Category: SEO

Responsive Design and Thinking like a Human; Two Necessities of Web Design Today

Posted on by Chris Josten

These items as crucial for both Human and Search Engine View of your site.

Your website needs to be able to reach viewers on different devices such as: desktops, tablets, and mobile devices. “27% of consumers will leave a site if it is not mobile-optimized. (ExactTarget,2014 Mobile Behavior Report).”

Implementing Responsive Design

Responsive design is your best option for delivering a great search and browsing experience to mobile users. This will cause your website’s URLs to be the same across all devices and will all serve up the same HTML code. It is always better to provide the same layout of your website on all devices because people like consistency.

“Customer preference is the most cited targeting dimension that companies are using in mobile marketing, with location as the second most cited. (Forrester, MMA, and Velti, Present and Future Mobile Marketing.)”

The most popular device customers and potential customers use today are smartphones. Majority of consumers use mobile friendly sites because they are of the opinion that mobile-optimized sites run faster than non-mobile-optimized sites. Hence giving them the information in a better more timely experience.

With responsive design, the only thing that changes across devices is the styling. This configuration makes it easier for Google to crawl your pages and retrieve your content. “This improvement in crawling efficiently can indirectly help Google index more of the site’s contents and keep it appropriately fresh.”

Failing to think like a human

When designing o redesigning your website you have to think like a human. Humans want answers. Search engines such as Google have gained the ability to recognized full-sentence queries instead of picking out the individual words that make up a query.

The best information comes from websites that are crafted with humans in mind.

A couple of rules to follow for search engine optimization are: make sure your content adds value to visitors and to write about what you know.

  • • Always add value. Backlinks and keyword rank are important to gain through your visitors. If          your content is valuable, people will read and share it.
  • • When creating content write about what you know. Keep your content natural for viewers.              People will find you more reputable and seek advice from you if you keep your content simple      and natural.
  • • Search engine optimization is not the top priority when it comes to redesigning your website.

The best way to ensure you are focusing on humans before SEO is to make sure you are writing natural content that your viewers can relate to. Whenever you focus on humans first, SEO takes care of itself.

Growth Driven Design: A Smarter Approach to Web Design and Development

Posted on by Chris Josten

Most websites today are currently built as a set project with a web design team working to put together a perfectly designed website, working on a hypothesis of what type of flow your site visitors will use and how they get to the information that you feel is important to promote your business.

Recent studies have shown that most websites after launch go at least two years before being updated or refreshed. Hence, in some cases, websites can be a headache to small business owners.

The problem.

The way customers search online for businesses and services is always changing. Google, Bing, and Yahoo continually change their search algorithms to better match the way consumers search and the behaviors they follow.  With these changes for best results, your business website needs to change as well.  But how is this accomplished?

Growth Driven Design.

Growth Driven Design is a new approach to designing and building a website. Instead of working the standard 8-10 weeks around a hypothesis, you launch as a website as quickly as possible and then work to keep your site fresh based on real-time marketing and testing results.  Doing this allows your site to be an evolving marketing tool.  Constant change and updates allow you to keep your website optimized for better lead generation and a central goal of generating more revenue.  But the most valuable point to Growth Driven Design is that changes and modifications are no longer based on a hypothesis. The evolution of your site is now based off of actual data gathered from customers.

Some ways to boost your websites conversions include:

 

  • • Creating content continually
  • • Focus on conversion rate – the higher, the better
  • • Test images by swapping between different colors and styles and moods
  • • Run a Usability Test
  • • Install tracking software to track your user’s experience
  • • Personalize for your target Client persona
  • • Reorganize your navigation for easier site search
  • • Increase Search Engine Exposure

 

With the above list of items, you can test your site and check again to focus on enhancing your client’s experience.  The more your site can be customized towards the needs of your site visitors, the bigger the impact you will have on your conversion rate and a higher return on your investment.  Although the process takes a larger amount of time over the traditional website approach, the sky is the limit of improvements and successes of your site.

Web Design Must Haves for Leads: Become a Conversion Machine

Posted on by Chris Josten

You have the leads, now what?

To increase your websites conversions, you must have effective calls-to-action, CTA positioning, newsletters, landing pages and forms for your landing page.

The effect of a successful Call to Action is to drive a visitor to take a desired action. CTAs are the key to lead generation but they need to be done right to convert traffic into leads. The position of your call-to-actions is important also. Think about where you will be placing your CTAs. Do not place CTAs everywhere; that will give people too many options.

In order to drive CTAs you need to drive those links to landing pages. Landing pages are used to convert visitors into leads by completing a transaction or by collecting contact information from them. Landing pages consist of:

  1. A headline and (optional) sub-headline.
  2. A brief description of the offer/CTA.
  3. At least one supporting image.
  4. (Optional) supporting elements such as testimonials or security badges.
  5. And most importantly, a form to capture information.

Newsletters

Newsletters are easy to offer and effective. Not all CTAs need to be big offers. Newsletters or mailing lists are the perfect way to collect email addresses so you can nurture prospects over time to become leads. Make sure it is easy for people to find your subscription form.

 

Landing Pages

Landing pages are necessary to implement because they direct your visitors to one particular offer without the distractions of everything else on your website.

Once you’ve completed your landing page, it is important to have a form that customers can fill out to sign-up, subscribe to your site, or download an offer. Forms are the key to a landing page. Recommendations for landing page forms:

  • • Only ask for the information you need. Avoid asking for sensitive information that companies or                consumers may not want to disclose.
  • • Consider the value of the offer. The more valuable an offer may be perceived, the more information        you may be able to ask for in return.
  • • Lastly, reduce anxiety for your clients by adding a privacy message that indicates their email will not      be shared or sold. Avoid using the word submit on your form buttons; offer them a free download or      newsletter instead.

Internet usage is growing rapidly which makes a website an important factor for your business. The integration of search engine optimization, social media, blogging, content, call-to-actions, and landing pages will drive traffic, leads, and sales.

2 Items to Never Forget When Launching a Website Redesign

Posted on by Chris Josten

You’ve finshed the redesign of your website, now what?

The process is done, you followed our steps to make sure your site is up to today’s standards and the site has launched.  There are a couple items that need to be checked to make sure your newly designed site can be found and tracked.

Unblock search engines from crawling your site

When launching your website after a redesign, it’s important to double check that the search engines know where to find you. A common mistake people do is block search engines from their website during the redesign phase and forget to unblock them when the site is complete.

This issue can cause problems when sometimes developers forget to unblock robots from crawling and indexing the website after the website goes live. Search engine optimization is one of the main resources people use to research and purchase a product.

 

“SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate while outbound leads (such as direct mail or print advertising have a 1.7% close rate. (Search Engine Journal.)”

 

 

One reason this happens is because the site is in a dev environment and has robots.txt set to block all search robots. A robot.txt file is a simple text file placed on your web server which informs webcrawlers like Googlebot if they should access a file or not.

The site is then taken live with all-exclusive robots.txt file still in place and the site’s search traffic reduces.

Search engine optimization allows people to be able to find your website. You can double check with Google Webmaster tools to ensure your site is being indexed.

 

Add analytics tracking to your site

Your website redesign needs to be compared to your old website with analytics software. Once your new website is released, you should be collecting data on its performance.

A couple of questions to ask yourself after you apply tracking software are:

  • • Did your content audit and keyword research pay off?
  • • Is that new URL structure making it easier for visitors to navigate through your pages?

The goal being you want your new website to have a higher conversion rate than your old site. It is impossible to measure without any conversion code or analytics tracking it. That is why it is important to paste the proper Google analytics code on the new website.

Another reason it is important to track your data is to drive continual improvement of the online experience to your customers and prospects.

If your website redesign is not easier for customers and potential clients to use then your new website is not serving its purpose.

Ultimately, your website redesign should add value to your viewers. Analytics will help you make improvements to your website and your sites visitation will increase.

Why do Google algorithm changes matter?

Posted on by Chris Josten

The Google algorithms are computer processes and formulas that look through thousands, if not millions, of webpages for a typical search and find the most helpful information for the user. Today’s Google algorithms rely on more than 200 unique signals or “clues” that make it possible to guess what the user might be searching for. These signals come in a wide variety, such as the terms on a website, the freshness of content, a user’s specific region and PageRank.

Let’s dive a bit deeper and define what PageRank is exactly. PageRank is one of Google’s algorithm’s/tools used to ensure that their users are receiving the most insightful, useful and meaningful content. PageRank is broken up into a few different sections: system features, related work, system anatomy, results and performance as well as conclusions. Within each of these sections they are broken down even further but that is a very complex and very long discussion.

Why does this matter to my website?

The reason Google’s algorithms matter to your website and ultimately to your buyers is because these algorithms are the reason and the way your buyers first come in contact with your website while they are in the discovery phase of their buyer’s journey. The discovery phase of a buyer’s journey is when they have an issue but do not quite know what the solution to it may be. The reason they are searching the web is to find a solution or information about their problem. Wouldn’t you like to be the solution to their problem? Turn these strangers towards your company and ultimately into promoters of your company.

Let’s take a moment to be very clear, Google does not care about your website specifically, they care about making sure their users receive the most valuable content they can provide.

Penguin 4.0

With the latest version of Google’s Penguin algorithm it is even more crucial to stay on top of your website. Google’s data is refreshed in real time with the latest Penguin release, so changes will be visible much faster; typically taking effect shortly after a recrawl and reindex is completed. With all these changes it is imperative that your marketing team stays on top of these changes and is ensuring that they are hitting the key points that effect your PageRank.

How we can help.

If by the end of this article you have learned something or now have a question in the back of your mind, whether your marketing team is keeping up with these updates and ensuring your content is presenting the most insightful, useful, meaning and freshest content, contact us today. We would love to talk to you more about your buyer’s journey, growth driven design and ultimately how we can help your business reach your buyers.

Google is going to a mobile first index soon!

Posted on by admin

With the numbers of mobile users’ sky rocketing out of the atmosphere, it’s no surprise to anyone that mobile searches have surpassed desktop and at this point we do not think there is any turning back. With today’s world needing information instantaneously, a desktop just does not do and a laptop is a bit annoying to lug around with you. This is exactly where mobile devices and even tablets come into play. These devices allow the consumer to get the information they want, at the moment and it allows brands’ opportunities to be ‘near’ their mobile users. Per a recent Pew Research report, 46% of respondents said they could not live without their smartphones.

Micro-Moments

Google has coined a new term: ‘micro-moments’. Micro-moments are essentially a question or questions that a consumer has in an instant and wants to answer within that same instance. These moments are broken down into 3 stages: Immediate Action, Demand for relevance, Loyal to needs. Let’s define each of these per Google.

Immediate action – Smartphones allow us to act on any impulse at any time. We take immediate action whenever we want to learn, find, do or buy something.

Demand for relevance – When we act on our needs in-the-moment, our expectations are high and our patience is low. This makes the quality, relevance, and usefulness of marketing more important than ever.

Loyal to needs – Our preferences and purchases are shaped in these micro-moments. Ultimately, the brands that do the best job of addressing our needs in each moment will win.

As you can see these micro-moments are a make or break chance for your company to gain a loyal customer who will in return become a promoter of your company, so long as you continue to treat them with quality, relevant and useful content.

What you can do.

Identify a set of key moments in a buyer’s journey that you want to win or can’t afford to lose. Examine these moments of your buyer’s journey when they want to find inspiration, learn about your product, make a quick purchase or anything in between. For each of these moments put yourself in your buyer’s shoes. Ask yourself, “What would make this faster and easier? What content and features would be the most helpful?” Ensure your buyer’s journey is optimized across the board and that there are no hiccups along the way. You can never afford to under-serve your buyers, while every moment may not yet be directly measurable, you cannot allow anything to fall through the cracks.

What Google is doing?

Back in April, the 21st to be exact Google released an algorithm update that impacted mobile search results worldwide for mobile searchers. This update improved rankings for sites that provided a mobile-friendly experience to searchers on mobile devices, and, by association, demoted sites that did not. Well, Google is at it again and they are not joking around this time. Googler Gary Illyes announce at Pubcon that Google will be switching from a desktop index to a mobile index. This is a huge change. Google has always used a desktop version of a page for ranking, even when serving results to users on a mobile device. Big note, this mobile first index is not currently live. This is currently a pre-announcement/pre-warning to all site owners to get prepared for the upcoming changes.

Why Google why?

It’s simple with all research pointing towards a mobile first world it only makes sense to make this change. Now this is not something Google is coming out of left field about, Gary Illyes hinted at having been in testing for a little over a year now. Since mobile searches continue to sky rocket – this move is not a surprise.

How much time do I have, Doc?

Unfortunately, Gary Illyes did say that he will not give firm dates for this because dates can change. He did say though that Google will be announcing it with a blog post, which will include details about when the mobile first index is to take effect. It is also worth mentioning that Google has given site owners plenty of notice about these changes, such as when they made the plan to add a mobile friendly ranking boost. Now is the time to take your buyer’s journey and mobile experience seriously. With the current trends and Google moving forward with a mobile-first index it is not the time to sit idly by, it is the time to schedule your free consultation and see how we can help your business and your buyer’s journey improve.

How do local listings affect my business?

Posted on by admin

Before we can answer how a local listing affects your business, we first need to look at what exactly a local listing is, what it includes and what types there are.

A local listing is exactly that: a listing of businesses, normally within a directory, that points to a business by a few different variables, whether it be the business name, the business address, the type of business and/or social media presence within a certain area or city. This is taken a step further when it comes to Google. Google will gather the information from several different business directories to compile their own listing of your business, unless you have claimed your business with them.

 

It is highly recommended that you do this quickly, if you have not done so already. Having incorrect and/or outdated information can be devastating to your business. Imagine someone is looking for your business and finds out that you are already closed, when in actuality this is untrue or they go to the address shown, to only end up at an incorrect address.

What a local listing includes?

There are a few key areas that you want to make sure are 100% accurate. This includes the following: Your Business Title, Links and Citations, Categories, Reviews and Ratings, Photos and Videos, Social Factors and Other Attributes.

Your Business Title – This is one of the most critical  factors for ranking well in local search engines. Having a title that is consistent with an accurate business name is extremely important.

Links and Citations – Search engines find out about your business in two primary ways.  The first being crawling links that are inbound to your website and tracking sites where those links appeared.  The second is tracking citations of your business and where those citations came from.

What is a citation? Let’s take a quick pause to define what a citation is, so that there is no confusion. A citation is a ‘mention’ of your business name on websites other than your own. These ‘mentions’ should include the same information that a regular business listing does, i.e. the business address, the type of business and a phone number.

Categories – Many local directories allow you to choose between two to five categories that identify what your business is about. Search engines like Google will then use these categories to help decide which businesses to show for searches. Search engines will NOT show a business that is uncategorized – or even worse, incorrectly categorized – for sets of keywords. This is especially true for high demand keywords or phrases that already have several businesses associated within a category. This is exactly why having consistent and correct information about your business throughout is essential.

Reviews and Ratings – Reviews and ratings are powerful persuasion tools for customers that are on the fence about purchasing a product or service from your business. While a negative review can encourage a potential customer to hit the ‘back’ button, a great review can encourage a customer to pick up the phone and call you!

Photos and Videos – Having photos and videos help entice a potential customer into clicking on your business listing. This means taking the time to pick out the proper photos and videos you plan on showing to your potential customers; do not just put something up for the sake of putting something up. These photos and videos can be anything but putting up projects that your company has worked on, products you offer, your team and/or your office itself will lead to more clicks and more recognition.

Social Factors – The social component of local SEO is growing stronger with each passing year, and learning to participate in the social platforms your customers prefer is a fantastic way to further build your relationships. You can also interact with reviewers in a similar manner to Twitter and Facebook. Reviews are a key component to a business’s survival. Certain forms of social media activity appear to influence overall search engine rankings.  Their direct influence is unknown, but it is safe to say having a social media presence is important.

SIDENOTE. Not all reviews are created equal but having reviews is better than having none. There is an art to answering negative reviews to spin them into a positive outcome.  There is more to it but that would take another article.

Other Attributes – It is vital to list your complete contact information on your website in a format that search engines can read. This is a simple step that most businesses seem to overlook. Providing your contact information in a format such as an image, a flash player or any other non-text format that search engines cannot crawl will affect your search rankings.

Lastly, keeping up with changes to policies, the latest opportunities for promotion and what your competition is doing on major search engines and local listings are all good ways to ensure that your business is doing everything it can to be current and visible in the local search.

How does your local business listing stack up? If you would like to learn more on how we can help with your local listings please feel free to request a local directory analysis below. We look forward to working with you.

Does my website need an SSL Certificate?

Posted on by admin

In 2017 the answer is yes.

In 2014 Google announced it would start giving a higher quality score for sites that showed a call for HTTPS in the address bar.  Over the past couple of years it has been more of a suggestion than a requirement but that has changed.  Let’s review what SSL and HTTPS are.

What is SSL?

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. This link ensures that all data passed between the web server and browsers remain private. In other words this tells your site visitors you care about their information.

What is HTTPS?

Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is the secure version of the standard web call HTTP, the protocol over which data is sent between your browser and the website that you are connected to. The ‘S’ at the end of HTTPS stands for ‘Secure’. It means all communications between your browser and the website are encrypted. Essentially this is telling your site visitors that the SSL Protection is in place.

 

What is the cost?

In aspects of business and the amount of clout this gives your site in Google’s eye? Minimal. Depending on the level of encryption and the person applying the security to your site, the certificates range between $75 – $150 per year.  Overall not a big drop in the bucket considering what business expenses can be these days. Depending on the information that your site shares will decide what type of certificate and level of encryption your site needs.  When selecting the SSL certificate consult with your web host or agency on selecting the right one for your business.

 

Why is this so important?

Now that we understand what these terms mean, why is it important?  Although Google originally announced that they will give more credit to sites with SSL in 2014, in a recent article on their security Blog, Google made another announcement; They are moving to a more secure web.

As of January 2017 Google started tagging any sites not running an SSL Certificate and showing HTTP as a non-secure site.

In this article, Google states that they have conducted studies that most web users do not consider the absence of a security as a need to avoid sending content through a site. This is a problem Google is working to fix as they move towards a safer web.  Your standard contact form may not be an issue yet. But based on the article, we can see this being affected in the near future.  Being proactive may be the best solution moving forward.

 

What’s next?

If you are ready to move forward with switching to HTTPS, contact your Web Host provider or agency about getting this in place. At Curiosity we always strive to stay on the forefront of development and strategy. Since this change every new website project or new WordPress build will be requested that the site have an SSL certificate in place. Clients may go against our judgement, but we suggest you require it as well.

 

If there are any questions on how Curiosity can help, please reach out and we would love to continue conversations.