Deurali Club, Minbhawan, Kathmandu, Nepal
This is complete guide of digital marketing in Nepal. You can go in depth of online digital marketing and offline digital marketing strategy. You will get research based idea that is appropriate in the context of Nepal. Generally, people think digital marketing is only social media advertisement. however, here is lot more to know about it.
Chapter 1: Digital marketing fundamental in Nepal
Chapter 2. Online digital marketing techniques
-Search engine optimization (SEO)
-Search engine marketing (SEM)
-Content marketing
-Social media marketing (SMM)
-Affiliate marketing
-Email marketing
Chapter 3. Offline digital marketing techniques
-LED marketing
-TV marketing
-Radio marketing
-Telephone marketing
“If you want to break the digital marketing in Nepal. Read this guide completely with patience“
Let’s get started..
In his chapter we will go through landscape of digital marketing in Nepal. You will learn about:
-History of digital marketing in Nepal
-What is digital marketing means?
-Importance of digital marketing in Nepal
-Benefit of digital marketing in Nepal
Let’s get started…
Digital marketing in Nepal: An exciting word to everyone……that makes thinking of using technology.
Thank to those who started the concept of digital in Nepal in 13 December 1950, 8:30 pm with the initiation of “Nepal Democracy Radio” which was first broadcasted from Biratnagar.
After that in 1951, after the revolution, ‘Radio Prajatantra’ of Biratnagar transferred to capital city Kathmandu at Singha Durbar by Tarini Prasad Koirala. Renamed radio station is ‘RADIO NEPAL’ and regularly started broadcasting at April 2, 1951.
Here is the picture of Radio Nepal, that we can find rarely. Image source Wikipedia.
After the establishment of radio Nepal, we can easily guess concept of digital Marketing is also penetrated. Though it took almost 10 years to make specific digital marketing strategy.
Then, 35 years later in December 31, 1983, first television was tested which is called Nepal Television (NTV).
We can say, that was the greatest revolution in digital media and of course Digital marketing in Nepal was introduced.
First drama Telecasted from Nepal Television was Yestai Hunchha by Ujwal Ghimire on the very first day of its regular broadcast of NTV.
So, you got it right?
People says, digital marketing is started in Nepal recently, that is after the penetration of internet technology and computer.
Some of them says, it is in Nepal after the penetration of social media.
But, I have different thought on that.…. You have just seen the evidence…….
Digital marketing concept not New. it’s already been 127 years that digital market concept is penetrated in Nepal with the establishment of Radio Nepal.
And later on with Nepal Television.
You must be wondering, why I am not talking about 100’s of available social media.
Don’t worry, I will cover everything about digital marketing in Nepal, including past trends and new trends.
Now, you might have question, what is digital marketing is in Nepal?
Let’s dive in to this, step-by-step.
What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing is ‘advertising of any product of service through digital network.
The network like mobile, television, radio, email, websites, search engines, and many available digital media.
While defining digital marketing in Nepal: it is same. However, the context is different in case of Nepal.
Why digital marketing is important in Nepal?
Do you remember your childhood, people used to go to the doorsteps caring their product to shell?
I do, and it takes a lot of effort for them.
Not only that much past, let’s see the scenario of couple of years ago. The trends of marketing in Nepal was more physical.
But, time has changed…
The digital media has grown. And we have now different options available for digital marketing.
According to 2018 digital Nepal framework report, Use of mobile and internet is growing in Nepal exponentially.
That means, we can easily visualize that mobile marketing and internet marketing is raising.
Similarly we can see how Internet users are increasing.
Now, there are a number of possibilities for marketing your business digitally including email, video, social media, website, infographic and website-based marketing opportunities.
What is benefit of digital marketing?
The biggest things in the business is time and money.
Do you agree with that?
You do, right?
Since digital marketing have endless opportunity to save both (time and money).
How?
Let me explain.
Let’s say you have owned a business called that sales ‘pure local Ghee’
Image source (Wikipedia)
If you mobilize 10 marketers to sell that ghee in doorsteps.
Imagine salary of 10 people in month.
And let’s calculate time of 10 persons.
It’s scary right?
Digital marketing saves that both. I will explain how in details….
If you are still with me…
Let’s come in to the point now…
Fly in the top of mount Everest and see the overview of digital marketing in Nepal.
“There are two ways of doing digital marketing in Nepal”
1. Online marketing (i.e. internet based digital marketing)
2. Offline marketing (i.e. digital media based digital marketing)
it’s time to explain one by one for both types and available options that suits for Nepal.
You must get the point why I put the topics digital marketing in Nepal.
In this chapter we will go deep in to the seven online marketing strategy. We will focus our discussion in the context of Nepal.
-Search engine optimization (SEO)
-Search engine marketing (SEM)
-Content marketing
-Social Media Marketing (SMM)
-Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)
-Affiliate marketing
-Email marketing
let’s go to each of them…
Highlight of Online digital marketing:
J. Muller from google says “Ranking on search result Isn’t Always the Goal of SEO”.
He confused us right?
But, literally, I agree with him. Of course ranking is key outcomes of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). But at the same time, more important is to get meaningful traffic that help your business to grow and make profit. Let’s conclude, SEO helps you to generate traffic as well as supports to get your site in #1 in search engine.
Search engine marketing (SEM) is simply a paid version of SEO. That means you can generate traffic as well as rank in top in search result. SEM is very temporary that means you will rank until you spend money.
For me Content marketing is showing lollypop to the children. There is a saying in Nepali, those who speaks can shell flour, but who does not speak can’t shell even rice”. That means engaging people with your brand. In other word, it is also building your brand. Creating meaningful content attracts your customer.
There is very big picture of social media user in Nepal, I will discuss in detail. And is Social media marketing (SMM) is another powerful tool of online marketing. There are two options available that is paid and unpaid for marketing. I will explain how can you do social media marketing without investing money.
Pay-Per-click advertising is completely paid advertisement. It’s process of getting traffic to your website by paying a social media or any publisher in every click. Many platform allows you to run your PPC ad.
Affiliate marketing in simple word is shelling other’s product through your website and getting commission. You put product of other brand in to your website and shall to your follower and the product owner will pay you a certain commission.
Email marketing is my favorite and it’s powerful. Email marketing is the process of communicating your customer through email and generate lead. Interacting through email looks professional and the possibility of generating lead is higher.
Now you saw very big pictures of online marketing, you might have tired….
But don’t worry, we will fly to cross whose big picture and make it very simple. And breakdown in to smallest pieces…
Are you still with me right?
Let’s sharp our knife to breakdown first.
Brian Dean from backlinko says “SEO is all about improving a site’s rankings in the organic (non-paid) section of the search results.”
Neil patel says, “SEO stands for search engine optimization. Which is the art of ranking high on a search engine in the unpaid section, also known as the organic listings.”
According to MOZ “SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.”
For Ahref, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the practice of optimizing content to be discovered through a search engine’s organic search results.
Now it’s almost similar right?
Do you think the definition will be different in the context of Nepal?
Absolutely No,
The method might different but the definition is same.
Let me define this, “Search engine optimization is method of ranking higher in search result and generating quality of traffic to your website.”
A video from Ahref, he define SEO clearly.
I follow all of them to see their amazing articles about SEO. Their tactics really works, so that they appear higher in search result.
There are more than 200 raking factors in search engine, you can’t follow all of them, I do same. However, there are some important factors which helps to drive traffic in to the website as well as boost your site in to higher in search result.
A complete Search engine optimization consists of five major components such as:
1. Keyword research
2. On-page SEO
3. Off-page SEO
4. Technical SEO
5. Local SEO
Let’s dive in to each briefly.
Keyword research is foundation of SEO, once you have established your business, you need to find the right keyword that is appropriate for your business.
Based on that keyword you can focus for ranking your website in to #1 in google search result. So, it is the first step of any SEO campaign.
As shown in the picture keyword research impact all SEO process.
Finding right Keyword is tricky. I am sharing you the proven tips for keyword research in the context of Nepal.
There are plenty of keyword suggestion tools available in market and some of them are paid and some are free. The important consideration you have to consider is all tools may not useful in the
context of Nepal. It is because of following reason.
Region 1: All tools are not made for Nepal, that means you can’t select country option as Nepal.
Here is example.
Keyword-srfer is good tool, I like it. However, it does not have Nepal in its country options.
Now, what happens if you use this tool for your keyword analysis for Nepalese business.
It shows the data from other country for your keyword, which may not be appropriate for your business.
Region 2: It’s difficult to buy paid tool from Nepal as, it has payment limitation for international payment from Nepal.
So, what is keyword research idea?
Getting Keyword idea:
Step 1: Think broad keyword for your business and list down them.
This is very first step of keyword research. Just think border keywords. For example, if you run hotel In Kathmandu and you would like to rank your site for that topic. List some border keyword.
I would list some:
-Hotel
-Hotel in Kathmandu
-Restaurant in Kathmandu
-Hotel in Nepal
Step 2: Google search related Keyword
This is completely organic and free technique that really works.
How to do this?
Let’s say you run a hotel in Kathmandu.
So, type ‘hotel in Kathmandu’ in google and hit enter.
When you search keyword in google make sure you are searching from your location and you are logout with yours google account in browser.
Then scroll down to the last and see related keyword.
You can get different keyword ideas……
Step 3: Google, YouTube and Bing suggestion keyword.
Just type your keyword in google and YouTube and don’t hit enter. You can see various keyword ideas. These suggested keywords are must searchable keywords by peoples.
Similarly YouTube suggestion.
In above suggestion, you can see
various keyword ideas let’s list some…
Cheap hotels in Kathmandu
Star hotel in Kathmadu
3-star hotel in Kathmandu
Hotel in Kathmandu valley
Hotel in Kathmandu near pashupatinath
Kathmandu hotel with cashino
Hotel in Kathmandu with rate
Many right?
Cool…
Let’s go for another winning tips…
Step 4: Wikipedia
I strongly prefer Wikipedia, it is great platform where we can see a lot more.
Go to wikipedia.
And type your broad keyword like we did in past.
Let’s say hotel.
You can see the result like this.
Scroll down to the table of content page in Wikipedia.
You can see various keyword options.
Click to any links and see further details and more ideas……
Cool……
Step 5: Get suggestion from Reddit
This is growing platform where people engage in reddit. So, getting idea from reddit is great idea.
Simply, type broad keyword in reddit and see list.
In this example, I have circled some important keywords suits for hotel in Kathmandu.
This is good idea you can get suggestions.
Step 6: See the trends in Quora discussion
Quora is great platform for discussion. You can see what people ask in your topic.
Just type your topic in quora and search. For example, I am typing hotel in Kathmandu.
See how wonderful idea I find here.
Super cool right?
I hope you are not tired….
Because you have dream to learn everything about digital marketing in Nepal.
Let’s move on……
How to get keyword ideas using tools?
Do you remember? I have explained you in past…using tools may not be fruitful for keyword research in the context of Nepal…
I am breaking this now…
There are some awesome tools freely available which we can still use in the context of Nepal.
I don’t list all tools but some which really works for us in Nepal.
Super excited……
Tool 1: Google keyword planner
Google keyword planner is very right tool you can use to get keyword idea.
You need to sign in with yours google account to use this tool.
Go to google keyword planner
Sign in with your account. I am using mine account here.
Click on discover new keywords.
Type keyword, I am typing hotel in Kathmandu. You can type more keywords separated by comma.
Make sure your location is within your country, here is Nepal.
Now you have 1173 keyword ideas, with monthly search volume, competition, CPC.
I like this keyword because the keyword idea it provides is directly from google database. Beauty of this is you can get keyword selecting your country.
I will make dedicated post for using google keyword planner. Hope you will get this.
Tool 2: Soovle : This is cool tool I have ever found to get keyword idea. You can get all in one place. The keyword suggestion in this tool is directly comes from the database of google, Bing, youTube, yahoo, Wikipedia and amazon.
Looks amazing right?
Tool 3: Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is great tool for keyword research. You can get various matrices of specific keyword using that tool.
Tool 4: Google search console:
If you already have website, then see which keyword is performing well for you. Use search console. And prepare your content accordingly.
This works if you already have your site, and you are planning to do SEO.
In order to use google search console you have to connect your site in GSC.
Looks overwhelming?
Let’s summarize:
Keyword Analysis:
Finding keyword ideas:
-Look for google, YouTube, Bing suggested keywords
-Look for google recommended keywords
-Look for Quora question trends
-Look for Reddit recommendation
-Look for Wikipedia table of content
-Use google keyword planner tool
-Use soolve tool
Congratulations, you have made it.
Next step of keyword research will be identifying keyword difficulties.
In general, there are three types of keywords. Let’s go through which is best for you.
Example: hotel
Body Keywords: they are little specific then head terms keyword. It has 2-3 words.
Example: hotel in Kathmandu.
Long Tail Keywords: Long tail keywords are long, 4+ word phrases that are usually very specific. These types of keyword have low search volume. However, they are low competitive.
For example: “three-star hotel near to Thamel Kathandu”
Now, let’s move towards
On page SEO is practice of optimizing elements of page or group of page in entire website.
Do you know?
Google has made its algorithm much smart
The broader on-page SEO include:
Optimize your meta description and title tag:
Creating great content and optimizing it (i.e. Page optimization)
Increasing click through rate (CTR)
Internal links and URLs.
Speed
I will go through these step by step with best practice and some winning tips.
Let’s start:
Meta description and title tag:
Title tag and meta description is vital component of on-page SEO. It tells search engine what the page is about.
Best practice of title tag:
Use maximum two keywords in a title (don’t use more than 2 keywords)
-Separate keywords with hyphen if you are using multiple keywords
-Keep the brand name at the end of title
-Make title tag no more longer than 60 character.
If you use long title tag, the end will cut in search result like this…..
Great Example: Digital marketing: The definite Guide (2020)– phtech
Meta description:
According to search engine optimization starter guideline meta description is summary of overall page. That must be related to your page.
So it must be unique, descriptive and relevant.
I have outlined some best practices.
-Looks better if the end is not cut
-No more then 150-160 character
-Include keywords
-Include call to action to improve CTR
-Avoid using quotation and special character in meta description
Special Note* well optimized meta description increases CTR.
Page Optimization:
Page content is major component of on-page SEO. It’s important from both user and search engine prospective.
There are many good tactics to optimize your page. I really love a content optimization guideline by Backlinko in their on page SEO.
Let me highlight his tips.
I have prepared 13 actionable checklist for page content optimization.
1. Make keyword fit naturally (Do not over optimize)
2. Content must be relevance to your site
3. Create unique content
4. Link back to the content you are coding
5. Quoting content is fine
6. Each page should be unique
7. Coping from other and changing some words to make unique also not good
8. If page of your site is duplicate to other that may penalty
9. Add video or image within your content
10. Linking out to other domain is not bad
11. If you link other site, make sure this site is not spamy
12. Google looks synonyms so incorporate more synonyms keyword
13. Link to other content using anchor text
Internal links and URLs.
Internal links is huge assert for SEO. Make sure you follow following rules while linking internally.
-Link from high authority page to low authority page.
-While linking make sure to use keyword-rich anchor text.
Page speed:
Website speed is major component of SEO. Research says, faster loading site have higher possibility to rank.
To check your website speed I prefer following tools
Done with on page SEO.
Congratulations, you are one step ahead…
Let’s jump in to another crucial part of SEO.
Name itself represent Off-page (or off-site), that means the action that takes outside of your website to contribute for your site ranking in search result page (SERP).
MOZ have have developed this infographics to demonstrate which factor have what percentage of weight in off-site techniques.
-There are four major broad areas you need to consider for off-site SEO.
-Building link of your site
-Brand awareness of your brand through social media
-Understanding algorithm called PageRank.
-Content relevancy
Let’s discuss these topics. I will list some tactics to do so….
Link Building:
I love the checklist for Link building by Brian from Backlinko.
He has explained clearly with many examples and case studies.
Link building is also called backlink….
Getting your page linking by other writer is exactly is the backlink…
It is also called heart of Off-site SEO.
Backlinks is proof that your site have great content and people like it.
Because, if you have great content then anyone else gives reference of your site.
Here you can see very close correlation between domain that get referred and keyword that are ranking.
Image Source ahrefs
There are some unique tactics for link building…. That really helps you to get quality back links.
There are some factors that judge your links. Google looks what is the authority of the page that links in to your site.
Main link judging factor
-Quality of link
-Relevance of link to your site
-Placement of link (where link is located in site like footer or sidebar etc.)
And you need to be aware of following to be saved from penalty.
-If the link is paid or buying links
-If the links is unnatural
-The site is not relevant.
Note* Anchor text of link is important try to make anchor text in to your key words rather than making click here, read more etc
Resources for Link building tactics:
Growing Popularity and Links
How to Build high quality backlinks
How to create link building strategy from scratch
Brand awareness of your brand through social media
Social media indirectly influence SEO by engaging users.
Google have no algorithm to social media for ranking. However, it said that Twitter can increase visibility in search result.
Pinterest offer great SEO opportunity. Pinterest is good to rank for long tail keyword.
And Facebook also do.
Let’s here from Matt Cutts, (former head of Google’s webspam team). He explain about how google consider facebook and twiter links as ranking factor.
Here is video.
For more details you can refer the How social media helps SEO.
How short and sweet…. this is easy and important right?
With this it’s time to jump in to the next important concept that we need to understand about off-spage SEO.
Understanding algorithm called PageRank.
Google have developed algorithm called PageRank in 1997, with the motive to improve quality of search engine result.
It is a formula that finds the page value with the factor of page quality and quantity of page that it linked with.
Let’s see how it works:
PageRank formula:
The important thing that take in to account is google counts quality of the links and links should Earn naturally.
With that we move further step….
Content relevancy
It is crucial part of off-page SEO. Content is the heart of your page.
Presenting relevant content in your page is directly proportional to your bounce rate. If your content is great the bounce rate gets decreases.
If your content is bad, then your bounce rate gets increases.
So, reader holding content is important.
Think about relevancy to user search.
For example, if your page is about organic food and you have present content about sports.
In this case google finds that, your page is not relevant to the content.
Now it’s time to go for:
Technical means quite scary right?
Everyone do that…even, I used to say…
Ohhhh No…I am not good in technical.
But when I dive in to it, I found it completely different……
I have good news for you….
Technical is scary in coding part…. but we don’t need coding skill here….
Boom!!!
Anyone can do that…and it’s easier then we think…
I don’t want to make you bored…
so let’s start with very interesting things. How google finds content in website.
I like the infographic developed by onpage
Finding content by search engine is three step process. That is crawling web pages, indexing them, then ranking according to search algorithms.
But technical SEO is more than that…
Technical SEO includes:
-Site Architecture
-XML site map
-URL structure
-Robot.text files
-Site error
-Structure data
-Duplicate Content
-Redirects
-Canonical tags
-Secure Sockets Layer – SSL
These are major factor you need to consider in technical SEO.
I am sharing here some best practice for technical SEO.
Let’s start with
Site architecture:
Site architecture is all about how your pages are organized in to your site. Google and other search engine crawl your content according to your site architecture.
I recommend using linear and hierarchical structure like this.
To check how is your site architecture, you can use tool Visual site mapper
XML site map
XML site map tells search engine about your website. It is important to create sitemap for each website.
You can create and submit site using google search console.
Your can read documentation from search console help
Once you submit sitemap, you can check in your search console sitemap section in the left.
If your sitemap is ok it will display success with green and if it has problem, it will show error report in red as
circled in above image.
Robot.txt file:
Robot.text file is protocol that is file uploaded in to server. This file will be located in to example.com/robot.txt.
It is public anyone can see. This provides key instruction to search engine crawlers. Once you open robot.txt file you can see following information
Introductory text:
Ignored instructions
Specific instruction
User-agent: *
Let me demonstrate some example. How to see information on robot.txt file?
If we would like to exclude robots to entire site, we can do following in robots.txt file.
ROBOT.TXT
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
If we want to allow robots full access to the site, we keep the disallow field blank,
ROBOT.TXT
User-agent: *
Disallow:
Site error
Hey!
Are you still with me?
You might have seen some number displays while browsing to site. That is error code.
Understanding site error is important.
Once you understand site error code it will help you to overcome.
Generally, there are five types of code displays. They have their own meaning. Let’s explore what each of them
means….
Status code 200: This means ok or page load is success
Status code 404: Page can’t be found, page was removed and no longer exists.
Soft 404s: this mean what out for mishandled page. This means page is no longer exists but still reruns status code of 200.
Status code 500: server error, these errors are temporary
Status code 503: service is not available or server is down or temporary error.
You can see list of error in google search console.
If you have such error, what should do?
Let’s go to next step.
Redirect:
When webmaster may decide to remove page from website or replace with new, when this occurs it is good idea to
redirect to the new page.
Redirect helps really good in user experience point of view…
Let’s understand some useful redirects.
Redirect’s status code provides page handling instruction to search engine.
Types of redirects:
Types of redirects:
1. Permanent redirects (301) http status code:
In most case we use 301 redirects, as that let search engine to know page is no longer exists. And page is redirecting to permanent substitute.
That means old page transfer trust to new page and new page ranks well like old one.
2. Temporary redirects (302) http status code
3. 307 new versions of 302
It means redirect only takes for limited time. And should not transfer any trust.
This may happen during site maintenance.
Note* Permanent redirects are preferable in most cases precisely because the new page is credited with the trust that the old page had built up. The majority of authority is passed from the old to the new page.
With this we have done with technical SEO.
I hope you are building confidence with SEO.
Now it’s time to enter in to your house……
You might have probably guess…what I mean…
It’s …….
Do you know?
Approximately 92% of consumers use the internet to find local businesses. If you own a local business, having a web presence that gets you noticed locally is critically important.
Local SEO is help full to the businesses that operates in a specific geographic area.
In 2014, the google algorithm pigeon was updated and that corrected a problem with biased search results in Google.
During this Pigeon update, it improved accuracy of results for local directories and review sites, it reduced the number of local listings that displayed. This disadvantaged some business types.
After this update the local search was much better.
Over time, the local pack has adjusted to show three results rather than seven or ten. For example, when I search tea shop in Kathmandu it shows three result in local search area as below in image.
But new features have been added such as the ability to sort by rating and view popular times for restaurants. The local pack frequently changes, so keeping up with how it changes will be important when supporting a local business.
There are two ways to show your site in local SEO.
1. Your site can be displayed in the local box, based on organic searches, you can see in above image.
2. It can be listed as an ad at the top of the results page.
Google my business account:
It’s important to maintain google my business account optimized. It plays key role in local SEO.
Probable you might know how to setup your business in google my business.
If you are not familiar with this, don’t worry.
Google have developed step-by-step guide to setup google my Business account
And here is Guidelines for representing your business on Google
I am sharing you the most important factors that you need to follow while optimizing google my business account for your business.
The more complete, active, and visited your pages, the better chance your business has, of appearing in the three pack.
Let’s jump in to the tips:
Tips 1. Name, Address and Phone (NAP)
NAP is key formula of google local business page. Every business must correctly present these three component.
Always spell and write your business name the same way, your phone number the same way, and, your address the same way.
For example, if your business name is “Joe’s Pizza & Brewery” and you present this name as “Joe’s Pizza & Pub” somewhere. That means you made mistake. Because google read these two as different Name.
Image Source : Coursera
Similarly write compete address and use same format everywhere. Make sure you have included all information in your address like,
-House Number (if available)
-Street name,
-Ward Number
-Municipality/rural Municipality,
-Postal code
-City
-Country
For example:
Similarly, write phone number with country code and area code.
For example, (977) 01 444444
Email: Many businesses use a Gmail account for ease of use but it is recommended to use an email address tied to the domain of the site.
For example: info@yourdomain.com
Business Category:
While creating yours google business page, make sure that you choose right category that describe your business. Many people make mistake choosing relevant business category and they simply ignored it. But, this harm your local SEO process.
You can choose multiple categories for your business page. But make sure they accurately describe your business. Your primary category should be the category most relevant to your business.
Optimize your tagline and Intro:
It is crucial making sure you have an optimized tagline and introduction for your business. The text within the tagline will appear as the meta description if your page shows up in google results.
Upload your logo and Image:
It’s very important to use logo and your original image in google mu business page.
Great…
You have almost done with optimizing google my business page.
Now it’s time to look at.
How to optimize your website content for local search?
I am just sharing you the checklist:
-A site with multiple services should create individual pages on their site about each service.
-A site with multiple location should create individual page for each location
-Try to put business address in every page
-Put business address, name, phone in header and footer area
-NAP: Name, Address, Phone is important to have in all pages
Off-site Citations
Citations in SEO are quite different from the citations you see in formal writing. Citations are mentions of your business on other sites that include your business name and ideally your address and phone number as well.
Citations for local business are like links for normal websites, except that citations don’t actually need a link back to your site. They just need to mention your business name and at least your address or phone number, preferably both.
There are automated services that do this for you, but you can also perform this manually.
Off-site Link Building
Citation are great factor in local SEO. At the same time links are still a big ranking factor.
But…
It’s hard to get links….
right?
I have some great idea to get quality backlinks for your local SEO strategy.
-Increase relationship with news reporter, and look at local news source, where you can find a way to get links from local news source.
-If you see or hear something that makes news, inform writer to cover news. The writer may give you credit for the scoop with a link.
-Organize local event that makes news with your brand. So that local news can cover your event.
Customer Reviews
obtaining reviews from your customer really helps for your local SEO.
You need to think about how you make easy for your customer to provide review for you.
Let’s do following to get better review:
-Include a call to action with your link that requests a review.
-Send thank you e-mails to customers which contain links to places customers can leave a review.
-Include links to review sites in your newsletter with a reminder to leave a review, if they haven’t already.
-Add a sign on your storefront that remind customers to leave reviews when they’re checking out.
-You can even add a QR code that they can scan with their phone to be taken directly to a page that links to your favorite review sites, or, directly to a preferred review site.
My bottom line for local SEO:
let’s summarize ranking factor of local SEO hierarchically:
First factor: Top most important factor of local search algorithm is On-page signals.
That means you have great website, and it needs to be well optimized with quality content that includes location related information, in both the page and title tags. Also important is the presence of your name, address, and phone number throughout your site.
Second Factor: Another biggest factor is link signals.
Make sure to get quality links from high authority sites, especially local sites.
Third Factor: Citations.
So be sure there is consistency to references of your business across the web.
Fourth factor: Google My Business page:
Make sure you have google business page with reviews, behavioral, and social signals.
Another big congratulation!
You have completed whole SEO process as part of complete digital marketing guideline for Nepal.
Now let’s go to another big category to online marketing….
When you search anything in google, you might have seen a picture like this.
And this comes with paid advertisement.
Making it clear, the search engine marketing (SEM) is paid version of SEO.
Don’t get confuse we can call it with different names as follow.
-Paid search ads
-Paid search advertising
-PPC (pay-per-click)
-PPC (pay-per-call)
-CPC (cost-per-click)
-CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions)
You have to run paid ad to achieve this. However, spending money is not everything. You need to be clever to run right ad.
Wordstream have developed and optimal advertisement account structure to clarify how content marketing works.
You can read great ideas about SEM
Bottom-line: doing keyword research, targeting right audience and developing great landing page is crucial to success SEM.
1. Content marketing:
Content marketing is the way you engage your audience. That includes creating great content, publishing the content, sharing content.
Before going deeply in to the content marketing strategy, let’s watch this video to see how content marketing have been grown over the year.
Great right?
Content marketing is not new…
It’s very old concept. Only the difference is the way we do todays…..
Why content marketing is important?
Content is the things you are selling in market. So it’s important that people should get attracted with your content.
The content marketing helps your business for following.
-It tells customer what is your product
-It creates brands of your business
-With great content marketing your conversion gets higher
-It helps to build relationship with customer
You have clear idea what is content marketing is and how important it is.
I can easily guess your query…
How to do it effectively?
Let’s dive in to this step-by step process….
Content marketing strategy:
Strategy Number 1: Creating great content.
This is very first step; you need to create great content which gives clear picture of your product of brand or anything you are selling.
What Makes Content Great?
Strong keyword, call to action, shareworthy
First, people need to be able to find the content you have available in search engines.
Second, the content should prompt action by the user.
There are four types of content you can think of it.
I have learned these from the course provided by coursera.
Evergreen content: Evergreen content should avoid references to dates, references to current news items, references to technologies
Trending Content:
Seasonal Content:
General Content:
Content Format:
The content format plays vital role to the user. it’s very important to organize content in great format that user can understand easily.
Image source
Here you have many options to choose for our content.
However, make sure you have chosen right format for your content.
Now you have content, you can publish it in different way.
-Blog posts
-Ebooks
-Case studies
-Templates
-Infographics
-Videos
-Podcasts
-Social media
With this you must have clear idea about how to develop great content and how to publish it.
We now move in to the next interesting step of online marketing called.
In the past lesson you have read about SEO and SEM.
SMM It’s similar to this in terms of marketing.
They were much useful for site ranking purpose.
And here social media is more to marketing purpose.
Similar to SEO and SEM.
It can be used in both versions that is paid and unpaid.
Probably you might know there are many social media are available. But challenge is choosing right social media that fits for your business.
Here I am trying to make you easy that social media marketing in the context of Nepal.
Let’s start by looking user statistics of popular social media in Nepal.
Picture Credit Startcounter
How big population uses social media.
Now let’s see further…
Social media marketing pillar.
Picture is clear.
Hey, I have found best infographic ever that clearly tells the clear idea of making social media plan.
Picture taken from Buffer Blog
Choosing your right social network is crucial.
I recommend 5 major social media to choose in Nepal.
-YouTube
Paid advertising:
Social media is great platform to run advertisement. You need credit card to run paid advertisement. That service is not possible from Nepal. However, you can ask your friend for card or you can hire digital Marketing company to run ad for you.
Affiliate marketing simply means earning commission by referring others product online.
Let me clarify with example.
Ram runs a trekking company. He has developed different trekking packages. For example, Annapurna Base camp trek.
You are freelancer, you own a website. Now, you keep ram’s ABC trekking package and ask your customer to buy the trekking package.
If anyone buys through your reference, then you will get commission.
This is how affiliate marketing works.
You understand right?
How to earn through affiliate marketing?
You understand how affiliate marketing works.
Once a customer buys product through your referral you will get paid. And this process repeats over the time.
You just need to refer customer to buy product.
Note* affiliate marketing practice is low in Nepal. however, you can do it. which is worthful.
We are now at the last but not least topic of online marketing which is called….
Effective email marketing techniques includes:
-Collecting email list
-Send email with great content
How to collect email list?
I have studied more than 100 article to filtered out following techniques to collect email list. Which I am sharing you in bullet point.
-Use email subscription at your website. Make it attractive with call to action.
-Optimize Your Blog page and hope page for Email Signups with interesting way. Like I am using this technique.
-Provide PDF download option of any important materials upon email providing. See my example here.
Simply sending email does not work.
Then what?
You must send quality email.
What makes email quality?
Here is deal….
-Use innovative email template: There are many templates available for different purpose so use better one.
-Don’t include image in email, simply write text inn email
-Make subject line short
-Make email personalized and always send email from Name not with brand
-Include one call to action in each email.
-Optimize your sent time
-Send people great welcome email
-Delete non open from your list if they don’t open for 4 months
-Make font size 15PX in email text.
Software for email marketing:
There are many software available in the market and they are paid. Some of them provides free version with limited services. You can use free version of them also.
I like the most is MailChimp:
Free up to 2K subscribers.
Best for sending newsletter
I also like Sendinblue
Free up to 300 email per day
Another is Constant Contact:
for ecommerce market.
No free version available
Plans range from $20-$45
ConvertKit:
For “Online Creators” (Like bloggers, artists and musicians)
Plans start at $29 for a list less than 1,000 subscribers.
Plans start at $15/month with limited functionality.
And there’s a full 30-day trial.
WOW!!!
It’s time to celebrate.
You have done with online digital marketing.
Now it’s time to go for….
In this chapter we discuss offline digital marketing techniques. we only focus on available platform in Nepal. The chapter covers:
-Led display marketing
-Television (TV) marketing
-Radio marketing
-Telephone marketing
let’s start..
This is a type of offline digital marketing.
Generally this types of board is kept in building or used as hording board. This is good to capture the eye of people walking on the road.
We can say this types of advertisement is done to attract person physically.
Why TV marketing is important?
Sharecast Initiative’s 2017 survey shows that 72 percent households in Nepal own a TV set and nearly 60 percent of people watch television every day.
That means TV audience is larger after the radio in Nepal.
Like radio, each TV also have unique audience to target for specific business.
The video advertisement is far effective than any other advertisement format. So advertising through TV capture that.
Great. With this it’s time to jump to…
Radio is always gold….
Do you have radio in your house?
Probably No…
But you listen radio right?
That is power of radio…
Device is limited. but it’s reach is still growing.
Stydy.com have publish a good video about radio advertisement. Probably, you might also love to see this.
Let’s focus on how radio advertisement is still beneficial in Nepal.
Larger audience: radio is only the medium which can play any part of Nepal. So, it has larger audience. And each radio has their own focus and they have built their audience accordingly. So, business can choose better radio station based on their nature of business and nature of audience.
Effectiveness: do you read? If you ask me, I say No. these days’ people are being advanced. They have no time to read newspaper, or content available online. People love hearing while working. Radio allow that. This is the region radio is much more effective medium.
Cost: Cost matters for everyone. If you compare the advertisement in television or other medium, radio is much cheaper.
Accessibility: I mentioned earlier radio is not limited to device. It is available through various medium. Mobile phone, internet anywhere. So it’s much accessible.
Do you ever experience a call from a company telling you about their service?
I Do…
I receive call from restaurant, hotels, ISP and many more.
This is canned telephone marketing…
Company collect phone number and try to convince people to buy their service or product.
Here is great deal…
If you can convince the customer… you will win…
Digital marketing is ‘advertising of any product of service through digital network. The network like mobile, television, radio, email, websites, search engines, and many available digital media.
While defining digital marketing in Nepal: it is same. However, the context is different in case of Nepal.
With the advancement of digital technology, digital medium based marketing Is expected to grow vertically. Majority of marketing will be based on internet based in future in Nepal.
Offline Medium: radio, Television, LED display board
Online Medium: website, email, blog, search engines, mobile app, social media, paid advertisement.
Now, it’s your time…
how do you rate this article?
do you have specific question comment or suggestion?
I really love to hear from you…
Please reach me at santosh.it288@gmail.com (or) phtechnepal@gmail.com.
You can hire my team.
