Does Your Website Need a Makeover? Seattle Web Design Tips for Local Businesses

A website might be one of the best forms of internet marketing you can have, but what if the one you have isn’t good enough? You probably know that there are millions of websites on the internet, and no matter what you’re selling or doing, you have competitors. While not all of them are local, some of them are, so your website has to serve the dual purpose of attracting interest, drawing traffic, and impressing your clients and customers. Does yours? We talked with local Seattle web design experts, as well as our own Rory Martin, to talk about just what a business website needs to succeed.

web site makeover Seattle web design

Easy Navigation

You’ve probably gone to website in the past and had so much trouble finding things that you left. If you go on your website now and try the same thing, how easy is it to navigate your pages? Poor navigation is one of the number one signs that your website needs a makeover, mainly because it will drive your customers away. While you don’t have to go overboard, the best navigation is simple, easy to find, and easy to use. Plus, your search should produce quality results, not a list of every page you have.

Graphics

A picture is worth a thousand words and unfortunately, consumers just don’t respond to your all-text website. If you don’t have large, bold, and beautiful images on your site then you have to work on it. Photographs, pictures, and graphics help communicate your brand, your products, and your business, plus they look good. Don’t go online without them.

Speed

How fast does your website load? Did you know that your website speed affects everything from your SEO to your bounce and exit rate? Consumers want sites to be fast, especially if they are on mobile, so you have to make sure that your framework is light enough to make it happen. How fast is fast? Think under 1 second load time for the best results. Because more than 60% of your traffic could be stemming from mobile, you should try for somewhere around half a second as your optimum load time.

Responsive Design

What is responsive web design? If you’ve been paying attention to Seattle web design news then you probably know that it’s any web design that automatically resizes based on the size of the screen used to view it. Because 60% of web users are on mobile at least part of the time, you have to make sure that your site looks good on different size screens. Sound complicated? Any quality web designer will offer this service, so don’t worry.

Clear Communication

What is the first thing that you see when you go on your website? Whether it’s a picture, some text, or an advertisement, it probably defines your website. Unfortunately, while many sites do most of the right things, they don’t have the right branding or marketing message on their site. You have to make sure that anyone who stumbles across your website immediately knows what you are about as a business and as a brand. Once again, any good Seattle web designer can design you a website that markets you as a brand rather than as a product.
Does your website need a makeover? If your site isn’t extremely fast, responsive to different screens, or branded, then that is probably a yes. Try talking it over with your Seattle web design team, or talk to us at Rory Martin for a quote.

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Setting a Marketing Budget – How Much is Your Seattle SEO Campaign Worth?

If you’re planning on starting an SEO or marketing campaign for 2014 then you have a lot of decisions to make. First, you have to set a budget. Unfortunately, setting a budget on any sort of marketing campaign isn’t as easy as quoting a number and going with that. You have to decide a budget based on your spending goals, the company you’re hiring, and your potential for return on investment. Finally, all of this has to be tempered by your market and your demographic. For example, a localized Seattle SEO campaign is much smaller than an international one. Ready, let’s get started.

SEattle SEO Budget

Demographic

Your demographic should be a huge part of setting your budget. How many customers do you have the potential of reaching with a good SEO campaign? On top of that, how many of them are you capable of serving? If your target demographic is only very local, for example, Greenwood, then you’re not going to get much out of a thousands of dollar campaign. You need something small, and targeted locally, which typically means smaller budget. On the other hand, if you operate a web shop selling women’s clothing that delivers worldwide, then your demographic is as wide as you can get it. In this case, a huge marketing campaign would be in your best interest.

SEO Budget SEattle

What Affects Pricing

There are a number of factors that affect SEO pricing; especially in the Seattle area. Some companies charge more for SEO simply because they are more in demand. For example, an SEO professional with experience managing campaigns for big companies. On the other hand, some companies charge more just because they want to. On average, the following considerations affect pricing the most.
• Industry Competitiveness
• Current Ranking (Yours and Competitors)
• Size
• Resources Required to Achieve Results
• Geo-Location
• Current Risk
For example, if you are in a highly competitive industry such as finance, your ranking is quite low, and you have no real quality website or social built up, then your SEO company will have to invest a great deal just to get your SEO going. For that reason, your campaign would be more expensive. On the other hand, your website might already be in good shape, and all you might need are a few strategic links, better keyword optimization, and backend tweaking to improve website performance.

Defining Your ROI

Seattle SEO Budget

ROI is an acronym that stands for Return on Investment, while often nothing more than a bit of overused jargon by anyone who wants to sell you something, it is the single most important thing about your marketing campaign. Whether you’re investing in social media, in SEO, targeting the world, or targeting a small, local Seattle marketing campaign, you need ROI. Your return on investment is the money that you make from your marketing investment, and like any other type of investment, if it’s not there, then you need a new strategy. There are two types of basic ROI including ‘anticipated ROI’ and ‘actual ROI’. Deciding on your anticipated ROI is how you determine how much you can afford to spend on your initial SEO campaign, while your actual ROI is how you decide on what to continue spending.

What is your marketing campaign worth to you? To us, any SEO campaign is only worth as much as much as it can make you in actual returns. Want to know more? Contact us today to talk to one of our local Seattle SEO professionals.

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What Can Hyper Localization Do For Your Seattle SEO Campaign

Hyper localization, it’s the new big thing, the ‘next big SEO trend’, and the first SEO trend in 2014. Unfortunately, most of us don’t understand what it can do, especially not in terms of sales. After all, doesn’t decreasing your market demographic decrease sales, actually not really. The thing about hyper–localization is that it’s meant for small business who serve a local area.

Seattle social media

So What is Hyper Localization Anyway?

What is hyper localization? It’s the process of taking a ‘local’ Seattle SEO campaign and turning it into a ‘local’ single street or neighborhood campaign. So for example if you’ve been advertising yourself as a ‘Seattle business’, you can now advertise yourself as a ‘Lake Union’ business. The difference is that instead of marketing to someone who might be a twenty or thirty minute drive away, you’re mostly targeting people within a five to ten minute drive, and hopefully walking distance as well. You can probably guess that this isn’t the right strategy for everyone, but might be able to see that for small businesses, restaurants, and bakeries, it can be a godsend.

Benefits of Hyper Localized SEO

Social SEO

Hyper-Localization Gives You In Depth Location Based Search Results

Targeting a very small and specific demographic has a number of pros and cons, but the cons are mostly only applicable to larger businesses. As a small cafe, you can benefit from hyper localized SEO by targeting the people near you to make more sales. You can also decrease your spending budget because you’re only spending money on a very small area. Most importantly, you’re actually more likely to make a sale because your target demographic doesn’t have to travel to see you. You’re right there and they can drop by at any time. Some of the most obvious benefits of hyper-localized SEO include the following:

• Less Keyword Competition
• More Interested Demographic
• Better Chances of a Repeat Sale
• Ability to Build a Community
• Relevance

Someone who looks up ‘baker on Broadway E’ is likely looking for somewhere to go pick up cupcakes. On the other hand, someone who looks up ‘baker Seattle’ is probably looking to see what options are available for a future order. So, in a way, hyper localization is a bit like using long-tails in that consumers are often searching relevant shops and stores where they can buy something, rather than researching their options.

Bakers on Broadway E.

Bakers on Broadway E.

Using Hyper Localization

Most social pages already engage in hyper localized SEO. For example, if you set up a small local business page on Facebook, you can put in your exact address, as well as your opening hours. Anyone who uses Facebook’s Graph search to look up ‘This sort of business in this area’ is going to find you. Google + also features this sort of optimization through Google Local Pages, but the difference is that you come up in Google search on the map as well, which can be a great deal more beneficial. While this is social media marketing rather than ‘SEO’, it can still do a lot for your local sales.

Hyper localized SEO is still catching on, but it also still has a ways to go. If you think you can benefit from this sort of SEO campaign, then why not try it out. Contact Rory Martin for a consultation on your localized Seattle SEO campaign.

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The Mobile Craze Hits the Web & The Seattle Web Design Industry in 2014

Most of us know that web design is about as static as SEO, meaning that it’s about as far from as it is possible to get. The industry is constantly changing and updating according to online trends, and anyone who wants to stay ahead in Seattle’s competitive e-commerce market knows that.  Today, it isn’t hard to see where the newest trends are coming from, and that is mobile. At the moment, more people in the U.S. have smart phones than not, and considering that more than 20% of search is now mobile, it’s hard to ignore that the gadgets are taking over. In fact, with most of the new smart-watches now hitting the market early in 2014, and new tablets that are more affordable than laptops, mobile search is one of the fastest growing industries in marketing. But while this obviously affects your SEO, it also affects your web design in more ways than one. With that in mind, the following include a few of the important changes in the Seattle web design industry, and how they affect you now, and in 2014.

LK-Hjelle-Website-Mobile-Website-Design-by-Heydays-464574

Flash Is Out

Flash based websites are popular and pretty on the web, although they do have trouble in some browsers, but the truth is that many of them simply do not work in mobile browsers. For that reason, anyone with a purely flash website is committing web-design suicide because mobile users might just see a fancy white page and nothing else.  If you do want to go with flash, you have to work with your designer to cross test on multiple popular mobile web browsers in order to ensure that your site is fully functional across all platforms.

Responsive Web Design is No Longer an Option

Responsive web design first became popular a few years ago as a good way to boost your mobile popularity. The technique essentially utilizes adaptive code that changes size and shape to suit the browser and screen size it is displayed on. While in 2012, this was purely optional as the majority of search was still on the web, today, it can mean the difference between a potential sale and an unusually high mobile bounce rate. Make sure that your website resizes and looks good, no matter what sort of device your traffic is on. If you don’t feel like creating responsive theme variations for each and every device, you can take a look at your analytics (Google Analytics works) to see which devices are most common. For most, iOS including the iPhone, iPad, and iPad Mini) and Android are the two most common, but keep in mind that screen sizes vary across the most popular OS as well.

Speed

Did you know that the average web user will leave a page if it hasn’t loaded within 3 to 5 seconds? While mobile users are slightly more patient due to the restrictions of mobile Internet, their patience is also very finite. For this reason, you have to ensure that your web pages load as quickly as possible so that mobile users don’t leave before the page even finishes loading.

Depending on your website, you might need a lot of changed, you might need a new website, and you might already be good to go. Wherever you think you are, consider monitoring your mobile traffic and if you have a high exit rate, consider having a chat with your Seattle web design company to talk about responsive and mobile friendly design otpions.

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Get Your Seattle Social Marketing Campaigns Into the Holiday Spirit

December is the season for Holiday cheer, but it’s also the season for targeted campaigns across your social and blog. With more and more businesses gearing up to make sales, and more people buying things, the month is the perfect time to increase sales by focusing on a new marketing campaign. While you can focus on your social, content, or ads (or hopefully a combination of all three); you have to tailor your campaign to focus on your demographic for the season to get the best results.

Seattle Social meda

Research Your Demographic

Even if you already know everything about your demographic, you still have to research. This is mainly because the holiday shopping season is a little different, your customers and clients have different needs than usual, often because they are shopping for someone other than themselves. You can settle on who you’re aiming your offers too, decide what they are likely to be interested in, and how much. For example, there is a huge gap between marketing business services to businesses that may need more of them for the holidays and marketing shoes that might make good gifts. Knowing your holiday demographic allows you to decide when, where, and how to push your campaign.

Avoid Focusing Only on Christmas

The best thing about the month of December is that it’s not all about Christmas. You can focus your advertising campaign on anything from the months leading up to Christmas, Hanukah, or even New Years. The point is that you don’t have to focus all of your efforts on Christmas. Instead, figure out a marketing campaign that focuses on as many sale points as possible in your industry, and make the most of it.

Don’t Forget to Be Human

With Christmas and other holidays right around the corner, it’s more important than ever to instill the idea that you care about your customers. Acting like a human being and not a robot or sales pitch can win you more loyalty then any amount of products, so remember to keep it in mind. If you’re donating to charities, try bringing it up (without bragging) on your social to let people know you’re using their money to do good. Responding and talking to people who talk to you can also go a long way towards improving your business humanity, but remember that you don’t want to go too far into overly formal or overly friendly. If you’re not sure what to do, try looking around and checking out what other people are successfully doing.

While December is a little too late to put together a full holiday marketing campaign, it is the perfect time to start gearing your social towards the holidays if you haven’t’ already. Holiday themed offers, last minute gift tips, and even a holiday event can all be part of your holiday social strategy, just make sure that you have the time and resources left to plan them. If you’re not sure where to start, consider a Seattle social media company to design your strategy for you.

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Seattle SEO & The Long-Tail Keyword

If you do anything with SEO or marketing, then you are sure to hear about the long-tail keyword. With new Google search algorithms, new search results, and more people using longer searches, it is now becoming increasingly important for Seattle businesses to utilize longer keywords in order to keep up.

What is the Long-Tail?

The long-tail keyword is essentially a short phrase or specific search term that someone would use to look for something specific. While many people do use short-tail keywords to look for items, the results are much more vague, and usually used by someone first looking into an industry. So, for example, someone who is just starting to look into SEO might search for ‘SEO’ which wold bring up the Wikipedia page.

Seattle SEO

On the other hand, once that person has looked at the Wikipedia page, they are going to move on, and probably start looking for SEO companies to hire. A long-tail search for ‘Seattle SEO Company” is much more specific and as a result typically offers slightly more specific results.
Seattle SEO

About the Search Process

Right now, Google’s Hummingbird algorithm offers priority to websites that have the same long-tail keywords as the consumers search. So, if someone looks for ‘Marketing company SEO and Social” then they are going to get results that have all of those words. However, most people don’t start out looking for a long-tail keyword.

For example, if you’re considering hiring a Seattle SEO company but don’t know anything about SEO, your first search is going to be for ‘SEO’ or a similar ‘beginners guide to SEO’ where you would then read the Wikipedia Page, or browse around on sites like SEOMoz or SearchEngineLand in an effort to understand the process. For most people, the first searches are ‘what is it’, ‘how does it work’, and ‘do I need it’. While these searches can generate a lot of traffic, very few of them generate any sales.

Next comes the decision making process. The searcher knows what they want and they know what it does, so they start looking for something to buy. This is where the long-tail keyword comes in. The search for ‘SEO’ turns into “SEO company’s in Seattle’ or ‘Seattle Marketing’, which turns into a sale for one of the results.

Applying Long-Tail Keywords to Your Marketing Campaign

Unfortunately you have to know what your long-tails are before you can use them. If you only service a small area, then your long-tail keywords are obviously your location, but you also have to consider other specifics such as your exact products. A local bakery could utilize area and food specific long-tail keywords like, “Kirkland Wedding Catering” or “Where to Get Chocolate Cupcakes on 12th Street.”

Any long-tail keyword runs the risk of being too specific, but this is where keyword research comes in. A keyword with an average of 30 searches per month offers less traffic, but also the potential for 30 sales each month, as those 30 people find exactly what they are looking for. Broader searches offer more competition, and less chance of a sale, but can still be useful as well.

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Why Content Marketing is Set to Dominate Your Seattle SEO

SEO has grown a lot in the pat few years, with most notable changes including that ‘search’ marketing is now more ‘integrated’ marketing than simple ‘SEO’. Anyone who does their own optimization can easily see that tactics, techniques, and algorithms are quickly changing and in big ways. But while content is no longer the only star of your search optimization, new data shows that content marketing should be. If you want to keep your localized Seattle SEO campaign up to date with Google, then content marketing is definitely for you.

content-marketing-wheel

Image-Centric Content is On the Rise

Do you like pictures? Studies show that your fan-base most likely loves pictures. Image-centric content is on the rise and popular across every form of advertising including your localized SEO. The most successful blog posts and websites now all have the same thing in common, which is that they use beautiful imagery throughout the post. You want to make sure your photos look professional, that they are shareable, and relevant to your topic. For restaurants and anyone selling a product, this means you can showcase your business for nothing more than the cost of a photographer and then use sites like your blog, Pinterest, Instagram, and even Facebook to share with the world. Because images, and content with more shares and links both come up in search, you can’t loose.

Off-Site Content is On the Rise Again

Off-Sit content marketing has had it’s ups and downs for the past few years but right now it’s back on the rise, providing you follow a few specific rules. Every post that you put out must be high quality, and every blog or site that you post on must be highly relevant to your site. Just a link doesn’t benefit your pages very much, but a targeted link, especially one that appeals to readers without directly ‘selling’ your content, will do a lot for you. Plus, new research shows that Google’s Hummingbird is actually picking the first four posts by the number of inbound links, so off-site content marketing is definitely something to keep in mind.

One Ring to Rule Them All

While content marketing has nothing to do with Lord of the Rings (unless you happen to be in the movie business) it does offer a one size fits all way to dominate your integrated marketing. Content is popular in SEO, SMM, and PPC (Search, Social, & Advertisement), essentially giving you a catch-all form of marketing that you can invest in to turn out really great results. Of course, you might be able to just throw up a random image or boring article and hope it succeeds, but ‘real content marketing’ involves creating a strategy that targets your Seattle audience, and then hitting them with planned, imagery and writing.
Content marketing is hugely important no matter where you happen to be marketing. With Google’s new Hummingbird algorithm, it is becoming more important than ever for a number of different reasons. If you haven’t integrated content marketing into your Seattle SEO campaign, consider starting right away.

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Five Tips for Working with your Seattle Web Design Team

You’ve looked around, done the research, and finally come up with the perfect Seattle web designer to create your website. But now that you’re ready to make the hire, you have to decide how to work with the designer. Many people go in with no idea of what is okay or not okay, but the following includes a rough guide. The following include five tips for getting through your web design process as easily as possible.

web-page-design

Decide What You Want First

One thing that a lot of people do when going into building their website is ask for multiple mockups or designs right from the start. While this may be a good idea for you to see which you like better, it’s not the best thing for the designer. Instead of asking for two designs, try deciding what you want first and allowing you team to put all of their energy into one fabulous website rather than splitting their energy on something you won’t even use. You can always ask for updates later.

Ensure Your Website Designer Knows You

Did you know that most website designers create sites based on your business and not just the fact that you have a business? Ensuring that your designer is aware of your target demographic, your business ethic, your name, preferred colors, and other factors that influence your sales also ensures that your website will be designed for you. Because there are so many ways these factors can influence your sales, you have to ensure that your website designer knows them from the start.

Work With Your Web Designer

It is always important to work with your web developer. Talk to them, ask to see designs in progress, and if at all possible, get involved. Stages where you can work with your designer include concept and design (you can create mood boards, outline what you want, and even help with initial sketches), creation (you can help test), and of course, get involved with the final design to ensure that the site is exactly what you want.

Avoid Overworking

You do want to give your Seattle developers your input to ensure that you get a quality design that suits your needs. What you don’t want to do is nitpick and overwork the design until it is quite literally shoddy. No design will ever be absolutely perfect so keep that in mind when you’re tempted to ‘move this two pixels to the right’, or ‘change that pink to a salmon’, for the tenth time. Check the design, study it, and then carefully make a few changes that work once rather than redoing them dozens of times. Your site will look better for it.

Don’t Rush

It can be tempting to send your web designer 20 emails asking when the site will be finished but the truth is that you should sit back and relax. Ask your designer for a fixed due date and then leave them to do the rest. While it might be nicer to have your website sooner, rushing the processes will only result in a second-rate website that you don’t love. Quality takes time, so just sit back and leave your designers to do their job.

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Five New Seattle Social Media Marketing Trends to Watch Out For

The world of marketing is always changing and unless you stay on top of the trends, you’re going to see a quick drop in your campaign success. No matter what it is you happen to be marketing, trends can make or break your campaign so you have to watch out for them. The following include a few local, and international, marketing trends that could affect your Seattle social media marketing campaign.

social platforms

Twitter is Back

That’s right! Twitter is back and bigger than ever, especially if you’re in the right sectors. New data shows that Twitter is now doing just as well or better than Facebook for active users, and more importantly, it’s becoming harder to promote yourself on Facebook. While it’s important not to ignore either channel, Twitter gives you an opportunity to directly connect with your fans by answering questions, recommending your software, and creating an online buzz about your products, all without the huge amount of thought that goes into every Facebook post. While less people will click through on your links via Twitter, you do have the opportunity to get more exposure for your brand.

You Can No Longer Ignore Google +

If you don’t have a Google + then you need to run not walk to the computer and set up a page for your business. As we discussed in one of our previous posts, Google + is hugely influential across most fields of organic marketing including social and SEO. Google may be playing favorites, but with Google + offering all the benefits of Twitter and Facebook, and 540 million active users, you really can’t afford to ignore it any longer. Plus (pun intended) you can use Google’s Hangout function to directly engage with your fan base, answer questions, and earn loyal customers. Google’s ‘local’ functions are also invaluable to your marketing efforts so make sure you check them out.

Cross Marketing

Cross marketing, or working together with your competitors and other related businesses is quickly becoming the next big thing. By collaborating and offers cross marketing deals (such as a hotel stay and restaurant meal in one package) you gain more exposure to a wider fan-base. While not every business can benefit from this sort of cross marketing, most can. You can benefit by offering online coupons, giveaways or deals that encourage you to like/share your cross marketing companions, or even bundles and deals that benefit everyone involved.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is going, well, viral. It’s expected to be the biggest form of marketing in 2014, and is already making a huge splash in 2013. So what’s the big deal? Videos, pictures, blogs, and even infographics have all been going viral all year and when done right, will gain a massive amount of exposure and interest in your business.

Image Centric Social

One trend that has probably the largest impact is that image centric social sites like Snapchat, Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr are now more important than ever. These sites allow businesses to connect directly with customers via hashtags, image shares, and direct mentions, building brand image, product awareness, and interest. While a services site most likely cannot use these types of media marketing most types of businesses can.

Seattle’s social media marketing trends are rapidly changing and if you need help, there’s plenty of professional marketing managers out there to help. Want to know more? Contact our social media marketing team today to find out what we can do for you.

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How to Get Started with Google Plus for Local Seattle Businesses

If you pay any attention at all to the ‘hot topics’ in the world of search marketing and integration then you know that Google + is quickly becoming one of the most important things you can do for your online marketing efforts. With Google’s favoritism in full swing, Google + is more valuable to your search than Facebook and Twitter combined, and their +1 button has been proven by Search Engine Land and SEOMoz to affect search almost as much as your websites PR. With that in mind, any marketer who ignores their Google + is definitely missing out on a lot of social and search opportunities. While many businesses take this to mean international marketing, Google + can also be used for localized Seattle social media marketing and optimization. How? Keep reading to find out.

Set up a Page

While you can work with a Google + profile, you should really have a page for any sort of business. To do this, simply go to Google.com/+/business, sign in, and then click ‘Create a Google + Page’. From there you can easily add your business data, location, opening hours, and branding to Google Plus. Because Google + has gained more than 100 million users in the last year alone, exposure to this audience is definitely in your favor.

Google Places

Google Places listings show businesses on the map in response to keyword lookups for localized business and if you are in the top three, you’re highly likely to get a great deal of traffic from it. To do this, just add your local Seattle address into Google Places, and go from there. You can choose to use free features, or pay for options like Adwords integration and Google Offers to hand out free deals and coupons to people who find you in search.

Google Local

Google Local is very similar to Google Places but make sure that you have all of your information handy before you sign up. The process involves verifying that you own your business, verifying the location, and creating a page for your business. This allows you to show up in Google’s search results as a local business, which can do wonders for your search results. Because your reviews and recommendations also show up in these search results, quality business practices can turn into a lot of extra clicks and views.

Getting Reviews and Recommendation

Studies have proven that Google + Reviews and Recommendations can increase traffic and clicks by as much as 23%, and a high number of quality reviews can also increase your ranking on Google Local, meaning that you show up higher on the list. While this only works if you have Google Local, it is a great way to increase your ranking for search and help new customers with making a decision. Your ‘review this page’ box is located just under the page as well as next to the cover photo. Users have to be signed in with a confirmed Google + account in order to leave reviews, and any review they post will have their name on it. For the most part, you can gain reviews by simply asking your customers to leave a review on your page. Because the majority of them might not already have a Google +, it may also be beneficial to offer an incentive, as well as instructions on how to set up a Google + page, when you ask. Incentives, should of course, not be for offering a ‘good review’ but rather for an honest opinion.
A Google + Page can do wonders for your Seattle search engine optimization but it can take a while to get everything set up.

Remember that in addition to creating your page, you also have to keep it active with quality content and interaction. Otherwise, it’s just one more useless page that does nothing for your site.

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