Tag: Improve

What’s the Best Way to Improve Credit Score for You and Your Business?

If you are thinking of starting a business, you are likely thinking about funding.  Can you afford to start a business?  If you have a good credit score you probably aren’t worried. If your credit score isn’t great, you may be wondering “What’s the best way to improve credit score in time to start a business?”  

Best Way to Improve Credit Score, Both Personal and Business

The thing is, that’s the wrong question. You need to be asking yourself “What’s the best way to improve credit score for myself and my business?”  Whether your business is brand new or fully established, it needs a strong business credit score to thrive. 

Many business owners do not even know that their business can have a credit score.  They assume everything rests on their personal credit.  Others know their business can have credit all it’s own, but do not truly understand how a business gets its own credit score. That knowledge is key to learning the best way to raise your credit score and how to build a strong business credit score.

Keep your business protected with our professional business credit monitoring.

Personal Credit Score vs. Business Credit Score: What You Need to Know

Your business credit profile is the overall picture of the creditworthiness of your business. Lenders look at it to determine whether or not they want to lend to you.

To better understand the best way to raise credit score for your business and how it is different from your personal credit score, you need  to understand some of the differences between business credit profiles and personal credit profiles.  There are many, but these specifically seem to cause a lot of misunderstanding and confusion among borrowers when they get a funding denial. 

How You Establish Each Type of Credit Profile

The biggest and probably most misunderstood difference is in how you establish the two profiles with their accompanying scores. Pretty much everyone knows that with your first debt, usually a credit card, you begin building your personal credit score.  If you handle your credit responsibly, you will have a good score. If you do not, your score will be bad.  

You do not have to do anything to open a credit profile for yourself.  As you pay your debt, the creditor reports your payments, or lack thereof, and your score builds from there.  Such is not the case with your business credit profile. 

You have to intentionally set up your business in a way to establish your business credit profile.  This means fully separating it from yourself as the owner by having separate contact information, an EIN, and D-U-N-S number, incorporating, and opening a separate bank account.  In fact, this is the first best way to improve your business credit score.  Before these things are done your business will have no credit profile or credit score of its own. 

Late Payments

Both business and personal credit reports are affected greatly by late payments. Yet, business credit scores are affected faster and more profoundly. Late payments are not reported to personal credit reports typically until they are 30 days past due. Late payments on business credit accounts are reported if only one day late.

Inquiries

Hard credit checks on your personal credit will lower your credit score. However, business credit reports are different. A credit check on your business credit profile does not affect your business credit score. 

Data Reported

In addition to late payments being reported much more quickly, accounts on your business credit profile are listed by industry.  In contrast, personal credit lists the name of the company that issues the credit.

Also, personal credit reports show the exact amounts of accounts, while business credit reports show rounded amounts. How long data stays on a personal credit report varies, but typically it’s the life of the file. Information stays on business credit reports an average of 3 years.

Keep your business protected with our professional business credit monitoring.

Also, with personal credit accounts,  almost every account reports to the credit reporting agencies. In contrast, only about 7% of business credit accounts report to business credit reporting agencies. This is why you have to intentionally seek accounts that will report to business credit reporting agencies (CRAs), and that is only one of many reasons working with a business credit expert is the way to go.  

One last thing to note about business credit versus personal credit is this. While your business credit profile is totally separate from your personal credit profile and does not affect in any way, the reverse is not true.  Your personal credit information can affect your business credit profile, and in some cases, even your business credit score. 

Best Way to Improve Credit Score: Personal 

Most people know many ways to do this, but what is the best way to improve credit score on your personal credit profile?  Frankly, it’s to pay your bills consistently on-time.  That said, sometimes that isn’t the problem.  Furthermore, sometimes you need to make other improvements while you work on paying on time. 

Personal Credit Score Monitoring

This is easy and free. You can get a free copy of your credit report annually.  The first thing you need to do is look over it for mistakes. If you find any, contact the CRA in writing. Send with your letter copies any documents you have to support your case. This may be receipts, bank statements, anything that proves that what you are saying is a mistake is indeed a mistake. 

After that, look closely for what else could be causing issues.  Is too much available credit being used? Are there too many late payments? The best way to fix this is take a long, hard look at your budget.  Cut wherever you can to start making more than the minimum payments. 

A good strategy is to put all available extra cash on the highest interest debt.  Then, when that is paid off, put that entire amount, extra plus the minimum, on the next highest interest debt, and so on.  This is called the snowball method, and it can help you raise your credit score significantly if you stick with it. 

After that, there are many free apps to help you track your personal credit score throughout the year. This is the best way to get credit score information on a regular basis. Typically, you can get a snapshot of what your credit looks like once a month with these, and if you pay a fee you can see it in real time. This can let you see if your efforts are working, and show you if something is amiss. 

Best Way to Improve Credit Score: Business

Understanding how your business credit score is different from your personal credit score helps a lot. For example, now that you know that a business credit account can report a late payment even one day late, you can plan accordingly.  

Furthermore, knowing that not all business accounts report lets you know that you need to intentionally look for those that will report to raise your score.  

There are a few ways to do this. First, talk to any vendors you already have a relationship with.  Ask them to report your payments to the business CRAs.  They don’t have to, but they may.  It can only help you. 

Next, talk to utility, phone, and internet providers. You pay them monthly already.  Ask them to report those payments.  Again, they do not have to. Still, if they agree, it can only help you. 

After that, actively seek out accounts that report. The problem is, most vendors do not make it publicly known whether or not they report. This is just one of the many ways a business credit expert can be helpful. They have inside information and relationships with vendors to help you get this information and more.

Keep your business protected with our professional business credit monitoring.

Business Credit Score Monitoring

This is a whole other ballgame. First, business credit score monitoring is never free.  You may be able to get a peek as a one time free trial promotion, but for the most part you have to pay to see what is on your business credit profile.  One exception is, if you get a loan denial because of what a lender sees on your business credit report. They have to disclose that, and you can get a free copy of your business credit report as a result. 

While all the major business CRAs offer credit monitoring services, they are pricey. Credit Suite offers business credit monitoring for a fraction of the price. 

Follow the same steps as you would with your personal credit profile. If you see a mistake, contest it.  Each of the bureaus has directions on how to do so on their website. 

There is More Than One Best Way to Improve Credit Score, and More Than One Credit Score to Improve

All the best ways to get your credit score up involve one thing, knowledge. First, you have to know how to see what is one your credit report.  Then, you have to know what to look for so you can know what the problems are. After that, you can fix them. One thing remains true however.  The hands down best way to improve credit score, whether personal or business, is to pay your debt on time.  If you need help on the business side, Credit Suite has you covered. Talk with one of our qualified business credit experts today!

The post What’s the Best Way to Improve Credit Score for You and Your Business? appeared first on Credit Suite.

Improve Your Chances of Getting a Loan with Small Business Lenders

Small Business Lenders Have the Money You Want

Can you improve your chances of getting a loan from small business lenders?

Small Business Lenders, Business Loans, and Funding

Of course you know your business needs money. But business lending doesn’t just come from banks. Still, working to make your business more attractive to lending institutions isn’t just an end unto itself. It will also help your company also become more attractive to nontraditional lenders. It may even help make your business more attractive to prospects. There are factors which are within your control and you can help your business right now.

Start Making it Easier to Get Money from Small Business Lenders

Once you understand what banks and lenders are looking for, you can address their concerns directly. Many of these are actions you only need to take one time, and many of them will also help you to convince prospects to buy from you, thereby helping you recoup any incurred costs.

Working to More Easily Get Money from Small Business Lenders: It All Starts with Fundability

Fundability is the ability of your business to get funding. When lenders consider funding your business, does it appear to them to be a good idea to make the loan? What do they look at to make that determination? Fundability means recognizing what’s important to lenders, and then giving them what they want.

How Does a Business Become Fundable?

You probably already know that a great business credit score is important. But many of the aspects necessary for a strong business credit score work for fundability as well. A potential creditor or lender needs to see your business is legitimate and profitable. Many loan applications get denials due to fraud concerns. Others, simply because something didn’t match up and threw up a red flag.

Your Business Setup

A business must be set up to appear to be a fundable entity separate from you, the owner. The first step is to ensure your business has its own phone number and address. That doesn’t mean you must get a separate phone line, or even a separate location. You can still run your business from your house or on your computer.

Business Phone Numbers

You can get a business phone number that will work over the internet instead of phone lines. This is called a VoIP (voice over internet protocol). The phone number will forward to any phone you want it too so you can use your personal cell phone or landline if you want. Whenever someone calls your business number it will ring straight to you.

Virtual Offices

Use a virtual office for a business address. A virtual office is a business that offers a physical address for a fee. They sometimes they even offer mail service and live receptionist services. There are some that offer meeting spaces for those times you may need to meet a client or customer in person.

But not every vendor will accept a virtual address.

Business Website and Email

A business website can affect your ability to get funding. But a poorly put together website that appears unprofessional will not help you with customers or potential lenders. Spend the time and money necessary to ensure your website is professionally designed and works well.

Along these same lines, your business needs a dedicated business email address. Make sure it has the same URL as your website. Don’t use a free service like Yahoo or Gmail.

Demolish your funding problems with 27 killer ways to get cash for your business.

Improve Your Chances of Getting Money from Small Business Lenders with Business Information and Consistency

All your business information should be the same everywhere you use it. But when you start changing things up like adding a business phone number and address or incorporating, you may find that some things slip through the cracks. This is a problem because many loan applications fail each year due to fraud concerns simply because things do not match up.

Consider all the places where this information could be.

Credit providers won’t stop to consider all the ways you could list your business. If you write Incorporated in one place, and Inc. in another, it can be enough to trigger a denial. Consistent and congruent information makes it fast and easy for credit providers and lenders to find your business and its payment history.

Fix Inconsistent Information by Getting Organized

Consider all the places where your business has a listing. It’s your website, credit applications, even places like Yelp and Google Reviews. Take the time to keep records of all of these places, so Google your business often. Claim your profile on review sites to better control how your business name, address, and other particulars are presented. Copy and paste your information. Don’t chance an error with typing it out. This also means updating info whenever it changes.

Get an EIN

An EIN is an identifying number for your business that works like how your SSN works for you personally. Many sole proprietorships and partnership use their SSN for their business. But it can cause your personal and business credit to get mixed up. When you are looking to increase fundability, you need to apply for and use an EIN. Get one for free from the IRS.

Demolish your funding problems with 27 killer ways to get cash for your business.

Incorporate Your Business

A lot of businesses start off as sole proprietorships. But there’s no separation between the owner and the business with this setup. Partnerships are another entity where the ownership and the business are more intimately connected. With either entity, any other efforts at separating business and personal credit could be all for naught.

Why Incorporate?

A corporate structure truly separates business and personal credit and finances. This is because a corporation is considered to be its own entity. Should you choose a C-corporation, an S-corporation, or a limited liability corporation? That’s up to you to decide. We highly recommend working with a corporate lawyer or an accountant to determine what’s best for your particular situation.

Why Should You Incorporate Quickly?

When you incorporate, you become a new entity. Hence if you haven’t incorporated ASAP, you lose the time in business that you have and must start over. You also lose any positive payment history you may have accumulated.

Hence you must incorporate as soon as possible. It’s not just necessary for fundability and for building business credit. Time in business is also vital. The longer you have been in business the more fundable you appear. That starts on the date of incorporation. This is regardless of when you actually started doing business.

Improve Your Chances of Getting Funding from Small Business Lenders with a Separate Business Bank Account

There are business owners who pay for business expenses with personal credit cards and checks. But a business’s credit file is only supposed to reflect the financial performance of the company itself. Using personal payment methods can muddy the waters. Resist the temptation to pay for any business expenses with personal credit or checks.

Separate Your Business and Personal Finances

Your business must stand or fall on its own financially. Once you get credit from starter vendors or any other business or lender, use it on your business, and stop floating what are essentially interest-free loans to your business.

Get a Merchant Account

Another way to assure your finances get and stay separate is separate bank accounts. Often, a starter vendor will want for your business to have its own bank account anyway. While you’re at it, open a merchant account so you can take credit cards from your customers. Customers will spend more if they can pay with plastic.

Improve Your Chances with Small Business Lenders and Get all Required Licenses

Fundability means being a legitimate business. For a business to be legitimate it must have all of the necessary licenses it needs to run. If it doesn’t, red flags will fly up all over the place. Do  research to ensure you have all the licenses necessary to legitimately run your business at the federal, state, and local levels. Being properly licensed can help assure skittish prospects that you and your business are legit.

Get a D-U-N-S Number

In addition to the EIN, there are identifying numbers that go along with your business credit reports. Some are assigned by the agency, like the Experian BIN. Dun & Bradstreet is the largest and most commonly used business credit reporting agency. Every credit file in their database has a D-U-N-S number. To get a D-U-N-S number, you must apply for one through the D&B website.

Demolish your funding problems with 27 killer ways to get cash for your business.

Business Credit Monitoring

The key to keeping records consistent is to monitor your reports frequently. Monitoring your credit means you know what’s going on with it. You can pounce on errors quickly. Yes, the business CRAs make them, but they are all committed to accuracy and want to correct those mistakes ASAP.

When it comes to business credit reports, you can monitor through the reporting agencies directly. But that’s expensive! Or you can save 90% and monitor through Credit Suite.

Improve Your Chances with Small Business Lenders with a Good Business Credit History

Your credit history has a lot to do with your credit score. It is a huge factor in the fundability of your business. The more accounts you have reporting on-time payments, the stronger your credit score will be.

Your credit history consists of a number of things including:

  • How many accounts are reporting payments?
  • How long have you had each account?
  • What type of accounts are they?
  • How much credit are you using on each account versus how much is available?
  • Are you making your payments on these accounts consistently on time?

Personal credit scores come from several metrics. But business credit mainly depends on one thing, how early or late you pay your credit bills. Paying late will damage your business credit scores at all three of the major CRAs.

Improving Your Business’s Payment History

Here are a few suggestions on how to improve your company’s payment history:

  • Set up reminders to pay – your phone or your business calendar are both fine
  • Set aside money for your credit bills as a part of your budget so you’re not caught short
  • Shop around for better deals and spend less if you can
  • Repurpose older equipment or the like to avoid spending in the first place

Improve Your Chances with Small Business Lenders by Building Business Credit

Business credit is credit in the name of the business, not its owner(s). It’s a measure of how well your business (not you) pays its bills. Properly created business credit separates personal and business credit completely. So if your business defaults on payments or goes bankrupt, it protects your personal assets.

Good business credit is the way to qualify for funding without good personal credit, collateral, cash, or a guarantor. Here are some tips on building business credit to improve your chances for financing from small business lenders.

Buy from Vendors and Other Credit Providers Which Report

While many vendors and credit providers don’t report all payment experiences, they have no problem reporting late and missing payments. So, seek out and mainly (if not 100%) work with vendors which report. These are called starter vendors. Their requirements change all the time. Fortunately, we know which vendors report, and we keep up with their ever-changing requirements.

Spread Out Your Credit Applications Over Time

Asking for too many lines of credit at once signals that you’re desperate and could be overextending yourself. Building a successful business takes time. In the same way, so does building a good business credit profile. As a result, spread your applications for additional lines of credit over time.

Applying for a lot of credit at once also means you’ll have a number of brand-new accounts, which will bring the average age down. Not using your credit can result in credit providers closing inactive accounts. This, too, brings the average age down.

Use Your Credit

Business credit isn’t going to be built if you get cards and then forget about them and never use them. The business credit reporting agencies are calculating your scores based on the credit you use. Using your credit, and paying on time, is positive fodder from business credit scores and reports. You can’t control the passage of time, but you can control card usage and not apply for every credit card you see all at once.

Finally, Apply for the Right Loan

Do you need a traditional loan or a line of credit? Would a working capital loan or expansion loan work best for your needs?  Choosing the right product to apply for can make all the difference. Don’t waste yours and the lender’s time by not considering the best loan product to apply for.

Improve Your Chances for Approvals from Small Business Lenders: Some Takeaways

There are steps you can take to make it more likely your business will get a loan. These steps may also help your business become more appealing to prospects. They also help with building business credit. And applying for the right loan product will also help improve your chances of getting a business loan from small business lenders.

The post Improve Your Chances of Getting a Loan with Small Business Lenders appeared first on Credit Suite.

How to Understand and Improve CTOR (Click-to-Open Rate)

Email marketing is one of the most important strategic channels in a marketer’s toolkit. According to UK DMA, 91 percent of marketers rate email as their most important channel, followed by social media at 83 percent. Email marketing’s success rate comes from its high ROI, which DMA states comes in at around $58 for every …

The post How to Understand and Improve CTOR (Click-to-Open Rate) first appeared on Online Web Store Site.

How to Use Machine Learning to Improve Your Digital Marketing

Machine learning is on the verge of transforming the marketing sector. In many ways, it’s already started. According to Gartner, 30% of companies will use machine learning in one part of their sales process by 2020.

What’s more, these companies are using machine learning to get ahead of competitors by tackling some of marketing’s toughest challenges, such as personalization, instant customer support, and big data.

In other words, machine learning isn’t just for computer scientists. Marketers should sit up and take notice. Below, I’ve covered five ways you can use machine learning to supercharge your digital marketing efforts.

What Is Machine Learning?

Before we get into the marketing side of things, let’s take a second to establish what artificial intelligence and machine learning are.

Artificial intelligence is simply any form of intelligence demonstrated by a machine instead of the natural intelligence displayed in humans and animals. When most people think of artificial intelligence, they think specifically of computers that replicate some level of human intelligence, like a chess-playing computer I mentioned in the introduction.

Machine learning is a branch of artificial intelligence that enables systems to find new and better solutions automatically by learning from mistakes and experiences. The more data and experience a machine learning algorithm has access to, the better it becomes in the future.

Machine learning systems can largely be divided into two subsets: guided and unguided. Guided machine learning systems are supplied with data sets and solutions by humans in the first instance. They are taught which patterns to look for initially and will then get better at identifying those patterns going forward.

Unguided systems are given access to unsorted and disparate data sets and are left to decipher patterns independently without guidance from humans. Unguided systems will create an algorithm and then look for ways to improve it going forward.

Using Machine Learning to Improve Your Marketing

We know that marketing teams don’t want for lack of data. Marketers struggle with making sense of all the data they have at their fingertips and then putting that data to use. This analysis is where machine learning comes in.

The primary reason to add machine learning to your marketing stack is that it can make sense of vast amounts of data much faster and much more effectively than humans.

Machine learning can use data to identify patterns and make predictions almost instantly. Marketers can then use these insights to optimize a huge portion of their workflow, from running more tests and improving their website’s UX to personalizing the customer experience and automating consumer engagement.

The long and short of it is machine learning can be used to improve just about every part of your digital marketing efforts. Below we discuss five of the most important ways.

Analyze Data Sets

However you use machine learning in your marketing efforts, the process will probably begin by analyzing data sets.

For instance, machine learning can be used to analyze and find user activity patterns on your website. Rather than sifting through data in your Google Analytics profile yourself, a machine learning algorithm could do the job in seconds, predicting future user behavior and identifying patterns that you can use to optimize your site.  

Sure, humans are perfectly capable of analyzing data themselves, but you can’t do it half as fast or accurately as AI-powered solutions.

Marketers can also use machine learning to gain a better understanding of their customer base.

Take customer segmentation, for instance. Dividing up your audience into different groups can make your marketing efforts much more effective, but it’s time-consuming to do so yourself. On the other hand, a machine learning algorithm could automatically segment your customer base based on actions and behavioral patterns that you couldn’t hope to identify.

Create and Optimize Content

You don’t need me to reiterate the importance of content in your digital marketing efforts. However, you may need clarification on how machine learning can improve what you write and publish and why using machine learning in your content marketing strategy is essential.

For starters, machine learning can help your articles rank higher in search engine results. It’s one thing to be a great writer; it’s another to write in a way that pleases Google, so it rewards you in the SERPs. You need to make sure you use all relevant keywords, discuss every relevant topic, and cover all of your bases in general.

That’s pretty hard to do without smart content creation tools like Frase.io, which uses machine learning to compare your content against Google’s top results and make sure you hit all of the relevant points.

Machine learning Frase

Second, you can have machine learning algorithms write content for you. Phrasee is an AI-powered copywriting tool that uses machine learning to create email subject lines and push notifications that its algorithm believes will drive the highest ROI.

Machine learning AI Copywriting

You can even use AI to help you curate content for your customers. Curata offers a machine learning content curation software that helps marketers find and publish the most relevant and engaging content for their audiences.

Machine Learning Curata

Increase Personalization

Personalization matters for consumers. Research by Accenture shows 91% of consumers prefer brands that remember who they are and provide relevant offers and recommendations as a result. What’s more, if they don’t get a personalized experience, over half of consumers are only too happy to switch to a competitor.

Here’s the good news: machine learning lets you deliver the most personalized customer experience possible. You can employ a machine learning algorithm that tracks user behavior on a granular level, learns what products they like, and creates a personalized homepage and recommendation list as a result.

Amazon, for instance, uses AI algorithms that take into account the purchase history of users, the items in their cart, and their viewing habits to offer the product recommendations that are most likely to convert.

The same algorithm could also generate personalized offers for every customer and email them to consumers when they are most likely to purchase.

Improve Marketing Automation

Better personalization is one way machine learning can transform how your brand engages customers, but it’s not the only way. AI and machine learning can also be used to better automate your marketing efforts and significantly improve customer engagement as a result.

Let’s say you automatically send an email to customers when they sign up for your newsletter or abandon their cart. While most brands will send a generic email, companies that adopt machine learning can tailor content and offers based on that consumer’s browsing history. If they looked at your brand’s range of dog toys before signing up for your newsletter, a relevant offer on chew toys would make them much more likely to re-engage with your brand.  

For SaaS brands, AI-powered marketing automation tools can analyze much larger and disparate data sets to better segment leads. This allows sales reps to prioritize those leads that are much more likely to convert.

Marketing automation is incredibly powerful. According to Invesp, marketing automation leads to an over 14% increase in sales productivity and an over 12% reduction in marketing overhead.

It’s entirely possible to do this without machine learning, but AI makes your automation efforts much more personalized and much more powerful.

Utilize Chatbots

Chatbots are a powerful customer service tool. Eight out of ten consumers who have engaged with them report a positive experience. If you run an online business, they are all but essential.

With chatbots, you don’t have to have a human on-hand to respond to consumers. Instead, machine learning-powered chatbots can automatically answer consumer queries with a scarily-high rate of accuracy. That’s because your chatbot will learn from your website’s content and the conversations it has with consumers to constantly improve the answers it provides.

Because the chatbot is continuously learning and improving itself, it will deliver an even better customer experience with more conversations. You may want to have your chatbot pass an incredibly complicated query onto a human at first, but soon the bot will become so effective there’ll be no need for a human to interject.  Eventually, you’ll have a smart enough chatbot to upsell the consumer, not just answer their questions.

Consumers probably won’t be able to tell they’re speaking to a robot, either. Some chatbots, like IntelliTicks, employ another branch of AI, Natural Language Processing (NLP), to have human-level conversations with customers.

What’s more, data gathered by AI-powered chatbots can be analyzed by another machine learning algorithm to generate insights that marketers can use to optimize their efforts going forward.

What is the Future of Machine Learning?

Things move fast in the world of machine learning. Expect advances in marketing AI to happen rapidly.

Improved unsupervised machine learning algorithms are in development right now, for instance. These algorithms don’t need input from humans at the start, making them much easier and faster for marketers to implement.

Personalization will become even more powerful, too. Machine learning algorithms will become better at discerning what consumers want for one, but the ways they can be integrated with online stores will improve, too. Soon, marketers will be able to customize every part of their sites for individual users, much like social media timelines are personalized for every user.

Finally, expect big advances in mobile machine learning. AI-powered digital assistants will become a more prominent part of our life, and marketers will have to develop strategies to contend with this. Mobile applications will also be able to integrate machine learning features in the same way websites can right now.

Don’t get overwhelmed, however. Before you start worrying about what the future holds, work your way through the suggestions I’ve made above first. You’ll then be ready for whatever occurs in the future.

Conclusion

It’s clear: machine learning can transform your digital marketing efforts.

Don’t rush into the world of machine learning, however. Adopting solutions without first understanding how the technology works and its role in your company will typically do more harm than good.

Machine learning is powerful, but it isn’t a silver bullet. Adopt one solution at a time, however, and you’ll be fine.  

Continue your education by reading my articles on AI’s role in SEO and AI-powered digital assistants.  

Which machine learning strategy are you going to implement first?

The post How to Use Machine Learning to Improve Your Digital Marketing appeared first on Neil Patel.

How to Use AI SEO to Improve Your Website

The internet has become the go-to source for everything from trivia about celebrities to fixing our kitchen sinks. But AI SEO may be changing the way marketers help their sites rank high on search engine results pages (SERPs).

Failure to rank may result in your business missing out on valuable search traffic. Which means far less revenue for your business.

For a long time, you could get by with basic SEO strategies.

But not anymore.

With artificial intelligence (AI) taking over the world, you need to up your game.

What does that mean for your SEO strategy?

What is AI?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is an umbrella term that covers several different technologies, including machine learning (ML), computer vision, natural language processing (NLP), deep learning, and other, still emerging technologies.

What’s the point of AI?

AI has one principal goal – to perform (often laborious and mundane) cognitive tasks better and faster than humans. It is a technology designed to make our work and life easier.

In business, AI has already proven to be effective in increasing revenue.

In sales and marketing, 30% of AI adopters cited a 6-10% increase in revenue after implementing the technology.

impact of ai

These are pretty impressive results.

And yes, AI can also be beneficial to your SEO.

But, will AI replace SEO?

Emphatically – no!

Let’s talk about how AI is impacting SEO and why it won’t be taking over.

What is AI SEO?

AI has become a core component of major search engine algorithms, including Google’s Rankbrain and BERT.

This factor means if you understand AI and how it impacts search engines, you can boost your SEO using AI.

But that’s not all.

AI is also an excellent tool for data analysis, which is a significant part of designing an effective SEO strategy.

From helping you spot trending topics to discovering content gaps, you can do tasks faster and more efficiently with AI-powered SEO software.

AI and SEO are a match made in digital heaven.

Why is AI SEO Important?

Although both AI and SEO are complex disciplines, used together, they make it easier for you to boost your website’s rankings.

One thing to keep in mind about search engines is they always put the user first. They aim to deliver content that’s as relevant as possible.

Because of this, SEO is not just about keywords anymore. It’s about:

  • Concepts: What is the idea behind the searchers’ query?
  • Context: What is the intent behind the searchers’ query?
  • Customer satisfaction: What are the most relevant answers to the user’s query?

So, keyword stuffing doesn’t work anymore (and hasn’t since Hummingbird). For your content to rank, you need a great link building strategy and to optimize for AI-powered search engines.

Today (and in the future), one of the main factors that impact ranking is user experience. And AI is one of the best ways to provide website visitors with a positive experience.

Let’s quickly look at six ways it can help boost your SEO.

AI SEO: 6 Ways to Use AI to Improve Your Website

Now that you understand what AI is and how AI SEO can impact your site, let’s look at a few ways you can use AI SEO to keep up with modern SEO tactics.

Opportunity Discovery With AI SEO

One of the most important aspects of SEO is discovering hidden ranking opportunities that haven’t been exploited.

That’s one of the areas artificial intelligence SEO is proving to be effective in helping boost your website’s rankings. Powerful AI-powered SEO tools have emerged in the last couple of years, giving you more in-depth insight into:

  • Keywords you should be targeting
  • Link building opportunities

These and other insights that you can get from AI-powered SEO software are crucial to crafting a content strategy that will exponentially boost your website’s SEO.

With the competition to rank becoming fiercer by the day, you need to find keywords, topic ideas, and other SEO opportunities that aren’t too common.

Find opportunities that your competition is not exploiting, and you’ll have a much better chance at ranking.

Granted, finding these opportunities manually takes a lot of creativity, time, and hard work.

However, with the help of AI-powered SEO software, like BrightEdge, you can uncover golden SEO opportunities faster.

This is one of the main reasons AI must be a part of your SEO strategy.

Content Creation With AI SEO

Discovering content opportunities is only a small part of the battle to dominate the SERPs.

You also have to create content that hits the mark.

This is where AI can help improve your SEO.

How?

Once you’ve used a tool like BrightEdge to find keywords, you can use AI to help you know what kind of content you should create.

Once fed with your target keyword, AI-powered tools scour the web for content created around that keyword. In a few seconds, you’ll find:

  • Content gaps to exploit
  • Trending topics
  • The average number of sections to include

With insights like these, it becomes easier to create content tailored to solve specific problems for your audience, in short, personalized content that satisfies user intent.

Not only that, but AI can help you ensure that the content you create is relevant for each stage of your funnel.

Content creation is no longer just about creating poor quality content that ranks. It’s about creating content that users will find helpful.

And that’s exactly what AI will help you do.

Content Optimization With AI SEO

For a long time, content optimization has been about keywords, internal links, backlinks, and other on-page SEO tactics.

Those things still matter.

But search engines now look at more than just those indicators. Search engines are getting better at figuring out precisely what searcher’s intent is while searching.

How can you optimize your content for user intent?

You guessed it – with the help of AI.

AI SEO tools help you:  

  • Create topic clusters that answer user questions and rank
  • Know the optimum length of content on your given topic
  • Use keywords and LSI keywords correctly

With AI, you can optimize your content to meet Google’s E.A.T standards found in their search quality raters, guidelines. You can create content that expertly answers user queries authoritatively. And that’s the kind of content Google loves to serve its users.

But AI doesn’t end at helping optimize content for search engines. AI-powered writing tools like Atomic Reach and Grammarly (among a slew of others) also help ensure your writing makes for a pleasant read.

AI seo example grammarly

This also helps increase dwell time, another factor that indicates to search engines that your content is useful.

The bottom line is AI can help you create better optimized content that your readers will love and engage with.

Optimizing for Voice Search

One of the fastest evolving areas of search is voice search.

With more people relying on their voice-activated devices to search the internet, voice SEO (VSEO) has become an aspect of SEO you can’t ignore anymore.

Just take a look at how fast the number of voice-activated assistants is rising:

ai seo voice assistants

Statista forecasts that the number of voice assistants globally will reach 8.4 billion in the next few years — which is more than the world’s population.

Most voice searches are in the form of questions, so one of the main ways to optimize for VSEO is by answering the questions people are asking.

This is where AI tools come into play.

For example, tools like Frase help you create VSEO optimized content by showing you the questions searchers are asking. You can then create content around these questions.

frase ai seo

Another aspect of voice search is that it’s conversational. This is where AI principles like NLP come into play.

AI-powered content tools like Grammarly and Hemmingway can help you create more conversational content by recommending tone changes and highlighting hard to read passages.

One thing to note about VSEO is that it is hyper-competitive. That’s because voice assistants only give one answer – the one right at the top of the SERPs.

This means you have to pull out all the stops to ensure you rank well for VSEO.

Scale Your SEO

A significant part of SEO is tedious manual labor that has made it difficult for marketers to achieve results quickly.

AI has changed that.

AI-powered tools have taken a lot of the grunt work out of SEO by gathering data, analyzing it, and translating it into actionable steps,

More than that, however, you’ll find that artificial intelligence SEO software, like Alli AI, can help with your technical SEO as well. For example, it can help you:

  • Conduct website audits
  • Automatically optimize content
  • Fix duplicate content issues

On the on-page SEO front, AI SEO software can help you scale your content creation by analyzing top-performing content. The software can then help you create content strategies and briefs for optimized content.

As a result, you can quickly scale your SEO efforts — without overworking your team.

AI can take over the laborious, mundane, and time-consuming (and sometimes soul-sucking) aspects of SEO. This will free up your team to do other things that need human attention.

User Experience

Remember – Google’s (and other search engines) primary focus is the user.

This means user experience (UX) is a crucial element of SEO.

That’s probably why, in a rare announcement, Google let people know that page experience will be a significant ranking factor starting from the year 2021.

But what is page experience?

According to Google, page experience is a set of signals that measure a user’s satisfaction (or lack of it) when interacting with a web page. This goes beyond the page’s informational value.

It takes into account the overall UX the page provides.

Of course, pages with negative user experience won’t rank and those that offer users a positive user experience.

Where does AI come into play here?

With search engines thinking more like real human users, they can determine whether your page will provide users a positive UX or not.

This means when a user inputs a search query, search engines want to make sure they serve up:

  • Relevant and authoritative content
  • Pages with proper structure
  • Pages with easy navigation
  • Pages that load fast
  • Mobile-friendly websites

If users can enjoy a personalized experience on your website, this will increase dwell time and encourage sharing your content. Both are signals to search engines that your content is worth ranking higher on SERPs.

Today’s AI-powered SEO tools, like Market Brew, can mimic search engines and give recommendations on what you can do to improve your website’s UX.

As a result, you don’t have to guess whether the SEO gods will smile on your website with favor or not. You can know what pleases them (to a greater degree) and implement that on your website.

Conclusion

Ready or not, the future of SEO is here.

And it’s just two words – artificial intelligence.

By marrying these two disciplines, you can create a robust SEO strategy that’s bound to get you noticed. More than that, it will help you build a loyal audience.

Of course, for every business, that translates to a healthier bottom line.

Have you embraced the power of AI SEO yet?

The post How to Use AI SEO to Improve Your Website appeared first on Neil Patel.

How Pinterest Story Pins Can Improve Your Marketing

Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat tend to dominate the social media marketing discussion. Pinterest, it seems, is tired of being underestimated.

They’ve recently launched a new feature that has the opportunity to change the world of Pinterest marketing. So, what is it, and what do you need to know about the latest Pinterest feature?

Whether you’re a seasoned Pinterest veteran or new to the social media platform, Pinterest Story Pins offer an exciting opportunity to interact with your audience and gain more exposure for your brand.

Story Pins allow you to offer more value to your followers, inspire action, and, more importantly, drive traffic to your website.

This new feature will soon be commonplace on the platform, so here are some tips to help you get the most out of Pinterest Story Pins.

What Are Pinterest Story Pins?

Story Pins are the latest feature from Pinterest that allows brands to create the “inspirational” content your followers want. As opposed to a regular pin, which is just the one image or video with a description and link, Story Pins allow you to incorporate multiple pages of images, videos, text, and links.

Made up of between five and 20 slides, Pinterest Story Pins give you the chance to tell a story and engage your audience in much greater depth. Unlike Instagram and Facebook stories, they don’t expire after a set period of time.

Story Pins also allow users to publish unique content directly in Pinterest, rather than just distribute content published elsewhere.

This provides the perfect platform to showcase content that’s longer and more in-depth than your regular pins and leads people to your website content.

Here’s an example of a Story Pin for a luggage review:

Pintereststorypinexample1

They can also be used for travel guides, like this one from Edinburgh Insider Guide:

pinterest story pins example2

For businesses, Story Pins represent an excellent opportunity to showcase expertise and engage people with valuable content.

With the ability to include more multimedia, more text, and more links, you can grab people’s attention, get them engaged, and then get them clicking to your website.

Who Can Use Pinterest Story Pins?

Pinterest Story Pins are still gradually rolling out, so it’s not available in all countries yet.

Many creators in the US were invited to get an early look at the Story Pin feature, but if you don’t have access yet, you can submit a request on the Pinterest website.

pinterest story pins screenshot from website

The request takes a few seconds to fill out, and you will find out if you can get access to Pinterest Story Pins in five to seven working days.

Early access will allow you to look at this exciting new feature and understand how it can work for your business before everyone else starts seeing the benefits, so it’s well worth the effort.

Once you’ve been granted access to Story Pins on Pinterest, then you’re free to get your creative juices flowing and see just what great content you can fit into 20 pages!

How to Prepare Your Business for the Rollout of Pinterest Story Pins

While you’re waiting to hear back from your request to unlock the Story Pins feature, there are plenty of things you can be doing to get ready. Story Pins might be a new feature to Pinterest, but at the end of the day, it’s still Pinterest, so you have a good idea of what works and what doesn’t.

Before you jump headfirst into Story Pins for Pinterest, make sure you’ve got a clear plan of how you will use them. Here’s how to get started.

Understand Your Audience

Pinterest allows you to reach a vast audience, but this is only valuable if you’re reaching the right people with the right message. If you’re going to engage the right people, you need to understand what your audience looks like, and what kind of content they want.

If you have an established business, you already have access to a massive audience data, so make the most of your analytics. Use your Pinterest analytics, other social analytics, and your website data to better understand your audience and the content they’re looking for.

Before you get started with your Pinterest Story Pins, make sure you can answer these six questions about your audience:

  1. Who are they?
  2. What are their greatest difficulties/problems/desires?
  3. Where do they find the information they need?
  4. What are the benefits of your product for them?
  5. What negatively draws their attention?
  6. Who do they trust?

Get Your Multimedia Ready

With Story Pins, Pinterest actively encourages fresh new content, so give them what they’re looking for by getting all your images and videos ready. Low-quality multimedia doesn’t do well on Pinterest (or any social platform,) so make sure you’re investing in high-quality photos and videos.

Keep your audience in mind when you’re shooting your images and video and giving them something that will inspire them into action.

You’ve got so much freedom now that you can use up to 20 slides, so use your creativity to make your new Story Pins stand out.

Make Use of Pinterest Analytics

Pinterest has ramped up their analytics in recent years, and you can find extremely helpful insights here. Story Pins might be a new feature, but the things that made your old pins successful in the past are still working today.

Use Pinterest Analytics to find out which pins have been successful for you in the past.

To view analytics, sign in to your Pinterest Business account, and click on Analytics.

pinterest story pins how to see analytics

From there, you’ll be able to see which Pins get the most views and engagement.

pinterest story pins analytics example1

Once you see what Pins are most popular, think of ways to successfully transition them into Story Pins. For example, can you turn a DIY post into a Story Pin with detailed instructions?

This is a great way to expand on some of your most popular content and give it a chance to reach a broader audience.

It might be your first time using Pinterest Story Pins, but you can make sure you hit the ground running by leveraging content that is already working well.

Why Should Your Business Use Pinterest Story Pins?

Pinterest Story Pins are still in their infancy, which means there’s not a great deal of data to act upon at the moment.

However, similar features have been a huge hit on other social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, with millions of active daily users. Pinterest has put a lot of effort into creating its own version.

This suggests Pinterest will push the story feature (like Instagram did) and ensure Story Pins get a lot of attention.

Aside from the fact that Pinterest is invested in Story Pins —  they’ve been trialing them in different markets for over a year now — these new pins seem to have plenty of business benefits.

With regular pins, you don’t have much time to earn someone’s click – your image, video, or a short piece of text have to do all the hard work for you. However, with a story pin, you’ve got so much to keep your audience engaged with.

You can also include multiple links, which gives you a much better chance of driving your audience to your website. From here, you control the customer journey, and you’re in an excellent position to achieve your goals.

Long story short: You want to get clicks to your website, and to do this, you need to engage your followers with valuable content; Story Pins are an excellent opportunity to do this.

When Should You Use Pinterest Story Pins?

Regular Pinterest pins are ideal for traditional Pinterest content like recipes and DIY tips. However, Story Pins are a brilliant resource for “how-to guides,” which you can do in any niche.

For example, a story on “How to Create Perfect Pinterest Story Pins” is ideal, with videos and text showing the steps to create engaging Story Pins.

This is an excellent opportunity to rework some of your blog posts and turn them into easy to consume social posts. If you’ve got how-to guides, recipes, list posts, longer DIY guides, travel tips, or even detailed reviews, then you have the makings of a great Pinterest Story Pin.

You’re still going to want to produce regular pins, with short, snappy, actionable messages, but use Story Pins to go into more detail.

Story Pins are like a bridge between your regular pins and your full-blown content, and it’s a great way to push your audience over to your website to consume more content.

How to Create a Pinterest Story Pin

You’re all ready for Pinterest Story Pins, you’ve narrowed down your audience, got your creatives ready, and you’ve just been granted access, so how do you create your first story pin?

From your Pinterest business account, you can create Story Pins on desktop or mobile.

Create Pinterest Story Pins On Desktop

  1. Click the Create button in the top left-hand corner and select Create Story Pin.
  2. Add up to 20 images or videos.
  3. Design your pages. You can change the layout, add text overlay, adjust/resize your image, and add more pages.
  4. Add extra text to help inspire your audience.
  5. Select your story pin title, choose which board you’re going to pin to, and add tags to help people find your pin.
  6. Click publish.

Create Pinterest Story Pins On Mobile

  1. Click the + button at the bottom of the screen and select Story Pin.
  2. Decide what your pin is about; choose from “recipe,” “crafts + DIY,” or “something else.”
  3. Select your photos and videos from your library.
  4. Get creative with your design by selecting your cover photo, resizing images, and adding text overlay to bring your Story Pin to life.
  5. Add the finishing touches by coming up with a title for your Story Pin, choosing which board to pin to, adding extra details, and making your story pin discoverable with tags.
  6. Click publish.

What Makes a Successful Pinterest Story Pin?

A successful Pinterest Story Pin is all about engagement. Pinterest stories give you the ability to hold people’s attention for longer, giving you more time to inspire them to take the action you want them to take.

Your Pinterest analytics will give you a lot of insights into how your Story Pins are performing, but so can your website. You want your pins to do well on Pinterest and get lots of impressions and link clicks, but we can track this further and see how people interact with our website when they come from Pinterest.

If you’re creating amazing Story Pins that inspire people with your message, it should result in people clicking to your site and spending a good amount of time engaging with the content.

Track this in your Google Analytics by going to Acquisitions, then Social Channels, and Clicking on Pinterest.

pinterest story pins how to check traffic

Through a combination of your Pinterest analytics and your website data, you can get a good feel for how well your new Story Pins are performing.

Tips on Creating Pinterest Story Pins

The big aim with Story Pins is engagement, but how exactly can you go about achieving this? You have the opportunity to grab people’s attention and hold it, but there are several things your Story Pins need to accomplish this:

  • Have high-quality visuals
  • Draw people in with catchy titles
  • Deliver on people’s expectations
  • Go more in-depth than the average pin
  • Supplement visuals with helpful text
  • Ooze creativity
  • Inspire action

You’re telling a story through your Story Pins, and like any good story, there are lots of different aspects that need to come together. By combining great visuals with catchy titles, informative text, and plenty of creativity, your pins are going to stand out and encourage your audience to take the actions you want them to take.

Conclusion

Pinterest Story Pins are a great new feature to help businesses engage better with their target audience. Although the new feature is still rolling out, you can request access and get ahead of the competition.

With Story Pins, you have another way to grab people’s attention and get them engaging with your content. In many ways, they’re even more effective at doing this than regular pins, so make sure you’re taking advantage of it.  

Pinterest is the latest social media platform to bring out a story feature, and the chances are this format is very much here to stay. Story pins will become a big part of the Pinterest platform, so you might as well start mastering them now by giving your followers the fantastic, in-depth content they’re looking for.

Have you started to use Pinterest Story Pins yet?

The post How Pinterest Story Pins Can Improve Your Marketing appeared first on Neil Patel.

How Google Local Guides Improve Visibility

As a business owner, you know reviews and fresh content are essential to your success.

Suppose you’re passionate about promoting your business. In that case, you likely spend a lot of time creating new blog articles, crafting social media posts, or developing video content to keep your audience engaged.

But there’s another, more passive promotion method that can help grow your business and boost your local search results: Google Local Guides.

Launched in 2015, Google Local Guides—also known as Google Guides—took over where Google Cities left off. If you’re unfamiliar with it, the closest comparison is the Yelp! Elite Squad.

Google Guides allows users to add reviews and other content in exchange for various perks ranging from storage space to clothing.

Since its launch, the Google Guides community has proved hugely popular. There are 120 million local guides, spanning 24,000 cities and towns.

There are several potential benefits of Google Guides for your business and its online visibility.

Let’s take a closer look at the Guides system.

What Are Google Guides?

The idea behind Google Guides is simple. It uses user-generated content (UGC) to enrich the information available on Google Maps.

Or as Google explains it, Guides are:

… a global community of explorers who write reviews, share photos, answer questions, add or edit places, and check facts on Google Maps.

Guides’ additional content can increase your business’s visibility and make it easier for consumers to get the information they need.

Becoming a Local Guide is simple. Potential Guides sign up through their Google accounts, choose their locations, and be ready to go.

Once signed up, members of the Google Guides community receive points for each action they take.

All Guides start with zero points and work their way up through 10 levels, earning various perks along the way.

Creating Lists

Once Guides reach level four, they can start to add lists. These lists may consist of favorite places, destinations the guide plans to visit, and saved locations.

As you might expect, each list a Google Guide adds must meet specific requirements. To be eligible for publication, Google state a Guide’s list must:

  • have a title (i.e., a custom list, not be included in Want To Go or Favorites);
  • include a minimum of four places; and
  • be shared publicly.

Google Guides Perks

One aspect that makes Google Guides appealing to its members is the perks. Although these can vary from time to time, examples of the incentives include:

  • early access to new Google products
  • free music trials
  • discounted video services
  • storage space
  • partner perks
  • digital newspaper subscriptions
  • t-shirts and socks

Other bonuses include invitations to the Google Guides convention or Connect Live events, which are open to a limited number of community members.

There’s also an active online forum that helps fuel the community feeling and allows guides to share tips, favorite images, and other information.

How Do Google Guides Points and Levels Work?

Community members start at level one and can work their way up to level 10, which offers a maximum of 100,000 points.

google guides profile example

To try to ensure that Guides play by the rules, Google will close an account if a Guide violates the program’s policies.

Some violations that may get a guide removed from the program include:

  • participating as a business
  • duplicating reviews
  • spamming the site
  • posting offensive content
  • adding inaccurate information
  • including unnecessary keywords

How Does Your Business Benefit From Google Guides?

Since you can’t take part as a business owner, you might be wondering how Google Local Guides can help you.

Let’s start with one of the most crucial elements for businesses today: getting found online.

Increased Visibility

With most consumers heading online to search for local businesses, and mobile search on the rise, increased visibility is more critical than ever before.

This is where the content Google Guides compile can prove invaluable to your business and potentially help your local search rankings.

A Google my Business Insights Study revealed that high-quality images are vital to your listing.

The survey revealed that profiles with more images receive increased clicks, queries, and inquiries for directions.

Let’s look at the stats. Businesses with over one hundred images received:

  • 520% more calls than average
  • 2,717% more direction requests
  • 1,065% more website clicks

In addition, the research suggests several search benefits from image-rich Google My Business profiles.

Businesses with more than 100 images received:

  • 960% more search views
  • 3459% more map reviews
  • 1038% more direct searches

Although Google Guides and Google My Business are different products, they’re closely correlated, with both providing information for Google Maps.

This insight means the more detailed information about your business on Google Maps, the higher the likelihood consumers will find you online—and offline.

The Ability to Keep Your Profile Updated and Accurate

As we explained at the start, Google awards points for editing listings.

Making sure your details are updated is imperative because inaccurate information such as out-of-date phone numbers or an old address reduces the likelihood a customer will find your business offline.

Besides editing listings for errors, Google Guides can correct omissions. This added detail is essential in attracting new customers.

google guides local listing error review example

Statistics from Google show that 67% of your listing visitors would not feel the need to conduct further research if the profile includes essential information such as:

  • opening hours
  • locations
  • images
  • consumer reviews

The same study shows that 41% of users who come across an incomplete profile would continue with their research and leave the business’s profile, possibly depriving the business of an opportunity to gain a new customer.

Online Reviews

You know positive reviews inspire customer trust, but they can also help you get noticed online.

In an increasingly digital world, this online validation for your business is vital because:

  • 93% of consumers say online reviews affect their buying decisions
  • 91% of consumers value online reviews as much as personal recommendations
  • 90% of consumers will read reviews before visiting a brick-and-mortar business

Google is the first place consumers go to read reviews these days.

The search engine leads the way in online reviews, with over 60% of would-be buyers heading to Google when considering making a purchase.

Although there has been some debate about just how critical reviews are to SEO, Google confirms they play an indispensable role in local search:

High-quality, positive reviews from your customers will improve your business’s visibility and increase the likelihood that a potential customer will visit your location.

Additionally, research from Moz confirms the importance of online reviews to SEO. Their 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors report found reviews account for 15% of local ranking factors.

Dealing With Negative Reviews

No matter how dedicated you are or how well you run your business, getting a negative review at some point is almost inevitable. It can hurt you personally, and you may be concerned that it can harm your professional reputation.

Let’s try to put this fear to rest.

Despite what you may think, your business needs negative reviews. Negative reviews allow consumers to make informed decisions. They also enable buyers to understand what could go wrong during a transaction, helping manage their expectations.

Instead of worrying about potential low reviews, your best approach is to positively and objectively respond to reviews.

Ask yourself:

  • Does the reviewer have a valid point?
  • Is it an issue you can address to make the experience better for the next customer?

All that said, there’s one type of negative comment that may concern you more than any other: the fake review.

Unfortunately, getting unwarranted negative feedback removed from Google Guides isn’t as easy as it could be. If the review violates Google’s terms, it will likely be removed.

But there’s no reporting option for fake reviews.

The best option may be to approach a Google Guides moderator. However, that doesn’t solve the problem of potential reputational damage over fake reviews.

Business owners can expect to, but this process is often time-consuming and frustrating for business owners who’ve experienced it.

How to Get Google Guides to Engage with You

You now know the benefits of Google Guides for your business. But how do you get them to find you and engage with you?

If you want to get more actively involved, that’s an option.

Here’s how to approach it.

Take Part in Meetups    

Businesses are welcome to partner with local guides for meetups, and even offer special discounts to them. Getting to know local guides is an excellent way for your business to engage with them and build relationships.

However, you’ll want to make sure that your company and the Guide adhere to Google policies. This means:

  • Local Guides mustn’t accept sponsorship in return for a positive review
  • Guides can’t accept payment for hosting the meetup
  • if your business sponsors the meetup or provides goods or services, Google Guides must clarify this in their meetup descriptions.

Also, Google Guides at level three and up qualify to host meetups, but they must get approval first.

Optimize Your Google My Business Page

Despite the apparent advantages of optimizing Google My Business, research has found over half of local businesses hadn’t claimed their listings.

Optimize Your Business Map’s Listing

Optimizing your map doesn’t just make it easier for locals to find you; it also makes it easier for Google Guides to discover your business.

To make your site stand out, optimize your Google map listing by:

  • adding imagery
  • responding to reviews
  • completing your profile
  • keeping your profile updated

Stress the Importance of Reviews to Your Business

There isn’t anything wrong with explaining to your customers how important reviews are to your business. However, be careful about the way you approach it.

If you need some basic guidelines on getting more reviews, Google has these suggestions:

  • Begin a conversation with your shoppers about reviews.
  • Make leaving feedback easy.
  • Share positive reviews.
  • Respond to online feedback.

Conclusion

Google Guides can help you attract new interest in your business. But you may be unaware of the potential advantages of being profiled by local guides.

Businesses with an increased amount of user-generated content (UGC) stand to benefit from increased consumer confidence in their brand, enhanced trust from Google and potentially improved local search rankings.

As a result, your business may experience an increased number of queries, enhanced visibility for your goods and services, and more visits to your offline store.

Do you have experience with Google Guides? Feel free to comment below.

The post How Google Local Guides Improve Visibility appeared first on Neil Patel.

9 Ways to Improve Organic Reach and Beat the YouTube Algorithm

As the most-viewed site globally, YouTube is a must-visit destination for marketers and content creators looking to increase audience reach.

While it is possible to optimize YouTube SEO to score top results, without an understanding of the YouTube algorithm, SEO alone won’t manifest videos on a potential viewer’s suggested video list.

YouTube’s product chief underlined the reality of the impact of suggested-to-watch videos in an interview, noting 70% of a user’s time spent on the platform was dictated by the company’s suggested video algorithm.

70%. That number is huge.

To truly execute a successful YouTube marketing strategy, improve organic reach, and take advantage of that massive percentage, you need in-depth familiarity with the unique YouTube algorithm. Here are nine ways to increase your organic reach on YouTube.

The YouTube Algorithm’s Evolution

What began as a venture capital-funded technology startup in 2006 is now our go-to spot for all things video.

Although YouTube itself has undergone significant changes over the past fifteen years, its algorithm has, by far, been its most dynamic feature.

Before 2012, YouTube charted video success by the number of views alone, regardless of the length of viewing. This singular YouTube algorithm led to a profusion of clickbait videos that relied upon misrepresentative headlines and thumbnails to earn views, with most audience members jumping ship immediately.

Later the same year, YouTube began measuring success through view duration, a metric that rewarded longer-viewed videos with increased search promotion.

Today, we still see the roots of the platform’s infancy in the current YouTube algorithm, which draws heavily on view duration as a component of a video’s ranking.

How Does the YouTube Algorithm Work?

While YouTube’s stated mission is to give everyone a voice and a window to explore the world, one of YouTube’s lower-ranking goals is to engage viewers for extended amounts of time, maximizing the number of advertisement interactions.

Why does this secondary goal matter? Because YouTube suggests videos that satisfy this goal of increased exposure to advertiser content.

YouTube uses an algorithm based on three main qualifiers: relevance, engagement, and quality.

To benchmark relevance, YouTube explores the pairing of title, description, tags, and content with an individualized search query.

Engagement aggregates the number of responses from users, including watch time, engagement, and frequency.

Quality rating is determined by a channel’s ability to demonstrate trustable authority.

In addition to these three qualifiers, YouTube’s algorithm also draws on a user’s historical views and a video-specific assigned score, one that weighs both novelty and frequency of channel uploads, among other attributes.

This combination of statistics allows YouTube to recommend videos that speak directly to a viewer’s interests, continuing a narratively static viewing material chain.

These videos will appear in six different locations on the YouTube platform:

  1. Search results
  2.  Recommended Streams (as shown in the screenshot on the right side in the below screenshot)
  3. Notifications
  4. Channel Subscriptions
  5. Trending Streams
  6. YouTube Home Page
9 Ways to Improve Organic Reach via the YouTube Algorithm

Much like any search algorithm, YouTube’s ranking system is in constant flux, evolving and adapting in an ongoing attempt to better define and satisfy user engagement.

How do I Improve my Organic Reach on YouTube?

Armed with a concrete understanding of how the YouTube algorithm works, it’s time to break down how you can harness your newfound knowledge to increase your organic reach.

1. Keywords and Metadata

YouTube made it explicitly clear in their algorithm explanation that content-relevant keywords, descriptions, captions, and tags all matter when you’re optimizing videos for search. Make sure you do your keyword researching using a tool like Ubersuggest to make sure you’re mentioning terms users are looking for.

By writing compelling, keyword-rich titles and descriptions, you increase your chances of attracting audience members’ attention and increasing your video’s search visibility.

Check out this post if you need to brush up on SEO basics.

2. Optimized Description

The quote “you never get a second chance to make a first impression” is true of YouTube just as much as life.

Ensure audience engagement by crafting attention-getting copy that not only attracts your potential audience but also harnesses your keywords’ power.

9 Ways to Improve Organic Reach via the YouTube Algorithm -- video description optimization

YouTube slants toward the verbose, advocating long descriptions, so don’t be afraid to go the extra wordy mile with them.

Although your prospective viewer will only interact with the first few lines of the description unless they select the “show more” option, those few short lines are valuable real estate when it comes to attracting your audience.

3. Video Transcription

Closed captions not only help those with accessibility needs, but allows users to watch videos in silence.

To make the most of closed captions, upload self-created subtitles. By uploading these yourself, you ensure that, when these captions are indexed for search, they are more accurate than automatically-generated ones, in many cases.

4. Whole-Video Views

Because YouTube ranks videos by engagement, longer watch times mean more opportunities to earn the coveted suggested video inclusion.

If you’re struggling with viewer attrition rates, you’re going to want to tighten focus on your videos’ first few seconds and ensure you:

  • match the description with the first few seconds of video content, and
  • snag a viewer with an impossible-to-ignore hook.  

Don’t forget to study your audience retention graphs and pay attention to what those metrics are telling you.

These quick fixes help you further engage your audience, extending watch time, and earning your video a higher score via the YouTube algorithm.

5. Conversational Conclusions

Rather than simply ending your video, use various tactics to influence your audience’s next view.

By directing viewers to another video on your channel, you increase interaction and likelihood that they’ll return to interact with future content, both of which satisfy the YouTube algorithm’s engagement portion.

To direct your audience, use watermarks, end screens, and cards, all of which can be clicked and linked to your next video, ensuring continued viewing of your channel and content.   

6. Subscriptions

When viewers subscribe to your channel, you automatically increase your organic reach. To increase your number of subscribers, consistently create great content, videos viewers are dying to see.

While consistently creating great content may be easier said than done, it’s essential to building your channel. Create a channel trailer, reach out to influencers, and engage with all comments left on your videos.

If you’re looking for additional strategies to increase your subscribers, check out our YouTube Marketing Guide.

7. Serial Viewers

By crafting videos that continue a conversation, viewers are helpless to resist watching the next in the series.

To keep viewers on your channel, you can create playlists of videos with similar content: these are collections that will attract and sustain viewership.

8. Cross-Promote Content

Social channels are free advertising for your YouTube channel. Promote your videos on all your social accounts, website, and in your email marketing—anywhere you have an audience.

9 Ways to Improve Organic Reach via the YouTube Algorithm
An example of a recent YouTube video shared on this blog.

 You can also publish a blog post with the video and a summary or transcription.

9. Actionable Analytics

These numbers don’t just exist to make you feel good; they tell you what’s working well and when, and to identify who is watching what and when.

Conversely, these numbers also tell you what isn’t working, which is inarguably the more influential insight. By identifying what isn’t working, you can try new strategies and content, attempting to delight your audience and improve your reach through different approaches.

By digging deep into YouTube analytics, you can unearth realities about your videos and your audience, allowing you to tailor your creation process to suit the needs of the audience you’re trying to reach.

Conclusion

With over one billion hours of video watched per day on YouTube, it’s undeniable content creators and marketers need to take advantage of the platform to curate and grow their audiences.

By understanding how YouTube suggests videos, content creators and marketers can make their videos work harder and use its nuances to your benefit.

How you changed how you upload videos to satisfy the YouTube algorithm? 

The post 9 Ways to Improve Organic Reach and Beat the YouTube Algorithm appeared first on Neil Patel.

How to Easily Improve Your Business Credit Scores in a Recession

Yes, You Can Easily Improve Your Business Credit Scores in a Recession – This is Foolproof!

Do you know your small business’ business credit score? And is it, maybe, not so hot? Then consider these simple tips for how to easily improve your business credit scores in a recession.

Every Small Business Needs Business Credit Building

This is especially true in an economic downturn, when bank loans can be scarce.

Company credit is credit in a small business’s name. It doesn’t attach to an owner’s personal credit, not even when the owner is a sole proprietor and the sole employee of the small business.

Thus, an entrepreneur’s business and personal credit scores can be very different.

The Benefits

Because small business credit is distinct from consumer, it helps to protect a business owner’s personal assets, in case of litigation or business bankruptcy.

Also, with two distinct credit scores, a small business owner can get two different cards from the same vendor. This effectively doubles purchasing power.

Another benefit is that even startup businesses can do this. Visiting a bank for a business loan can be a formula for disappointment. But building small business credit, when done right, is a plan for success.

Personal credit scores are dependent on payments but also additional considerations like credit usage percentages.

But for small business credit, the scores truly just depend on whether a small business pays its debts timely.

Find out why so many companies are using our proven methods to improve their business credit scores, even during a recession.

Easily Improve Your Business Credit Scores in a Recession: Take Steps to Improve Your Payment History

How do you improve your payment history? It’s easy – just pay your bills on time, and as close to ‘in full’ as possible. Of course, that is not always as easy as it sounds. The truth is, just as you need to keep your personal spending within your means, you will need to keep your business spending realistic as well.

We cannot predict the future. Who can tell if your company’s particular widget will suddenly take off? All you can do is go by whatever data you can get, and interpret it in a manner that is not overly optimistic. For new companies, that means looking at industry trends. For more seasoned companies, it means closely examining your business’s performance under all sorts of conditions.

Therefore, if it looks like your company can make $1 million next quarter, but you need to borrow money, don’t borrow more than $1 million and, in fact, you probably want to borrow less than that.

Keeping your business spending in check and not gambling the company’s future on a hunch are both good ways to get your credit balances down and, as a result, improve your payment history. After all, your biggest supplier could go out of business, your best worker could retire, or crops could fail or any of a number of setbacks could occur. Being bold in business can often be a virtue – but you still need to pay your company’s bills.

It Pays – Big Time!

The single most vital step you can take to improve your business credit scores is to improve your payment history. Every credit reporting agency weighs this factor heavily.

Easily Improve Your Business Credit Scores in a Recession: Keep on Top of Your Credit Scores

This means regularly getting and reviewing your credit reports. And not just for your business! For new businesses and sole proprietorships, credit bureaus often look at your person credit as well. And this goes double if your business just so happens to be both.  Therefore, you will need to keep on top of both sets of scores, which is a good financial habit to get into, anyway.

Why do this? Because credit scoring reports can have errors and you have the right to dispute them. But you will not know there’s an error unless you check.

Disputing credit report errors generally involves sending a paper letter with copies of all proofs of payment accompanying it, such as receipts and cancelled checks. Of course, you do not want to send the originals – always send copies and retain the originals. Precisely itemize any charges that you are calling into question. Use certified mail so that you will have proof that you sent in your dispute.

Of course, if there are no mistakes on your credit reports, then you will need to move onto the next step. Don’t try to pull a fast one and dispute your credit score if there is really nothing wrong with it! Credit reporting agencies understandably do not like that.

Find out why so many companies are using our proven methods to improve their business credit scores, even during a recession.

Easily Improve Your Business Credit Scores in a Recession: Keep a Handle on Your Credit Utilization Rate

This goes right along with improving your payment history. Your credit utilization rate is an easy calculation: it’s just your balances divided by your total available credit.

You want to keep this figure under 30% if that is at all possible. So if you borrow less money, and you pay your debts off as quickly as possible, you will keep your business’s credit utilization rate in check.

Credit reporting agencies look at this figure, so if you keep it low, that will help with your score.

Furthermore, credit utilization rate tends to go toward your ability to better balance your budget and work within your means. Of course there can be unexpected expenses. But those should be rare.

Find out why so many companies are using our proven methods to improve their business credit scores, even during a recession.

Easily Improve Your Business Credit Scores in a Recession: Monitor Your Business Credit

Know what is happening with your credit. Make sure it is being reported and attend to any inaccuracies ASAP. Get in the practice of taking a look at credit reports and digging into the particulars, and not just the scores.

We can help you monitor business credit at Experian and D&B for 90% less.

At Equifax, you can monitor your account at: www.equifax.com/business/business-credit-monitor-small-business.

Update Your Record

Update the relevant information if there are mistakes or the information is incomplete. At D&B, you can do this at: https://iupdate.dnb.com/iUpdate/viewiUpdateHome.htm. For Experian, go here: www.experian.com/small-business/business-credit-information.jsp. And for Equifax, go here: www.equifax.com/business/small-business.

Fix Your Business Credit

So, what’s all this monitoring for? It’s to contest any inaccuracies in your records. Errors in your credit report(s) can be fixed. But the CRAs typically want you to dispute in a particular way.

Get your company’s PAYDEX report at: www.dnb.com/about-us/our-data.html. Get your company’s Experian report at: www.businesscreditfacts.com/pdp.aspx?pg=SearchForm. And get your Equifax business credit report at: www.equifax.com/business/credit-information.

Disputes

Disputing credit report errors normally means you mail a paper letter with duplicates of any proofs of payment with it. These are documents like receipts and cancelled checks. Never mail the originals. Always send copies and keep the original copies.

Fixing credit report errors also means you specifically spell out any charges you challenge. Make your dispute letter as crystal clear as possible. Be specific about the concerns with your report. Use certified mail so that you will have proof that you sent in your dispute.

Dispute your or your small business’s Equifax report by following the instructions here: www.equifax.com/small-business-faqs/#Dispute-FAQs.

You can dispute inaccuracies on your or your small business’s Experian report by following the directions here: www.experian.com/small-business/business-credit-information.jsp.

And D&B’s PAYDEX Customer Service contact number is here: www.dandb.com/glossary/paydex.

Easily Improve Your Business Credit Scores in a Recession Credit Suite

Easily Improve Your Business Credit Scores in a Recession: Personal Credit Score Reports

You can use AnnualCreditReport.com to get your credit report from Transunion, Equifax, and Experian.

Easily Improve Your Business Credit Scores in a Recession: Business Credit Score Reports

You will need to keep on top of three separate reports: Equifax, Experian, and your business’s PAYDEX report.

Equifax

Order your business’s Equifax report here. Dispute your or your company’s Equifax report by following the instructions here.

Experian

You can order your company’s Experian report here.  You can dispute any errors on your or your company’s Experian report by following the directions here.

PAYDEX

Get your PAYDEX report here and you can contact their Customer Service department (it’s a part of Dun & Bradstreet, as they also generate PAYDEX reports) here. D & B’s PAYDEX Customer Service phone number is here.

Easily Improve Your Business Credit Scores in a Recession: Patience is a Virtue in the Credit World, Too!

Finally, you will need to be patient. In particular, because credit reporting bureaus look at payment history. And they also look at the length of your payment history. So this goes directly to how long your company has been in business.

As a result, one piece of the score improvement puzzle is to just let some time pass. Get some distance you from your opening day. Good business credit scores aren’t built in a day.

Easily Improve Your Business Credit Scores in a Recession: A Word about Business Credit Building

Always use credit responsibly! Never borrow more than what you can pay back. Monitor balances and deadlines for payments. Paying off in a timely manner and in full will do more to raise business credit scores than nearly anything else.

Establishing small business credit pays off. Great business credit scores help a small business get loans. Your lender knows the company can pay its financial obligations. They recognize the company is bona fide.

The business’s EIN attaches to high scores and lending institutions won’t feel the need to request a personal guarantee.

Easily Improve Your Business Credit Scores in a Recession: Takeaway

Business credit is an asset which can help your small business for many years to come. Learn more here and get started toward building company credit.

The post How to Easily Improve Your Business Credit Scores in a Recession appeared first on Credit Suite.

Instantaneous Approval Bad Credit Cards – 3 Ways To Improve Credit Rating

Instantaneous Approval Bad Credit Cards – 3 Ways To Improve Credit Rating

If so, you can obtain authorized for a credit report card. Having poor credit scores might make is difficult to get very reduced prices when funding goods, you have the power to alter your debt circumstance. If you are having a challenging time developing credit rating, poor credit rating debt cards can place you on the appropriate course.

What misbehave Credit Cards?

Negative credit rating debt cards are made for individuals that are incapable to certify for a normal credit scores card. There are numerous factors why an individual is refuted for a credit scores card. If you have no credit scores background, as well as you are wishing to develop debt, several credit scores card business position you in the exact same classification as an individual with poor credit rating.

There are 2 kinds of negative credit score debt cards. Guaranteed credit report cards ask candidates to send an application with a down settlement.

Usage Bad Credit Cards to Your Advantage

Utilize the credit score card sensibly if getting a negative credit score debt card to increase your credit score score. Keeping great credit report is not difficult. You have to be disciplined as well as make clever credit rating choices.

For beginners, keep reduced equilibriums. Credit report cards are not cost-free cash. If feasible, pay off the equilibrium each month.

In addition, send credit report card settlements on time. If you do not keep a great settlement background, the debt card firm might reduce your debt restriction.

When you have actually developed an excellent background with your present credit report card business, you will certainly certify for much better credit rating card provides in the future. Using for numerous lines of credit report will certainly reduce your credit history rating.

If you are having a hard time developing credit history, poor debt cards can place you on the appropriate course.

Negative credit report debt cards are created for individuals that are not able to certify for a routine debt card. If you have no credit rating background, as well as you are wishing to develop credit scores, several credit scores card business position you in the very same classification as an individual with negative credit rating. If getting a negative credit score debt card to increase your credit score score, utilize the credit history card sensibly. When you have actually developed an excellent background with your present credit report card business, you will certainly certify for far better credit scores card supplies in the future.

The post Instantaneous Approval Bad Credit Cards – 3 Ways To Improve Credit Rating appeared first on ROI Credit Builders.