What is an H1 Tag?
If you want to produce good content marketing that is readily discoverable you need to know what an H1 tag is, how to use it and how to write a good one.
Entries by Ivan Reed
The Best Time to Post on Facebook
When you post your content on Facebook has more to do with how well your posts perform than any other factor!
What are Google Shopping Ads?
There are several ways to generate traffic and sales for your online shop. However, a practical yet often overlooked strategy is Google Shopping Ads.
Are Google Ads Worth It?
If you’ve worked with a marketing consultant before, you probably have heard of Google AdWords, now google ads. But, are google ads worth it?
How Much Do Facebook Ads Cost?
It can be quite challenging to plan your Facebook ad budget if you’re getting started with advertising. How much should you allocate?
Amazon Product Listing Optimization
Amazon Product Listing Optimization can increase revenue for Amazon sellers. Here a few tips on how to sell more using SEO fundamentals.
Del Mar Restaurant Marketing
Del Mar Restaurant Marketing can be tricky, but with these insights you can start getting more diners now! SEO. PPC, and directory strategies.
Facebook Shops: An Overview
Facebook Shops allows your business to set up a store and sell products directly through Facebook and Instagram. The industry-disrupting element of Facebook Shops is that consumers can now browse for products, add items to their cart, complete the checkout process, and receive their goods in the mail—all while never having to leave Facebook or Instagram.
Should My Company Hire a Consulting Firm?
With the speed of change in business increasing at a seemingly exponential rate, the idea of outsourcing pieces of work within a company makes more sense than ever.
How Does Google Ads Work?
Google Ads is one of the largest online advertising platforms globally, and you can reach customers anywhere and everywhere.
SunCity Advising Wins 2021 Local Excellence Award by UpCity
For more than a decade, UpCity’s mission has been—and continues to be—to help businesses find B2B service providers they can trust.
What is a Good Click Through Rate for Facebook Ads?
How can you tell what is a good click through rate for Facebook ads and what isn’t? Are your ads working correctly? Let’s take a look!
How Much Do Google Ads Cost?
The question of how much do Google Ads cost is a good one; it’s something that any right-thinking, ambitious, up-to-date business owner is going to want to know.
How to Use Business Twitter Accounts
Learn how to use Twitter for Business. If you don’t have an account set up, find out why you should and learn how easy it is to get a professional look and feel for your company.
How To Build A Wildly Successful Blog
Starting a blog can be challenging. So let’s review some of the essential steps to creating a wildly successful blog!
5 Ways to Simplify Your Website Design Project
Successful businesses worldwide have websites that boost brand awareness and digitally market their products and services. To make your website design less complicated, here are five steps to assist you.
How & Why to Disavow Toxic Backlinks
While you should generally have a favorable image of backlinks, it’s not as if every backlink will be good for your website. In this blog, we’re going to look at how & why to disavow toxic backlinks.
How to Appear in Google News
There are many excellent ways to drive traffic to your website, but one that many people overlook is using Google News.
Difference Between KPIs and Metrics
In this blog, we’re going to take a look at the difference between KPIs and metrics, as well as offer advice on how you can get the most from both.
Top Strategies For Ecommerce Search Engine Optimization
By upping your SEO, your online store can use this large source of traffic to its full advantage. Below are a few of the top strategies for eCommerce search engine optimization.
5 Considerations to Enhance Your Social Media Efforts
Here are five easy ways for you to make your social media marketing much more effective.
SunCity Advising Picked as a Top San Diego Digital Marketing Agency
Expertise.com has recently nominated SunCity Advising as one of the top digital marketing agencies in San Diego. Here is how we scored regarding reputation, reviews, and consistency.
3 Big Reasons Businesses Are Hiring Local SEO Experts During the Pandemic
COVID-19 has challenged companies to rethink their entire business models. Businesses that used to be able to rely on foot traffic or word of mouth marketing such as restaurants, gyms, retail stores, bars etc. now have to market online in order to remain open. That is why companies are hiring local SEO experts.
SunCity Advising Announces Preferred Partnership with Zoho One
Zoho benefits businesses by having everything in one place. That way a business can monitor all activities and projects within their company.
Marketing With Instagram Reels
Yes! They’ve done it again. Instagram has ‘upped’ their game with another properly positioned and ingenious addition we’ve come to know as Instagram Reels.
16 Marketing Messages for A/B Testing PPC Ads
There are many types of marketing messages that can be used to generate conversions within paid online advertisements. From choice architecture, to “FOMO,” each marketing message appeals to ad viewers senses in a unique way. Here is how to use 16 of the marketing messages for A/B Testing PPC Ads.
How to Make Eye-Catching Social Media Posts
Social media can be a real game-changer for businesses. However, today every business is on social media. Making it more difficult to stand out from competitors and grab the attention of users. That is why it is crucial to build a strong social media strategy and design eye-catching social media posts that will get people interested in your business.
Creating Your Brand Story
If you aspire to be a premium brand, then it is vital that you have a good story. Customers will remember your offerings and ultimately your brand through your brand story. This is how to create an effective brand story.
Building Website Typography and Font Hierarchy
Typography greatly impacts a user’s experience on a website. So here are our recommendations on how to find the perfect fonts and typography for your website.
How to Create a Style Guide
It is highly recommended that every commercial establishment utilize a brand style guide. Consistent branding is often overlooked by companies, and this can lead to various shortcomings. In this guide, we take a high-level look at how to create a style guide with an emphasis on brand consistency.
3 Ways to Get Android App Downloads
New Android apps can often struggle to get downloads in the early stages. The Google Play Store involves numerous algorithms working to put relevant apps in front of the right people. In this guide, we discuss optimizing your app store landing page, running Google Ads app campaigns, and taking advantage of Google Firebase.
5 Ways to Measure App Performance Using Google Firebase Analytics
Google Firebase can complement your app in multiple facets. The highly valuable analytics software allows you to build a better app, improve upon your app’s quality, and effectively scale. Here are the top 5 best ways to measure app performance with Google Firebase analytics including overall metrics, tracking, audiences, events, and funnels.
Google Ads is Giving Away COVID-19 Ad Credits
Small and medium-sized businesses that have been using Google ads over the past year are eligible for up to $1000 in advertising credit. Here’s everything you need to know including how to determine if you qualify, how long the Google Ads credit is valid for, and more.
Granting Access to Facebook Ads
One of the biggest entry barriers to using Facebook advertising is simply learning how to grant, or receive, the required access to a Facebook Ads account. Difficulties include understanding the difference between a personal and business account, complicated nomenclature of Facebook ads structure, and other technical issues. Here’s how to grant access to a Facebook Ads account.
Small Business Coronavirus Checklist
There is a lot of information circulating about how to mitigate the effects of the coronavirus on your business right now. This can make it tough to navigate what business owners need to do.
Google Merchant Center Best Practices
Google Merchant Center is massively underutilized by sellers (online and storefront). The platform provides free traffic to your website by analyzing your product’s attributes, and placing them in relevant “Surfaces Across Google”. It requires inputting product feeds in order to articulate what you sell to Google. When paired with a PPC ad campaign, your business can achieve sustainable sales growth.
SEO Case Study: GetDismissed Organic Traffic
SunCity Advising shows a 1,486% increase in organic traffic over a 15 month period. Other results included 7,209 new keywords ranked on Google and a 300% increase in monthly average sales.
5 Tips for Outsourcing Blog Content Creation
Articles that you feature on your website must be timely, relevant, well-written and must offer value through your unique perspective. The following five tips have been crafted based on our own real-world experience creating content for clients from a wide range of industries.
How to Grant Access to Google Ads
Under no circumstances, should you ever grant any person or company access to your Google Ads account directly through your login information. Remember that your Google Ads account is connected to your Gmail account, shared drive, and any other Google product that is connected with your account. Let’s take a look at how to correctly grant access to a Google Ads account.
5 Internal Linking Must-Do’s for SEO
Setting up internal linking on your website can be extremely confusing. In this article, we’ll give you the inside scoop on our top 5 best internal linking practices for search engine optimization.
How to Set Up a Website Sitemap
Setting up a sitemap for your website is the best way to create a reciprocal relationship between your website and the SERPs. Here is everything you need to know about creating a sitemap using SEO best practices.
Marketing a Business During a Sales Slowdown
Usually when we discuss a sales slowdown, or a complete pause, there is some form of seasonality involved. Things have changed with COVID-19, so make sure you spend time on the right marketing activities.
Google BERT: Google’s Biggest Update in 5 Years
According to Google, the BERT Google algorithm update is the most significant search engine change of the last 5 years. Designed to better understand language searches, BERT is expected to impact 1 in 10 search queries.
SEO Expectations vs. Reality
We take a look at common expectations when it comes to the search engine optimization process and we compare them to the realities of the full SEO funnel.
Advertising on YouTube: An Overview
YouTube is a smart place to market a new or growing business. The advertising platform offers many different types of ad placement services tailored to a company’s goals, values, and budget.
Facebook Ads Structure: An Introduction
There are many layers to Facebook Ad’s structure, including Business Manager, Ad Manager, Ad Accounts, Ad Campaigns, Ad Sets, and Individual Ads. The goal of this article is to clarify the structural levels of Facebook Ads.
Best Site Structure for SEO
Structuring your website so that it appeals to search engines such as Google is no easy task. How many categories should you list on your site? What should you embed site navigation with? How should you internally link? SunCity Advising answers these questions and shows you the best site structure for SEO.
Developing Brand Voice
Crafting a brand voice helps you connect with your target audience, build reputation and ensure all content and ads are consistent. And businesses who see to it that all team members are on the same page when it comes to brand voice, appear more trustworthy, reliable and authentic. And therefore are more likely to be successful in the long run.
SEO Impact of Changing URLs
In a perfect world, you choose the most effective URLs for your web pages as you initially create them. In reality, it is frequently necessary to change web page URLs to properly optimize your site. It turns out that this has lasting effects on search engine optimization. Let’s go over how changing URLs affects SEO, and how to safely modify URL structure safely.
What is E-A-T SEO?
Here comes another SEO acronymn: E-A-T. What does E-A-T stand for? Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness. These are critical SEO metrics and Google is now focusing on for every indexed website. Here’s how you can get your website E-A-T SEO ready.
Color Palette Guide
Color plays a big part in the perception of your brand and product or services. They determine the first impression that a potential customer will get when they lay eyes on your branding for the first time. Colors can do so much more than just making your visuals attractive and eye pleasing, they convey feelings, emotions and experiences.
Website Imagery and Iconography Style
When building your website, everything created on it such as your content, design, theme, and images should aim at driving home your point on what your business and services are all about. They should also buttress how you aim to benefit would-be clients.
5 Best Practices for Google Maps and SEO
For local businesses looking to acquire customers online, using Google Maps and SEO is one of the best channels that are available.
Internet Marketing vs. Digital Marketing
There are numerous terms that describe the relationship between technology, the internet, and marketing. How should your business be spreading its marketing message, through internet marketing, or digital marketing? What is the difference, and does it even matter? We shall examine a side-by-side comparison between internet marketing and digital marketing.
Is SEO Optimization Worth it?
SEO requires a large time and effort commitment in order to achieve optimization. This predicament brings up the question, “should I focus more on PPC and other traffic-driving sources, rather than organic SEO?” Let’s explore whether or not search engine optimization is truly worth it.
Why Measure Website Click Through Rate
If you are familiar with search engine optimization, then you’ve likely heard of “click-through rate.” This metric can be used as a metric in comparing online paid advertising campaigns, organic search results, and more. Let’s define click-through rate, delve into why it should be measured, and find out how it can be increased.
How to Fix A Facebook Hack
In October of 2018, Facebook announced that hackers had gained access to nearly 50 million personal accounts in a massive data breach. If your account fell victim to hackers, here’s how you can regain access and secure it for good. Has your business account been hacked? We have answers to help you fix it.
How to Create A Press Kit in 9 Steps
Companies looking to stand out and provide key pieces of information to media, investors, press releases are spending quality time on content creation for a press kit. Imagine being able to send one link that has every piece of valuable information anyone needs to know about a company in seconds.
How to Write a Great Meta Description
When it comes to search engine results pages, (SERPS) meta descriptions have typically been neglected as an unimportant element of search engine optimization.
How to Advertise on Pandora
With nearly 80 million current Pandora Music users, there is a plethora of advertising options available to you that make targeting your intended audience a breeze. Let’s take a look at how to advertise on Pandora, how much these ads cost, and which ad types to choose for your business.
A Guide to Huffington Post Submissions
Looking for a spark to boost your website traffic? Try submitting content to the Huffington Post.
“This Page Didn’t Load Google Maps Correctly”
Many website owners use the Google Maps widget on their contact pages to show maps of their exact location for potential and current customers. If you do, this is how to fix it if it’s not working correctly.
Google vs. Bing: How to Optimize Your Site
Google’s 74.5% control of the world’s search engine market is huge, but Bing is still immensely influential, averaging between 5-10% of market share. In the United States, Bing and Yahoo actually hold approximately 30% of the search engine market.
Your Complete Guide to Growing Through Instagram
Instagram has become a powerful social media tool that allows us to deliver our brand’s message to our target audience. This guide encompasses everything you need to know to grow your business through Instagram.
12 Ways to Identify a Fake Facebook Account
In effort to become a dominant social media platform, Facebook lost control of fake accounts, bots, and shared information. According to Facebook, it estimates about 40-50 million accounts are fake. That is a lot! Here are the 12 ways to identify a fake facebook account.
How to Get Verified on Twitter
Seeing that Instagram verified badge is challenging there are other ways to authenticate your account. One big way is to create great content with high quality photos and videos that will gain users.
How to Remove Bad Reviews from Yelp in 8 Easy Steps
Has a negative Yelp review ever brought down your business’s credibility? One negative review—valid or not—can sink your business. Learn how to remove bad reviews from Yelp.
How to Write a Press Release
A press release and press kit can put your business on the map and establish opportunities to add new customers. It gives you the ability to highlight your business and target media outlets for exposure. The focus of the press release should have a specific market in mind beyond the media and should include specific keyword topics for SEO.
Improve Website Rankings and Pagespeed with Google Lighthouse
We compared Pagespeed Insights with Google Lighthouse in order to determine which google speed test is more useful. Then we will delve into how to make the most of this new Google SEO audit tool and what else you can do to boost your Pagespeed.
An SEO Startup Launch: Pitching, Marketing, Networking
Every startup launch must learn how to pitch to an audience. This experience gives them the chance to hone in on a solid idea and solidify who they are. Startup launch lists should always include working on a pitch deck because it creates marketing and networking opportunities.
How to Create a YouTube Channel
Does your business need a YouTube channel? Here’s an easy guide to creating a youtube channel for your business or personal account. Only 9% of small business are using YouTube to effectively market themselves. Get a leg-up on your competition through video content.
Press Release Distribution
For your press release distribution to be a success, we found that two performance indicators must be considered. A successful press release strategy requires syndicating your content to the right outlets and delivering relevant content to a targeted audience.
Local SEO: 5 Tips to Boost Your Google Ranking
Local SEO: How Google Ranking Determines “Near Me” Searches. How to Succeed at doing Local SEO and Google Ranking. Learn how to do local SEO with or without a storefront & why location-based SEO is important for your business. Understand the Google algorithm for local search engine optimization.
How Many People Use Twitter?
We know how many monthly active users Twitter has, but how many of them should a business expect to get if they set up a page? Get all kinds of information about how many people use Twitter & important metrics if you are using a Twitter business account.
Digital Marketing Trends: Is Your Strategy Adapting?
Substantial digital marketing news from both Google and Facebook indicate that 2018 will be an important year for businesses to realign their marketing strategies. Emerging channels such as WhatsApp Business provide exciting new opportunities for businesses to connect with their target markets.
Aligning with Google Search Trends
Google is exploring new platforms to develop for their search engine. SEO strategies must target emerging google search trends like mobile search, augmented reality and web crawlers to remain competitive.
Advertising with Facebook WhatsApp for Business
Digital advertising trends are constantly evolving and repositioning. Stay up-to-date on shifting platforms and how to target your businesses channel advertising optimally. Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp is expected to make a major impact in the sector.
Paid Digital Advertising Trends
Paid digital advertising trends come and go, but the fundamentals don’t. Maximized reach + elevate brand awareness + increase top-line. This is a simple three-step process for search engine marketing (SEM) and the most popular and suggested ways of implementing a strategy.
SEO Best Practices: Long-Term SEO Strategy
A Long-Term SEO strategy is only as effective as the reporting and analysis behind it. Once you feel satisfied with the technical and creative on-page SEO implementation, as well as the domain strategy behind your website, you can start tracking the results.
Net Neutrality: Small Businesses Better Pay Attention
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), on December 14, voted to end net neutrality. Find out what it means for your small business.
Customer Acquisition Strategy
The availability of dozens of marketing channels and content strategies in the digital space has created a paradox of choice for business owners and marketing managers.
Marketing Message Delivery
The digital age has upended the way marketing managers and business owners engage with the traditional sales funnel. The “Funnel” no longer captures the shifting reality of the Customer Decision Journey.
Customer Segment Analysis
In 2018, worldwide social media engagement is expected to reach 2.5 billion people. They way that customers are interacting with brands is shifting to mobile and social.
Which Social Media Channel Should You Use for Your Brand?
If you want the best possible returns from your posts, content and ads, then you should know the difference between social media channels that way you can adjust your message to your specific target audience. In this article, we will break down social media channels and help you to find the best social media channels for your business.
SEO Best Practices: Tactical SEO Approaches
The second entry in our Long-Term SEO strategy series is focused on the Implementation Phase of SEO, including strategies behind content creation, technical and creative on-page SEO tactics, domain focused SEO strategies and the importance of backlinking.
Free Website Report Offered by SunCity Advising!
Free website report for businesses using industry-leading reporting tools. A report for your website provides data on how well your website is performing.
SEO Strategy Development
SEO strategy development is a long-term plan that can deliver huge business results. SEO improvements require an investment of time with an evolving plan.
WordPress Plugins for Beginners
WordPress plugins help website owners maximize both website versatility and available features without sacrificing performance. Find out how & what to use!
Search Engine Algorithms Made Simple
According to statistics released from Google itself, results on “page 1” receive 95% of all website traffic and 32% of that traffic lands on the first result.
How To Design a Logo For Your Business
Making an effective and unique logo is not an easy task. It requires a lot of knowledge and research. You need to have a solid understanding of how you can make a design that is effective and depicts your business picture in the best way possible. This is the most comprehensive guide on how to design a logo for your business. So let’s get started.
Beginner’s Guide to Content Management Systems for Websites
A content management system, popularly referred to as a CMS, is a popular format for the creation and formatting of digital content.
The Art of SEO
The Art of SEO | Four experts in search engine optimization share guidelines & innovative techniques to plan & execute a comprehensive SEO strategy.
SEO Case Study: Strategic Sequencing to Offset Budget Constraints
SunCity worked with ABC Co. to create a list of target keywords related to their product. They sold both B2C and B2B directly and also wanted to explore relationships with distributors.
SunCity Book Review: Blue Ocean Strategy, Value Innovation
The book combines theory with practical tools and case studies that allow the reader to explore the myriad ways of creating value for customers.
Website Building SEO
So you have a business idea. You have done some research on who will buy your product or service (I hope) and realize you could make some money doing this.
Growth Hacking
Growth Hacking: A new generation of megabrands like Facebook, Dropbox, Airbnb, and Twitter haven’t spent a dime on traditional marketing.
What could the LinkedIn Acquisition by Microsoft Mean for Your Business?
Microsoft will acquire LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in cash, a 50% premium to the closing price Friday (as a note the stock was down 42% YTD at Friday’s close).
SUPERINTELLIGENCE: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
Superintelligence asks the questions: What happens when machines surpass humans in general intelligence? Will artificial agents save or destroy us?
Staying Motivated
Life is a marathon… sort of. Except in life nobody set up water every mile, strangers don’t cheer you on the whole way, and you don’t get a medal for finishing. Other than that, it is very similar.
Thinking Fast and Slow
A great look at judgement and decision making by Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman. He guides you through the complexities of human choices with formulas tied to illustrative examples.