Why Having A Mobile First Website Is More Important Than Ever

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We’ve mentioned before how more people are browsing the internet and completing Google searches on mobile devices than on desktops, and how this number continues to grow. But Google recently began another initiative to serve people a better mobile experience when using Google search. This initiative is being rolled out now, but won’t be fully in effect for a few months.

In some cases, website designers create two versions of a website: one is served to a searcher if they are using a desktop computer, and another is served if they are using a tablet or smartphone to search. These two separate sites often have different amounts and types of content on them, which means Google has two different places to look and two options to serve people. And for the most part Google will serve the desktop site in search results, which can cause confusion once the searcher arrives and the desktop content doesn’t exist on the mobile site.

Why Is This A Big Deal?text-ads-mobile

Google is solving this by beginning to index mobile-websites first, meaning if a mobile site exists, they will prefer this over the desktop site, even if the searcher is on a desktop computer.

If you have a separate mobile and desktop site, and your mobile site doesn’t mirror your desktop site perfectly, you’re going to need to do some work to keep your rank in Google search results.

Wait! Don’t Panic.Equity-mortgage-mobile-contact

Don’t go and call your web designer just yet. In fact, if we are your web designer, you’re good to go as all of our websites are what we call ‘responsive’, which means they are one unified site which adapts to fit whatever screen it is displayed on, whether desktop, mobile or movie screen. Responsive websites have nothing to fear with these changes.

If you don’t have a responsive website, you may have a great web designer who is keeping your mobile and desktop versions of your site up-to-date and in sync. You’ll want to get in touch with them to find out if these changes will affect you, and you’ll want to verify by looking at and using your site on both a desktop and mobile device.

If you don’t have a mobile website or a responsive website, you’ll definitely need to do some work to optimize your site to be mobile first, which means it should be built first to serve those on a mobile device and then desktop visitors.

If you’re not sure how your site is faring, click here to see if your site is mobile-friendly.

If you’re worried about how your site will do as Google continues to implement changes to make the web more mobile-centric, contact us and we’ll be happy to talk you through some different approaches you can take.

5 Misguided Myths About Social Media Marketing

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Social media marketing has been of interest to marketers and business people since at least 2007, but has been steadily popular since 2011 according to Google Trends. The need to fill your funnel from your fans and followers has grown, as has the mythology around the process of doing so.

Let’s take a look at some of the most misguided myths social media marketing manifests

1. Social Media Marketing Is Freehands-1167618_1920

Sure, signing yourself and your company up for a social media account is free, and you may think that since you aren’t paying to advertise on the platform you can get away with your marketing plan for free!

The truth is, no matter what you do on social media, your marketing is going to cost you either time, money or both.

Your team’s time and effort are valuable, and the more of it you pour into your social media marketing campaign the better ROI you will likely see. However, time and effort cost the business money, so just know that nothing is free.

2. Social Media ROI Can’t Be Measured

When most people first start utilizing social media for marketing, they focus on the metrics in front of them: likes, shares, comments, etc.

But it’s important to go beyond these metrics and focus on two things at the same time: building a community, then driving that community to your website/landing page. In order to know if you’re building a community, you focus on those likes, comments and shares. To know if you’re converting people from your social media page to your website or to a sale, you’ll need to utilize Google Analytics and build trackable links for your social media posts.

3. Every Social Media Platform Is Valuable

Depending on your industry and needs, you’ll need different social media platforms. The demographics who use the site, it’s functionality and purpose, as well as how it is accessed will all play into whether the platform is valuable to you and can be used to increase sales.

For instance, a consulting business will see a lot more ROI on investing in LinkedIn, while a restaurant will see better results through Facebook and Pinterest or Instagram. You may not have the resources to tackle multiple sites at once, so be sure you choose the right ones to concentrate on.

4. Social Media Marketing Is It’s Own Strategy

Truly, social media marketing is best done in conjunction with a series of other strategies, like content marketing, search engine optimization, reputation management and more.

Content marketing helps you build content on your website worth sharing, which then draws people through to your website and makes them more likely to convert.

Search engine optimization helps your website flow better and become easier to read and navigate while making it rank higher in search engines, meaning people are more likely to enjoy working with you and like or follow you.

Reputation management helps monitor and direct people to leave you positive reviews on sites like Facebook and Google, which are also social media sites. This means your social sites will pull more weight with people, making them easier to convert.

5. Making Social Posts Mobile-Friendly Isn’t Worth It

If you still believe mobile phones aren’t where people do most of their web browsing – as well as nearly all of their social networking – you are living in the past. Nearly 80% of social media time is spent on mobile devices these days, so it’s extremely important to make sure you’re optimizing your social media posts for mobile devices. You may be writing them on a computer at work, but that’s not how your followers are going to read them!

How Small Businesses Like Yours Are Leveraging Search Engine Optimization

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When it comes to trying to capture the attention of potential customers online, search engine optimization is key to your online success, especially for small, local businesses! In fact, in 2016, searches containing “near me” – i.e. auto repair near me, tacos near me, etc. – increase 34x since 2011!

This means customers near you are looking for your category of business, but the question is: are you appearing in the search results? Because a huge amount of the traffic from a search goes to the first three results on the first page of google. And very few people head to the second page of results.

Let’s look at how you as a small business can make search engine optimization (SEO) help build your business! And remember, we’re always available to talk.

The below statistics were supplied by The Google Mobile Playbook.

Producing High-Quality, Local ContentSearch Engine Optimization

One of the best things you can do to boost your SEO ranking is to create high-quality, engaging and local content. This content is what will help searchers convert into customers, giving them the information they need to make a decision and providing a link to the product or contact and location information so they can come to the store and make the purchase.

In regards to local, mobile searches, 51% of searchers will visit a store after completing the search; 48% of them will call the store; and, 29% of them will visit the store and complete the purchase quickly. This means local searches are extremely valuable, and creating content geared toward them is rewarding.

Employing An SEO Firm To Clean Up Data

Another way of boosting your SEO to get further up the rankings is to clean up the data behind your website.

It’s usually a good idea to hire an SEO firm like ours to go in and clean up these bits, such as page titles, descriptions, dead or misdirected links and organizing the sitemap. Everything needs to be geared toward your business and streamlined to give you the best ranking for the keywords your business needs.

Contact us anytime to learn more about how we can help you climb the rankings and capture more customers searching for your products or services locally!

How Search Engine Marketing Has Brought Billboards To Their Knees

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These days, search engine marketing is king. Television, radio, newspaper and even roadside billboards have begun to fall by the wayside as Google and other advertising providers have brought the ability to target advertisements down to the individual, to the masses. In fact, the goliath of advertising spending – TV – is set to be overtaken by search engine marketing and online advertising in 2017. Meanwhile, billboards continue to be a miniscule portion of advertising spending in the U.S., with $9.2 billion spent in 2015, while online advertising had about $67 billion spent by advertisers with a much higher growth rate.
We’re always available to talk, anytime you want to take a look at how search engine marketing can help your business thrive.
For this post, a study by MarketingCharts supplied the statistics.

Statisticspexels-photo-12

The biggest reason billboards are not growing as fast as search engine marketing and other channels is they can’t be tracked. When a person drives past a billboard, you as the advertiser won’t be able to track whether they saw the advertisement, whether they later go to your website or call you, whether they see your ad again later or who they were (demographically speaking)!
With online advertising and search engine marketing, you can track all of those things and more, making sure that your ad is as effective as possible!

 

Location

With billboards, you can only place your advertisements in certain locations: alongside roadways, in city centers, etc. And you’ll need to rotate the billboards in order to be able to reach new audiences, with no guarantee that people are actually looking at your billboard.
With online advertising and search engine marketing, you can target ads directly at certain demographics, and with Google you can even target ads at people who live on a certain block in a city! This means they will be served the ads in many places across the internet, without having to waste money showing the ad to people who aren’t your target customer!
Contact us anytime to chat about how we can help boost your ROI with search engine marketing!