Website Design as the First Step in Internet Marketing
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Internet marketing covers a wide variety of subjects. This presentation specifically speaks to the fundamentals of finding a domain name, building a website, website design tools and tips for small businesses.
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Website Design as the First Step in Internet Marketing
- 1. ADAPTING ONLINE Internet Consulting and Website Design
- 2. INTERNET MARKETING WEBSITE DESIGN, CONTENT SEO, PAID ADVERTISING, SOCIAL MEDIA, DIRECTORIES, REVIEW SITES & HOW TO MAKE IT ALL WORK FOR YOU
- 3. ABOUT US WE HAVE THE MARKETING EXPERIENCE AND WE WANT TO SHARE OUR KNOWLEDGE WITH YOU Connect With Us We’ve Been Around Collectively we have 30+ years of internet & marketing experience. Google Certified We have managed over $15 million dollars in internet ad spends. We have met Google. We Are a Team We come from both sides of the marketing world – design and functionality.
- 4. 7 Components to Internet Marketing What makes your Internet Marketing tick? All of these pieces should work together and independently as part of your marketing plan. The Pieces This is what you get once you master the pieces of today’s internet marketing. Authority Your website design must be fluid, easy and mobile responsive. Web Design You must have content optimized for the search engines and interesting to your audience. Content & SEO Whether it’s on Google, Facebook, Bing or YouTube, paid ads can be vital to internet marketing. Paid Internet Ads Acquiring listings and paying attention to what your customers are saying can make or break your reputation. Directories & Reviews Knowing where your audience is, listening to what they are saying and engaging them as a peer. Social Media
- 6. Website Design & Usability There are 6 basic components of a great website. CONTENT & LINK BUILDING Links to, from and within your site give the search engines a map of your content and guide them through your website. IMAGES & VIDEOS Properly optimized videos and images creates ‘stickiness’ and user interaction. FRONT END UX Your design should be easy to navigate, understand and should have a great call to action. BACK END What your website is built on can effect its success and yours. DOMAIN NAME & HOSTING Tips and hints for picking a good domain name and hosting company. MOBILE RESPONSIVE With smart phone and tablet use increasing, a mobile-friendly website is critical.
- 7. DOMAIN NAME What’s in a name? SEO Domain names are not as important in SEO as they used to be. Generic Vs Brand Where you are at in your business and your wallet may help you decide. Special Characters Hyphens are generally not a good idea. Try to find something without them. Extensions .com, .net, .org.,, specialty extensions or country extensions – what to pick? Conclusion Be careful, be smart, think about the advantages and disadvantages – this is your most valuable asset. Buy an Existing Site Make sure to check the age and history,
- 8. Domain Name Search Helpful Websites GoDaddy.com NetworkSolutions.com InstantDomainSearch.com Neighbourhood Checker Domains.Google.com Doman Age Checker
- 9. WEBSITE HOSTING Pick a company you can trust WPENGINE.COM GODADDY.COM INMOTIONHOSTING.COM HOSTGATOR.COM BLUEHOST.COM SITEGROUND.COM
- 10. CONSIDER YOUR BACKEND It’s more important than you think SEO Your CMS contains all of the SEO options for proper development of a search engine friendly website. 01 SPEED Your CMS can determine how fast your pages load and if they load correctly. 02 UPDATED You need to make sure you CMS is maintained and updated regularly. Search engine technology changes constantly03
- 11. Optimized Your CMS needs to be easy to optimize. A clunky, old CMS that does not have flexibility will hurt your SEO. 04 Responsive Your CMS must be mobile responsive. With over 50% of searches coming from mobile devices, this is critical. 05 User Friendly Unless you are a website designer by trade, you need to be able to make changes to your website as well. 06
- 12. 1 2 Front End Website Design The UIX will keep them coming back Must be user friendly & easy to navigate Call to Action Tell them what to do HomePageDesign UIX Other tools for completing The conversion
- 13. Effective Web Page Designs Just a few examples 4rsmokehouse.com eWedding.com Freshbooks.com Mint.com Basecamp.com
- 14. Bad Website Design Just a few examples LingsCars.com SuzanneCollinsBooks.com Arngren.net TexasGulfCoastFishing.com JesseJamesRealEstate.com
- 15. 15 IMAGES, VIDEOS, COLORS It’s how you want people to see you and your brand PHOTOS & IMAGES VIDEOS & AUTOPLAY GRAPHIC DESIGNS LOGOS & COLORS
- 16. Content is the Key to Your Website’s Success High quality content ranks and sells Search engines are smart and they are looking for fresh, new useful and intelligent content to rank Fresh Content Content that has keywords, geolocations, context, links, titles, bullets and other optimization will rank and will sell. Optimized Content Content that is specific to an area or specialty will rank locally and generically if written and optimized correctly. Localized Content Review your analytics to see what content is ranking and converting and expand on it. Content that works can be repurposed. Analyzed Content Content that can be shared on social media has wider reach and will often produce better results and higher conversions. Shareable Content
- 17. US Smartphone Users 2011-2016* 17 Per Statista.com 236.8 Million It is estimated that by 2019 there will be 236.8 million smartphone users in the United States alone. 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016* 92.8 122 144.5 171 190.5 207.2
- 18. 2015 Mobile Statistics Compiled by Mediative.com 18 01 05 03 02 04 72% Of consumers say they want mobile-friendly sites. 67% Of consumers are willing to buy a product or use a service on a mobile-friendly site. 89% Of participants admitted to searching for a local business on their smartphones once a week or more. 30% Of all internet traffic globally is mobile traffic. 73% of mobile searches trigger a follow-up action 70% Of mobile searches result in action being taken within an hour (as opposed to a week on desktop)
- 19. The Mobile Difference Image Holder Image Holder
- 20. Helpful Links for Testing Your Website Make sure all aspects of your web page design are complete Google PageSpeed Insights Google Structured Data Testing Tool Google Mobile Test Pingdom Website Speed Test MobileTest.me
- 21. ADAPTING ONLINE Let’s start a conversation 512.993.9993 AdaptingOnline.com /AdaptingOnline /AdaptingOnline We would love to talk to you Whether it’s today or whenever you have a question, we would love to hear from you. We love talking about all things internet so, so don’t hesitate to call or connect with us via social media. @AdaptingOnline /AdaptingOnline /company/adapting- online-llc +AdaptingOnline
Editor's Notes
- INTRO NAMES We own Adapting Online. We are internet marketing consultants and website designers. A LITTLE BIT ABOUT OURSELVES - Collectively we bring 30+ years of internet marketing experience and we bring all things internet to the table. - We have been working together for 14 of those years. Each specializing in different parts of internet marketing – from the graphics and design and social media to the code and analytics and paid campaigns. - We are Google certified in AdWords. Per Google we are proficient in search advertising, Advanced Adwords and online marketing. - Together we have managed over $15 million dollars in internet spends and have managed small local accounts, large nation wide accounts, as well as Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. - One of our biggest projects was a 3 letter domain name older than Google.com and with thousands of pages.
- The input are these 7 components. So to master the various types of internet marketing you need to know what each of these 7 components are, how they work effectively, independently and together to create a successful online marketing campaign. One way to think of this is that the types of advertising we just discussed are like the face of a clock. They show you the time and give you the information you want to know. Each of these 7 components are like the gears behind the clock. They have to be running together smoothly in order to show you the correct time. We could spend an hour or more on each of these gears, but we will make sure to cover as much as we can REFER TO SLIDE TEXT FOR EACH GEAR First and foremost you have your website: Your website must be secure, fast, fluid, easy to use and navigate and mobile responsive. Then you have your content: Your content is your voice. It speaks to who you are. It has to be optimized, interesting, and consistent Once you have a website and some words you can run paid ads: These ads allow you to jump start your internet marketing, but can and should be used throughout your marketing campaign. Then there is Social Media Again, we could spend a day just on the benefits and pitfalls of using social media. Its importance is growing everyday. Another growing piece are directories and review sites These sites are mission critical for customer support, satisfaction and sales. They are also very useful for getting your website ranked in the search engines. The last piece is Authority This is more of an abstract piece, but it’s what is created when all of your gears start working together. It’s what we all strive for with our internet marketing campaigns. To be the authority in our market. The go to person, the brand that is known across the mediums. So let’s dive into these pieces in more detail. [HAND OFF TO BILL]
- The first and most important step to a successful internet marketing campaign is to have a website. And not just a $1.00 website from GoDaddy or Wix.com, but a well built, reliable, efficient and converting website, built with your customer and sales funnel in mind. WHAT IS A WEBSITE TO YOUR BUSINESS? Your website is who you are. It is often times the first or maybe second thing a prospective customer sees when they are looking for you or your product. It needs to be found in the search engines, it needs to be easy to use and it needs to be secure. Customer experience has emerged as a key priority for many organizations over the last few years. The emphasis on customer experience coincides with rising consumer expectations, which has led brands to focus on customer satisfaction or even delight at every touch point in an attempt to foster loyalty. And your website is often the first experience your customer has with you You only have 1 chance to make a first impression.
- Nearly half (46%) of people say a website’s design is their number one criterion for determining the credibility of a company, 81% of B2B purchase cycles start with web search, and 90% of buyers say when they are ready to buy, “they’ll find you.” There are so many things to think about when it comes to creating a great site. It starts first with a domain name and hosting company.
- If you don’t have a domain name already, it’s not too late. They are releasing new top level domains pretty frequently. - Things to consider when picking or buying a domain name from someone: -SEO Factors *It used to be the trend to try to get an exact match domain such as www.buyacar.com. But since 2010 the SEO advantages of these types of domains have been in decline. These types of domain names are harder to come by these days, and while they are easy to market in offline material they are not as important for SEO rankings. -Generic domain names vs Brand names *Generic and shorter domain names are quite expensive, but easy to market. However if you have a well known brand name it is often advisable to use your brand name so as to not confuse consumers. -Hyphens or no? *Many people are often tempted to add hyphens to their domain name search when they can’t find the name they want. However, back in the day hyphens were used a lot by spam and there is an argument to be made that they can negatively impact your SEO. Also they are hard to market, so in general we would stay away from extra characters when picking a domain name. - Extensions *50% of all domain names have a .com extension, so it is often not a good idea to use the .net because likely your competitor is using the .com and 50% of your marketing efforts could go to them. There are lots of new domain extensions or TLD (.star, .contact, .ford, .lincoln, .storage, .shell, .zero, smile, .author, .firestone, .sharp, .audi, .pet, .forum, .realty, etc, etc etc) One of these many might be a good idea to get a unique domain name, but will require lots of on and offline branding. List of TLDs: http://data.iana.org/TLD/tlds-alpha-by-domain.txt - Domain age & history *Google and Bing use several factors when ranking websites on their search engine results page (SERP), and the actual domain itself is one of those factors. The age of the domain, meaning how long ago the domain was originally registered for use is important. Older websites that have been around for a long time, or crusty domains as they are lovingly referred to as, are worth considering. Search engines sometimes use the age of a domain as an indication of their legitimacy and significance, more importantly they consider the backlinks associated with older domains and that these links bring weight with them. However, steer clear of websites that have been in use for a long time but were used for spamming, gambling or pornography distribution. *Another important thing to investigate before deciding on a domain is the neighborhood the website is in. What does this even mean? This means you need to find out where the website is being hosted or where it lives, before you buy it. If a company known for having spam servers controls the site, your site could be punished for their offenses. This makes buying a domain from a reputable domain registrar very important. Google and Bing know where your site lives and if they think it is living in a bad neighborhood, then they believe it could potentially be used for spamming too, and that is an impossible battle to fight. - Conclusion - Domain seller and previous owner - length - spelling and punctuation - intellectual property rights - branding potential - do you buy the others to keep your competition from doing so? If you have a geographical area you want to target or a primary product, then it makes sense to use those as options in your domain name search. You can go to any number of website hosting companies and search available domains, mixing and matching your keywords, or simply type them in to your favorite search engine. If the vision you set out contains a broad spectrum then it might be a good idea to find a variation of your name or your business name. Make a list of all domain names you can find that are available and then do your research, being mindful of the things to look out for. You can and should purchase more than one domain name. You can always use the other websites later as a supplement to your primary site. For example, if you have a business that covers several different products or services you may want to use www.BusinessName.com as your primary site that contains all of your areas of business and information. Then later you build www.BusinessWidget.com to highlight just your one aspect of your business. Conversely, if you are a just starting out as a small business owner you may be better served with one domain name. Within that one website you highlight all of the various products and services you provide. Standard domain purchases are relatively inexpensive and it is always a good idea to seize an option if it is available.
- Buying – purchasing a pre-registered domain from someone in order to transfer the registration to your name for use. You technically never ‘own’ a domain name. You lease it for use from the original registrar, pay a fee or transfer that lease to someone else. Registering – putting the domain name out for people to get to. Requires registration fee. Hosting – this is where your website files are housed and maintained. Once you register a domain name you can host it anywhere. Chances are when you hire a website development company they will have recommendations for where they want to host the website. This is so that they have easy access to the nuts and bolts of the site. As mentioned before, you want to make sure that it is hosted with a reputable company that is not known for spamming or other types of negative services. It also should be hosted with a company that is secure and reliable. Before agreeing to any web hosting recommendations, ask questions and do your research on the hosting company. Another important factor to consider is the speed of the servers the hosting company uses. This is important because their equipment will affect how fast your website will load when someone visits. Speed and security are used in search engine results and are very important to the overall user experience and success of your site. Things to consider when choosing a hosting company. - Neighborhood – such as knowing whether gambling or adult sites are being hosted next to your site. - Reputation and reliability. - Server speed - Customer support - SSL Ability - CDN for your images and videos
- Now you have a domain name and a hosting company. The next thing to consider is what platform will your website be built on or what back end will it use. The back end is also known as the CMS or content management system, and there are many, many options out there for building websites. You need to know what CMS your site is using for several reasons. One First and foremost, it will affect your search engine rankings. The search engine bots prefer some platforms because they are easier to read and index. The CMS contains all of the SEO options for proper development of a search engine friendly website. The most well known CMS are WordPress, Drupal and Joomla. There are others and you need to know what your website company will be using. Two Secondly, the CMS will affect the speed of your site. Just as with hosting, your website back end will determine how fast your pages load. Many hosting companies advertise that their servers are designed for a specific CMS. Make sure that your website company can explain to you the hosting and CMS relationship and that you are comfortable they work together for optimal page speed. Three Third, you need to make sure that the CMS is maintained and updated regularly. There are many platforms that have come and gone, but are still available for use. If the CMS is not updated regularly then your website has no chance of success. Search engine technology changes frequently, your CMS needs to be up-to-date with those changes.
- Four Fourth, your CMS needs to be easy to optimize. There are small details that have to be done to every aspect and page of your website. Your CMS needs to be able to handle those changes easily and fluidly. A clunky, old CMS that does not have any SEO flexibility will hurt you. Five Fifth, your CMS must be mobile responsive. The importance of this is growing by the day. Your website has to be usable on mobile devices and smart phones or it’s not worth doing, and your CMS must be able to do this. Six Sixth, the back end of your site has to be user friendly. Chances are, you are not a web guru, however you should be able to add or edit the content on your site with ease. Most popular CMS are easy to understand, even for those who have never used them. The same cannot be said for all CMS though. Finally, your CMS will ultimately control the tools and analytic reporting you can get from your site. If you ever want to add a special feature such as click-to call or a chat box your CMS needs to be able to handle that. The analytic reports you use to determine the success of your site are also determined by what your CMS allows. You may not completely understand the in-depth details of your CMS, but your website company should be able to explain them to you clearly. All you need to know is that this is a critically important decision in the development of your online presences. **You need to stay away from drag and drop, template driven, do it all CMS.
- If the back end of your website is important, the front end design and layout is equally important. The design of your website impacts everything from conversion rates to search engine rankings. There are unseen details of your site design that, if not done correctly, can actually tank your rankings or burn your domain name altogether. Some of the more technical aspects of a web page include the proper use of keywords, heading tags, title tags, meta descriptions, menu structure, content placement and image ratio. These are all things that a website development company should implement and be able to explain to you as they lay out your website. While you should not expect to know all of these technicalities you can certainly ask the questions or review the source of your website to take a peak under the hood. If your website has trouble ranking after its completion these are a few of the initial things to take a look at or have a third party review to make sure they are being done correctly. Home Page Design Obviously you start your design with your home page. As this page is created you need to look for some recognizable components above the fold. Above the fold means what can be seen on an average screen size with out scrolling down. A clear and direct call to action, your business name and contact information as well as your navigation menu and links to the most important information should always be towards the top of your home page. This is also where you use your logo, slogan and image to enhance your branding. Carrying a consistent, professional brand from your letterhead to your website is essential to a complete marketing effort. CLEAR Call To Action – tell them what you want them to do or where you want them to go The call to action is often over looked or underestimated on a web page. A call to action is not just posting your phone number. You need to tell the visitor what to do: “Call for a Free Consultation” or “Call Now to See How We Can Help.” You also need to make sure that your phone number is clickable from a mobile device and that all of your address information is formatted correctly for the search engines. This formatting tells the search engines what the content on your page means and helps it relate to local search results. You need to verify this microdata with your website designer because search engines use this correctly formatted information to read your site and render the most relevant information to the searcher. This is part of the minutiae of website design, but if it is done correctly it can have great influence on your success Other tools for completing the conversion or making the sell Call Tracking Numbers There are many add-on tools and services you can use on the front end of your website to make tracking and converting visitors easier. You can have a call tracking phone number. This is a telephone number that logs a phone call each time it is dialed and this call can be directly linked to your website traffic data. For example, you run a specific holiday ad that lands on a specific page of your site. Your website traffic data can be combined with call traffic data to determine how many visitors your ad drove to the page versus how many of those visitors actually called. Now the caveat here is if you have a very easy to remember vanity or straight number you probably do not want to use a different call tracking number. However, it is something to keep in mind if you are trying to determine ad effectiveness. Call tracking numbers are sometimes an additional expense at your request and sometimes they are included with your site design Form Mailer The form mailer or contact form is a common part of most small business websites. This is a form where the visitor can fill in their contact information to receive a call back. Some people are not searching for small business owners during your business hours or are not able to make a phone call at that time, so it is very helpful to give them a method for contacting you. Your form mailer cannot be too long or too intrusive. It should only request basic information, i.e. name, phone number, email, best time to contact and a brief description of the issue. Asking for too much information will often times dissuade someone from filling it out. Some business owners use the form mailer as method of culling out prospects, but information in a contact form can be misinterpreted. It is recommended that the form mailer be the secondary call to action behind the phone call Click-to-Call & Chat Boxes Another method of contact available is the Click-to-Call. This is a fancy way of making the visitor’s computer initiate the call to your office. This feature sounds advanced and cool, but there are things to consider. It usually comes with a monthly fee paid to a third party service. There are some on screen directions that have to be followed by the user and sometimes there is awkward silence that makes the visitor hang up. This requires training your office staff and answering service on how to handle these incoming calls and depending on how tech-savvy your target market is, this may or may not be the best method of contact to make the conversion. Another growing trend is the chat boxes commonly seen on websites. These are only effective if someone is on the other end to respond. Like the other services, there is usually an additional cost for this service. Large banks of responders answer some of these chats, other services allow your office to respond to them directly, and some are a combination of the two. You need to carefully assess who responds, what they say and how the chats are handled before deciding on this service. As with all add-on tools to a website you need to discuss with your web development company how much they cost, how they will behave on mobile devices and if they will impact your overall site performance. Offers and Newsletter Signups One of the basic objectives of web page design is to make contact with the visitor. Usually this means getting them to call you or fill out a form mailer. However, there are other means of positive contact. Persuading a visitor to give you their contact information for later use is also considered a success. Getting a visitor’s contact information the right way allows you to advertise directly to them whenever you want. The most effective way to do this is to offer them something. A successful website offering essentially builds a qualified prospect list for you. Some small business owners often times wonder what they can offer if they do not sell a product. The most common offer is a newsletter subscription. This offer requires consistent effort on your part to ensure that your newsletter comes out in a timely matter as specified in the offer. If you can make this commitment this is an excellent offer because it allows you to spread your brand on a regular basis. Newsletters are good for certain types of businesses where the services may not be immediate, but the prospect relationship needs to be nurtured until the need arises. Some business owners offer books or eBooks. Writing and offering a book sets you apart as the authority in your business area. There are other ways to get your message and brand across through an offer. You can offer webinars, an online video library or a subscription to your blog. If you are considering adding an offer to your page you need to determine how much time you have to maintain the type of offer you make. Offers need to be current and fresh in order to be rewarding. Remember, the primary reason for the offer is to create a qualified prospect list, the secondary objective is to make your brand the authority and get your message out there.
- Each page of a website has a purpose, if it does not have a clear purpose, give it one. Once you have decided on the purpose consider elements that can be used to make that purpose clear and tell your visitor what you want them to do or what you expect them to learn from their page visit. A website full of text can be overwhelming. Chances are the visitor will abandon the page without ever digging deeper into it. This is where images and videos play an integral part in the stickiness of your site. Images and videos are used to break up the monotony of a page full of words. They are used to draw the visitor’s eyes to where you want them to go and to keep them moving deeper into your site. Images and videos should be used strategically and properly to ensure they help and not hurt your web page. There are a few keys to properly using videos and images. First, DO NOT have your video automatically play when your site loads. Chances are your prospective customer is researching their options at work and having a video shout out the fact that they are doing so is a sure-fire way to get them off of your site in a hurry, never to return. Make your videos have a noticeable play button with a brief description that gives them an opportunity to turn their speakers down before outing them at the office. Each of your videos and images needs to be optimized on the back end so that they show up in the Images search and Videos search of the search engines. Videos that are properly tagged with metadata and descriptions often have the ability to show up in the organic search results as a page of their own, giving you an additional opportunity to entice the visitor. Consider using a video hosting company instead of running the videos directly from your website. There are many video hosting companies you can use to reduce the overhead on your own website. You do not want a great video to slow down your page load speed, so using a third party hosting company is a good idea if you have several videos, or if your video is long. Videos and images not only add visual aesthetics to your page, but they can increase the amount of time spent on your site and the number of opportunities for your site to get ranked in the search engines. Vimeo, DailyMotion, YouTube, Twitch, LiveLeak Graphic Design Elements Abstract images and shapes can define spaces or draw attention on a webpage. Don’t over clutter the page or add too many things to look at. Consider exactly what the purpose of the page is and make that clear to the visitor. Logos & Colors Majority of small businesses use nonrepresentational, unrecognizable symbols. While these images are perfectly acceptable, using such abstract images contradicts the idea of setting your business apart. A better idea would be to find a unique logo that represents your business. Perhaps using your initials or other distinctive characteristics of your name to design a logo specific to you. You need to make sure that you chose a font and color that are easy to read on mobile devices and desktop computers. Make sure that your website colors, fonts and logos are consistent across your on and offline marketing
- The single most difficult part of creating a website can be developing content. It used to be that you could throw some words on a page and it would rank in the search engines. This is not so any longer. Search engines are smart and they are looking for fresh, authoritative, and intelligent content. Repeating the same words and phrases over on different pages or directly copying content from another site are quick ways to get your website penalized. This is called duplicate content and it is one of the most common penalties you can get. As your site is created, your website company will either write the initial content for you, or they will ask you to write it. If they write it for you, it is imperative that you make sure it is unique and that it accurately describes your business. Be on the look out for descriptive words that you may not be allowed to use in your copy, such as expert or specialized. These are common words used by copywriters, but some advertising rules in certain professions do not allow them. You are the one who will get penalized in the search engines, or worse you could get in trouble with your governing body. As a side note, some web companies state in their contract that any content they write for you belongs to them. Therefore if you terminate your relationship you lose the right to that content. This is something to be concerned about because if they do write good, ranking content and you decide to leave them because of poor customer service or some other reason, that content can easily be given to your competition. These terms usually have a large buyout amount that you need to be aware of before agreeing to them. If your web company asks you to submit content you may think finding it seems like a challenge, but it doesn’t have to be. You know your business, you know your brand and you know what you do, use this information to write informative and creative content for your primary pages. The basic pages of your website need to be descriptive and current. You can use your affiliations, education and experience as excellent unique information. As for your blog, you are a business owner; you know your business – write about it with authority. Whether it is recent events, changes in the law or interesting statistics of your industry – write about it. As a small business owner you have access to information others may not, so there should never be a shortage of topics to discuss. Current news events involving your industry are also great topics for content. As for writing content there are some basic writing principals to follow. First, create headings or titles that ask questions and use important words that you would want your page or blog article to rank for. Make sure that if you have a keyword in mind, you use that keyword in your title and content, preferably towards the beginning. Also, keep the content short and easy to read. This doesn’t mean dumb it down, just don’t write a term paper. State an opinion and back it up. When you write you need to make yourself and your business the authority on that topic. Proof read and grammar check your content. Believe it or not the search engines will do the same, and poorly written content will be penalized. Add links to your sources and find images that represent your topic to add ‘beef’ to your pages. The primary goal of good content should be to get it to rank in the search engines, but it has other purposes as well. Quality content can help your cost if you are buying ads on Google or Bing. It can help promote your offers and drive prospect conversions. Authoritative content may get picked up and referenced by other sources, resulting in good inbound links. Often times news outlets will contact small business owners with respected information to speak on select topics. If possible, get your content onto other authoritative domains. The links from good websites will help with the overall performance of your site. Your content is your online voice and should speak to who you are. When writing your content, remember the overall brand and image you envision for your business. Your content should relate to and promote that vision. Optimizing your content will help with every aspect of your online presence. There are various ways to make sure your content is working for you. Your content needs to be localized. Write about current events in your area and make sure to reference the geographical locations. This will help with your local search results. Use semantic search principals to help ensure your pages show up for all relevant searches. Semantic search is essentially a shift in the search engine algorithm to understand the intent of the searcher, to show them more relevant results. This is a relatively new concept, but it takes the emphasis off of keyword content and places it on authority and relational content. Think of your content as a relationship graph with the search term at the center and all other related terms spreading out from there. Those tangential keywords are the semantic terms that you could use in your content to help it show up for a broader spectrum of potential searchers. This means that not only are keywords important, but words related to the keywords are just as important. You should also ask and answer questions in your content. This helps with more natural language searches that are becoming more prevalent with search engine users. Once the content is written there are the back end tools for optimization that your web company should use, such as tagging, microdata and schema mark up, as well as header and hyperlink structure. All of these things are interconnecting pieces to help make your content stand out among the rest and are important to the success of your website. Content and Link Building for Small Business SEO One of the staples of great SEO is link building. Getting quality inbound links from other authoritative websites needs to be priority if you want to get the most out of your site. The key words here are ‘quality’ and ‘authoritative’. Link building does not mean buying links from link farms, nor does it mean to have unrelated links from unrelated sites, just to say that you have inbound links. There are two basic components of a good link, first is the structure of the link. This means that link has good anchor text and it is pointing to the correct page. The second, and more difficult component, is identifying what other sites or types of sites are considered related and authoritative. Good inbound links that come from popular and important websites matter, as well as links from websites that are local to your area and are related to your business. More recently, links shared socially are becoming more significant. If you recall, earlier we mentioned that quality content often gets referenced by other websites. Assuming those other websites are legitimate information sources, these are good websites to get inbound links. If you are able to guest blog on other industry sites, make sure that you get a link to your website. If you are referenced by a news source or other informative website, those are good inbound links. It is also important that your links stay fresh. Simply because you garnered some good links early on, their strength declines over time. Conversely, do not fall into the trap of buying links or using spam links. The search engines are smart enough to know you are linking to and from spam sites and they use this to determine how trustworthy your site is and you will be penalized. Be wary of people wanting swap links with you. This is very rarely a good idea. There are additional inbound links that you can control yourself. As a business owner there are several places your name or business name are listed without even trying. Make sure that you review your information on websites such as these and add your website on as many as possible. Most small business owners are members of several local organizations and each of those have a member list, make sure your website is listed on those as well There are also the links within your website and your content to help guide readers and search engines through your site. In conjunction with inbound links your profiles on these other websites offer citations for your business. Citations are mentions of your business on other authority or directory webpages, such as your local chamber of commerce or YP.com. These mentions and/or links are a critical component of both Bing and Google’s search ranking algorithms. These citations help the search engines verify your existence and offer a ‘proof of life’ to the search engines that you are a real business. Citations and links from websites like SuperPages.com, Switchboard.com and Kudzu.com will make the difference in your website’s success in the local search results.
- The statistics around mobile search are proof positive that a mobile responsive website is almost, if not just as important as great content.
- In May of 2015 Google officially stated that “more Google searches take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries including the US and Japan. There are more and more stats to back up the importance of a mobile responsive website.
- When designing your mobile site you need to consider reorganizing or hiding certain elements that may be visible on your desktop version. Break up long bodies of content with call to actions Make sure your videos are in a format that plays on all smartphones Make sure the font is large enough to read and the pages adjust for both portrait and landscape, phone and tablet. Make sure to test your website on various different devices for page load speed, readability and navigation. Website that is mobile responsive vs App vs mobile responsive version
- Here are some good links to keep to test your website along with your Google Webmaster Tools account and analytics.