How to Format Your Blog For Success

, ,

While your content quality is always important, it is always important to remember aesthetics when building up a blog. Adam Thompson from Search Engine Journal has a good rule for considering how your blog appears. “What’s on the inside only matters if the outside is attractive enough to keep viewers reading”.

This applies even when writing a blog post. Most internet users scan content instead of really delving in and reading. You need a quality title to intrigue readers, and good formatting to draw the readers to areas with the most important information. If you can do this well enough, your formatting may help grab your visitors and make them actually read.

We have a list of seven tips for formatting your blog, but beforehand, there are four requirements you need to meet.

  1. Have a high-quality theme – Make sure it is related to your brand, and if you choose a premium theme, you can have a designer customize it to match your brand.
  2. Use Great Titles – If your titles aren’t quality, visitors won’t bother to even skim the body text.
  3. Ensure you’re using social sharing buttons and widgets – Keep them relevant and easily accessible, but also remember not to clog the page.
  4. Follow SEO practices – Always make sure you meet the basic SEO best-practices such as static URLs, optimized page titles, meta descriptions, and image alt tags.
Now that we’ve covered those basic requirements, here are seven tips for successfully formatting your blog posts.
  1. Subheadlines – Breaking up your blog post with subheadlines help readers scan your post, and your subheadlines should give the reader a good idea what the post is about.
  2. Real Photos – Stock photos can always help add some good color and pizzaz, but if it isn’t adding anything unique to your post, then it shouldn’t be there. Your photos should be communicating something specific.
  3. Photo Captions – Captions help transform your pictures from basic aethetic touches to communcation of real ideas. Using captions well allows photos to be used to communicate specific information to the reader quickly.
  4. Custom Graphics – Sometimes charts or graphs may be the best way to quickly communicate information visually. While they require some extra time and money, custom graphics help clearly visualize data and spruce up your post.
  5. Pull Quotes – Pull quotes are an easy way to entice viewers to get intrigued in your post. If you use them right, your viewers will be intrigued by the quote and want more information or context.
  6. Use Color – Black text on a white background is old and boring. Add some color to liven up your page and engage viewers. It can be as simple as changing the colors of your Hx tags, or brightening up pull quotes. Don’t overdo it, and make your site neon, but use color to highlight information and attract readers.
  7. Bullet Point Lists – If your information is easily communicated in a list, always use bullet points or a numbered list. It makes it much easier for readers to scan for the interesting points, and still gain quite a bit of information.
If you can employ these tips in your blog, you will make viewers want to read, rather than trying to push them to the content. Coerce them to actually read by making it pleasant and engaging for them.

 

/0 Comments

How 2 Factors Play a Role in Mobile Search Behavior

, , , ,

We’ve talked quite a bit about the quickly growing use of mobile devices to search the web. The latest reports show between 10% to 20% of all traffic on the web, and some popular websites, claim that roughly a fourth of their traffic is coming from mobile devices, if you include tablets.

Of course, this all shows that ignoring mobile web use at this point is not a good decision. Those that are innovating in the field of mobile optimization will have a much brighter future than those that continue to resist the mobile shift. The sooner you optimize your site for mobile use, the better chances your company will do well in the future.

There are two factors that differentiate mobile devices from other traditional computing devices. They both are obvious, but both factors have undeniably huge effects on users’ web experiences. The first is portability. Since mobile users are accessing the web on the go, their current location and activities become important to what they are accessing online. The second factor is screen size. Mobile screens do seem to be getting larger, but they will never go anywhere near standard computer screen size. Take advantage of screen size limitations of mobile users, rather than fight it.

With between 15-20% of all searches on Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. coming from mobile users, how does that change search behavior?

Search Behavior Due to Location

Microsoft’s research has found that 30% of all mobile searches are related to their location, and 61% of searches end in a phone call. Like I said, a person’s locations and activities are clearly important to mobile user’s.

Of course, the recent changes to search engines have made great strides to customize search results based on user’s locations, but you should still make an effort to specify your business’s location on search engines using their web master settings.

The major search engines also look for location signals from the title and text present on a website. If you own a local business, make it easy for them to find these signals. Emphasize the location on the site so search engines prioritize your website in search results around your area.

Can you still take advantage of mobile users’ locations even if your business has more than one location? Of course!

If your business has multiple locations, you should be creating internal pages for your different locations, with a present hierarchy starting from the homepage so that search engines will notice the location specific pages too. You will still have to deal with standard issues such as speed, relevance, and backlinks, but taking advantage of location will help get individual pages ranked based on where your users may be.

Search Behavior Due to Screen Size

Screen size contstraints are a more physical limitation, but it strongly effects how people search and visit pages. The clearest difference between mobile and desktop search is the number of paid results and advertisments. On most search engines, there are far less paid ads on mobile because of the screen size. That means organic results on mobile are more important than on desktop.

Screen size also limits the number of results you recieve at any given moment. On a typical smartphone you can only see a few results at a time. Desktops give users a broad range of results immediately, but on mobile the top three results are key. Mobile users are not prone to research, and they rarely go past the first page of results, so it is important to get your page as high in the rankings as possible.

Search behavior on mobiles are certainly unique from their desktop counterparts, and mobile requires a similarly unique SEO strategy. Of course, desktop is still important, so the best way to approach the issue is by creating a seperate mobile site that is optimized for mobile user experience. The longer you wait to optimize, the more trouble you will have later.

For more, read Paras Chopra’s article at Search Engine Land.

 

/0 Comments

Google Survey Reveals What Mobile Users Want

, , ,

Want to know what features and capabilities consumers are wanting from mobile websites? Google has released the results of a recent survey and, while the findings aren’t anything earth shattering, they also included data that could be beneficial to you.

The results have reaffirmed that smartphone users want sites to be optimized for their smaller screen, and they will leave those that aren’t, but Google also took the time to collect data on what users want in their experiences with mobile sites. Google used two independent research firms to survey over 1,000 adults in the US, who were also involved in focus groups and required to keep journals of their mobile activites throughout the third quarter of this year.

So what are users wanting from mobile sites? According to Google, users expect websites to load in less than five seconds. They also want mobile websites to allow them to act immediately. Seventy-six percent of smartphone owners want to use their phones to get locations for businesses and sixty-one percent like businesses to allow customers to contact them at the time.

Most want information available within a few clicks, with buttons large enough for their fingers. Other widely desired features were conveniently placed search bars, “click to call” buttons, unidirectional scrolling (up-down or left-right), and interestingly many desire the ability to go to the full non-mobile site. Google even gathered data on what users are looking for in sites for specific industries. Greg Sterling at Marketing Land has a break-down for these individual industries, if you’re interested.

Most of these findings are inline with what you would expect, but they also show how the expectations of mobile users are quickly getting higher. If you don’t raise your own standards to meet those of your customers, your business will not fare well in the future.

 

/0 Comments

Quick Tips for Making Great Content

, , ,

The vast changes Google has been making to SEO are well documented and discussed, as they have rendered all of the old ways of ruling searches with manipulative techniques obsolete. Instead, the optimization industry is being dominated by content investment. That, of course, means you’ll need to know how to make the best content possible.

We have some quick tips for helping with the shift to content creation. For a longer list, check out Simon Penson’s list at Search Engine Watch.

Idea creation

  • Come up with a list of ideas you can serialize. Regularly appearing content like “Quick Tips”, Top 10’s, and Q&A’s are a good place to start.
  • Identify types of content that would work well for you online.
  • Use Highcharts.com to see a visualization of every part of your content strategy to make sure everything is consistent.
  • There are lots of different and innovative types of content to create now, but the blog post is still the old standard for a reason.
  • Competitions are a great way to grow audiences via social media that you can later engage.
  • Change up your locations for brainstorming. Different environments stimulate creativity.

Creating Structure

  • While serialized content is good, don’t just repeat the same type of content over and over. Try to come up with a pattern of types of different content you can create and publish.
  • Make a 6-month content plan in the form of an editorial calender, keeping in mind industry events and trends.
  • Include your site pages in your initial structural plan. It is essential to include every part of your site in your plan so that every word matches your brand persona and message.

Content Strategy

  • Think about your timing. Time of day has a large effect on online activities and you should try to maximize your potential reach by considering when you publish content.
  • Learn your audience. Use survey for quantitative data and customer meets for qualitative information. This will tell you more about how to approach creating content for your market.
  • Separate your brand into different personas to match three or four demographics with different needs, then create content for these different personas.
  • Create a content flow as part of your strategy creation process.

Content Execution

  • When creating copy keep the details in mind. Font style and size, kerning, and leading all matter. Your presentation is as important as your content.
  • Take time to make a solid headline.
  • When creating a post, plan the structure beforehand.
  • Create persona writers for your brand and build authority over time to grow AuthorRank.

Measure Effectiveness

  • Don’t measure outreach by just the links earned. Take into consideration factors like referral traffic and brand visibility.
  • Keep social metrics in mind during content marketing measurement campaigns.
  • Set up Google Alerts with a snippet from any major piece of content you make so that you will be alerted when someone copies it.
  • Think of content performance like baseball averages. One hit for every three pieces of content is solid performance.

Hopefully these short tips will help you make the transition from the old SEO practices to content creation. The more you invest in content, the more reward you will see later.

 

/0 Comments

Everything You Need To Know About Copywriting [INFOGRAPHIC]

, , ,

Consistently creating good quality content is not easy. For copywriters, good content is something that really connects with readers, and while some can churn out content like robots, most of us have to invest a lot of time and effort.

Of course, practice will always make you a better content creator. Having an intimate understanding of copywriting and how it works is the foundation you will be building on. We all know a solid foundation is important.

Thankfully, the folks at ABC Copywriting have everything you could ever need to know about the copywriting processes all in one infographic. They include a walkthrough of every step of copywriting, as well as tips for quality sales letters, information documents and webpages. With it, you will have a solid base of information to become a great content creator and copywriter.

/0 Comments

3 Tips for Capitalizing on Mobile

, , , ,

It should be pretty obvious by now that the shift to accessing the internet via mobile devices is not going to wane any time soon. Some have already recognized this and capitalized by integrating mobile into their overall marketing and media plans, but there are still many untapped ways to take advantage of the mobile market.

While one ROI firm recently suggested that marketers allocate 7 percent of the budget to mobile, leaving room for growth to 10 percent by 2016,  Bill Dinan at Search Engine Watch argues that there’s a high amount of opportunities for mobile minimization and you should be giving a higher percentage of your ad budgets.

Mobile consumers tend to be more ready to buy than others, and a study conducted by Nielson found that local mobile searchers are converting at much higher rates than desktop users.

Over 60 percent of those participating in the survey said they ultimately make the purchase. 20 percent even stated that when using mobile they are often looking to purchase immediately or within the hour, which shows a window of opportunity for marketers.

We have 3 tips to help you fully take advantage of the opportunities created by mobile.

  1. Know the Mobile Customer – Any good advertiser should be paying attention to customer motivations and the ways their intents are often connected with their methods. Mobile customers have different needs and desires, and a one-size-fits-all approach isn’t going to cut it.
  2. Contact Info is Essential – Calls and location information are always an important step in the path for mobile users to purchase. Most users will want to connect with a business before making a purchase, so make sure your phone numbers and location info are clearly displayed. If the customer can’t contact you when they want to make the purchase, they will likely move on to the next business.
  3. Understand the Differences Between Tablets and Smartphones – Consumers use smartphones and tablets for different things, and it is important for mobile marketers to keep this in mind. Most smartphone users are looking for and contacting local businesses, while smartphone users tend to do more research activities. Brand websites also tend to be more popular on tablets, while local directory apps are more popular on smartphones.

If your company is ready to leap into the mobile marketing world, and you should, remember these tips. They will help get you headed towards an effective marketing plan.

 

 

/0 Comments

How Google’s Changes Should Change the Reports You Use

, , ,

Google’s algorithm changes over the last decade have really made huge shifts in the way we search things. They also really help developers stay on their toes.

Initially, the SEO business was all about rankings. You told your client how you would get their keywords to the top of the search, and then showed them how high they were coming up in searches. Of course, it took a while to get their site to the top, but once you did, they were content.

Now, thanks mostly to Search+, it is the job of SEOs to get their clients to stop thinking about ratings. What Search+ has done is customize the results for every search you make based on search history, location, social media usage, and other criteria. That means everyone gets results catered to them, but it also results in your client’s site not appearing high in the rankings for some people.

Sujan Patel offers some other methods of tracking how your websites are performing, all of which can be found in Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics.

There are simple reports like “visitor growth” that show how your site is trending quickly and clearly, as well as old metrics that have risen in popularity. Such measurement tools like Impressions give you ideas of how your pages are appearing for similar search terms.

Another old metric that has become much more useful is your site’s average ranking. In January, Google announced changes to how they score site’s average rankings and now it gives a much closer average of “how a link’s position in Google search results should be important.”

While the older ways of Google made it easier for you to see how your site is performing, the changes in recent months have actually been an improvement for marketing towards target demographics. Unfortunately, this means improving your analytic skills is essential if you want to succeed. You may not be able to give your client keywords to search to see their performance, but if you know your analytic tools, you can still quickly show them how your SEO path is helping them grow their business.

 

/0 Comments

7 Thing You Need to Know About Mobile SEO

, , , ,

Just about everyone has a smart phone by now, so why is mobile SEO still a poor facsimile of desktop SEO? Even the most basic stats show that mobile SEO is worth paying attention to, as mobile devices accounted for 13% of all searches in June 2012 with 20% of clicks.

The problem is creating a mobile site isn’t easy, and effectively optimizing any given site for a mobile audience relies on several criteria.

SEO consultant Aleyda Solis at the BrightonSEO conference listed seven of the criteria you should consider when optimizing a site for mobile SEO, and we’re here to help you through it.

  1. How does your audience behave on your site? – Before you invest time and money into a mobile site, it’s first important to know if you even have enough of a mobile audience to make it worth your effort. Using Google Analytics, you can create a segment for organic mobile traffic, which will allow you to look at the volume of visits, devices used, and the landing pages they tend to hit, as well as what are the most popular keywords. If you know what type of content is most popular with mobile users, you can prioritize it when creating a mobile website.
  2. Where does your site appear in mobile search results? – Where your site appears in mobile search results is helpful in knowing what content you need to optimize for mobile use. Investigating these statistics, as well as what keywords and pages are already gaining visibility will help you prioritize.
  3. How does your audience use mobile search? – Knowing how your target audience uses mobile search allows you to make yourself more visible to them and increase your traffic. You can use Google’s Keyword Tool to find the keywords your audience are using, and Our Mobile Planet lets you check how consumers are using their mobile devices.
  4. How does your site render on mobile devices? – Testing your content on mobile devices is essential when designing a site because if your content doesn’t render correctly, visitors will promptly leave. Using Google’s Getmometer, PageSpeed Insights and the ‘Fetch as Google mobile bot’ in Webmaster tools, you can see how mobile users and bots see your website.
  5. What content and products are you offering to your mobile audience? – Mobile users are often looking for different content than your desktop visitors are. Identifying what your mobile customers are after, lets you know if you are catering to their needs. Often, mobile users focus more on localized content. If that is true for your audience, are you offering localized content? If you’re not, are you able to create some?
  6. Do you have the technical capacity to develop a mobile site? – If your website isn’t rendering correctly on mobile devices, you need to consider if you have enough of a budget to make it responsive, dynamically serve content or build a parallel mobile version. Each method has its pros and cons, but ideally you need to use responsive design. That’s not always possible though, depending on technical capacity, budget, and content needs.
  7. Based on these criteria, decide what type of mobile site you need – Depending on your site’s needs and abilities, you will know how you need to respond to creating a mobile site. David Moth at Econsultancy has a flowchart to use to make it easy for you.

There are different ways to handle mobile optimization, and hopefully this list has helped you identify the best route for you, but there is one thing that is true no matter what. Mobile SEO is becoming more important every day, and ignoring it is only hurting yourself.

 

/0 Comments

What Should You Be A/B Testing?

, , ,

Anyone reading this should know they should be testing their websites and landing pages, but if you aren’t well studied in optimization, how are you supposed to know what you should be testing? Oli Gardner has some suggestions to get you started testing your site.

1) Test the Headline – Your headline is the first things viewers will see when they land on your page, and to be most successful it should match what your viewer expected when deciding to visit your page. For example, you can test how positive or negative language performs in your headline, such as “Save Time by Downloading Now”  vs. “Stop Wasting Time, Download Now”.

Headlines are also used by your audience to quickly identify if the site they came to has what they want. Make sure your headline lets visitors know what you have to offer immediately. A great way to quickly test this is to just show the headline to someone unfamiliar with your brand for 5 seconds and ask them what the page was about. If they don’t know, you have a problem with your headline.

2) Test Your Forms – Most landing pages will have some sort of form trying to gain information from visitors. Its important to remember however that you should be offering something to your visitors in exchange for this information. What you offer is up to you, but examples could be an e-book, webinar registration or whitepaper.

The question remains though, how do you test to see if your forms are effective? One test would be seeing which forms people fill out the most, if all fields were made optional. The goal is to make sure you’re offering something equal to the amount of data you need. Try to be efficient and only have forms with relevant information and test different arrangements to see what visitors respond to the most.

3) Test Your Call To Action (CTA) – A call to action is your conversion. It is how you get people to do what you want them to do, and if that isn’t happening, you may need to work on your CTA. Make it descriptive, so that your visitors will know exactly what will happen if they follow the CTA,

A way to test your CTA is by changing just one word and seeing how customers respond. Unbounce found that changing the description “order information” to “get information” led to a 38.26% increase un conversions.

While these examples will get you going, if you want a more thorough guide, you’ll also want to look into Oli’s “Ultimate Guide to A/B Testing”.

 

/0 Comments

3 Reasons to Learn Online Marketing

, , , ,

 

As a web designer or developer, it’s always important to understand what the client wants. That’s why it is strange how few designers and developers understand online marketing.

Understanding and implementing online marketing give any developer or designer a great advantage in the marketplace and promises much more of a long term reward than those that fail to learn about online marketing. This isn’t to say neglecting your designing or developing skills is a wise decision, but by combining your skills with online marketing, you can do three things:

1) Get more clients – When clients post ads for developers or design jobs, they often get responses detailing what features and formats the person could implement. They promise so many pages, or list how they are proficient in HTML5, jQuery, and W4C standards. This may seem like a great approach for contacting potential employers, but it has a great weakness.

Potential employers want to know what you will do for them, and what they want you to do is make more money. Employers want to hear that you will raise the number of subscribers a certain percent, or will raise their revenue. Wether you use HTML5 or jQuery is not of much importance to them.

There are plenty of good web designers that can make nice looking websites, but there are way less designers that know how to increase sales. Those that know online marketing will get the better clients, and higher rates.

2) Build Your Brand – The biggest problem for every freelancer is building a base of clients. It would be great for clients to just come to you ready to pay however much you want, but that is a fantasy. Or is it?

Building a strong personal brand online attracts clients by exhibiting your skills to them beforehand. This can be fairly difficult and requires a lot of perseverance, but there is a basic pattern. First, you build a popular blog, followed by establishing a decent social media following. Then, you participate in outside activities like conferences, and make yourself known about.

This path does two very important things for you. It establishes you as a reputable expert, and gains you tons of publicity many would pay for. When employers need work done, they go to the experts they know first, and if you’ve built a strong brand, they will know about you.

If you want to know more about building a personal brand, I highly recommend watching the TED talk by Jacob Cass.

3) Earn extra income – Freelancing is far from a stable career and anyone should be prepared for unexpected problems. That is why it is important to make yourself as financially secure as possible before the problems arrive.

One of the best options for securing your finances is to diversify your streams of income between client work and passive income. If you are already perceived as an expert in your field, creating a passive income shouldn’t be difficult. There are a slew of monetization options, such as creating and selling your own products or even simply displaying ads on your site.

It does take effort to create a product, and even more to market and sell it, but it could be extremely important in your future.

Think of it this way, if you want to run a local bakery, you have to be as good at business as you are at baking. Otherwise, the business won’t get off the ground. The same goes for creating a business online. If you want to be successful online, learn online marketing.

 

If you want to learn more about online marketing and the mistakes you can make while starting out, read more at 1stwebdesigner.

/0 Comments