Category: Digital Marketing Resources

Mobile Search is a High Priority For Google

In an unprecedented move by Google, webmasters of sites that are not mobile-friendly are receiving warning notifications on a mass scale that mobile-usability issues are present and their website will be ranked accordingly for smartphone devices. This comes after Google recently began providing mobile-friendly labels in mobile search results for websites that are optimized for mobile. Specific changes to the search algorithm have not been announced, but it is clear that supplying mobile-users with a positive experience is a very high priority for Google.

What Does this Mean for Your Organization?

If your organization relies on search visibility and search traffic in any capacity to generate new business, but fails to implement a mobile-friendly website soon, chances are your organization will be negatively affected by these impending changes. As a Tampa website design company that specializes in SEO, we highly recommend responsive web design as a solution for making your organization’s website mobile-friendly. This is Google’s recommendation as well.

It’s time to understand and appreciate the prevalence of mobile search. More and more people rely on their mobile devices to search for information, and Google is having to adapt to this change in consumer behavior. As such, Google must reward websites that help them provide users with a positive mobile search experience in the form of higher rankings, and penalize websites that hinder these efforts.

If you would like more information or to schedule a consultation, please call us today at (866) 611-6267 or fill out our contact request form.

To have a successful online marketing strategy in 2015, the first and most important place to begin is your company’s website because it is the embodiment of your digital presence. To help prepare your website for 2015, our team has put together five initiatives that will be instrumental to your online success.

1. Make the Switch to Responsive Design

If you haven’t made the switch to responsive design, now is the time. Mobile visitors to your website have the expectation that they can learn about the products or services your company offers in a user-friendly fashion. If upon entering your website, visitors are instead met with text that requires them to pinch and zoom, buttons that are too close together to tap with their finger, or limited functionality, your customers will become frustrated and likely move onto your competitors.

Additionally, Google and Bing now penalize websites that do not provide a positive mobile-experience for their users. In 2014, Google rolled out “Mobile-Friendly” labels and Bing, which also powers Yahoo search results, recently began providing unique search results based on the device being used. Our Tampa web design team predicts these ranking penalties to only grow in the coming year. So, if you rely on organic search in any capacity, failing to have a mobile-friendly website will affect your search visibility.

2. Increase Search Visibility

SEO is still the single most effective way to drive new traffic to your website, and to generate conversions. If you’re company does not currently have an SEO strategy in place and lacks search visibility, this may be one of the most important and rewarding strategic changes you can make to your website in 2015, combined with responsive design. Since mobile search is becoming so prominent and search engines are giving preference to mobile-friendly websites, having a responsive website is essential to a successful SEO strategy.

3. Update Your Website to Meet Customer Needs

The best way to meet your customers needs is by understanding them. You can do this by asking your customers for feedback and reviews, or distributing surveys. Then, based on the feedback you receive, create a customer persona. Think about the varying stages of your sales cycle from the initial research stages to converted customer. Take time to review your website through their eyes. What is important to them? What questions do they need answers to? If they’re an existing customer, can they easily access answers to common questions, as well as great customer support? If their researching your company for the first time, is credibility established, is your unique selling proposition highlighted, and are their pain points addressed?

Once you have a good grasp on the information that matters to your customers, tailor your message and package it in a professional design.

4. Tailor Your Message

The content on your website should explain to your customers who you are, what you do, and how you can meet their needs. Keep your content fresh and engaging by listening to your customers. What questions are asked at initial meetings or at the point of purchase? What are your customers saying on social media and online forums? The pain points and feedback derived from the people who use your services or products will give you direct insight into what matters most to them. Content is all about tailored experiences. The more you can focus your message, the better the chance your customers will listen.

5. Know Where Your Traffic is Coming From

If you don’t have Google Analytics installed on your website, you are missing out on insightful customer behavior data. Once you know where your traffic comes from and how visitors engage with your website, you can evaluate the success and failures of your current online marketing efforts, and also gain a better understanding of the intention behind website visits. For example, if you own an architectural firm and you see that half of your traffic is resulting from searches for residential architects and one-third of that is coming from mobile devices, you can increase engagement and conversions by having a mobile-friendly website with a strong emphasis on the specific needs of both home builders and prospective home buyers who are looking to hire an architectural firm that specializes in residential architecture.

To learn more about Leverage Digital, a web design company in Tampa, please call us today at (866) 611-6267 or submit our consultation request form.

As a web design company in Tampa, we can confirm that having a mobile-friendly website can have a direct and substantial impact on an organization’s revenue. This should be reason enough to update your existing website if it is not designed with mobile use in mind, but now major search engines are giving businesses another incentive to develop an online presence that is in-line with consumer behavior, increased rankings. Bing, which also powers Yahoo, represents 29% of the search market industry, and sees 5.2 billion searches each month, recently made a big announcement in regards to mobile rankings. The first part of their announcement that was published to Bing’s official blog last month outlines the company’s ever-changing “relationship” with mobile. They began by saying how search results across desktop, tablet, and smartphone devices were the same in the past, but because as they state, “we live in a mobile-first, cloud-first world and we need to think about our users’ search experience on mobile devices differently.”

Why the Change? User-Experience.

If you’re wondering why this major change to Bing’s search algorithm happened, it can be explained in one word, user-experience. Bing identified, one, that mobile use is rising exponentially each year, and two, users are frustrated when they find search results that either don’t work because they use mobile-incompatible software like Adobe Flash or make it impossible to read and perform functions because text and links are too small. Bing’s solution the to changes in how people access information is to provide users with unique results based off the device they are using to perform a search. So, when a search is performed on a mobile device, mobile-friendly websites are given priority and rank higher than sites that are not mobile-friendly. This is big news for organizations that rely on search traffic to bring in new business, and can have a tangible negative impact on revenue if mobile rankings are lost for lack of a mobile-friendly website. It is important to keep in mind that two unique search results presents more work and more cost for Bing. So, for now they are crawling websites differently, but this might not always be the case and companies that do not embrace mobile could be completely removed from all search rankings in the near future.

How Bing Determines Mobile Rankings

1. Identifies and classifies mobile and device-friendly web pages and websites
2. Analyzes web documents from a mobile point-of-view by looking at: content compatibility and content readability
3. Mobile functionality (to weed out “junk”, that is pages that are 404 on mobile or Flash only etc.)
4. Returns more mobile-friendly URLs to the mobile SERP
5. Ranks the results pages based on all of the above

Bing Recommends Responsive Design

Mobile is not a growing trend, it is here now, and while it may have been easy to ignore the necessity of making the jump to a mobile-friendly website before, now there are real financial implications that will result from search engines removing listings that provide a negative user-experience. Another important consideration results from whether it is better to choose a unique mobile website or a responsive website that adapts to users’ screen sizes. For this question, Bing states, “we continue to recommend you use responsive designs over separate mobile (m.*) sites and ensure a great experience for users on all devices and avoid compatibility, readability, and functionality issues.”

If your organization does not have a mobile-friendly website, as a Tampa web design company that specializes in responsive design, we cannot stress enough the importance of making the change and redesigning your website to create a positive website experience for mobile visitors.

Does your organization need a mobile-friendly website? Please call us today at (866) 611-6267 or submit our consultation request form.

Google Adds “Mobile-Friendly” Label to Search Results

As a web design company in Tampa, we see first hand how mobile user-behavior is completely changing the way businesses communicate with their customers. Because of this, we can not stress enough that if your company has not taken steps to create a positive user-experience for mobile users, you are losing out on potential customers.

There are endless statistics that our Tampa website design team could highlight from mobile use and website traffic studies, but we are able draw from our own clients’ websites, which on average currently receive 30-35% of website traffic from mobile devices. In other words, roughly one-third of people visiting our client’s websites are on a smartphone or tablet. These visits equate to dollars, and with recent changes to Google’s search results, there are even more added benefits to having a mobile-friendly website. Starting last month, Google began adding “Mobile-Friendly” labels in the search results that identify if a website is optimized for mobile devices. This comes after they began adding warnings for websites that incorporate Flash: “Uses Flash. May not work on your device.”

To see if your website can pass the test and earn the coveted mobile seal of approval from Google, take Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.

Google’s Mobile Criteria

So how does Google determine if a website is mobile friendly? Well, for starters they make sure that mobile incompatible software, like Flash is not utilized anywhere on your website. Then, it’s all about the content experience. Users should be able to easily read text from their phone without having to zoom in or scroll horizontally. This also goes for images and videos. All content on your website should adapt to the screen size of the device. The next thing Google looks for is link placement. All links should be far enough apart, so users can easily tap on the one they want.

To reiterate the criteria:

1. Your website should use mobile friendly software.

2. Text should be easily read without scrolling horizontally or zooming.

3. Links should be placed far enough apart for users to easily tap the correct one.

Your website is a direct reflection of your company, make sure yours is sending the right message to your current and future customers. If you haven’t made the leap towards mobile, and have question about how to make your website for mobile-friendly, our Tampa web design team is happy to provide you with answers and help you create a better, more enjoyable user-experience for your customers.

If your organization’s website is not mobile-friendly, please call us today at (866) 611-6267 or submit our consultation request form.

Your website is one of the key elements of your brand. It can often separate you from the competition, and make the difference between whether or not you gain a new customer. In managing the daily operations of your business, however, it is easy to overlook this important aspect of your brand, and as your business, technology, and customer expectations evolve, so must your website.

As Tampa web design specialists, we recommend asking yourself the following six questions to help determine if it is time for a new website.

1. Does your website align with marketing objectives?

All marketing initiatives intentionally or unintentionally lead back to your website. So, you must ask yourself, are the objectives I am trying to achieve with my marketing efforts strengthened when a prospect finds my website? The answer to this question could be “no” for a number of reasons. For instance, an outdated design, unfocused and unorganized content, broken links, or a website that is incompatible with mobile devices all lead to potential issues with the perception of your brand, and in turn, hinder your marketing efforts.

2. Is your website mobile-friendly?

Is your website mobile friendly? If not, it should be. Mobile usage is increasing globally as people are becoming more and more accustomed to using their smartphones and tablets to search for information online. Your customers are going to visit your website from a mobile device, so it is crucial that your website provides a positive mobile user experience.

3. Can visitors easily find information on your website?

Information hidden deep within your website because of a confusing navigation structure is a surefire way to frustrate your customers and lose business to your competitors. If you constantly receive feedback asking for information that is already available on the website, this may be an indication that the content is not organized in a way that makes it easy for your customers to find what they’re looking for.

4. Is your website compatible with the latest browsers?

Customers will visit your website using a number of different browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, or Safari. As these browsers update over time, compatibility issues may occur, causing broken links, slow page load times, and a number of other potential issues that will create a negative user experience. If your current website is not compatible with current web browsers, this is another indication that it’s time to update your current website.

5. Are you able to easily update the website’s information in-house?

Outdated information on your website is detrimental to your credibility. If your business does not have the ability to easily update information in-house, creating a new website on a content management system is an excellent solution. A content management system gives you the ability to add information, update projects, and add company news with little to no technical expertise.

6. Have you redesigned your website in the last five years?

Web design standards and technology are constantly evolving to create a better user experience for website visitors. These standards often relate to the aesthetics, functionality, and usability of your website. Today’s standards use a clean, minimalist approach, strategically designed to accommodate the way users interact with a website across different devices.

Conclusion

Much like your company, website technology and design standards are constantly evolving. To adapt to these changes, it is important to view your company’s website as a dynamic part of your brand that should be regularly updated to meet your customers’ expectations. If you answered no to any of the questions about your current website, we recommend consulting with a knowledgeable Tampa web design company.

For more information regarding custom web development services, please call us at (866) 611-6267 or submit our contact request form.

It’s time to shift thinking away from the idea that smartphone usage is only for people on the go. In today’s reality, the relationship between consumers and their smartphones expands far beyond a means to find a location, send a text, or make a call. In a 2013 mobile consumer survey by Google, 58% of smartphone users stated that they use their device to stay informed by reviewing websites, products, and news online, and 82% stated they use their device to casually browse the internet. Social patterns and behaviors have shifted and every aspect of people’s lives are integrated with their smartphone in hand.

With this evolution in behavior, a societal expectation has emerged. Consumers expect the ability to access online information from anywhere and at any time with the same user experience across all devices. To sum up their survey findings, Google states, “Having a mobile-optimised site is critical and a cross-channel strategy is needed to engage consumers across the multiple paths to purchase.”

What does this mean for your business?

Your Brand Must Be Mobile

For starters, it is a necessity to embrace mobile and cater to your mobile customers. Whether it be through a mobile-friendly website, a mobile app, or a combination of both, your brand should be able to connect with your audience through their mobile devices. If that communication channel is disrupted, brand perception suffers, because it sends a message that says, “I am out of tune or don’t care about the needs of my customers.”

Your Sales Strategy Must Be Mobile

By building sales strategies around smartphone usage, you will see an increase in mobile conversions. In the aforementioned Google consumer survey, 46% of smartphone users stated that they made a purchase directly from their device, and of those, 60% make at least one smartphone purchase every month. The survey also shows that 38% of smartphone users made an offline purchase as a result of preliminary research performed on their smartphone.

Conclusion

Technology is advancing at a rapid pace, and it is important for your business to stay current with these changes or run the risk of alienating prospective customers. If you don’t have the time, capabilities, or desire to develop a mobile strategy in-house, consult with a Tampa web design company that specializes in mobile. Mobile is not a thing of the future. Consumer behavior is changing now, and smartphones are at the center of this societal shift.

Download the entire Google mobile consumer survey.

For more information regarding how to develop a successful mobile strategy, please call (866) 611-6267 or submit our consultation request form.

Social media may play a significant role in your organization’s marketing strategy, but as a Tampa SEO company, we want to set the record straight. Tweets, likes, and shares do not equate to higher rankings in Google Search.

This topic is the source of significant misinformation, but the head of Google’s spam team and distinguished engineer, Matt Cutts, debunked the myth earlier this year during a Q&A video posted to the Google Webmasters’ YouTube page. In the video, Cutts clearly states that any relationship between social media and rankings is purely the result of correlation and not causation.

Correlation Vs. Causation

To put this into context, let’s say you produce content for your website in the form of a blog post, and then share that blog post to your social media pages resulting in hundreds of likes, shares, and re-tweets. A few days later you evaluate the rankings for that blog post, and see that it has made its way to the first page of Google Search. This would seem to point to a causal relationship between social shares and search engine rankings. That observation, however, would be incorrect. High rankings and social media success are unique to one another, but both result from the same source, GREAT CONTENT.

If you provide valuable content that people find useful and engaging, then it is more likely to be shared on social media, and also given greater authority on Google Search.

Cutts describes this by saying, “There was an SEO that said, okay we see a lot of likes on Facebook and those are the pages that rank well, but that’s correlation, not causation. Instead, it’s probably because there’s something really awesome, then it gets a lot of likes on Facebook and a lot of people decide to link to it. The better content you make, the more people are to like it, in Google, Twitter and Facebook.”

What about Google+?

It has also been speculated that Google +1’s result in higher rankings, but Matt Cutts debunked this myth as well in a response directed to an article published on The Moz Blog that implied Google +1’s do influence Google rankings. In his response, Cutts stated that “If you make compelling content, people will link to it, like it, share it on Facebook, +1 it, etc. But that doesn’t mean that Google is using those signals in our ranking. Rather than chasing +1s of content, your time is much better spent making great content.”

Conclusion

While social plays an integral role in building your brand identity and connecting with your audience, it is important to understand that Google’s algorithm does not consider social signals when determining how to rank pages on your website.

If you are searching for SEO services in Tampa, please call us at (866) 611-6267 or submit our consultation request form today.

As a company that specializes in digital marketing and custom web design in Tampa, we can say with 100% certainty, email marketing works. According to a study conducted by the Direct Marketing Association, email was shown to have the highest success rate over any other outbound strategy, with 66% of consumers stating they have made a purchase after receiving a marketing email.

To create a successful campaign, implement our recommended three C’s of email marketing.

Compelling Content

The essence of email marketing is creating a connection with your target audience. This relationship is built and strengthened by the quality of the content you provide. Once an email is opened, you have mere seconds to grab the attention of the recipient, so from the headline to the conclusion, make it compelling.

Before publishing an email, ask yourself the following questions.

1. Is this content relevant to my audience?

2. Is my message clear and concise?

3. Does my content provide value?

4. Is my industry knowledge being expressed?

5. Does my content go beyond the surface of the topic?

If you can answer yes to all of these questions, you are on the right track. Also, make sure you are taking the time to properly edit your work. Grammatical errors and the use of incorrect or false information can be detrimental to your credibility.

Customize Formatting

Once the message is perfected, the next step to designing an effective email is to ensure that the email is properly formatted. If the layout of your email is not stylized, the content may seem overwhelming and difficult to read. The use of headings and subheadings can help bring attention to important points, and also make large quantities of information easier for readers to digest. If a certain point in your message relates to a service your company provides, a previously published article, or an industry study, provide links to extend reader engagement. Finally, keep in mind that some readers may use a mobile device to access their email, so font sizes, style, and color should be legible across all devices.

Calls to Action

No message is complete without a call to action. It is important to provide interesting information that does not explicitly try to sell your product or service, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have an objective. If there is not a definitive action to take, the user experience ends at the email. Whether you want the reader to schedule a call or visit your website, at the close of every written communication, provide a clear call to action. The call to action should epitomize the objective of the email and guide readers to the next step.

Summary

A successful email marketing campaign can be achieved through a well thought out strategy. Take the time to write compelling content that connects with and engages your audience. Then, design your layout in a way that is not only visually appealing, but compatible across different devices. Finally, always keep the end goal in mind, and close every email with a clear call to action.

If you would like to learn about our Tampa web design or email marketing services, please call us today at (866) 611-6267, or request a free consultation.