Author: Al Krulick

Steps to a Google-friendly Site

google-485611__180

There is no point in having a website unless people visit it. And people won’t visit it often enough, if it first doesn’t please Google, who, like it or not, is the most important arbiter of how your website will be ranked. So, while you are indulging in your creative fancies, trying to make you site the most beautiful and technologically sophisticated in the land, you also need to pay attention to grabbing the attention of Google – your new, best friend.

Number one on the list of creating a Google-friendly website is realizing that content is still king – not clever meta tags or sneakily inserted and endlessly repeated keywords. You have to provide unique content that is worth reading, viewing, or listening to, and that is updated regularly. And make sure that your content is original. Google is particularly annoyed when you lift content from another site and try to fool it into thinking that it is truly your own.

The good news is that if you provide unique and useful content, other sites will link to yours. Google likes that and attaches a lot of importance to inbound links. Again, don’t try to fool the Google algorithm; inbound links that are the result of schemes or link farms are a no-no. Google’s algorithms can distinguish natural links from unnatural ones.

Also, don’t try to out-maneuver Google by creating multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with duplicate content, or stuff pages with key words that don’t actually relate to the content therein. If your site contains pages, links, or text that you don’t intend visitors to see, Google considers those links and pages deceptive and may ignore your site, altogether.

Now, for the more technically minded, here are some other hints to making your site more Google-friendly:

• Ensure that your URL is optimized for organic search because its structure is important to its crawlability. Eschew unnecessary parameters and irrelevant characters.

• Test your page speed using Google’s own tool.

• Make sure that you’re not linking to non-essential pages in order to maximize your PageRank filtration

• If you’re using JavaScript, ensure that you’re coding it correctly so that it can be accessed by search engine spiders.

• Don’t use images to display important names, content, or links. Google’s crawler doesn’t recognize text contained in graphics.

• Use ALT attributes if the main content and keywords on your page can’t be formatted in regular HTML.

• Remember to create a Google Webmaster Tools account for your website so that Google can communicate with you directly.

A final word about the basics: Create your website for people, not search engines. The more usable your website is to humans, the more appealing it will be to search engines, anyway.

How Much Should I Spend on My Business’ Online Presence?

seo-618434__180

The easy answer to this question is: “As much as necessary and as little as possible.” But, of course that’s the easy answer and in business, there are no easy answers. Some experts suggest that you allocate 15 to 20 percent of your company’s annual income for the best results, but that answer is also a little too facile.

You know that you’re going to spend something for your business’ online presence and you know that it’s probably going to more affordable than print ads, radio or TV commercials, or sending out actual mail. But what you really need to do before you spend a dime, is decide what you want to achieve, where you will find most of your customers, and what aspects of online advertising and communication will give you the biggest bang for the buck by generating leads and sales and directing people towards your company.

Generally, you will have several main choices for your online spending: a website, which requires building it, hosting it and maintaining it; search marketing, such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), digital ads such as Google AdWords, pay per click (PPC) campaigns, etc.; a social media presence, such as Facebook, Twitter, and all the other various platforms; review site advertising such as Yelp and Foursquare; and email communication.

The most important of these is probably your website. There you have some choices. You can build it yourself using any number of off-the-shelf templates, such as WordPress, or you can pay to have one constructed for you. Your other basic costs will include a web domain, web hosting, a web developer (if your platform needs specific functionalities that are not available as plugins or extensions), and perhaps a social media manager (if you don’t have the time or the knowledge of how to manage the different channels). And remember: as the world becomes increasingly mobile-centered, it’s best to have a website that will display properly on smart phones and tablets.

Paying for SEO is another essential cost for many businesses. There are several models in play. You can pay a monthly retainer, which is a set fee each month in exchange for an agreed-upon array of services; or you can contract for services at fixed prices. Two other options are project-based pricing and hourly consulting.

Of course, you need to be on Facebook. It costs nothing, unless you wish to pay for boosting your content. The main expense is in labor. Facebook pages need to be updated constantly. In many companies, it’s a full-time job.

Sites like Yelp and Foursquare that offer customer reviews are also helpful tools for directing customers to your business through their advertising options. Most (non-PPC) advertising is priced on a CPM basis – essentially the cost per thousand impressions. You will have to do a lot of number-crunching to determine if this option will net you a decent return on your investment.

Finally, email marketing can be the centerpiece of any effort to stay in touch with existing customers, while reaching out and finding new ones. You can use it to promote new items and offer special discounts to loyal customers or to simply keep your customers informed. Blast email programs are relatively inexpensive, but you will need to pay a staff member to keep on top of everything.

Now, once you’ve done a lot of thinking, planning, and budgeting, you can re-ask yourself the question at the top of this post: “How Much Should I Spend on My Business’ Online Presence?” With all of your newly acquired knowledge, however, you will still likely wind up with the same answer: “As much as necessary and as little as possible.” Like we said, in business, there are no easy answers.

How Important are Mobile-Friendly Websites?

mobile-phone-579548__180

Here’s the quick answer: VERY. By 2017, it is estimated that there will be 150 million mobile websites – that’s 149 million more than there were in 2007. With 4 billion mobile phones being used, world-wide, it won’t be long before many people’s first internet experience will be through a mobile device. If your business doesn’t maintain a mobile-friendly website, you are missing the opportunity to attract customers over their mobile phones.

Google has already recognized this shift when it recently rolled out of a major algorithm update that is designed to allow mobile-friendly websites to appear higher in mobile searches, while non-mobile sites will experience lower rankings. So if you want your site to rank high in Google, it is now imperative that it is optimized for mobile.

However, SEO ranking is not the only reason to have a mobile-friendly site. The fact is, that sometime in 2014, mobile usage overtook desktop usage for the first time, ever. If your business’ site is not mobile-friendly, you’re running the risk of losing over 50 percent of your visitors. So if you want to keep the traffic flowing, it pays to make the move to mobile.

Here’s another reason. Optimizing a website for mobile has been proven to boost engagement by almost twice the average traffic per user. Since the vast majority of people tend to move between devices when completing a task, offering them an engaging mobile experience increases the likelihood that they will re-visit your website on a desktop.

Also, research indicates that consumers are more likely to do business with an online retailer if it has a mobile-optimized site. And finally, many smart phone users employ GPS when they’re on the go. A mobile-friendly site that allows consumers to find nearby services and businesses while still in their cars can increase walk-in traffic substantially. Not only that, the use of bar codes on a mobile-friendly site can be used for instant discounts by those same walk-in customers.

To sum up: SEO, traffic, engagement, and sales are four good reasons why your website should be optimized for mobile as soon as possible. And remember, your competition is already making the move. If you don’t want to be left behind in this next technology wave, you need to make the transition, now.

Does My Company Need a Mobile App?

mobile-phone-630413__180

There is only one way to answer the question: Does my company need a mobile app? And that is: It depends. It depends on a lot of things going on in your company and the type of business you’re in, so in order to answer the big question, you’re going to need to ask yourself a lot of lesser questions and keep probing until you have enough answers to get past the doubt.

Let’s start with some basic questions: Do you think that your business will benefit from having an app? Will the benefits outweigh the costs? What are your competitors doing and how will that impact your decision? These are not easy things to figure out, but perhaps using an analogy will help. Not too long ago, businesses didn’t have websites. If someone wanted to find your business they had the Yellow Pages and, if you could afford it, paid advertising in various media.

Today, you’d have a hard time finding a business that didn’t have a website. They’re just too valuable a tool for connecting with customers. Your business has a website and your competition does, too. Well, mobile activity is proceeding at a pace similar to the desktop/laptop activity of only a few years ago, and it may overtake it in the very near future. If you believe that most of your consumers will be on their smart phones most of the time, then you may well want to engage with them in that manner. And if your competition is already there, then you definitely need to consider having your own app, as well.

Today, the sectors that are most aggressively producing apps are restaurant and retail. Restaurant apps make it easy for users to find locations, review menus, place orders, and make reservations. Retail apps are very convenient when looking for a specific product or comparing prices. They are also used to find offer codes and coupons. And, of course, some companies, such as Uber, are totally dependent on their app. All these apps have specific purposes. So another crucial question you need to have a good answer to is: “What will your app do?” If you can’t readily explain your app’s purpose, you need to go back to square one.

Here’s another good question: “Is your current website ‘responsive,’ meaning does its layout adjust according to what device is being used to access it?” In the very recent past, most website interfaces were designed to work with a keyboard and a mouse on a large screen only; they didn’t work well on mobile platforms. But a responsive site can be accessed on a desktop or a smart phone and the interface will be optimized for each different device. If your business already has a website that’s mobile-friendly, an app might be superfluous; especially when you consider that apps have to be written and maintained for different platforms (iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, etc.), but responsive websites are all-inclusive.

Finally, here are a few more questions that you should consider that relate directly to the consumers you would be trying to engage with your mobile app: 1) “Will your app make life easier for them?” 2) “Will your app make life less expensive for them?” 3) “Will your app make life more fun for them?” Remember, there are already thousands and thousands of apps out there. The world is not screaming for another one – unless of course, it can answer all of the above questions, positively. Then there’s always enough room for one more good one.

This list of questions is by no means exhaustive. But they are the kind of business questions you need to start asking yourself before going to the expense of creating and maintaining an app that might not amount to much more than an icon on page five on someone’s smart phone. If, when all is said and done, you can undeniably ascertain that an app will benefit your company because you believe it will make more than it costs in the long run, and that if you don’t have one you will lose ground to your competition, than you can pretty much conclude that you need it. But ask the questions, first.

The New SEO Rules of Google

google-485611__180

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of making a website rank as high as possible on a search engine, such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing. SEO is considered to be one of the most important elements of any digital marketing strategy because most contemporary consumers use a search engine in order to find goods and services over the web, and the higher a website ranks, i.e., the closer it is to the top of the first page that a person sees, the greater its chances are of attracting traffic.

And Google, in particular, has been the 800 pound gorilla in the room that has set the rules that companies must follow, in order for their websites to rank as high as they can.

But over the years, Google’s rules keep changing, so business owners need to keep abreast of the constantly shifting SEO landscape in order to know how to drive as much traffic as possible from search engines. This year, new rules give businesses an opportunity to fine-tune and re-evaluate their SEO efforts, or risk losing organic traffic, or even having their websites removed from search engine results, altogether, for not abiding by Google’s new guidelines.

Google’s biggest adjustment this year is its announcement that it will rank a site differently if it isn’t “mobile-friendly.” The rate of use of mobile devices has grown tremendously over the past few years. More and more people are now browsing websites on mobile devices, which means they need to have an experience that can be loaded clearly on them. This means that a business must either create a whole new mobile site with a separate domain for mobile users; or utilize “dynamic serving,” which is a technique that detects what device a site visitor is using and then redirects them at the server level; or employ “responsive design,” which determines the resolution of the screen on which a page is being viewed using media queries, then adjusts the size and layout of the page appropriately.

Long-form content will continue to matter strongly in 2015. The length of a post really does help when it comes to how well a website ranks. Most important, however, is that content be helpful, educational and/or entertaining, and provide verifiable value to users.

This year, content will need to be shared as much as possible on social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, in order to increase the odds of getting natural links due to more exposure. A balanced, back-link profile will still be essential, as well; relevant, fresh, and authoritative links always help move a business up in search engine rankings. Also, according to Google, site speed will play a larger role, this year, in mobile and desktop rankings.

It’s not always easy to keep up with the changes in SEO best practices, but if a business wants to strengthen its brand in 2015, it would be wise to understand and adhere to Google’s newest rules.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zati-En69TY

Is e-commerce Right for my Business?

seo-618434__180According to the U.S. Census Bureau, retail e-commerce sales for 2014 were estimated at $304.9 billion, an increase of 15.4 percent over the previous year. They accounted for 6.5 percent of all total retail sales, up from 5.8 percent in 2013.

By anyone’s reckoning, that’s a lot of money, so it’s not unusual that many businesses are wondering whether e-commerce is the right way for them to go in order to increase their sales and beat the competition, especially since e-commerce – the sale of products and services over the internet – is the fastest growing segment of the American economy.

The beauty of e-commerce is that it allows even the smallest business to reach a national, or even a global, audience with its product or service at a minimal cost. Your customers can have access to information about your company 24/7, 365 days a year, and can buy from you at any time, day or night.

But before you consider whether or not you are primed and ready to become the next Amazon.com, you need to consider what it takes to become an e-commerce retailer.

First, you need to decide if you have the right type of product for e-commerce. The truth is that not everything can be readily sold over the internet, and many of the products that can and do, already are being offered by huge companies that essentially have cornered the market, making it difficult for a newcomer to gain any traction.

Second, if you do decide that your product is a good candidate for online selling, and that there is a potentially lucrative market out there for it, are you ready to make the effort into finding your customers? Because in order to do that, you’re going to have to create a winning website that can convince buyers that you are the go-to company for what they want or need.

Your online store will also need to be hosted and supported, either by yourself or by one of the growing number of e-commerce platforms, such as Shopify or Volusion. You also need to make sure that you continue to keep your website current with fresh content – your site ranking depends on it.

Then, you’re going to have to create a marketing strategy that maximizes your ability to reach your customers in the most cost-efficient way possible. That can include any or all of the following: SEO (Search Engine Optimization), PPC (Pay Per Click), social media, email, or video marketing.

You’re also going to have to figure out all of your logistics and fulfillment costs to see if they are less than your expected profits. Remember, shipping your product is not going to be free.

E-commerce can be an excellent choice for your business but you’ve got to take the time to learn how to do it properly. And that includes understanding not only its advantages but all of its potential pitfalls. So before you decide to launch into the world of online commerce, it makes sense to talk to an expert in the field. There are no shortcuts to success, but there are many roads that can take you there.

What are the Differences Between PPC and SEO?

monitor-560634_640

Current marketing research makes it clear that in order for a contemporary business to flourish, it must have a strong web presence in the most commonly used search engines, such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. Under the general heading of Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are two tools that businesses use in their internet marketing campaigns in order to get their brands in front of their target audiences.

Research also shows that, in many cases, the ultimate success of an online business will often depend on the amount of “traffic” it can generate for its web pages utilizing either, or both, of these two modern marketing methods. However, there are several differences between PPC and SEO, and under certain circumstances, one approach may be preferable to the other.

First, let’s look at SEO. SEO is considered an “organic” method of driving web traffic because it is free, and depends on its success by means of its intrinsic value. SEO employs a number of sophisticated techniques whose aim is to propel a website to the highest place possible on the first page of the major search engines, where it will be seen by the greatest number of people. It does this by providing a website that is “optimized” for search engines.

An optimized web site has the most accurate and well-written content, the most “keywords” that people enter when they are searching for something online, and the widest variety of links to other sites. For example, Google, which is the world’s foremost search engine with over 400 million searches per day, employs a complex algorithm that ranks websites according to their level of relevant and accurate information, and how constantly they provide their searchers with continuing value.

SEO is most beneficial for an online business that wants consistent results, a reputation for authority, and benefits that are more affordable in the long run. Ranking high in search engines takes a long time, but most marketing experts agree that the results are worth the cost and effort.

PPC campaigns are more like traditional advertisements because they are paid listings. PPC ads are the ones you see on a search engine that are above or to the right of the organic SEO rankings. They are in the “Sponsored Ads” or “Sponsored Links” section on a results page. The closer they are to the first page of a search engine, the more they cost. Popular PPC systems include Google AdWords, Yahoo Advertising, and Facebook’s advertising platform. The good news for advertisers is that they only have to pay for their ads each time one is “clicked on” and not every time they are merely viewed.

PPC is more useful for short sales cycles, limited time promotions, or new websites that need to get immediate exposure. A business can get a first page listing almost immediately – if it is paid for. On the other hand, PPC campaigns disappear as soon as a business stops paying for them, which means their existence is usually much more temporary than an SEO listing. However, if there is an adequate budget, and sales need to be made quickly, a PPC ad can be very effective.

Research shows that PPC ads have a slight edge in conversion rates (the percentage of users who buy a product or otherwise do something else based upon their searches) over SEO listings, because the people who click on them are conducting more specific searches and, thus, are more likely to act. PPC ads are also appropriate when a website isn’t particularly designed for SEO.

The Importance of Online Marketing in Today’s World

In order for a business to survive, it must have customers. In order to have customers it must sell a product or service that people want or need. Then it must find ways to reach out to those potential customers in order to convince them that their wants and needs can be satisfied by that particular business. In a competitive marketplace, where every business is reaching out to a finite universe of consumers, getting enough customers “in the door” not only requires excellence in the product or service being offered, but most certainly in the ways in which the business promotes itself and markets it product or service to the public.

In the advertising world, there are two broad categories of marketing, sometimes known as the shotgun approach and the rifle approach. The shotgun approach just puts the word out there to be seen or not be seen by a broad swath of potential buyers. Examples are billboards, newspapers, radio and TV. In contrast, the rifle approach concentrates a business’ marketing efforts on a more narrowly defined audience. Direct mail marketing and ads in niche publications are two examples.

In today’s advertising environment, online marketing – marketing that uses websites, emails, and social media platforms to communicate – manages to marry the best of both strategies. With a robust and compelling website, a business can literally advertise itself to the entire planet at minimal cost. Anyone searching for a product or service can see anyone else’s electronic billboard at any time of the day or night through the medium of the World Wide Web.

But online marketing also lends itself to a laser-like personalization of customer relationships. Businesses can track its website use in order to cultivate those who have visited it, and then use sophisticated email campaigns, as well as all the various social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter, etc. – to reach out to specific individuals who are most likely to become, and stay, customers.

In today’s world, having an online presence and utilizing the internet to its fullest capacity, is crucial if a business is going to be able to reach people where they are and how they now shop. Businesses cannot survive without customers, and for the foreseeable future, those customers will be knocking on their doors via a home computer, a laptop, a tablet, and/or a mobile phone.

Apple’s iPhone 6 Release Highlights the Need for Responsive Design

The Apple iPhone 6 and 6+ have launched, and demand is so high users who order are facing order fulfillment delays reaching into October. The delays don’t seem to dampening sales, however. “Response to iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus has been incredible, with a record number of preorders overnight,” Apple told the Financial Times.

To avoid these delays, users are waiting in long lines at the brick-and-mortar stores of major retailers and wireless carriers who sell the phone. “There are going to be ridiculously huge lines,” Tim Bajarin, an analyst with Creative Strategies, tells USA Today. “Demand for iPhone 6 is so high.”

Reports indicate many of those waiting in line may be app developers or their proxies. This is because developers are anxious to immediately update their apps to run on the new phone and new operating system. Apps for both Apple and Android products have skyrocketed, after all, following the general trend toward greater smartphone use.

What does this mean for businesses? To put it simply, increased. Just as the surge in internet use a decade ago drove companies online, forcing them to build an online presence in order to reach customers, the new wave of increased smartphone use demands that companies now field online sites that can be easily viewed and used on smartphones. When possible, companies are also developing apps to make connecting with customers even easier.

In the past, websites were designed solely for use on computers with relatively large monitors. As mobile internet was developed, users found these sites difficult to view and use on the smaller screens offered by portable devices. The original answer to this question was the development of separate, similar mobile sites designed to be easier to view and use on smaller screens.

The technology has advanced, however, and now websites can be built that automatically query the users device when they access the site in order to determine the size of the screen. Based on the answer, the site then chooses from one of several ready-made format options designed to best different ranges of screen sizes. This is called “responsive website design.”

40 percent of users will abandon a site that takes just three seconds to load.
40 percent of users will abandon a site that takes just three seconds to load.

Determining the right format for the user’s device isn’t the only key to responsive design, however. A properly designed website can also load faster on mobile devices. Even a good 4G connection loads slower than most wired or wireless broadband internet connections, and some flashy features like sliders and large-format graphics that look great on a large screen and load easily through a broadband connection can load dramatically slower on mobile connections. Responsive websites determine the user’s speed and delay or eliminate the loading of these bandwidths hog as necessary. Remember, as we have discussed in another blog article, 40 percent of users will abandon a site that takes as little as three seconds to load, and 79 percent won’t return to a site they previously had trouble loading. In this business, time is quite literally money.

How do you know if your site is responsive? Odds are, if your site wasn’t built in the last year or tow or hasn’t been extensively updated or overhauled in that time, it isn’t – or at the least isn’t using the current full capabilities of responsive design. Here’s a good way to check: Pull out your smartphone. Open your web browser. Enter your site address. If you can’t view or use the site easily, odds are your customers also can’t…or won’t.

If you need a responsive web site designed, or an existing website overhauled to be responsive, at The Click Experts, we can help. We know responsive coding inside and out, and have the knowledge and experience to put it to work for you and your business. This means we can build responsive designs into both template and custom sites. We also build custom apps for both Android and iPhone, so if your company wants there to be “an app for that”, we can help. We offer free quotes, so there’s no excuse to check and see how custom apps and/or a website featuring responsive design can benefit your business. Don’t lose customers due to bad design. Contact The Click Experts today!

Apple introduces the new iPhone 6:

Robin Williams: An Inspiration to Generations

For this month’s blog here at The Click Experts, we would like to take a break from our usual articles discussing business or technical matters. Instead, we’d like to take a few minutes to remember the life and mourn the passing of Robin Williams.

Mr. Williams was not only one of the world’s funniest comedians and greatest actors; he was also one of its kindest, most compassionate, generous, and greatest citizens. He had a special brand of manic humor and an incredible passion for things, people, and causes he cared about and thought were important.

From his first television appearance in 1974 on Happy Days as an alien named Mork and his later starring role as Mork in the spin off series Mork and Mindy, through his successful transition into movies and subsequent brilliant career on the big screen, Mr. Williams entertained and inspired generations of fans worldwide. He had an incredible gift to make people laugh, and he also had an uncanny ability to bare his soul in a dramatic and deeply personal way. While many comedians who got their start doing stand up are also talented actors, few have ever exhibited the depth and breadth of ability in the way that Robin Williams did.

His body of work is reflective of that broad range of talent. Mr Williams examined the human condition in introspective dramas like Good Will Hunting and Dead Poets Society and called out the powerful in gritty political movies like Good Morning, Vietnam. He pushed the boundaries with artsy and avante-garde films like Toys and What Dreams May Come. He inspired us and tugged at our heart strings with movies like Patch Adams. He was at his best, however, when making the kinds of slightly bizarre and uproariously, hilariously funny children’s movies for which he’s best known- films like Jumanji, Hook, Aladdin, and of course, his perhaps most iconic film, Mrs. Doubtfire.

The world is a little less bright without Robin Williams in it, but we can all take solace in the fact that he left a much, much brighter place overall for having been in it in the first place. Here at The Click Experts, we join with fans the world over in offering our condolences to his family and his friends. We call on everyone throughout the world to honor Mr. Williams’ legacy by taking a little piece of him with them in their heart everywhere they go and using it to inspire them to do something, however small, each and every day that makes the world a more joyful, wacky, weird, wonderful, and most importantly, fun place.

A short video tribute to Robin Williams:

Recent Posts

Our Services

Paid Search SEO Software & Apps