Titan Growth Awarded Third Best Place to Work in San Diego!

The census is in and Titan Growth came out in the top three in this year’s Best Places to Work Awards! 

Standing amongst other innovative San Diego companies, Titan Growth was awarded the third Best Place to Work

The San Diego Business Journal’s Best Places to Work Awards salutes companies who make an outstanding effort to cultivate a positive and rewarding work environment. Eligible companies are ranked based on employee surveys, where employees are able to rate their overall satisfaction and add additional commentary anonymously. (We were ecstatic to find out that we had a 99% satisfaction rate amongst our employees in all categories!)

Here were some of the things our employees had to say about Titan Growth:

“Aside from a strong cohesive team and plenty of incentives to succeed, we also have many fun team-building activities in and outside the office where we can celebrate the hard work we’ve done as a team.”

“I believe every employee would agree that satisfaction and productivity our held at a high value. Everyone is valued as an employee and is rewarded in various ways for their productivity and strong work ethic.”

“Titan Growth encourages its employees to be creative, innovative, and step outside the box on a daily basis. As an online marketing agency, this type of work environment is the foundation to our success. Every day is an adventure and our boss makes sure that we are constantly rewarded for our hard work. Promotions, bonuses, and company trips are given to us throughout the year and I am proud to say that I truly enjoy coming to work every day!”

This award was especially rewarding for our company since we place so much emphasis on culture and our working environment. We are thrilled to be named one of the Best Places to Work in San Diego and are looking forward to an amazing year!

How Travel Companies Can Cut Costs to Make Room for an SEO and PPC Budget

More often than not, hotels and traditional travel companies are confronted with how to allocate the marketing dollars. I would estimate that most companies in the travel industry think of offline marketing initiatives. The main reason for this line of thought derives from the fact that the travel industry still is a very traditional industry; a relationship driven industry where suppliers (tour operators) and products (hotels, cruises, inbound tour operators) place great value on knowing whom they are dealing with.

In many instances, when marketing a product, there is more emphasis placed on the suppliers, disregarding targeting the passengers (the end client) that are going to stay at their properties or on their ships. This is a big factor in why marketing still is viewed in terms of offline initiatives.

As competition increased in the marketplace and consumers became a focal point, online marketing seemed to be a viable alternative. However, most travel companies are confronted with an obstacle – their inability to come up with additional dollars for their online initiatives.

Below are some areas for travel companies to think about trimming in order to enable them to come up with the Budget to do SEO and PPC:

  1. FAM (Familiarization) trips: FAM trips are meant to familiarize (as the name implies) suppliers with the products they are promoting. Unfortunately, in many cases, they forget this is the objective and send staff members more as a reward of motivation rather than for the actual purpose, thus adding very little value, wasting time and money for both the hotel and the supplier. It is not unusual to see an accountant, A/P or financial analyst being sent to fulfill this purpose.
  2. Marketing Contribution / Support: Monies out of pocket or in exchange of room nights for a third party to do marketing initiatives is very often the shortest way to throwing your money away.
  3. Brochure Contribution: You are already paying commissions of some sort, but do you also have to pay for inclusion in every trade brochure? Review whether your ROI is positive in most cases and adjust accordingly.
  4. Business Listings / Directories: Analyze whether there is a need to be in every possible business listing or directory.
  5. Road Shows and Workshops: There is a tendency to participate in every road show or workshop available. It is easy to single out if it is necessary to train or pay a visit to business partners with whom you are constantly in touch
  6. Industry Trade Shows: Not all shows are created equal. Do the math and figure out how many clients (and business) you have obtained in the past 4 shows you have attended and decide which shows you should focus on.
  7. Membership Fees / Associations Fees: Because of the relationship based nature of the industry, companies tend to want to belong to every imaginable association. Some of them don’t garner any benefits.
  8. Printed Media Adverts: Granted that niche publication will deliver better results than general publication, advertising is often expensive and hard to measure ROI.

I am confident that any travel companies that closely look at the aforementioned areas can come up with some marketing dollars for SEO and PPC. I am as equally confident that going through that process and investing in digital marketing can forever change the course of their business. If you have any further questions, please contact us today!

4 Ways To Spice Up Your SEO Efforts With Social Media

Kick your SEO strategy up a notch or two by incorporating these 4 social media must-haves.

Social media may not be the end-all be-all SEO strategy that media hype made it out to be, but that doesn’t make it any less important. In fact, social media is becoming increasingly more prevalent as a ranking signal and maybe what brands need to get a one-up on their SEO strategy. Here are 4 ways you can leverage social media to spice up your SEO efforts.

  1. Add social media share buttons – The term ‘social media buttons’ is frequently used interchangeably, when really, there are two distinct types of buttons that need to be recognized. There are ‘social icons’, which simply link to the brand’s social media channels and there are ‘share buttons’ which share the page’s content. While traditional social media icons are great for creating awareness around the existence of your social media channels, the social media share buttons are what help to pass possible SEO authority. Incorporate social media share buttons onto every page of your website, as well as on content that you create.
  2. Blog – Blogging is a great tool for any business. It can promote thought-leadership, awareness, and traffic, not to mention, it can give brands more opportunities to rank in organic search. While the benefits of SEO for blogs are vast, the most notable are backlinks and increased site crawlable, both of which can help brands with their rankings. To get the most out of your blogs, do your research on your audience and their searches. Leverage headlines, title tags and content to incorporate keywords that reflect your research; and above all, create content that is of interest and value to your target audience. Focusing on quality helps to promote more quality traffic and links. Since creating great content is only half the battle, it is also important to focus on distribution and sharing. Incorporate the social share buttons that we talked about above to each blog article to promote sharing and don’t forget to distribute it through your social media channels and online forums to promote further reach.
  3. Leverage Google+ – Google+ is a great asset for brands on a few different levels. First, there’s Google+ Local, which is essentially a local listing with some social flair. Google+ Local is a great tool for any brand with a local address and can help boost local SEO rankings. Setting up a Google+ Local listing is fairly effortless, and if you’d like to set one up for your brand you can find more information here. Second, the rel=”author” and rel=”publisher” tags are simple code snippets which can help promote authority for authors and brands, respectively. In order to utilize the tags, however, you must first have a Google+ profile (rel=”author”) or a Google+ business page (rel=”publisher”) set up and some general knowledge of .html. You can use either or both tags on any one site. As long as they are utilized correctly, these tags are minor updates that can have a significant impact.
  4. Review Websites – Reviews can go a long way. Not only can reviews influence buying decisions, but they can possibly help your search rankings as well. However, review sites like Yelp can be a double-edged sword. Review sites tend to rank fairly well for brand queries, and if your reviews are less than par, this could actually hurt you. If your reviews are awesome, then a high ranking for your review sites is a good thing. Promote positive reviews by asking happy customers to review you and if any negative reviews do arise, be proactive about commenting back and amending the situation.

Since social media is becoming predominantly more important as a ranking signal, it may just be that boost you need to send your SEO efforts over the top. More importantly, if you are not invested in your social media presence in the years to come you could be at a disadvantage. Taking the time to do it now will not only help give you a boost today but will keep you from playing catch-up tomorrow.

If you have any questions about social media SEO strategy and its impact on your overall SEO strategy, or how to begin leveraging social media, contact us below for a free assessment.

Submitted by Erica Machin, Titan Growth