Currently, ranking high on search engines has become the obsession of brands. And with good reason, because this implies that the content will have more visibility and receptivity from users searching for something specific.

Getting top rankings can be a challenge, but it can be easier if you have an SEO checklist. Keep in mind that having an organized list of what you need to achieve your goal will make it much easier to achieve it effectively.

Check out the SEO Checklist
As with any strategy, you need to have a solid structure in order to achieve your goals. In the case of web positioning, you need to have an SEO checklist to guide you through this process. This list is divided into several relevant categories:

A.- Be prepared with the right tools
Web positioning is a job that needs great allies. Therefore, the first thing you should have in this SEO checklist are the tools that will be of great help to you:

1.- Google Search Console

This is one of the favorite tools of SEO specialists, as you make sure that Google knows your web pages. It also helps you take them into account when generating your results pages or SERP.

It will show you detailed information about those queries that generate traffic to your website. As well as the performance of individual pages within the domain such as impressions and clicks. It also helps to detect errors, measure conversion rate or CTR and so on.

Keep in mind that all this can be configured according to the period you want and various filters that give you the ability to plan a precise optimization strategy.

2.- Hosting Service
More than a tool, it is a highly relevant service, so you cannot choose a hosting provider lightly. Consider that it will be responsible for storing all your Web site’s files, media and databases on a server.

This service must be maintained 24/7 and be ready to protect your domain from malicious attacks. A good hosting provider can help you increase your upload speed. Also, to offer extra services such as SSL certificates, corporate e-mail, developer tools, among others.

B.- Do an SEO audit.
Once you have the necessary tools, the next step is to check the current status of your website. It will be very helpful in determining how your strategy has gone and what you need to improve to rank on Google. Therefore, you need to evaluate these factors:

3.- Validate how much information there is in Google about your website.
Before you start making changes, the first thing you should do is to know the size of your website. To do this, you can use one of the above tools, including Google Search Console. It will allow you to see how many and which pages are indexed in the search engine.

This means it will show you all the pages registered in Google’s amazing library. You may have many articles, but maybe the search engine does not recognize them. If you set it up from the beginning, you will know what to work with.

4.- Verify that your pages do not have a “no-index” tag.

It is essential that you do this check because if your pages are tagged “no-index,” this indicates to Google that it should ignore them and not rank them. Consider that when a page is not indexed, it means it is not in the search engine’s library. But if it is archived, it will be able to rank.

5.- Make sure you have uploaded a sitemap.
Another thing to consider in your SEO checklist are sitemaps, these are sort of plans that make it easier for Google to read and rank your pages. There are both URLs and images, and with these files you indicate which page belongs to a category and which ones are most important.

Knowing whether or not you have a sitemap will help you understand how highly your page is currently ranked.

6.- Find out what links your site receives.
You need to be aware of the type of links you receive on your website and the amount. Focus on the visible words and where they are placed. Also, you need to evaluate the relevance of the sites that put your link on their website.

7.- Evaluate search traffic and keyword analysis.

Your SEO checklist must also have a good analysis of search traffic, as it will let you know what words a website is found with. Search Console provides a table indicating what users search for on Google before they reach one of your pages.

As far as keywords are concerned, you need to do keyword searches. This gives you the ability to do an organized, detailed and thorough search of the phrases or words most used by your potential visitors.

C.- On-page SEO and off-page SEO.
What other aspects should be on your SEO checklist? You cannot miss on-page SEO, as it is what allows you to optimize the internal elements that make up your website. This way, you can make sure that your site has an effective structure.

But off-page SEO should also be on this checklist. Unlike the previous one, it focuses on improving and effectively managing the actions that occur off the page.

Now, it is important to know what should be listed in each of them:

8.- On-page SEO

• You need to work on your pages to make navigation easier for the user.
• Add buttons and calls to action on your main pages that lead to the most important content.
• Write new titles and descriptions for your pages.
• Configure your website so that the most important text is in the written content and not in images.
• Eliminate animations and heavy files that have no value to the user.
• Add title tags.
• Place alternate text (alt text) in images.
• Make sure forms work properly.
• Include your contact information in a visible place.
• Optimize the loading speed of your website.
• Make necessary changes in the main menu and footer for greater accessibility.
• Change your page URLs so that they are user-friendly.
• Get rid of duplicate content from articles or pages.
• Add structured data to your pages and products in case of e-commerce.
• Eliminate duplicate content due to language conflicts.
• Work with responsive design.

9.- SEO off page

• Take advantage of social networks and email marketing to promote your content.
• Recommend your articles to sites that might be relevant.
• Contribute by writing content for more popular websites than your own.
• Create a Google My Business account to add points to your online presence.

D.- Content Marketing
Content is king in any digital marketing strategy, which is why you should add content marketing to your SEO checklist. Some of the things to consider at this point are:

10.- Know the trends in your industry.
You need to study the market before creating any kind of content, you need to know what customers are interested in about your product or service. This way, you can have a clearer view of where the industry is going and you will be able to create content that is found, read and shared by users.

E-commerce seems to have no end, and it is now that SEM becomes more important for e-commerce. In recent times, online stores have been leading in terms of progressive growth, this is due to the coronavirus pandemic and confinements. More and more companies want to join this trend that continues to generate profits.

The truth is that all may not be rosy for companies selling their products and services through e-commerce. There is a lot of competition in the industry today, which is why it is crucial to differentiate yourself to achieve a much better position. SEO plays a central role in this regard, but SEM for ecommerce does as well.

Turnover is what will determine whether a business is successful or not. To get good numbers, it is necessary to have a defined strategy that the target audience can easily understand. The most advisable thing is not to use only one strategy, but rather several activities such as email marketing, social networks and SEO positioning among the rest.

All these methods or strategies are important and even necessary, but their results are generally available in the long or medium term. To quickly drive traffic to the digital space, search advertising SEM e-commerce is the best option.

SEM in digital marketing strategies

SEM actions for ecommerce or Search Engine Marketing are all the practices that are carried out on a website to achieve maximum visibility through search engine advertising campaigns. SEM are the results that are obtained in the different platforms or search engines such as Google or Yahoo for a fee.

Difference between SEO and SEM

While SEO bases everything on organic content placement, SEM is based on paid content placement. Articles that are paid usually have the word “Sponsored” or “Ad” at the bottom in very small letters. In fact, there is nothing in the organic search results to indicate this and they are usually located below the paid ads.

The more clicks a link receives, the more money the company has to spend. You don’t pay for the times it is displayed, you pay for the times someone clicks on it. In SEO, you don’t have to pay anything to locate the page or online store, but that doesn’t mean it’s cheaper, because there is a lot of work behind it.

Benefits of SEM advertising in search engines

There are several points where online advertising offers multiple advantages, and among the many are the following:

A.- Segmentation
More does not always mean better or something like that. An SEM campaign for ecommerce offers a good number of visitors and, more importantly, segmented traffic. This is a specific ad for a specific search or question. The people who usually access these links are willing to buy.

B.- Ease of startup and administration
Launching an ecommerce SEM campaign does not take much time and is very useful, as it allows changes to be made at any time until the set goals are achieved.

C.- Total control
Investing in an SEM campaign for e-commerce means knowing where every euro invested will go. The advertiser is the one who will determine how much money to use. Likewise, you can know data and metrics about how the campaign works.

How to create an effective SEM campaign for e-commerce

A positive aspect of SEM campaigns for e-commerce is that they provide good results. The most complicated thing is not creating it, but knowing how best to manage it once it is launched. There are some steps that can be taken to create a successful campaign such as the following:

1.- Define your keyword strategy.
Google Adwords allows you to create a comprehensive keyword list where you have to add all relevant terms for each type of search. These lists can be segmented using the matching options so that Google can display the ad according to the order of the words in the search.

2.- Use ad groups

Ads should be grouped according to terms corresponding to a certain semantic area. The more ad groups that are created, the better the effectiveness of the applied campaigns. At this point it is advisable to create various types of group ads so that you know which ones will work better than others and modify those that do not give good results.

3.- Be creative: SEM for e-commerce.
The space in which you can describe the ad and the headline is very limited. Therefore, you need to be quite creative with the words and phrases you will use. Above all, you should use those that generate the most interest and strike the target audience.

4.- Links: a very special detail

This is usually the most common mistake in SEM campaigns for e-commerce. The link that is placed in the ad must be related to a page that in turn corresponds to the keyword. In other words, if a user searches for an electronic item, the ad must send him to where he will find it and not to a home page of the manufacturer’s.

5.- Know your customers well: SEM for e-commerce
All companies have an ideal customer in mind, and creating valuable content for these people is critical. Knowing how customers search on the Internet gives a clear vision of how a digital space should be optimized. If you don’t spend time analyzing potential customers, you may be creating content for the wrong people.

6.- Follow the competition and its movements
After creating an SEM campaign for ecommerce, you need to analyze your online competition. This is one way to know the strengths and weaknesses of your counterpart.

Once upon a time, not too long ago, when you needed to find a service near your home or the phone number of some business you used big yellow books.

In big Italian cities like Rome they were even divided into alphabetical tomes, they were heavy with very light sheets, writing so small and lines so thick that every search was really a treasure hunt.

Today things have completely changed. Everything we search for we want to be available at our fingertips. Yes, “at our fingertips” in the truest sense of the word, because most of our needs and wants are met through online searches that we perform using Google, our beloved search engine.

Keep in mind that 25-30% of total google searches have “local intent,” a percentage that rises considerably when we use our smartphone as a device to search for something, in which case the percentage of searches with local intent rises to 40-50%.

This is when it becomes extremely important for artisans, entrepreneurs and professionals to gain a space within Google, to create and curate their own digital identity with the goal of increasing visibility on Google.

TO IMPROVE YOUR VISIBILITY ON SEARCH ENGINES

YOU MUST FIRST UNDERSTAND HOW GOOGLE WORKS
First thing google is not internet wink
Google is a search engine that, as it explores the web, finds billions of pieces of information contained within millions of websites. It indexes sites and their pages (indexing means entering web addresses into its own database) and returns them “in the form of sorted results” whenever a user performs a search by entering a keyword (the keyword is the Keyword).

In summary, for each keyword entered, Google, almost in real time, offers us, broken down by pages, a list of sorted results. The order of those results is basically the ranking that each website has based on the search keyword.

Positioning Yes, you got it right, we are really talking about search engine positioning (in English SEO=Search Engine Optimization), a word that you must have heard countless times and that indicates the most important activity to achieve maximum online visibility for your business or profession.

Ranking is a key factor in being found by your potential customers during their searches and “appearing high on Google.” It is the first step to be able to gain new leads and not lose opportunities by giving them away to your competitors.

If you want to better understand the difference between indexing, optimization and positioning I recommend you watch this preve video where I explain it very simply.

BUT HOW DOES GOOGLE SHOW RESULTS?
It is important for you to know that all searches are not the same; on the contrary, they are highly variable and influenced by so many factors that I am not going to enumerate here.

For what concerns this journey of ours, it is enough for you to know that Google offers the results:

• Personalized according to the search subject. Cookies, history, searches from “logged in” with your account are all elements that allow Google to recognize you and offer you the result closest to your personal target. Remember, Google knows you better than a wife or a mama-cool
• located based on the area in which, with our device, we search or based on the input of location indicators such as searches like lawyer Milan, Hotel Verona, Car Body Shop Bologna, dentist Perugia, in short question + city.

I tell you this to make you understand how Google tries to offer each of us the best search result and experience.

A satisfied user is a user who will not stop using Google!

The concept of “localized results” is the one that is of most interest to all businesses that, as we said at the beginning, offer goods or services in a specific geographic area and therefore have a business strongly linked to the territorial data. In these cases, so-called Local Seo often proves successful.

Within what I defined as “localization” we can, as mentioned, have two variables that mainly influence our Google search:
1.The fact that we search from a device (smartphone or pc) that has its own geolocation i.e., a certain geographic location, either because our IP address is recognized or because we have the GPS device active.
2.The fact that in our keyword (keyword) we explicitly indicate a territorial area (e.g., Italy, Sardinia, Cagliari) or because our word has a territorial connotation in itself. Let me explain further. If I search for plumber Google will tend to show me all the plumbers in the area where I search based on the location detected by my device. So if, for example, I am in Rome and simply search for “plumber” he will show me all the plumbers in the area even if I have not specifically requested “plumber Rome.” Eh yes it really is invincible!
Forgive me for this premise, but it is critical to understand how Google works before grappling with how to get the most rankings and consequently increase search engine visibility. Today, to be a digital entrepreneur, it is important to have at least the basics of interpreting and understanding online tools.

Now that we are clearer on how Google works let’s see how to grow your visibility and strengthen your digital presence especially if you are a business or professional operating locally.

Here is what you should not miss to increase your online visibility:
1.A Web site that contains as much information as possible about your business: who you are, what you do, what services you offer, where you are, and contact information for reaching you. Remember that for the purposes of local searches, it is essential to include as much relevant and pertinent information as possible in order to the geographic area of interest.
2.Facebook page of your business with the inclusion of all the contact information needed to be found (phone number, address, website) and a Talking Keyword in the name of the page. For example, if you are a lawyer instead of simply writing “Mario Rossi” write “Mario Rossi – Lawyer” or “Lawyer Mario Rossi Milan.” If you have a pizzeria called “Red Tomato” do not call your Page the “Red Tomato” but “Pizzeria il Pomodoro Rosso” or “Pomodoro Rosso Pizzeria Roma.” This is because so many people often use Facebook to search for information, as if it were a search engine, but also because Facebook pages appear among Google search results as I show you in the image below.
In this case this the result you see in the image immediately below is on the 1st page of Google probably also influenced by the large number of positive reviews. But having indicated the word PIZZERIA and the CITY (Anzio) definitely favored it among the results.

1.Use the big aggregators. If you have an accommodation business such as a restaurant, pizzeria, hotel, bed and breakfast being on TripAdvisor or Booking.com can make a difference, especially being there with a good reputation. More and more often, in fact, the first search results, for these types of activities, are “occupied” by these sites. Current trends also show how Booking.com is being used as a “search engine” to then move on to direct contact with the facility for booking.
2.Creating a Google My Business tab for your business. This last aspect, given its ever-increasing importance, we will go into it step by step.

Google My Business is a free service provided by Google that gives you the ability to create a business/professional tab to manage online information about your business. The incredible advantage is the fact that if you work well on your tab and follow the tips you find in this article, your business can easily appear in both the organic results on the 1st page of google and on Maps.

See in the example below: this is the result by searching with the Keyword Agenzia Grafica Sardegna, after the first 3 paid results, the ones highlighted in green with the label Ann, we find an amalgamation of 3 business cards (the so called 3-Local Pack) highlighted in orange and at the 1st result Our Company, which is also in the first position among the organic results, highlighted in light blue.

How to list a business on Google My Business?
First of all, don’t be surprised if, despite not having done anything, you too already have a tab on Google My Business. So many businesses, in fact, unbeknownst to them, already have their own presence created directly by Google thanks to partnerships with PagineGialle and other directories, so the data held by these platforms has been used by google to create a kind of “digital business directory.”

Let’s now take a step-by-step look at what to do to rank your local business on Google.

The first thing to do is Manage a Business Tab, to do this you have two avenues available to you.

First search for your business on Google and once found verify that the link that says “are you the owner of this business?” is present. If you find this heading you can breathe a sigh of relief, it means that your business is there (as I have often mentioned to you it was google itself that created it), but no one has appropriated it, then all you have to do is click on the link and follow the procedure to OWN YOUR BUSINESS FILE and subsequently verify it.

(I will explain in a moment what it means to verify your google my business tab).

If the tab appears but not the words “are you the owner of this business?” or if no tab appears then you need to go to www.google.it/business and register your business by following the steps I show you.

1:: Click on the green TEST NOW button.

To use My Business services you have to log in with your Google accunt (ed. your email address on gmail) if you don’t have a google account you necessarily have to create one. Use a professional account, if you have your private address for example mariorossi@gmail.com it would be better to create an ad hoc one like avvocatomariorossi@gmail.com, to go back to the example given earlier.

2:: Once you have created the account or logged in with the one you already have you must ENTER YOUR BUSINESS NAME.

I recommend that you use a Talking Keyword such as Pizzeria+business name, Beauty salon+business name, Clothing store +business name, in short, it is important that the card name specifically contains the service or activity you practice.

3:: Indicate the ADDRESS where your business is located. A google Map will appear and you will need to drag the Pointer to the exact location of your business.

4:: At this point you will need to enter your COMMERCE CATEGORY. when you start typing the name Google will come to your aid by suggesting various options so that you can choose the most appropriate one.

5:: Next you will be asked to enter CONTACT DETAILS so any useful reference so that potential customers can get in touch with you directly. You will in fact be able to enter your telephone number and website.

A website, in fact, should be thought of and intended as a business tool and not as a mere complement, or worse ornament, to one’s business communication.

If you are wondering if the website has lost centrality or is outdated to the benefit of social networks, as I hear some people say, know that the answer is NO.

Certainly there are some sectors and types of business in which the website is not the priority. Some businesses, in fact, because of the particularity of the sales process or the way products or services are offered, would probably benefit more from using other marketing tools, perhaps even offline.

But for all industries in which the online marketplace represents an opportunity, the website is still the heart of the web marketing strategy, and without fear I would say that it will remain so for a long time to come.

In all likelihood, if you have ended up on this page, you are looking for a solution to turn your site into a sales and contact acquisition channel…

Well, then you should know that to do all this a site absolutely needs to be SEO optimized.

As you most likely know, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization or Search Engine Optimization, but taking into account the fact that Google makes it as a monopolist, with peaks touching more than 93% of the world market, talking about SEO today is equivalent to talking about Google optimization.

Search engine optimization is represented by all those actions and, pardon the repetition, optimizations that you need to make both on site, and in this case we are talking about seo on site, and off site seo off site, in order to improve the organic ranking of the same on search engines for the keywords or keywords of interest. Mind you, when we talk about SEO, we are talking about organic positioning with respect to certain keywords or keywords. A positioning that builds over time and allows a website, albeit with fluctuations, to secure some stability in the SERP, grow its authority and improve visibility.

We speak, on the contrary, of paid positioning or SEM when this is the result of Keyword advertising campaigns on Google AdWords. In the latter case, you will have positioning only and exclusively for the duration of your campaign. Once the campaign is discontinued, your website will return to its original position.

Before we get into any disquisition about the actions necessary for search engine optimization, I recommend you watch this video in which I briefly explain how google works and what is the fundamental difference between indexing, optimizing and ranking a website.

SEO AND WEB MARKETING TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN

You should know that devoting yourself to search engine optimization, hence doing SEO, means engaging in online marketing activities and actions. Yes, marketing, that’s right! Jot down somewhere the phrase “Doing SEO is marketing” and don’t forget it.

Those who do SEO aim to rank high on Google and bring traffic to the same by trying to attract target customers.

I’ll try to explain better what I mean. All optimization actions performed on a website, whether on site or off site, affect the ranking of your site on search results with the effect of:
1.increase visibility on Google
2.facilitate the meeting of DEMAND and OFFER.
A well-optimized site in fact:
ranks better on Google
attracts more traffic
encourages contact with target users
succeeds in acquiring customers
But what does SEO have to do with marketing?

First, a quick review of the definition of what it means to do marketing.

Most entrepreneurs and professionals confuse marketing with advertising, or worse, believe that marketing is the purview only of large companies. Nothing could be more wrong. Anyone who wants to sell a good or service cannot do without a market analysis, capable of showing how to match supply and demand.

From a Web perspective, your target market is the online market. On the web, demand is represented by a query (=keyword) that the user types into the Google search bar. See for example the image below, where the DEMAND is represented by the word “pellet stove.”

While the OFFER is represented by the ordered list of results that Google returns to us with respect to our query.

With this simple example I just want you to understand what I mean by matching supply and demand from an SEO perspective. If I am a user looking for a pellet stove, through an internet search I can find an infinity of offers capable of more or less precisely satisfying my demand. The image above shows how the SERP (= google results page) returns both images depicting a pellet stove and a list of websites on the same object.

SEO ON SITE AND OFF SITE

As I mentioned above, when we talk about search engine optimization it is useful to make a distinction between actions taken on site, called on site optimizations, and actions taken off site called off site optimizations.

In this analysis we will focus on the on site factors directed at SEO optimization. As you read, I invite you to take pen and paper and mark “point by point” whether your website complies with these steps.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION: MAIN ONSITE FACTORS
1:: Make a website with a good structure. If you want to start with the basics, know that “the foundation of any website is given by its structure.” Therefore, it is important to plan the organization of content following a hierarchical and prioritized order. Information should be structured according to a criterion that goes from “general to particular,” so as to guide the visitor within gradually more specific content.

Each page of your website should be linked to another and should allow the user to return to the home page easily and in a few steps. It is very important to create internal links or cross links, which cross-link related content within the website. Having internal links, which refer from one page to another on the website, has the dual function of:

offering the search engine links to related content, making the thematic focus of the site to be indexed clearer

bring traffic to pages that are not yet well positioned, because they may be newly built or more hidden

point the visitor to the informational path to further explore the content they are viewing

stimulate the user to stay on the website so as to increase their dwell time and reduce the bounce rate. Bounce rate indicates the percentage of visitors who, once they have accessed the website, visit only the page they landed on and then leave… “bouncing”! A high percentage of the bounce rate is definitely a factor to be interpreted: it can be entirely physiological and natural or be a signal to be analyzed.

2:: Have a mobile friendly website. The data speaks for itself, the number of people accessing the web from a smartphone or other mobile device is growing daily. This trend has not left Google indifferent. “Big G” has released Mobile First Index, an update to its algorithm through which it preliminarily verifies whether “a website is optimized for viewing from mobile,” all obviously with consequences in terms of ranking. Let me explain better, if you have a site with only the desktop version Google will continue to index it, but will prefer a competitor of yours that has a so-called responsive site that is adaptable, in its display, to any device.

Give it a try right away, check your site’s visibility from mobile devices through Google Test Mobile a free tool provided by Google.

In addition, having a website optimized for mobile devices has obvious “user experience” side benefits. A site that is easily navigable from smartphones increases the visitor’s time on the site, positively affecting its ranking.

3:: Have a fast website. The speed at which your website’s pages load is another important factor capable of improving its ranking. In fact, the time people “give” to opening a web page is getting shorter and shorter. If you want to check the speed of your website you can do so through this free tool: Google Page Speed Insights. In case the results are not good, I suggest you take action by following the directions Google itself will give you. Remember that time is a very valuable resource, the Internet has made us all less patient and even a fraction of a second can make the difference between you and your competitor.

4:: Have talking URLs that are not too long. The URL, short for Uniform Resource Locator, is the address that uniquely identifies a web page. Every resource on the Internet has a unique URL: in fact, there cannot be 2 pages with the same URL or address.

In the image above, I wanted to exemplify what is meant by a speaking or seo friendly URL. The URL address is one of the textual elements that appear on the Google results page whenever a search is made. The image below is Google’s 1st Page for the word “country house renovation” and, as you can see, in all the URLs I have highlighted there are relevant, if not identical words with the search just done.

5:: Optimize the Title Tags of each page. If I had to explain it in the simplest way I know, I would tell you that the Title Tag is the Title of a web page. This Html Tag is still one of the basic elements for on-page website optimization. It basically has 2 functions:

user side: it helps us to choose among the various results proposed by Google. In the image below I have placed in a green box the Title Tag, as you see it is the first element capable of capturing the reader’s attention, helping him to understand the content of the proposed resource. Obviously, the user will have arrived on the google page based on his specific question and, consequently, will click on the title that will best represent for him the answer he was looking for.

Therefore, in writing the Title of your website pages, follow these invaluable tips:

1:: Include in the title tag the Keyword for which you are trying to rank on Google. And since the title tag is about 55 to 60 characters long, try to keep the keyword as far to the left as possible.

2:: Write it in such a way that it succeeds in attracting the reader’s attention > search engine side: it helps Google’s spiders understand at a glance the content of a given web page. In short, the title is for Google a clear indicator of the content that will be talked about.

6:: Optimize titration tags H1- H2 – H3… H6. If you want to rank well on Google, you definitely need to produce quality content, but it is not enough. If you have decided to work on search engine optimization for your site, you will have to take care of the structure of the text by paying attention to the Headings or Titling Tags. These are important elements when writing and layout content, especially when writing articles that exceed a certain length.

Headings Tags have a dual function:

• they serve the search engine to understand what the logical structure of the entire “writing” is, highlighting priorities and hierarchies
• they help the user in reading the texts

Since the function of these Tags is to “open paragraphs” they are useful and recommended whenever you want to organize a fairly structured textual content. They have an ascending order of importance: the H1 is the Title of our content/article and indicates the topic we are talking about. It is a good idea to include a keyword in this tag. P.s. be careful not to confuse it with the Title Tag which is, on the contrary, the title of the web page. If your article is long you will surely need to break it down into several paragraphs, for this the H2 will help, and in case of more complex structure, the other Tags H3 – H 4… And so on.

If you are wondering “How do I insert these Tags? I don’t know anything about html code,” know that it’s really simple. In fact, most popular CMSs contain this option within the text editor, as I show you in the following image.

In the text layout phase, it will therefore be very easy for you to go and enhance all the elements useful for the proper organization of your content. In the image posted below I show you, HTML code side, how the various Heading Tags are read by the search engine. To make it easier for you to understand I have written in red the H1 Tag and in green the H2 Tag.

7:: Optimizing images. Image optimization is as important as it is neglected. Every image on the web in fact has at least 3 references that should be emphasized as they are very important for search engine optimization. Let’s talk about the file name, the image title and the Alt Tag.

Image Name: when we take a picture with a smartphone or camera the file name is represented by a sequential number e.g. IMG_853.jpg or DSC_453.JPG. Do these acronyms give you a hint? Definitely not. That is why it is recommended to rename the file with a name that describes the image.

In the following image, I show you how the Title (framed in green) and ALT TAG (framed in red) appear from the HTML code side of the page and within the Joomla CMS editor.

First, there is a preliminary distinction to be made: there is more than one way to gain visibility, and one does not exclude the other.

You can do it:

Organically. In this case, you don’t have to shell out 1 euro! It’s about leveraging a few tricks to increase visibility and traffic on your Instagram business profile. So, off to useful and valuable content, different ways to generate engagement and interaction, smart use of Insight and polls, collaboration with other accounts.
Via sponsors. The other option is to invest in actual advertising. You can engage influencers who embody the company’s values and message, or you can sponsor your own posts.
In the latter case, pay attention to the prerequisites! You must:

Have a company Instagram page; if you have a personal one, hurry to make the account switch!
Link it with the Facebook page; yep, the ownership is the same!
Use the official Android and iOS app; it’s the only way to sponsor your content!
Well, having clarified this dual possibility, let’s enter the world of advertising!

Let’s find out right now how advertising works on this social and what you need to know.

Research your competitors. Identify the industry leaders and ask yourself: how do they go about it? How do they structure their campaigns? What call-to-actions do they use? What reactions do they generate? This is a critical preliminary analysis for your Unique Selling Proposition: you must offer something unique by sponsoring it in a unique way!
Define the goal of your advertising. Basically: what do you want to achieve? For example, do you want to increase awareness, profile traffic, or conversions? Understanding where you want to go is essential to know what direction to take and how to go about it.
Clarify your target audience. Targeting should be specific and targeted. Then define your buyer persona: How old is she? Where does he or she live? What is he or she interested in? What passions, desires and fears does she have? What behaviors characterize her?
Choose the format of your advertising. Do you prefer to focus on image or video? Better a carousel or a slideshow? Canvas or stories? The choice depends on the goal you have defined, the target audience, and the message you want to convey. However, a word of advice: aim for videos or stories, they are the winning formats! This is because of the engagement they generate and the current trend of storytelling.
Monitor and measure the results. On Instagram you can take advantage of charts and metrics that allow you to analyze performance. Monitoring campaign performance is critical to understand what’s working and what’s not, so you can make changes and optimize!

What are the advertising costs on Instagram
Knowing precisely what the costs of ads on Instagram are is impossible! And I’ll tell you why: prices change depending on certain variables, such as the days of the week or the target audience’s master data. Why? What is it that varies?

Infrasweekly there are more interactions than on weekends, therefore: it costs more to sponsor on weekdays. Similarly, targeting a young audience (from millennials up to 35 years old) is more expensive than targeting an adult one: this is the most popular target audience.

Okay, but why is this not precisely predictable? On what does it depend?

One must consider that the mechanism that governs advertising on Instagram (as well as on Facebook) is the auction. What does this mean in practice? That prices vary depending on the number of advertisers present at the same time on the same target. In general, the auction determines costs according to:

Quality of the advertisement
Economic bidding
Estimated action rates
Okay fine, but how much is spent in practice?

Let’s clarify that the minimum cost to advertise on this social is 1 euro; however, this is a very small amount if you aim to get significant feedback.

Tip: for lead generation activities on the national level it is advisable to invest at least 25/30 euros per day, for an e-commerce at least 40/50. This is essential especially at the beginning, later you can figure out which campaigns yield the most and focus only on those.

In any case, remember: with Instagram you decide how much to invest in advertising! You just choose the duration of the ad and the total budget, you will not spend more or less. But, how do I pay? First of all, the cost units of ads are:

CPC: cost per click. As the name itself says, you pay for each click the user makes on your ad. This is useful when the goal of the campaign is to increase conversions: if once clicked the user proceeds to purchase you will get your revenue!
CPM: cost per thousand impressions. A thousand impressions means that your ad can be viewed 1,000 times by users: you pay for these thousand chances of being tracked. CPM is mainly for increasing awareness and engagement; therefore, it’s for you if you’re looking for visibility!
But, how to choose the payment method? How does the transaction take place? The answer is: directly on the app.

1.Click on the three lines at the top right of your profile;
2.Select “Settings.”
3.Click on “Company.”
4.Select “Payment Methods.”
Then, once you have set your budget and configured your ad, you can go ahead and choose your payment method. You are charged automatically and only when you reach the billing threshold.

How to advertise on Instagram
If you are wondering how to advertise on Instagram you are in the right place! Do you know why? Everything is more accessible when explained simply. With a few useful tips and pointers, you can make it on your own to juggle Ads, among the most important Instagram services for businesses.

The first thing to decide is whether you want to sponsor previously published posts or if you prefer to create new content. The process is the same, the only difference is that in the first case you will already have the content ready while in the second you have to create it first.

So: if the post you want to advertise is to be dredged up in your profile, follow these steps:

1.Enter your profile and click on the little man-you will see the posts you have published.
2.Choose the content you want to promote and preview it.
3.Click on “Promote,” in the lower right corner.

Okay, at this point the steps to follow on Instagram Ads become the same:

1.First thing to do: select the target of your campaign. You will see that Instagram (as well as Facebook) offers you 3 macrocategories:
”Notoriety.” It includes “Brand Awareness” and “Coverage.” You will choose the former if the intent is to increase awareness; select the latter if you have the goal of getting the ad seen by as many people as possible.
”Consideration.” Here are included: “Traffic,” which corresponds to the goal of increasing clicks on your page; “Interaction,” for those whose intent is to induce the user to like, comment or share; “App installation,” for the purpose of stimulating downloads; “Video views,” to get more views for the latter; and “Contact generation,” to attract additional users.
”Conversion.” Instead, this macrocategory encompasses “Conversions,” “Catalog Product Sales,” and “Point-of-Sale Visits.” The objectives are quite explicit and all directed at stimulating user action, be it a purchase or a visit.

2. Set the target audience for the ad campaign.

Be careful: this step is crucial to the success of sponsored ads! Aim for a well-defined target audience, stick to the buyer personas you have worked out for each of its segments. The more specific you are, the better your chances of achieving your goal!

Instagram Ads offers very broad and in-depth targeting options, among which are:

• Gender
• Genus
• Age
• Location
• Interests
• Behaviors

Once you set up your audience, you can save it for subsequent campaigns so you don’t have to start all over again!

Additional option in your hands is, “Similar Audiences.” What is this? The platform uses information about followers who already follow you to search for others with similar characteristics. Not bad, right? It’s a great help: it’s easier for a similar audience to the one you already have to be interested in your offer, so it’s easier to attract them.

3.Choose the format of the ad. You have several options, which, as mentioned, should be considered according to the goal and target audience you have defined:

• Carousel: 2 or more images/videos to scroll between.
• Single image: a content with only one image.
• Single video: a post with a single video.
• Slideshow: continuous loop video insertion with up to 10 images.
• Canvas: combination of images and video to tell a story.

As mentioned: aim for maximum engagement and storytelling. So better a Canvas than a single image!

4. Select your Call to Action.

This is about choosing the button to invite the user to action.

5. Define the budget and set the duration.

That is: choose how much you want to spend in total or daily and whether to activate the promotion continuously or for a defined duration. And there you have it! Always remember: the best way to attract followers is always to come up with valuable content. So in addition to advertising, don’t forget to offer something useful/informative/educational/stimulating.

Examples of advertisements
At this point it is good to get into practice and give a couple of examples of advertisements on Instagram, analyzing the factors that led to their success, that is, the achievement of the set goal.
A case in point is Burberry and its campaign.
As you probably know, this is a giant in the fashion industry; the brand has a distinct and distinctive identity (we’ll all be thinking of the same texture and colors) and a very good degree of brand recognition. Its campaign focused on storytelling and told, via canvas and slideshow, the world of Burberry behind the scenes. Here’s the promise and the narrative: we involve you in the making of garments and accessories, we take you backstage at our events, we let you experience the shooting of the new collection.

Basically: here’s unveiled what we do and how (it makes you feel important and curious); here’s to you an experience you might not have known otherwise (we offer not just products but a real experience)!

The telling of a story and the excitement of a whispered secret drove users to curiosity, which in turn led them to click to view more content, products, initiatives. That was the goal of the campaign. Well done!
Here is another case of success: the advertisement for Ben & Jerry’s, a large American ice cream company.
His idea is brilliant: not to create content, but to use content made by his followers (user generated content, UGC). So he sponsored his own ads with photos and posts of his customers, each with their favorite ice cream flavors, each eating it in a different place.

What do you get from such a strategy?

The follower feels involved, participatory, special: he is in the foreground; many people who end up as protagonists in an advertisement tend to like, comment and share: they increase the interactions and visibility of the post. In addition, other users find the testimony of people like them more trustworthy, rather than that of the seller: a disinterested evaluation is considered unbiased. Credibility and visibility end up increasing awareness. Well done again this time!

Instagram sponsored: what is meant
Now you have all the information to understand what is meant by sponsored Instagram! Yes, it’s really about advertising: those posts with the words “sponsored.” You find them in the feed, among the posts of people you follow, on the explore page, and in stories. And here’s the thing:

Sponsored ones fit into the scrolling seamlessly, blending in among other content. So, unlike other types of advertising, they don’t interrupt enjoyment, prevent the performance of activities, or annoy the user (think YouTube ads while listening to music or TV commercials while watching a movie!). So much so that not-so-savvy people do not even notice that that post is actually an advertisement. That is precisely the key to their success!

Why your company should advertise
By now you may be wondering why your company should advertise, what’s in it for them, and what benefits they get.

Let’s start with some data (Facebook, 2019):

• There are about 1 billion active users on Instagram;
• Instagram accounts for businesses total more than 200 million;
• 90% of users follow at least one business profile.
• 80% of users are influenced in their purchasing decisions by advertising on this social.Not bad, right?

But what do these numbers mean?

If in managing Instagram for business you consider investing in advertising, you have many opportunities to get a good ROI. In fact, you multiply the opportunities to gain visibility, notoriety or conversions (this also depends on your goal).

So, the pool of potential customers becomes larger, they have more opportunities to get to know you, and you have more opportunities to make a sale.

This is a vicious cycle: as it repeats, the users you attract increase, further increasing awareness and demand for your offer.

So rather than asking yourself why advertise on Instagram, ask yourself: why not?

What are you waiting for? Get involved now: now you know how to do it!