6 Steps for the Best Small Business Web Design

Small Business Web Design

Is your small business online? You may already be aware of the importance of social media for your business, but is your website optimized for maximum lead conversion? And do you know the best small business web design and user experience (UX) strategies to make your site beautiful and user-friendly?

In 2022, design is king for your website. In fact, a survey found that 50% of consumers believe that website design is important to a company’s brand. But user interface (UI) or UX is also incredibly important. UX/UI involves how users interact with your website, and how easy or difficult it is to navigate. In the same survey referenced above, 42% of users reported that they would leave a website because of poor functionality.

So, for the best possible client experience, you want your small business website to be responsive, elegant, and easy to navigate. But how do you go about this? Where do you start with small business web design?

Designing a small business website is a time-intensive endeavor, and there are many factors that affect web design or UX choices. However, there are some general rules of thumb to keep in mind. Keep reading for our top small business web design strategies to improve your small business website.

Step One: Set Up Your Site

You may already have a website for your small business, but if you don’t, you’ll need to start from the ground up. First, choose a Content Management System, or CMS, to develop your site. There are many CMS on the market to choose from, but the easiest are platforms that have a simple front-end design experience. Font-end design experiences, included in CMS like WordPress and Squarespace, allow you to visually design your website without needing extensive coding knowledge.

After you’ve chosen your CMS, you will need to choose a host and domain for your site. A web host is where your website files are stored, and many hosting platforms will cater to a particular CMS. For example, Bluehost markets itself as a WordPress hosting site. WordPress itself also offers hosting services with WP engine.

A domain is the web address that a user types in to find your website. Domain names should be simple, short, and relate to your business. If possible, use a keyword in your domain name that would be searched to find your business. For example, if your name is Hannah and you own a shoe store, you could register the domain “hannahshoes.com”. Robert with a consulting firm could register a domain like “robertsconsulting.com”.

Step Two: Choose Your Site’s Purpose

Next, you need to know the purpose of your small business website. Will you be selling products online? Or is your site geared toward generating leads for a service you provide? Do you own a restaurant and your patrons are looking for your menu? Or are you a content creator, and you want to display your work for future clients? The purpose of your website will largely determine the layout and types of pages, as well as the overall branding and design. We’ll go more into detail in the section about pages.

Step Three: Decide on Design and Layout

Now that you have your CMS, domain, hosting, and the purpose of your small business website, it’s time to start designing. You can design your website using a template or create your own from scratch. Either way, first you will need to choose the overall look and feel of your website. What colors and typefaces are you using? Are you using images as design elements, or sticking to a more text-based design? Whatever you choose, keep it simple and stick to a defined color palette, typeface, and header style on every page. The more consistent your design, the more visually appealing your site is to your visitors.

Next, choose a layout for your information. How is your content organized? Most users will expect these common elements, so make sure you include them in your layout:

  • A header with a navigation bar.
  • Your logo or business name.
  • Contact information that is easily accessible.
  • Footer navigation.
  • Social media links.

Many websites now have a one-page, scrolling design, where the tabbed pages in your navigation bar transition from one to the next simply by scrolling. This layout is popular due to the increased prevalence of mobile internet traffic, where scrolling rather than clicking is the preferred method of consuming content. Choose the design that’s best for your small business website and your customer experience.

Step Four: Choose Your Pages and Create Content

With a design and layout in mind, it’s time to create your pages and fill them with content. Depending on the kind of small business you’re operating, you will want to emphasize different pages further up in your hierarchy. Restaurants will want their menu page front and center, while companies that provide services will need to list and describe those services first. Your pages will vary, but make sure you at very least include the following:

  • About Page
  • Services Page or Pages
  • Contact Page
  • Privacy Policy Page (A Legal Requirement)
  • Terms and Conditions Page (Also Required)

Next, you’ll need to fill your pages with content. Make sure to have enough information on each page, but not too much to prevent visual clutter. Present information in an easy-to-read format, such as lists or bullet points, with clearly defined headers so visitors can find what they’re looking for more easily. Most web users skim read to find what they want to know, so utilizing headers is a great way to make sure your important content isn’t lost in excess fluff.

Step Five: Optimize for SEO

Once you create your content and organize your site layout, you will need to optimize your small business website for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Ensure that your small business website follows SEO best practices, including organic use of keywords, appropriate alt text for images, and updating meta descriptions within your search engine optimization tools. These SEO strategies will ensure your site ranks positively within search engines, increasing the chances of your target audience finding your website. You can check out this guide for some SEO best practices you can use to increase your small business website’s search engine rank.

Step Six: Optimize for Mobile Devices

To build off of the last point, SEO and mobile optimization go hand in hand, as Google has recently switched to mobile-first indexing. Users also respond more positively to sites that are optimized for mobile. So, making sure your website is fully optimized for all devices is key to gaining and retaining lead conversions.

Approximately 55% of all web traffic comes from mobile devices, and 93% of users surveyed report that they would leave a website if it wasn’t optimized for their device. Utilize the responsive design settings in your CMS to design for desktop, tablet, and mobile devices, so your small business website works smoothly and looks sleek across all devices. Images and text elements should be resized to fit the screen, and navigation menus should be compressed into a hamburger menu, so the navigation is mobile-friendly.

Get a Killer Small Business Web Design from Killerspots

Are you not sure where to start designing your small business website? Killerspots’ web design team creates beautiful, responsive websites for our clients, no matter what industry they’re in. Learn more about our web design services and get in touch with us to get started today.

10 Tips on Creating an SEO Strategy for Small Businesses

creating an SEO strategy

In 2021, when creating an SEO strategy, businesses shouldn’t focus only on targeting certain keywords. SEO and content creation are about more than targeting keywords.

As algorithms mature, it’s important that content does as well. So, how can business owners take advantage of changing search engines? How can they be sure they’re doing it properly?

Read on for 10 of the best tips for creating an SEO strategy for small businesses.

1. Identify a Target Audience

The first thing any business should zone in on is its target audience. Creating a target persona is crucial because it’s who the content is going to be geared towards. If a product or brand is meant for 18 to 24-year-old females, but the brand’s content is geared towards men in their 30s, that’s not going to get anybody very far.

When creating a target audience or persona, it’s important to be as specific as possible. Here are a few base questions to answer:

  • How old is the target audience?
  • What do they look like?
  • What are their interests? Hobbies?
  • Are they in college? 
  • Do they work full-time?
  • Do they have kids?
  • Are they pet owners?
  • Are they homeowners?
  • What is their annual income?
  • Where do they live?

While there are other ways to begin identifying your target audience, these questions provide a great place to start. Knowing their income, age, and whether or not they rent or own a home is important for knowing what kind of content they’d be interested in.

Nailing down a few other basics is also a great way to begin identifying topics to base content from, and provides a great basis to begin keyword research with.

2. Identify Easily Ranking Keywords

While knowing the popular keywords a business can rank for is great, that’s also a great way to ensure they don’t ever end up on the first page of any search engine. Identifying keywords that fit within those popular keywords, however, is a win.

So, while “dog treats” might not be an easy keyword to rank for, “dog treats near me” might be. It’s also great to get into specifics when conducting keyword research as well.

If a business sells gluten-free, grain-free, or even organic dog treats, those are also potential keywords they could rank for. Exploring pages like Google Trends is a great place to get started.

3. Determine Goals

The next step is for the business to determine its goals. Is national or global SEO the goal here? Or is targeting local SEO going to be better in the long run?

While that answer might depend upon each business’s industry (a locally-owned grocery store in New York might not want to target an audience in LA), it’s still worth taking into consideration for an effective digital marketing strategy.

Wanting to boost search rankings is an obvious one here, but there are other things to take into consideration as well, like understanding how SEO can affect a business’s sales and overall revenue. If things are done well, then sales are going to go up. 

If things are done poorly, then it’s almost guaranteed that nothing is going to go up. In fact, things can actually go south if special care isn’t taken to create high-quality content that draws people in.

If businesses find themselves struggling to create a list of goals, then it’s best to keep it simple: create good content that has something to offer the reader, promote the brand, and keep audience members coming back for more.

Often, repeat customers are valuable than new ones.

4. Conduct Market Research

Once a business has determined its target audience and goals, it’s time to research similar businesses in the marketplace. Market research can be as simple as looking at the first page of Google to determine what the competition may hold.

Identifying how competitors work and what they do well is a great place to begin building a marketing strategy. While business owners don’t simply want to blend in with their niche, they do want to make sure they’re following marketing trends.

Researching competition can help businesses identify not only what they would like to replicate in their own way, but also what they can do differently, and even improve upon.

After gathering that information, it’s time to move into identifying what their target audience’s pain points might be.

5. Identify Pain Points

From there, business owners can begin to look at their target audience’s pain points. No business can fill all the gaps, and there are bound to be places that competitors are lacking.

These pain points are often pointed out by customers in reviews — especially the bad ones.

By going through content, website designs, customer reviews, and even conducting potential customer interviews, a solid content strategy can be built. This content strategy should incorporate not only what others do well, but also make up for what they don’t do well.

6. Fix the Problem

After that, it’s up to business owners to address their customers’ pain points and work to fix them.

This may take some trial and error, but it’s not too complicated to address. Start with creating content that addresses your initial goals and fills any gaps you believe are in the market. From there, interact with your customers and followers on social media.

Ask for their opinions and whether or not they would change anything you’re currently doing. It’s surprising how direct people can be when they’re asked for their opinion on a subject. Being open to honest feedback is also going to make the entire process easier.

7. Create Quality Content

The key here is to create content that not only targets specific keywords but also presents value to your target audience.

This means answering specific questions, providing insight into specific situations, and even educating them on things they could do better. Creating numbered lists is always attention-grabbing, but so are how-to articles.

A big thing to not do is keyword stuff. It isn’t going to help any site’s rankings. In fact, it’s simply going to hinder rankings and made readers want to click off content.

Search engine algorithms actually have ways of spotting keyword-stuffed articles, and it usually results in lowering a website’s overall ranking, or just removing it from the search engine altogether.

People — and bots — appreciate authenticity. Keep things simple and real!

8. Use Keywords in Page URLs

Now that you’ve worked so hard to create quality content, it shouldn’t go to waste with awkward, long webpage URLs. These too can be optimized for SEO, and definitely should be.

In fact, this is where keyword research comes in the handiest. 

Having simple, easy-to-comprehend page URLs is not only going to make content more clickable, but it’s also going to increase a brand’s overall search engine rankings.

9. Improve User Experience

Besides content, user experience (UX) is the best way to boost a business’s SEO rankings.

In recent years, Google has evolved its algorithm to begin placing websites with great UX at the top of its rankings. Though content is still important and plays a larger role, placing emphasis on UX is a great move for any SEO strategy.

Creating an intuitive website that’s easy to navigate is not only to drive to SEO rankings, but it also has the potential to boost conversion rates.

10. Hire an Expert

While SEO is a fairly common sense affair, hiring an expert is a great way to make sure it gets done right. Instead of spending hours conducting research and implementing SEO into a business website, business owners can set aside a portion of their budget to allow an expert to get it done for them.

This is an especially great idea if a business’s website already exists. Having someone go through and optimize SEO instead of doing it alone can save business owners a lot of time and money in the long run. (Their focus can be placed elsewhere!)

Remember These Tips For Creating an SEO Strategy

When creating an SEO strategy, putting any of these tips to use can make a website flourish. Not only is taking SEO into consideration from the beginning an important step to take, but it’s also the most crucial.

Having an excellent SEO strategy is going to boost a company’s search engine ranking. This can take any website from simply existing to the internet to thriving in the e-commerce world.

If you don’t know where to begin, contacting the award-winning specialists at Killer Spots is a great place to start.

Contact them today to begin your journey.

A Guide to Proper SEO Management

SEO management

How often have you visited a website that you found on the second page of Google’s search results? More to the point, how often have you clicked on a page that didn’t even make the top five results? The answer to both these questions is that you probably rarely do. That’s because 32.5% of all Google users just visit the first page offered. Why? Because Google is good at getting it right when it comes to giving their users what they’re looking for. This is where proper SEO management comes in.

To get your website to appear at the top of the search results, you need to use search engine optimization (SEO) to drive users your way.

In this article, we’ll discuss SEO task management and how it can get your site up there in the top spot in the rankings.

What Is SEO Management?

When Google and other search engines such as Bing come to rank your website against other sites, there is a lot that they need to look at. With over 1.7 billion websites out there on the world wide web, working out the order to display them for any given search is no mean feat.

The likes of Google use powerful algorithms that use a number of factors to decide on the order that they are presented. This is where SEO comes in.

SEO is the practice of making your website and content search engine friendly. SEO takes these ranking factors and ensures that your website is performing its best in these areas.

There are several key areas involved in SEO. These include:

  • On-page SEO – This relates directly to the content on your site
  • Off-page SEO – This relates to the measures you take outside of your site to drive traffic
  • Local SEO – These are practices used for driving business websites within your local area
  • Technical SEO – These are the technical aspects of your website and how they can be tweaked to improve your ranking

Let’s take a look at each of these areas in more depth.

On-Page SEO – Content is Everything

The number one reason that people visit your site is because of what is displayed there. Whether your site is there to inform your visitors, or whether you’ve got a product to sell, content is everything.

The effort that you put into creating great content will ultimately lead you to get more visitors. Search engines understand that they need to send their users to the best content possible, so they look for certain factors within the content.

Use Keywords Naturally

Relevance is essential. This is why you need to use relevant keywords within your content. These should be naturally placed and not stuffed. If your content is too keyword heavy, it can make it difficult for visitors to read.

Google knows this, and if you’re stuffing keywords in, then you are very likely to get penalized in the rankings.

Don’t be tempted to try and create your content in a way that the search engines alone will be able to read it. Forcing extra keywords will ultimately cost you in terms of visitors.

Write Longer Informative Content

When Google sends someone to a website, it believes that that site will provide the most relevant information on the specific search topic. This can often mean that users get sent to a site that has lots of content.

Longer articles are able to cover more ground, and if you can create posts on your site that exceed 1,000 words, this will help drive traffic.

What is Off-Page SEO?

Off-page SEO refers to the work that you carry out to drive traffic to your website through external means. This includes link building.

Build Backlinks

You should include internal backlinks in your content. This means that your content should link back to other relevant areas of your website.

Make sure that the links that you use a high-quality. They need to add value and make it easy for your visitors to navigate around your site.

In addition to these internal links, you should also include external links to websites with content that will complement the content you have created. Again, make sure the links are relevant, high-quality, and add value.

When you create content for your site, you’ll want other sites to link back to you. This will tell Google that you’re an authority on the subject. Ideally, these links will come from reputable websites.

Build a relationship with bloggers and influencers. are many sites that will either feature your website or will allow you to create a guest post in which you can include quality backlinks to your site.

Write Meta Descriptions

A meta description is information about your content that shows in the search engine results. Every page should have its own meta description as this will enhance the user experience and let them know that their clicking on the right link for their search query.

Because this is the first thing that many people will see, it needs to be well-written.

Encourage Social Sharing

Although there is no proven link between search rankings and sharing on social media, you should make sure you’re leveraging social sharing on your website.

Sharing all of your content across a range of social media will help to build the reputation of your site and drive traffic.

Include some social sharing buttons on your site and do what you can to get your visitors to share your content.

What is Technical SEO?

It may sound daunting to refer to something as technical SEO, but it shouldn’t be anything to be scared of. Many of the improvements that you can make are quite simple.

Speed Up Your Website

Google understands that when people make searches, that they want their results quickly. For this reason, they always ensure their search results are returned almost instantly. Not bad considering how many sites they’re ranking.

Google also knows that users want to head to a site that works, and that is fast. For this reason, Google will favor sites that load quickly. If your website takes longer than three seconds to load, then you’re at risk of losing your visitors to another site.

For this reason, page load speed is an essential element of SEO and something you need to give serious consideration to.

Use Google’s Page Speed Insights to give you an idea of the speed of your site. By carrying out a full scan on your site, you’ll be able to see where you need to make improvements.

Once you’ve run a speed test, make the necessary changes to your website to help speed it up. This may mean using lazy-load plugins, deleting unused plugins, and compressing images on the site.

Manage Your Local SEO

If you have a business and are reliant on local trade, then you need to optimize your site for local SEO. Local SEO is a surefire way to get your website ranking above everything else on the search engine results page.

Sign up to Google My Business. This free listing service will allow you to claim your business listing and take control of it. From there, you’ll be able to get yourself on the map,

To get the most out of this service, be sure and fill in all of the details. Include photos of your business, your products, and your employees. The more you can include, the better.

Make sure that your name, address, and phone number match across all of your listings and that they match your website. Discrepancies in important information could go against you, and you may end up being penalized in the rankings.

Keeping Up-To-Date With SEO

SEO is an ever-changing field. With changes in technology and shifts in search habits, there will always be tweaks to the way that Google’s algorithms work.

For example, voice search is on the rise. This means that websites should be optimizing their content for smart speakers and artificial intelligence searches.

Keep yourself up-to-date with the shifting trends and make sure that you follow the latest guidelines to optimize your site.

Hire a Professional SEO Management Company

Managing the SEO management of your website is a full-time job. You’ll need to continually tweak and optimize your content to make sure that you’re continually competitive in the search results.

Hiring a professional SEO management company to take care of your SEO needs will mean that your site will always perform to the best of its ability.

Killer Spots provide SEO services that will save you the hard work. Let us take care of your managed SEO needs.

Get in touch today to find out how we can help you improve your search engine ranking.

Landing Page SEO Checklist: 9 Things You Can’t Forget

landing page seo

So, you’re looking to make some improvements to your business website’s SEO strategy. More specifically, you want to make sure your landing page is SEO optimized.

The basic concepts behind SEO don’t change much, regardless of what page on your site you’re working on. With that being said, there are a few things to keep in mind when dealing with landing page SEO that differs from other pages on your site. 

But how do you make SEO improvements to your website’s landing page? And what are some things you can do today to make your landing page more SEO-friendly? If you’re asking yourself these kinds of questions, wonder no longer, because we’re here to help!

In this article, we’ll give you 9 SEO tips and tricks that you can use to help you make your landing page rank higher on search engines. Now then, let’s get started!

1. Simplify Your Navigation

One of the best ways to make sure your landing page is SEO-friendly is to keep your site’s navigation simple and easy to use. The last thing you want to do is to make it hard for users to find whatever it is they’re looking for on your site.

A good rule of thumb is if it takes more than three clicks to find something on your website, it’s too complex.

2. Check Your Page Speed

One of the biggest things that search engines are looking for is websites with short loading times.

Remember, the last thing a site like Google wants to do is recommend a user to a site that takes forever to load. It makes them look bad and can lead to them losing users, which isn’t what they want. So make sure your site loads fast without any delays.

Not sure if your site is fast enough?

Google offers a neat speed checker tool that is easy to use and will tell you if your site is up to par. And if you get a bad grade, don’t worry. Google will even give you a few tips on how you can speed up your site!

3. Go with a Single Column Layout

Remember, poor user experience is going to lead to users closing your site and going to another fast. And if that happens too often, Google will flag your site, which means you can’t rank as high for your desired keywords.

Next to website speed, layout issues are the next most common reason as to why folks close out of a site after a few seconds. So keep it simple, and go with a single-column layout so users can find what they’re looking for in seconds.

4. Make Sure You’re Mobile-Friendly

Did you know that over 50% of all web traffic in 2018 came from mobile devices? That’s a stat that is expected to rise over the next five years as people continue to use mobile devices more. Because of this, search engines will no longer rank sites that aren’t mobile-friendly.

Not sure if you’re site’s mobile-friendly? Use Google’s mobile-friendliness checker to see if you check that important box!

5. Don’t Go Overboard with Media

One of the quickest ways to slow your site down is to overload it with media like pictures and videos. And again, if your site doesn’t load fast, search engines aren’t going to rank it near the top search results.

So keep it simple and use media when necessary, like to break up large walls of text. Make sure that all images and videos you use are cropped and compressed for optimal loading speeds.

6. Use Whitespace Design

Legibility is a huge part of having an SEO-friendly website. One of the best ways to keep all of the content on your website easy to read is to use whitespace design.

Whitespace design is less about color choice and more about making sure there’s plenty of negative space between page elements. This helps the content flow well and is easy on your user’s eyes, which is what you want. 

7. Format Your Text Properly

Another way to make your site more legible and easy to read is to format bodies of text properly.

A few tips on how to do this? Use paragraphs, break up your text with media and don’t write too much, especially on your landing page. It may also help to emphasize important information with a large, bold print.

8. Use Legible Fonts

When it comes to legibility, the last tip worth remembering revolves around fonts. While it may be tempting to try and be different from everybody else with your fonts, it’s important to pick fonts that are easy to read.

This will help keep users around for longer, which is again, something search engines care about. So whether it’s various headings or your base content, pick fonts that are easy to read.

9. Use Your Keywords the Right Way

When it comes to SEO on your site’s landing page, keywords play a huge part in helping you reach your goals. By placing your keywords in the right spots, you can boost your rankings for those keywords.

So where do you need to put your keywords? In the content on your landing page, in alt tags for your images, and in your website’s description. That way search engines can identify your site and that landing page with those right keywords.

Keyword stuffing is bad, however, and should be avoided. Only use the same keyword a few times, and try to make things sound natural. Search engines are smart and will flag you for keyword stuffing.

Landing Page SEO Strategies and Techniques

There you have it—a few landing page SEO strategies and techniques that you should keep in mind for your business website!

As you can see, user experience is a huge emphasis. So try to put yourself in your user’s shoes and make decisions that you think will improve their experience on your site.

A good place to start is to make sure your site’s navigation is simple and easy to use and confirm that your site is both fast and mobile-friendly.

Use a single-column layout, white space design, and legible fonts. Also, format your text well and break things up with media, but don’t go overboard with the media, either.

Looking for more website design tips and tricks? Check out our blog!

Radio vs Digital Marketing

Pros and cons of Radio and Digital Marketing

What is the most effective form of marketing for your company? Digital marketing vs Radio marketing? Well that’s really a question only you can answer, but here I will break down some pros and cons of each medium to make that decision easier.

Radio vs Digital Marketing

Pros:

Radio:
  • A proof advertising on radio is that you can target a specific audience with your ad. Radio stations often have a specific demographic that it caters to. If your target demographic matches the one a radio station serves to, then you can easily reach by purchasing ad spots on the station.
  • With the right timing, radio advertising can be relatively cheap. If you know the demographics your targeting and what station cater to it, advertising during off times can be cheap and effective.
  • A radio ad is more personal than an internet banner ad. With radio, you can tell stories, personally talk to the listener, which makes you more memorable and favorably received.
  • Advertisements can be easily made. Radio ads can be as simple as a 30-second copy you pay the radio station to read for you. The more produced your ad is, the better returns you’ll find, but simple is still effective.
  • Since radio ads are relatively easy to produce, the turnover time on ads can be quick. Going from idea to finished ad on air can be a short process if it’s not overly complicated of an ad.
Digital:
  • Digital marketing can reach a massive audience. The internet is a global infrastructure, and buying ad space on the web can reach a global audience.
  • When you advertise online, you have faster response rates to your service. When someone sees an ad that his helpful to them, they’ll often go immediately to that website. If you answer their problem, then you’ll have their business rather quickly.
  • Helps you expand your customer service. If you advertise or have a presence through social media then you can interact with customers at a near-instantaneous rate. Answer a customer concern, posting an update on your page, or responding to a comment builds a relationship with customers and brings you into a favorable light in their minds. Relationships mean repeat business and brand loyalty which can drive future sales.
  • Online marketing is fast. It doesn’t always have to be a banner ad or a side ad designed professionally. Sometimes just posting a promotion on your social media is enough to get people talking about your company. Just Chipotle tweeting something like “free burritos today” or something of that sort, will see interactions with their brand rise exponentially for that day

 

Cons:

Radio:
  • Radio spots during peak hours can be expensive because stations know they reach the most people. There is a reason for the price, as these spots are the most effective ones and where you’ll see the most return on your money, but they’re expensive nonetheless.
  • Not every product will thrive on the radio. Certain products and services either can’t be sold on audio alone. Services that answer problems listeners might be facing on their drive home from work do the best with radio advertising. This is especially true for places like restaurants that answer the question “What’s for dinner?” Keep in mind that when you decide to advertise on radio
  • Some radio listeners block out the radio or change the channel when ads come on. This is hardly surprising, people use the radio as background noise, or only want to listen to music, no matter the music. When the ads come on they’re either not listening or they change the channel and don’t even hear your ad. Repetition is one way to fight this, and is essential for any successful radio campaign, read this post to learn more about it!
Digital:
  • Digital marketing is going to take up a lot of your time to keep up with it. Staying on top of all the comments and questions, and making sure your social media is up to date and engaging with your customer base can be a time drain. It may not be expensive to start a digital campaign, but it can sure take up your time during the day.
  • You lose some control. When you advertise on digital platforms, and especially on social media platforms, you’re at the mercy of those platforms. Algorithms can bury your ad if it doesn’t create enough interaction (or if you didn’t pay enough) which creates a negative feedback loop, just pushing it down. If a site or platform goes down for whatever reason, then you no longer have it to advertise on, and if you lose internet service or power for a day, then you’re no longer able to engage with your customer base.
  • First impressions matter more here than in some other places. You have mere seconds to leave a favorable impression on someone online, if you fail then they’ll move on and forget about you. You have to be captivating and enjoyable in those first few instances, which can be difficult to get right.
  • There can also be some negative reactions online. Some people can be annoyed with your ads, sometimes they might feel wronged by you for whatever reason, or they can just be there to mess with you. This is a fact of working on the internet, and can sometimes have a negative impact on your perception online if not handled properly.

Conclusion: Radio vs Digital Marketing?

There are a lot of pros and cons to both sides of this argument. Ultimately, both forms of marketing have their advantages, and thus their place in any marketing campaign. Which one you do is entirely dependent on your company, your product or service, and what you can afford to do. Both can be successful, and both can fail, making sure you understand the pros and cons of both will help you avoid the later. For more information or help with either form of marketing, contact us here!

SEO Optimization Tips for Spring

seo optimization

SEO Optimization for Spring

Since website performance and SEO optimization is affected by things such as bad links, sloppy code, and poor content, it is a great time to do a semi-annual tidying to eliminate any problems. What does something like this do for search engine optimization efforts? Here are a few ways to be sure any essential SEO areas that tend to collect internet ‘dirt’ is cleaned.

Analyze with Analytics

Using analytic software such as Google Analytics and run a full array of reports normally monitored, especially important ones like site and page errors. Error reports are the most significant and probably the lengthiest. As much it may seem like doing such work could be put off – don’t do it! Every error detected by analytics tools is one more that is affecting website efficiency.

Inspect your site.

Start the process with a crawl of your site to collect the data you’ll need. Use a crawler such as Deep Crawler (which is especially helpful for sites on Angular, the front-end platform) or Screaming Frog. Crawlers help you identify all manner of metadata and site errors, as well as the server header status for each page. Each of these data points will identify an area that needs attention.

Review Your SEO Optimization

Since it can be somewhat difficult to systematically review websites for SEO, content, and other aspects, adding this job to the twice-yearly cleaning can help make sure it actually happens. Be sure content is correct and complete; review upcoming content ideas to be sure of current relevancy. Discover the latest trends in SEO and coding; update any techniques or HTML to benefit the overall website.

Site Errors

The annoying truth of the matter is that site errors need to be fixed. Many will be simple such as dead links or URLs with typos; others may be quite important. SEO reports can point out errors such as pages missing header tags, nonworking links, and other such information. Troubleshooting site speed may show other types of problems that unknowingly exist. It may be tedious; however, it is necessary to fix page issues regularly. This will improve site speed and result in fewer problem pages on the website.

Social Profiles

Check those important social media pages to be sure that they work, especially for any unknown issues. Be sure links from main websites to different social pages are not broken, out of place, or have been forgotten. Such problems should be corrected quickly, as this can potentially affect website traffic both to social sites and back to the corresponding website.

Claim Your Local Listings

Just like with social media, the more local listing sites you’re on, the better. Find out where your company should be online and start claiming your businesses profiles. Most, if not all of these sites are free and require very little effort to claim. Once you’ve done so, start filling out the profiles with relevant and useful information including products/services, location(s) and contact information. Be sure to save all the credentials for these listings as you may need to update them over time as new products/services come out, you change locations or need to change contact information.

It probably seems like a lot to go through twice a year; however, doing so can keep any website and its search engine optimization efforts functioning smoothly and reaching planned goals with very few concerns.

Have any question about SEO Optimization? Contact us here! 

How To Improve Your Search Engine Ranking

search engine ranking

How To Improve Your Search Engine Ranking

Here are important factors when trying to improve your search engine ranking.

Keywords are key

The first step to choose the search term or phrase you want your page, blog post, or website to show up for. If you’re writing a blog post on the best ways to grill a burger, you’ll need to find out what people are actually searching for to find that answer.

What makes a good keyword?

The answer is both broad and targeted keywords. Search engines will associate specific keywords with their more general phrases. When you use both on your site, it will help the site become an authority on the subjects you discuss.

A general term may yield a higher search rate than more specific terms, but search engine ranking for a target keyword phrase will give you a higher conversion rate.

Where to include the word?

It’s important to include your keyword in all of the necessary locations to ensure your page ranks for the word. First, your page title should contain your keyword. You should include it and make the title interesting enough that people will want to click on the title to read your blog post or webpage. An engaging title can help you pull in your audience and turn them into customers with your engaging content.

Including your keyword in a header will not only help you organize your page but will help it rank. This organization is helpful not only for people in skimming blog-post articles but it’s also helpful in showing Google exactly what your blog post is about. Therefore, be sure to use your exact keyword phrase at least once in your sub-headers.

Next, if your blog post contains images, you can use them to cement how Google will crawl your page about your post’s topic. There are a couple of ways to do this. You can change the image name and the alt tag.

To change the image name, simply change the name of the image on your computer before uploading. Instead of a file called “2831274.jpg,” you can rename it something like “juicyburger1.jpg.”

The “alt tag” is something you designate after you upload the photo to your website. Without getting too technical, the alt tag is simply the text that the web browser will show if the photo can’t load for some reason.

Research your competition

Good content is better than none, but bad content is worse

Now that you know what your competition looks like, it’s time to create the content that is going to blow those folks out of the water. This is perhaps the most difficult part, but it’s the most important. Your content needs to be engaging for the reader, and written so that your audience and Google can understand it.

Links for Search Engine Ranking

-Internal

If you aren’t talking about your best content, why should anyone else care? For this reason, it’s important that your best SEO content is linked to internally by other pages on your website.

Yes, this means you may need to go back and edit some older posts to include links to the new, incredible content.

-External

Okay, finally we’re finally at the big one: external links.

External links are links from websites other than your own. Google relies heavily on external links to determine how good a post is. And this makes sense, doesn’t it? You can talk about yourself and your own skills all day long, but no one will believe you. But as soon as other people begin bragging about you, others take notice.

While producing incredible content may get you some links, the truth is, you are going to have to do some “link building.” This means reaching out to other website owners in the space to ask for links.

Have any questions on how to improve your search engine ranking? Contact us here.

 

Benefits of Using Google My Business

Woman working on laptop

Google My Business is a free tool that helps businesses and organizations manage their online presence on Google. It helps customers find your company’s information, such as hours, recent updates, photos, etc. Also, it allows you to respond to reviews, update information, and add posts.

Why use it?

Having a Google My Business sidebar appear after someone searches for your business makes it appear more professional. It can also improve its local rankings. Additionally, it provides viewers with quick and short information so that they don’t have to dig too deep to find what they are looking for.

Advantages

With the new Posts feature, users can create and update more information on the business sidebar. For example, posting about sales, promotions, or upcoming events is a good way to attract customers.

Recently, Google added a Q&A feature, which displays frequently asked questions to viewers right away. This makes it easier for them to decide if they are interested or not. In addition to Posts and Q&A’s, Google has created a real-time chat mode with customers and businesses. This allows for more client engagement and increases brand loyalty.

In short, Google My Business is a great way to keep your small business or organization at the forefront of peoples’ minds.

Want to find out more about best practices on Google? Ask us!

Why Search Engine Optimization is Crucial

search engine optimization

When you search Google for the best Italian restaurant in town, a list of results appears. The results at the very top are the ones that most closely match the words you typed into the search box. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is what helps those restaurants appear at the top of your search results.

Why care?

 For over ten years, search engine optimization has served as a valuable tool for businesses. In short, it directs more people to your website based on relevant keywords or phrases that they search. It can even help you monitor progress. SEO also helps with reputation management. Therefore, the more your business appears on a search results page, the more reputable and credible it seems.

What to expect

Getting acclimated to SEO takes a long time. It’s an ongoing process that involves choosing and editing specific content for your website. Because it can be such a tedious job, a lot of companies hire people specifically for the role of SEO. The benefits, however, pay off. SEO can increase brand exposure and awareness as it reaches new markets. Additionally, it makes your website more attractive and easier to navigate.

Overall, investing in search engine optimization can be a beneficial opportunity for your business to grow. As the Internet continues to change, it’s important to make sure your brand is still being noticed.

Need assistance getting started with SEO for your business? We can help.

Cleaning Up Your SEO For Fall

SEO for fall

Since website performance and optimization is affected by things such as bad links, sloppy code, and poor content, it is a great time to do a semi-annual tidying to eliminate any problems. What does something like this do for search engine optimization efforts? Here are a few ways to be sure any essential SEO for fall areas that tend to collect internet ‘dirt’ is cleaned.

Analyze with Analytics

Using analytic software such as Google Analytics and run a full array of reports normally monitored, especially important ones like site and page errors. Error reports are the most significant and probably the lengthiest. Don’t put off the work! Every error detected by analytics tools is one more that is affecting website efficiency.

Review Your SEO for fall

Since it can be somewhat difficult to systematically review websites for SEO, content, and other aspects, adding this job to the twice-yearly cleaning can help make sure it actually happens. Be sure content is correct and complete; review upcoming content ideas to be sure of current relevancy. Discover the latest trends in SEO and coding; update any techniques or HTML to benefit the overall website.

Site Errors

The annoying truth of the matter is that site errors need to be fixed. Many will be simple such as dead links or URLs with typos; others may be quite important. SEO reports can point out errors such as pages missing header tags, nonworking links, and other such information. Troubleshooting site speed may show other types of problems that unknowingly exist. It may be tedious; however, it is necessary to fix page issues regularly. This will improve site speed and result in fewer problem pages on the website.

Social Profiles

Check those important social media pages to be sure that they work, especially for any unknown issues. Be sure links from main websites to different social pages are not broken, out of place, or have been forgotten. Such problems should be corrected quickly, as this can potentially affect website traffic both to social sites and back to the corresponding website.

It probably seems like a lot to go through twice a year; however, doing so can keep any website and its search engine optimization efforts functioning smoothly and reaching planned goals with very few concerns. Don’t overlook this important fall website tidying effort – and keep that website running like new!

Have any questions about updating your SEO for Fall? Contact us here! 

SEO Basics Every Business Owner Should Know

seo

You may have seen it somewhere before. On LinkedIn, in an article somewhere or in a free webinar you joined. The word SEO is commonly heard in the realms of marketing, website design and a multitude of others.

But do you know what it stands? You know it’s important but…

What is it?

SEO is a noun and stands for Search Engine Optimization. But that does not really answer the question. Let me put it this way, go ahead and Google your name, now count how many hits lead back to you. Generally, your hits are Facebook, Linked-in, Instagram, or maybe you’ve had a news article written about you: these results are your personal SEO.

Now apply the same concept to your business. The more times your name pops up in an organic search, the more likely your website is to be clicked. This is simple psychology. The more something is right in front of a client the more reliable it seems.

How does it work?

Search Engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo comb through your website looking for keywords and phrases. Go back to Google and type in, “Two houses divided.” I’m willing to bet most all of your search results had to do with Shakespear and Romeo and Juliet. Weird, right? You were not looking for either of things.

In order to make this work for your business, you need a clear picture of what people are looking for when they need your services. Keywords are worth their weight in Antimatter (the most expensive substance per gram). Once you discover what words and phrases people use in their searches, embed them on your website. Every page should its own list of keywords for search engines to locate.

Why do you need it?

That’s the easy part! The majority of website traffic comes directly from search engine results. This is because search engines represent the most popular way of navigating through the World Wide Web. With proper SEO optimization, the flow of traffic will lead directly to your web page.

Interested in learning more about SEO? Or improving your own? Don’t hesitate to contact us!