townsend.bunksite.com

Tag: content strategy

“Where You At?” 4 Attractions That Are Owning and Winning the Social Media Game

If you’re anything like me, you’re likely to experience an immediate rush of nostalgia when you hear the phrase “where you at?” Probably because you can recall the early 2000’s when Boost Mobile coined the famous tagline. However, with updates to technology happening all around us, the popular tagline has never been more applicable. Thanks to social media, we’re no longer limited to experiencing some of the world’s greatest wonders and destinations through a fashion magazine or a dusty book at the neighborhood library. Now, with a finger scroll, you can experience live snaps from the Louvre in Paris by night and wake up to astounding images of Tokyo’s Imperial Palace by morning.

Although some attractions have found the path to social media enlightenment challenging, enticing content can generate the right kind of attention and turn your historic venue or neighborhood candy store into the next viral sensation. Here’s a look at four different attractions that have used social media to help skyrocket their brand’s popularity and engage audiences.

The Tate Collective

It’s not every day that you see dancing art from the 1840s, but The Tate Collective, a collection of four UK art galleries, managed to change the way millennials saw classical art with their 1940s GIF party. Using their wide reach in the area and the innovation of a growing young population, their site saw one GIF re-blogged over 100,000 times, increasing the Tate Collective’s Tumblr followers by 25,000 users throughout the campaign.

Grand Central Station

While it’s not your typical attraction, Grand Central Station provides a great example of an entity whose making the most of social media. With 750,000 people trekking through the station every day, this travel hub has turned into a true social experience. Creating their own easy to remember hashtag (#ShareGCT), their Instagram, @GrandCentralNYC encourages visitors to share the sights and sounds of one of the world’s busiest travel stations. Not only does this provide visibility through user sharing but it also creates great content for them and an awesome way for travelers to occupy their time.

The Metrograph

Utilizing a cool backdrop to attract visitors, the Metrograph has made the most of their newly acquired foot traffic by also using it as a teaching experience. Metrograph’s designer accidentally created one of New York’s hottest new Instagram backdrops by “Sharing the magic of cinema beyond the rectangle of the movie frame.”

New Orleans Tourism and Marketing Corporation

Last but not least, we have the city of New Orleans. The city has perfected its social media campaigns just in time for its tricentennial celebration. With what’s slated to be one of the city’s largest celebrations, the New Orleans Tourism and Marketing Corporation (NOTMC) took to social media to coin the giant fête’s theme and slogan, “One Time In New Orleans.” Having had ample time, they’ve perfected the pitch using their captivating #FollowYourNOLA campaign across all social media platforms. NOTMC has set the precedent for how an entire city can showcase itself to the world!

Although you may lack the budget of an entire city, not to worry—you too can generate revenue simply by capturing engaging photos and videos from some of your city’s most unique landmarks and busiest hubs.

How to Make Yourself #Instagrammable

Becoming a viral sensation doesn’t require in-depth knowledge of string theory, but it does take some strategic planning in order to execute it effectively. So, how can you do it? We’ve gathered a few simple tips:

Pay Attention!

Make sure to pay close attention not just to the trends on social media, but also your customers’ behaviors. If you notice that your visitors are drawn to a particular window or centerpiece, then encourage them to share it on their social media! Whether it’s a cool Instagram frame prop or your own clever hashtag, encourage avid and amateur photographers to capture and share their vision with the world. Consistency is key here—the more engaging the content the better!

Keep It Simple, Silly!

Social media, while ever-changing, has always stayed true to one principle: Everyone can do it.

Ease of access to social media has made networks like Twitter and Instagram catapult to the forefront of experience sharing. Don’t believe me? Try social listening to gauge just how many users are on board with Instagram’s change in chronology, or Twitter’s new testing feature that now allows users to tweet with a 280-character limit.

#DontOverkillTheHashtagTitle

When curating your hashtag, make sure it’s easy to remember. The last thing you want is for a spelling error to donate your hard earned traffic to another profile. Not only will your hashtags generate lots of attention, but also the constant onslaught of user-generated content will make for weeks of recyclable posts! You’ve filled your content calendar without even having to schedule a professional photo shoot. Keep it simple yet provocative, and you, too, can be #Instagrammable.

Time to Empty Your Plate

Got the creativity but don’t have the time? Or, have the time and not the creativity? There’s a professional for that! Let our team at Search Influence help you create a social media campaign that will engage your clients and potential customers.

Here at Search Influence, we’ve established ourselves as leaders in digital marketing by executing social media strategies for the likes of The National WWII Museum and the Audubon Nature Institute. Learn more about how you can Up Your Social Media Game!

Image:

Sunglasses

Bachelorette

October 11, 2017
Rookie Website Mistakes, Part 6: You Abandon Good Work When Replacing an Old Site
So, you’re launching a new spiffy, user-friendly website? Or, maybe you’re migrating your site from an HTTP to HTTPS secure domain? To make the launch as successful as possible, there are a few important steps you (or more likely your web developer) should take on the backend to facilitate a seamless transition.

Changing your URL requires a strategic plan. Without it, you could end up with lost links, dreaded 404 errors, and annoyed customers. If you’ve built some authority for your site, you also need to manage your page rankings during the process. No one wants to watch traffic plummet when they launch a new site.

While it may not be as exciting as creating the design or building out new pages, here are four absolutely necessary administrative steps to take during the launch of your new site.

Set Up 301 Redirects

A 301 redirect will automatically transfer users from the old URL to the new page on the website that replaces it. So, when someone types in your old domain they will still end up on your beautiful, newly-designed (or newly-secure) website.

While there are other options for redirecting links, 301 redirects are the safest and most trusted way to permanently redirect pages without diluting PageRank on Google. In fact, Moz estimates that 90–99 percent of ranking power will pass from the old page to the new one with the use of a 301 redirect. This is because Google bots recognize 301s as a permanent change, indicating that the original content from the old URL has found a new home on the redirected page.

There is no limit to the number of 301s you can use per site, so you can (and should) redirect all of your old, viable content to new URLs for your new site in order to retain all of the rank power (also known as link juice) from your old site.

To make this happen, extract all the URLs from your content management system or export the URLs from Google Analytics to create a list of the URLs on your existing site. Don’t forget to include landing pages from any paid search campaigns you’re running, as Google will lower your quality score for running ads with broken links.

Once you have this list, you can proceed to the next item on our list, mapping out your new site.

Update Site Maps

As you learned in part four of this series, you’ll obviously want to have more than one page on your new site. An updated sitemap should be the foundation for your new site design. Start by creating a list of all the pages you know you want to include in your new site. Your old site’s URL list (see above) can provide a foundation for essential pages that you know you want to keep, especially the pages on the old site with inbound links that help improve rankings.

Map out all planned pages that correspond to pages on your old site so you can set up redirects for all of those pages. You’ll also want to take note of key analytics on legacy pages to use for comparison once the new site is launched.

The following are some ideas for what you should track for your benchmark:
- Organic traffic and page visits
- Bounce rate
- Page loading speed
- Conversions per page
- Rankings for priority keywords
From here, you’re ready to create a robots.txt file and an XML sitemap to give Google and other search engines the right information to crawl your new site. If any of the steps so far have left you scratching your head or frantically googling SEO jargon, one of our friendly tech gurus can help you out!

Recycle Existing Content & Optimize for SEO

Creating a new website from scratch is already a big undertaking—don’t recreate the circle. Be sure you bring over your existing title tags, meta descriptions, and page headings and ensure all new content includes these essential SEO elements. This is also the perfect time to audit your existing content to ensure that it meets the latest best practices. Are multiple pages using the same headline (h1) or meta descriptions? Do pages have broken internal or external links? Are images too big and slowing download time?

Use what works, fix what doesn’t. Your content for each page should be unique, use keywords naturally (without stuffing), and include logical internal links.

Don’t Forget About Google Analytics

As you launch the new site, it will be more important than ever to track analytics and ensure that everything is functioning like it should. Migrating to a new domain is a huge, detailed undertaking, and little problems are likely to arise.

Make sure that the Google Analytics tracking code is properly installed on each page of the new site and collecting data. With your collected benchmark data, you can compare traffic and rankings for the new site and check and adjust as needed. Tools like Screaming Frog can also help you check for 404 errors on the new site and alert you to any issues with pages being indexed improperly via your robots.txt file.

Images:

Lost Duck
October 10, 2017
Rookie Website Mistakes, Part 5: Weak Content

Welcome to Part 5 of our series on Rookie Website Mistakes. In Part 4, we learned about single page website design and how they often put form over function much to the detriment of your SEO and the user experience. While we all want a shiny new website with all the bows and whistles, it’s more important to focus on quality content that will give the users what they want. Having weak content can prevent search engines from exploring your site and leave visitors with more questions than answers. Avoid this mistake by following the tips below.

Hit the Sweet Spot of Content Length

Unfortunately, there’s no magic number for how long your content should be. Because I can’t tell you that precisely 253 words will make your page number one, I’ll instead give you the frustrating advice my high school English teacher gave me–your content should be as long as it needs to be. Obnoxious, right? But, what it comes down to is that your content should provide all of the related information on the given topic you’ve chosen for the page.

Very broad topics, like ‘what is family law,’ are going to be longer, while very specific topics, such as ‘features of Victorian-style roofing,’ might not have as many relevant details. Generally, more technical content like a plastic surgery procedure outline will be 500–700 words, while an ‘About Us’ page will be more around 250.

If you’re not sure how much you should write on a given topic, scope out your competitor’s pages to see how much they’ve written. If they’ve written 500 words, chances are you can build out your own content to be more competitive than theirs.

That being said, you don’t want to over-inflate your content just to make it longer. The other half of ‘as long as it needs to be’ is that it shouldn’t be any more than necessary to make your point. At Search Influence, we’ve named this superfluous content ‘fluff”; it provides the same amount of nutrition to your content as fluffy cotton candy. Fluffy content makes you sound less authoritative on the subject and doesn’t actually provide the reader with important or new information.

Focus on EAT Content

Google uses the acronym EAT to describe the characteristics of high-quality content: Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. The opposite of fluff is EAT content. Producing EAT content gives you a better reputation in the eyes of Google, and it can help you rank above competitors writing on the same topic who don’t meet the EAT requirements.

Of all the EAT qualifications, expertise sounds the scariest. When you’re a marketer or a small business owner, you might not feel like an expert on everything you want to write about, and you may not have a degree or certificate that proves you’re an expert. For some topics, like medical and financial, Google expects that you have some sort of formal training to back up your knowledge on the subject. But for most industries, “everyday expertise” that you’ve acquired from working in the field or having a first-hand experience is sufficient. Google evaluates expertise by looking at how useful and detailed the content is, so the goal should be to write what you know, and your expertise will shine through.

You can also increase your EAT levels by incorporating specific statistics, studies, and other information from reputable sources. Make sure to cite the source and explain the findings in your own words if you can. You don’t need to be overly formal about this, either; saying something like “According to the CDC, 43 percent of sudden, unexpected infant deaths are caused by SIDs” would be sufficient.

Save Your Spam for Quick Lunches

Keyword stuffing is an old SEO practice that involves using a keyphrase as many times as humanly possible in the content, even if it doesn’t make sense in context. Sometimes, the keyphrase would even be hidden in the page footers and the background of the page! Google has caught on to this and will penalize sites they think are providing a poor user experience by being spammy. Focus on writing clear content that is centered on a theme and answers the reader’s potential questions. Then you can go back and naturally incorporate a few keyphrases throughout the content.

Try to pick long-tail keywords that are more specific. For example, instead of using the broad keyphrase ‘botox,’ you could use variations of the long-tail keyphrase ‘does Botox work on crows feet.’ Google is clever enough to pick up on variations, so you can use the exact match long-tail keyword from the example above, and then use ‘Botox for crows feet,’ ‘crows feet Botox,’ ‘treating crows feet with Botox,’ and even ‘Botox around the eyes’ throughout the content to keep things natural.

If you’re unsure what keyphrases you should be using and trying to rank for, Search Influence can build you build a keyword strategy, track your keyword rankings, and even write content for you. Call us to discuss your content goals!

Put Some Words Behind the Scenes

While putting keywords in all sorts of nooks and crannies of your site is considered spam, there are some parts of the backend of your website where you should optimize for keyphrases. Make sure you check out this previous blog for an explanation of what the backend of the site means if you’re unsure what I’m talking about.

Readers can’t see the metadata of a page when they’re viewing your content, but search engines can see it. It works as a sort of behind the scenes shortcut to what your page is about. Your title tag, meta description, and image alt text should all have relevant keyphrases to solidify ‘this is what this page is about.’

But metadata is useful for people, too. The title tag and meta description appear in the search results; they encourage the viewer to click through to the page by showing them what kind of information they should expect from your content. Alt text on images will appear in place of an image if for some reason the image won’t display. It is also used by screen readers to describe an image to visually-impaired users. Without alt text, users and search engines could be missing out on crucial information.

Craft a Killer Call-to-Action

The final piece of really strong content is a great call-to-action. Now that visitors have read your content, what do you want them to do? This should be a specific action and related to the content they’ve just read. If you’re a cobbler and I’ve just read your page on all the different styles of shoes you can cobble, I should have a pretty clear idea if my shoes can be cobbled. So now, I may want to learn more about the process, what it will cost, or how I can go about making an appointment to have my specific shoe assessed. The call-to-action will direct me to something I will find useful and that will still serve your business needs and entice me to eventually come in to the shop. The goal is to use the call-to-action to convert.

Strong content will build trust with the reader, provide them with valuable information, and help drive them to buy your product or service. Putting words on the page just for the sake of it could actually drive them away. Download our whitepaper for more information, and tune in next time to learn about mistakes made when going to replace an old website.

Images:

SPAM

October 6, 2017
How Patients Are Searching for Doctors Online: Make It Easier for Them to Find You

The digital world has infiltrated every facet of our lives, including our health care. Yet, many physicians don’t know how to best compete in this online marketplace. The sheer amount of information on the internet has empowered patients to choose physicians with discretion and change care providers if they don’t have a good experience.

By placing your clinic’s online presence in the same digital spaces that your potential patients occupy, you can increase the likelihood that they’ll choose you for their next appointment.

Help Them Find Their Diagnosis

Patients come into an appointment with a pretty robust working knowledge of all the possible rare tropical diseases they could have and a comprehensive list of all side effects of each potential treatment. How do they have all of this information? They Googled it.

While some people still go straight to their mom, most first enter their symptoms into a search engine or medical-focused portal like WebMD. They investigate all the possible causes of the symptoms, available treatment options, and further advice on what kind of care they should seek. By creating content that answers these questions, you can position yourself as an authority on the subject and build trust with the readers.

Claim Your Listings

Once people have a good idea of what could be wrong with them and what kind of medical care they need, they might not immediately make an appointment. Instead, they may return to search engines to do further research. They search facilities and doctors nearby, check to see which providers are in their insurance network, and read reviews. This chart from Gravitate shows some of the queries people are searching.

Having information about specializations, board certifications, awards, presented papers, and other selling points on your website is useful, but often patients are looking at third-party sites like Healthgrades for reviews from other patients. You only have control over the content of your website, but if you claim your listings on some of these sites, you can update them to have an up-to-date address and phone number, a link to your website, a list of current physicians and specialties, and even responses to negative reviews.

For help claiming your listings or other healthcare marketing services, contact Search Influence.

Put a Face to Your Practice

When you claim your listings, it’s a good idea to list all of your physicians and some of their basic information. You can also provide detailed bios of each doctor on your website. Yext conducted a study on how people search for physicians and found that 76.3% of patients search for individual providers, while only 29.9% research facilities.

Patients want to feel like a partner in their own healthcare, so finding a physician who is personable, knowledgeable, a good listener, and willing to go out of their way to help the patient is important; a strong doctor-patient relationship may even be favored over a cutting-edge facility if the patient is seeing a different doctor every time or feels more like a lab rat than a person.

By giving information about the people behind your practice, you’ll appear in front of a much wider audience and get conversions through your personality and expertise.

Take Advantage of Social Media

Americans, especially the younger generations, get the majority of their news and information from social media, for good or ill. But even older people use social media to share interesting articles and connect with people who share similar experiences and worldviews. By sharing important and relevant medical information, you can help educate patients and combat misinformation.

If you consistently share quality content, potential patients will trust you and see you as an authority within your field. While they may not run off and make an appointment immediately, you will be in their minds already the next time they get sick. Social media is also a great way to continue to engage with patients you’ve seen before by responding to comments and questions. This way, they will feel like you still care for them as a person, even after their treatment has ended. Just be sure to maintain patient privacy.

By finding patients where they are on the internet and providing them with quality content that answers their questions, you can position yourself as a source for medical information and quality care. Contact our team for help building a digital marketing campaign suited to the unique needs of the medical industry.

Images:

Gravitate Graph

September 27, 2017
Turning Links Into Lemonade: Your Guide to Juicy Internal Linking
You’ve likely heard of internal links. In terms of SEO jargon (which there’s a lot to sift through), they’re pretty straightforward. Internal links are just the hyperlinks on your site that point to other pages within the same domain. For example, your homepage content probably has internal links pointing readers to your primary service or product pages. While a blog post might incorporate internal links to other posts that elaborate on a similar topic—or better yet, a service page that helps users solve the problem focused on in the blog post.

The navigation menu for your website is also a structure for internal linking to ensure that all of your pages are connected and easily crawlable by search engines. It’s important that all new pages you create are linked back to your homepage using this navigation. For the purpose of this post, however, we’re going to assume your navigation is set up and focus on the internal links you incorporate into the actual content of your pages and posts.

Choose Internal Links for Users & Crawlers

Internal links are easy to understand, but don’t underestimate their power—both in terms of SEO ranking and an improved user experience.

When you properly use internal links, you’re spreading ranking power (also known as “link juice”) and authority from your site to that specific page, which improves the chances that it will also rank in search results. Internal links act as road signs, telling search engines which pages to crawl next on your site. On top of that, when you use highly relevant content links that match users’ search queries you’re confirming your authority.

Internal links also plot the course for users (humans) to navigate your website and find the most relevant content to meet their needs. This keeps them on your site longer and improves the user experience. Just imagine that a prospective customer finds your blog post about steps to take when you get a flat tire, then within the post, they find a strategically-placed link leading them to your tire company’s product page about how to find replacement tires. With the right internal linking, you’ve given that person the information they needed and even offered a solution.

So what does it mean to properly use internal links? There’s not always a hard and fast rule for when to link, how much to link, where to link, and the like. But this guide can offer a primer for getting started.

Choose Appropriate Anchor Text

The anchor text for your internal link is simply the clickable words you select to turn into your hyperlink. You’ll want to think about your selection both in terms of the context of the sentence and how the anchor text reads on its own for skimmers. There’s no character count limitation for anchor text, but you should aim to keep it as concise as possible without sacrificing clarity. Your reader should know where they are headed before they click the link.

Landing them on a confusing or off-topic page that does not align with your anchor text disrupts the user experience. While keywords or topics for the content are a great first choice for relevant anchor text, Moz recommends using a variety of words throughout the post that most naturally fit for your anchor text. That’s because Google’s algorithm will take note of pages with too many keywords in anchor text and flag them as spam.

Instead, opt for descriptive, partial-match anchor text that contains part of the target topic within the text. For example, build a comprehensive SEO strategy with Search Influence. This link goes to our SEO services page, which you could probably guess based on the anchor text.

When in doubt, double-check that your anchor text meets the following criteria:
1. The anchor text fits naturally within the rest of the content on the page
2. There is zero mystery about where the user will land when they click the link
3. Anchor text selection is diverse across all the content on the page
Opt for Relevancy Over Quantity

We can’t overemphasize this enough: choose natural, relevant pages to link to within your content. Don’t force a link. Google and your users will catch on quick, end of story.

You should also avoid linking to the homepage or contact page. Those pages already have plenty of link juice. If your reader is already on an internal page within your site, why would they want to backtrack to your homepage? Instead, do as Kissmetrics recommends and reach for a 1:1 ratio of deep internal links and main navigation links. If your page is content heavy, then you should link out to other content-rich pages that elaborate on your topic and keep your reader engaged.

While there is no magic number for how many links you need on a page, you can aim for about 2-4 contextual, natural links that make sense and address topics that would interest your reader. Just like with writing calls-to-action, you should assess each linking opportunity from the perspective of your prospective buyer to see if the target page is a good fit.

Audit Existing Content for Linking Best Practices

Keeping your content fresh with new internal links is an important step because it notifies Google to crawl the page again, increasing your ranking opportunities. You can also make sure that your inventory of content remains up-to-date and relevant for readers. We recommend building a schedule for updating content on a regular basis, with priority given to posts that cover topics for which you’re most interested in ranking. If you’re a plastic surgeon, that might mean auditing all of your existing posts about breast augmentation and liposuction if those are your top two procedures.

When you update a page, we recommend checking for necessary updates, adding fresh content in the opening paragraph, then naturally incorporating internal links to any new related content. If you recently added pages about breast augmentation FAQs and post-surgery healing, then you’ll want to ensure those pages have link juice from other breast augmentation pages and posts on your site.

Tools like Moz’s Open Site Explorer allow you to see how many internal links are going back to each page on your site. This will give you a holistic view of your domain to see how you can move more link juice to specific pages that cover topics related to those top-priority ranking terms.

Of course, sorting through these tools and creating a dynamic strategy for link building takes a dedicated effort. If you’re short on time but eager to improve your link profile, contact us to chat with an expert.

Images:

Lemon

Counting
September 25, 2017
Rookie Website Mistakes, Part 4: You Have a Single Page Website

Single page websites are very popular right now with web designers. With so many new ways to develop websites, they’ve become a unique and scroll-friendly way for users to interact with a company in a way that they’re used to (cue the token image of people scrolling through phones). And, to be fair, they can be quite beautiful. For example, take this design from 415-Agency, a San Francisco-based design firm that works with healthcare companies to make their digital products user-friendly, seamless, and as they put it, “awesomely good looking.”

It’s an understatement to say that ton of work went into this site—it won them an honorable mention award from Awwwards, an organization that gives awards for the best designs, talent, and web dev agencies across the world. I’m a huge fan of exciting visual content, interactive graphics, and designs that enthrall. But, where some entrepreneurs get into trouble is when they try to manage a killer single page website while also optimizing it for SEO. They may come to discover that, for all its glitz and beauty, they’re the only ones actually finding it online.

Form Must Follow Function

Just as the customer is always the top priority, your website should follow that same line of logic. When thinking of how to design your website, think of not just how users will react to the visuals, but also how they will eventually interact with the site’s navigation. Give them clear avenues for finding more information, ordering products, or exploring your blog or testimonials. While a single-pager may seem simpler, it can often be easier to get lost and frustrated with trying to find a relevant page of content. To quote marketing guru Neil Patel, “website usefulness is more important than website beauty.”

If a user comes to your site and thinks, “wow,” then give your web designer a bonus or yourself a pat on the back. But, the more important thing you should worry about is if their next word they is, “how?” Users should know how to interact with your site pretty easily. If they don’t know what to do or how to do it, then your site is harming you, not helping you. This can also lead to high bounce rates—users will eventually get frustrated and leave your site for one with better navigation.

Another thing that can contribute to high bounce rates from your one-page design? Slow load times. I wrote about this in a previous blog in this series, but it’s worth mentioning here as well. Whether you’re using Flash (which, please don’t) or not, data-heavy load times due to unoptimized, large images that occupy your page’s whole screen can strangle your page load times.

Single Page Websites Lack the Opportunity for Detail Laden Content

Single page websites don’t have the space to allow for specific, rich content. From a user perspective, this limits the opportunity to provide a visitor with detailed, relevant content on topics they want to learn more about. Instead, they’re likely only able to view around a paragraph on specific topics. From an SEO perspective, this also gives search engines fewer opportunities to crawl your site for content that can help you move up in rankings while asserting yourself as an authority on your subject. It puts a great amount of pressure on a small amount of words. And, if you do manage to get a lot of content onto a single page, it ends up looking like it’s fighting for space.

Google likes to see that you’re updating your site with relevant content. If you have a single page site, you could make the argument that new content could be added to the bottom, creating an endless scroll of text and images. But, that method still doesn’t address the problem of not allowing search engines to crawl multiple pages of relevant content, and it also creates a headache of a user experience for visitors.

By building out pages for your content to live, you give visitors designated, clean spaces with which they can explore your services, products, or ideas (blog posts) to their heart’s content. They don’t have to scroll for a minute or two to find your latest blog post, and search crawlers can find it easier, too.

Forget About Performing Wide Keyword Targeting

Since single page sites are generally designed around one main concept, the opportunity for using multiple keywords is very limited. With a multi-page site, every page has a chance to introduce a new topic or genre that can include different types of keywords that target different users and open up multiple avenues for ranking.

With a single page site, it becomes extremely difficult to rank for varying keywords. For example, say you’re an owner of an HVAC company. You provide installations and repairs for furnaces, A/C systems, ductless A/C, water heaters, as well as air quality testing. By building separate pages for each of those services, you have an opportunity to move them each up in Google’s rankings, all while showing an increase in your authority. Putting all of your content in one page is like putting all of your keyword goals in one basket and hoping Google magically picks them up.

Missed Opportunities for Quality Tracking

Having multiple pages means multiple opportunities to track user behavior. You can track if someone spends 5 seconds or 5 minutes on a page about one of your services. With that valuable data, you can then focus your goals on what pages need work to bring in more visitors and convert them into customers. Obviously, this would be a difficult task for a single page site. The data showing time spent by your users will be very general, leaving you unable to tell what they love and what they dislike.

Are There Examples of Single Page Designs That Work?

There should and will always be design diversity on the internet. And sometimes, a single page site may work for you. For instance, take this site made by firm Gin Lane for GE that explores everything about the inside of volcanoes. Not only is the site visually satisfying, filled with video and interactive graphics, but the scroll feature of a single page makes sense because you’re literally venturing down into a volcano. Educational sites like this can have the luxury of not worrying about how SEO-friendly their content is because their main goal is to inform, not sell a product or service. Also, it doesn’t hurt that GE has the budget to build a site like this.

Another example of a single page site working to your advantage can be when you’re utilizing it as a promotion. FBC Creative Tech Design created a site for FOX’s upcoming show, “The Gifted,” a show based on the X-men series of comics. The site, using the fictional “Sentinel Services” organization from the show, details the reasons why people should get tested for the “x-gene.” There have been numerous pre-launch sites built to create a buzz around upcoming movies or shows, and this is a fantastic way to build awareness. They’re almost like temporary landing pages. It’s worth noting again that it’s no coincidence that some of the better single-pagers are tied to large organizations—they simply have the budget to pull it off.

Combining the Storytelling Approach of Single-Pagers Into Traditional Navigation Sites

There’s no denying that some single page websites create curiosity. They can encourage the user to explore by simply scrolling instead of clicking, and they (ideally) tell a story about their company along the way. Businesses looking to wow users with a cool site while also being optimized for SEO should try to incorporate this same type of organic curiosity into a multiple-page, traditional navigation website. It’s completely possible. Take this blueprint of a popular WordPress design scheme from Undsgn—Uncode.
Make each page a rewarding experience for users, where they can sit and really get comfortable with your content. If you design your multi-page site with the same goal of clean content without a lot of clutter and clear calls to action, then you’ll achieve a lot of the same aesthetic ideals of a single-pager, and with better SEO capabilities! Also, consider using visual content on your pages, like animation headers and background video. Just make sure they’re optimized so that they don’t slow down your load times.

The ultimate decision on whether or not you choose a single page website for your business will be up to you. Every website is different; it may work for you. But, it will also be that much trickier to see your site move up in Google’s eyes and, inevitably, in rankings. If you decide that more than one page fits your business, you should learn more about SEO services which are imperative to the health of your website.

Stay tuned for our next blog in the series, Rookie Website Mistakes, Part 5: The Content Is Weak.

Images:

Digital Design for Healthcare

Volcanoes

Blog Masonry

September 15, 2017
How to Write Clear CTAs That Convert
According to Small Business Trends, “70% of most B2B websites lack a call to action.”

With millions of websites in existence, the odds are slim that a user will visit your site and miraculously remember your URL or bookmark it for later viewing. Without a continued, personal connection through an email newsletter, a white paper download, a podcast subscription, a special offer, or another form, it may be the last time that person connects with your business online.

A call to action, or CTA, attempts to establish that connection with your potential customers once they click on your PPC ad and head to your landing page. Even if you’ve got a CTA on your site, it may be deterring visitors rather than inviting them to explore your business. Here are some tips to make your CTA convert visitors into customers.

Start Strong With Action Verbs

There’s not a lot of space to get your point across, so it’s important to get straight to the point. Use an action verb to start your call to action. If you’re in the eCommerce world, consider using words like “shop” to start your CTA, possibly followed by “and save 50%.” The goal is to be direct and informative, highlighting the exact action you want your potential customer to take.

Focus on Value and Benefits

As a general rule, think of how you might be able to finish your potential customer’s thoughts for their desires/pain points/expectations, and then use that action verb at the end of the following sentence: “I want to _______.” What was the first thing that came to mind that your clients might choose? Grow more leads? Find shoes that slay? Get My Custom Ad Analysis? Start My Free Software Trial? The answers to this hypothetical question are completely dependent upon your business, but one thing remains true—they need to focus on how you can delight your customer by providing them relevant solutions and unique selling points that make their life or job easier. Instead of phrases like “Buy Now,” which focus on an action a user has to do, get more creative by emphasizing what he or she will get out of clicking that CTA.

In a case study from Unbounce, a B2B website owner reported a 38.26% increase in conversions after replacing just one action verb—Order Information vs. Get Information. With the former, “order” puts the customer in a difficult position—there’s either purchasing the service or not. But with “get,” the potential customer gets to see advantages or rewards. He or she is potentially awarded valuable, relevant information for choosing to continue the buyer’s journey. It’s this combination of value and relevance that can make or break a click.

Another tip about delivering benefits: Don’t make claims or offers you can’t deliver on. This is going to be the start of a potential relationship with a new customer. The last thing you want to do is promise something you can’t afford.

Keep It Short and Be Specific

According to research performed by Dan Zarrella at Hubspot, the most engaging Press Release headlines are between 90–150 characters. The same holds true for crafting landing page headlines and their corresponding CTAs. Be concise, focused, and goal-oriented. Going back to emphasizing value for the customer, consider these more focused and value-driven options.

Generate Leads ⇒ Generate {higher quality} leads by {unique qualifier}

Drive Sales ⇒ Drive {higher value or more} sales by {unique feature}

Measure ROI ⇒ Measure ROI {across all channels} with our {unique product}

Sure, the first versions were about as short as you could get, but the amended CTAs remain concise while giving a more in-depth and accurate portrayal of what the customer will get. Clear copy should help reduce any anxiety or confusion that someone may have about exploring your company. And let’s face it; people have a limited amount of time to explore your content. Make the time they spend on your site valuable, not wasted.

Use Natural Language—Submit or Click Now? No Thanks.

These antiquated terms used to be exciting when it really was a novel concept to be able to click on something and get immediate results. After all, most CTAs before the internet involved a number that you had to call. Now, though, that novelty isn’t the selling point; what you can provide your customer is. When thinking about writing your CTA, think about how you can connect with them. One way to use this in your writing is to use the words “you” and “my/our.” For example, “Drew Brees Can’t Stop Talking About Our Training Program. Learn Why and Get Fit.”

Steer clear of using ornate language by cutting unnecessary adverbs and adjectives. These words may seem like they add value to your copy, but they’re hiding the value that you can provide your customer.

Also, avoid using industry jargon in your copy. This can include words like, “franchise,” “utilize,” “virtualization,” “capitalize,” and especially acronyms that only a limited number of potential customers would even understand, like these marketing big ones: KPI, RSS, CAC, CSS, CRM. Doesn’t look too inviting does it?

Does the Size and Layout of the CTA Matter On a Landing Page?

Just like your copy, your page layout should be neat and clean. Kissmetrics recommends: “The size of your CTA buttons is also important. A too-small version won’t command attention, while a supersized one will make you seem desperate.”

Think about how your landing pages look from a visual standpoint. Avoid the color red for your CTA. There are too many associations with danger, stop signs, stoplights, aggression, etc. You’ll likely see more positive results from calm colors like blue or green.

Also, consider the size and spacing of your text on the page. It should be scannable so that a visitor can instantly pick out the information they’re interested in. Cut out the clutter. For instance, here’s an example from Macy’s current main landing page. Aside from the mixed messaging of the different values, can you spot the call to action?

Their “star rewards” offer is shifted to the right of the page. The goal for a button’s CTA is to predict where the user will look next. This one missed that mark. Also, it’s hard to tell what “JOIN NOW” means until you read the tiny print at the top indicating this CTA is for their rewards program. And finally, they’re asking a lot of their visitors to read the fine print on all of these different offers. A cleaner example of a landing page with less clutter and more clarity would be like this one from Teambit, an employee feedback, recognition, and survey startup.

The value? Your team could be the best it can be. Sounds great. How do I go about doing that? Oh, I’ll get started for free. They have detailed information if you scroll through their page about just how they help people. But the reason why it succeeds is because it doesn’t worry about that up front. It focuses on the why with a compelling headline followed by clean copy and a simple CTA. Sometimes, it really is that simple.

A Few Final Ideas for Crafting Great CTAs

In addition to the previously mentioned points, here are a few examples of how you can make your CTAs stand out and drive conversions.
1. Make sure to always display the benefits. If you’re offering a free guide, then say so right away (e.g. “Get the Knowledge You Crave – Download Our Free Guide.”).
2. Try using a pain point that your potential customers may be hitting. For example, “Tired of Not Seeing Results In Your Ad Campaign? Watch Our Free Webinar to Find Out…”
3. Also, you can try using an Influencer who supports and promotes your brand. This adds authority and intrigue to your CTA. Viewers who see that “Mark Zuckerberg Is Crazy About Our Team’s Marketing Ideas” will likely want to click on the corresponding, “Discover Why” button.
4. Lastly, utilize testimonials from your current clients. This is a source that people often overlook. Your customers should be the biggest proponents of your brand. If a client has said that you’re the best company they’ve ever worked with, then take that and condense into copy to go along with a short, action-oriented CTA. Of course, always make sure to attribute ownership of the testimonial, and it goes without saying that creating a fake testimonial is a horrible idea for your brand. You’ve got to earn them.
5. Numbers are great. If you have some success metrics, consider including them on your landing page. Are 100% of your employees certified in the service you’re promoting? Visitors should know that.
Have any great examples of CTAs in landing pages or other types of content that you’ve seen? Share them with us! A great CTA can have your business seeing more conversions and fewer bounces. Need some more guidance on building a landing page that has strong calls to action that focus on your company’s brand and values? Reach out to us at any time.

Images:

Macy’s

Teambit
September 12, 2017
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.

Image:

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