies that can help law firms improve their online visibility and attract more clients. By conducting keyword research, building backlinks, and leveraging AI, law firms can enhance their digital marketing efforts and stay competitive in today’s digital landscape. As technology continues to evolve, law firms that invest in SEO and AI will be well-positioned to succeed in the online marketplace.

Digital Marketing

Why Digital Marketing is Important During the COVID-19 Pandemic

There is no way to sugarcoat this: it’s an extremely difficult time for businesses. The economy has taken a downturn, and whether you’re a business that has slowly opened up your brick and mortar location or you function online, the revenue that you’re used to generating isn’t coming in.

However, the simple breakdown is this: if you can solidify your communication to your customers through social media, adjust your business hours accordingly, and offer quality products and services during the pandemic, you will be in an ideal position when this is all over. If you can afford to run a digital marketing campaign during this pandemic, do it, but if you need a little help doing so, hire a digital marketing consultant.

What the Statistics Show 

According to Search Engine Watch, a majority of the over 4,500 digital marketing professionals that they surveyed believed that businesses must adapt to conditions as quickly as possible to not only retain customers but so that they can also quickly return to pre-quarantined markers.

On top of that, many believed that increasing their work and enhancing business signs was ideal, with 18% of respondents noting an increase in sales, 27% reporting an increase in traffic, and 12% receiving new customers. 

While many corporations are standing pat and trying to tread water by eliminating their digital marketing footprint, there are companies that see the big picture and are poised to seize the moment. It is important to note that one in four companies are increasing their digital marketing game plan, with 41%  set to ride their momentum to enhance their social media standing, according to InfluencerMarketingHub.com.

How Business Owners Can Maintain Their Digital Footprint 

Even though the normalcy of our daily lives has slowed down to a crawl, every business owner can do things to maintain their digital footprint. Those who develop an intelligent and receptive approach can build a bridge with consumers that will make the business more visible, cultivate a deep loyalty, and answer lingering questions about your business operations:

  1. What are your new hours?
  2. When are you open?
  3. What products do you have available?
  4. What measures have you taken to ensure the protection of your customers?

Updating your social media channels and helpful, relevant content that answers all of these questions is an essential lifeline of your business today. If you are already employing a digital marketing strategy that answers these questions, now would be a great time to analyze important site metrics through Google Analytics, conduct brand awareness campaigns on the social and content side, and create impactful and empathic ads on social media.

If You’re New to Digital Marketing, Help is Always Around the Corner

If you have a vision for your company and a desire to see your business succeed during these trying times, then fostering a digital campaign that quells consumers’ fears and caters to an uncertain and everchanging circumstance is the key to a business’ survival. Whether it’s with a sensitive approach or some much-needed humor, the road to your future financial recovery is how you set your digital approach right now.

Being a business owner is not easy an easy role–much less so during a pandemic–but luckily, a digital marketing consultant’s function is to help your business sell products and services online, which is a service that is needed now more than ever.

Developing a winning digital-marketing strategy on top of managing your business may seem like a massive obstacle, but with the right digital marketing consultant, it doesn’t have to be.

 

Contact Mauricio Piña Now

SEO

Getting a Head Start on Voice Search Optimization


Not long ago after taking a hard look at end-of-year trends for 2018, something dawned on me. Smartphones that use Google Assistant (or Siri, Cortana, etc.), and smart home speaker devices, like Alexa, are becoming a popular alternative to searching for something manually on the Internet.

I took the next few days analyzing my own site data, general theories swapped among my fellow digital marketing consultants, and speculation about what Google will be implementing via updates, to see exactly how voice search applications are going to affect Internet traffic.

Here are my findings, and a little later, I’ll show you how to prepare for its inevitable take over.

So…What is Voice Search?

Let’s start with the basics. Simply put, voice search (also known as voice-enabled) offers users the ability to use voice command to handle a specific task. Most of the time — at least at this point in time — voice search is used for searching for services or goods, as well as asking general questions, via the Internet. Most devices used to accomplish this are either mobile devices or smart home speaker devices.

With the advent of smart home speaker devices, now is the time for websites to take action in updating their SEO accordingly. Don’t believe me?

According to a 2018 PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) report, 71 percent of people surveyed would rather use some form of voice assistant for their queries rather than typing it out and hitting the search button.

However, voice search isn’t exclusive to smart devices like Alexa or your smartphone either. People also use their desktop PCs for voice search as well.

How Will Voice Search Affect My Business?

This is the million dollar question.

There are many ways that voice search can affect your online business, but nothing showcases the power of voice search so clearly as this report conducted by BrightLocal. In short, BrightLocal found that:

  • Around 58 percent of consumers have used voice search to find local business information within the last year.
  • 46 percent of consumers use voice search to look up local business information on the daily.
  • 27 percent of consumers who use voice search then visit the website of said local business.

To be clear, voice search is just another method that consumers use to find online businesses, local or otherwise. But it’s important to be aware that if your website isn’t properly optimized for voice search, you could be losing out on revenue-generating opportunities.

That’s why hiring an experienced digital marketing consultant like me, Mauricio Piña, to open many of these potentially lucrative opportunities for you is well worth an investment.

How to Optimize Your Website for Voice Search

Now that we know why optimizing our business website for voice search is important, how do we actually go about doing it? Even though many top-tier companies have foreseen this happening for years, voice search implementation has been a relatively slow process.

That being said, a few of the following tips for updating your SEO to incorporate voice search may seem a little familiar, as I’ve talked about them in the past, but essentially you’ll want to:

1. Use Natural Speech – Data from Google shows that 70 percent of requests to Google Assistant are expressed in “natural language.” In order to be effective in our efforts to attract more clients to our websites, SEO strategies for voice search must reflect this.
2. Try Long-Tail Keywords – This is important, especially in conjunction with tip number one. Long-tail keywords are, in a sense, specific phrases that people use when searching on the Internet. They generally run around three to five words long and are more specific than what you would expect from regular keywords.

To illustrate this, let’s say that you run a small business that sells vintage vinyl records from the 60s. Since your business is small, it may be a bit challenging to go up against massive businesses that sell vinyl records as well. Instead, it would benefit your business if you used targeted long-tail keywords like “vinyl records from the 60s” to attract customers looking specifically for the type of product you’re selling.

3. Use “Near Me” to Your Advantage – Since our devices are connected to the Internet, chances are high that they know where we live. Since the “near me” trend is rapidly increasing in use, it is only natural that we optimize accordingly.

Why? Because users use natural language when using voice search, and voice search optimization is based on conversational speech. Saying “near me” comes off more naturally for someone searching for a local service or good.

4. Take User Intent Into Consideration – User intent tells digital marketers and SEO gurus why users are utilizing a search engine in the first place. In most cases, it is fairly obvious why if an individual is using words like “buy” and “how to” in their query. But other times it takes a little finesse to figure it all out.

And by finesse, I mean Google’s 2013 update Hummingbird. This update did a lot for helping Google understand the context in search queries by analyzing the most relevant content. That’s why when you enter in a search for “Super Bowl winners,” Google will show the most recent champion, rather than the winner from 25 years ago.

Optimizing your site to understand user intent and helping them get quick answers is what will be important in the near future. If you do it right, you will reap the benefits from the next tip.

5. Beef Up Your Featured Snippets Game – Usually, when people use voice search, their digital assistant will read aloud the copy in the Google snippet.

You will want to take advantage of this. Doing so will establish you as a leader in your industry, which will then, in turn, gain the confidence of shoppers looking to make a purchase. That’s why it is well worth your investment to hire a digital marketing consultant to help you create quality content that answers users’ questions.

6. Improve Your Page Speed – This is something that we should all be doing, anyway, as part of our website optimization process for mobile devices. Page speed will still continue to make a difference as we focus more on optimizing voice search because people still want quick answers.

“Alexa, who is one the best digital marketing consultants in the Rio Grande Valley?” Answer: “Mauricio Piña.”

If you’re looking for guidance on how to update SEO for voice search queries or have any other digital marketing questions, do not hesitate to contact me today at (956) 566-4998.

Featured Google SEO

The Mo’ You Know: A Resource Guide for Your SEO Needs


If you’re new to digital marketing or barely on the cusp of developing your own website, then you should know that there is plenty to learn about this complex world. One of the toughest concepts to grasp is Search Engine Optimization, otherwise known as SEO.

But SEO consists of more than just one single action. In fact, Google has over 200 SEO factors that they take into consideration when ranking a website (and one of your main goals should be to have a high ranking on Google search results).

That means your website, along with your overall digital marketing strategy, has to hit multiple targets, such as:

  • JavaScript standards
  • Website security (HTTPS vs. HTTP)
  • Mobile-ready website
  • Fast web page loading
  • Correct website schema markup (coding)
  • Quality and length of website content
  • Quality social media connections to your website
  • Quality backlinks
  • Optimized images on the website
  • Off-page optimization
  • Keyword optimization
  • Sitemap optimization
  • Quality UX
  • Optimized web design
  • Quality domain authority

These are but a few components that need to be managed on an ongoing basis.

That’s right. SEO isn’t a one-and-done deal. It’s a process that requires you to remain on top of your game at all times. Google loves to change its algorithm constantly and you need to be aware of these changes in order to make the proper adjustments in your SEO strategy.

Is all this scaring you? Well…it shouldn’t.

While there’s definitely a learning curve to SEO, thankfully, there are quite a few resources available out on the Internet that can get you on the right path.

(Or you can always reach out to your local digital marketing consultant if your looking for a quick start or don’t have the time to handle the complexities of SEO.)

The Basics About JavaScript and SEO

JavaScript (JS) is a frequently used programming language to develop websites. However, there were issues for some time with crawlers being unable to properly index JS websites. When indexing couldn’t be properly completed then a website’s ranking was affected.

Fast forward a few years, however, and Google now has the ability to crawl JavaScript. This has changed digital marketing and SEO. It’s important to be aware, however, that there are certain instances in which a crawler could misinterpret content on your website and thus affect ranking results.

Google is leading the way in terms of successfully crawling JavaScript websites but you should still be wary of developing your entire website using it. It’s better that you use JavaScript for certain elements so that your site can be easily accessed by crawlers.

When it comes to JavaScript and SEO, you should know that:

  • JavaScript content must be indexable within the load event.
  • Content dependent on user events is not indexable.
  • You’ll need an indexable URL with server-side support for your JavaScript site.
  • There shouldn’t be any variations between the HTML and JavaScript versions of your website.
  • All essential elements or content on your JavaScript website need to load during the load event. Anything loaded after will not necessarily be crawled and indexed.
  • You’ll need to allow search engines to crawl your JavaScript, otherwise, they may penalize you.
  • Consider doing a manual check to see if your website is “crawlable”.

There’s plenty (and we mean plenty) more that can be said about JavaScript and SEO but the resources below should help you to develop a clearer understanding.

The SEO Resources You Need to Know About

First on our list are the “Beginner Guides and How-To’s” of SEO:

What you need to know about JavaScript and SEO:

Google resources you need to know about:

Websites that can help you on your SEO journey:

If you need in-depth assistance setting up your website SEO and customizing your JavaScript website to improve your ranking on Google, then contact a digital marketing consultant like me, Mauricio Pina, at (956) 566-4998 today.

Digital Marketing

Conquering Marketing Automation in 2019


While artificial intelligence has not gone the way of Skynet (just yet), 2019 has been noted by many digital marketing consultants and professionals as a game-changing year regarding machine learning.

For digital marketers, this means improved understanding of consumer behavior as well as improved digital marketing campaigns and streamlined implementation. This potentially holds a bevy of benefits for business owners.

Today, we’re taking a look at how automation can help you to perfect your 2019 digital marketing campaigns in a way that will build up fat returns on your investment.

Automation Should Focus on Profitable Growth Over Efficiency

It may be tempting to optimize and use an automated program so that certain business processes can be more efficient. But by doing so, you may be limiting how you see the overall big picture.

Optimizing an automated process that focuses on increasing profits instead can be a better option. In other words, you want to focus on what’s profitable in the long run, not what makes you a quick, easy buck. Many businesses in late 2017 began to adopt this philosophy, resulting in great returns.

For instance, HomeAway, a vacation rental marketplace, really put in the elbow grease in 2017 by using automation. In essence, the company — through automation and machine learning — categorized particular members of their audience that viewed certain pieces of content or ads and set them into groups based on their real-time behaviors.

This gave the company the ability to tailor content and messaging that engaged with potential customers until they were ready to make a decision. This simple act ended up skyrocketing their annual revenue by 115 percent!

Automation Should Help You Find the Right Customer

Many of the industry’s top marketers have designed automated programs that utilize machine learning to allocate funds for finding long-term customers. The goal here is to find customers that provide more sales opportunities over a long period of time and weed out the one-and-doners.

And it has been successful. Finding customers that have a higher customer lifetime value (CLV) isn’t always an easy task, but with automation, lots of possibilities are revealed. For those that need a little refresher, CLV is a prediction that takes into account how much a customer will spend throughout the business-consumer relationship. It is determined through many different calculations that we won’t get into today.

But I can provide you with an example.

Let’s say you own a bakery, and occasionally, you’ll have a customer that will come in to purchase one of your most expensive cakes. Not always, but every now and then. Then, of course, you have your regular; the individual that comes in every day to buy a couple of pastries.

Out of either of these two, which one would you consider to have a higher customer lifetime value?

It’s the regular that provides your bakery with a steady flow of revenue every day.

Using automation to help your marketing efforts target these frequent customers over the rare big spenders should be paramount, as it is these people that sustain your business in the long term.

Automation Should Help Your Business Earn More From Existing Customers

As the old proverb goes, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” And when it comes to keeping customers engaged and retaining their business, automation has made that process much easier.

The extra revenue that comes in from existing customers can then be allocated to acquiring new customers.

One way that experts increase CLV is to improve on their cross-selling. What these top marketers do is predict what kind of product a customer will buy next and actively market it to them, sometimes through automation. This information can be garnered from similar purchases made previously, social media likes, content viewed, or a variety of other data points that an automated program can pick up regarding past behaviors.

Another technique to improve CLV is through churn reduction. Having an automated program that picks up on at-risk customers — possibly targeting previous customers who haven’t interacted with your brand on social in some time – and then offering them a heck of a deal to earn their business back works great.

With automation, the sky’s the limit to not only making your marketing process more efficient, but to making it more profitable.

Nothing beats a solid investment into hiring an experienced digital marketing consultant. Contact me, Mauricio Piña, today at (956) 566-4998 to learn how automation can improve your digital marketing efforts.

E-Commerce

Get Mo’ Business in 2019 with E-commerce


There’s plenty of reason to develop an e-commerce website in 2019 if you haven’t already. There are plenty of stats available to back up the indisputable truth that consumers are fleeing in droves to online shopping, including:

  • Global retail e-commerce sales are expected to hit $4.5 trillion by 2021.
  • In the U.S., e-commerce sales represent almost 10% of all retail sales and are expected to grow by 15% every year.
  • Approximately 80% of Internet users have shopped online with 50% having done so multiple times.
  • U.S. shoppers spent $5 billion online on Black Friday in 2017.
  • Millennials now account for nearly 54% of all online purchases.
  • Mobile commerce reached $700 billion in revenue in 2017, which is a 300% growth over the past four years prior.

Despite the profitability of e-commerce, 46% of small businesses in America still do not have a website. Are you one of those who still hasn’t taken advantage of this lucrative market?

Let me, Mauricio Piña, give you the inside scoop on how you can reap the benefits of having an e-commerce website.

E-commerce Basics

Let’s run down some of the basics of e-commerce.

E-commerce is essentially any commercial transaction that takes place over the Internet. In this case, we’ll be talking about e-commerce websites, which are websites where a business and its customers can participate in a transaction for goods or services and payment.

E-commerce includes a variety of marketplaces like Amazon and personal brand stores which can be created on e-commerce platforms like Shopify. While retail is one of the most common forms of e-commerce, there are plenty of types that may meet your business needs including:

  • Business-to-Business (B2B): This form of e-commerce occurs between companies.
  • Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C): E-commerce between consumers that generally requires a third party to assist with the transaction (i.e eBay).

Depending on your needs, you may either choose to create a website from scratch, which allows you to design and configure to your specific needs, but which may take some time to create. Or you can use an out-of-the-box platform like the previously mentioned Shopify, which allow you to get up and running much more quickly but doesn’t allow much customization.

Where to Start

  1. If you already have a business and are looking to expand into the world of e-commerce, then you’ll want to do some research beforehand to see how successful you can be selling your particular product(s).
  2. If you’re interested in just getting your feet wet, you can start by selling only a handful of products – or even your best sellers. This can be especially beneficial if you have a huge inventory but merely want to start off small.

  3. In order to sell your product online, you’ll need to have a payment platform that is PCI compliant. This means that your system is safeguarding customers’ credit card information. When evaluating payment systems, you’ll want to keep an eye on:
    • Fees that you’ll be charged for any transaction and monthly recurring fees.
    • Transaction processing time frame.
    • The payment platform’s ability to integrate with your website.
    • UX and how well customers will be able to use it for a quick payment.
  4. When developing your website and executing your digital marketing plan, you’ll want to:
    • Design your website for a great customer experience that includes easy navigation, solid product descriptions, quality visuals, and an easy ordering process.
    • Don’t forget to get your website mobile optimized.
    • Make sure to include plenty of product reviews as the vast majority of consumers take reviews into consideration when making a purchase.
    • E-commerce shouldn’t revolve strictly around your website. Make sure to engage with your audience via social media, email newsletters, blogs, PPC ads, online promotions, and even real-world events when possible.
  5. Your e-commerce website is only one part of your entire business. It needs to integrate well with the rest of your business, such as ensuring that items no longer in-stock are noted as such on your website. The processes that take place at your brick-and-mortar store need to align with your e-commerce website, especially your shipping processes.

Ready to take your e-commerce website to the next level in 2019? Get the digital marketing consultant services you need to get ahead of the game.

Contact the seasoned digital marketing consultant, Mauricio Piña, today at (956) 566-4998 to concoct a winning e-commerce strategy that will increase conversions and sales.

Digital Marketing

4 Digital Marketing Mistakes You Should Definitely Avoid in 2019


First off, Happy New Year!

Now’s the perfect time to refresh our approach to digital marketing. And the easiest way to devise those strategies is by learning from our past mistakes.

We’re starting off the year with a look at what mistakes we should avoid if we want to run a successful digital marketing campaign in 2019.

Check this out.

4 Digital Marketing Mistakes You Need to Avoid in 2019

1. Creating Content Just Because
Search engine optimization changes all the time, but the one true constant that Google focuses on is factual, meaningful, and valuable content. You can guarantee that won’t be changing anytime soon.

Content shouldn’t be created just to fill space on your website. That is a surefire way to feel the wrath of Google’s ranking system. Content should contain valuable information that will meet visitor needs in some manner.

Google gauges this by taking into account multiple metrics such as measuring the duration of the visit, as well as if the visitor went to another similar website after viewing your site, just to name a few.

That’s why developing content that answers visitors’ questions is paramount to retaining a high Google ranking on the results page. Be sure to ask yourself questions like:

  1. Does my content help build up my brand?
  2. Will my content gain – and keep – visitors’ trust?
  3. Will it attract potential customers/clients?
  4. What format are visitors responding to most: video, blogs, vlogs, live streams, or webinars?
  5. What exactly do I know about your target audience?
  6. Do I have a strategy developed for sharing the content on a social media platform?

All of these questions are relevant to establishing yourself as a reliable source of information that visitors can trust – and trust earns business.

2. Having Undefined Goals
Having set goals helps you choose what tactics you need to achieve them, allows you to better understand areas of improvement, and offers a clear sight of what obstacles you need to overcome to get there.

And they have to be clearly defined, realistic goals. If your goal was to establish a dominating social media brand, signing up on all social media platforms isn’t necessarily going to get you there. While Facebook and Instagram might earn you some business, Reddit may not particularly cater to your niche. Therefore, it wouldn’t make sense to focus on Reddit if it provides little value to you, regardless if your competition is doing so themselves.

Think about it this way. Would you trust a surgeon that didn’t have a plan if they were about to perform a major surgery on you? I’d hope not. As with many other things in life, you need a plan to get to those streams of revenue that a good digital marketing strategy can unlock.

3. Multiple Profiles, Over-Promoting, and Poor Reply Etiquette
It goes without saying that a brand that has multiple Facebook or Twitter accounts is going to confuse consumers. It’s also a waste of your company’s time and resources.

That’s why it is so important to have a one social media account per social media platform. It ensures that your social media followers know where to go to find out the latest company news, offers, or company-led conversations.

In the end, that’s all social media is all about: being social and communicative.

But there’s a fine line between having a meaningful interaction with a follower and saturating their feed with nothing but promotional content. This can feel a little spammy and nothing encourages brand abandonment quite like spam. Aim for effective and efficient promotion, not the “shooting fish in a barrel” approach.

Lastly, be social on social media. That means having more engagements, interactions, and conversations with your followers. There have been plenty of times where a brand posted engaging content on Facebook that piqued a followers interest, just to lose that opportunity because they refused to reply.

Replying to a follower solidifies their brand loyalty, assists in retaining followers and attracts more consumers to your brand. Refusing to reply is not only a wasted opportunity to grow your brand, but it can also possibly decrease your value as a social media presence.

4. Expecting Instant Results
The world of digital marketing is a fascinating one. Sometimes important decisions come on the fly, but the results can take some time to come to fruition.

That is why you shouldn’t expect instantaneous results. The anticipation in waiting to see if your campaign was successful can be overwhelming, but your patience will be rewarded.

Sure, digital marketing can net you some quick successes — like an increase in your website traffic — but oftentimes, that quick success is only temporary. Then shortly after, you are left wondering what you can do to make another quick buck. In the long run, this isn’t a sustainable digital marketing business model. Work smarter, not harder.

You need to develop long-term content marketing strategies that focus on crafting high-quality content through different methods of distribution. We’re talking through copy, video, social media – the whole works. And the best way to do that is to hire an expert digital marketing consultant.

Hiring an experienced digital marketing consultant like me, Mauricio Piña, is a surefire way to avoid these mistakes in 2019. Don’t hesitate to contact me today at (956) 566-4998 to learn more.

Digital Marketing

Mo’ Basics: Web Analytics 101


Suffice to say that analytics play a pivotal role in the world of digital marketing. Data helps tremendously when developing your content strategy, social media campaigns, making changes to your website, and essentially all other aspects of your digital marketing strategy.

But understanding analytics can be a challenge if you aren’t familiar with which you should be keeping an eye on. As your friendly digital marketing consultant, I’d like to share with you some basics about web analytics. By better understanding web analytics, you can make valuable improvements to your website – which should ultimately improve your sales and your business.

What Are Analytics

Analytics is the system by which you collect and analyze data. This information is collected from your website, as well as through other channels like your social media profiles and includes information involving site visitor activity, SEO performance, and other key areas.

Generally, data is collected everytime a user visits your website or social media profile(s), tracking them from when they first enter until they leave. This individual data is recorded into a larger databank where you can begin to see bigger trends, like which website pages are attracting the most visitors and which pages have the highest bounce rate.

Ultimately, the more you know about your site visitors and customers, the easier it is to figure out how to draw them in and get them to spend more.

Key Analytics to Monitor

The truth is that there is a ton of information that you can draw from your analytics but the secret is to set goals beforehand and use the data to measure how far or close you are to reaching them. It’s important to recognize that your digital marketing campaign doesn’t always have to be about conversions and sales, you can also focus on:

  • Building strong customer relationships by providing meaningful information.
  • Building your company up as an expert in your industry.
  • Building up and promoting higher value services.
  • Attracting a newer, more lucrative client demographic.

In terms of basic data metrics, you should be keeping an eye on, you’ll want to take note of the following key analytics:

  • Visits – This is the number of visitors that come to your site within a given time frame (which you can dictate). The same visitor can be counted as multiple visits. For example, 1 visitor coming to your site 10 times within a month will count as 10 visits.
  • Unique Visitors – This data focuses on the number of unique individuals that visit your site within a given time frame. Visitors are only counted once, regardless of how many times they visit your site.
  • Page Views – This metric measures the website pages that are viewed by visitors. You can determine the average page view per visitor using this “formula” (Page views ÷ Visits = Page views per visit).
  • Time-on-Site –  This is the average amount of time that users stay on your site during a visit.
  • Bounce Rate – The bounce rate is the measurement of how quickly a website visitor enters and leaves your site. The lower the bounce rate, the better.
  • Top Pages – Knowing which pages are receiving the most love can prove to be vital as it helps to show you what your audience responds to and prefers. You can use this info to make adjustments to the rest of your content.
  • Conversion Rate – Your conversion rate is essentially the goal that you have set for your visitors. You can calculate this number by dividing the number of unique visitors you get and the number of those that “convert”, which can include:
    • Making a purchase
    • Submitting an email to join your mailing list
    • Sharing on social media
    • Liking your page

Common Traffic Sources

A key component to effectively understanding your website traffic is knowing where your traffic is coming from. By effectively knowing where your visitors are coming from, you can spend more resources on these components. For instance, are your site visitors finding you on Google? Then you’ll want to place emphasis on your SEO strategy to ensure they are able to find you organically via this (and other) search engine.

In terms of traffic sources, the most common ones are:

  • Organic – Traffic that comes via search engines.
  • Direct – Traffic that comes from someone typing in your URL in their address bar or through a bookmark.
  • Referral – Traffic that comes from another website to yours.
  • Paid Search – Traffic that comes from search engines that have a search ad of your business.
  • Social – Website traffic that comes from social media networks (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.)

Again, knowing where your traffic is coming from can help you to improve your overall marketing strategy. A qualified digital marketing consultant can help to break down the numbers and conversion rate by traffic source to uncover which works best for you and how you can continue to optimize this source.

Improving Your Conversion Rate

Alongside using this data to make meaningful adjustments to your overall digital marketing strategy, make sure to also:

  • Include plenty of calls-to-action throughout your website and make sure they are in areas where they can be easily found.
  • Make the checkout process as seamless and quick as possible. A convoluted checkout process can lead to plenty of abandoned carts.
  • Headlines and sliders should grab visitors’ attention and include CTAs.
  • Experiment with A/B testing on ads and landing pages to see what type of copy and images customers prefer.

Keep in mind that web analytics are not the end all of your digital marketing plans, but should, nonetheless, play an important role in your overall strategy. Use these data points as the tools that they are and make 2019 a record year.

Need help figuring out all your web analytics data?

Reach out to the digital marketing expert, Mauricio Piña, today at (956) 566-4998.

Content Management

5 Top Web Designs That Will Take 2019 By Storm


2019 is coming in fast, and if you want to get that sleek, new look before your competition does, enlisting the aid of a digital marketing consultant is the best way to do it. It’s time to renovate those stale web design trends of 2018.

Check out these top 5 web designs for 2019.

1. Clean, Minimalistic Design

The days of cluttered images and overly complex web design are fading away. Since 2017, developers have started to change their website to cleaner, more minimalistic designs. Developers did so in anticipation of the mobile-first indexing revolution, knowing that getting it done early would mean a huge boost in their revenue-earning potential.

This brilliant form of “flat design” not only provides a cleaner look but also improves function as it reduces the amount of time it takes to load a webpage for both PC and mobile devices. It also benefits a website’s Google ranking as sites which prioritize quick load times are better ranked, something image-heavy websites can’t dream of.

2. Micro-Animations

Sometimes as web designers, you’ve got to learn how to appreciate the little things. This is especially true for micro-animations — a subtle trend that is quickly gaining traction.

A micro-animation can be a number of things. It can be something as simple as changing the color of a call-to-action button when the user moves their cursor over it. It can also be something a little more visually appealing, like a list of links expanding downward when a “hamburger” menu button—the three parallel lines stacked horizontally that you find on the top left or right of a website—is activated.

While this may seem inconsequential, that couldn’t be any further from the truth. Little animations like these actually help site visitors better understand its layout better, increasing retention by providing an intuitive and satisfying experience as they explore what you have to offer.

3. More Detailed Footers

Footers, as far as web designing is concerned, have mostly been overlooked, but 2019 is looking to change that. In most cases, it was a space on the homepage where visitors could contact information and little else.

Now, designers are looking to utilize that space in a much more effective and efficient manner. While it should still have your company’s contact information, it should also feature clickable social media icons that can send a user to your social media pages (hopefully so they start following you).

However, it won’t be limited to just those elements. In fact, it can be heavily improved upon based on what your particular niche or business is. Take for instance 360gardalife.com. This sports magazine/blog shares local sporting information around the Malcesine area of Italy – and they are really hitting it out of the park in terms of a footer.

Now imagine having a customized footer that a potential customer can access to personalize the information that they receive from your company. You can bet top dollar that user experience and customer reviews with your company would skyrocket in a positive way.

4. Better Video Backgrounds

Remember when I said that minimal-looking websites may take the cake in 2019? Well, they are going to have some competition with websites that will feature a video background. I know, hard to believe since websites that can load quickly will be scored better, but video backgrounds have also been shown to increase conversions – and that’s always a good thing.

Before we continue, it won’t be like a YouTube video playing in the background while you are trying to read a blog. When a user lands on your site, they may see the video playing in the background—muted, of course. Short video content commands users’ attention more than texts or images can because it delivers your message quickly and effectively. Because of that, users are more likely to stick around to watch the video.

Of course, the more likely they are to stick around means that your time-on-site metric is going to increase.

5. Non-Traditional Scrolling

For as long as the Internet has been around, users have become accustomed to vertical scrolling—top to bottom. Twenty-nineteen is looking to change that up a bit, offering a unique twist to scrolling and piquing potential customers’ interests.

Some sites are looking to embrace horizontal scrolling, where instead of the page moving top to bottom, it is moving from left to right. This offers a refreshing and attention-grabbing experience to potential customers that are getting to know your brand.

To illustrate this in action, picture yourself as an owner of a business that sells artisanal cheeses. When a user lands on your home page, they see a brief loading screen—we’re talking 1 to 2 seconds of load time here—and then they are greeted by a quick history of your business.

As they scroll, the history portion shifts to the left and now the home page is featuring a special cheese on sale for the week. At some point, the carousel of information—if you will—will stop, and the page can scroll vertically as normal to other portions of your homepage that feature the daily product review, customer reviews, accolades, video content, or even that souped-up website footer that you created.

Kick off the New Year with a fresh new website style and then reap the benefits of your investment. Contact your experienced digital marketing consultant at (956) 566-4998 to get started.

Digital Marketing

The Magic of Link Building and Earning


All right, time to confess. Earning and building links is hard work. If you spam too many links in your content, you risk losing your ranking on Google search as well as customer confidence. If you don’t earn any links to your website, you won’t be seen as the credible source of information that you are.

If my experience as a digital marketing consultant has taught me anything, it’s this: a little elbow grease in building and earning links goes a long way when driving traffic to your site. The more (and better quality) traffic you get, the higher the potential for making conversions and sales.

Today we are going to analyze the benefits link building and earning can provide to your digital marketing campaign.

What are the Benefits of Link Building?

You may be thinking, “Why would I need to worry about building or earning links when there are literally hundreds of other SEO factors that go into Google’s ranking system?”

That’s a fair question. In short, it’s because link building and earning helps:

1. Grows Your Traffic – Let’s imagine that you are a grapefruit distributor, and you’ve recently written up a blog post highlighting your fruit’s sweetness, tartness, and uniqueness.

Not long after, you are contacted by a highly recognized company (e.g. Food Network) and are asked if they can link a recipe to your blog piece. This is great news for your business.

If this company that contacted you has a huge Internet presence, and if they are linking out to your website, that’ll help to direct online traffic your way. Once at your company’s website, a properly placed call-to-action can entice site visitors to purchase your fruit. If they have found your website helpful and engaging, they may even interact with your social media accounts.

2. Provides Value to Search Engines – Remember how I mentioned earlier that Google ranking is governed by 200 other factors? Well, links have a high value in this list of factors.

This is why a lot of authority websites have top spots in Google’s ranking system. Many other websites are likely linking out to these authority sites, which in turn helps to build up their credibility even more. Think of it as a vote. The more “votes” a website has, the higher its position in the search engine results page (SERP).

To build off the example above, since your website was linked to an authority website, Google will recognize that you are a credible source of information regarding grapefruit. So when someone is searching for grapefruits, your page is more likely to show up on the SERP.

3. Increases Brand Awareness – In tandem with everything above, link building and earning can enhance brand awareness through “influencers.”

If an influencer happens to run across your product and begins to promote it, you gain access, in a sense, to their followers and audience. To illustrate, let’s say that there is a “grapefruit influencer” that has over a million viewers on their YouTube channel. One day while searching for new and interesting recipes, the enthusiast happens upon the authority website that originally linked out to you.

Later, you get a notification from the influencer that they would like to create video content featuring your grapefruit. Of course, you give the okay so long as they link out to your company website. You notice not too long after the influencer has created their content about your product, that your traffic metrics have grown substantially.

Through that influencer, through the authority website, and through your own efforts, you have effectively increased your brand awareness and brought in a new swarm of customers.

Summing It Up

Link building and earning can definitely help to draw more traffic to your website, but it must come with a delicate touch. If you’re looking for some tips on how to earn links, we have a blog just for that as well.

It’s important to know that you can’t just spam links in your blog post as Google looks down on that. Being renowned as a link-spammer rather than a purveyor of a quality product is a surefire way to lose reputation and ranking with Google and, more importantly, future sales.

Link building and earning is by no means a “kickback” kind of thing either. It takes a certain drive, a hustle, to earn these types of relationships with other websites. One shouldn’t focus so much on paying for links or spamming, but you should instead focus on producing quality content and connecting that content with the right audience for maximum brand exposure.

Do you need an expert’s touch to help make your link building happen? Look no further than Mauricio Piña, your experience digital marketing consultant. Contact me today at (956) 566-4998 to find out how I can help improve your digital marketing campaigns.