How to Prepare Your Site For Google’s Mobile-First Index

Gone are the days when desktop traffic is viewed as the priority. Mobile browsing has long surpassed desktop browsing years ago and Google is on the move to making adjustments in how sites are ranked.
Lo and behold, 2018 is the year that Google is making it official by launching a mobile-first index algorithm, ultimately making mobile sites and pages as the main basis for indexing and ranking.
So what does this all mean? Simply put, the mobile version of your site should be your main priority because it’s what Google will use to assess your ranking in search engines. Sounds scary? A bit. But is it a surprising move on Google’s part? Not at the very least.
This has long been an expected update from Google. The tables have finally turned and mobile sites aren’t just an afterthought anymore; it’s become the priority.
With all that said, it’s pretty easy to determine your proper course of action, which is to focus on improving (or creating, if you don’t have one yet!) the mobile version of your site. We’re listing down important steps in preparing your site for Google’s Mobile-First Index. The first step? Don’t panic and just read on.
Step #1: Ensure that your site is truly optimised for mobile browsing
More than being mobile-friendly, your site has to be mobile-optimised.
There’s actually a difference between the two. Saying that your site is mobile-friendly means that you have a working mobile version of the site, meaning you can simply view your site using a mobile device. However, saying that it is optimised for mobile means that it offers a seamless user experience and has a truly responsive mobile design.
Having a mobile-optimised site doesn’t just mean that you have a shrunken or slightly rearranged version of your site. It means that your users would be able to navigate your site with the same ease (or more!) as they do with the desktop version.
Good news is a lot of website platforms provide an automatic mobile version of the site. However, it would still be best to make sure that it’s the best possible design for mobile and not just a slightly adjusted version. This is why a lot of developers opt to build it from scratch to ensure that they hit the mark in mobile-responsiveness.
To check if your mobile site is up to par, you can use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test as a starting point. They’ll either say that your site is mobile-friendly or come up with a report that would highlight the main points for improvement and repair.
Step #2: Adjust content for mobile viewing
It’s not enough to simply adjust the design. You may also have to look at how you craft your content and see if it works as effectively for mobile viewing as well.
Content remains king and one way of how marketers deal with this is by coming up with at least a thousand, or even three, words and complete with supporting images and graphics. The thing is, these highly informative and wordy content may seem fine to look at on a desktop screen but doesn’t translate as smoothly to a mobile screen. One remedy to this issue is to slightly adjust how you write. It doesn’t mean that you have to shorten your posts. Perhaps you can cut them up into shorter paragraphs and sentences, as opposed to piling it all up in lengthy chunks.
Google’s mobile-first index shouldn’t push you into a corner and restrict you from coming up with quality content. Remember that quality content remains a strong ranking factor above everything else.
What this algorithm update should do is to push you into paying more attention on how your desktop site and pages translate to mobile. This applies not just to text content, but also to images, graphics, videos, and other content formats.
Step #3: Consider other mobile-first index factors
Achieving a seamless user experience with your mobile site comprises of several factors that come into play. It’s not simply about the display or adjusted layout. There are other mobile-first index factors that you strongly pay attention to. These include the following:

• Site speed: Did you know that Google has stated that 53% of mobile users would leave a site if it takes more than three seconds to load? This makes site speed an even more important factor for mobile browsing. To check on how your mobile site is faring, you can go ahead and do so using Google’s PageSpeed Insights. It’ll give you a clear idea if your site is on the safe zone or if it requires major speed improvement.
• Intrusive interstitials: Interstitials are what you call those pesky pop-ups that come up when you visit a site. It’s described as “a page that is inserted in the normal flow of editorial content structure on a website for the purpose of advertising or promotion.” Google has cited that there’s an existing intrusive interstitial penalty–and trust us when we say that’s something you don’t want to receive. You may want to reconsider adding interstitials or perhaps adjusting its size or frequency.
• Sources of mobile site traffic: Remember that with the launch of the mobile-first index, where your mobile site traffic comes from would matter even more since it would also affect your desktop site ranking. Apart from using social media to drive click-throughs and traffic to your mobile site, you can also consider using guest posts, videos, podcasts, email newsletters, influencer marketing, PPC, Quora, and so on.
• Link building: Backlinks still matter. And it also matters if these are quality or spammy backlinks. Apart from consistently checking to see who links back to your site, it would also help to monitor who links back to your competitors and use that information to create your own linking strategy as well. Of course, also make sure to get rid of bad links to avoid getting penalized by Google.
• Schema markup: Having a schema markup is your way of helping Google understand what the content of your site/page means. A schema markup is described as a “code [semantic vocabulary] that you put on your website to help search engines return more informative results for users.” This is something that should be added to the backend of your site to ensure that Google recognizes what your data means, not just what it says.

Conclusion
As we’ve already said, there’s no reason to panic because you still have time. But that time is getting shorter with each day and if you still haven’t gotten around to at least having a mobile-friendly version of your site, then it’s high time that you make the move.
Should you have a mobile-friendly version, then kudos to you! But the job’s not done yet. Your goal is to truly optimise it for mobile browsing by paying attention to several factors that affect user experience.
Make the most out of the time we’re all waiting for Google to finally launch the Mobile-First Index to focus on making several adjustments and improvements on your mobile site.
Simply put, prioritize your mobile site starting now and by the time Google announces its launch, your site is up and ready to rule the search engine rankings on both mobile and desktop.

The post How to Prepare Your Site For Google’s Mobile-First Index appeared first on Creativ Digital.

How to Be a Successful Content Hacker

If you’ve been keeping in the know within the world of startups and digital marketing, then you’re most likely familiar with the term growth hacking/hacker. But have you heard of the new type of hacking, which is content hacking?

In this day and age where content remains king of everything, a content creator has to continuously evolve in order to keep up with the ever-changing times. A content marketer can’t be stuck with old, tried and tested ways to craft content and instead, they’d have to continuously search for ways to hit publish on pieces and posts that get better and better every single time.

This is why simply being a content creator or marketer isn’t enough to sustain a business nowadays. What your business needs to thrive and succeed is to have a content hacker on board. But what is content hacking in the first place? Let’s go find out!

What Is Content Hacking?

To understand what content hacking is and what it takes to be a content hacker, we first have to go back to its roots, which is growth hacking.

It was Sean Ellis who first coined the term growth hacker, in which he describes it as “a person whose true north is growth. Everything they do is scrutinized by its potential impact on scalable growth.”

He continued saying that, “An effective growth hacker also needs to be disciplined to follow a growth hacking process of prioritizing ideas (their own and others in the company), testing the ideas, and being analytical enough to know which tested growth drivers to keep and which ones to cut. The faster this process can be repeated, the more likely they’ll find scalable, repeatable ways to grow the business.”

That description may be too much of a mouthful but simply put, a growth hacker is someone who utilises creativity and analytical thinking to find new and disruptive ways to promote and sell products/services, while making use of social metrics to measure their efforts as well.

So how does growth hacking contribute to what content hacking is all about? Simple. Content hacking is the result when you combine content marketing and growth hacking. And it is through being a skilled content hacker that businesses and brands can thrive in today’s competitive game of content creation.

What Does it Take to be a Content Hacker?

It’s true that it is in utilising the skills of a content creator and having the mindset of a growth hacker that makes a successful content hacker. But what other characteristics are needed to be a content hacker?

We’re breaking down the key elements of how to be a successful content hacker and why you’ll come to realise that it’s more of a mindset, rather than a toolset.

Growth-minded all the way

When you say that someone is “growth-minded,” it means having the vision, drive, and creativity that it takes to increase traffic, leads, and conversion rates.

A content hacker doesn’t just create content for the sake of creating. They create content with purpose and measurable goals in mind. The content they craft has to amount to something–perhaps increased foot traffic, virality, more likes/follows, or what have you–that would spell growth for the brand or company they represent.

Takes advantage of every opportunity

Content hackers see every step they take as an opportunity for growth. Suffice it to say, they are very much opportunistic, in the sense that, they take advantage of contacts, networks, meetings, and leads and turn it into solid connections that they can benefit from in the future.

Of course, this is done by offering something in return as well. For example, turning a contact into a connection can be done by offering to do a guest post on another business’ blog and in return, you can have inbound links for your site.

SEO minded and data driven

SEO should be far ingrained within a content hacker’s arsenal. Even as a content marketer, SEO is an important element that should always be involved in creating content. And as a content hacker crafts and works on producing content, they should be able to properly assess the best optimisation techniques needed to give their business that extra boost.

On top of this, a true content hacker doesn’t just stop once they’ve hit publish on their content. They continue the work by measuring the reach and effectiveness of what they’ve created, identifying which aspects to replicate and which ones to improve on. Scalability is of utmost importance for content hackers and it’s a continuous cycle they embark on in order to come up with the very best content to produce.

Makes sustainability the goal

In line with having a growth mindset, a content hacker also makes sustainability their goal. This means that in creating their content strategy, a content hacker is rightfully focused on planning not just for the near future and immediate results, but also for long-term success of the brand through content creation.

Having sustainable content means that they’ve managed to identify content that’s tailor-fit to their target audience, which in turn allows for continuous engagement from readers and customers.

True north is sharable content

So what is the bottomline mission for a content hacker? It is in having sharable content.

Having sharable content entails different factors that play into creating a really engaging piece of content. This includes, but is not limited to, having supporting graphics and images, creating customised or localised content, putting in videos, having a higher word rank of up to 2,000 plus words, headlines that start with numbers, and so on and so forth.

All of these are part of continuous building on the benefits of their content, even long after they’ve published it.

Conclusion

Think of a content hacker as a content creator on steroids. And those steroids are comprised of growth, metrics, and sustainability.

More than relying on tools, being a content hacker is all about having a focused mindset. A mindset that’s eating, breathing, and living growth day in and day out as they plan, craft, create, and publish content targeted to engage their audience.

Therefore, in saying this, being a content hacker is not so much paying for software programs or increasing knowledge. Those are just a part of it. What it truly takes to be a successful content hacker is in changing and upgrading to having a growth mindset and apply that to every step of the content creation process.

The post How to Be a Successful Content Hacker appeared first on Creativ Digital.

5 Ways on Keeping Your Site Relevant This 2018

We may be two months already in the new year but it’s never too late to start updating your site to keep it relevant this 2018.
Updating your site becomes even more important, especially if you haven’t done any major changes and improvements during the past year–or years.
Not only has web design evolved, but so has optimisation, user experience, and content creation, all of which play a big role in building a website that your target audience would want to go to and stay in.
So what does it take to transform your site and keep it all the more relevant this 2018? We’ve listed 5 key factors for you to work on starting today.
Mobile and Beyond
When we recommend that you improve your mobile site, we don’t just mean making it mobile-friendly or responsive. At this point, your site has to be mobile optimised as well, especially in preparation for Google’s Mobile-First Index that’s bound to come out this year.
This time around, it’s not just about adjusting how your desktop site appears on mobile devices or being content in simply having a mobile version of your site. To keep your site relevant–and ranking–this year is by optimising your site to carve out a seamless user experience for your customers.
It’s making sure that the way customers navigate through your site would be so much easier and accessible, that it’d only take a few clicks for them to go from one page to another or even browse through products, hit add to cart, and then proceed to checkout. Not only that, but it’s in never losing sight of what your goals are, which is to engage your site visitors and keep them locked in through the design, format, navigation, and so on.
Video Content
It’s been predicted that by the end of this year, more than 80% of traffic will be directed towards videos–and it’s not hard to see why.
Videos are an elevated form of content that proves to be more effective in conveying a particular message in comparison to just using words. Brands that utilise video within their web content, whether it’s in blog posts, landing pages, product demos, or even client testimonials, tend to garner higher click throughs, engagements, and conversion rates.
Best way to go about it is to know how to diversify your content and what type would best suit different messages that you want to deliver to your audience. Of course, don’t drown them out with a barrage of videos. Choose which information would engage your target audience more if it is done through video and go for that.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence is a term that gets thrown a lot these days, especially in the realm of startups and tech. It’s quite daunting to even think about integrating AI into your website if you don’t know anything about it. But before you panic, what AI mostly means for your website–at this point–is having chatbots and live chat for better customer experience.
It’s a common practice for more modernised sites these days to have that small pop-up, usually on the lower right, that comes with a friendly message asking if you need help. Having customer service automated right on your site makes your products/services all the more accessible to those who step foot on any of your landing pages.
Just be careful in implementing a chatbot on your site. At some point, it may get too annoying for your customers, which would then make them just want to leave your site, proving your efforts to be more counterproductive than beneficial.
Data Security
It’s been reported by Marketing Profs that 2018 is the year where data security would be a primary concern among site visitors. This is even more relevant for sites that require visitors to provide their personal or financial information.
There were quite a lot of security breaches that were made public last year, even involving companies from the big leagues. This makes visitors wary of just how much they can trust various sites with their privacy, which then directly affects the chance that they’ll turn into paying customers.
There are many ways to work on securing information on your site and you can start with using HTTPS to keep online transactions safe, as well as information forms. You’ll also need to have trusted certificates and compliance put on display on your site such as the Payment Card Industry Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), basic SSL-Level security, as well as other pertinent certifications to keep your site secure and maintain your customers’ trust.
Voice Search Optimisation
Another factor that experts predict to become more prevalent this year is voice search and the need for voice search optimisation. This arises from the increasing dependence of users on mobile devices or voice assistants (e.g. Amazon Echo, Google Home), as well as the call for a much more convenient user experience.
Compared to traditional SEO keywords and phrases used for text optimisation, voice optimisation requires a more coherent structure of words and phrases. This pertains to questions that their target audience might ask or certain inquiries that they may need in relation to the products and services that your business is offering.
Before you worry about having to deal with even more optimisation for your site, all you need to do is conduct a general search for common queries and assess how they would be structured when done through voice search. Do take note that voice queries tend to be more conversational in tone and have a longer format than your usual keywords and phrases.
Conclusion
These five factors are just the tip of the iceberg in enhancing your site to keep it relevant this 2018. The most important thing is to always stay in the know of all updates and changes happening this new year in order to not get left behind the optimisation game.
The post 5 Ways on Keeping Your Site Relevant This 2018 appeared first on Creativ Digital.

Top 5 Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid With Content Marketing

Content marketing proves to be a valuable area on which businesses can bank on to not only to improve their rankings, but also contribute to increasing their foot traffic and conversion rates. Combine quality content marketing with an effective SEO strategy and you can expect your website to gain authority within your niche.

However, some content marketers still fail to hit the jackpot with the content they’re producing. What’s worse is that they fail to recognize their errors or oversights, which cause them to not get their expected SEO results.

If you can relate to this sentiment, you may want to take a closer look at these five common SEO mistakes that content marketers make and should highly avoid.

Mistake #1: Overly optimising content with keywords

Thanks to the rise of keyword usage, marketers have honed in on using these words and phrases as much as they could with every piece of content they produce. From landing pages to blog posts, keywords became the priority, instead of focusing on producing high quality content.

Let’s establish that keywords do indeed help in optimising content, but it’s not the be all and end all of content optimisation. In fact, pieces that don’t have widely used keywords can still make it big with high quality content. This means prioritizing how your content is structured, the substantial information it contains, and just how much relevance it can truly offer to your audience.

Mistake #2: Failing to boost old, yet still relevant, posts

Every piece of content you publish matters. This includes even those old, yet still highly relevant, pieces that would prove to be beneficial to your audience today as it was in the past. And this is why it’s important to find ways to promote old content to drive traffic and establish your authority.

One way of doing so is including some references and links to newer pieces of content. You can also re-promote them through social media platforms or include them in your regular e-newsletter blasts. It’s a great way to double your optimisation efforts, as well as in building your site’s credibility.

Mistake #3: Focusing too much on length of content

Long form or short form? Marketers, copywriters, editors, and content creators have long debated which length of content would prove to be most effective in engaging readers. The answer? Both has its merits–and both has its downsides.

Again, there is too much focus on the length–as with keywords–and not so much on the quality and substance of the content itself. Forcing a writer to stretch out their ideas into a multitude of words, when in fact it could be done with a shorter version would feel contrived and unnecessary to a reader. The same goes for compressing relevant information into a shorter piece, when it would be best suited having a longer explanation. The key is to be flexible enough with the length and strategic enough to know that quality trumps all–including keyword usage and word count.

Mistake #4: Overlooking the importance of internal linking

Prioritising getting external links over internal ones are much too common an oversight among bloggers and marketers. Although external linking is really proven to be highly beneficial in gaining authority, internal linking shouldn’t be overlooked as well.

Once you’ve managed to gain traction with external linking, you can then build on internal linking, which could even solely help your site rank higher. This is because internal links alert search engines on which pages are deemed important. One effective way do implement internal linking is by linking to old posts, as what’s previously been mentioned.

Mistake #5: Not producing content frequently

Regardless if you’re writing a well researched long-form content with all the right keywords, it would prove to be ineffective for your site if you post very rarely. Surely, there are special cases in which infrequent posting can still garner links and traffic but studies point to those that post more frequently earn higher foot traffic and engagement.

Find the number that’s optimal and most beneficial for your brand to engage your customers without overwhelming them with a barrage of content here and there. Not only is this advantageous in making sure that your audience stays connected with your brand, but it also bodes well in optimising your site for search engines.

Conclusion

There are many ways to succeed in content marketing and SEO but part of that success is ensuring that you also avoid committing these common mistakes, among many others errors that content marketers often overlook.

If you’re finding it hard to get the results you’re aiming for, SEO-wise, then it may be best to go back to the drawing board and reassess at your strategy, at what you’re doing correctly, and what you’re doing wrong–or not doing at all. Only through this can you be fully aware of even the slightest hint of oversight that may be costing your whole SEO and content efforts.

The post Top 5 Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid With Content Marketing appeared first on Creativ Digital.

Best Methods In Optimising Content for Voice Search

The concept of voice search optimisation has been gaining more traction recently, especially after Google’s very own John Mueller provided suggestions on what works for Voice Search during a Webmaster Central Hangout.

While it’s not exactly what we’d call the future of SEO, voice search has become even more prominent due to the increased use of mobile devices and voice assistants like the Amazon Echo and Google Home. And since queries done through voice search is vastly different from simply typing it in on a search engine, it’s important to know how to get your site on top of the results whenever a user asks something from Alexa, Siri, or what have you.

To prepare for the rise of voice search, better take note of the following methods that are best used in optimising your site and content.

Use Structured Data

Even without the goal of optimising for voice search, you should’ve already implemented having a schema markup, also known as a structured data, to optimise your site for search engine rankings.

A structured data, which is metadata implemented on your site’s source code, provides data about the information found on your site. This would be extremely helpful if you’re focused on creating content that’s specially targeted towards your primary audience, since it helps Google–and other search engines–direct them towards your site.

So how can it help voice search? Voice queries have a lot to do with users wanting to find local businesses. Through implementing structured data, you can ensure that search engines would be able to identify the important information regarding your business such as operation hours, contact information, address, and so on.

Optimise Your Business Listing

In line with having structured data, there are other ways to optimise your business listing to make it easier for your customers to find you.

Improving your business listing includes claiming your Google My Business listing that’s complete with accurate name, address, contact number information, as well as other pertinent data such as industry categories and writing a packed introduction on the field provided for. It’ll also boost your ranking to have positive reviews in order for Google to recognize your business as something that would best deliver what the users want.

Pay attention even to the small details such as ensuring that your business info is accurate across several platforms, choosing the right categories, using high-res photos, and so on.

Go With a Question & Answer Format

One important characteristic that differentiates voice search keywords from your conventional search engine keywords is having that conversational tone and longer sentence structure–often times, in the form of a question.

This is why it may do well for your site’s content to strategically place a question, and naturally follow with the right answer. One way to start is to think of how you would ask for the products and services that your business offers. Getting into this mindset will help you reformat your keywords in such a way that reflects how your customers would structure their voice queries.

For example, you offer nutritional products. You may want to use a question such as “What is Intermittent Fasting?” as your title or headline and then proceed to offer a short yet substantial information right on the first paragraph before you dive into breaking down its components.

Improve Your Mobile Site’s Responsiveness

You simply can’t run away from needing to optimise your mobile site. The benefits of having a mobile responsive site is so vast, it even includes voice search optimisation as well.

This is really no surprise since most voice searches are done using mobile devices. Just one question could instantly direct a potential customer to your site and you’ll want your site to offer them with a seamless user experience, so they won’t look anywhere else.

Part of optimising your mobile site is ensuring that the pages load fast. People have very short attention spans, especially those using their phones, and you’ll want to give them what they want when they want it in order to increase foot traffic and conversion rates.

Conclusion

We may not know just how much bigger voice search could get in the near future, but it wouldn’t hurt to act on it now, while its popularity is still on a steady rise among users.

Considering that SEO involves continuous updates and changes, all you need to do is to go back to your strategy and incorporate voice search optimisation techniques. It may prove to be an added challenge on your quest to get high rankings, but the benefit would surely outweigh the cost of your effort, especially in the long run.

The post Best Methods In Optimising Content for Voice Search appeared first on Creativ Digital.

How Are Taxi Booking Apps The Smartest Solutions To Travel?

Travelling to a new city? If so, then certainly you need to book the ride for easy travel. But sometimes, chasing down a cab on the street, or calling a cab make the travel a bad tale.
How?

In case you have hired an unregistered taxi by hailing a cab, then at first, you may end up paying too much for cab fare as they won’t play by the rules. If the registered taxi is booked by calling a cab, then drivers start the meter from the time they are called for pickup. The excuse of not having small change will eat up some of your bucks. Also, they do take a long route to drop you to the destination, which increases the meter readings. Sometimes, security issue as well.

That’s really a taxing situation for the travelers. Here, the automate taxi mobility solution is a panacea. What is the taxi booking app? Take a sneak peek at it.

The taxi booking app development is the holistic solution that connects passengers and cab drivers. It allows the passengers or travelers to search, book and pay for the ride at the fingertips. The real-time taxi booking on mobile has ended up the daunting task of waiting for a taxi and make the taxi stand at the desired location at the right time.

There are a lot of taxi booking apps like- Yellow taxi, Uber, Lyft and Hailo which have eased the travel, and made the ride booking convenient by providing Taxi Booking App Builder to the taxi companies. This way life gets much simpler and easier.

Let’s quickly glance at what are the changes these taxi booking apps brought to the passengers or traveler’s lifestyle, which has made the taxi companies to embrace it:

• Best way to get a ride

Now, taxi booking is just a tap of a button away. The passengers can book the ride for now or pre-book the ride for a scheduled trip alongside indicating the special needs such as bulky luggage or wheelchair they have.

It ends up hailing a cab and then waiting for it as the cab will arrive at the pickup location in a couple of minutes. This way passengers can have the cab 24/7.

• Know your driver before the drive

There is a straightforward method to book the ride. The passengers look for the taxi in the nearby area and then sent the booking request to the multiple drivers. The driver who accepts the request first will get booked.

The passengers can view the drivers’ profile, picture, ratings and the feedback provided by the previous passengers. The information alleviates any confusion that the passenger may have in mind and they can confirm the booking undoubtedly.

• Get fare estimate in advance

Many times, the notorious drivers play with regulations like- taxi fare is high during weekends or extra will be charged for the luggage or the meter is broken so an average amount will be taken from you at the end of the journey. These are actually the tricks to charge two to three times of the fare from you.

With the taxi mobility app, no such high price bomb will be thrown at the passengers as the app enables the passengers to get an estimation that how much fare they have to give once they enter the pickup location and destination. There will be no cheating and just fair prices will be charged!

• No more guessing for taxi delays

After booking the ride, the passengers wait for the drivers to come and pickup, but sometimes the wait is elongated to an hour and they don’t know where the driver is and how much time it takes to arrive at the location. Besides, communication with the driver is also problematic, if the driver is sent by the Taxi dispatch system.

The situation will turn upside down when the ride is booked with a mobile app. The passengers can track in the real-time where the driver is and can communicate with him by in-app texting or calling. The real-time tracking also helpful during the drive to know whether the driver is taking the right route or not. It’s safer!

• Pay the way you want

“I have no change” or “Tip” are some of the ways to put an extra hole in your pocket by the drivers when you are paying cash. The mobility solution takes the payment processing to a whole new level. Now the choice is completely of passengers.

When the passengers reached the final destination, they can either pay with cash or use the card to pay the taxi fare. Once, the fare is paid, the receipt is sent as an email to the passengers.

• It’s a ride that you can trust

Unquestionably, safety is the major concern that the passengers or travelers have when they are making a trip to a new place. From start to the end of the journey, the doubt in mind ruins the fun of the expedition.

Again, the taxi solution excels. It’s ensured by the companies that the ride is safer and it’s something on which the passengers can trust. With GPS tracking, the taxi companies would have complete information of before, during and after the trip. So, they know which driver has made the booking for which journey, what route the driver has taken and where the taxi is in the real-time. Consequently, the million of safer rides are completed every day!

• Plan the trip on your own

There is no optimal way to reach the destination or check out the buses or routes at new locations. Here, the navigation travel app helps. It lets the travelers plan the trip, exact the current location, decide from where to start the journey, which bus stops would pass by and how much time it will take to reach the destination, all in the palm of their hands.

The post How Are Taxi Booking Apps The Smartest Solutions To Travel? appeared first on Creativ Digital.

5 Web Design Blunders That Make the Entire Website Look Dumb

Have you ever watched a film so dumb that it is actually good?

Perhaps yes. There is a separate genre of movies that focus on nonsense comedy which does look dumb but serves the purpose of entertaining people.

But, web designing does not follow the same. If you commit a mistake that makes the whole design look nonsensical, it can damage your credibility along with the goodwill of your organization. Well, it is true that web designing is a strenuous job, and at times, some silly mistakes skip the notice of even the most skilled professionals.

So before you can even take measures to prevent these blunders, you need to acknowledge them first. And in this blog, we will be trying to identify the mistakes that make a web design look stupid.

1. Repetitive clicks
Anyone, who has been into doing web design for a considerable amount of time, knows that increasing the number of clicks to get to the required information turns users off.

However, a lot of web designers (willingly or unwillingly) build the pages in isolation and forget to consider the route to the content which is getting longer with the inclusion of each page.

If you are a user, and you have to click through several pages to get to the information you need, will you consider the website for further use? Perhaps not.

So when you are working on an educational website like essay or assignment help services, examine how the users reach the desired content, and see if a more direct approach can be introduced to make it easier for the users.

2. Forgetting the primary elements
It may be a completely different approach for some businesses, but ignoring the primary design elements (navigation, brand name, information accessibility, etc.) of the website is one of the common mistakes that make the presentation look weird.

Usually, when a web designer introduces too many customizations on a website, it often ends up distracting the readers from the actual content.

However, a user may also get repelled if the website does not include the primary elements of web designing. Ideally, there should be a balance. Otherwise, the page may end up looking dumb.

While talking about the use of design elements, it is also necessary to mention about the graphics, images, banners and other essential elements as well.

You are creating the website for your audience. So your intention should be to make the website make more appealing to the audience and pushing them to take the desired actions.

3. Faulty filters and facets
The purpose of facets and filters is to enhance the user experience by narrowing down their search and helping them find the desired resource, product or quality website content writing.

However, these facets and filters can ridicule the entire web design if there is an error while setting up the filters in the first place.

The filters and facets help define the search space for the users, but there needs to be separate approach while working in the different contexts.

For instance, you may like to include separate filters when you are designing a page for computer hard disks. It won’t work if you add the same filters here which you used for the apparel category.

How would you feel if you want to locate a fine dining restaurant, but the top 10 results don’t even have restaurants on the list? You get the point, right?

As a web designer, you need to tag the content correctly and reliably so that when a user searches using a filter, he/she gets the right kind of results. You don’t want the website to look stupid in front of the consumers.

4. Making it hard to find the information
As mentioned previously, it is crucial to understand that the convenience of the user should always be your priority as a web designer. If the user has to work hard to find the desired information, it means you have failed as a web designer.

Ideally, a homepage should provide the user with the links to the pages like FAQs, How It Works, Contact Us, etc. which are the major things that users look for in a page.

When you are creating the navigational layout for a particular website, you need to consider the most frequent needs of your target audience and make the corresponding pages easy to locate.

If you can’t fit all the necessary links on the homepage, at least put the search bar. That way, the users can at least locate the things they are looking for with a direct approach.

5. Not keeping the website up-to-date
As a web designer, you must be familiar with the fact that in order to sustain in the dynamic environment, you need to keep the website up-to-date.

Whether it’s the theme of the website, the plug-ins or the other crucial aspects like the license – everything needs to be updated in compliance with the requirements of the consumers.

If you are designing a website that seems outdated in comparison to the latest websites, it would seem pretty stupid from the consumer’s point of view.

Thankfully, the web designing platforms like WordPress and others can auto-update their crucial elements once they are configured properly. So that saves you from the embarrassment.

However, you need to install real-time protection like iThemes Security or Wordfence along with a CAPTCHA option to strengthen the security of the website and keep the automated attacks away.

Bottom Line
They say, “To err is human…” – Everyone makes mistakes, but you aren’t allowed to make blunders that make the whole organization (for whom you are making the website) look dumb in front of the audience.

So do review your work, once you finish designing a website. It will not only help you improve your work, but will also save you from a lot of embarrassments.

The post 5 Web Design Blunders That Make the Entire Website Look Dumb appeared first on Creativ Digital.

6 Ways to Boost Your Email Marketing Campaign This 2018

Email marketing still proves to be a viable marketing strategy up to this day but pulling off a successful campaign is another story.

As with other forms of marketing such as web design and content marketing, the goal is to create the best user experience to win customers over. And as it follows, brands and businesses that cater to delivering the most engaging and beneficial inbox experience to their target audience wins.

Get the lowdown on how to win your customers over with email marketing with these six ways to boost your email campaign for 2018.

1. Avoid Getting Marked as Spam
Sometimes, all it takes is one look at the title for your customers to mark an email as spam. On top of that, do make sure to go by ethical practices in sending email such as getting permission to send, setting clear expectations, providing an opt-out option, and providing substantial content, just to name a few.

2. Focus On Acquiring Quality Subscribers
A list with fewer subscribers that consist of your core audience is far better than having a massive yet generic list. Prioritise building on a list with the “right” subscribers to which your brand could truly offer something of value to. Of course, you have to actually deliver on that promise in order to increase your conversion rates.

3. Add a Human Touch to Your Marketing
Don’t just bombard your audience with charts, graphs, and technical information ‘cause those don’t impress them much and would even turn them off–or hit the “unsubscribe” button. Humanize your message by presenting substantial data that appeal to their behavior in order to deliver a more authentic approach.

4. Think What Would Benefit Your Customers
In line with humanizing your campaign, also try your best to put yourself in your audience’s shoes. This way, you’ll be able to grasp what information and message you should be sending them on a regular basis. What would keep them engaged? What would make them interested? What is it that they’d want to know more about? Be generous about it and you’ll be surprised at how well they’d return the favor.

5. Personalise With Purpose
Personalisation is a big part of delivering an authentic message, as opposed to simply pushing and promoting your business endlessly to your subscribers. Make the effort to personalise your message, as though you’re having a one-to-one correspondence. Personalise your emails seamlessly and strategically–but without sounding creepy or overkill.

6. Don’t Forget to Automate and Scale
As you automate and measure your other marketing initiatives, don’t forget to do the same for your email marketing campaign. Tracking your audience’s behavior can lead you to a perfectly timed automated message that would be received well by a potential customer.

Conclusion
Remember that the end-all be-all of your campaign is in understanding the behavior, wants, and interests of your target audience and not simply by building a generic list of subscribers.

Email marketing may just be your key to improving your conversion leads and experience a significant increase in sales opportunities, so it’s important to pay attention on how to make it as effective as can be with regards to appealing to your target audience.

The post 6 Ways to Boost Your Email Marketing Campaign This 2018 appeared first on Creativ Digital.

Improving SEO Ranking Through Backlinks

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a way of increasing a website’s search rankings, making a website easily searchable in the process. One of the many ways to increase a website’s ranking is by containing words or phrases a person will type in search engines. The more searchable a website gets, the more profitable it becomes. The competition in this area could be challenging; site owners must be updated on the most searched words on a regular basis to be able to maintain its ranking. The good news is that investing in SEO does not cost so much, the main investment in this area is utilising backlinks, a well-thought marketing plan that is free for everyone.

What are Backlinks?

Hyperlinks found on one website leading to another are considered as the building blocks of a successful SEO campaign, they are called backlinks. Backlinks are classified into two types:

Outbound Links are links that come from your website that sends a reader away to another site. The use of these links is not all bad, you could redirect your visitor to a partner company, for example. If you have a travel blog site, make use of outbound links to lead visitors to an airline company. This will make your site look more reliable and will also give your readers a broader idea of their searched topic. It is important to keep in mind that outbound links are not meant to direct your clients to your competitors.

Inbound Links serve as another method of web navigation. They are links from another site that generate traffic to your website. Inbound links increase web traffic and help you get a better search ranking. This means that the more inbound links a website get, the more relevant it becomes for search engines. A “good” inbound link is a link that comes from established sites like government and media websites.

What are DoFollow and NoFollow Links?

DoFollow and NoFollow links hold equal importance in the world of SEO. NoFollow is an HTML value that can be inserted to tell search engines that a hyperlink should not impact the link target’s ranking in SERP. It is designed to lessen the use of certain types of search engine spam to prevent spamdexing, hence improving the quality of search engine results. If you are directing your readers to a spam website for any reason, it is advisable to use a NoFollow link tag.

Dofollow links give search engines the go-signal to “follow” them and reach a website, giving them credits and a backlink. All the hyperlinks are DoFollow by default. So, you don’t need to do anything to make a link a DoFollow.

Important Points to Consider

Now that you have an understanding of what backlinks are, here are a few reminders before working on your SEO plans:

* You must ensure that all links used are of high-quality to make your site trustworthy. Remember that the best promotion is an excellent and dependable content.

* Take note of the advantages and disadvantages of the DoFollow and NoFollow links. Although a follow link may count as a boost to your search ranking, it makes your site prone to low-quality references. Outbound links that contain a well-thought NoFollow tag ensures that the links in your site are relevant and original.

* Put your attention to organic backlinks which are relevant and influential to create a positive impact on SEO.

* Your website must be original and must contain only relevant information so that your visitors and subscribers are encouraged to share your site’s link.

The post Improving SEO Ranking Through Backlinks appeared first on Creativ Digital.