What is Google Data Studio?

The Google Data studio is a data visualization and analysis tool that helps in creating customized reports using the data from all the tools that you are using. It has been released in the US and the free versions of it are also available. Using the free version you can typically make up to 5 reports. It is very useful for the professionals who are responsible for generating the reports for their clients.

Why should you be using Google Data Studio?

Amidst all the discussions there is one question that makes sense, how much is it beneficial to use the Google Data Studio? There are professionals in every company who are responsible for the hectic tasks like generating the reports for Clients. It surely is a difficult task to generate the accurate reports by synchronizing the several accounts. To simplify that and generate the accurately customized reports Data studio can be used. I have been working a lot on generating the reports from Google Analytics and Adwords, and it is a big deal to spend so much of time on only generating the reports. While making report it is very necessary to frame it in a way that can be understood by the clients as well, and Data studio allows us to do so.

How to start?

In starting, you can only generate 5 reports. For fully accessing the functionalities of Data Studio you need buy it. We need to start loading the data resources and then organizing that data to generate the customized reports. The data resources can be anything like Google Adwords, Google Analytics, etc. Based on the tools that you are using. As per the requirements, the data can be organized.

Why is it needed?

As we discussed the Google Data Studio allows people to make the best possible understandable reports, it is also very useful for saving the time. Apart from saving time, it has various other benefits:

·         Collaborative: When you create a report on Google Data Studio, it can be accessed by anyone with whom you share that. Therefore, it can be collaborated with the team and anyone who wants to make changes can do that.

·         Proper Customized Report: While using Google Analytics I observed that it is not at all possible to add images or additional data in the reports. While using Data studio proper customization of the reports can be done. This has eliminated my various problems.

·         Easy to Use and Understand: Google Data Studio is very easy to use, and also the data can be pulled in from various data sources. The report thus generated is easily understandable by clients as well.

·         Multiple data resources: Along with the Google Analytics we can pull the data from our Google Adwords report as well. A report with all the data can be then presented to the client, which is much easier to read.

Right now the free version of it can be accessed to generate up to 5 reports. There are many things that can be problem while using Data Studio like not being able to connect to the networks outside Google, prices, etc. When we look for a platform that aims to simplify our work we certainly expect a lot from it. It depends on company to company whether they need the Data Studio or not. It can be the most useful bet for the companies that have already invested in all the Google Products like Analytics, Webmasters, AdWords, etc. For companies who have a wide base of clients need a very simple approach to generate the reports and Data Studio certainly allows that. 

How Google Reviews can help SEO and Ways to Increase that

Reviews are the major part of online business, and according to the surveys, most of the customers rely a lot on reviews. They can also add to your social conversions and also you get the vote from Google as it favors the high rated sites.  As we know that increasing the unique content is very important for the website, and what can be better than a user generated content. These reviews are the best source for making the customers write about  what are their expectations and what were the let downs in the product that they purchased.  This in turn greatly enhances the quality of the services.

According to the new features of Google Map Search, reviews are also shown in the results pages. This directly decides whether a user will come to your website or not. No matter where your website ranks on Google, but when people search with local intent the Google Map will always show the results with the highest rated business to keep the user satisfaction.

How to increase the Reviews?

After seeing the importance of the reviews, all the websites should start working towards increasing the reviews of the website. Here are certain ways through which the reviews can be improved on Google Search.

1.     . Search the Competitors: Make the list of the options from your industry and look for the sites having the best reviews. When you open the Google Map you get the list of a few websites that the Google has pinned in the Map. In that list you can get the list of genuine websites, and linking to these websites can be very helpful for your business.
2.             Customer Service: Google and other search engines are very genuine and never encourage the businesses that are of no value to the customers. If you have customers that are happy with the services you provide, you have better chances of getting good reviews.
3.            Never Pay for the Reviews:  Generating the reviews and endorsements in exchange of any service is not at all acceptable by Google. You should never think of extending the prizes and asking the customers to review your services. This will only degrade your image on the search engines.
4.             Encourage customers for Reviews: Instead of exchanging the reviews, you should make efforts to encourage the customers to review your services. You can make polite and formal requests to your customers about whether the products are satisfactory or not.
5.       Place the Reviews: Place the reviews of customers at the business place, this in turn, sends out a message to customers that you value their reviews. Getting printed reviews also validates that your business deserves all the praise.
6.       Never force users to a particular site: The best practice to gain the trust of Google is to distribute the reviews on different sites. If you direct the users to the same site and it overloads the site with the reviews, it impacts the Google ranking in a negative way.
7.       Overloading the sites with the reviews: When you analyze the competitors and see their reviews it is not necessary to gain as many reviews as theirs. Overloading the sites with loads of reviews generates a negative impact. 

SEO as the first step towards online marketing

SEO is the way to rank your website on the search engines and showing it on the top results of search engines. If your website is displayed on top results for any of your products or services then surely you have gained a good position among the competitors. But it might just be the starting step towards your marketing plans, as having a good rank should also guarantee the business. And, this can be assured only if you have also designed proper marketing frame.

Many marketers believe that SEO is dead, but this is not true as there are still numerous ways and tactics that if implemented properly can give a good online presence to your website. There is, in fact an urgent need for starting with the mobile SEO as well for the companies who have not started that. Almost 91% population of the world has mobile phones, and out of that 51% has smart-phones that majorly contribute to the searches. It is crucial to make the website according to the mobile devices in order to keep the track of these users who come from mobile. SEO simply means optimizing a website to be easily tracked by search engines, so SEO can never be dead. It is just the activities and tactics that need to be changed with time.

There are also certain myths associated with SEO that need to be debunked.

• ·         SEO is not one-time activity; it is an investment that can help your website in long-run.
• ·         It takes 2-3 months for results to start showing up.
• ·         It is a slow process, but if done correctly can make the visibility consistent.
• ·         Creating a website according to search engines is equally important as promoting it.

To keep the website in the good book of search engines it should have magnificent designs that extend a great user-friendly experience. Users are directed to your website for a purpose, and if you have made sure that they should come to your website, you should also make sure they stay there. This can only happen if the landing pages of the websites are engaging enough to hold the visitors. So designing a user-friendly platform should be the first step. With time, even Google has become more sophisticated in order to return the results as per the user’s intent instead of only keywords. With the upgrade in different algorithms, it returns more refined and precise results for the user queries. This makes it even more critical for the marketers to focus on proper SEO and design of the website.

All about Google Panda Algorithm

We all know, the Google Panda algorithm basically looks for low-quality content on the website and penalizes a website based on that. According to the recent updates by Google, this algorithm is now the part of main ranking algorithm. So, how does it affect the website? It, in many ways will affect the websites that have bulk of content. It will put an end to the generation of paraphrased content that does not deliver any unique information to the readers. So how should the websites be updated for keeping only the quality content? There are certain things that you should be considering while generating any piece of content.

     1) Recognize the low-quality content:

There are certain parameters that describe the quality factor of the content. If you have content on a website that is:

·         Generated in bulk with the help of different resources.

·         Simply paraphrased form of already available information on Google.

·         Stuffed with keywords sacrificing the quality.

·         Written with the unclear aim of simply increasing the word count.

·         Badly formed sentences and wrong usage of grammar.

If your website if loaded with such content, then it is advisable to remove it as soon as possible. It will be definitely on the hit list of Google Panda. Since the algorithm has now become the part of main ranking algorithm, it may penalize your website and make it disappear from the search results.  Once the website has been penalized it may become very difficult to gain back the rankings in SERP.

2) Use genuine Ad spaces:

It’s the time when you should reconsider the amount of space to be provided for the ads on any of your web pages. It usually does not deliver a good user experience because most of the ads are irrelevant to the queries of the user. It is also visually distracting and increases the page loading speed. So, it is quite necessary to keep the ad ration healthy. It will not only keep the website safe from the penalties, but will also extend a genuine user experience. 

3) Increase unique and authoritative content:

Increasing the content that is unique can lead panda algorithm to rank your site. Before writing any content ask yourself whether you are writing it for traffic or to help your readers to gain the useful insight. If your content has been written with the aim to simply generate traffic, then it has to be analyzed again. Quality content can be a dominating factor while ranking your site on search engines.  It is also advisable to entirely remove the low quality content pages, because if the Panda rolls out it may penalize all the pages irrespective of the content. Even, the pages with the unique content also might get affected.

4) Issues of Duplicate content and word count:

There can also be the issues of duplicate content on the website, which should be resolved in order to avoid the penalties other than Panda. The content that is duplicate or copied from some other works has the highest chances of getting discarded by Google. Even if you have generated a content that has been uploaded on several platforms, it has to be uploaded with the rel=”canonical” tag; Doing this will help search engines locate the original website where it was published. After this has been done, the content can be republished without worrying about the issues of duplicate content. As far as word count is considered, it has not been a big issue because what matters in the content is the quality and not the quantity. A few hundred words content can deliver more information than a thousand word content.

Reasons to spend on ContentMarketing

There are different kinds of marketing strategies that can be used to escalate the growth of the business. The basic aspect of marketing is to understanding the customer base and delivering the customer friendly content. Content Marketing has been rated as the only marketing practice that guarantees the maximum engagement of the customers. It is a great challenge for marketers to generate the content that can convince the masses to serve the intent. It is a major compelling force that can navigate the targeted traffic to your website. Statistics suggest that content has always increased the number of conversions to the website. It has been estimated that nearly 93% of B2B marketers are using content as their main marketing tool.  The main challenge for marketers is not to generate more content, but it is to generate the relevant content.

Availability of bulk content on the Internet has forced Google to increase the penalties for same. So, to make sure that the content is relevant we need to understand the nature of business and importance of content for that. Statistics prove that most of the marketers spend their 42% of the budget on content marketing and that is a whooping number! This has been proved to be a better strategy!

As per the trends of the market, there will be 60% increase in the content creation and its promotion. There is a huge dependency of PPC campaigns and social media campaigns on the quality of the content that is being produced.

There can be a lot of ways in which you can become a better content marketer in order to stay ahead of the marketers.

• -          Start investing the time that you spend on the reading to writing the blogs.
• -          To make the content effective try to gather the statistics that can appeal the customers to read your work.
• -          Spend some budget on promoting the content on social media platforms

Content Sharing Platforms

As per the above graph LinkedIn is the platform where 94% of the content is shared and that has proved to benefit the marketers. This is followed by Twitter and Facebook, indicating the dominance of social media platform in the content marketing.

Content can even be a piece of visual graphic that has the maximum probability to attract the visitors and to take that advantage around 60% of the marketers are working on the creating the visual content.

So, to stay ahead in the competition in the market, creating the content to appeal the targeted traffic is the best strategy. Consistency in generating the content can actually make your analytics soar high.