January 2015 - InSync Creative

Off-page SEO

January 30, 2015

Off page SEO tips

Tips on how to add relevance to your website and attract more visitors

When your website is up and running, the way to attract more visitors is to increase the relevance of your site to a search term or keyword, and there are lots of different ways to do this. The other thing that search engines look for is how often it’s updated, but not in terms of a sentence or word change here and there but how much content is added.

Here are some tips on how to add content to your site to increase your relevance and page ranking on a search listing…

Introduce a blog!
Your blog can contain things like tips and tricks, observations, what your interested in etc. It’s a place to add some personality to your business, give it that human touch. Remember to use your on-page SEO tricks we showed you before to help web crawlers find the page. Point out to your visitor other areas of your site that might be of interest.
Use social media
There are some really exciting new ways to use social media. Not just Facebook and Twitter, but other channels can be used to target very specific audiences much more effectively – such as Pinterest which has a user group consisting mainly of women. Find a channel which fits your demographic and think about how to attract visitors to your website. They may be interested in special offers, competitions or what events you’re going to. Explore Google it’s rapidly growing in popularity and will help towards your SEO. Remember to use your website in your campaign or your hard work will see less return for your effort.
Create a link building strategy
Most search engines use algorithms to work out just how relevant your site is for a particular keyword or phrase. These algorithms change frequently, but over time, if you gain back-links from high Page Rank, RELEVANT websites, you will gain more authority within the Search Engines. This in turn will improve your organic search engine results. Its easier said than done, and is a time consuming process, but there are a couple of ways in which to approach this – and ideally you should use a mixture of both. The first is to create some compelling content on your website/blog that other site owners and bloggers would find interesting and want to link to. Another way is to analyse your competitors back-link profile which will give you a great insight to where they are gaining their back-links from. Armed with this information you can find the high page rank websites/blogs that are linked to your competitors’ sites and start to approach these in order to place your own links on them. Ideally the links that point to your website within the anchor text should contain the primary keyword/s that you would like to rank for.
Pay per click advertising (PPC)
It’s here that you can easily spend a lot of budget, so proceed with caution. You can pay for ads in Facebook, Bing, Google adwords, Yahoo etc. Remember to set a realistic budget for your campaign. Your budget can be spent per click through to your website or per day. It focuses around choosing keywords a good place to start is the Google Keyword Planner tool which enables you to choose your keywords based on popularity, set a budget and then write an ad. Take care, if you choose a popular keyword, it will cost you more per click and use your budget quicker!

Whatever route you choose to increase traffic to your website, remember that there is no quick fix. Be patient, plan properly and spend carefully and you should start seeing rewards! Remember, there are lots of companies who may be offering the same or a similar product or service – promote what’s special about you and be proud of it.

If you’d like to understand more about SEO whether it’s on-page or off-page, we’re here to help.

How to increase visitors to your website

January 21, 2015

Understanding keywords and measuring traffic

Within the web, a keyword is a term that’s used by search engines to quickly identify websites that relate to that keyword and display them in the search results. So keywords play an important role in attracting traffic to your site. There are two types of keyword – paid and free. The paid for listings are typically displayed at the top of the search results but did you know that a person browsing the web is 2 or even 3 times as likely to click on an organic search engine listing than paid listings? So before you spend money on potentially expensive keywords, there are some simple points you can follow to improve your visitor numbers:

Use a ‘keyword’ planner tool such as Google’s keyword planner or http://keywordtool.io In the case of Google’s keyword planner, you can type in 15-20 keywords and it will tell you how popular each keyword is. You can use it to guage how much traffic your site could attract if you used that keyword*. You can use these keywords for each of the pages on your website to help draw visitors to your website.
Include an internal search button on your site and allow customers to search only within your website. You can track what your customers are interested in and make this content more prominent or improve promotion around it. These could become new keywords.
Add your keywords to your web page description, within the headings and text within your pages.
There are some practices which will see your site excluded from search results such as overuse of keywords for example if a keyword was every other word on any page. For more information on practices to avoid simply Google ‘Black Hat SEO’. For tips on how to optimise your site safely click here.

Now you know your keywords, invest time in analysing your traffic using an analytics tool such as Google Analytics. It’s free and will give you great insights into how to get the best from your website such as:

Who are your visitors – have you targeted the correct audience? Where are they based? It may be that you need to refocus your content and promotion.
How your customers enter your site – what search engine and device did they use. This will help define keywords and highlight potential technology barriers ie. is your website ‘responsive’.
What content is viewed – what were the most popular pages and where did they go next. If your top content isn’t going to make you money, you need to promote the content that will.
How long did your visitor stay – your site should encourage your visitor to stay longer and view more content. The average ‘bounce’ rate for a site is between 41% and 55%. So aim to keep within or below this bounce rate if you can!

You can also measure the effectiveness of your social media activity and set up ‘goals’ which can report upon how many visitors complete a task such as download a pdf or complete a booking form. A beautiful site doesn’t automatically mean you’ll get traffic to your site. Good planning will result in the right traffic. A search engine will draw upon the information you give it to tell potential visitors about your site. You design your site to promote to visitors what you want them to know but how your visitors engage with your site is often very different to how you planned. Analytics tools will help you to understand that difference and change your site to draw more visitors in. If you need more help on how to optimise your site using keywords, come and talk to us; we’re friendly, don’t bite and we’ll buy you a coffee!

Website design: Mobile vs Responsive

January 15, 2015

Technology has really changed the way in which we surf the web.

Before the smartphone the only real place to use the internet was at a desk.

When smartphones exploded onto the market suddenly users could browse on the move, but the screen was tiny and touching the wrong button was a frustratingly regular occurrence. Enter the age of the ‘mobile’ website. Built to render on a small screen, with bigger buttons making it easier to view, scroll and click on menu options. Less clutter became a key design requirement as the ‘real estate’ of the screen was at such a premium. Heat maps of web traffic became critical in designing a mobile website that could really deliver a good return. Then just when everyone was getting used to this new way of browsing on the move, along came the next generation of devices – the tablet. A larger piece of web ‘real estate’ but it didn’t fit into the ‘mobile’ bracket and it wasn’t as large as a standard screen. At the same time as this new revolution of web surfing was rising in popularity so too were smart TV’s. A new way of designing websites was born – responsive. A responsive website understands what device is being used to browse the site and then render it in a way that makes the best use of the screen. The designer will still use a ‘heat map’ to determine the hot spots on a page, then prioritise them in the design so that when rendered on a smartphone, tablet, TV or even watch the top content is still working hard.

Why is this important?

Put simply, your customer now has a range of devices that can be used to visit your website. The most ‘future-proofed’ website that can be designed today is a ‘responsive’ one. Finding the best way for your site to attract more customers can be tricky, but it doesn’t have to be. A creative agency can help design a site that delivers what you need, and remember if you need more help, we’re just a call or email away!

Brand Guidelines – What’s the Point?

January 5, 2015

A good brand is a consistent brand.

Whether you’re a huge multinational or a small local company, your business has been built around a foundation of core values. Sales are made when your customers learn to trust in these values, and happy customers buy again and again. Happy customers with a good brand experience build the reputation of the business through word of mouth and more sales can be generated. Your brand is what helps to tell your customers about your values and the more consistent you are, the more likelihood your business will succeed.

So why have brand guidelines?

Achieving that all important brand consistency isn’t difficult, you just need to create a framework of how the brand should be represented – and it doesn’t have to be complicated. That way regardless of who is experiencing the brand, it always gives the same feeling or messaging. Without guidelines, a brand could appear haphazard and customers are more likely to be distracted by better presented businesses. It’s important to note that a logo is NOT a brand. How the logo is used and what words and images you put with it to communicate our company values is your brand. So your brand guidelines need to cover:

Colours (what colours can be used and when)
Messaging (what should your customer understand of your brand)
Images (what style of images do you plan to use and why)
Logo placement (where should it be placed and how much space should you have around it)
Tone of voice (how you communicate)

Without clear guidelines, your brand is open to the interpretation of every person who handles it. Take for example if new business cards need to be ordered, the staff all order their own cards from a variety of different printers. Without a set of brand guidelines to follow, all of the cards could have the logo in a different place and use a different font. Imagine if all those members of staff where in the same meeting handing out those cards. What would your potential customer think of your business? Your brand guidelines are also there to protect the investment your business has made in time, money and effort. After all for many businesses their brand is a ‘bankable’ asset. Remember a brand can still be flexible and exciting – even when there are guidelines! So giving a little thought to your brand guidelines early on in the design process can be really beneficial. Make it easy for your staff to implement and use your brand whilst giving your customers confidence that they are dealing with a professional business.

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO

Off page SEO tips

Categories

Archives

How to increase visitors to your website

How to increase visitors to your website

Understanding keywords and measuring traffic

Categories

Archives

Website design: Mobile vs Responsive

Website design: Mobile vs Responsive

Technology has really changed the way in which we surf the web.

Why is this important?

Categories

Archives

Brand Guidelines – What’s the Point?

Brand Guidelines – What’s the Point?

A good brand is a consistent brand.

So why have brand guidelines?

Categories

Archives

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