The Importance of Visuals

When digital marketing experts talk about visuals, they do so with a strong sense of urgency. From the moment visuals were first able to be used on the Internet, there has been a serious movement to get more out of what we can see on a website. Today, movies that used to take hours to load can now automatically start within seconds of you clicking on a website that is filled with images. But how important are those visuals that are being put on your website?

What Are Visuals?

In digital marketing, visuals are what a user sees when they first come into contact with a landing page, website front page, or a digital ad. Everything from the layout to your website to the color scheme that is used is part of your website visuals, and they have to be able to attract an audience on their own.

Making That First Impression

It takes .05 seconds for an Internet user to decide whether or not they are going to give your website a look. The slower your website loads, the more traffic you lose. But the more visuals you use, the more apt you are to retain that traffic. Once digital marketing experts figured out how quickly people made their website decisions, it became imperative to get visuals down to file sizes that could load in less than a second.

The combination of your website layout and any images or videos must load as fast as possible, because it is your visuals that make that first impression. Before a consumer even has a chance to determine whether or not your content has value, they are making decisions on whether or not to utilize your website based on your visuals.

Why Are Visuals So Important?

Aside from determining whether or not an Internet user will check out your site, visuals reach into the very core of human behavior. It is estimated that 93 percent of all human communication is done using visuals. Everything from using the right combination of colors to creating a layout that is pleasing to the eye makes a difference.

An image or video can help a customer to get a more comprehensive understanding of your product than the written word ever could. A picture or video of a product can help elicit emotional responses that are critical in the buying process, and they can give a potential consumer a feeling of familiarity that determines whether or not a product will be purchased. Visuals are also essential in helping people who have never seen your product before to understand how it works, and what its value may be to them personally. Visuals can deliver all of the buying cues a consumer needs without ever using a single word.

The Profession Of Visuals

A digital marketing professional not only understands how to use visuals, they also understand how to monitor the effectiveness of visuals and make changes as needed. Something as simple as changing the background color of a website page could increase traffic three or four fold. These are the types of observations a trained professional can make to help your website succeed. With the right digital marketing team on your side, your website will be able to utilize visuals to get results that words could never achieve.

The Basics Of Good Web Design

In order to become good at something, you first must master the basics. Most business owners hire a digital agency to handle their website design needs, but a good website owner should still understand the basics of good web design to be sure they are getting a quality service. There are many different ways to achieve these basic design ideas, but the core concepts that make up a good website design will always remain the same.

A Clean Layout

A clean layout means that each page is easy to navigate, the background does not look too busy, and the coding is streamlined. When a new visitor lands on your website, they need to be able to figure out how to use your site in three seconds or they will bounce to another site. A clean layout uses tables to keep the navigation links in one spot, and a color scheme that makes the font easy to read and the website easy to look at.

Strong Navigation

If a user has to click more than three times to get to the page they want, they will leave your website. Make your navigation menus as simple as possible and include any extraneous content as links within the text of a page. You can also help navigation by including a site map that is accessible from the front page, and a search box at the top of every page.

Functional Graphics

Graphics, images, and videos make your website more appealing to your users, but only if they are used properly. Avoid animated graphics and also avoid putting self-starting videos on your pages. Give the user the option to start a video, and make sure that all of your graphics and images serve a purpose. It is also important to make sure that your graphic, image, and video files are as small as possible to help your page load faster.

A Title On Every Page

You can enhance the SEO quality of your website when you put a short title on every page that makes it easier for search engines to crawl your site. It is important to keep your page titles short, and make sure that they accurately describe the page they are on. Search engines will penalize your page if it is filled with titles designed to hit on certain keywords instead of describing the page.

Security Certificates

These days, every user on the Internet is concerned about the security of the websites that they visit. If you require your users to input information of any kind on your website, then you need to have a security certificate in place to protect your user's data, and your website.

Consistency

The temptation to make each page on your website look different can be strong, but it is a big mistake. Your website is an important tool in building and enhancing your brand, and the best way to get the most from that branding is to make sure that the colors and design throughout your website are consistent.

Good website design allows a site that is easy to navigate to load quickly and serve the user's needs. If your website is not performing the basics very well, then you are losing a lot of traffic and a lot of potential revenue.

Good Reasons Why You Should Use WordPress

A content management system (CMS) makes it easier to develop and grow a website, even for people who have little to no website development experience. The most popular CMS in the world is WordPress, but its popularity is often a mystery to most people because they don't understand WordPress. If you are considering building your own website, then you may want to check into the benefits that WordPress has to offer.

It's Free

WordPress is popular because it is comprehensive and it is free. You can download WordPress for yourself at no cost, and you will get the fully functional version of WordPress to use. Not only is the CMS software free, but you can also get a wide range of free plugins that will allow you to add functionality to your website that you want.

WordPress allows you to create a professional looking website, add ecommerce functions, include tables and graphs, and it is all free. When you are trying to develop a professional website, free is the kind of price you want from your major components.

It's Robust

The majority of website designers use WordPress because it has one of the most powerful content management components in the industry. You can add, archive, edit, and manipulate content any way you like with WordPress. You can also include SEO tags and other SEO tools in WordPress that will bring your website more traffic.

WordPress is also extremely simple to customize to get any look you want from your website. You can use one of the many templates that are available to get your site looking the way you want, or you can customize a template to get a unique look.

RSS Feeds

One of the most powerful SEO tools in the world is an RSS feed, and the WordPress CSM comes standard with an RSS feed you can use. When you utilize an RSS feed, your content is shared across the entire Internet, which significantly increases the chances that your content will go viral. A strong RSS feed also increases your position on search engine results pages, and can even put your page at the top of the first page of results.

It is worth your time to understand what an RSS feed is and how you would use it. It will not be long before you start to see your content shared on websites you didn't even know existed, and that is the kind of exposure you want.

Develop Your Own URLs

WordPress allows you to create your own website addresses for all of your pages, which can significantly increase the SEO value of your site. You can give each page any name you want to give it, and you can also add titles and tags that will help to increase exposure.

Over the years, WordPress has developed into an extremely powerful CMS that is used as the foundation for some of the largest websites in the world. WordPress' versatility and built-in SEO tools means that you can immediately add SEO power to your website and launch your site with plenty of traffic attracting features. Developers are constantly adding templates and add-ins for WordPress that allow it to remain the most popular CMS in the world.

How To Pick The Right Keywords For Your Website

Since 2012, Google has made a series of changes to its search algorithm that have altered the role of keywords in creating good content. The biggest misconception people have is that keywords are no longer necessary to help move a website up into the first page of search engine results. The real truth is that keywords are still important, but the way you choose the right keywords has changed.

Use The Tools That Are Available

Choosing keywords is not nearly as easy as it used to be, which means that you have to use tools that have kept up with the times. The most obvious tool to use for any keyword search is Google AdWords. You can do keyword searches and get a lot of information back on the keywords that would be relevant to your business by using the AdWords free keyword tool.

Another powerful way to use Google AdWords to get the right keywords is to run test AdWords campaigns using keywords you feel are relevant and see what kinds of results you get. You don't need to spend a lot of money to start seeing activity, but you will get a wealth of information on how keywords really react when consumers start doing searches.

Be Specific

If you are a shoe manufacturer, then the days of you getting lots of valuable web traffic using the keyword "shoes" are ancient history. These days, millions of websites use the basic keywords, which means that you are going to need to get creative if you want traffic.

When you put keywords together, be specific in your wording. If you sell red shoes, then use "red shoes" as a keyword. If you find other keywords associated with "red shoes" that perform well in keyword tools, then use them as well. If you work to find specific keywords within your industry, then you will start to attract traffic that is actually interested in what you have to offer.

Understand The Long Tail

Not too long ago, digital marketing agencies shied away from long tail keywords because they didn't work. But now that Google is more focused on finding good content for users, the long tail keyword has become king.

Understanding the long tail keyword is in line with the idea that your keywords need to be specific. Users are inputting longer and longer keyword searches to find what they are looking for, and you need to craft the long tail keywords that will attract those users.

Have A Plan

The best keywords are the ones that match your specific marketing goals. Each digital marketing campaign you launch should have its own, specific keywords to get the best results. You should avoid using generic keywords with your marketing campaigns, and you should monitor keyword activity to determine which keywords need to be changed to give you better results.

Digital marketing has become more than a full-time job, which is why you need to hire experts to help you handle your marketing needs. Developing effective keywords used to be a lot easier back in the days when search engines counted content instead of reading it. Now that Google is looking to give users quality search results, you will need to understand what keywords are going to work to attract your audience, and what keywords are not already being overused by the competition.

4 Signs Your Website Needs A Re-Design

Things move fast on the Internet, and new technology means new functionality for websites. You want your business website to remain relevant, but you do not want to spend money jumping at the latest Internet innovations. That sort of stance is understandable and practical, but there are moments you will come across when it becomes extremely evident that it is time to give your website a face lift.

Your Site Still Flashes

Using Flash animated features in websites was all the rage, but that was 1991 and it is time to get the Flash elements out of your website. Not only is Flash no longer part of a professional website, it is also no longer supported by most browsers. While you may enjoy the little animated picture on the front of your website, it is not doing your website any favors.

If you continue to include Flash elements on your page, then you will crash browsers. If there is one sure way to stop traffic from going to you website, it is to start crashing browsers on users. It is time to part with the Flash and update your website.

Your Site Does Not Cut The Mustard With Search Engines

Most Internet marketing experts will tell you that just the passage of time is a good reason to re-do a website, but that does not fly with frugal business owners. The real reason that time is your enemy when it comes to website development is because the tactics used to get good positioning on Internet search engines just three years ago could not cause your website to disappear from search results completely.

Search engines change their SEO rules fairly often, and using patchwork solutions will only satisfy the search engines for so long. If you want your website to do well with search engines again, then you need to have your site updated.

Your Site Looks Old

In the mid-90s, websites on free hosts such as Angelfire were all the rage. The flood of free sites all using the same template created a look that froze website development in time. If your website still looks like one of those template websites, then it is going to be difficult to get people to take your site seriously. When your website starts getting called "grandpa," then it is time for a change.

Your Site Is Really Slow

Website design and programming has changed a lot over the years, and older sites simply cannot keep up. When you have updates done to your site, sometimes the old code is left in place to save time. Over the years, all of that old code can confuse browsers and your website loads extremely slow. Also, if you are still using languages and functions that are no longer supported, then your site will slow down as well.

It is a good idea to have your website evaluated each year to make sure that you are keeping up with the latest in Internet programming. At some point, your Internet marketing expert will let you know that it is time to do a full overhaul because your site and the Internet simply do not speak the same language anymore.

People love classic cars, but no one loves a classic website. When your website is no longer serving its purpose to your business, then it is time to get your Internet marketing team to overhaul the whole website.

Free Tools Online To Help Create Landing Pages

Landing pages for your promotions and other website functions are extremely important. Your landing page is often the first impression your website makes on a new customer, so you want to be sure that the landing page looks great. While creating a great looking landing page can sound intimidating, there are actually free tools online you can use that will help you to create a professional and functional landing page that your existing customers and new prospects will both appreciate.

Launch Effect

Launch Effect is a WordPress theme that is specifically designed to create great landing pages. As with most WordPress themes, Launch Effect is a template that you can quickly fill in to create a great landing page. This plug-in helps you to create one-page promotional pages that can go viral, or act as landing pages for any kind of promotion you may be running. There is plenty of support for this free tool, and its versatility allows you to create a wide variety of landing pages for your business.

Digy

Chocotemplates is known for its CSS templates, and Digy is one of the more advanced templates you can use for your landing pages. One of the extremely helpful features about Digy is that it has a responsive design element that allows it to adjust to tablets and smartphones without losing any critical information. Digy also works with HTML5, which is a critical feature when you want to take advantage of the latest online functions.

Launchrock

Launchrock is specifically designed to help you grow your customer base with customized landing pages that offer a wide variety of features. As with Digy, Launchrock also offers responsive design as well as pre-sale ecommerce functions. Lauchrock comes with a long list of templates you can easily use to create pages with your background, logo, and marketing message. Launchrock is simple to use, and it has a lot of extra features that you do not get with many other free landing page tools.

The Income Press Free Landing Page Generator

The Income Press Free Landing Page Generator is extremely spartan in its look, but it is incredibly effective in what it does. It was not originally designed to be released to the public, but a few people started using it and suddenly it caught on. You are given the choice of several template options, and then you populate the templates however you want. This simplistic looking landing page generator is extremely easy to use, but it gives you amazing results.

IM Creator

IM Creator is not exactly easy to use, but it is an effective landing page tool if you have WordPress. It is a drag-and-drop landing page creator that can take some getting used to. But once you have it figured out, it becomes a very powerful tool that will help you to create great landing pages.

A landing page can make or break your promotion. If you create a page with a high bounce rate, then you are losing business. But if you invest some time and effort into your landing page, then you can get great results. Fortunately, you will only need to invest time and effort because there are plenty of free tools you can use to make great landing pages.

10 Quick Tips for Killer SEO Results

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of updating and developing your website so that it shows up at the top of search result pages for the keywords in your industry. But what many people do not realize is that there is much more to good SEO than just a couple of well-placed keywords in a piece of content. With all of the changes Google has made to its search algorithms, it is now more important than ever that website owners utilize great SEO techniques to make their websites stand out.

Stop Using Paid Links

If you are not an Internet marketing expert, then you may have missed it when Google made putting paid links on your website a bad thing. Google wants all link building to be organic and have relevance to the website that is hosting the links. If your site still has links you paid for, then your site is being punished by Google and you need to remove those links immediately.

Clean Up Your Coding

If you have old coding on your website that references pages and materials that are no longer offered on the site, then you need to clean up that coding. Clean coding speeds up your load times and makes Google happy, so spend some time cleaning up your coding if you want to improve your search results.

Update Your Content

That content you bought four years ago is filled with SEO tactics that were good back in the day, but those tactics no longer work. It is now time to invest in new content for your site that will improve your SEO results.

Clean Up Your Index Page

If you have a movie clip or audio file that automatically starts when your page is loading, then remove it. Google will drop your page in the results rankings if your index page takes longer than two or three seconds to load, so clean up your index page and improve your SEO status.

Fix Those Broken Links

Truth be known, Google hates broken internal and external links. Invest in a piece of software that checks your site for broken links and make sure you run a link check at least once a week.

Make Your Images Smaller

Unless you need high definition images on your website, then reducing the size of your images down to anywhere between 40K and 80K will speed up how fast your site loads and improve your standing with the search engines.

Include A Site Map

Google loves site maps because they make it easier for Google's crawlers to index websites. If you want to get your site moved up in the search results, then create a map for your website.

Make A Long-Term Commitment

Websites that renew their domains year to year tend to have a difficult time moving up in the search engine results pages. Google wants to see a commitment to your website, which means that you should get at least a three-year package on your domain each time you renew. The more years you renew for at once, the better it is for your site.

Get Rid Of Excess Content

If you have content on your site that has nothing to do with the business your website conducts, then it is time to get rid of that content. Don't even archive the excess content. Just delete it and your website will feel much better.

Use Google+ Verified Authors

While it is not absolutely necessary to use authors for your content that are verified through Google+, it doesn't hurt. As you hire writers for your content, be sure to ask if the writers are Google+ verified and always post their Google+ link to improve your content's standing.

Does Your Business Need A Mobile Presence?

It is pretty common these days for business owners to put a lot of stock in having a great website and understand the importance of social media, but it is also common for business owners to completely miss the point on mobile marketing. The days of "I'll just create a text version of my website for people to see on their phones" are way over and your company needs a mobile presence if you are going to maximize your marketing efforts.

More People Are Going Mobile

The time is fast approaching where more people will access the Internet through their mobile computing devices than a laptop or a desktop. If you are an old school thinker who still believes that the desktop is king, then it can be hard to accept the fact that mobile is taking over. But this is not some gradual transition from desktops to smartphones. This is a massive and rapid migration that you will miss out on if you do not start taking a mobile presence seriously.

Cross-Platform Digital Marketing Is Becoming The Norm

There will always be that huge segment of the consumer world that spends time browsing for companies and products while at work or when they are bored at home. But if you plan on hoping that you reach that audience enough where it will sustain your business, then you will be disappointed at the revenues you start seeing.

Cross-platform marketing started decades ago when smart marketing experts insisted that their customers advertise on television, radio, and in print to get maximum exposure. If the consumer didn't see your ad on television, then they heard it on the radio. But more importantly, by constantly seeing your marketing no matter where they went, customers found it almost impossible to get your company out of their heads.

The digital age has finally reached the point where desktops, tablets, and smartphones all reach different types of consumers and that makes cross-platform digital marketing critical to your company's success. Without a mobile presence, you are diluting your marketing impact and leaving a lot of market share for your competition to grab.

Innovation Brings Revenue

The latest Internet innovations will always bring an increase in traffic and that applies to mobile marketing as well. Companies that invest in the development of new ways to create functional mobile websites will see a marked increase in web traffic and revenue. These days, converting your standard website into a text website for mobile users is the equivalent of an insult to all consumers. If you really want someone's business, you have to impress them with your mobile presence.

The digital marketing world continues to expand and grow, which opens up more opportunities than ever before for companies that want to grow their revenue. Hundreds of millions of people around the world live their lives attached to their mobile computing devices and you need to maximize every available method to reach those people and turn them into customers.

It used to be that not having a website meant that your company was invisible to consumers. Now, having a website is simply not enough to grow your business and maximize your marketing return. You need a mobile presence and you need it now. The chances are very good that your competition is already working on their mobile marketing plans and you will get left behind if you do not get your mobile marketing started today.

Google, Kanye and Twitter

Google and Twitter recently signed an agreement that rekindled a service that had stopped in 2012. For about a year, Google was offering real-time access to tweets as part of its search engine service. For example, if you decided to do a search on Kanye West, then one of Kanye's always entertaining tweets would show up and it was usually his most recent one.

Google decided to allow the original agreement to lapse, but Twitter insisted and a new one was signed in late 2014. We are not exactly sure what Google was thinking, but this could pave the way for social media to level the playing field with search engines and become the Internet marketing vehicle of choice for website owners.

Google Is Currently The Undisputed Marketing Champ

When we create a marketing campaign for your website, most of what we do is based on getting better search engine results through Google. We update your website coding, add keyword-enriched content, and put in organic links that are all designed to put your website as high as possible on the first page of search results for Google. But what if we could do all of that without even having to worry about Google's increasingly constrictive guidelines?

Right now, Google is the gold standard when it comes to developing rules for online marketing. But if Google continues to open up the landscape for social media, then that may mean that Google's rules are not as important as the social media rules. In other words, it could completely shift the marketing power from Google to social media.

A Lot Has Changed In A Year Or Two

For a few years, it looked like Facebook was going to overtake Google as the Internet marketing vehicle of choice. But when greed took over and Facebook suddenly forced business users to pay just to have their posts seen by any kind of audience, Facebook lost all of its marketing strength.

In lieu of Facebook, social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram have become dominant to the point where millions of people a day access both platforms to give and receive real-time information. Neither Twitter or Instagram puts any constraints on the types of information that can be shared, which makes them both very powerful marketing options. But they both still needed that massive platform to take their marketing potential to the next level. Google just provided that platform and it could be at a huge cost to Google.

Now What Happens?

With Facebook no longer a viable marketing option for businesses, the emphasis shifted to Twitter and Instagram. Pinterest was holding its own for a while, but the fickle finger of fate chose Instagram and now that is the photo sharing platform that is taking off. Marketing companies like ours are finding new and creative ways to use Twitter and Instagram to reach larger audiences. This agreement with Google just made it much easier to use Twitter to promote your business.

When this new agreement finally goes into effect, real-time tweets will show up at the top of Google search results in much the same way ads show up now. Instead of paying for a Google ad, you would just need to figure out how to get your tweets to show up on Google instead. Considering how fast the Internet changes, it should not take long to figure out how to use Twitter to dominate Google.

Google still sets the standard for content and will always be the way in which websites get their information to large amounts of people. But if it is faster and easier to use Twitter to make a marketing impact for a business website, then you will start seeing more and more Internet marketing companies developing effective tweets to utilize an agreement that puts Twitter ahead of Google on Google's own platform.

Three Reasons You Cannot Do Your Own SEO

As a professional Internet marketing firm, it is our job to get your website the kind of traffic that you need. Some people see what we do as marketing professionals and feel that they can get the same results on their own. But it takes years to become experts in SEO and Internet marketing, which is why SEO is definitely not something you should do on your own.

If you are considering a homemade SEO plan to improve your web traffic, then we propose that you just talk to one of our experts to get a professional opinion. We don't use big words or complicated phrases to impress you because that would not be beneficial to your website or to our business. But we can explain to you, in detail, the three reasons why you should never attempt to do SEO on your own.

Bad SEO Means Bad Results

One of the most common and dangerous misconceptions about DIY SEO is that it cannot do any harm to just try it out and see how it goes. There is no faster way to damage your website's status on the major search engines than to engage in bad SEO. The longer you use bad SEO practices, the more damage you will do and the longer it will take to repair.

What is bad SEO? Keyword stuffing and using purchased links are two sure ways to get a Google penalty that can take months to remove. But there are many other ways that dabbling in SEO on your own can damage your website's online reputation and prevent you from getting the kind of traffic you need.

The Rules Change Constantly

Google has put in several algorithm updates since 2012 and there are more updates yet to come. Yahoo! and Bing are also altering the way that they address SEO content and that has a direct effect on your website.

The rules for good SEO content change on a regular basis. If you want to be able to create good SEO, then you need to stay up to date on all of those changes. As a professional Internet marketing firm, we make it our job to stay updated on every change and alter SEO policies accordingly. We know that good SEO practices this year could be banned next year and that is why you need to stay on top of everything to do with SEO.

You Need Resources

We have teams of marketing experts, website developers and content creators available to execute the perfect SEO program for your website. If you do not have access to those types of professional resources, then your SEO program will never give you the results you need. We can put together an SEO plan that will raise your web traffic, generate you more revenue and get your website right where it needs to be.

Internet marketing is a complex profession that takes many years to master. A professional marketing organization such as ours employs a wide variety of experts to make sure that every SEO program we put together is successful. Instead of taking chances and possibly being damaged by bad, DIY SEO tactics, you should give one of our experts a call today and let us put together an SEO plan that will work.