How to Design a Landing Page in 5 Steps

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How to Design a Landing Page in 5 Steps

You spent hours building the perfect Instagram ad. You ran the copy by all your friends and family, the creative attracts attention, and it gets your message across. You have a well-targeted audience using retargeting tools like lookalike audiences and your . Facebook Pixel 

Your ad is getting clicks and views…but for some reason, the ad isn’t converting.

The issue may be your landing page.

It’s our opinion that the landing page should have equal, if not greater, time expenditure.

After, all, you have unlimited freedom as to how this page will look as compared to an advertisement where you are limited on everything.
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Your ad’s landing page needs to have the following characteristics:

The first thing you need to do is name the page something that says what it is. If you are running an ad to get people to sign up for an online class you are offering you should name the page something like yourwebsite.com/onlineclassinfo. Platforms like Facebook will show your URL in the ad, depending on your campaign settings, and you want to use every inch of space they provide you in your favor. Thoroughly naming a page like this will help you down the road when you need to find it quickly or turn an ad back on without opening the ad up to see which link it is sending traffic to. ​

The best way to make an ad is to start the process from your customers point of view. Imagine you saw a beautiful ad and clicked on it to make a purchase, only to come to a landing page that looked clunky, possibly spammy, or used different art than the ad you clicked on. This would give you some pause. It could be the reason your ad isn’t working!
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If you have a really nice piece of creative content, use it at the top of the landing page. Stick with the same color schemes and language style you used in the ad on your page. People love consistency. It’s the quickest way to gain trust. All of your marketing from top to bottom needs to have the same look and feel.

If you are a seasoned advertiser on social media and Google you will not need to make any changes regarding this. For those just starting out, you want to make sure you have the Facebook Pixel installed if you are running FB or IG ads and Google Tag Manager properly installed on your buttons and pages if you are running Google Ads.You can read to learn more about Google Tags and how to install them.You can also always call the pros at and we can take care of this for you quickly.
 

this webpage
 Mad Mango Marketing
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Installing these on your site will let you track how many page visitors you are getting and where they are coming from. You will also be able to use this information to create new audiences. Now you can have a top of funnel ad that shows to everyone who has an interest in what your class teaches and a lower-funnel ad that only shows to people who have visited your webpage, filled out the form, watched a certain percentage of your video, or endless other tracking options!

If you are selling a product this will come naturally at check out. For example, posting this ad to get people to sign up for our online class, you will want to install either a lightbox (image below) on the site or a form for individuals to give you their contact information.

We recommend against lightboxes as they can come off as spammy. For this example, however, if you are selling a product you may want to offer a discount in exchange for an email or phone number. There are many great plugins for building lightboxes that are free to install.

Like we mentioned in the beginning, a landing page has no restrictions as compared to an ad. We recommend to all of our clients that they give some additional info underneath the sign-up form. Video and infographics are hot right now. You can hire someone for cheap on sites like Fiverr to create these for you.

What this does, besides providing additional info, is it keeps the user on the page. Seeing how all things online play into So there you have it! A few key factors on what makes a good landing page. It is easy to get caught up in the building of the ad or finding the right copy. Make sure your website and landing pages are getting the attention they deserve and SEO, you can actually gain some great SEO juice by keeping people on the page. Time spent on-page is a big factor for Google. If visitors are spending longer amounts of time on your page because they’re watching a video or reading an infographic, this will signal to Google that your site is providing value and deserves to be ranked higher!
contact Mad Mango Marketing today!

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Originally published at https://www.madmangomarketing.com.

A Guide to Google’s Disavow Tool

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A Guide to Google’s Disavow Tool

Bad backlinks will bring your sites credibility down. In turn, good backlinks will increase your site’s reputation. How do we decide which links point to our side?

Using this tool without proper knowledge between good and bad links and be very harmful to your sites standing.

The purpose of this article is to provide a history of the disavow tool, explain how you use it and define the difference between good and bad links.

Created in 2012, Google’s Disavow Links Tool lets you tell Google to ignore specific backlinks for ranking purposes.

The decision making that goes behind choosing which links should be disavowed and those that should be kept is very complicated. Google’s intent behind creating this tool was to clean up spammy looking links to garbage or irrelevant sites. Google had created a sort of prototype of this technique in 2005 by introducing Years later, to serve as an improvement upon this Google released Google
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the “nofollow” attribute . As the name suggests, you would use this tool to label links and spammy link comments as “no follow” to tell the Google crawlers not to trace back to their link.
Penguin algorithm .

Penguin served as a filter which all search results had to pass through before being presented to a user. Though this algorithm was not without kinks. Some of these links which Penguin would scan and then deem unfit to present would be penalized. Sadly, since it was not perfect some non malicious sites would get penalized and the penalty would exist for months before being resolved. Google search console would alert webmasters if there was a pattern of unnatural or deceptive looking outbound links.This penalty could have such an effect on a site that when a single webpage was demoted, the entire site would feel the wrath.Google noticed this and attempted to adhere to the savvy web builders like you and provide us with more control over our sites. Thus the disavow tool was born!
 

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In this first version of the tool, webmasters gained the ability to manually disavow links which they deemed as spam but ONLY after Google’s automated methods had been exhausted.
So next came the question is disavowing necessary? And if so when?

What constitutes a “bad guest post” Or a “bad” directory as compared to good ones?

“ Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. This includes any behavior that manipulates links to your site or outgoing links from your site.””Links are usually editorial votes given by choice, and the more useful content you have, the greater the chances someone else will find that content valuable to their readers and link to it.”

A good collection of principles to keep in mind are as follows:
 
Does this link bear any relevance to my business or could in some way benefit my site users?
 
Is the soul purpose of this link to increase my SEO standing?
 
Is there potential to generate customers from this backlink?
 
High quality links are rewarded for good organic content. Again another quote from Google 

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As I’m sure you and most of our SEO community agree, these two quotes seem very subjective.

Still, some links are inherently bad and taking the time to investigate their individual pages and root domain can help to see if they are coming from any sort of link building service or not.

While some paid links may be difficult to detect, there are a few red flags: Google has begun taking action Private blog networks are groups of people who have reached an agreement to participate in link sharing to one another’s websites. These blogs often have exact anchor text that can quickly tip off Google. When looking at which directories you’d like to include your business on, ask yourself this. “Do I trust this service to present my business to users and will users even be able to visit this directory? If the answer is no then the directory is most likely low quality.This fall off to this method is time. This process can be very difficult to automate making it inefficient. Not to mention most sites now make their comment section “no-follow.”This is our most straightforward example, obviously. You want nothing to do with a website which appears to be compromised. These are the big bad hackers Google is looking to take down and you wouldn’t want to be on the ship with them when it sinks. (It’s illegal) Negative SEO is the most common and malicious practice of poor link building. There are services which can be used to send hundreds of backlinks to a website in a short amount of time in order to frame you as paying for them yourself.

1. Dofollow site-wide links with exact-match anchor text;
2. Dofollow links from unrelated sites/content;
3. Dofollow links from pages with obvious footprints such as “Sponsored Post.”

against sites participating in private blog networks since 2014. 

This can be done with the intent to knock down your website, usually led by a competitor with something to gain.

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Originally published at https://www.madmangomarketing.com.

Do Trade Businesses Need SEO?

Do Trade Businesses Need SEO?

Do I Need SEO in Connecticut as a Plumber?

Yes! In the 3 largest cities in CT, Bridgeport, Stamford, and New Haven, the keywords for the plumbing industry are extremely valuable. With 130,000 + citizens and hundreds of thousands more in the surrounding towns and suburbs, appearing on Google on the first page can be the difference between another average year and an explosion in phone calls and web visits.

Do I Need SEO in Connecticut as an HVAC Specialist?

Of course! In Connecticut, we are lucky enough to experience all four seasons every year and sometimes in the same week. This means that HVAC systems are constantly going back and forth from heat to air. Repairs and installations never end. Think of how you search for a service…appearing high in Google Maps can be the deciding factor in someone using your business.

Do I Need SEO in Connecticut as an Electrician?

Absolutely! You focus on keeping the lights on and we’ll focus on keeping your website ranking high on Google. Just like you invest in your business and equipment, and investment in advertising and SEO can pay big dividends in the long run. Think of the online power like the giants at Benjamin Franklin…they have a support staff dedicated to building their presence on Google. Let Mad Mango be your SEO support staff.

Do I Need SEO in Connecticut as a General Contractor?

For sure! Connecticut is an interesting place. Some people love it and others, not so much. With an ever-moving population nutmeggers need contractors. When someone searches for a general contractor in Hartford anywhere from 10–50 websites are competing to show up for that search term. The ones that do show up have been using best practice SEO for years and what they have built results in phone calls that keep the wheels turning. Don’t wait another year! Start SEO with Mad Mango today!

Do I Need SEO in Connecticut as a Roofer?

Definitely! New England has many unique home styles and roofs. Help keep heads dry by becoming more accessible to your customers! With over 40 roofers alone in the West Hartford area, the best way to stand out is to get to the top of Google.

No matter your trade, investing in SEO is a wise decision for your future. Although you may not see the same action as running an ad, search engine optimization can bring you business for years to come. Talk to an SEO expert today at Mad Mango Marketing.

Double Dip on Your Next Blog

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Double Dip on Your Next Blog

As Google’s algorithm matures, the days of keyword stuffing are long gone. It used to be that if you used the right keyword enough times per page you would be rewarded with a first-page placement.

Not so much anymore.

Now Google’s crawlers are smarter than ever. Able to decipher between computer-generated content and human written copy, authoritative and legitimate information is the bare minimum.

Not only does it have to be real, it must be useful. Things like time-on-page and social shares are more meaningful to Google because this shows that the public trusts you.

This blog will walk you through not only how to create meaningful content but also double dip on every single one of your blogs forever.

Let’s begin with selecting a topic.

Google makes money a million different ways but for this discussion, we will only talk about their search engines. Google makes its money by supplying you with accurate answers. A user (the customer) searches a topic and is presented with a series of results like links, shopping items, images, videos, or a Google Maps address. Google wants to provide you with this answer as quickly as possible so that you use their service again to find the answer to your next question. Because Google hosts PPC ads on almost every search query, your return searches mean more money for Google.

So, for Google to show your site on an organic search, you need to answer a question or be the solution. One of the best ways to take a simple keyword and find what people are searching for on Google concerning that topic is AnswerThePublic.com. This website pulls data from Google and other search engines and presents you with a list of questions people have searched for concerning this topic. Now that we have our list of questions we can look at search volume to see which questions will be the most advantageous for us to write about.

Find the perfect question and begin to write!

But wait…before we start writing let’s take a more holistic look at search engines and how we can rank better and quicker.

As previously stated one of the fastest-growing factors to get your site ranked is time spent on-page. The way Google sees it, the more time spent on a page, the more valuable your page is. After all, in today’s fast-paced world, no one is sitting on a web page that isn’t giving them what they want.

So, what’s the best way to keep someone on a page for a long period of time? A video!

As if you didn’t already know (you’re probably not even still reading this blog) people have short attention spans. We prefer information in video format because it’s even less work for us. This has been proven time and time again whether its Facebook adding the Watch section to your app’s nav bar, or your kid watching their 100th consecutive hour of Tik Tok.

VIDEOS KEEP PEOPLE ON WEB PAGES.

So, let’s make a video! Instead of writing a blog and working out the perfect sentence, we can just speak! Film yourself in front of your business talking about this issue for 5 minutes. Use still images to create a slide show over your voice. Or even better, show us. Teach your audience how to replace an air filter, or spread that mulch in a flower bed. Whatever it may be, it's probably more interesting on video.

Create a YouTube channel under the same name as your site, load up the description with appropriate links and keywords, apply relevant tags, and publish.

But how is that a blog? You may ask.

It’s not…yet. After we have uploaded the video to YouTube, pull up the video on your phone and open Google Docs or Microsoft Word. Depending on which program you choose the next step will differ but we will use Google Docs for this example.

Up on the top bar click “Tools” and then “ Voice Typing “.

Got your YouTube video out on your phone?

Once recording, start the video. Google will begin creating a document that will act as a transcript to your video. Let the video play out and then go through the document for wrong words as this is still not a perfect system.

You now have a blog AND a video! Start linking up that transcript, upload it to your website, and embed your YouTube link to the post. YouTube is the world’s second biggest search engine (behind Google) so having even more content here is like double dipping on every blog you make. You also don’t have to spend hours hunched over a keyboard.

With Google owning YouTube putting your content here is a no brainer. Just like GMB, the Google search engine loves content inside its own ecosystem because it has more control. Your posts here will serve you well into the future and who knows…you may be able to monetize some of your better videos and create another stream of income. Reach out to the SEO experts here at Mad Mango Marketing today!

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Originally published at https://www.madmangomarketing.com.

Creating a Google Map Pack Ad

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Creating a Google Map Pack Ad

What is The Google Map Pack?

The Google Map Pack Shows the 3 most relevant businesses based on your search, location and their reviews. The Google Map Pack displays photos, reviews and a location of a business. However, you are also eligible to show up at the top of this group by creating an ad in Google Ad words. Follow this step by step instructional blog to create an ad of your own! If not, and you’d like us to take the reins on your
online advertising , take a look at our page and contact us by phone or email. 

Step 1: Navigate through the Google Adwords Dashboard till you reach the extensions tab. ​

From here you will select ‘Campaigns’ on the far left. Select your desired campaign.

Select Ads & extensions’ on the left

Step 2: Creating the extension
 Click on the blue plus arrow and select ‘Location extension’

You will be prompted to choose from these 3 options:
Select curated locations ,Find a Google My Business account, and Link to a Google My Business account I know.
We will select the second option. From here select your desired GMB account

You will see all of your location options here. ​

Press finish and you are done! You will find your new location extension ad in the extensions tab.

Why are Google Map Pack Ads Valuable?
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Get ahead of your competition
In industries that are heavily dependent on bringing customers to their physical location, these types of ads can provide a massive leg up on your competition. Showing up in the Google map pack allows you to customers to contact you by phone, visit your website, or directly input directions to your location in their GPS.

Boost your SEO
Apart from being a great help in PPC campaigns, these ads grant an additional boost to your website’s SEO. Since these ads tend to be rich in quality and relevant text they will be prioritized by Google when determining ranking.

Increase your Click Through Rate Google reports that nearly
⅓ of user traffic is related to a location in some way. So this should be an easy grab for all business owners.

Boost Brand Awareness and Free Impressions
You have the possibility to consistently show up on Google Maps for search queries you aren’t organically ranking for.
A great perk to Google Advertising is if you don’t get a click, you don’t pay for it — so you could potentially get your business’ name in front of 1000 people for free when someone searches for “bars near me.” but don’t receive the click.
The next time those people drive by, do a Google search, or see one of your ads, they have a far greater chance of becoming a customer since your name has become more recognizable.
In conclusion
​Sometimes you don’t need extensive advertising campaigns to generate sales, all you need is to show customers that you exist!

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Originally published at https://www.madmangomarketing.com.

Guest Post HACK

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Guest Post HACK

​I will start off with acknowledging this is in no way a hack. More of an observation that can get you around using marketplaces to buy guest posts.

It should also be noted that paying for links & guest posting goes against Google’s best practices however, the grey area around “paying for content” naturally gets blurred. Owning a high-ranking website on Google is like owning real estate. Renting that space out is the natural free-market practice. Whether it’s an ad, vlog, guest post, or any other type of content, if the content creator doesn’t own the domain, the content was paid to be put on that property one way or another.

First, let’s talk about what a guest post is for those who are new to Search Engine Optimization. A guest post is when you write and publish an article on someone else’s site. Depending on the domain authority of the website you are guest posting on you may link this guest post to your money site or 1st tier sites. Guest posts are great because they give websites free content and your site gets a backlink.

​​Next, we have to find these sites. There are online marketplaces where you can pay for guest posts but this can be costly. A pretty common strategy is to do a Google search of your industry and the phrase “write for us”. Yes, include the quotation marks in your Google search. This will tell Google that you only want to see websites that are about that industry and have the words “write for us” somewhere on the website. Sites with the phrase “write for us”, “contribute”, “guest blogger”, “submit a guest post”, and many similar terms are most likely looking for content! Another tip, turn your search tools to only show web pages built in the last year. These sites are more likely to be active and have a contact point available.

So, now you have a list of 100 websites in an excel sheet and you’re happy. These people should be easy to work with. Who doesn’t want free content!?

Before you send anyone anything, we need to make sure that these sites are worthy of our time and energy. Guest posts are supposed to be original content so ideally you’ve worked on this piece for a minimum of 2 hours. How can we be sure?

In this stage, the first thing I like to do is judge a book by its cover. I know, your mother always advised against this. Some SEO experts may say I am missing out on potential. I say I want only the best. Look at every link in your excel sheet and throw out everyone that has a spammy looking domain name, a domain that makes little sense for your industry, or links ending in things other than .com, .edu, .org, or .net.

Now that we’ve cut some junk domains out we want to see who’s the best of the rest. Go over to your Ahrefs account or a free tool like websiteseochecker.com and enter your links one by one and record the domain authority (DA) of each site.

We now have a list we can start to make sense of. What I like to do is now break this excel sheet up into tabs and label them “DA 0–10”, “DA 10–20”, and so on. We now have a visual break down of our potential guest post sites and can make a better decision on our reach.

Tip: I like to add 3 columns to the right on the domain authority column. One that is a color code. I use red, yellow, and green based on how receptive they are to me. Anything in red I will put a number in for how many times I’ve reached out. After the third time with no response I delete them from the list. The next is the last date contacted, followed by what their blog requirements are.

Many of these sites will require 750+ words or more per blog with a minimum of one picture. If you have a 500-word blog you want guests posted it’s nice not to waste your time with sites that won’t waste their time with your blog.

Now, do we throw away all sites with a DA under 30? No. SEO is all about balance. We want our guest posts to spread out. A simple 33% split between 0–20, 21–40, and 40+ is a safe place to start. It will never be perfect but it will signal to Google that you are well represented around the web.

We have our plan and emails ready. We will assume you have created an awesome piece of content that complies with these site’s requirements and it is time to write approach these properties for a post.

Some sites will tell you what they want in the subject line. (This should be in your notes column next to the word count). For everyone else use a straightforward approach. Remember, we found these sites by searching terms like “write for us”, there’s no need to use all caps or make someone think there’s a problem with their site. A simple “Your Next Guest Post” or “Looking to Build Guest Post Partnership” will go a long way. The word partnership is great, who doesn’t like getting something in return for helping out. It could get you a few more opened emails.

You communicate with the site editors, get your blog posted, get that juicy backlink, have made the proper notes on your guest post excel sheet and you’re ready to go.

If you have expensive software like SEMRush or Ahrefs keep an eye on this link with one of their tools to make sure it continues to give you positive results. If things go awry you can always disavow it.

Now to that “hack” I mentioned in the title…the reason you’re reading this…

There are a ton of platforms that bring together buyers and sellers of paid guest posts. The one we used when starting out was BuySellGuestPost.com. The job got done but there were times where communicating with a website owner was difficult after you already shelled out. Sometimes you wouldn’t hear anything from anyone. There were a lot of moving parts. Then it hit me, instead of paying through this platform hoping for a responsive site owner, why not cut out the middle man. Sites like BSGP are riddled with sites looking to pay reasonable prices for content. Find some sites you like using their platform where you can break down by price and DA, saving you a ton of time. Reach out to these sites and make contact before paying! You may even be able to get a cheaper price with the middleman taken out of the equation.

Now you’re really building a network.

Acquiring guest posts is work, it takes a lot of emails and even more writing. If you write a paragraph and add 5 new sites to your excel sheet a day you will have a list worth envying in a year’s time. Maybe even worth selling.

Mad Mango Marketing has also done the work for you! Reach out to us today and start utilizing our already built network!

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Originally published at https://www.madmangomarketing.com.

A Step by Step Guide to Creating a Facebook Ad

To Start:

1. Create a Facebook account

2. Create a Facebook Page for your business 3. Select Business or Brand

• Fill out as much onto your Facebook page as possible. Add photos, basic business information like hours and a link to your website.
• Then you need to make sure you make your team admins on the page.
• On the top right select ‘Settings’. On the extreme left select ‘Page Roles’ Then enter the names of anyone who will be publishing on this page.
• Select the appropriate level of permission you would like to grant this person, then click ‘Add’
• They will receive a notification on Facebook accept or deny this role.

4. Create a business manger account

• Visit business.facebook.com and choose “create account”. Log into the Facebook account used to create your Facebook page.
• Fill out the general information as prompted
• Connect your Facebook page by entering your Facebook page’s name.

5. Approve the request on your personal Facebook
6. Create an ad account

• On the bottom of your screen you will see a green button saying ‘Create Ad Account’
• Name your Ad Account the name of your business, select your prompted time zone, select your currency.

7. Ad positions to your ad account

• Select “Business Settings” on the top right, then click “Accounts” on the far left.
• Add yourself to your business manager account and select Admin Access

8. Input payment information

Starting the Creative:

1. Create your first campaign

• You will now be brought to a page showing the pages and ad accounts you have access to. Click on the name of your ad account.
• Click the green button ‘Create a Campaign’

Before you move any further it is important to note this. The most important aspect of creating an advertisement is by laying out your client’s expectation. Along with that, you must be sure to layout your own set of expectations. These expectations will help you to maintain a path in the development and then, targeting. After keeping that in mind, you are ready to select your objective.

2. Select from a wide variety of objectives to begin.
Strategies to aim for:

• Brand Awareness: This strategy is when you and your client develop an approach to deliver a message about your business or products you offer.
• Reach: This shows your business to a wide variety of people.
• Traffic: your goal is to drive as many people as you can from your advertisement to website. These ads tend to work more when you offer an incentive. Maybe a discount or signing up for a mailing list.
• Engagement: This route is more for publicity. You want people to naturally share and drive likes to the post.
• Video Views: Attention is difficult to grab itself. A person averages 8 seconds of attention.
• Lead Generation: These are bottom funnel targeted ads. The target though in the audience more likely to purchase.

To pair with these strategies you also need quality graphics which fit to both mobile and desktop perspectives. You can use websites such as Canva and Giphy! Another addition to these two is exciting copy. Something that gets your audience interested. Really capture the viewer’s eye with something outstanding. Discounts help!

3. Select your target demographic
Location: We’ll target the area your customers reside
Age: Choose an ideal age for your audience
Gender: Is your ideal audience mostly male, female or a mix of both?
Languages: Select the languages which unique to your product or service
Detailed targeting: Select different

• Demographics
• Interests
• Behaviors

4.For example’s sake we’ll choose those interested in DIY
Choose placements:
Show your ads to the right audiences in the right locations.

• Automatic Placements: You let Facebook try its best to get the most amount of ad space as it can.
• Manual Placements:
• 
  
• Select which mobile device operating systems will be receiving the ad.
• 4.Budget & schedule
• Here you can choose several things all focused on saving you money. If you lower the Cost Control, options.
• It is important to keep documentation of your numbers in a separate place like such as excel because Facebook does not spend your exact daily budget each day.
• 
  

Creating the Ads:

1. Name your ad: Make sure the name describes the ad made.
2. Identity: Select your pages you wish to display from
3. Select a format

• Carousel — add 2 or more scrollable images or videos.
• This format tends to preform the best when you have menu items, a chronological story, or multiple clothing items.
• Single image or Video — Self-explanatory, 1 photo or video.

Ads tend to perform better with a higher quality image. Facebook prefers to show ads to its users which are higher in resolution.

As for video ads, you want to capture the attention of your viewer in the first few seconds of your video. People’s attention spans are short nowadays, so it is important to display the main selling point and importance of your ad.

4. Copy and Destinations

• Enter in your primary text for your ad
• We tend to keep our ads 3 lines or shorter in length to ensure all of our text is shown on the user’s screen.
• Headline: Write an attention-grabbing headline
• Description: add short details about your business or service which make you stand out from your competition.
• Link — Enter the link which you want your audience to see.
• Provide a “Call to Action”
• 
  

How Much Should Spend to Run Facebook Ads?
This is where Mad Mango Marketing comes in! Contact us today and we can give you a suggested budget along with how many people you will be able to reach with that budget!

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Originally published at https://www.madmangomarketing.com.