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Rookie Website Mistakes, Part 3: Your Site Isn’t Mobile-Friendly

Now that you have learned how to get your website found in Google searches, Part 3 of our Rookie Website Mistakes blog series will explore how to get mobile visitors to stay.

It’s no secret that the current generation is keen on the combination of mobility and technology. We are a group who thrives off convenience and being able to get the information we need while on-the-go. It’s no wonder the level of frustration when a website we want to reach is not properly formatted for mobile use. Many of us quickly move on, searching until we find a site that is mobile-friendly and can also provide us with the information and services we need. According to Google, 58 percent of Americans use their smartphone (instead of a computer) to access a website. This means that over half of your potential audience—individuals who use the internet—are searching via cell phone. Visitors are also typically multitasking, leaving you with a limited amount of time to impress and engage them. You would be remiss to not format your website accordingly. Let’s dive a little deeper into what you lose and what you stand to gain with a website formatted for mobile visitors.

Not Using Responsive Design

One of the main differences between a site that’s built for mobile use and one that’s not is the responsiveness of the design. Consider the size of the interface or screen on a desktop computer or laptop versus a smartphone. Because mobile phones are smaller, websites cannot afford to have lofty navigation that hangs out in the margins—nor can they afford to have a surplus of text that hides below the fold. Often, the entire design of the website should be optimized for how visitors will need to navigate the page on a 5×3-inch device. Font size, typography, and single-column layout are also some items to consider.

Optimizing for mobile does not mean that a business will have to create two different sites. Responsively designed websites are flexible and can detect screen size and orientation. The flow and readability of the design are crucial for a pleasant user experience that will keep visitors on your page, allowing them to receive the valuable information you are providing.

Lack of a Touch-Friendly Interface

Because visitors to your website are most likely accessing your page from their handheld device, it is imperative that the site can be easily navigated by touch. Visitors are frequently using touchscreens to find your business online, and once they arrive at your website, they need to be able to use their fingers to scroll, move between pages, click links and videos, and request more information.

Consider enlarging the font and adding more space between navigation buttons and links so that it’s easier to select items on the page. Unlike using a mouse on a desktop, fingers are less precise, so the use of buttons is vital to a friendly interface. Be sure to also have indicators on items that can be selected, such as adding a highlight or indentation marker to the button. This lets visitors know that their phone has recognized their selection. Another element is utilizing dropdown menus for navigation. They can be used on desktop screens and are ideal for mobile phones. Also, make sure the phone numbers are click-to-call and emails listed on your website are designed to open a compose window. This adds even more convenience for potential customers and visitors to your website.

Images That Aren’t Optimized

In previous blogs, we’ve made a case for the importance of having quality images on your page. But what happens if these images are slow to load? According to a study done by Equation Research, 60 percent of mobile users expect a site to load within 3 seconds, and 74 percent are willing to wait up to 5 seconds for it to load before abandoning the website entirely. Visuals that take too long to configure to the page also slow down the general responsiveness of your website. Scale images through code or optimize them by using new HTML markup that prevents the browser from downloading pictures that are larger than what is needed.

Content That Isn’t Mapped for Mobile

Take inventory of each piece of content on your website and evaluate how effective it will read on a mobile phone. The size of the font and the typography style is something to consider, but the length and relevancy of the content are important, too. Trim down the fat. Use your analytics intel to determine which pieces of content your visitors are actually reading, and consider removing or optimizing content they are not. Review your website and be sure each piece of existing content is essential and can be easily digestible on all screen sizes.

Having a mobile-friendly website is not something to be overlooked. With more and more of your potential customers using their phones to search for your business, mobile-friendly optimization is vital to the health of your business. If you have any questions or concerns about how to optimize your website and grow your business, our team is happy to help. Drop us a line!

Stay tuned for the next blog in the series, Rookie Website Mistakes, Part 4: You have a Single Page Website.

September 1, 2017
Paid Search, SEO, and the Evolution of Google
No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man. –Heraclitus

One thing that’s certain in the world of search is that technology and user habits are always evolving. David Mihm recently wrote an excellent blog on the ever-changing landscape of search engines otherwise known as “SERP Topology.” We recently had the honor of hosting David as a guest speaker for a lunch & learn for the whole team. He provided us with some powerful insights about the evolution of Google. Here are some key takeaways.

As you can see above, based on his predictions it is highly likely that Google search results will be more and more driven by paid advertising as opposed to traditional SEO in the next 5-10 years.

Practically, this will impact your business in a few different ways. Some industries will continue to stay relevant with a traditional SEO approach, but for many, it will become a less effective strategy.

If you’re a business owner, here are some things to keep in mind:
1. What percentage of closed business is coming from digital marketing efforts?
2. Where, specifically, are your leads coming from?
3. How is your team converting those opportunities?
Brand Awareness

If you’re producing content, it will become increasingly important to promote that content using social platforms and other advertising options, such as Google Display Ads. Marketing your brand through ads will continue to be an important and useful strategy.

Referrals

The connection economy will continue to increase in importance. Who are the influencers in your industry online? Where are they? Find out what platforms the thought leaders are on and connect with them.

Also, find out where your customers are hanging out. If it’s Facebook, then you should seriously consider developing a strong presence there.

Lead Generation

Organic SEO is very powerful, however, one of the downsides is that it can take a long time to grow results. Google ads are a great option to compliment SEO and content marketing strategies because you get instant feedback from your target audience. From there, you can take that feedback, find those great leads, and nurture them into customers.

SEO

Search engine optimization is not going away anytime soon. And, in the next 10 years, it will remain relevant for many industries. However, it won’t be quite as effective in the near future. As Google continues to generate the majority of its revenue from advertising expenditure, it inherently implies a push toward incentivizing businesses to use those tools.

If you’d like to understand more about how to advertise your business online, or how you can best take advantage of SERP Topology, reach out here to chat with a strategist.

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SERP Topology
August 31, 2017
Marketing Myths Small Business Owners Should Stop Believing

When you’re running a small business, it’s often up to you or a member of a very small team to research and make all decisions for the business. And when you’re trying to allocate a marketing budget, being well informed is essential to the future of the business’ success. If you’re considering investing in SEO for your company but aren’t sure if it is going to pay off in the end, get the real facts about common SEO misconceptions.

Myth 1: Only businesses of a certain size, in particular industries, or with certain audience demographics need a website.

Some of you might be shaking your head at this one, but of the 500 small business marketers surveyed by highervisability.com, 20 percent said their company didn’t have a website. Having a website in today’s world is essential for getting found by customers, and everyone can benefit from one. SEO will help you get found by the right audience, no matter how niche your market may be, from HVAC companies and mom-and-pop shops to CNC engineers and doctors.

Myth 2: Keyword stuffing and duplicate content are good SEO practices.

While a majority of those surveyed believed copy-and-pasting content from other sites wasn’t ok, 12 percent didn’t see anything wrong with duplicating content from another site or page of your own site. When you copy from another person’s site, it’s plagiarism, and Google will penalize you for it. But even if it’s your own content repeating on different pages of the site, Google still flags it as duplicate content and therefore dings you for failing to provide new and useful information for your readers.

Keyword stuffing was considered a good idea by 38 percent of responders, but this is another practice that will get you in trouble with Google. Keyword stuffing involves cramming a chosen keyword into your content as much as humanly possible, even if it makes the content sound stilted and unnatural. Not only will Google penalize your site for it, but it also makes things difficult for readers, and pleasing them is the most important thing at the end of the day.

Myth 3: SEO is all about keyword rankings.

Keyword rankings are obviously an important metric for gauging your site’s performance, but there’s more to SEO than sprinkling some keywords into your content and calling it a day. Content creation, link building, local search optimization, and technical aspects of your website, like page speed, are all necessary components of a well-rounded and robust SEO campaign.

If you’re having trouble evaluating the technical side of your SEO, request a site audit from us.

Myth 4: Social media is just for sharing pictures of my kids at the beach.

19 percent of small businesses don’t have any social media presence. Of those 19 percent, only 35 percent are happy with their Google rankings. It then stands to reason that social media is a very important piece of the puzzle.

Social media helps you promote your content, share industry news with your followers, show off a bit of your personality and your brand’s tone, and engage directly with your customers. It’s the personal touch that matters in today’s business world. Plus, social media lets you find your customers where they spend the most time.

Myth 5: All of this should cost me less than $100 a month.

SEO services are a marketing investment. And like all investments, you have to spend money to see money. According to Pigzilla, we’re in the middle of a pandemic where shady SEO companies are charging rock bottom prices and not delivering the kind of results their customers are hoping for. Positive results require consistent efforts in content creation and quality link building, not just a few tweaks to your site or a handful of spammy links. A reputable SEO company is charging you for their expertise in the industry coupled with a truly hands-on approach for your campaign. Even if your budget isn’t huge, a good company will tailor their work to give you the most bang for your buck.

There’s a lot more to SEO than most small businesses realize. Whether you’re just starting to allocate some of your marketing budget to digital marketing or you’ve been burned by a bad SEO company in the past, talking to one of Search Influence’s sales executives can help you determine what your next best steps are for building an SEO campaign that will give you results.

August 29, 2017
5 Questions Your Medical Practice Should Ask Before Hiring a Paid Search Firm

When it comes to choosing a marketing firm for your paid search campaign, it’s important to do your homework—especially if you’re in the medical industry. According to Pew Research Center, 8 in 10 online health inquiries start with a search engine, and 72 percent of internet users said they looked online for health-related information. Beyond patients frantically Googling their symptoms, they’re also searching for medical care providers. The right ad agency will make sure you show up on page one of the search results.

But on top of a highly competitive and saturated market, medical practices also face added challenges to adhere to strict medical guidelines and discuss sensitive and highly personal topics appropriately. All said, a paid search campaign can do wonders to both improve your brand awareness and get new patients in your door. Here are five questions you should ask your prospective paid search agency before signing a contract.

1. What Experience Do You Have Working With Clients in the Medical Industry?

Your ad agency shouldn’t just know costs per click and search engine optimization, they should also know how to speak your language. More than that, they should know how to speak your language to your prospective patients. Search Influence has been helping clients in the medical industry stand out and rank in search results since 2007. In that time, we’ve worked with medical clients in 30+ cities across 18 states. Our experience ranges from plastic surgeons and dermatology clinics to hospitals, counseling services, and physical therapists. We use a holistic approach for every campaign to create brand recognition, improve ranking, and—most importantly—deliver qualified leads.

Our years of experience have helped us build a database of technical and demographic knowledge in order to strategically reach your desired patients where they’re at. In fact, we have helped our clients stay on the frontline of innovation by optimizing their sites for procedures as soon as they are approved and available to the public. For example, when the FDA approved gummy bear implants in 2013, we already had content written for our clients and were ready to run promotions to highlight this highly desirable option at the time.

We also understand the meticulous detail required to accurately reflect the standards and restrictions of medical societies, HIPAA, and the platforms where we promote your content. We know how to accurately post images in accordance with both American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS) and American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) promotional guidelines or how to use language that aligns with Google’s expectations for websites in the medical industry—an issue that can even cause Google to suspend your site.

If you’re curious about the current state of your website or worried about a site suspension, you can contact us to help you get on the right track.

In addition to meeting all of the medical industry standards, it’s also important that you position your practice as a thought leader. Our deep knowledge of the subject matter ensures that your content is optimized and technically accurate. More than just knowing that gynecomastia is the condition and breast reduction surgery is the procedure, we also understand the discreet and laser-precise writing required to appeal to men who are searching for this sensitive topic. As your PPC agency, we will deliver results because we start with strategy, and we understand your business.

2. What Is My Cost Per Lead?

Your cost per lead will depend on market factors such as seasonality, the size of your city, and the number of advertisers in your area. However, at Search Influence, our typical target for plastic surgeons is $50-$60 per lead. For us, we care most about delivering you qualified leads that actually become patients.

So how do we actually calculate your cost per lead (CPL)? Let’s say, as an example, that you offer a procedure for $5,000, and you’re willing to pay 10 percent (or $500) in order to get a lead for that procedure. However, you know that not every lead that contacts you is going to become a patient. Let’s say that 1 out of every 10 leads who contact you about the procedure will actually become a patient. That’s a 10 percent conversion rate, which results in a CPL of $50.

Of course, if your conversion rate is higher or if your cost for acquisition is higher or lower than the example, we can adjust accordingly. The table below outlines seasonal averages for some of our plastic surgery clients to show how we can achieve results for your practice.

As a medical practitioner, your bottom line all comes down to how many patients are walking through your door (and how much you paid to get them there). For you, a worthwhile investment in paid search results in qualified leads that can translate into actual patients. We get that. That’s why we have built-in systems to seamlessly track your leads, and a post-launch schedule to fine-tune your campaign as quickly as possible. Not only will you have clear reporting, but you can also use our lead tracking system to create an organized database of qualified leads, allowing your team to close leads faster.

3. How Do You Measure Return on Investment?

PPC is not a “set it and forget it” machine. Successful online ad campaigns should run on a continual loop. You have to look back to determine what’s working and adjust in real-time to build on successes. Our reporting can help you pinpoint the average cost per patient so you know your exact return on investment. You’ll know if your leads prefer to call or fill out a contact form, and you’ll gain valuable insights like location demographics.

Your PPC agency should also collect continual feedback from you about the quality of your leads in order to apply that information directly to your campaign and avoid any wasted ad spend. With endless customization opportunities—not a prix fixe package—your marketing firm should have a system in place to make things easy, but also be ready to break the rules to fit your budget and make your campaign a success for you.

4. What Procedures Are You Promoting and What Drives the Most Leads?

Remember that thing about endless customization? Yeah, that applies here, too. Your ad agency should have the know-how to build a holistic strategy that both grows your brand and promotes your most important services.

Brand building and search engine optimization are definitely comparable to the age-old chicken and the egg situation. You have to have some brand recognition if you want to rank high on search engines, and once you rank, you’ll get greater brand recognition. So what does that mean for you? Well, if you don’t rank yet, you’ll need to do more than simply optimize your content and build your link profile. You’ll have to create a dynamic strategy to build the overall awareness of your brand. After all, in the age of the internet, who says you can’t have all your eggs in your basket and eat some chicken, too?

Your online marketing agency can help you do just that. That’s why at Search Influence we start with a comprehensive kickoff meeting to understand the details of your business. Why? It’s simple. Formulating the right strategy first will save you money and get you the right leads.

Once we understand your business goals, we can target the right procedures and help you establish your brand around specialties and services that matter to you. We can also help you identify missed opportunities. For example, while aesthetic services aren’t the highest revenue driving procedures, they’re a great way for plastic surgery practices to continue generating revenue even when the doctor is booked with another client. Or, perhaps you specialize in rhinoplasty and want to be established as the leader in your market for that procedure. We can center your campaign on your qualification as a rhinoplasty surgeon to build your brand as the preferred specialist. It all depends on your needs, and your ad agency should do the setup work to understand those needs from day one.

5. On What Page Do Leads Land During a Campaign?

You can have beautifully written ads, but without the right landing page, your leads are highly unlikely to convert into patients. Especially when it comes to AdWords, you have to optimize for both your human readers and Google’s Quality Score. Google can spot landing pages that don’t align with the search term in the ad and actually make you pay more as result. For example, if someone searches for liposuction, clicks on your ad all about liposuction, then lands on a general page about body contouring services, then you’re missing the mark on user experience and Google’s best practices.

Without optimized content and a dedicated landing page, your chances of converting are slim.

A recent report from Unbounce placed the average conversion rate in the healthcare industry at only 2.9 percent. And if you’re using your homepage as your landing page, then you’re totally missing out. Your ad agency can create dynamic landing page content that makes it easy for prospective patients to take an action, with custom forms and click to call buttons that prove your return on investment. In fact, the same Unbounce report shows that healthcare businesses in the 90th percentile achieve conversion rates at 9.3 percent, and the right content and strategy can help get you there.

Landing pages are just one key element in a successful ad campaign. At Search Influence, we care about delivering a holistic advertising strategy focused on results. Contact our team to see how we can help optimize your medical practice’s online presence.

August 25, 2017
Search Influence Makes Inc. 5000 List for 7th Straight Year

Inc. magazine has recognized Search Influence on its 36th annual Inc. 5000 list, making this our seventh straight year achieving this coveted recognition! It’s important to note that the Inc. 5000 list includes an exclusive ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies and represents the most comprehensive look at the most esteemed segment of the economy—America’s independent entrepreneurs. The distinguished ranking started in 1982 and has since become the hallmark of entrepreneurial success.

Recognized as one of 47 Louisiana firms included in the 5,000 fastest-growing companies, we remain amongst the ranks of groups such as Yelp, Pandora, Timberland, Dell, Domino’s Pizza, LinkedIn, and Zillow, as well as many other industry leaders who gained early exposure as members of the Inc. 5000.

A Company Built From Search Discovers Its Niche

Our company founded on the basis of search engine marketing began its journey in 2006 when Angie and I obtained our first client in need of SEO services. Three years later, we began delivering Google, Bing, and Facebook paid ads, becoming a Google Partner in 2011 and a Premier Partner in 2016. Having handled paid media budgets from as little as a few hundred dollars to hundreds of thousands per month, we were able to achieve direct and sustainable results for our clients. Our successes span the nation and even bolster the initiatives of major-league companies like ALCC American Language with their international goals. It has been milestones like these that have fueled our expansion and ultimately become the cornerstone of our agency’s mission in helping our customers to successfully market themselves online by developing tools, technology, and the knowledge of experts who support them.

By 2010, we had begun redirecting our focus on the homefront and started our first enterprise work in the local community with Audubon Nature Institute, thus establishing our dexterity in the areas of tourism, non-profit, and event marketing. Other current and past local clients of note include industries of expertise, like New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation, Center for Restorative Breast Surgery, The National World War II Museum, and Tulane School of Professional Advancement.

Recognition as a Result of Innovation

We’re certainly excited to celebrate this recent accomplishment, especially on the heels of our newest announcement which details notable advancements to our employee experience. Our dedicated team consists of 50+ in-house employees and dozens of contractors. Our team includes specialists in content marketing, online advertising, technical SEO, local SEO, social media marketing, advertising, and online PR.

Our ability to sustain long-term growth can be attributed to the dedication of many key employees, like Gabrielle Benedetto, who joined our ranks in January 2012 and has spent 5 years deep in technical challenges & strategies for digital marketing.

Gabrielle notes, “Search Influence is known for crafting a team of collaborative, enthusiastic, and dedicated employees. Around the office, you see tenure flags covered with stars representing the number of years Influencers have spent with Search Influence. It’s our long-standing employees who drive this company forward. We’re encouraged to be leaders and pledged to do what’s best for our clients. When you empower a team to put the client first, the company will always move forward. I’m so excited to be part of this growth, and can’t wait to see what we tackle next!”

It is precisely this kind of dedication that has been the basis for the restructuring of our compensation philosophy. Our recently updated perks and pay reflect a leading-edge approach to talent management reflecting our belief that only with happy employees can we have successful clients.

We recognize our employees are our greatest investment and we’re hopeful that with the recent changes, prospective employees and current team members will see Search Influence as a progressive employer when it comes to pay, benefits, and paid time off, providing the ability to work hard, do great work, and take advantage of all of the great things that life in New Orleans has to offer.

Interested in Learning What Sets Us Apart?

Our drive to help clients find more customers online has enabled us to become the largest digital marketing agency on the Gulf Coast. It has been our ability to achieve reliable results and our desire to teach what we’ve learned that has made us a recognized national leader in digital marketing.

If you’re interested in learning more about how we help businesses grow, please get in touch. To learn more about our approach to talent management, read about our recently updated compensation philosophy and please visit our current openings to learn how to join our team of dedicated professionals.

August 24, 2017
Rookie Website Mistakes, Part 2: Not Allowing Google to See Your Website
Congrats, you’ve finally created a website for your business! And in the last post in our Rookie Website Mistakes blog series, you even learned how to bring your site up to speed. Now’s the part where you pat yourself on the back and start thinking about how to work your way to the top of the first page in the search results.

Well, hold your horses—Google’s really smart, but it’s not magic. Think of the search engine results pages (SERPs) as an insanely big library: if you’ve written a novel, the book doesn’t automatically appear in the correct place on the correct library shelf. You’d have to get someone to read it, decide what it’s about, and figure out how to catalog it somewhere in the existing shelves. In the same way, Google needs to actually “read” your website before it can make a decision about where it fits in in the SERPs.

And if you’ve accidentally prevented Google from reading your site at all, it has no way to fit it into its library. As a result, the “if you build it, they will come” mindset definitely doesn’t apply: potential customers won’t find you if your site isn’t showing up when they search for it. Failing to allow search engines to actually find your website is a very common rookie mistake when moving WordPress sites from staging to a live server, but a little knowledge of how Google works can help bring your site up to speed.

How Does Google Find and “Read” Your Website?

According to Verisign‘s Domain Name Industry Brief, there were approximately 330.6 million domain name registrations in the first quarter of this year alone. Google’s a huge company, but its employees don’t have time to read all of these new sites. Instead, they entrust that task to specialized bots, called “spiders,” “crawlers,” or “Googlebot,” that automatically discover your website and analyze its contents.

These bots “crawl” websites by moving through one link to the next, bringing back information for the search engines. Google also uses these spiders to analyze updates to your site, but since you’re just starting out in the website ownership process, let’s focus on site discovery. “Indexing” is the process of discovering your site and deciding where it fits into Google’s library. A page has been indexed when Googlebot’s results have been recorded in Google’s index, or the massive database of the search engine, allowing the page to actually show up in the SERPs.

One interesting thing to point out is that the terms “crawl” and “index” are related but not necessarily dependent on each other. In other words, just because a bot has visited a page doesn’t necessarily mean that the page has been indexed. Similarly, it’s possible for a page to be indexed without ever having been crawled (in rare cases).

What Happens When Googlebot Is Blocked?

If Googlebot is unable to see what’s on your site, it means that no crawling and indexing is happening. This, in turn, might mean a loss of rankings in the SERPs.

There are a few ways your site might be blocking Googlebot:
- Firewalls – Using a firewall or DoS protection system is always best practice, but your systems might be recognizing Googlebot as a potential threat. Because Googlebot tends to make far more server requests than your average human user, the firewall on your site might flag this as threatening behavior, preventing the bots from crawling your website.
- Intentional blocking – The webmaster of your site might intentionally block Googlebot in an attempt to control how the site is crawled and indexed.
- DNS issues – Your DNS provider may be inadvertently blocking bots.
How Do You Ensure That You Aren’t Telling Helpful Bots to “Get Lost”?

Here are a few things to double check to be sure you’re putting out the welcome mat for your helpful crawlers.

First things first: check for noindex meta tags, which basically tell bots “thanks, but no thanks.” It seems obvious, but removing a line of code may be all you need to do to get indexed.

Next, check your robots.txt file. It’s not a mistake to use this file at the root of your site; when used effectively, it allows you to give bots exact direction as to which pages you want crawled and which bots you want to access your site. However, if you’re using it incorrectly, you might be blocking Googlebot from seeing your site at all. You can learn more about robots.txt here, and Google offers plenty of additional information to help you understand how to use robots.txt files effectively with Googlebot.

You might also want to configure your URL parameters through Google Webmaster Tools to control Googlebot’s access without a loss of search ranking.

Finally, if a firewall or any kind of bot blocking script is the culprit, you’ll need to manually remove the block. For DNS issues you can’t fix on your own, try contacting your DNS provider.

How Long Does it Take Google to Crawl Your Site?

Note that even after making these changes, you’ll need to give Google a few days (at least) to index your site—it won’t happen instantly. And once you’ve made sure Google is able to access your site for crawling and indexing, you can move forward by optimizing your website for spiders to make it easier to crawl. If you need help with that next step, our team would be happy to get you on the right track. Contact an expert from our team anytime.

Stay tuned for our next entry in our blog series: Rookie Website Mistakes, Part 3: Your Site Isn’t Mobile Friendly.

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August 17, 2017
Rookie Website Mistakes, Part 1: Slow Loading Speed
74 percent of customers will leave a website if it fails to load within 5 seconds. And the numbers don’t look too great even if your site is noticeably faster—according to Google engineers, anything slower than the blink of an eye, 400 milliseconds, can cause users to leave a page and search elsewhere. Google released their Caffeine update in 2010, placing importance on site speed for search ranking factors. With such a demand on site performance, it’s more important than ever that business owners and their partners understand not only why page speed is important but also what affects it and how to remedy a sluggish site.

Why Is Speed Important for Search Factors?

Overall site speed is based on a sample of different pages from the site. “Page speed” can be broken down either as “time to first byte” or “page load time.” The first of these, the time it takes for a browser to receive the first byte of information from the server, has been shown to correlate to search rankings. “Page load time” more noticeably affects the user experience, but it can also impact SEO.

All of that hard work you’ve put into developing and designing your new site, implementing beautiful images, creating an intuitive navigation, and writing and implementing pages of content for users to scour—it can all mean nothing if your pages take longer to load than what has come to be expected. The longer someone waits for a page to load, the sooner he or she begins to look for other avenues to find a product, purchase a ticket, or make a reservation. And with the magnitude of resources available today, it’s only a matter of time until they leave your slow-loading site (bounce) and seek their information elsewhere via a new search.

The average user doesn’t have time for your slow page to load, and rightly so. We shouldn’t be subjecting potential customers to a dull experience. We wait in traffic. We wait on elevators. We wait on our bread in the toaster. But when it comes to our web experience, we aren’t stuck in the ‘90s with pages that can’t possibly load any faster than 10 seconds. There are tools and practices at our fingerprints that can make your flashy new website lightning fast and more easily crawlable by search engines.

Page Performance Impacts User Experience

Now, a slow loading page isn’t the be-all-end-all factor for search rankings. In fact, there are over 200 factors that go into search rankings. However, it can impact conversions and sales due to a poor user experience.

When’s the last time you sat and waited for a page to load? How long until you gave up and tried a competitor that sells the same type of product or service? It’s worth repeating that users expect speed. Whether they’re searching on desktop or mobile (and most have been on mobile for close to two years), an inefficient website can frustrate users and result in lost business. So, what are some easy ways to make the user experience more friendly and eliminate high bounce rates that result from slow load times? Our developers can help diagnose more specific problems, but here are a few tips to get started:
- Eliminate multiple pop-ups or spammy widgets used for sales on your site
- Create smart site navigation to give users a clear path to a purchase
- Implement direct calls to action with forms or buttons throughout your site
There are other steps that can be made on the backend of your site that can help with load time, like limiting redirects, organizing your HTML, and compressing your images, but the above-mentioned tips are a step in right direction toward enhancing the way users will interact with your site.

Regain Potential Lost Conversions and Sales

While load time might not be the biggest contributing factor to a poor search ranking, it can certainly contribute to a lower conversion rate. According to surveys done by Akamai and Gomez.com, 79 percent of web shoppers who have trouble with website performance say they won’t return to the site to buy again, and around 44 percent of them would tell a friend if they had a poor experience shopping online.

In the same survey, they found that a 1-second delay in page response can result in a 7 percent reduction in conversions. To put that in a sales perspective, if an e-commerce site is making $100,000 per day, a 1-second page delay could potentially cost $2.5 million in lost sales every year. That’s a huge number for a 1-second delay. To give another example of a direct ROI, for every 1 second of speed improvement to Amazon’s website, their conversion rate went up 2 percent.

For your landing pages to convert visitors into customers, you need to give them an enjoyable experience. The nice thing about doing technical work to decrease page load time is that it simultaneously benefits your bottom line. A faster, cleaner site means a higher likelihood that visitors will stay, peruse your content, fill out a form, and eventually convert into a customer.

A Faster Site Helps You Serve Your Customers Better

While there are many mistakes that rookies make when building a website, starting a marketing campaign, and attempting to grow their brand, not recognizing key SEO factors that slow down their pages’ load times is one of the more frequent culprits.

Stay tuned for our next entry in our blog series: Rookie Mistakes, Part 2: Not Allowing Your Site to Be Found by Search Engines.

Contact an expert from our team if page load time has been an issue for your business’s or institution’s website.

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August 10, 2017
How to Use Google’s New Quality Score Columns to Drive Lower Costs Per Conversion
If you’re a hands-on business owner using Google AdWords, you’ve no doubt come across the term “Quality Score.” You know it’s an important metric for the success of your account, but what does it mean? What factors contribute to this important number? And how does improving the overall quality of your account result in more leads? In this blog post, I’ll take you through a quick introduction to Google’s Quality Score and several strategies for monitoring, analyzing, and optimizing this metric.

What Is Quality Score?

According to Google, “Quality Score is intended to give you a general sense of the quality of your ads. The 1-10 Quality Score reported for each keyword in your account is an estimate of the quality of your ads and the landing pages triggered by them.” The main components of a keyword’s Quality Score are the Expected CTR for your account’s keywords and how your performance stacks up against that expectation, Landing Page Experience, and Ad Relevance. As your account runs and your keywords begin to receive impressions and clicks, Google ranks each keyword as Above Average, Average, or Below Average for the following criteria:
- Ad Relevance – This component quantifies how closely related your keyword is to the ads in your ad group.
- Landing Page Experience – Google rates your site based on the relevancy of your keywords to your landing page and the ease of navigation. Can the user find what they’re looking for on your landing page?
- Expected CTR – AdWords knows the historical CTR of your ads. Using this information, the platform determines an Expected CTR for a given keyword and each keyword is then measured by how close actual performance is to that pre-determined expected performance.
A keyword’s Quality Score used to be based on the keyword’s historical performance on Google until it achieved a significant number of impressions in your account. However, now Google reports a null score until that threshold has been reached. Once the keyword receives a significant number of impressions, its Quality Score will start to reflect how it performs in your account, and historical performance will be a lesser factor.

Theoretically, your account level Quality Score is the cumulative result of the historical performance of all keywords in an account. It would be a painstaking process to capture this information on an individual keyword basis to determine the average Quality Score across the account. Luckily, there are wonderful geniuses who have developed scripts to do this for us. Google doesn’t confirm this Quality Score’s existence, but it’s generally accepted that there are different levels of Quality Score other than the visible keyword level Quality Score.

Why Is Quality Score important?

The components of Quality Score along with your set bid and the expected impact of your ad extensions are factors in the calculation of your Ad Rank. Your Ad Rank determines the position in which your ad will show as well as how much you pay for each click. Improvements in your Quality Score can lead directly to decreased Costs per Click. Without raising your monthly digital advertising budget, reduced CPCs allow you to generate more traffic to your site. The additional, cheaper traffic to your site creates more opportunities for Conversions at a reduced cost.

Where Can I Find the Quality Score?

Whether you’re using the new AdWords experience or the old interface, navigation is similar. However, there are a few additional functions currently only available in the old AdWords that we’ll explore in a later section.
1. Navigate to AdWords and select Keywords in the page menu.
1. If not already present, you may need to modify your columns to include the Quality Score column.
2. Now you will be able to compare Quality Score across keywords.
- You can sort by Quality Score or use the filter function to view only keywords with a specific Quality Score threshold.
What Is a “Good” Quality Score?

If a keyword’s Quality Score is 1-3, this is cause for concern. You’ll want to identify specific criteria needing improvement. If the score is 4-5, you can definitely make a couple of improvements, but you’ll want to focus on improving the areas that will have the biggest impact on your overall Quality Score. If the keyword’s Quality Score is 6 and above, the keyword is performing quite well, and you might only make minor adjustments.

How Can I Diagnose My Quality Score?

You know that a Quality Score of 2 isn’t great, but how do you figure out where to start with improvements? In the old AdWords, you used to have to hover over the speech bubble next to the keyword to see Google’s rating of each of the three factors.

This is extremely time-consuming. In the past, we’ve used a script to make this process a little more automated, but in early May of 2017, Google released brand new Quality Score columns to make the large-scale analysis of this data even easier. In the old AdWords, modify your columns and review the parameters available under the Quality Score heading. Unfortunately, these columns are not yet available in the new AdWords experience as of this posting.

Google now allows you to add columns to see your criteria rankings—Above Average, Average, or Below Average—within the platform. If a keyword has Above Average ratings for 2 out of 3 factors, you can easily identify which factor is having the greatest impact on the Quality Score for that keyword. There are also historical measurements of these metrics that can help you determine whether changes to your account positively or negatively affect the various components of Quality Score. For instance, reviewing historical Quality Score performance alongside current performance can help you determine if the new ads you implemented improved Ad Relevance or if the edits to your Landing Page contributed to improving the overall experience.

How Can I Improve My Quality Score?

So now that you’ve identified areas for improvement, what steps can you take to fix these issues? If your keyword has a Below Average Expected CTR, this is the easiest element of Quality Score to improve. Here are some strategies for improving this criterion:
- Review the Search Term Report for this keyword for opportunities to implement more relevant keywords that users are searching and clicking in place of the keyword with a low expected CTR.
- This could also mean that your ads are not compelling enough for people to click through. A quick way to give your account a natural CTR boost is including Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) in your ads.
If Ad Relevance is an issue in your account:
- An ad is deemed relevant to a keyword when the keyword appears in the ad. Review your ads alongside your keyword to determine if the keyword in question is highly relevant to the ads for that ad group.
- As I’ve already mentioned, account organization is key. Would the keyword be more relevant to another existing ad group? Is the keyword important enough to warrant the creation of a separate ad group?
- You can also duplicate an existing ad and edit the copy to include a keyword with a low Quality Score to try and give that keyword a boost.
- Ensure that your ads are answers to the queries the ad group most often receives. Reviewing your Search Term reports can help you figure out the information that users are most curious about.
- Google also takes into account keyword density on the site, so improving your Landing Page could also be a factor to improving ad relevance.
If your Landing Page Experience is subpar:
- Don’t ignore the impact of your site’s mobile landing page experience!
- Make sure that your keywords and ads are relevant to the content on the landing page.
- Implement image optimizations like meta text, title tags, and alt text to include relevant keywords.
- Brainstorm better CTAs for your buttons.
- Improve your content.
- Create more visible conversion points, like a highlighted click to call button on mobile, a click to call button at the top of the body content, and a corresponding form below.
- Work to improve the navigation experience.
- Forms or downloads on the landing page should clearly indicate what will happen if clicked by the user.
You can’t have a “set it and forget it” mindset when it comes to Quality Score, especially considering the potential impact on your overall Cost per Conversion. I recommend performing a quarterly Quality Score analysis on your account and using insights from that analysis to drive the next quarter’s account optimizations, pacing out your changes, and using the historical Quality Score columns to judge the impact of your optimizations. If you have any other Quality Score tips, tricks or insights, please leave us a comment. If you’re new to AdWords and need some help setting up your account for success, please reach out to our team. We would love to help you optimize your potential!
August 9, 2017
Success Story: ALCC American Language
Learn how we helped ALCC American Language new inquiries while delivering higher site traffic and more frequent engagement on social media.

The Situation

The client is a language school located in New York City whose mission is to help international and local students learn English in a supportive atmosphere. The client’s goal was to increase the number of enrolled students and increase their number of fans on Facebook.

The Approach

Our strategy included a mix of campaigns that would ultimately increase the volume of leads via forms, calls, and social media engagement by making the client more visible and accessible online.

We did this using the following campaigns:
- Demographically and behaviorally targeted Facebook Advertising
- Google Paid Search advertising
- Search engine optimization including website improvements and authority building
The Outcome

Paid Search:

When analyzing their paid ads campaign, even 2 years after initial launch, ALCC American Language saw continued growth in new student inquiries and conversion rate. During 2016, they averaged 279 new inquiries per month (179 calls and 100 website contact form submissions). Testing and tuning the campaign resulted in a conversion rate of 6.69%, which is an increase from the start of their campaign in 2013 at 2%. Additionally, in 2016 the paid ads averaged 55,250 impressions and 4,160 clicks per month.

Facebook:

Looking year over year from 2015 to 2016, the client saw a significant rise in Facebook engagement. Their fans increased from 10,000 to 18,000 fans and the engagement, which includes reactions, comments, and shares, increased from 34,000 to 42,000.

Search Engine Optimization:

Through methods such as monthly blogging, press releases, user experience improvements, authority building, and helpful website content, the client gained increased Google rankings for top key search terms and overall website traffic. At the start of ALCC American Language’s campaign, they weren’t ranking for industry relevant keywords and common search terms. As of this year, they are ranking in the top 5 positions of Google for the majority of their important keywords. Additionally, they saw a 57% increase in their goal conversion rate from their total website traffic and a 38% increase in web page visits per session from their organic website traffic when comparing 2015-2015 to 2016-2017.

By using a comprehensive, custom strategy, we were able to help ALCC American Language bring in more prospective students so that they can continue to do what they do best—help those striving to learn English. Interested in learning how we can help improve your online presence? Reach out to us at any time.
August 2, 2017
Join Us in Welcoming Our Newest Team Member!

SI is happy to have new team member Shelby Emens in the office, adding a bright new face to our endless summer of Influencers.

Shelby Emens (Junior Web Developer)

Recently relocated from rural Michigan, Shelby completed her Bachelor of Science in Technical Writing from Grand Valley State University. She is excited to join the Search Influence team and is looking forward to not dealing with snow during the winter! Outside of work, Shelby enjoys spending her free time reading, playing video games, and spending time with friends.

Welcome to the team, Shelby!

July 31, 2017