Archives for 2019

Prospects expect their search engine optimization agencies to project an aura of, well, optimization. In the digital age, it is difficult to hide supply side inefficiency. Prospects will not suffer fools long. If you do not have a proper project management solution in place as you scale your agency, you could find your business in trouble even if you were initially scaling it in the right direction.

Some decision makers view project management as a useless bureaucracy, an expensive middleman that does not deserve a mention in the queue of daily operations. However, savvy companies know the true value. Here are just five ways that project management helps SEO agencies in growing their businesses.

If it gets tracked, it gets done

Performing SEO for a single client can quickly become a complex web of interdepartmental collaboration, pending tasks, and feedback loops. You may need to involve your client at times. Also, you might need to coordinate a team remotely through the cloud.

RELATED ARTICLE: 3 MODERN TOOLS FOR MANAGING REMOTE WORKERS

Notably, many of these organizational tasks are better accomplished through a system than through an individual or even an operations team. Incorporating modern project management ensures synchronized scheduling between the many nodes your agency needs to coordinate.

Freemium project management no longer inspires confidence

Do you want the big franchise clients who order SEO automatically every month and pay a premium for the privilege? These are not the types of companies that will respond well to your spreadsheet-based project management. In short, do not go into a meeting with whales when you’re using email to coordinate tasks. That is, unless you want to see whales turn into sharks.

A better workflow means more clients

Often, an agency is unable to scale because its current manpower is at the edge of its level of productivity. Hiring new people, however, is just too expensive. On the other hand, the cost-effective solution is a good project management system.

With the proper system in place, you automate simple tasks, relieving your overworked staff. You completely eliminate the human error that comes with the data input and synchronization stages of operation. You also inspire confidence in your people. They will be re-energized once they realize that you are investing in their ability to produce.

Delegation analysis creates better teams

One of the most important attributes of professional project management software is the ability to go back and see what worked and what didn’t. What team or individual was the bottleneck? Did someone outperform?

You now have quantitative evidence informing the delegation of tasks in the future. In short, with better project management at your fingertips, you become a better project manager.

Improving customer service is essential to growth

No SEO agency is going to perform at peak capacity at all times. Your customer doesn’t like that excuse, though. The solution is to do your best on the initial run but take copious notes. In this way, subsequent iterations of your efforts improve continuously.

However, you can only do this when you can pinpoint exactly where a problem occurred. Where better to find problems than on an accessible user interface with processes meticulously laid out in plain language? Proper project management improves customer service. And this keeps customers coming back for more.

Make Project Management a Top Priority and Your Agency Will Grow

If you plan to grow your SEO agency in the modern business landscape, project management must be a top priority. Consider the perspective above if you are considering a new project management solution or switching away from a legacy. The future of your agency may very well depend on how you organize your tasks today.

Image by Coffee Bean from Pixabay 

On your way to becoming the entrepreneur you aspire to be, you might need to work for someone else for a while. In that case, you’re going to need a top-notch resume. That’s because landing the job of your dreams can make all the difference in the trajectory of your career.

As you search through the online job
postings, there may be some opportunities that sound like a perfect fit. In
these situations, you need to make a strong first impression so you are
considered for the job. 

Traditionally, the first step in landing a job starts with a very important piece of paper: the resume.

RELATED ARTICLE: HOW TO WRITE A GREAT RESUME AS A BUSINESS PROFESSIONAL

Brush up Your Resume

There is a lot riding on this document. And like it or not, much of the candidate qualification process is still heavily based on the resume. Of course, it is quite difficult to truly judge someone based on this piece of paper, especially considering the fact that many recruiters spend less than one minute scanning each resume.

If you are going to land the job of your dreams, you need to be sure that your resume impresses hiring managers so that you can pass this crucial first round of qualification. For this purpose, Resumonk is an online resume-building tool that helps job seekers create appealing and easy-to-read resumes. With a resume you create on Resumonk you will ace the initial qualification process. Here’s how.

1. A Good Resume Increases Qualifying Factors

Unfortunately, the smallest of mistakes can mean that even highly qualified candidates are passed up on. For example, if a resume is full of misspelled words, is formatted incorrectly, or is simply unattractive, recruiters will not hesitate to pass on it. In fact, 77% of hiring managers will disqualify a candidate right away based on a typo or grammatical error.

Mistakes like this happen all of the time, and even super talented candidates may forget the small details. Resumonk can help you avoid this. That’s because each template is formatted to avoid these mundane—yet game-changing—blunders. Also, Resumonk guides you to go into deeper detail regarding your past positions so recruiters can have a better idea of your work history and experience.

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Another common issue with resume
qualification often arises if a company requires a certain formatting for
application, such as a PDF file, Word Doc, or JPEG. If you send in the wrong
format and a recruiter cannot read the file, you will automatically be
disqualified. Resumonk allows you to save each resume in multiple formats to
ensure that it meets these criteria.

2. Create Optimized Resumes for Specific Opportunities

If you have an eclectic mix of work history, it can be distracting and confusing to the recruiters who are trying to qualify you. This is particularly true for a candidate who has a long and widely varied job history. Having various skills and experiences certainly doesn’t disqualify you. However, it can distract from the details that are relevant to the job you are currently applying for.

Therefore, Resumonk allows you to make multiple versions of your resume so they are optimized for whatever position you are applying for. For instance, say that you have a degree and job experience in marketing, but you have also worked in retail sales. In this scenario, your skills and job history are split between these two types of positions.

Using this tool, you can create multiple resume templates that are focused on the exact skills and experiences in both of these areas. This way, your resume will reflect that you are a qualified candidate for specific positions that may be geared toward marketing or customer service.

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3. Rely on Cohesive Formatting for Faster Qualification

Even for small businesses, it is quite common to receive hundreds of applications for a single position. In fact, the average number of resumes a business receives for an available position is 250, with only about five candidates being invited for an interview.

This leaves recruiters with massive piles of paperwork and lots of digital documents to glance over, a process that can take days or even weeks. Time is of the essence when it comes to the qualification process. Also, as a candidate, you want to hear back from them sooner rather than later.

As recruiters scan through these hundreds of applications and resumes, they are naturally looking for specific things. For example, they want to see job history, years of experience, degrees, and certifications, and so on.

Therefore, you can help to make the qualification process easier by formatting your resume in a logical and organized fashion with a Resumonk template. Although there are multiple formats to choose from, they are all designed for easy reading and skimming.

From a recruiter’s perspective, it can be quite frustrating to try and spot the information they need to qualify a person when their resume is set up in a non-traditional way. However, when resumes are formatted in a commonly preferred fashion, it’s that much easier for recruiters to find the information they are looking for.

4. It’s Easy and Quick

If you have ever created a resume from scratch, you know the task is quite daunting. Even on a template builder, manually filling in your information can take a lot of time. This is especially the case when you are applying for different titles.

Thankfully, Resumonk is designed to make it easy to create a resume from scratch or update your existing one on file. What’s more, you can convert your LinkedIn profile to a well-formatted resume using Resumonk in just a few minutes.

This means you can create a new resume with all of your skills and job history with just a few clicks, making it much easier to create specific versions for each job you apply for.

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Resumonk also offers some great resources to help you phrase your job history correctly. There are lots of tools and articles to help you choose powerful keywords that will catch recruiters’ eyes and help them get an understanding of your strengths.

Conclusion

Finding a new job and deciding which opportunity to pursue is a major decision. However, in order to get to the point of making that decision, you first have to get through the door and into the interview room.

You can make yourself a more attractive candidate by using Resumonk to optimize your resume for specific job postings. In short, Resumonk will help you to present a professional-looking document that stands out.

Online merchants running small enterprises are doubtless familiar with the challenges of getting a good return on their investment (ROI) from the advertisement platform Google Ads. There are usually two primary challenges to overcome. The first is direct competition from other online merchants vying for the same keywords. The second is optimizing for Google’s Quality Score metric, which is notoriously hard to do.

RELATED ARTICLE: PROMOTING YOUR COMPANY IN THE INFORMATION AGE

Google Ads Optimization and Why it Matters

All the same, Google Ads is an incredible resource for ecommerce merchants. The good news is that it provides easy access to a broad customer base, potential for high conversion rates, and a nice boost to your top line. However, the bad news is that it’s hyper competitive. The big fish usually eat the little ones because they have more money to spend.

Despite the bad news, though, Google Ads optimization tactics can still produce positive results on a budget. How? It starts by understanding the rationale behind Google’s sorting mechanisms.

Google parses the competition for ad placement using two functional metrics: keyword bid price and quality score. Optimizing for keyword bid price is relatively straightforward. However, it can quickly become expensive with a generalist’s approach. That’s because the cost of a bid is reducible with granular segmentation of search data. However, this should absolutely be part of your strategy already.

In general, though, merchants often spend too much time (and money) focusing on keyword bid price. Then they wonder why they are not ranking for keyword groupings despite raising their bid amount. The reason likely has to do with a lower-than-desirable Google Ads Quality Score.

What Is a Quality Score in Google Ads?

First of all, let’s clarify what a quality score actually is. A quality score is a composite score that estimates an e-merchant’s overall performance in Ad Auctions. Basically, Google uses this score to determine the overall relevance your Google ads provide to users.

How Does Google
Determine a Google Ads Quality Score?

There are several factors that go into
determining a Google Ads Quality Score, including:

• Expected
  click-through rate (CTR)
• Ad
  or keyword relevance
• The
  overall quality of a landing page
• Previous
  performance

As you can see, there is a close connection between the keywords you choose and the ad copy you want to promote. Google, acting as a proxy for what consumers are looking for, takes relevance very seriously—and so should you.

Relevance is absolutely crucial to your advertisement strategy. That’s because it helps consumers understand what it is you sell. For ad copy, this means using the keywords you want to rank for in the title and text in a direct, logical way.

For example, let’s say you are an ecommerce vendor of women’s running shoes and you’re targeting the keyword “best Nike running shoes for women.” In this case, you would want to include those search terms in the description.

However, you need to do more than just map keyword groupings to ad copy, although this is an important prerequisite to getting a better click-through rate. Other factors, like the quality of the landing page and previous performance, influence performance, too.

Why a Strong Quality Score Will Help Lock Down Returns

Keep in mind that while keywords have their own
individual quality scores, this is not the same thing as the overall quality
score determined at the time of each separate auction.

Quality scores of the keywords themselves do not factor into the Ad Rank position determined at Google auctions. However, real-time calculations of the same overall factors that determine a quality score do. In fact, a study by WordStream found high-quality scores don’t just translate into more clicks and better ad rankings. They also directly correlate to higher conversions.

Tips for Boosting Your Quality Score

So what can you do to optimize your quality score? In other words, how can you lock down better value for better rankings? Here are some helpful strategies to help boost your quality score and therefore maximize your returns.

Eliminate Keywords with Low-Quality Scores

Slicing out all keywords with a quality score
of one is an efficient way to lower costs and improve overall ranking
positions.

Design Targeted Campaigns

The more well-targeted campaign will result in an improved user experience. This is why it is worth it to take the time to parse out a relevant set of keywords for each ad group.

Focus on High-Quality Content

This tip applies both to the landing page and to the ads themselves. Avoid including any distracting information, and keep ads neat and concise. Focus ads on one product and one product only. In this way, you ensure that the ad is relevant to the user.

Don’t Forget About Your Landing Pages

Neglecting your landing page will have a negative overall impact on your Google Ads Quality Score. Also, be sure to integrate relevant keywords that are specific to the ad group they pertain to. Moreover, if it is practical, shoot to include a separate landing page for each ad group.

For example, here’s a screenshot of a well-executed paid search campaign in Google Ads, where the ad copy reflects the search term and is central to the landing page as well.

First the ad copy:

And the landing page:

The Takeaway

Developing a killer strategy for a Google Ads
campaign relies on a granular approach to developing effectively targeted
campaigns. The most effective way to optimize for a high Google Ads Quality
Score in an auction is to understand the intent of your target audience and
commit to endless iteration.