Monthly Archives: February 2018

5 Biggest Web Design Mistakes You MUST Avoid This Year

Posted by & filed under Website Design.

web designThe 2017/18 Global Digital Outlook Study found that 43% of marketers across the world are upping their investment in digital marketing. Almost half are spending 50% or more of their marketing budget on digital marketing alone. The importance companies place on having a solid online marketing game is huge. Everything from search engine optimization to pay per click advertising plays a pivotal role in a successful marketing campaign, but one thing needs to happen first.

Website design can be likened to how a physical store looks. Is it clean? Are things where you’d expect them to be? Do people like being there? These are all important questions for store owners, and now website owners must ask them as wel. Sometimes, however, a website is a total mess. In fact, this is fairly common. So, here are some common web design mistakes to avoid at all costs.

  1. Unresponsive Design
    A responsive web design is a site designed so that its presentation adapts to the size of screen that it is being accessed from. If, say, a visitor is using a phone to access your site, but when it loads they are only able to see the top left corner of your site, they will likely find another website to browse.

  2. Under or Over Designing
    Too little design being put into a page is one way to make your website look like everyone else’s’. Too much design and your website could end up looking cluttered, distracted, and all over the place.

  3. Missing Leads
    If you employ Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click, and other lead generation techniques, but fail to capture user emails and contact information when they are directed to your site, you will lose those people as leads. Not every visitor will convert on their first visit, which is why remarketing campaigns, contact forms, and email lists are such valuable lead capture tools.

  4. Buried Essential Information
    If potential customers have to click through 17 different pages of nonsense to find the product information they’re after… Well, they won’t click through that many pages, will they? Make any important information relating to purchases readily available and easy to locate, or risk losing lots of leads.

  5. 404s
    Error: List item not found.

 
If you wish to avoid these issues and make a masterful website, contact a professional website design company that offers a wide array of web design services. Building a beautiful and high functioning website is no small chore. If you need a hand, contact us today.

5 SEO Trends To Watch In 2018

Posted by & filed under Search Engine Optimization.

seoThe world of digital marketing is wild, new and has fantastic potential to transform the way people market both their companies and themselves. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is on the front lines of this new marketing landscape, but to stay there, it has to be agile. Google, the search engine overlord, knows all about SEO strategies. All they had to do was google it. Due to SEO, there are many updates to Google’s search algorithms every year. So, SEO experts need to change tactics all of the time. Here are some trends you should expect to see early on in 2018.

  1. RankBrain
    This is Google’s most advanced deep learning algorithm to date, and it has become the third most important ranking factor in the interconnected web of wonder that is the Google ranking algorithm. Among other data, the primary focus of this almost-AI is on measuring the duration a person spends on a website (Dwell Time), and the percent of people clicking on your page(Click Through Rate).

  2. The Knowledge Graph
    This can make or break your page’s CTR. The knowledge graph, or answer box, or featured snippet, or any of Google’s clean-cut boxes of information that come up with generic or broad searches could preclude people from clicking your link. Either you make a website so attractive that you can overcome the knowledge graph, or you become the knowledge graph.

  3. Content
    The more you factor in Dwell Time to the decision-making process that Google’s algorithms must undertake, the more you will see why long-form content reigns supreme. Most top-ranked links on any Search Engine Results Page (SERP) will be in the thousands for their word count. Not only that, but they will be good.

  4. Image Search
    Google image searches are an ever-improving enterprise. Using picture keywords in content might become an emerging strategy in the upcoming months. Images will be especially useful in social media marketing campaigns.

  5. Alternative Search Markets
    For a long time now, Google has been the only relevant platform to do SEO, and in the broad sense it still is. Specific search engine optimization can be done on the engines used on Amazon’s internal search engine by writing reviews in much the same way articles are written for Google. Likewise, Yelp, Siri, and other widely used platforms with internal search functions could be optimized.

Google gets more than 100 billion searches every month. They have some of the most brilliant minds and complicated algorithms in the world working to provide a platform for people to find knowledge. SEO experts are the silent infantry of online marketing. They work tirelessly behind the scenes to make your business visible to consumers worldwide. On the bleeding edge of digital marketing stands search engine optimization, ready for whatever algorithm Google decides to make next.