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Category: SEO

  • Do you want more Google Reviews?

    Do you want more Google Reviews?

    In the 21st century, Google is the first point of contact between many customers and businesses. From finding businesses nearby to looking up a forgotten phone number, we search keywords in Google to help us find anything and everything we want to know. And if we want to find out how one business compares to another, we Google them to learn about other people’s experiences.

    Why should you care about Google Reviews?

    Local search engines love online reviews for one primary reason – consumers love online reviews! Did you know that Google uses these Reviews as a factor in their ranking algorithm.

    So, let me start with a very simple example. Let’s say you’re looking for a Website Designer in Coquitlam.

    Right away, you can see the user ratings and the number of reviews prominently displayed in both the search results and the accompanying map. If you click on the place pin of one of the businesses, you can also see brief summaries of the latest reviews shown alongside the businesses information including the address, hours of operation and phone number.

    This example illustrates the fact that customer reviews are among the first things people see when they search a business category on Google or Google Maps. It has also been shown that positive reviews provide your website with a greater boost to conversion rates compared to any other local SEO effort.

    For local businesses, online reviews help increase the degree of trust felt, based on feedback from other people with similar needs. A 2014 study discovered that 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations from friends and family.

    Do you want more Google Reviews for your business and for your website to appear higher in local search engine queries? Ask us how we can get more Google Reviews for you!

    I want more Google Reviews!

  • Easy Tips for Designing a Killer Website that Converts!

    A Poorly Designed Website Can Kill Your Sales

    It is very important to have a website, and now more than ever, it needs to reflect your business, service or product. Having a professional website can make or break a sale. Your website is usually the first or second contact with a new customer. They either find you by doing a search within a search engine like Google or Bing, or they find your business via another source and they look up your website to find out more information about your business, product, or service.

    Have you ever done business with a company that offers an amazing product or service, and their website just doesn’t reflect amazingness? They could be losing new business daily! Do them a huge favour, and let them know about the experience you had with their website. They can not change something that they are not aware of.

    Tips for designing a killer website that converts into positive ROI!

    1. Use Great Graphics

    Having poor graphics can decrease the value of your website. Make sure your graphics are high quality and are not pixelated. If you are designing your website on your own (which some small businesses do) make sure you get someone to help with the graphics that you design or choose. iStock is a great place to purchase high quality graphics.

    2. Make Sure It Looks Professional

    I know that lots of business owners like to save money. Realistically, we all do. Having a budget to have your website designed professionally is important. Cheaping out and getting your site built by a friend, a student, or your own kid who took a course in high-school will only cost you money and sales in the end.

    I have worked with many businesses that had their first website designed by someone new in the design industry, and I have found that the level of professionalism was just not there. Having a website that isn’t functional, or looks thrown together is only going to leave a bad impression with your potential customers about your product or service.

    3. Spell & Grammar Check Your Content

    How many times have you gone to a website and found errors throughout the content? It doesn’t reflect well on the business. The impression that you are giving is that you don’t care to do things well. Again, have someone go over the content to correct the errors. It can be a friend, colleague, employee or spouse. It takes just one look-over to find some errors that you just didn’t see because you had been staring at it for too many hours. It is worth it in the end.

    4. Easy To Navigate

    Help your user find what they are looking for easily. Implement a user friendly navigational system. Have people test it out and provide feedback. Using a tracking program like crazyegg can give you some great feedback on the usefulness of your navigation.

    5. Make it Easy For Them To Contact You

    Your website is the perfect place to interact with your new customers. I have had many consultations with new clients that complain about their existing website not doing anything for them. When I look at the website, I find their contact information buried in their contact page. I recommend placing the business phone number dominantly in the header of the document on every page so that the user doesn’t have to search for it. Also, I always add a simple contact form to every page. Yes, I said every page! Most importantly, make sure that it is above the fold. This will definitely increase the chances of your customer contacting you. We have seen a website go from 0 calls to action to over 60 in 1 month just by adding a contact form. It’s not rocket science, it’s just smart design.

    Remember, when designing your business website, it is always best to hire a professional, so make sure that you set aside a budget when planning your marketing strategy for the year. Spending your marketing budget on great sources that drive traffic to your website is a worthwhile investment, but only if your website is setup to convert the traffic once it gets there.

  • SEO and the Keywords Meta Tag

    The Keyword is ‘Keyword’

    If you’ve done any SEO, you know it’s all about keywords. Once you establish what your site is about, you do keyword research, keeping an eye out for low competition, high traffic keywords you can take advantage of. Then, you implement your keywords throughout your site, trying to fit them organically into the content of the page as well as in the meta tags.

    Writing or editing content to include keywords can be tricky. Overloading a page with keywords is dangerous, however, as it might be considered spamming. This is dangerous because it can result in a penalty to your ranking.

    Abused and Misunderstood

    Then there’s the ‘keywords’ meta tag. If you don’t know its history, then it probably seems like an essential meta tag. The truth about the keywords meta tag is that it’s not only deprecated, but using it can actually benefit your competition. All you really need to know to be justified in rejecting this tag is that Google doesn’t support it. When the keywords meta tag was used by search engines, it was abused by crafty marketers who stuffed it with unrelated (but popular) search terms to boost the rank of the site. It’s clear why a meta tag that allowed the manipulation of search engines had to go.

    It’s Harmless, Isn’t It?

    You aren’t penalized by Google for using the keywords meta tag. However, you are essentially giving away your keyword research to other people who are doing SEO for a competing site. Right-click and view source – that’s all they have to do. Of course, if someone really wants to figure out what keywords have been used on a site, they can go through each page and read through all of the copy and meta tags. The difference is that using the keywords meta tag makes it so easy to copy that they won’t be able to resist.