ITCL, Author at IT Creative Labs

SEO Best Practices

Jul 15, 2020 by ITCL

With Hubspot’s research indicating that 75% of consumers don’t venture beyond the first page of search results, it is clear that success with organic search is determined by ranking in the top 10. And with Search Engine Journal reporting that click through rates for organic search results drop off sharply, with position 1 yielding a 28.5% CTR and positions 2, 3, and 10 yielding a 15%, 11%, and 2.5% CTR, respectively, it is evident that amplifying search ranking positions incrementally can pay off in multiples of engagement. Thus, in order to facilitate your journey with organic search, we’ve attempted to make sense of the 200+ ranking signals that Google employs, beyond domain authority, in order to highlight the actionable factors most germane to driving higher rankings.

Looking for SEO services in NYC? Click here to get more information about SEO services from IT Creative Labs.

Inbound Links

Inbound links, also known as backlinks, are third party endorsements indicative of valuable content that delights. Such backlinks are manifestations of other brands affirming support of your knowledge share or product/service offering and, because of this, the number of authoritative inbound links your page receives factors heavily into how search engines rank the page in search results.

Just consider how, if the New York Times is linking to your content, that is an endorsement of your subject matter expertise and deserves for search algorithms to reward favorably. Thus, in order to optimize for inbound links, generate content that offers a unique perspective or advance a differentiated value proposition that delivers value, builds trust, and earns customer satisfaction. To drive the path forward, create partnerships with established and credible pundits and content producers within your industry in the quest to win coveted hyperlinks that enhance your search ranking advantage.

Content

Since content is the value that search engines serve users in response to search queries, its quality in meeting the search query is a major ranking factor that influences organic search position. And with developments in Google’s web crawling algorithms, machines can understand the meaning of content beyond the density of single keywords and more so in the context of long-tail keywords and phrases. Because of this, content should be optimized as a whole rather than with a singular focus on specific keywords, though, if written well and directed towards the searcher’s query, keywords and context words will naturally sew into the fold to augment search signals. Content that aligns with search intent in order to solve the consumer’s problem at their unique stage in the customer journey is rewarded with favorable visibility. Consider that if a user is searching for “what are the best running shoes?”, search algorithms recognize this is an informational search and serve blog posts and publications that educate and inform, whereas if a user is searching for “buy running shoes” search algorithms recognize this as a transactional request and serve product and e-commerce landing pages.

Thus, as you create content, write to the stage in the customer journey and advance sufficient depth and coverage in order to fully meet the user’s query. Conveying thought leadership on specific topics will push the needle on designating you as an authority such topics, while keeping content up to date signals search relevancy. To optimize content, incorporate keywords and context words using natural language, refresh your content regularly, and meet users’ queries with comprehensive and in-depth responses that satisfy search intent, which will translate to approximately 500-2,000 words depending on the context of the page. Quality content will yield favorable results in the form of in click through uplift, increased time on page, and reduced bounce rates, all of which indicate a positive user experience that augments organic search performance.

Meta Tags

While not as important as they once were in impacting search rankings, meta tags facilitate search algorithms’ understanding of both the purpose and topic of different pages and content sections and remain a prominent organic search signal. To optimize for performance, the Title Tag, which appears as a clickable link in search results, should lead with keywords and concisely convey the value of the content contained within. Limiting the Title Tag to 55 characters prevents truncation while writing for search intent encourages click through. Beyond Title Tags, the Description Tags, Header Tags, and Image Alt Tags all exist to facilitate understanding and influence click through or search ranking. As best practice, Description Tags should sit within 156 characters and drive informed demand, Header Tags should remain within 70 characters and limit to one H1 per page, and Image Alt Tags should summarize descriptively with hyphens between words, with all of the meta tags incorporating keywords appropriately without “keyword stuffing.” Whether direct ranking signals or drivers of click through that, in turn, influence organic search ranking, meta tags are on-page SEO attributes that should be optimized for the queries they serve.

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Segmentation and Dynamic Content Fuel Email Personalization

Jun 30, 2020 by ITCL

Leverage list segmentation, dynamic content, and dynamic fields to drive email personalization.

Research from Experian Marketing Services indicates that personalized emails drive 6x greater transaction rates than their non-tailored counterparts while Data Marketing Association evidences a 760% uplift in email-attributed revenue from segmented campaigns. However, with less than 50% of retailers sending personalized product recommendations through this high-performing channel, it’s clear that there are low hanging opportunities for enhancement. Because of this, we’ve put together some actionable insights on how to tailor emails with the aim of increasing relevancy, boosting performance, and ultimately earning subscriber satisfaction.

Utilize segmentation to drive personalization at scale and enhance performance outcomes

According to Mailchimp, segmented emails drive 14.31% more opens, 9.37% fewer unsubscribes, and 100.95% more clicks than non-segmented campaigns. Thus, in order to partake in the performance gains, it’s important to divide your contact list up based on distinct and meaningful consumer attributes provided during opt in and to augment that data with other first party data sources, such as that from your marketing automation platform, CRM, and beyond. Segments can be created based on surface-level characteristics such as demographic, geographic, and firmographic data as well as based on deeper-level attributes such as psychographic, behavioral, and benefit data. For example, if you were a cosmetics company, you could segment based on data points including age, gender, number of past purchases, and product category interest in order to send offers and discounts for items in related product groups to customers who have expressed loyalty and met a threshold of repeat purchases. Additionally, automation based on triggers and stages in the customer lifecycle can help increase relevancy. With this, you’ll be better equipped to send the right message to the right person at the right time, based on an understanding of customer insights, past purchase behavior, digital content consumption, and events driven by goal conversions. Segmentation that is performed correctly facilitates personalization at scale, resulting in outreach that better aligns with consumers’ motivations, preferences, and desires.

Leverage dynamic content and dynamic fields to ensure relevancy

Writing tailored emails to everyone on your contact list would take an exorbitant amount of time while writing generic, catch-all emails would fail to achieve relevancy. Thus, in order to increase efficiency without reducing personalization, it is beneficial to employ an email strategy that leverages both dynamic fields and dynamic content that adjust based on the recipient’s profile. Dynamic fields that tailor messaging to the recipient’s name, location, company, and beyond engender a personalized feel, indicating to the subscriber that the personal information they handed over was not for nothing. Dynamic content that customizes blog posts and product recommendations to recipients’ preferences adds value, facilitating their achievement of goals surrounding decisions they are seeking information on and purchases they are looking to make. To ground dynamic fields and content in an example, if you were a cruise line coming up to the winter holidays, you could write an email such as “Hi [name], how enjoyable would it be to bask in the sun rather than chill in [location]’s [temperature] weather?” and include blog posts and offerings that populate based on the recipient’s content consumption on specific coastal regions and prior purchase history.

When utilizing dynamic content and fields, it is important to have correct, up to date subscriber data, else the attempt at personalization and relevancy will be received as prefabricated and careless. Used correctly over time, click through rates and the overall return on your email marketing strategy will increase as subscribers come to recognize your emails are tailored to them.

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IT Creative Labs Responds to Covid-19

Mar 31, 2020 by ITCL

Unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures.

Therefore IT Creative Labs is launching a Covid-19 Response Program. In a nutshell the Program allows any small business, including individual entrepreneurs, to receive free web design and web development services from our company. The Program is intended to help as many small businesses as possible to get their products and services online without any burden of additional costs and expenses to do so. Another goal of the Program is to get the businesses back up and running in the shortest time span. For that reason we are setting up a special Squad team that will be dedicated to delivering quick, efficient, functional solutions.

It is important to highlight that even though the program is open to any existing or new business in need, IT Creative Labs has limited capacity and will accommodate as many requests as it can handle on the first come first serve basis.

The Program is open to any business impacted by the lockdowns across the globe and is absolutely free. You can apply here.

Stay safe, healthy and keep your spirits up.

How is IT Creative Labs Different From Other Vendors

Feb 22, 2020 by ITCL

It is true, we are one of the many IT consulting firms out there, offering a suite of services that are not unique to the industry, such as custom software development for web and mobile applications; digital marketing services in the realm of email marketing, marketing automation, marketing cloud solutions and data management; recruiting for the IT sector.

So what makes us unique? WE CARE, WE DRIVE, WE DELIVER.

We like to tell our new and prospective clients that what really makes IT Creative Labs stand out is that we have a human-first approach. That means we don’t have resources – we have people and teams, and each client is not just another project but a long-term relationship.

IT Creative Labs was founded on the human-first principal. That is exactly why every long-term contract employee at our small firm gets up to 10 days of paid time off per year. Every.Single.One. How many companies do you know who offer their consultants paid time off? How many of those are small businesses?

We are also very keen on diversity and inclusion. And for us those are not just fancy buzz words. Being a technology company we are aware of the gender gap and IT Creative Labs is making its own contribution to narrow that gap. Our current team ratio is 50% women, 50% men and includes talented human beings from all walks of life and parts of the world. Not bad for a trivial IT consulting firm, right? As far as we are concerned this is just the beginning. Our CEO is committed to continue to improve the well-being of her employees and continue to promote inclusivity and diversity in the workplace.

So that’s a sneak peak into what kind of vendor IT Creative Labs is beyond all the technical expertise and certifications.

Forbes Executive Luncheon

Nov 12, 2019 by ITCL

A couple weeks ago I, amongst a few other executives and founders, was invited to attend a Forbes Executive Luncheon. There were a few companies representing technology services, a couple digital marketing and influencer marketing agencies, a few businesses working in real estate and even a private jet services company. Overall a great mix of industries and minds. There were a few topics put forth for the discussion. However most of the questions were targeting us as professionals in our fields rather than targeting us as professionals representing our companies. And i must admit at times it was rather challenging to separate the two concepts.

As a business owner, founder, CEO and jack of all trades i am fully emerged in my business, so much so that positioning myself as a leader and professional in the industry outside my company is not something i have given much thought. Not until the luncheon at least. Working on a personal professional brand is definitely important and should not be disregarded. I am guilty of that, giving 100% of my attention to building the brand of my business and in the process, leaving my own branding behind. So I have decided to take action in that regard. I will be writing more about technology. In the near future I will be sharing insights on choosing the best e-commerce solutions available on the market, talk about integration solutions and the client 360 options and share other useful tips and advice related to the services IT Creative Labs offers, which are: software development, digital marketing and staffing.

Another observation that I would like to share is around some of the issues businesses face. Interestingly enough, as different as our industries are, the issues we have to deal with are exactly the same. One of the major challenges discussed was around hiring the right people. Needless to say it is a very broad and multi-dimensional subject. During the limited time that was allocated for the discussion, we agreed that an overall more human approach to recruiting needs to take place. Among other recommendations that surfaced were: coming-up with creative questions to see how the candidates handle unexpected situations and making hiring as well as letting go decisions quickly. Staffing is part of the suite of services that IT Creative Labs offers, so certainly I will be sharing more insights and recommendations on the subject in a separate blog post. The post will be based on our expertise along with professional insights from some of the leaders in the industry of technology services and staffing.

In the meantime, here are a few shots from the Forbes Executive Luncheon.

Minimal Node.js Development Environment Using Docker Compose

Nov 11, 2019 by ITCL

Quick and painless setup of a basic local development environment for Node.js using docker-compose.

This is a quick tutorial on how to get a Node.js Docker container up and running for local development.

This approach does NOT require a Dockerfile and solves infamous insidious server response issues. No more “localhost didn’t send any data” or “ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE” or “127.0.0.1 didn’t send any data”.

You will need Docker Community Edition installed and running (aka Docker desktop) and exactly two files to fire up a Node.js app – “docker-compose.yml” and “app.js”.

docker-compose.yml

version: "3"
services:
    app:
        image: node:alpine
        volumes:
          - .:/app
        working_dir: /app
        ports:
          - 80:80
        command: node app.js

app.js

const http = require('http');
const hostname = '0.0.0.0';
const port = 80;

const server = http.createServer((req, res) => {
    res.statusCode = 200;
    res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'text/plain');
    res.end('Live long and prosper!\n');
});

server.listen(port, hostname, () => {
    console.log(`Server running at http://${hostname}:${port}/`);
});

Then navigate to the newly-created folder using the console and type: “docker-compose up -d”

That’s all.
Now you can open your browser and access your app at “http://localhost“

Time Management Techniques for Small Business Owners

Sep 12, 2019 by ITCL

Below is an excerpt from an article authored by our CEO and published on Forbes.

Small business owners often find themselves stretched too thin and struggling to keep up with the rapidly growing demands of their businesses. Below are a few real working strategies on how to streamline your organization’s processes and manage your time effectively.

Be Strategic About Your Corporate App Suite

It is very common to use multiple tools at work for different but complementary purposes. Ultimately, we end up being forced to duplicate pieces of work across several applications. One of the first steps to optimizing your team’s time is to eliminate duplicate effort as much as possible. You can start working toward that goal by choosing the correct set of tools to institute in your organization. With the abundance of options available on the market, it might take a bit of time to select the best solution for your company. However, this time investment will pay off big in the long run. Three important points to keep in mind during the tool’s evaluation process:

Be certain about the purpose and compatibility of the application. What purpose will the tool serve? Do you already have a tool that could perform the same functions? Does the tool integrate well with the rest of the applications used in the organization?
Be strategic about your selection criteria. Consider applications that can not only comply with your organization’s needs for the time being, but would also be able to scale up and support your growing business needs in terms of capacity, functionality, customizations, integrations, etc.
Ensure the app suite you institute is used by everyone across the organization. That will allow you to promote effective online communication and knowledge sharing and increase productivity.

Continue to Forbes to read the whole piece.

Official Member of Forbes NY Business Council

Aug 19, 2019 by ITCL

We are proud to announce that IT Creative Labs is an official member of Forbes New York Business Council.

NY Email Marketing

Aug 14, 2019 by ITCL

A lot has been going on at ITCL and this post I would like to make a little different. It will still be industry focused (because we live and breathe technology and innovation) but it will be more personal. In the time when most of it can be done by an AI assistant it feels right to take a moment and jot a few words myself.

A couple years back we had the honor to be represented at Forbes Under 30 conference as well as at NY Tech Week. More detailed posts on each to follow. This year we have big plans for our small company. In addition to our consulting and software development services (web, mobile) we are expanding our email marketing services, which will be consumed by digital marketing services. We have been working hard on establishing this line of business last year and are thrilled to finally “get it off the ground”. Please welcome NY Email Marketing, your go-to digital agency for all things email marketing and what I like to call a digital marketing hub. It also means that we are hiring to expand our strong team of Salesforce Marketing Cloud certified professionals and experts in other digital marketing platforms, such as IBM Marketing Cloud, Adobe Marketing Cloud, Oracle Marketing Cloud and others. Because Digital Marketing is such a buzz word and because there is a plethora of marketing cloud platforms out there and because it is very easy to get confused which platform would work best for your business and because we would like to share our expertise with those in need, we are preparing a very cool case study on the subject. We will review top 10 digital marketing platforms and rate their features to give you a good grip on the current offerings and to empower you to make informed strategic decisions on which digital marketing solution would be the best option for your business.

Excited to congratulate the team on the launch of a new email marketing hub!

nyemailmarketing.com

Digital marketing solutions provider.

Visit NYEM on Facebook, like and subscribe!

Connect to WooCommerce Rest API using Javascript

Jul 21, 2019 by ITCL

Do you know, how to get data from WooCommerce via Rest API from the client, using JavaScript? Surprisingly, tutorials on this delicate subject are seldom found on page one of search results. Moreover, as of the moment of this writing WooCommerce documentation is also missing this information.

Warning: It is never a good idea to expose API authentication credentials.

Nevertheless, in rare cases when you do end up using this frivolous setup in production, make sure that your API key is for read only.

Below are a couple working code snippets – one using jQuery and one using vanilla async/await. Both get the job done:

const wooClientKey = 'ck_00000000000000000000000000';
const wooClientSecret = 'cs_00000000000000000000000000';
const wooUrl = 'https://yoursite.com/wp-json/wc/v3/products';

function basicAuth(key, secret) {
    let hash = btoa(key + ':' + secret);
    return "Basic " + hash;
}

let auth = basicAuth(wooClientKey, wooClientSecret);

function getData(url) {
    jQuery.ajax({
        url: url,
        method: 'GET',
        beforeSend: function (req) {
            req.setRequestHeader('Authorization', auth);
        }
    })
        .done(function (data) {
            console.log(data);
            return data;
        });
}

getData(wooUrl);

While the code itself is fairly self explanatory, here’s a quick step by step breakdown:

Const

The “consts” are merely script settings, which one can generate from within their WooCommerce API section (WP Admin area).

basicAuth

This is a helper function, introduced for clarity.

The “Basic” HTTP authentication scheme transmits access credentials – username and password, encoded using base64 (defined in RFC 7617).

Thus, all basicAuth does is uses btoa() method to create a base64 encoded ASCII string (<key>: <secret>) and return the resulting hash along with the “Basic” identifier.

Vanilla Javascript

const wooClientKey = 'ck_00000000000000000000000000';
const wooClientSecret = 'cs_00000000000000000000000000';
const wooUrl = 'https://yoursite.com/wp-json/wc/v3/products';

function basicAuth(key, secret) {
    let hash = btoa(key + ':' + secret);
    return "Basic " + hash;
}

let auth = basicAuth(wooClientKey, wooClientSecret);

async function getProducts() {
    try {
        const response = await fetch(wooUrl + 'products', {
            headers: {"Authorization": basicAuth(wooClientKey, wooClientSecret)}
        });
        return await response.json();
    }
    catch (error) {
        // catches errors both in fetch and response.json
        console.log(error);
    }
}