How Can I Save My Facebook Ads Money?

Build your Facebook ad campaigns tactically so that allows you to save money and book profits optimally.

9 secrets to save money that allow you to run profitable Facebook Ads

Even experienced campaign managers are continuing to struggle with understanding the right way to go about running paid Facebook campaigns successfully. And the most unfortunate part is that even it doesn’t take much, many ad account managers are reluctant to take necessary measures timely.

If you can be diligent about keeping track of your ad expenses, you will save yourself a whole lot of stress worrying over your business bank account’s future.

Here are nine ingenious ways you can begin shaving a few extra cash and letting your Facebook ad campaigns start to grow:

1. Set a periodic P&L check-up routine

This is secret number one.

The day you paid Facebook for running ads, set an automatic reminder to calculate P&L.

Impose this as rule on yourself and let your campaigns run gainfully.

You will definitely have some extra cash in your savings account from following this tactic.

2. Pause your non-performing campaigns

One of the worst habits you can have is to leave the non-performing ad campaigns ON when you’re not monitoring them proactively.

It’s a no-brainer.

You take the time to get your advertising cost down to the lowest possible, you set up automatic payments, and then you never have to sweat about them again.

3. Use Facebook Analytics to identify your pain point, and then cut it

One of the best tools out there for digital advertising is Facebook Analytics. You can connect your bank accounts and credit cards with your campaigns to start working very easily but then this tool will help you understand where and how people are interacting with your business so you can always run campaigns profitably.

At the end of each day/week/month/quarter, you’ll get a pretty good sense of where your ad spending is going.

When you do this, you’ll quickly realize that you are cutting that unnecessary spending as your campaigns are now more profitable thanks to the ad optimization decision you made based on data.

Then continue with your ad performance analysis and optimization work to save money each month in your bank account.

The bank balance will automatically grow which you may reserve for contingency.

4. Hire an ad consultant instead of a digital marketing agency

Depending on the budget you have, you may hire an individual instead of an entire army.

The only time I would suggest you hire an agency right away when you are completely unable to look after your campaigns.

It’s amazing how much money you save when you hire a consultant and manage campaigns for yourself instead of hiring an agency. The average agency bill for managing social media accounts is much higher naturally due to their establishment cost. You can get the same output from an individual professional at an affordable rate.

Again, track how much you spend as a consultancy fee, what is the ROI, and accordingly decide on hiring an efficient agency if at all required.

5. Look for discounts offered by Facebook as part of their promotion plan

If you have a limited ad budget, and especially if you’re trying to save money, search for offers you can use to save a few bucks.

Depending on your industry type, these could be redeemed for advertising on Facebook and/or Instagram.

Save the costly ad dollars for special occasions.

6. Do experiments and take calculative risks

Ever heard of A/B testing or multivariate testing?

Testing your ad copies and landing pages saves way more money than advertisers give credit. Things like A/B testing, multivariate testing, will help you reduce your campaign cost by improving your goal conversions.

So instead of using the standard ad format every time or so, try out some data-driven experiments for better results.

7. Take the help of the Facebook Ads Guide

There are certainly times when it’s easiest (and fairly cost-effective) to just take the help of free resources published by Facebook for online advertisers.

Especially if you’re keen on saving money as fast as possible, this is one of the best ways to start.

When you’re new, you really only have a few ideas about the nitty-gritty of Facebook ads - how it works actually? You can start by reading the guides on how to advertise on Facebook, created by Facebook’s own team to help novice marketers across the world. Some very helpful insights, as I’ve said, can be derived by reviewing Facebook’s ad library.

Even you can think about contacting the customer support time to get some quick yet smart solution which ultimately helps you save money on your campaigns.

8. If you’re going to advertise online, do homework

This is probably one of the basic things I’m talking about but often overlooked by many.

Search the web for competitors before you start with Facebook Ads if possible. It’s a super easy and extremely useful tactic to know where the market is.

This is one of the benefits of the digital age when it comes to campaign management. There are so many tools, websites, and services out there dedicated to helping you do research on the market. If you’re hesitant in any particular area, chances are you just need to do a quick search and something will come up to help you. Use Facebook search as a guide to see where your competitors are and what methods they are applying.

9. Do not, under any circumstance, forget to set campaign end-date

This is more of a best practice, but it’s also a Cardinal rule.

Do not, ever, for any reason, forget to set campaign end-date, in addition, to refrain yourself from go for an automated bidding option.

I’m not completely against of automated Facebook bidding strategy but with starting a business (not my particular way of running ads, but it’s a strategy many employ, and do so because they have to), go with manual bidding. With due respect to all the salient benefits, an automated bidding strategy will make it so unnecessarily difficult for you to begin building a sound financial foundation for ad campaigns at least initially.

So, set deadlines for everything. Spend within your means, and save as much as you can.

You’ll thank yourself later.

7 Common SEO Myths Debunked Once & For All

There’s always a lot of advice are available on the web about SEO.

Some of it is very helpful, some of it not.

The difficulty is then in selection.

It can be hard to identify what information is based on facts and what is just a misinterpretation of Google statements.

The challenge is the internet is available to everyone but knowledge of SEO is not. So myths automatically are prospering.

Some real-life scenarios:

A client will tell you about with confidence of running Google ads to influence keywords’ rank organically.

Your boss will question you for not keeping the page’s Meta titles to 580 pixels.

Your developer will prohibit you to implement GTM on site for the sake of site speed issue

Your designer will convince you that if it looks good on your computer, everything is fine

Your content editor will calm you by saying typos are some minor errors and is not hampering the brand’s goodwill

How SEO myths form?

The issue is, no one knows exactly how the search engines work.

Due to this, a lot of SEO work starts as a test, experiment, and educated guesswork.

When you are learning about SEO it can be difficult to try out all of the claims you are hearing.

That’s when the SEO myths begin to spread out.

Why SEO myths form?

The reasons are -

• Start considering Google search engine as almighty
• Relying on untested theories
• Giving too much importance to minor adjustments
• Following the out of date advice
• Misinterpreting advice from a Google representative
• Creating myths on your own to cheat from the fear of failure

There could be other factors at play.

How to avoid SEO myths and misinformation online?

Spotting SEO myths and act accordingly can save you from experiencing lost revenue and a whole lot of time.

So -

Do the test: Measure whether making a change across many pages will be worth the time and resource before you commit to doing so.

Be confident: Someone may not have had success with a method when they have tried due to any reason but it doesn’t mean it won’t help you since the context of applying the same method is different and can bring a different result.

And remember: Google often tested new features before a mass rollout. So before you jump for the latest SEO advice that is being spread around as a result of a change by Google, wait to see if it is going to last.

7 Common SEO Myths

Let’s talk about the reality behind some of the myths now.

1. The Google Sandbox

The Sandbox effect is a name given to a thought of the way Google ranks web pages in its index. It is the subject of much argument—its actuality has been written about since 2004 but not established, with several disagreements to the contrary.

2. Duplicate Content Penalty

Google tried to put an end to the myths around duplicate content years ago. Susan Moska posted on the Google Webmaster blog in 2008: Let's put this to bed once and for all, folks: There's no such thing as a “duplicate content penalty.” At least, not in the way most people mean when they say that.

3. PPC Advertising Helps Rankings

Again according to a Google post, PPC ads like Google Ads are paid online advertisements which appear next to relevant searches and other sources of content on the SERP. Running a Google Ads campaign does not help your SEO rankings, despite some myths and claims. However, PPC ads can be useful in reaching out to a broader audience online.

4. Domain Age Is A Ranking Factor

Google's John Mueller confirmed that domain age is not a ranking signal, tweeting, “… domain age helps nothing.” Site age, on the other hand, has more ranking relevance. Very new websites - less than six months old - have trouble ranking.

By the way, many have confusion about the difference between domain and site. A domain is basically the name of a website, a website is what people see and interact with when they get there through a URL which is how to find a website on the internet. In other words, when you book a domain, you have bought the name for your site, but you still need to develop the website itself.

5. Tabbed Content Affects Rankings

Long ago, tabbed content created simply by using JavaScript or any other programming languages was not indexable to search engines as they don't crawl the web pages for ranking JavaScript code, and therefore text inside the code is considered as part of the code and was ignored.

But time flies, search engines are now smart enough to understand JScript codes better and developers are too become smarter for finding ways to manage tabbed content without losing its importance for proper indexing and better ranking a webpage.

6. Google Uses Google Analytics Data In Rankings

Does Google Use Google Analytics for ranking a website or page? Google could not be clearer on this: Google does not use Analytics data for ranking purposes. There is no foolproof evidence to support the idea that Google uses Analytics for penalizing sites or ranking sites on the SERP.

7. Google Cares About Domain Authority

“Domain Authority is not a ranking factor used by Google in determining search rankings and has no effect on the SERPs..” - according to a spokesperson from the Google Webmaster team.

Conclusion

Lastly, some myths have their origins in causation and correlation and others have not.

Now you know how to react to an SEO idea that you can’t say for sure is truth or myth.

What We Can Learn From Famous Print Ads?

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been on an analysis of print advertising. Although print ads are far less glamorous than social media or Facebook Ads nowadays, they were frontrunners of the advertising industry for many years.

And noteworthy print ads are RARE. If you pick up a magazine at your local library or book store, you’ll find pages after pages of ads. They all have a catchy yet self-explanatory photo, a highlighted tag line, some bright colors (some are in black and white), and (if it’s really good), maybe even an offer (a.k.a. call to action).

This is how basically advertising is done. But unfortunately, most of the time it doesn’t work.

There’s an idea that just because you are advertising, it means that it's working or generating revenue. That’s simply not true.

Take the example of Gillette razors. They are part of the Proctor and Gamble family of brands and spend millions of dollars on ads over the years. Yet for the past couple of years, they’ve been losing market share notably at least in the US. And one of the brands growing is the Dollar Shave Club - which started with a video.

Simply put, spending on ads doesn’t always work. So what does work? What are the secrets of the famous print ad? And how do we use that learning in making successful digital ads?

Length

Some of the best print ads of all time are 300+ words. They are interesting to read. They tell stories and weave together storylines.

More than anything: they give you a solution. How often have you read an ad and felt smarter, wiser, or more informed? The best ads make you feel like you are missing something. And that motivates you to take action - explore the information you have gained through the ad to solve your problem.

Maybe you’ve heard that “nobody reads your content” or “no one visits your website”. But if you’re great at writing crisp yet useful content in terms of providing the right solution to the right audience at the right time, the small percentage of people who read it are exactly the people you want to connect with.

Story

In addition to length, these ads say something. It might be easy to write “nine reasons why..” or “five great tips..” like ad headlines. Or the most commonly used term “free” in ads. And these will often get clicked. But they rarely sell well.

Instead, stories get read.

When readers pick up a magazine or newspaper, they’ll certainly skim most of it. But they’ll read the things that are interesting to them. That’s how we operate - our brain operates. News sites get more traffic than ever as they tell/present stories interestingly than ever. You should do the same.

No law says an ad needs to look like an ad irrespective of certain character limitations we have to follow while crafting ads in digital space. However fundamentally, every successful ad (and the linked landing page) needs to tell a story to get clicks and ultimately sell anything.

Headlines

Headlines are the most significant part of a good ad. I won’t spend much time talking about them here, but if you make one part of your ad awesome, it should be the headline(s).

Simplicity

Most successful ad agencies from the last few years have focused on four elements: Headline, text, photo, caption. That’s it.

It’s tempting to make your advertising as flamboyant and complicated as possible.

Or to use puns or jokes.

This is seldom a good idea. Keep it simple stupid (KISS principle).

Black on White is Normal

It’s almost always better to print black text on white background from a UX perspective. It’s the way human brains are wired. No one prints white on black unless they want people not to read it. That means, study and adopt the common traits from your niche whenever is required to optimize your landing pages’ color definition.

Follow the Rules

I’m always looking for ways to be better, more efficient, and to find new ways to be better at digital marketing and ads.

But when I work with a client’s ad dollars and marketing budget, I want to find things that work - day in and day out.

We usually compete with giants in the advertising and marketing industry. It’s time to take some ROI-focused approach.

Good luck,
Partha

What To Look For During A CRO Audit?

As a digital marketer, my job responsibility is simple: produce results. You too. You’re likely familiar with questions like, “How many leads did this generate?” or “How much revenue did this produce?” etc. Unfortunately, most online marketers stumble over their answers because they aren’t able to support their efforts with hard data – numbers. Yes.

In light of that, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is a web marketer’s one-stop solution. It gives us a way to experiment, analyze, and optimize ideas, then produces real results that are easily measured using tools like Google Analytics or through a marketing automation platform like HubSpot or Salesforce.

If you aren’t familiar with the world of CRO, this is the right place to start. Follow these guidelines to learn how to conduct a CRO audit, and soon you’ll be improving results and influencing ROI.

What Is A CRO Audit?

A CRO audit is a comprehensive website gap analysis to discover why visitors on your website aren’t converting. Following the audit, you make modifications based on what you have found and track your experiments while you increase the conversion rate. It sounds complex but simply put, there are a number of easily traceable reasons to figure out why your visitors are leaving your website or not performing the action you desire.

The CRO Checklist

One of the best ways is, you’ll need to do a top-to-bottom analysis of your website. Let’s use this checklist to get started.

Gather Information

• First, take note of your current overall goal conversion rate. For example, what is your visit-to-lead ratio? And what is your lead-to-customer ratio? These are the two most important metrics to keep in mind throughout the auditing.
• Take note of your top five most popular landing pages. These are where you should initially give attention because they represent the bulk of your website traffic.
• Establish the goal of each selected page. The goal could be to simply learn more about your company, or it could be to fill out your “Contact Us” form. Don’t move on until you make sure that every webpage has a goal.
• Next, collect data. How many page views is each of these five selected website pages getting? What is the bounce rate? What is the percentage of new traffic? How much time is being spent on each page? How many are currently hitting your goal (what is your current goal conversion rate)?
• As you complete the breakdown of data at the page level, queries should start arising in your head. You may find out indications like, that visitors are only scrolling through the top 20 percent of your page or primarily visiting your website via mobile device. Try to recognize where the friction is. What is the reason any number of visitors aren’t hitting your goal?

Test Your Theory

Prepared with data and information, now you can start testing. Based on the goal of the landing page and the current behavior of your page visitors, make changes to your website pages that influence the conversions.

• Majority of the website visitors coming from mobile or not? Make sure every section of the landing page is optimized for that platform. Use forms smartly to shorten the forms on landing pages when viewed from a mobile device.
• Are visitors only scrolling through 1/3rd of your page? Rearrange of sections or move CTAs higher up. Allow your visitors to take action as per your goal above the fold.
• Which landing pages are getting the most attention in terms of views? Try repositioning your forms on these pages to increase your conversion rate. Also, try presenting the forms as concisely and gracefully as possible.
• Are you asking for too much information from the visitors? Use progressive profiling techniques to collect data gradually and strategically from the visitors throughout their journey.
• Is the headline of the page confusing your visitors? Rephrase it out in more enticing language.
• Do visitors feel an emotional attachment to your offer? Modify the action verbs used in your CTA copy and landing page content.
• Have you tried different CTAs? Use a few designs and try links instead of buttons in some cases.
• Is your form inappropriately stood? Try moving it above the fold or transforming it to a sticky form.
• What do your images say about the landing page? Use images logically, making sure they are high quality and aligned with the message.
• Have you tried swapping your content? Use language that resonates with your buyer persona or target audience.
• Are your visitors using the site the way you planned it to be used? With Google Analytics, you can track the path (i.e., conversion funnel) your visitors took through your website.
• What are visitors actually clicking on within your site? Remove or replace the sections of your website that aren’t engaging or creating friction in the buyer’s journey.
• What pieces of content are performing the best or presenting your USP or representing your value proposition nicely? Feature these first in your landing page wireframe.
• How far are visitors scrolling down your page? Update sections of your website where they became disengaged without deteriorating the website’s structure and functionality.
• How many opportunities are you giving your visitors to convert? Try increasing conversion chances, or even decreasing (refrain from overdoing it), if the call to action isn’t clear.

Analyze Results

Soon after implementing some of these hypotheses, you’ll have more data with a clear direction at your disposal. Then, you can use a variety of tools during your CRO audit to continue to analyze, tweak, and improve the performance of your landing pages or the entire website.

One of the best available tools for conducting, analyzing, and optimizing the test results is Google Analytics. Its free version will be more than enough for many like me. Now, there’s no need for me to dig deep all that Google Analytics can do, but keep in mind that this tool isn’t just important for forming a website’s benchmarks at the start of a CRO project’s initial stage. It’s also just as important once the user data allows you to see how website visitors are behaving and converting on your site. Google Analytics is just as important once you understand why users are acting in a specific manner on your site’s landing page. That context we like to get from another type of research at the final stage of the CRO project.

One of the common CRO mistakes to avoid is relying only on A/B testing predominantly. Although A/B testing is certainly necessary and very much effective on top of acceptable to many quite easily, it’s only one piece of the CRO jigsaw puzzle. You should also consider usability testing, customer journey mapping, personalization and segmentation tools, event-triggered emails, copy optimization, and sundries of multivariate testing. If you focus too much on A/B testing, you will actually limit the possibilities of your website in terms of reaching the optimum level of CRO.

Final Thoughts

Lastly, remember to be a little patient. It usually takes weeks (or in some cases months) before you start seeing the output of your CRO effort, but when you do, it will be beneficial. If you’re interested in learning more about CRO, subscribe to our blog.

Why Would Your SEO Not Be Working?

The reasons why SEO isn’t working for you range from impractical expectations to internal business factors to inappropriate resource allocations. Look into 10 of them here.

Introduction:

There are now only a few developing businesses that don’t bother about their web presence.

SEO is a process that takes more time and effort than almost all the paid media channels.

That doesn’t mean it’s insignificant. It hurts me when I hear sayings like “SEO isn’t working for us” or “SEO doesn’t profitable for us” or any kind of skepticism about the value of SEO.

There are at least 10 reasons why SEO hasn’t work.

Most of the time when SEO fails, it’s due to one or more internal reasons ranging from impractical hopes and beliefs or inborn challenges within the company or organization rather than external factors.

These are just pure realities that might hurt a bit if you can relate.

These are basic necessities to recognize before shutting down SEO operation or if you are unsure it will work for you or not.

1. Impractical hopes and beliefs	If we’re considering SEO as the magical source that will meet all of our goal conversions instantaneously, we need to rethink as, like media channels and other digital marketing disciplines, SEO should be planned and systematic. Search for industry-standard, competitor data, and audience (keyword) research to define and design the SEO road map.
2. Stop trying too early	One thing we all have to remember that SEO doesn’t guarantee anything in short term. Algorithm updates, website’s health and history, backlink profile, and the competitive landscape all make an impact on ROI through SEO and making it difficult and unpredictable. Most business owners hate the unpredictable nature of SEO outcomes when it comes to timing for results. With so many unknowns, the known thing that makes SEO campaigns flop though is giving up too soon. In general, the more competitive the market, the more time you need. Likewise, the more issues you have when you start SEO, the more time you need to wait for producing ROI.
3. Directionless decision-makers	When SEO doesn’t work, it’s often because it is without direction. Strategy means doing research, setting goals, planning out a process, measuring the outcome, and having mechanisms built in that allow to take actions to implement the intended strategy is called tactics. So, strategies and tactics must work cohesively for achieving success.
4. Old-fashioned practices	It’s understandable why even seasoned SEO professionals need periodic updates for their methods and understanding of the SEO profession. The risk of outdated or ineffective practices comes with having someone add SEO to their responsibilities, those that cost measly, or those that haven’t done SEO in the recent past.
5. Lack of demand in the market	I mentioned that most of the time it’s hard to find a case where SEO can’t help a business. That’s not always 100% true. Or, at the very least, I can definitely attest that there are times where it shouldn’t be one of the leading or highest priority channels in the marketing mix. When a company’s target audience isn’t searching for what they offer, that’s a warning sign that SEO won’t work. It isn’t a case where SEO efforts can’t get the site ranked for certain keywords – it’s about the fact that those rankings won’t matter in terms of driving traffic and/or leads and sales. Some examples include products or services that are ultra-technical, have zero awareness, or in selling models that are private and aren’t conducted publicly on the web. SEO is an inbound channel. We have to have people actively coming to a search engine, do a search, find us, and click through to see it work. When there’s no opportunity (or desire) for that, then investing in SEO and working to optimize can be a pointless exercise.
6. Heavy competition	Google search results use to appear with the different layouts and types of content in the SERPs based on search intent and keyword, and organic search results are just one portion of the SERP. SEO expectations need to be filtered by considering how competitive the market is and what feature-set SERPs are displaying against the focus keyword terms and phrases. If organic results are pushed way down the SERP below ads, images, local listings, and other content created by your direct and indirect competitors, the traffic potential for a number one organic search ranking is less than it would be for a page where organic results are above the fold near the top. Rankings don’t support traffic and conversions in such cases. SEO may not work despite the top organic position if SERP features are working against us.
7. IT support issues	I know many system engineers personally. Some of the professionals sometimes don’t understand or like SEO requests. Cloud security, server functionality, and domain configuration data are often seemingly considered unnecessary requests from the SEO team even after providing necessary justification. SEO doesn’t work when the IT infrastructure or support doesn’t work. When SEO isn’t even an option for prioritization by the IT team, the situation becomes worse. If technical site issues can’t be touched, updated, or fixed, things like indexing and site speed can suffer before we even start talking about on-page factors and CMS needs.
8. UX and UI issues	Especially for conversion-focused SEO campaigns, UX and UI can often make or break the opportunity. It’s one thing to get rankings and then targeted traffic. It’s another if that traffic doesn’t convert. You can have the best rankings and alignment with keyword research, supportive content, and apt promotion on the web. However, if the UX and UI is a weak point and people can’t navigate to where you need them to, then SEO will be judged as a failure. Just like the IT team, often the designers are reluctant to address requests that come from the SEOs. Maybe they refrain from reworking on an image. That’s why involving SEO at the time of site design and development is critical.
9. Poor team configuration	Team structure often a hidden issue for poor performance. Whether it’s tied to skill sets, experience, priorities, or commitment of the resources, the team (or individual) responsible for SEO success combined with others that need to support it. Early in my career, I was an individual SEO contributor in an organization. That has changed a lot - which is a positive thing. However, many organizations still run SEO operations with an undervalued or understrength team. If there’s no real commitment and prioritization by all involved, then SEO success is in jeopardy. We need people within or around the team for content, IT, UX, and other levels of support.
10. Lack of investment/budget	SEO traffic is free! This is an utterly false statement. While no direct media dollars are required, internal or external resources are needed to be hired. That means, either pay an agency for outsourced work and/or invest in software/tools to manage SEO for a large/complex site, in addition to the costs of setting up an internal team; so SEO definitely has a price. Many organizations and business leaders still feel hesitant to invest sufficient money for SEO from their marketing budget. Not a fully funded SEO effort with direct and indirect costs cannot keep SEO working. Proper investment of money and resource needs are both critical.

Conclusion:

We all want all of our digital marketing efforts to work.

SEO is no exception.

Whether there are one or more issues or challenges that stand in our way, being aware of the reasons why SEO doesn’t work is key.

SEO is an investment at many levels, especially in a multi-layered organization. Knowing where to resolve encounters or what can sink it before even SEO starts, or after efforts are underway, can have a deep impact on making it work and unlocking the potential opportunities for reaching overall marketing and business goals through it.

How to Choose the Best Suitable diagram

(Photo by Lukas from Pexels)

In my previous post Diagrammatic Presentation of Data we have discussed different types of diagrams. Now a question may arise in your mind is that how we come to know that which is the suitable diagram in a given situation? Let see how we can answer this.

The choice would primarily depend upon few factors, such as:

1. The Nature of the Data
2. The type of people for whom the diagram is to be made
3. Simple bar diagrams should be used when changes in totals are required to be represented
4. Sub-divided bar diagrams are more useful when changes in totals as well as in components figures are required to be represented
5. Multiple bar diagrams should be used where changes in the absolute values of the component figures are to be emphasized and the overall total is of no importance
6. The multiple and sub-divided bar diagrams are used for not more than four or five components. For more than five components pie diagrams will be the best choice
7. Percentage bar diagrams are better choices when changes in the relative size of component figures are to be displayed
8. The pictogram is admirably suited to the publications of articles in newspapers and magazines or in reports 

Summary

How to Choose the Best Suitable diagram? To answer this question absolutely depends on case to case basis. I tried to give you the best way of representation of data using different types of diagrams.

As always, if you have a question or a suggestion related to the topic covered in this article, please add it as a comment so other readers can benefit from the discussion.

Diagrammatic Presentation of Data

(Photo by Fauxels from Pexels)

If data are presented in the form of diagram, it attracts the reader and it is easy to represent a table data. Diagrammatic presentation helps in quick understanding of data. 

In today's post I will discuss one-dimensional, two-dimensional, pie diagrams, pictogram and cartogram. 

First let us see what are the significance and general rules for constructing the diagrams...

Significance of Diagrammatic Presentation of Data
1. Easy Understanding	2. Attractive Look	3. Greater Memorizing Effect	4. Comparison of Data

	Components of Diagrams
	1. Title of the Diagram	5. Index of Diagram
	2. Size of the Diagram	6. Neat and Clean Diagram
	3. Scale of the Diagram	7. Simple Diagram
	4. Footnotes

Diagrams are categorized under the following heads...

1. One Dimensional Diagrams or Bar Diagrams
1. Simple Bar Diagram
2. Subdivided Bar Diagram
3. Multiple Bar Diagram
4. Percentage Bar Diagram
5. Deviation Bar Diagram
6. Broken Bar Diagram
2. Two Dimensional Diagrams
1. Rectangles
2. Squares
3. Circles
3. Pie Diagrams
4. Pictogram
5. Cartogram

1. One Dimensional Diagrams or Bar Diagrams

Bar diagrams are the most commonly used diagrams. Note: for large number of observations lines may be drawn instead of bars to save space.

Simple Bar Diagram -> If someone has to represent the data based on one variable, then the simple bar diagram can be used. 

Fiscal Year	Average Participation
2010	40,302
2011	44,709
2012	46,609
2013	47,636
2014	46,664
2015	45,767
2016	44,220
2017	42,317
2018	40,776
2019	35,703

This dataset (from Kaggle) focuses on public assistance programs in the United States that provide food, namely SNAP and WIC

The simple bar diagram of the above data is given below:

Subdivided Bar Diagram -> If various components of a variable are to be represented in a single diagram then subdivided bar diagrams are used. Note: If the number of components are more than 10 or 12, the subdivided bar diagrams are not used due to overloaded with information and cannot be compared and understood. 

Cost of grocery items (in INR) month wise	April 2021	May 2021	June 2021
Mustard oil 1 ltr	154	167	177
Atta 5 kg	128	132	137
Gobind Bhog Rice 5 kg	297	304	329
Almond 1 kg	155	167	170
Juice	130	142	147

The data is taken randomly

On the basis of above table required subdivided bar diagram is given below:

Multiple Bar Diagram -> In multiple bar diagrams two or more groups of interrelated data are presented. 

Multiple bar diagram of the above data is given below:

Percentage Bar Diagram -> Subdivided bar diagram drawn on the basis of the percentage of the total is known as percentage bar diagram. 

Percentage diagram of the above data is given below:

Deviation Bar Diagram -> For representing net profits, net loss, net exports, net imports, etc.., the deviation bar diagram is used.

Year	Sale(in %)	Net Profits(in %)
2019	5%	15%
2020	8%	19%
2021	10%	-6%

Deviation bar diagram of the above data is given below:

Broken Bar Diagram -> If large variation exists in the values of certain type of data, i.e. some values are very small and some are very large, then in order to gain space for the smaller bars of the data, the large bar(s) may be presented as broken bar.

2. Two Dimensional Diagrams

In one dimensional diagrams only length of the bar is important and comparison of bars are done on the basis of their length only, while in two dimensional diagrams both length and width of the bars are considered. 

3. Pie Diagrams

Pie diagram (Pie Chart) is used when the requirement of the situation is to know the relationship between whole of the thing and its parts.

Cost of grocery items (in INR) month wise	April 2021
Mustard oil 1 ltr	154
Atta 5 kg	128
Gobind Bhog Rice 5 kg	297
Almond 1 kg	155
Juice	130

Pie diagram of the above data is given below:

For Pictogram and Cartogram we use infographics.

Summary

In this post we have covered diagrammatic presentation of data. We discussed One Dimensional Diagrams or Bar Diagrams, Two Dimensional Diagrams, Pie Diagrams and how to draw different types of diagrams.

To know - How to choose the best suitable diagram read my this post.

As always, if you have a question or a suggestion related to the topic covered in this article, please add it as a comment so other readers can benefit from the discussion.

A Technical SEO Checklist For Ecommerce Website Revamp

Revamping an e-commerce site? Don't lose domain authority or organic search traffic and conversions. This checklist will help you avoid the most common SEO consequences during your reform.

Reshaping an e-commerce site is part of the natural brand progression.

Reforms keep your brand relevant and your message up-to-date can radically improve the user experience and may be necessary to keep up with changing web standards.

At the same time, restructures can result in dumping SEO authority and throwing away organic search traffic.

Collaboration between SEO professionals and web developers is extremely important.

SEO should be a concern throughout the redesign process from beginning to end.

The following technical SEO checklist will help you keep track of the changes made during the remake to prevent pitfalls from happening.

1. Crawling & auditing the existing site

Use a crawling tool like Screaming Frog to get an index of your web pages and various important bits of Metadata that you will want to refer back to throughout the development.

Make sure to save the original crawl report. You will need this information to ensure continuity between your existing e-commerce site and the upcoming version of it.

After you complete your crawl, categorize any of the following issues from within the original crawl report, creating separate tabs in a spreadsheet or separate spreadsheet for each:

• Duplicate page titles, image alt, H1 tags, or meta descriptions
• Missing page titles, image alt, H1 tags, and meta descriptions
• Page titles too short or too long
• Meta descriptions too short or too long
• Links to 404 pages
• Links to 301 pages
• Links to any other 3xx, 4xx, or 5xx status code URLs
• Any inconsistent use of HTTPS vs HTTP or www vs non-www

You have to also:

• Check for a mismatch in the number of URLs crawled by Screaming Frog and the number of URLs indexed by Google. You can find the same by doing a “site:my-site.com” search or through Google Search Console.
• Make sure you have a valid XML sitemap and make a copy of it.
• Ensure you have a valid robots.txt file and make a copy of it.

2. Setting up the test site

In setting up the test site, help the developers to keep the following in mind during their development if required:

• Preferably, the existing site’s crawl report (the original one) should act as a base for the upcoming site. Make a copy of the original crawl report and keep notes of any changes to be made on the redesigned site, especially any URLs that will be altered or removed, inside it.
• Address any issues you faced in auditing the existing site and map the changes to the redesigned site and keep notes in the original site crawl report.
• Make sure that the test site in a non-indexed state from within the robots.txt file. You do not want Google to start exposing your pages on WIP (work is in progress) mode in the search results.
• Make no changes to any of the URL folders and filenames unless absolutely necessary. They should be as close to identical as possible, with exceptions only to deal with discrepancies and web pages you do not want to carry over.
• Any URLs that are changed should have the links (links from within the same website or domain) to them changed. You should also set up .htaccess to redirect the old URLs to their equivalent new ones, but this mustn’t be an excuse to leave the internal links untouched. Links to 301 pages lose Page Authority and create unnecessary server load on top of wasting your crawl budget. Your original site crawl data will tell you about internal linking along with the anchor text. Make note of these modifications in your original crawl report.
• Eliminate any links to pages that you are removing and make note of the changes in the original crawl report.
• If you are combining any of your pages into a larger yet single central resource page, update the internal links on your pages so that they point right to the new resource page, rather than simply redirecting or removing the links. Make note of these changes in the copy of the original site crawl report.
• Do not create “soft 404s” by replacing missing pages with redirects to the homepage or any other irrelevant page. Google has been very clear about the logic for removed pages to display as 404.

3. Crawling & auditing the test version of the site

Do a complete crawl of your test site, again using a tool like Screaming Frog that you used on the existing site. Download and save this as your first test site crawl report.

Start by verifying that all of the issues discovered in crawling the live site are not present in the test site’s crawl data.

Now make a fresh copy of your original site crawl report, having all of the change notes, and do a find and replace operation inside it so that the URLs have the same structure as the test site. For example, replacing https://my-site.com/folder/page with https://test.my-site.com/folder/page. Save this as a testing crawl data file.

Now set the Screaming Frog tool’s crawler to “list mode” and crawl the test site using your testing crawl data file. This will check each URL individually to see if there is a matching page on the upcoming site (i.e., the test site) for every page on the existing site. Download and save this as the final test site crawl report.

To recap, at this point you should have:

• A crawl report of the existing site and a copy that you have made with notes to address any fixes.
• A crawl report of the test site and a copy of that you can edit.
• A testing crawl data file containing your existing site’s URL is edited to match the test site’s URL structure.
• A final test site crawls data file containing the results of checking each individual URL using your testing crawl data file.

You will use all these files to ensure there are no inconsistencies between the new site (i.e., the test site) and the old site (i.e., the existing site) in the following steps.

4. Matching up your content (existing site vs. up coming site)

You will need to take the following steps to ensure that the existing site and the test site line up in the approved manner:

• Address any 404 pages in your final test site crawl report first. If you noted that these pages were being removed entirely, no need to do anything. If you noted that these pages were being moved or merged, you will need to set up redirects in .htaccess. And add these 404 URLs to a spreadsheet of relocated pages; you need to make sure that all internal links to these pages will have to update at a later stage.
• If you encounter any 404 pages in your final test crawl report that are not noted as either removed or relocated, do a search for a matching title tag, meta description, or keywords on the first test site crawl report to see if there are any good matches. If not, verify that the old page is intended to be removed or if it should be present on the upcoming site but is missing accidentally and needs to be added.
• Like 404s, create a spreadsheet of any 301 pages in your final test site crawl report. While the redirects mean that the site should be operational, you will still need to ensure that internal links to these pages are updated at a later stage.
• Verify that there are no duplicate or missing title tags, Meta description tags, image alt, or H1 tags on any of the pages in your final test site crawl report.

5. Prepare redirects for all changed URLs

You will need to pinpoint any URLs that have been reformed that you haven’t yet set up a redirect for:

• Filter out the list of 404 pages from the final test site crawl report.
• Search for the Meta title of the first 404 pages on your original test site crawl. If there is a match, set up a redirect in .htaccess from the old URL to the corresponding new URL.
• Repeat this process for each 404 URL.

If you encounter a 404 on your final test site crawl that doesn’t have a matching Meta title tag, search for keywords or Meta descriptions or any unique identifier that matches.

If there are no matching pages on the upcoming site, note this in your spreadsheet and leave that 404s for the time being. In the next step, you will ensure that no internal links are pointing to these missing pages.

6. Audit internal links

Now it’s time to take care that all of the links on the upcoming site point to the appropriate page.

• You may find it now easier to run one more crawl of your test site after updating .htaccess in step 5 to ensure that all pages are either HTTP status 200 or 301.
• Do a bulk export of all of the links on the site from your crawler tool.
• If any 404 links remain, address them first. If .htaccess was applied correctly, all of the remaining links to 404 pages should be removed.
• You will need to update the links to your 301 pages so that they point to the appropriate page instead of the redirected URL.

7. Finalization & launch the revamped site

By now all crawling issues should be addressed and the upcoming site should be ready for launch, but you will want to run a final crawl before doing so.

There are a few things you will need to verify during the launch process:

• Remove noindex entirely from the test site’s robots.txt during the migration.
• Ensure that .htaccess is operating on the correct URL structure, not the dummy URL structure of the test site.
• Run a final crawl after the launch to ensure that there were no issues in migrating the test site to its live location.
• Re-upload the updated sitemap.xml file to your server.
• Re-upload the updated robots.txt file to your server.

Note: .htaccess is a fantastic way to manage all the redirects but remember that it’s essential to keep it organized, else, your site’s restructuring work will face some serious consequences. If required, consult with an SEO professional for hassle-free site migration.

Conclusion

As I said in the beginning, a collaboration between developers and SEO professionals is critical.

Make sure that you have correct crawl data on the original site as well as the test site throughout the development.

Be as clear as possible with all the stakeholders about what will create issues and what needs to be avoided throughout the reform.

Remember that this checklist is a guide. You will likely end up with a customized one base on your unique project requirement.

Keep a record of which issues have been addressed and which persist.

Nonetheless, this checklist will help you avoid some of the most common consequences brands face during site restructure.