4 Ways Your Web Designer May Be Getting Images Wrong

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The proper use of images – while only one facet of web design – is something that’s often overlooked until it becomes a problem. Whether it’s causing people to bounce off of your page due to unattractive image use, leading to trouble with your SEO due to poor use of alt tags or getting you into legal trouble by stealing images, it’s important to pay attention.

If you need assistance with web design or want advice on the use of images, let us know. We’d be happy to chat!

Image Alt & Title

1. Organize Images On The Page

When browsing online, you might open a new page and see an image half above the bottom of your screen and half below. This means the designer didn’t take into account whether the photo made it above the fold or not. Even worse is when the photo is below the fold, because there isn’t anything visual for the website visitor to grab onto.

It’s best to make sure you have one chief image at or near the top of your page or blog post to capture attention, and it should be completely above the fold. You can check this by viewing the page on a few different screen sizes – also, with mobile devices it’s acceptable for the image to not be above the fold due to the narrowness of the screen.

Then a second image or third can be added below the fold as needed to illustrate the purpose of the page.

 

2. Use The Alt Tag

An alt tag is a piece of data you attach to the image. It helps search engines understand what the picture is (since they can’t see) and it’s also helpful for the blind and hard of sight as they utilize assistive technology which reads the page out loud to them. Without an alt tag, it’s as if the image isn’t there or relevant for search engines (which hurts your SEO) and for the blind and hard of sight (which eventually will be a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act).

An example of an alt tag would be “young-boy-rides-horse-in-meadow”.

If you leave the original name of the file – 51381238532351.jpg – or fail to describe the photo well – “boy-horse” – then you’ve gained nothing.

 

3. Use The Caption

A caption is a way of further explaining an image. While not always needed, particularly complex images which aren’t stock photos may need a caption. If the photo is of staff or a particular location, it’s important to identify the people or place properly.

The caption is also used to provide documentation of where a photo is from . . .

 

4. Source And Link Your Photos

Lastly, be sure source and link the photo back to it’s original photographer, unless you or someone you employ took the photo for your business.

If you take a photo off of the internet, you need to be sure it’s safe to use. Most photos out there belong to someone. You wouldn’t walk out and pick up a dog off the street to take home, because 99% of those dogs aren’t strays.

Certain websites will provide you with photos which are in the public domain, which means you can use them freely. It’s still important to note the web address of the source in the caption, and link back to it to cover yourself. The same goes for photos you may buy off of a service like Adobe Stock Images. While you own the photo, it’s still nice to make sure you’re covered incase anyone ever asks.

If you have any questions about designing your website or the proper use of images, we’d love to chat.

5 SEO Tips To Make Your Page Titles Pop

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Not everyone can be a search engine optimization master. SEO takes a long time to understand, and to top it off the best practices often change. Google and other search engines are always improving their algorithms to better serve the searcher, and web developers and business owners like you and I have to keep improving our sites to stay on top of search results for our chosen keywords.

We get quite a few questions every month about how to write page titles which conform to SEO standards and help a page rank for certain keywords. In light of that, let’s take a look at a few tips we’ve gathered and be sure to contact us with any questions of your own!

 

1. Understand Yourself and Your Searcher

 

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” – Sun Tzu

 

I think Sun Tzu, ancient Chinese military strategist, said it best. If you don’t know yourself and your enemy, it’s a lost cause, but if you truly understand, you’re well on your way to victory.

Now, I’m not saying searchers are the enemies of businesses and digital marketers, but it is important to really know the intent of the searcher when they are coming to your website, and to really know what benefits your service or product offers and not just the features.

Take for example the following page title examples:

 

Two Boots Pizza

Happy Pizza

 

When someone types ‘Pizza’ into a search engine, they’re probably not looking for a specific place, otherwise they would have just types the name of the business in. So general keywords like this are your opportunity to shine and grab a customer by the collar!

Two Boots Pizza really didn’t get the memo on this, as the page title simply states the name of the business and nothing further. But Happy’s Pizza at least tries to grab attention with “The Best Pizza In Town” immediately following the business name. While not necessarily the most well crafted tagline around, if the customer were given only these two page titles to choose from when ordering pizza, it’s no contest.

 

2. Make It Mechanically Sound

When I say you should make your title mechanically sound, I mean exactly that. When someone builds a boat, they need to make sure it floats before they spend time decorating it. The same goes for your page title.

Google and other search engines only show a certain amount of the title text in any given search result, whether on a computer, tablet or mobile. Generally, we suggest keeping a title length in between 40-65 characters (including spaces), as this gives wiggle room for when certain characters are a few pixels wider than others. Once you know how many characters you really have to work with, then you can start crafting your title.

 

3. Know Your Keywords

Next SEO tip: know your keywords. A digital marketing company like us can really help you out and make sure you’re using the best keywords for ranking your business, but if you don’t have access to someone like us or choose not to work with a digital marketing firm for some reason, a good way to start is to log into your Google Analytics account (I hope you have one, if not, you just need a Gmail address). From there, there are keyword tools which can help you determine what keywords might be best for your specific business. If you need help with this section, I do recommend you contact a digital marketing firm like ours for expert assistance.

 

4. When Appropriate, Make It Local

When it comes to page titles, certain pages have different functions than others. For instance, Happy’s Pizza may want to make a page to market specifically to their customers in Brooklyn, NY. My suggestion would be a page title like this:

Happy’s Pizza | Brooklyn Pizza Parlor | Original New York-Style Pizza

 

If Happy’s Pizza opened a location in Memphis, TN, they might want something more like this:

Happy’s Pizza | Memphis, TN Pizza | Authentic New York-Style Pizza

Each of these pages references the local city, and hits on what the searcher may be looking for. In Brooklyn, it may be a return to the original pizza of the area, while Memphis searchers may be looking for something different than they can find locally – an authentic, New York slice.

 

5. Execute

Finally, the most important SEO tip I can give is to execute. Do it. Make that page, because if it doesn’t get made, there is no way it can rank. This goes for your content, your ads, anything.

Make a decision and let it ride for a while and see how it goes. If after a month or two the title doesn’t seem to fit anymore or you’re having a hard time ranking or getting people to click on it, it may be time to change it up a bit.

The most important thing is to do it, and have fun. And let us know if you need any additional SEO help or tips, we’re always just a phone call or email away.

Digital Marketing Myths You’ve Internalized & Why They’re Wrong

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Digital marketing myths continuously pop up these days, from client meetings or on ‘digital marketing myths’ lists on sites across the web.

We’ve been scouring the web for digital marketing myth lists and comparing them against beliefs our clients hold, and discovered that many of these lists have ‘myths’ which aren’t even commonly held beliefs anymore. So we set out to display some myths here that we still find prevalent among our clients, friends and family so we can provide real value in our digital marketing myths list. Enjoy, and let us know if you have questions!

1. Negative Reviews/Comments Are Bad NewsSEM Spend

We have our own proprietary review management software, so when we’re pitching this to clients they’ll often say that they need it because they have a few bad reviews they want to get rid of. We reframe the conversation right there, because bad reviews are not inherently bad for business, and in fact can help! Here’s a few ways to make that negative review or comment a good thing:

A. Opportunity To Grow

A bad review of your business is an opportunity to grow. Take the complaints the person is making, decide which hold merit and see if there is a way to address those complaints so another bad review like that doesn’t happen.

B. Evens Out Your Rating

The bad review doesn’t necessarily doom your Google or Facebook star rating. One or two bad reviews actually helps even out your stars a bit, as people tend to think the perfect 5-star rated companies might be manufacturing reviews.

C. Good PR opportunity

Responding to the review is a great PR opportunity. Take the time to really listen to the customer, and respond in a way so as to either address the issue or open up discussion on how the issue can be address. Thank them for pointing out the flaw in your system or bad egg on the staff, and encourage all customers to provide you with critical feedback. Other customers will see how smoothly you handled the review and think better of you for it.

 

2. Message Personalization Isn’t Possible

This myth hits home for people using LinkedIn, Google AdWords and email marketing.

A. LinkedIn

On LinkedIn, if you’re using Sales Navigator or another tool, it can feel downright overwhelming to market your business and brand at a mass scale while trying to personalize the messages. One way of doing it is to spend hours on it each day. Another way is to use software, like our proprietary myProspector, to help you create templates to contact other users which are easily and quickly personalized on a mass scale, within LinkedIn’s guidelines.

B. AdWords

In AdWords, people who are just getting used to the system might only set up a few variations of a display campaign for different geographic areas or different income brackets. But in AdWords with display ads, your ads can be personalized down to an email address, zip code (or even down to a few blocks) and in other ways. This means you can really personalize messages to fit a specific person you may know, or someone who fits a certain profile.

C. Email Marketing

Another way to personalize is through email marketing. Most email marketing solutions now allow you to segment your email lists, and it’s something you should take advantage of. For instance, if you have a list of customers from your pizza store, you may want to segment them by people who mostly order online and those who mostly order in store, and tailor different deals to them.

 

3. Visitor Volume Is A Key Website Metric

Visits are great. It’s nice to have people looking at your website, but volume of visits alone doesn’t mean much. In Google Analytics and other software which helps organize your website and marketing data, what you really should be looking at are the following metrics:

A. New Users

New users is a way of tracking how many new visitors have navigated to your website within a timeframe. This allows you to see if the same people are coming time and time again or if you’re able to attract new potential customers with your AdWords, social media, email marketing or other strategy.

B. Pages/Session

This is the number of pages a visitor views per session. Typically more is better, and if you’re seeing your average drop down near 1 you know people are clicking on a link to your site and then heading back out without looking anywhere else. That’s not good.

C. Average Session Duration

This is how long a visitor stays on your site before navigating off. You want to see a good amount of time here, but it depends on your industry. Adding value to the page, like more engaging or informative content, a video, a download or other things can help bring this number up, with the goal of getting them to remember your brand and feel their time was spent wisely. If the average session duration is low, it means they probably didn’t find what they were looking for.

D. Bounce Rate

The bounce rate is a measure of how many visitors leave your site after viewing only 1 page. Anything less than 70% is typically considered a ‘good’ bounce rate, so if your bounce rate is already very low it means people are finding something of value in your website!

 

4. Social Only Works For Select Industries

This is a big one. People feel that lawyers offices or other ‘traditional’ or ‘boring’ industries have no options when it comes to social media. It simply isn’t true, you just have to find the channel that fits your brand, and craft your strategy to how people want to interact with your service.

For instance, with a law firm, LinkedIn is a clear winner for most law firms because it helps build your reputation among the business community, no matter what kind of lawyer you might be.

Facebook might not seem like a natural choice, but it may be that people don’t want to post directly on your wall or about you, they want to find your contact information quickly and easily or drop a quick note into Facebook Messenger to see if they really need to come in for a consultation or not.

There is always a channel or strategy that will work, it just takes some time to find the right fit.

 

5. Visitors Won’t Convert On Mobile Devices

If you aren’t able to convert visitors into customers or sales leads when they’re using mobile devices, it isn’t the visitor’s fault for using a mobile device – it’s the content’s fault.

You need to take a look at your interface and the way people actually use your site from a mobile-first website design standpoint, and find a way to simplify your process. From reducing the number of fields to fill out in a contact form, to one click downloads for ebooks, there is a way to do it, you just have to find it.

For help figuring out how digital marketing fits into your business, and to separate fact from fiction, drop us a line.

Why You Need A Local Web Design Company On Your Side

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When you’re ready to redesign your website or build the first website for your business, there are a few things you’ll probably look for: samples of work, expertise, partnerships with Google, something bigger than a one-person shop, etc. When you’re looking for that web design company who is the perfect fit for you, don’t forget to check out your local area for great design companies like us! Here’s why.

Customer Service In PersonWeb Design

The biggest benefit of a local web design company is meeting in person with not only the account manager, but also the web designer and content writer.

A national corporation may be able to put you on the phone or let you communicate by email with your designer, but there’s no way they’ll fly you or the designer halfway around the country or world to work together in person.

With a local design company like Cohlab, you can come down to our office or we can meet at yours to discuss the specifics and get a solid footing off of which to build the perfect website of your business.

Targeted Design

The design of a website is largely based off of your industry, but it’s also based off of the needs of your customers and differentiated from your local competitors. A local web design firm is going to know your competitors and understand your customers at a local, personal level a national firm never will.

Localized Content

Also, the content on your website needs to be fresh and engaging and specific to your customers needs. That’s why at Cohlab our writer will meet with you to get the full story, and follow up with any questions they may have as the content for your website is created.

Besides website design, it’s also important to have pages directed at certain search terms, groups and cities in order to better draw them in through search engine optimization. This is an additional service we provide as a local web design company which can help you get ahead of your competitors who use a nation-wide web design firm.

For local website design, give us a call. We’re ready to meet in person with you.

How To Improve Your Search Engine Ranking With Content Marketing

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When a new client approaches us for a website design, one of the most common issues with their current site is that it hasn’t been updated in months or years. Your web designer or a dedicated person on your team should be constantly crafting new content for your website to keep it fresh.

A decade or two ago, it was common thinking that a website should be set in stone and only updated very occasionally, like a brochure or business card. That’s simply not the case anymore.

The Online Experience Centers Around Contentcms-265127_1920

As can be seen by the popularity of sites like The Huffington Post, Reddit, HowStuffWorks and countless blogs, fresh, ever-changing content helps sites retain and grow a following and build their ranking in search engines. Sites which are constantly changing their content, being added to and improved are getting the most traffic.

However, each of those sites have a focus: news and opinion, cool and strange things from the internet, and explanations of how language, mechanics and other things work. Their content focuses on those things and their readers reward good content with clicks, time spent on the page and site, and sharing those articles on social media.

Therefore, your site should not only have new content, but it needs to be centered on topics which reinforce your business. This is the heart of content marketing.

Experimentation

Another great way content marketing can improve your search engine ranking is by experimenting with different types of content and different types of pages.

Do you have a blog currently? If not, that’s a great place to start, as blogs are a good way to create consistently new content based around a theme. Experiment with different formats of blog posts, like lists, ‘How Tos’ and others.

Also experiment with infographics and videos as well as text posts to see which perform better. Use your websites built-in analytics or sign up for Google Analytics to get a better idea of how each piece of content performs with your visitors, and don’t forget to promote it on social media!

For help with the whole gamut of content marketing, contact us today!