Orlando Web Design

There is a lot to consider when deciding if rebranding your website is the right move. Some businesses bought exact match or partial match domains in the past, such as FlowersAndVases.com, and they are starting to rethink those choices in favor for more “brandable” website URLs to better match their social media and content marketing efforts. The website FlowersAndVases.com doesn’t stand out at all; it could be any flower shop. Whereas a URL that corresponds with a more definitive business name, such as BlueBirdFloral.com not only ties together your branding, but it also distinguishes you for word of mouth and other types of advertising.

So how do you know if now is the right time to rebrand? You can start by answering these questions.

How memorable is your current brand?

Staying with the example, Flowers and Vases; how memorable is that business name? Perhaps it’s easy to understand what they offer, but if you told the business name to a friend, they’d probably never be able to find it. However, if you told your friend the name Blue Bird Floral, they’d easily be able to search for and find the business.

If you are realizing that your brand name is, in fact, holding you back in search results and social media amplification, press, in blog mentions, in journalist links and more, then it’s time to consider rebranding.

Is the new name a long-term goal?

If having the name Blue Bird Floral is something you want to have three or four years down the line, it’s best to do it now. The longer you wait, the longer it will take to build up the signals around the new domain and the more work you’ll have wasted working on branding your old name.

How much traffic would you need in one year in order to justify the URL move?

Search engines such as Google and Bing are constantly changing and growing. Within the past 4 years, Google has released algorithm updates such as Penguin, Panda and Pigeon. While it is important to stay updated with the ever-evolving world of algorithms, you should never forget these five search engine optimization (SEO) basic principles.

1. SEO is not done in one shot.

Though basic SEO should be established on your website early, your website should never remain stagnant for long periods of time. Continuously updating your website with high-quality content is important for search engines and your users. You can also update old content to show Google that you’re updating your website, without it consuming too much of your time or resources.

2. Search engines control the game.

While the term SEO stands for search engine optimization, the only thing you can affect is your own site. Search engines take into account these site changes and that can then affect your search rankings, but if you don’t play by Google’s rules, your customers will never find you. Don’t go against the Google algorithms solely for looks or to save money. In the end, Google will penalize your site and you’ll end up losing even more money.

3. Don’t focus on getting more traffic. Focus on the right traffic.

While driving a lot of traffic to your website might seem like the most logical way to get more sales and a higher ROI, it’s not always the case. Having everyone see your website instead of targeting your ideal customer base can cause your website to have a higher bounce rate and could ultimately hurt your rankings. You’ll also see a much lower ROI if you are targeting everyone rather than having a high converting website.

4. Content is king.

You’ve seen it all over the Internet lately, and it still rings true – content is king. What this means is that Google is specifically looking to websites to provide continuous, relevant, high-quality content for users. If you fail to provide this content, use plagiarized material or have keyword stuffed content, your website will ultimately be punished by Google or other search engines.

5. Black hat SEO never wins.

If you have ever worked with an SEO company, it is likely you may have heard the term ‘black hat’ when they were explaining a process they can’t use or how other websites in your industry could be preforming so well in a short period of time. Hopefully you’ve never worked with a company who utilizes black hat SEO tactics, because while short term gains may be impressive they could lead to your site being blacklisted by Google or penalized severely in the long run.

While the connection between email and SEO isn’t as cut and dry as some of the other methods of search engine optimization, it can be a very useful tool to keep your audience engaged and directing traffic in a way with which other marketing channels just can’t compete. Google doesn’t crawl your individual emails, nor does the amount of subscribers equate to higher rankings, but here are some ways that email can impact your SEO efforts.

1. Audience Engagement Through Email

The amount of keywords included in your emails will never have an effect on your search rankings. However, if your email campaign is full of helpful resources based around a keyword term such as “Digital marketing agency in Orlando,” you might end up attracting searchers for various marketing-related terms.

Emails that encourage comments and sharing can help shift the factors that Google wants to see, and that will help you rank higher. For example, if you write a great article for your blog and share it to your email list, you can increase the number of views that your article receives as well as shares, tweets and comments on the article.

Here are a couple ways you can encourage engagement in your calls-to-action in your emails:

Ask readers to leave a comment at the bottom of your blog about how they’ll use your insights in their business.

Encourage people to share a non-profit project you’re involved with in order to spread a good cause.

Drive people to your social channels (Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube) to encourage engagement on those channels; not solely your blog.

2. Drive to Regular Content Consumption

Encouraging engagement can be extremely helpful to your SEO efforts, but giving subscribers other ways to get hooked on your content is also important. Ideally, you want people coming back to your site or social media channels without the need for an email reminder.

Here are some ways to hook people on your content:

Link to your blog posts but also make sure people know that they can also connect via RSS to stay informed.

Allow people to subscribe to individual email lists dedicated to particular sections of your blog.

If your subscribers love your videos, have them subscribe to your YouTube channel, or if they love your photos have them stay connected on Instagram.

Having these content hooks can keep people connected and engaged by seeing your fresh content. With them actively following you, your blog could get many more views and your rankings could go up.

3. Newsletter Content Can Be Repurposed

Emails can take time to write, so don’t just throw them away after you’re done sending it out. Great newsletter content can and should be repurposed as blog content.

Here are a couple of simple ways to get extra mileage out of your newsletters:

Long newsletters and be turned into stand-alone blog posts by taking the same content, inserting relevant links, and posting it on your blog. (This also allows the possibility for social shares and comments.)

Shorter newsletters can be saved up and posted as a bundle of three or four emails together as one blog post.

As a new business owner, you may already have your business plan, products and services ready to be released to the world, but you may not have a customer base yet. If you are a business with a physical storefront, your physical location may be your first priority, as it should be. However, after that or perhaps if your business operates solely online, you will need a website in order to drive traffic and attract new customers.

Having an aesthetically pleasing website is important, but almost equally as important to the appearance of your site is being able to get good rankings in search engines. This is where your website will be the most successful in attracting new customers at a low recurring cost. In order to reach good rankings in search engines, you have to establish a good foundation for your website in terms of search engine optimization (SEO).

A good SEO foundation usually comprises of a few key areas that are most important in a new website launch:

Titles

The page title is the first thing search engines read when they scan through the html code of each page of your website, otherwise known as “crawling” a website. It is important that you have a title for every page so the search engines can properly identify the topic and nature of your page. These titles should include targeted key terms relevant to the page and to your business. For example, if you are a florist in Sacramento, a common SEO title might include the key terms “Sacramento”, “florist” and your best selling flowers. It is highly recommended to keep page titles to between 50-60 characters.

Meta Descriptions

Meta Descriptions give search engines a description and written statement of what that page is about. Meta descriptions are usually text snippets comprised of 160 characters or less that are displayed in search results to help the user understand more about the page on which they are clicking. It is important that each page has a meta description, as it is your way of conveying a targeted message to your audience and to the search engines.

Content

Quality content is considered one of the most important elements of a solid SEO strategy. Most search engines now consider original quality content as their number one ranking factor on their algorithms. Before you launch your website, make sure every top-level page (such as Home, About Us, Products, Services, or any other link at the top of your website) has quality content. Quality content is generally more than 300 words and not “keyword stuffed,” meaning that in the content, you should include your targeted keywords only about 2-3 times throughout the page.

Internal Linking

Internal linking provides a way for search engine “spiders” or the bots that scan your website’s code, to navigate through your website. Think of your website as a spider web, where the more you can connect the lower level pages to your higher level pages, the more value your website has as a whole and the stronger the web is. In the content of your pages, it is recommended that you should be linking a minimum two to three times to other pages on your website. For example, if you’re talking about your seasonal flowers on your florist website, you could link the word “perennials” to the perennials you have for sale.

Audit Tools

Prior to site launch, it is highly recommended to install Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools file (known now as Search Console). Both tools assist you with making sure your website is active and will allow you to review any errors your site may have that prevent Google and other search engines from properly “crawling” or scanning your website. You will need to set up a Google account in order to have access to both tools.

For those of you who heeded our warning about getting a responsive website back in April 2015, you don’t need to fear. However, if you are still operating with a website that is not mobile-friendly, Google has announced it will be making another shift to strengthen their mobile-friendly ranking signals again; which means your website could drop farther down the mobile search results than ever before solely based on this ranking factor.

While the initial data after what most marketers were referring to as “Mobilegeddon,” which took place on April 22, 2015, wasn’t as strong of a change as initially expected, things are about to heat up according to Google. According to the Google announcement, “…beginning in May, we’ll start rolling out an update to mobile search results that increases the effect of the ranking signal to help our users find even more pages that are relevant and mobile-friendly.”

Why You Should Have A Responsive Design Anyway…

“Mobile devices — smartphones in particular — dominate digital media time (60 percent vs. 40 percent for the PC),” according to Search Engine Land. With this in mind, it is even more essential for a business to have their website be responsive and compatible for any device, beyond the threat of Google rankings.

Responsive design is an approach to web design aimed at providing an optimal viewing and interactive web experience that is easy to read, navigate, and designed to work across a wide range of devices (PC’s, MAC, iPad, iPhone, and all other cell phones).

Google is constantly updating its way of ranking and displaying search engine inquiries. The goal behind this is too always increase the relevancy of the searches.

With all the new technology dealing with smart-phones these days, it's important to make sure that your website is phone friendly. Cell phones are no longer just used to make calls, and the number of clients using their phones for online purposes continues to grow.