A Recap of Our Top Blogs in 2019

As 2020 approaches, it's quite astonishing how SEO has enhanced, and algorithms have changed in the past year alone -- it is developing into a more advanced phase, changing the way we search for and ingest content.

With this in mind, here are some of our top blogs of the year, that you, our readers, loved the most! We covered everything from Social Media, SEO, Content Marketing and more.

An Ultimate Guide to Using Google Maps for Online Marketing

To successfully compete and to get recognized in today's online space, one had to dominate all available channels. And that includes Google Maps.

If you are thinking, why does it matter, read the blog to find out!

When it comes to local SEO, Google Maps is going to be your best friend. It's a known fact that one of the important and fastest ways to win the local market is by using Google maps. Nowadays, users can do a quick Google search and find a list of services nearby within seconds. Therefore, having a local online presence can do wonders for your business.

In the above example, we received these results for a "bookstores" search query. As you can see, the very first results here were Google Maps showing local bookstores listed near me.

Before buying locally, 93% of people do an online search, and out of those, 88% would visit or call the business within a day of the search. With these facts in mind, no business can say no to registering on Google Maps. This way, Google Maps can drive thousands of potential customers to your business.

If executed correctly, Google Maps marketing can become one of the quickest ways to boost your business's presence in local search results. So if you think Google Maps marketing is worth it, you can get started by setting up your business on Google Maps today.

Quora Ads: The Ultimate Guide for Beginners

I bet the first thing that came into your mind is that Quora is basically a Q&A site, and what does SEO has anything to do with it? It's time to think again!

Quora is the largest Q&A site on the internet. Even the founders Charlie Cheever and Adam D'Angelo started Quora in 2009 with their mission: create a platform to share knowledge by asking questions about things you don't know. What makes Quora different from other answer forums is the method of displaying the quality answers by people as per the user's vote.

Thanks to its reach and visibility, plenty of Quora questions and answers can be found on the first page of a search result. One of the main reasons you should consider Quora for your business is that it receives 300 million monthly unique visitors. With an audience that large, you can quickly drive traffic to your site. Since the introduction of Quora ads in 2017, it's been a win-win for businesses using Quora to build traffic.

When it comes to improving sales conversions and lead generation, Quora is the top place to promote your business, blogs, your sales, lead generation pages and more, as long as you are providing the answers to the actual question.

Read the blog to discover how your business can utilize Quora.

How to Create Awesome Meta Tags for Your Social Media Platforms?

Are you looking for a whole new level of customer engagement? Then you need to be on social media!

With a plethora of social media platforms available, one can easily gain maximum exposure, additional leads, potential customers, boost online traffic and much more. That is exactly why it's essential to pay attention to how your site is presented when a user tweets a link to your website or someone shares a post on Facebook.

Meta tags can be your heroes here! By using meta tags, you can customize how your website appears in posts and tweets. Meta tags have no direct role in Google's ranking factors, but the presence of tags will highlight your brand on social media platforms, driving traffic to your website and subsequently improve your search engine ranking.

72 Facebook Acquisitions - The Complete List (2019)! [INFOGRAPHIC]

Facebook launched in February 2004 and quickly reached 1 million users within ten months. As of now, Facebook is the world's number one social media network with 2.45 billion monthly active users. During its 15 years in business, Mark Zukerberg, founder of Facebook, has acquired 72 companies to the date.

Mark Zuckerberg stated in 2010:

"We have not once bought a company for the company. We buy companies to get excellent people. To have a really entrepreneurial culture, one of the key things is to make sure we're recruiting the best people. One of the ways to do this is to focus on acquiring great companies with great founders. so, most of the acquisitions were talent acquisitions.”

Facebook's largest acquisition to date has been WhatsApp Messenger, which they purchased for $19 billion in February 2015. WhatsApp is a globally diverse messaging service that has over 400 million users. After intense negotiations, they closed the deal with a $19 billion offer with a combination of cash and stock.

In March of 2014, Facebook made a $2 billion payout for the company Oculus VR, which is the company behind the virtual reality gaming system, Oculus Rift. Zukerberg saw Oculus as the biggest game-changer in the industry as Oculus had that platform that could change the way we play games, work and communicate. So far, Oculus was one of the most significant acquisitions Facebook has ever made.

Until now, the total cost of Facebook's acquisitions is a whopping $23,360,700,000. And it's just from the acquisitions they have disclosed!

Email Outreach For Link Building: The Definitive Guide

Before getting ready to start your email outreach, there are some things you have to take note of. Whether it is for your own business or a client, you have to understand the unique value your business presents to clients so that you can deliver the value succinctly. Understanding your business is an essential part of the outreach.

Most outreach emails are ignored or deleted. Yes, it's challenging to get people to reply to outreach emails. The fact is only 8.5% of outreach emails get a response. What goes wrong here? Experts say that the success of an email outreach campaign is purely based on the quality of the content. As per the Brian Dean's 'Skyscraper technique,' the key to creating valuable content is to find the best article in your niche and create something better.

Maybe this is your first cold email outreach, perhaps you already tried a campaign and quit halfway through, or maybe you did everything right, but you didn't get the results you were expecting. Whatever your reason is for wanting to boost your email outreach, we're sure you'll find something useful in this email outreach guide.

Google BERT Update: Everything You Need to Know!

By introducing the BERT update, Google is making the most significant change to its search system since RankBrian, a considerable update Google made almost five years ago.

Google says the update will affect 10% of queries, which means the new update is more focused on understanding the intent of user search queries better. Rather than looking at the user's query on a word by word basis, BERT allows Google to understand the entire phrase to give the searcher more accurate results, just like humans interpret a sentence.

This is what Pandu Nayak, Google’s Vice President of Search has to say about the BERT update:

“At Google’s core, Search is understanding the language we use. And by applying BERT models to both rankings and featured snippets in search, we’re able to understand and do a much better job helping everyone find useful information in their search results. When it comes to ranking search results, BERT will help search better understand 1 in 10 searches in the U.S. in English. Particularly for longer, more conversational queries, or searches where prepositions like “for” and “to” matter a lot to the meaning, Search will be able to understand the context of the words in your query. And as a result, you can search in a way that feels natural for you.”

Final Note

These are just a few of the evergreen blogs we created that you loved. These digital marketing trends and strategies from 2019 can be used to learn from and leverage into the year ahead.

As the Google BERT Update will be globally rolled out soon enough, marketers must be prepared to integrate technology, data, video, social media, quality content and artificial intelligence in their marketing.

If you’re ready to take your digital marketing goals to the next level in 2020, speak to our experts from TechWyse Internet Marketing today. Feel free to give us a call at 888.208.3095, or contact us here.