Why Web Design Matters

One question that we still hear a lot is: why web design matters???

We decided to dig deeper into it and share with you why good website design is crucial for your website.

By now, the majority of the world's particularly business owners are more inclined to the digital world. Your website gives your business a real identity online which is why if you want to flourish your online business, you must have a website. When it comes to having a website, it must be functional and have a good design.

Moreover, the Covid-19 pandemic has introduced the trend of an online approach to everything. People now preferably use the internet for all-purpose. It has increased the competition between websites serving online facilities. So to hit the jackpot, the website should be designed to compel the audience to terminate surfing and get hooked up.

For business and online success, effective website design is the crucial factor as your website design determines sales, profits, and audience/customer growth. A good website design ensures massive turnover and a competitive edge over the rest.

Let us delve into the notion of why web design matters so you understand its significance too.

Importance of Website Design

Digital marketing strategies have introduced several effective and reliable ways for entrepreneurs to get success in the digital universe. Businesses without websites miss out on numerous opportunities and potential customers due to a poorly designed website.

Website design has become the most crucial factor making it substantial to invest in effective web designing. It doesn’t involve rocket science in creating a website: several design options are available that make it a piece of cake if you have complete guidelines on designing a website.

Besides increasing credibility and accessibility, here are some of the reasons why web design matters and why it is important to design a website functionally and effectively.

Serves as First Impression

“You never get a second chance to make a first impression.”- Will Rogers

This quote implies all aspects of life. If the first impression is repelling, it destroys the temptation and intention to get further. A well-designed website creates an appealing first impression, whereas a crappy and outdated website design compels the user to leave the site at once. Now you know a substantial reason behind why web design matters.

Indeed, engaging and explicit content has a massive role to make a website highly ranked on Google Search Engine. But what if the site looks boring, unattractive, and confusing, would you continue to browse by the end of the content? You are likely to leave it and not return to it, right!

Ultimately, an effective website design becomes a prerequisite to ensure the lead traffic to your website. Since the first impression is the primary key factor in how the users perceive your business or brand, it is essential not to underestimate the worth of web design and invest in it without any hesitation.

Boosts Trust and Brand Consistency

Another major reason why web design matters. is that it helps build trust and consistency.

Before making any purchase or getting any services, users/customers go through its complete details and inspect whether the brand is worthwhile investing the time and money for it. If they find any inconvenience in using the website or do not get enough information about your brand, they will leave for the competitor brand.

Boosting Trust and Brand Consistency

Brand consistency and customer trust are other reasons why web design matters. Before making any purchase or getting any services, users/customers go through its complete details and inspect whether the brand is worthwhile investing the time and money for it. If they find any inconvenience in using the website or do not get enough information about your brand, they will leave for the competitor brand.

In the fast-paced world, people are unable to spend time in outlets or stores, so they prefer to browse for products online. As the competition in the digital world has become extensive, it has become mandatory to prioritize web design. Naturally, a professional site with effective website design captivates the user’s attention and wins their confidence.

A good website design must include the following features

Site Organization

Site organization is about how information is placed on each page and how it affects the customer experience. A user visiting your website expects to find complete information about your brand. It is, therefore, your responsibility to provide all the information in a digestible format.

The user becomes overwhelmed with information and leaves the site when it becomes incomprehensible because of a long text page with an unorganized hierarchy. If you section off the content using catchy headings is not only good for SEO, but also makes the user feel comfortable using the website to take the desired action.

Consistent visual hierarchy

Consistent visual hierarchy is another factor why web design matters. It refers to arranging or laying out the elements in a logical way to show the order of their importance. While designing a website, must consider the consistent visual hierarchy of site colors, typography, font size, and imagery, as these features influence the user's perceptions and make them take the desired action.

The uniformity in the order of information without emphasizing certain important aspects will miss conversions as a user will be hard-pressed to find the information they need.

You can utilize the colors and font size to highlight the importance of particular information or section so that it becomes feasible for a user to proceed towards the desired action.

Customer reviews visibly placed

Before buying any product or installing any app, people must go through the reviews given by other users. After finding any positive or valuable reviews, they make up their mind to go ahead. Hence, it is beneficial for boosting the credibility of your brand to place the customer’s reviews visibly and perceptibly while designing a website.

Awards

Getting featured on blogs or magazines or winning awards in the industry is certainly an honor.

While designing a website, you can consider displaying 5-6 awards (from the great authorities) that match your niche to benefit your SEO. Along with SEO, it boosts your self-esteem and users' confidence in your brand and website. Hence, getting accolades too plays a role in why website design matters.

FAQs

FAQs stand for Frequently Asked Questions and are the best way to make your website reliable and convenient for users. It lets you answer the concerns or questions frequently asked by the users about your business or brand.

To make your website more accessible for the users, adding FAQs is necessary. If your user finds the best answers to their queries provided by the FAQs page on your website, it will increase the user's credibility and the chances of the highest SEO scores for your website.

In the case of eCommerce, brand claims such as photography, money back guarantee claims, delivery times, customer reviews, product descriptions, etc.

Ultimately, this stimulates the users to purchase without a second thought.

Helps in Search Engine Optimization

A big reason why web design matters is because it helps with the website’s SEO.

The exact science behind SEO is beyond our ken, but as per the knowledge and guidelines available, the sites that fulfill the essential requirements of SEO can stand out in the competition. Once again, the designing of website plays a crucial role in that.

Internet surfers always prefer to visit the website from top to bottom. Google and all other search engines examine the website design and structure, content authority, and reliability to optimize your website. The code of the site and its compatibility with different devices including Smartphones and tablets also increase the chances of indexing and ranking the website by a search engine. Following the Search Engine Optimization strategies truly ensure conquest over your competitors. An effective website design is always according to these rules.

To understand how to create a good web design layout for your website pages, do go through Google's E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) model. Try to build an authoritative and trustworthy web design from any expert web design agency to be on the crest of the waves in Google’s world. If you fail to meet the SEO requirements, you would have to jump through hoops to make your website visible on Google and other search engines.

While we are on the topic of getting an expert’s help to design the website, Tom & Co offers all kinds of website design packages. Moreover, we have quite a skilled team of website designers who can create quality websites with effective website design.

Usability and Users Experience

Users will keep returning to your website if they can access all the pages without any difficulty. According to research, consumers visit a site to view, buy products, or contact the brand. Well-designed websites cover both aspects and are extremely user-friendly, which explains why web design matters.

Besides getting information about brands, people also use websites to buy products and services online. However, sometimes customers quit the website right before making a purchase just because the checkout process is too long or complicated to comprehend the instructions.

One of the benefits of website design being attractive and powerful is that it attracts potential customers. Understanding the importance of website design is imperative to increase the sale or recognition of your brand/business. Make sure to add all the vital contact information and details about the website in the main navigation and upper right-hand corner of your site so that the visitors don’t feel clueless and can find the required information easily.

Furthermore, you should create a mobile-friendly website to improve its usability since more and more people prefer to browse through their mobile devices instead of their PC screens.

Good Website Design Means Greater Control of Conversions

The ultimate goal of your website is to convert visitors into customers. Effective Website design will make it feasible for the user to get the desired outcomes of browsing.

If you have an e-store, a customer will likely want to make a purchase. To make that happen conveniently, make it easy for the customer to find the services and the ‘Buy Now’ button. If the user wants to get information about a certain topic, the content provided should be engaging and informative to the user.

When all the website elements are placed in an unordered way, it creates a mess and users can’t figure out what your services are all about. But in a quality website, it becomes a five-finger exercise for the customer to find what they were looking for. This is a huge reason why web design matters.

Now that we have covered the importance of web design, let us discuss the elements of a good website design.

Elements of good web design

By now, you must have acknowledged the importance of website design after knowing its benefits in content marketing. A lot of elements contribute to designing a unique and quality website. Here we have picked out a few salient components that are most effective in designing a website and also play a crucial role in the importance of website design. These elements can be helpful for business owners who are wondering about redesigning their old websites.

Let’s dig into some of the primary elements of good web design.

Website Layout

A sturdy and well-built foundation ensures a secure and worthwhile future for anything. As it is rightly said that without a strong foundation, you’ll have trouble creating anything of value or worth. To ensure triumph over the competitors in the digital world, you need to lay a strong and indomitable foundation for your website.

In designing of a website, the layout is its foundation. When discussing why web design matters, we simply cannot ignore the importance of a website’s layout.

The website layout involves the arrangement of visuals, placing the content, and navigational elements. To make the site work efficiently, you should create a hierarchy among these elements that puts the most significant elements at the top. The hierarchy should be based on how you think your audience will use it.

Let’s look at the four prominent features that must be kept in mind while designing a web layout:

Header and Menu are the first impressions of your website. It is designed in a way that might help out a user to easily decipher the purpose of your website.
Images or Groups of images are placed just below the header. The audience or customers descry the image along with the Header and menu statement. These features decide whether the customer will stay to continue to the web content or instantly tap the back to continue surfing. Be very meticulous and choose the website image that may deliver the objective and motive of your brand or services at the first glance to the audience.
Content is all about the knowledge that is delivered to the audience. It should be precise so that audience can quickly peruse through it, and move towards taking the desired call to action.
Footer rests at the bottom of the website, on the ground floor. The chunks of footer include sitemaps with the link to your site pages, basic contact information, and social bars to lead users to your social media platforms. These footer features are essential to the development of your business or brand.

If you work on these areas, the overall design of your site will improve, and your website's purpose will be clearer.

Typography

Website Typography source: Type terms

Typography is simply the creative design you choose for the text of the content. This design may include font pairing, leading, letter designs, and kerning.

Typically three general styles: Italic, oblique, and small caps are used for typography while designing of a website. Small caps with large size fonts are used for headings and subheadings to distinguish the headings from the rest of the paragraphs more precisely.

To enhance the readability score and traffic to your website content, always choose a compatible color scheme and consistent + suitable sized font for your content. Further, to make your content easier to read, you should consider the line spacing in the paragraphs, which should be 1.5em (1.5 times larger than the font size).

Website Navigation

Website navigation involves clicking and looking through websites and other resources on the internet. A web browser is used to navigate websites and click on links that lead to other pages. Website navigation is important to make your services approachable for users.

It is essential to design your website navigation rigorously so that anyone can access any page of your website without any inconvenience. A website with good design also has easy navigation, so pay attention to this aspect of your site too. Website experts at Tom & Co are quite skilled in this arena too, just saying. 😉

Visuals

We human beings believe in everything we see as the visuals spark emotions and action in our behavior. While designing a website, utilize the images that can deliver the purpose of your website to the target audience. Choose suitable, compatible, and decent images and videos along with the text to explain the information about your brand and services.

Though images and videos can attract an audience, too much of it makes the website cluttered and messy. The user may become overwhelmed after browsing through repeated images with inconsistent text. So be very vigilant about deciding where and how to place images and videos to make the content engaging for the users.

Color Scheme

Website color schemes

While we are on the topic of why web design matters, it is essential to discuss the color scheme of a site.

Colors add beauty to everything and attract viewers. The color scheme is quite a monumental factor in a good website design. Basically, it is a collection of colors chosen by the designer. The color scheme is one of the essential elements in designing a website as it reflects the website's objective and niche.

To create an appealing website, it is suggested to utilize three colors: two colors should be according to your brand, and the third one should be white for the background.

Content

Web Content

Website content is the backbone of any website. The content explains what the website is about and what services the brand provides. Engaging and unique content makes the website SEO optimized and increases Google ranking. When people ask why web design matters, they focus only on the design, not the content. Make sure you don’t make that mistake.

When a user decides to continue browsing a website, the content can keep them hooked to the site and compel them to take action. Action may be of any kind, it can be commenting and sharing the blog post and making a purchase by the time they are done reading the content.

Responsiveness

Responsiveness for every size

You may be thinking that your question is why web design matters, but we are discussing responsiveness. Why so?

Responsiveness in the website design is the flexibility and adjustment of the website layout according to the device screen. Since mobile phone users are growing rapidly, it has become compulsory to have a responsive website design.

A responsive website is easily accessible regardless of the device type. You can browse a responsive website using your mobile, iPad, tablet, laptop, or computer. It is loaded faster and generates a massive lead of customers. Quality websites are always responsive, so make certain yours is responsive too!

Call to action (CTA)

Call to Action

Once all the above factors are brought into action comes the eventual fate of your website.

After generating the lead and traffic, websites' ultimate purpose is converting leads into customers through a well-designed CTA button.

Effective website design contains an attention-grabbing CTA button that instantly draws the users towards it. The color scheme for the website plays an important role in designing a CTA button. Choose a bright and eye-catching color for the CTA button to make your customers take the action you’ve meant for them to take.

Information Accessibility

It is necessary to make your website accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities, to increase its usability. Designing a website in such a way that is comprehensible for all kinds of people around the world is essential to ensuring lead and conversion. The more information and procedures you simplify, the more likely you will be to increase sales and traffic.

Ample knowledge is available on countless websites, and it has become crucial to get ranked and legitimacy on search engines including Google. The one who makes things accessible and effortless for the users wins the attention of users. The web design plays a crucial role in that which is one of the reasons why web design matters.

Wrapping Up - Why Web Design matters

Creating a website for promoting a business and brand has become imperative in the digital age. If you want fruitful outcomes, you need to invest in designing and maintaining an effective website. Once you have designed a quality website, you can attract potential customers like a magnet. Make your website accessible as much as possible to get acknowledged by the users and Google Search Engine.

Now that we have discussed in detail why web design matters, make sure you create a powerful website. It is essential to possess a website when the internet world has become most intriguing to people. Hence to flourish and prosper in the highly competitive universe, go ahead and approach someone professional to design a unique and model website. Experts at Tom&Co. are all ready to help you out.

FAQs

Why is web design important?

A well-designed website leaves a good impression on your business and brand and generates a massive lead of your potential customers. If people can easily find all the information they need about your business/brand, they will be more confident in your services.

What makes a good website design?

Here are so many factors that need to be considered while designing a quality website. The key factors that have a major contribution to designing a flawless website include:

Unique layout
Typography
Accurate color scheme
Well-organized design elements
Imagery

Why does styling matter in good website design?

Upon first glance at your website, visitors form an impression in milliseconds. To maintain engagement throughout the website, website design must incorporate styling. Styling reflects the type of your business or brand.

Can I design a website from my phone?

Several apps are available that have made it a cinch. You can easily design a website for yourself using your android, iPhone, tablet, or desktop.

How SEO And PPC Work Together

For years, digital agencies have separated Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) functions into two separate operations. Both SEO and PPC require similar process to complete, but many digital agencies avoid mixing the two together.

When you work with an agency that allows SEO and PPC to work together, you will get more comprehensive results and you will be able to identify your target audience more precisely. While SEO and PPC function well on their own, they are even more effective when you put them together.

The Differences Between SEO And PPC

The primary difference between SEO and PPC is time. An SEO project is a long-term operation that constantly gathers and analyzes data and makes content changes based on that data. A PPC project is generally a short-term operation that is focused on a single goal and collects and analyzes a lot of data to be used in future projects.

Using SEO And PPC To Build Demographics

With PPC campaigns, you can create keywords designed to target specific geographic regions or other precise parts of your target audience. A PPC campaign is built around a single purpose or message, which allows you to collect very specific information about how your audience reacts to certain keywords and phrases.

The data you collect on a PPC campaign can be used to enhance the effectiveness of an SEO project. The keyword data you collect from a particular PPC campaign designed to affect a very specific audience can be used to create keywords that will reach a similar audience with your SEO information.

Regulate PPC Budgets

Since an SEO campaign is ongoing, it has a very different budget structure than a PPC campaign. With PPC, you pay for every click you get on a particular link, which can sometimes create a tight budget situation.

By using the ongoing data on keywords you have gathered from your long-term SEO project, you can be more precise in what audience you want to reach with your PPC campaign and what message you want to deliver. This allows you to get better value for your clicks, and that helps to keep your PPC budget under control.

Creating Accurate Traffic Projections

The intent of a PPC campaign is to target potential clients that are close to becoming paying customers. With SEO marketing, the process is more gradual and reaches out a broader audience. But when you put PPC data together with SEO traffic data, you suddenly start to see patterns that allow you to make more accurate traffic projections for future SEO and PPC campaigns.

The PPC side of the process will show you how your audience reacts to various keywords and advertising text, while the SEO side will show real trends when it comes to your audience's reaction to certain types of content. When you put this data together, you can get a surprisingly accurate projection on how much traffic you can expect from both PPC and SEO campaigns.

In a digital agency, there are good reasons for keeping PPC and SEO professionals separate from each other. Each group has its own way of collecting and analyzing data that is ideal for their marketing goals. But it also pays to bring the two groups together to give you the kind of accurate data you need to increase the return on investment you get with your marketing efforts.

The Five Parts Of SEM

When search enging optimization (SEO) first burst onto the scene, the acronym SEO was used to represent a wide variety of online marketing activities. Over time, digital marketing experts decided to separate paid search engine marketing (SEM) from SEO tactics, primarily because SEO referred to the organic process of using keywords, content, and links to bring in traffic. The practices surrounding SEM all required an additional investment from the marketing client, and that is why they are all grouped together.

Paid Advertising

A big part of SEM is buying ads on search engine pages. You can buy ads on results pages, or you can try to buy ads on the general search pages. Paid advertising can be expensive, but it can also bring in the best results. Each search engine offers its own type of paid advertising program, and you can also customize a program to have your ads show up during certain keywords.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

PPC advertising is very popular because advertisers only pay for ads that actually get results. You pay every time someone clicks on your link or banner ad, which helps to increase the probability of converting that traffic to buying customers. PPC marketing is also very effective at gathering market data to enhance other marketing programs, and it can also be very effective at letting companies know which new markets they should invest in to expand their customer base.

Pay Per Call (PPC)

The other PPC in SEM is pay per call, and it is the mobile equivalent of pay per click. This form of SEM charges an advertiser for each click that results in a direct smartphone call from a consumer. This form of SEM is a bit riskier that pay per click, but it can also generate much more financially rewarding results.

Cost Per Click (CPC)

CPC is a way of determining the real value an advertiser is getting from their PPC campaign. It is a series of math equations used to determine the true value of each click and determine which changes need to be made to the PPC campaign to get more out of it. You may be getting 12 clicks an hour in your PPC campaign, but not all 12 are browsing your site and making buying decisions. With CPC, you can determine more accurately what you are actually paying to get clicks that result in sales.

Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM)

The CPM method is another way to determine the real value an advertiser is getting for their digital marketing program. Instead of charging by the click, the marketing company charges a rate for every 1,000 impressions an ad gets. In many ways, the CPM method can help to get more accurate information for the marketer to use to refine future advertising.

When a digital marketing company uses SEM methods, they are looking to get the best possible value for their client. One of the biggest differences between SEM and SEO is that it can often be easier to measure SEM results because it is based on paid advertising. But any digital marketing expert will tell you that the most comprehensive type of marketing plan includes both SEM and SEO methods.

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.

Some Cold And Hard Facts About Blogging

If you are a business owner in the 21st century and you are still on the fence about the importance of blogging, then you need to start facing some cold and hard facts about this powerful form of marketing. Whether you take the time to run your own blog or you hire a digital agency to run your blog for you, it is impossible to have a comprehensive online marketing plan without a well-planned blog.

A Blog Offers Excellent SEO Material

The great thing about a blog is that you update it at least every week, which means that you can include content about the latest topics to help build your SEO presence. Your blog is also the place where you will post about topics of interest to your target audience that might be on the outer fringe of what your audience wants to know and help you to reach a broader audience.

When you update your blog regularly, you are adding more punch to your SEO results. The more often you update your blog, the more you will maximize the SEO results of your website.

A Blog Is An Essential Marketing Tool

A blog allows you to respond directly to consumer questions, post updated information on your products, and give immediate updates on topics of interest to your target audience. Not only does a blog enhance your company's SEO results, but it also an invaluable way of delivering the marketing information your company needs to maintain a strong bond with your customers.

Blogging Is Not Easy

We offered you these great benefits to blogging as a way to soften the blow when we reveal that blogging is hard work. If you want it done right, it is in your best interests to hire a professional digital agency. Not only do you need a regular supply of content that is professionally written, but that content needs to be relevant to your audience and it needs to inspire your audience to share that content as well.

Writing a successful blog post requires the right content, a writing method that is engaging to your audience, and a layout that makes your content easy to read. Each and every blog post you publish has to consider all of these elements to be successful, which makes blogging hard work.

A Blog Becomes The Personality Of Your Company

When consumers and members of the media want to read the very professional and proper version of your company's offerings, they go to your website. When they want to see what kind of personality your company has, they go to your blog. This idea of presenting your corporate personality through your blog is essential in making a bond with your target audience, but it can also get your company in trouble if you try to push the personality envelope too far.

A good blog becomes a full-time job, but the benefits of having a blog are considerable. If you have been avoiding creating a blog because you feel you do not have the time or expertise, then it is time to invest some resources in a professional digital agency. The longer your company goes without a blog, the more money you are missing out on each and every day.

Standing Out With Local SEO

As the Internet gets overwhelmed with new websites every day, it becomes more and more difficult for companies to separate themselves from the competition. The saturation of the Internet makes the role of the professional digital agency even more important, especially when it comes to local SEO.

Businesses are starting to realize that local SEO can be a more powerful marketing tool that the yellow pages in the phone book ever was. People carry their phones with them, and those phones have the Internet on them. The better your website can stand out with local SEO, the easier it will be to grab those local customers. But how can your company stand out from all of the rest in its local SEO?

What Makes Your Company Different?

The problem with many business owners is that they think in generalities. Owners need to realize that every company says they have the best customer service, and every company boasts that they offer the best products in the industry. When you try to separate your company from the competition, the last thing you want to do is say the same exact things the competition is saying.

If you want your local SEO to be strong, then you need to pinpoint at least one solid thing that makes your company stand out from the competition. Do you offer unique packaging? Is there a service you offer the competition does not? When you come up with at least one thing that you do better than the competition, then you can move on to creating solid local SEO content.

Focus Your Website's Content

In order for you to attract customers that will be interested in your local content, that content needs to highlight the things that make your company different. Instead of repeating the same business phrases everyone else is using, your content will be fresh and stand out from the crowd.

You also need to put your company's best traits in lingo the local audience will understand. Every region has its own dialect, and you need to speak in that dialect if you want to get the attention of your local customers. By expounding on what makes your company different in a language your local customers are comfortable with, you will truly enhance your local SEO.

Enhance Your Link Building Process

When you have pinpointed what you are good at, it is much easier to develop link building relationships with other local companies and local civic groups. As your SEO develops and your content brings in traffic, you will start to get opportunities to build a network of links that include people interested in what your company has to offer.

If you want your link building to work, it needs to be organic. With local SEO, your company's ability to do something no other company does will bring in link building opportunities that will help your website to grow. As your company's local SEO grows, so will the quality of your link building opportunities.

Creating strong local SEO starts with the right digital agency and a strong understanding of your company. When you lock onto that one thing your company offers that the competition does not, then you have found the key to creating content that is optimized for your local consumer audience.

The Importance Of Maintaining A Healthy Business Website

Your business website is the face of your company to millions of potential customers all over the world. Despite the importance of a website, there are plenty of business owners who do not invest the resources necessary to keep their website healthy and relevant. Aside from being the first impression your business makes to potential new clients, there are several other reasons why it is important to maintain your website.

Around The Clock Revenue

The ecommerce portion of your website should be available to your customers 24-hours a day. The convenience of an ecommerce section to your website is what attracts some customers to your business in the first place. Instead of having to spend time calling your sales department or trying to get in touch with their dedicated sales professional, your customers can just go online and place orders. When your website is not maintained properly, your revenue is significantly affected.

Customer Support

Your website is a place where customers can go to get answers to their questions, and submit product return forms to take care of product issues. When your website is not properly maintained, those functions suffer and the level of support you offer to your customers drops considerably. If you want to keep your customers happy, then you need to maintain your website to ensure the type of support your customers are used to.

SEO Ranking

The SEO criteria for major search engines changes quite frequently. One of the more important aspects of good SEO practices is to keep your website maintained and updated with new content. When you neglect your website, it will start to fall on the search result pages of all of the major search engines. The further your website falls in the search result pages, the more revenue-generating traffic you will lose.

Upgrading Is Easier

A healthy website owned by a proactive business professional gets updated more often than most people may realize. When a website is properly maintained, it is easier to upgrade portions of the website without disrupting business too much. But when a website has been neglected, upgrading any portion of it can take a very long time.

Security

Perhaps one of the most important reasons to maintain a healthy website is to maintain your website's security. A website needs constant updates to protect client information, and to prevent hackers from disrupting the company's servers. It seems like every month a new company is getting hacked and information is getting lost. One of the most effective ways to secure your website from hackers is to make sure that it is maintained properly, and that your security functions are checked constantly by an online security expert.

The truth is that any company website that is not maintained and updated by a professional digital marketing company is at risk of becoming vulnerable to hackers, and losing money for the website owner. If you want to get the most out of your website, then talk to a digital marketing company about a full evaluation of your site, and then sign up for a good ongoing maintenance program. A healthy website can bring your company revenue and opportunities. A poorly maintained website will bring your company misery.

Top 3 Reasons Your Competitor's Website Ranks Higher Than Yours

It is not difficult for you to do some research to see where your website ranks in the top search words and phrases in your industry. But when you do get those search results, you may be disappointed at what you find. If your competition is working with a digital agency for their website and you are not, then the chances are pretty good that their website ranks higher than yours.

The primary reasons why your competition is beating your website has to do with the types of comprehensive services a digital agency offers, versus your attempts at growing your website on your own. There are a lot of reasons why your competitor's website ranks higher than yours in search results, but there are three primary reasons that you should be aware of.

You Must Have A SEO Strategy

Getting good SEO results can only happen when you have a comprehensive SEO strategy, and a good SEO strategy takes time to unfold. If you are not mapping every step of your SEO progression, then you are flying blind and you will get hit or miss results. If you want consistent SEO results that will get you the best spots on search engine results pages, then you need a comprehensive written SEO strategy.

Your SEO strategy includes planning out blog posts, updating keywords and following trends that dictate how your traffic responds to your content. Without the right type of SEO strategy at work, you will not get the kinds of traffic results you are looking for.

Mixing In Paid Search Processes

Ever since Google started changing its algorithms around in 2012, the idea of organic search results has dominated the digital marketing industry. It takes months of hard work to establish a trend of good organic SEO results, but that foundation can lead to a significant rise in traffic when it is firmly established.

A comprehensive marketing plan that beats the competition includes paid marketing processes in with the organic marketing to get maximum results. Elements such as pay per click and banner marketing are going to work side-by-side with SEO content for your blog to get the best results.

Properly Utilizing Social Media

Most business owners who attempt to use social media for business purposes are going about everything the wrong way. First of all, you have to be sure that your target audience is even part of a social media platform's demographics before you commit time to that platform. You also need a dedicated staff to constantly update your social media pages, and interact with the people who have asked questions or made comments.

In order to beat your competitors in web rankings, you need to utilize social media in an efficient and professional manner. You need to make sure that every post you publish on all of your social media pages has a purpose, and that it ties into the rest of your marketing efforts in some way. Social media can be an excellent wait to retain customers and grow your customer base, but only when it is used properly.

The bottom line is if you want your website to beat the competition's in web ranking, then you need the help of a professional digital agency. A professional organization will have the years of experience and necessary understanding of how dynamic Internet systems work to push your website to the top of all of the major search engines.

SEO For Beginners - Free SEO Tools Online

The Internet not only offers website owners ways to reach millions of prospective clients around the world, but it also gives the tools necessary to generate the type of content that those prospective customers will enjoy. If you are new to SEO, then it helps to have free tools you can use to get the most out of your search engine results. To help SEO beginners out, we offer a list of the types of tools you can find online that will assist you in maximizing your SEO potential.

Plagiarism Checkers

If you post content that appeared on another website without permission, then that is plagiarism. You can also commit plagiarism if you copy parts of published content for your own articles. If there is one thing every search engine frowns on, it is plagiarism. There are plenty of free online plagiarism checkers you can use to make sure that every piece of content you are posting online is original.

Even if you buy your content from professional writers, you should still run everything through a plagiarism checker. While many of the more reputable content sites check content for you, there could be issues if you buy content directly from writers or if you use those content websites that do not check content before selling it to you.

SEO Score

Many marketing sites offer a free SEO score checker that can give you great advice on what you need to do to improve the reach of your website. You will find that each marketing company has its own way of computing an SEO score, so be sure that you become familiar with the meaning of the score and how it is calculated for the website you are using before you take action based on your score.

Grammar Checker

The Internet used to be filled with writing from people who could not really speak English, but they could copy and paste a keyword into an article several times over to improve the search engine results. These days, Google and the other search engines frown on keyword stuffing and bad grammar.

Even if you speak English as a native language, you may not have the best grammar when it comes to writing content. That is why every piece of content you put on your site should be run through a grammar checker first.

Keyword Checker

While keywords are not quite as important as they used to be, you can still get better SEO results if you use popular keywords in your industry. Google and a few other search engines offer comprehensive tools that will help you to either find the best keywords for your content, or tell you if the keywords you want to use will be effective.

The Internet content industry and rules change constantly, but the effectiveness of good SEO practices never go out of style. The biggest issue that website owners who are new to SEO have is developing content practices that deliver the very best results and put their websites as high as possible on the first page of search results. With the free tools that are available online, any SEO newcomer can make sure that their content is ready to reach their target audience and generate plenty of traffic.

SEO for Beginners - Four Tips to Get You Started

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a very important part to any online marketing program that will help to establish your website as a prime destination for your target audience. To get the best SEO results, you should hire a professional marketing firm because good SEO requires persistent monitoring and updating to be effective. For those business owners who want to get their own SEO program started, we have few tips to help you out. Once you start your SEO program, you will see why it is a task best left to professionals.

Update and Monitor Your Website Links

When you website has broken links for any period of time, that makes all of the search engines angry. The longer you leave those broken links in place, the worse the damage is to your SEO results. There is software you can use to monitor the internal and external links on your website, and you will need to keep an eye on those links constantly.

Use Only Relevant Content

The content on your website is a huge part of your SEO results, so you need to make sure that it fits what the search engines want. It used to be that you could strategically place keywords in your content and that would generate results, but those days are gone.

These days, you need to have content that offers your visitors value and deals in subjects within your industry. This can sound like a time-consuming process, and it is. But if you want to get premium SEO results, then your content has to meet the criteria of the search engines and add value to your website.

Develop a Link Swapping Program

Link swapping is another part of SEO that has changed over the years. Website owners used to be able to buy links and use those links to help bring in traffic. But since 2012, Google has outlawed purchased links and slap any website that uses them with a penalty that affects their search results.

The best approach is to contact website owners who have sites that are complimentary to yours and then agree to swap links. You can use those links naturally in your content, and then monitor the other site to make sure that your site is getting return traffic.

Evaluate the Titles on All of Your Pages

Website titles used to be a quick way for online marketing people to grab some extra traffic by either loading the titles with keywords, or creating page titles that had nothing to do with the content. Page and content titles need to describe the page or content accurately, be brief, and avoid too many keywords. If you want good SEO results, then you need to go through all of your page and content titles to make sure they fit the new SEO criteria.

Maintaining a good SEO program is a full-time job. You can use these four tips as starting points for your SEO program, but there is much more to developing a strong presence on all of the major search engines. Now that you know the basics, you can talk to your online marketing expert and help plan your own website marketing.