Monthly Archives: July 2019

How to maintain accurate listings information in a world that has moved way beyond the yellow pages!

Being found when consumers are ready to connect is critical. In today’s digital marketplace it is imperative that location data is managed in the local marketplace and across key business discovery platforms. People might constantly be online, they might be sharing details of their lives with personalities across the world, but ultimately people are local. They shop local. They eat local. They live local. That means that no matter how big or small our world becomes, local will continue to be the operative word when it comes to local online presence.

Here are the ‘Top 10’ most popular navigation platforms:

1. Google Maps
2. Apple Maps
3. Factual
4. TomTom Maps
5. OpenStreetMap
6. Facebook Local
7. Here Maps
8. Foursquare
9. What3words ID
10. 2GIS.ae

For starters, every self-respecting business needs to claim their business listing on Google. The following information should be submitted for listings:

• Business Name
• Detailed Address
• Exact Map Pin (geocode)
• Phone Number
• Website URL
• Operating Hours
• Category of Business
• Photos and logo
• Business information

Location intelligence can help businesses reduce their operating costs, increase asset utilization, optimize margins and improve customer service.

Here are a few distinct benefits of mapping your business online:

• Increased brand recognition
• Increased customer footfall
• Increased sales per location
• Increased local search rank
• Data insights & reporting
• Keep your digital presence fresh with real-time updates
• Track the performance of your listings

Most online experiences between a customer and a business begin with a search engine. People who search on their mobile phones for your business have a high intent of making a purchase. According to research, 76% of people say to visit a store after looking up information and 28% make a purchase afterwards. Location proximity is a decisive factor for customers who are looking for nearby places to dine and shop.

For more information on location mapping, brand reputation management, sentiment analysis, customer reviews, and local SEO services, contact Cyber Gear at info@cyber-gear.com

The Government of the UAE has launched the new domain name of its official portal to become the first government domain in the world composed of a single letter (U), to facilitate the public access to information, services, projects, strategies and laws in the UAE.

The new domain name, developed in cooperation between The Prime Minister’s Office at the Ministry of Cabinet Affairs and the Future and the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), is composed of the initials of the United Arab Emirates (u.ae). The first letter is the domain name, while the second and third letters form the UAE’s country code Top Level Domain “.ae”.

The official portal of the UAE Government is a comprehensive platform for all government services and information, as well as important data and information related to vital sectors in the UAE, including education, economy, business, infrastructure, residency regulations, health, national policies and strategies, and others.

Commenting on the new domain name, Hamad Obaid Al Mansoori, TRA Director General, said, “The new domain name of the UAE Government portal embodies the meaning of innovation, which is simple and easy to remember. It also reflects the centrality of the people in the government’s concerns with its various projects, programmes and plans. The adoption of the new domain name comes at an important stage of the digital transformation, in which we enter the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the smart city, and the government of Artificial Intelligence. We are guided by our wise leadership directives to adopt a culture of innovation and creativity as a way to assert our nation’s leadership and our community’s happiness.”

Al Mansoori added, “The most important message of the new domain name is the focus on people. It is a message from the UAE leadership that you are the goal, you are the purpose, you are the bet, you are the government, and you are the United Arab Emirates. We enter the digital age through the u.ae portal, to tell the world that the people are the ultimate goal of the UAE Government. The people in the broad sense of participation, tolerance, peace, prosperity, happiness, wellbeing, and sustainable development. The “u.ae” mission is that we are all our partners in future making.”

The informative side of the portal includes facts and figures on the UAE Government organisational structure, the Founding Fathers, the UAE strategies and initiatives, and development goals and plans. The portal also includes an e-participation platform that contains an online forum, blogs, surveys, polls, Chatbot, and links to the mGovernment pages on social medial such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others.

1. SECURITY
This is an extremely important feature. There needs to be high cyber security to ensure that no user data like credit card information gets stolen. When going through the transaction process, there should not be any sort of breaches; the pathway should be secure. One of the ways to establish security is to change the prefix in the address of your website from ‘http’ to ‘https’ after purchasing a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate. This helps avoid online frauds and keeps user’s data safe. Having ‘https’ also boosts your website’s search engine rankings.
2. MOBILE-FRIENDLINESS
Another feature that boosts SEO rankings and essential to an E-Commerce website. You might get customers who would want to shop on the go rather than going home, switching on their computers and then shop. Your website must be able to adapt to any kind of device it runs on to provide a user-friendly experience. Over two billion people use their smartphones to make some sort of online transaction. Another reason to go mobile friendly is that Google penalizes websites that are not mobile friendly.
3.REVIEWS
Whilst shopping, customers are not just going to buy products. One of the factors that affect their decision when purchasing something is the reviews. Customers trust reviews. Do not filter out the negative comments. Negative comments are actually beneficial to your business. Bill Gates once quoted, “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning”.
4. LOADING TIME
Optimize your source code, cut down on loading time and make your website as fast possible. If a webpage takes more than three seconds to load, then bounce rates soars. Google has taken speed into consideration as well when indexing websites. 79% of online customers have said that any minor setback in terms of speed or performance that has occurred affects their decision on returning to the website. Web Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or KeyCDN calculates the speed and performance of your website and gives a detailed report on what’s slowing your website down.
5. NAVIGATION & USER-FRIENDLINESS
Your website should be user-friendly and easy to navigate through. The customer should be able to reach their destination with a minimal number of clicks. Navigation and user-friendliness improve the overall experience and increases sales. Your website should be as organized as possible. Use easy to read font and font size, display all essential tabs, include a search bar which has the feature of autofill as well and try not to clutter everything in on the main page. For example, if a user is shopping for electronics, sub-categories for electronics can be displayed.
6. CHATBOTS
Suppose, a customer has a question about your product or website but does not have the time to call customer service, that’s where a chatbot comes in handy. A chatbot can help improve your website’s conversion rates and increases engagement. A chatbot does not overwhelm the customer with too much text or complication, it is straightforward. With the development of AI, chatbots have huge potential to propel your business. According to an Oracle Survey, “80% of businesses said they currently use or are planning to use chatbots by 2020”.
7. OFFERS
No customer can resist special offers once they see it. It motivates the customers to buy something. Even if this does not convert into a sale, the engagement time with your website increases. Not only does this boost your sales, but also your search engine ranking.
8. REGION & LANGUAGE
You can provide the option for a change of country within that region. This makes it more convenient for customers, makes it user friendly and improves the overall experience.
9. A WISH-LIST
A wish list allows users to bookmark the items they intend to buy in the future. Consequently, it reduces shopping cart abandonment rates. So, when the same customers return to the website for shopping, they are reminded of what they were planning on purchasing. This brings in more sales and allows the website to analyze customer interests. Customers can even share their wish list with friends and family allowing them to purchase the items for the customer. Not only does this boost sales, but traffic as well.
10. Social Media
Try bringing your business in to the top social media platforms. Users can discover your brand from these different social media platforms. One section of your website should display the company’s social media handles. This allows users to get in touch with you, share the company profile on their social media accounts and help bring in more traffic. You can even post fun videos and pictures, advertisments and share the latest merch on these accounts. It forms a connection with your customers.

Instagram is a social networking app made for sharing photos and videos from a smartphone.

Here are some interesting facts about Instagram you should know.

1. Instagram officially has 1 Billion monthly active users.
2. 500 Million users are active daily.
3. 88% of the users are outside the U.S.
4. 22% of the users log in at least once a day.
5. 38% of the users check Instagram multiple times a day.
6. There are 95 million posts per day.
7. 25 million business profiles.
8. 60% of the users discover new products on the platform.
9. Over 200 million users visit at least one business profile every day.
10. Majority of the users are between the ages of 18 and 29.
11. One in three internet users are Instagram users.
12. 25% of smartphone owners use Instagram.
13. Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo has a whopping 174 million follower count.
14. 70% percent of hashtags are branded.
15. There is a limit of 30 hashtags that can be used.
16. The optimum number of hashtags is 11.
17. Facebook bought Instagram for 1 Billion Dollars in 2012.
18. There are about 4.2 billion likes per day.
19. Number of photos and videos uploaded per day is more than a 100 million.
20. Instagram is worth more than 100 Billion Dollars.

Source: Hashtag Social

The main goal of every website owner is to win the cyber war and emerge at the top in terms of search engine rankings. The Domain Authority (DA) score is there to assist website owners in getting there. Now, what is DA? DA checker is a software developed by Moz that measures how relevant your website is and how it will rank in a search engine result. A DA score ranges from 1-100. Does it affect your website ranking? No, it doesn’t – it predicts your website’s search engine ranking. This score gives you an idea of how strong your website is compared to other websites. So, having a higher score can mean that your website is more likely to rank higher in a search engine result.

Here are some ways to improve your DA score:
CONTENT
Make sure your page has quality and up to date content. Writing content that contains a lot of text doesn’t mean it’s good content. It should be to the point, informative and relevant to the public. Get rid of grammatical errors and sloppiness. Use images and videos to make it look more appealing. No one wants to just see a whole page of text. It becomes monotonous.
INTERNAL LINKING
Within the page content, include links that take users to your older content. But make sure that the older links are related to the current post. This helps users easily navigate through your website and gain more information. When this happens, the engagement time of your website increases. Easy navigation improves User Experience (UX) as well. Furthermore, indexing, done by the search engine, becomes easier.
ACTIVE SOCIAL MEDIA
Make sure that you have social media accounts for your business. Link these accounts to your main website. The social media buttons should be visible to the users. It becomes easier for users to share your content on social media platforms. Try increasing the number of followers on your social media pages. This is likely to improve the number of shares and in turn, boost your website traffic.
MOBILE-FRIENDLINESS
Do not restrict your website to just desktops and laptops. Make sure that your website is responsive and is compatible with any device. If your website isn’t mobile friendly, it majorly affects your DA score and even your search engine ranking. There are almost 5 billion smartphone users. So, if your page isn’t easy to read on a phone, not only does this affect your score, but you also lose out on a large percentage of audience.
TOP-LISTS
Write lists that contain the top competitors in your niche. These experts would love to see themselves being a mentioned in a ‘top – 10,20,30…’ list. Most likely they will share your article on their website or their social media accounts. They might even link your website on theirs. So, you get traffic coming in from their website and this improves your DA score.
TOXIC LINKS
Constantly check your website for broken links or links that lead to unreliable websites. Toxic links decreases UX and increases bounce rate. Users become less reliable on your website. These links hurt your DA score and your search engine ranking. It is definitely an inconvenience to check each and every link on your website, so there are several tools online that do the job for you.
SPEED
Speed of your website affects your DA score and your website ranking. Moreover, it improves UX and even your website’s conversion rate. 40% of users will wait no more than 3 seconds for a website to load. Most of the factors that affect your website speed are technical. So, it is advisable to hire an experienced web developer to help you with the same.
GUEST-POSTING
Provide guest posting services. This increases referral traffic and helps with link building. It also builds a relationship with other companies, increases your brand awareness, secures quality traffic from other websites and improves your domain authority. Guest posting is extremely beneficial to your company.

In conclusion, do not let the DA score get to your head. It just shows you whether you are on the right path or whether you need to improve on your website. There are tools online that calculate your DA score. Be sure to check your DA score periodically and work on your website accordingly.

Top 10 Takeaways From A Google Analytics Report

If you’re a webmaster or a website administrator, the ‘Google Analytics Report’ is a tool that should be quite familiar to you. Google Analytics is a web analytics service that allows you to monitor website traffic and provides graphs and statistics to explain the traffic patterns. Analysing a Google Analytics Report thoroughly can help boost traffic and improve the overall website performance.

Here are 10 takeaways from a Google Analytics Report:

Mobile-Friendliness

We live in a world where the use of Smartphones is extremely common. People are constantly checking their phones wherever they go and browsing the Internet. So, an important key is to make sure your website is mobile-friendly. Google even penalizes website that isn’t mobile friendly. Once this task is achieved, keep track of the numbers from the report produced under the mobile section. Here you can see 3 types of devices under observation, Desktop, Mobile and Tablet. The mobile category can further be stripped down to specific devices. This allows you to see which brand of smartphones are performing the best.

Reduce Bounce Rate

This Google Analytic metric is the rate at which a user leaves your website from the main page without browsing any further. An average Bounce Rate lies in the range of 41-55 percent. Some of the ways to improve your Bounce Rate is to make sure that your website does not contain too many broken links, it uses friendly, there is good readability, not too many pop-ups or advertisements and writing fresh and relevant content.

Always Set Goals

Set Goals. Goals are a pretty useful and simple feature of Google Analytics. There are different goals provided by Google like destination goals (users arriving at a page on your website), engagement goals (amount of casinoluck.ca time a user spends on your website and visits different pages) and event goals (performing an action or triggering of an event). For example, if you run an E-Commerce based website your goal would be for the user to make an online transaction. Setting goals increases the conversion rate of your website.

Analyse Source Of Traffic

Take a look at where your traffic is coming from. This can be looked at under the acquisition section. It contains 4 sub-sections. Referral, Direct, Organic Search and Social. You can see if your website referred to by another website (backlink) is actually bringing in a significant amount of traffic and boosting your search engine ranking under the Referrals section. These numbers can be improved by reaching out to more websites for backlinking and getting rid of websites that aren’t really helping your website. Similarly, the other 3 sections can be closely examined as well.

Appropriate Exit Pages

Analyze the Exit Page section. This section tells you at which page users are leaving your website the most. Make sure the exit pages are appropriate. For example, if a user has finished making a purchase on your website, there is a high chance they’ll leave your website and that’s okay. But if you notice users leaving your website at the homepage itself, it becomes an issue and needs to be looked into.

Fine Tune Website Content

The Pages section in Google Analytics shows the performance of different sections, ex: About Us, Contact, Products, of your website. Based on the numbers observed, changes can be made to the sections that aren’t performing as well as the other sections. Try making changes such that the exit rate is reduced, and sessions are increased.

Focus On Interests

Try finding your field of interest and building a website based on that. Your interest should be the website’s foundation. The Interests section tells you a user’s affinity towards different categories like Lifestyle & Hobbies or New & Politics. Try improving the numbers in a few categories of interest. Do not go over the top and try building on every interest. This metric helps you reach out to a certain part of society and increases the chances of getting revisits.

Focus On Age & Gender

You can segregate your audience further by building a website that attracts certain age groups. The numbers for different age groups can be analyzed under the Age category. See which age range give you the best and worst output. Concentrating on certain age groups will improve your traffic significantly. Similarly, your audience can be segregated by Gender as well.

Target Local Traffic

Incoming traffic numbers can be observed country wise under the Audience section. It is better to gain as much as traffic possible within your country and then work towards an international goal. Keep improving on the Active Users number in your region after which concentrate on gaining international users.

Improve The User’s Journey

Behavioral Flows allows you to keep track of how users interact with your website, i.e. how they travel from the homepage and end up on the exit page. Look at how much time a user is engaged in a particular page and if you achieve any sort of conversion. Observe which pages they click through instantly and the number of pages they click through to reach the exit page. Try making the user’s experience on your website easy and entertaining.

Try taking complete advantage of the Google Analytics tool. Thoroughly analyze numbers such that it satisfies customers and brings in more website traffic.

The World Wide Web became available to the public in 1991 and since its inception, approximately over 2 billion websites have been hosted and this number increments every second. Every website owner wants their website to stand out amongst the vast competition. The Google Algorithm for organic search rankings warrants that the website content is updated frequently.
Here are 10 good reasons to update your website regulary:

1. Making A Good First Impression
It is said that “The first impression is the last impression” and this holds true from the customers perspective. Suppose you get traffic from new people; they’re first going to look at the appearance of your website, then look for the content of their interest and then continue to browse your website. Make sure that your website looks elegant and the content is regularly updated. Customers would want to see content published a few hours or a few days ago rather than months or years ago. A fresh and sleek look of the website and updated content will make the customer want to revisit your website, again and again.

2. Security
Maintenance of your website increases cyber security. This keeps your data and your customer’s data safe thereby making customers feel secure. If your website uses a Content Management System like WordPress, these companies launch software updates or bug fixes. As a website owner, it is your duty to keep up with such updates, else this gives hackers the opportunity to break into your website resulting in data loss of the website and the customer.

3. Improved Search Engine Ranking
Google continually brings out changes to their algorithm and your website needs to be updated and maintained accordingly. Google favors websites that are active and periodically updated. It is also important to add up-to-date content that is interesting and relevant. This boosts your website’s search engine ranking and consequently brings in more quality traffic.

4. Connecting To The Customers
Once you gain customers you have to make sure that these customers become loyal and keep returning to your website. In order to do this, you should find topics of interest and publish content that is not only captivating but up to the minute as well. When this is done, a connection is made between the website and the customer, making the customer loyal.

5. Employing Latest Technology
Technology is continually advancing and evolving. It is better to incorporate technology that is trending, for example, Artificial Intelligence (AI), into your website. This allows you to stand out from competitors and even provides a better User Experience (UX).

6. No More Dead Links
Make sure there aren’t too many broken links or even no broken links at all. If there are too many broken links this slowly drives the user away from your website and makes it an unreliable source. So, continuous checks and maintenance help avoid this issue.

7. Increasing Speed
Optimize and regularly make minute changes to the website’s code to make sure that it is as fast and efficient as possible because speed affects search engine rankings. Better speed means more website traffic and happy customers. If your site takes more than 5 seconds to download you can lose almost half the visitors traffic!

8. Feedback & User-Friendliness
Ask for customer feedback on the website and make changes to the website accordingly. Customer feedback can help your website become more user-friendly and interactive. This periodic update keeps customers satisfied.

9. Blogging
Writing user friendly content on topics that are in the news helps the users engaged and shows that you are well aware of the industry in which you operate.

10. Making Back-Ups
Another essential element is to back-up your website every few days. Technology may be advanced, but it is unpredictable. You can lose all your data unexpectedly. So, it is always good to make cyclic back-ups of your website.

Making a website and launching it is easy. But that is just the first step. The tough part is actually updating it and keeping up with competitors. So, hire a professional website development company to maintain and update your web presence – it plays a vital role in growing your business online.