Must Have Elements of a Well Designed Website

We live in a digital world where it’s almost impossible not to find a business online. Technology has evolved and with it, businesses have adapted to the change in order to stay relevant and profitable.

Having a storefront is no longer the key to success; maintaining a strong online presence.

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Here’s why:

It’s a powerful marketing tool that lets people find you and the services you’re offering. Most consumers will do research on their needs and their search begins online
Having an online presence gives any business credibility. That’s because most consumers assume businesses will have a website. Without one, consumers might not take the business seriously. It’s important in order to establish a reputation.

Once you’ve decided that you need a website, you should maximize it to its full potential.

A well-designed website should include the following:

A purpose

Do you want to educate consumers about your business or organization? Is it a place for people to shop? Think about the type of consumer you’re trying to attract to your website. This will give yourself an idea of how your website should function in order to meet the needs of your consumers and generate more business.

Content

Content is an important part of any website. It gives you the opportunity to educate and communicate with your customers and connect with new ones. Whether you’re writing blog posts, or simply loading descriptions of your content/services, you want to capture your audience’s attention right away. Be conversational and speak directly to your reader. It will help them connect with you and will influence them in the buying process when it comes time to purchase a service or product. Also optimize your content with right keywords – this will help you rank in Google when someone is searching for your products or services.

Easy Navigation

The right type of content on your website is important, but so is the way it’s laid out on your website. That includes organizing the content into headings or categories and using bullet points for large pieces of text. Think about how easy is for your consumer to navigate through the website to find what they’re looking for. Organizing your content into drop-down menus is a great way to keep everything in their rightful place on your website.

Simple fonts

You’ve got the content you want to post online and will have it properly organized. The next logical step in getting your content read is to ensure it’s readable. Present your content using a simple font. Picking a font that’s overly fancy may be distracting to the eye. Remember, you want your viewer’s experience to be a fun, yet purposeful one. Directing them to a page with fonts that don’t accurately represent your business (and aren’t pleasing to the eye) may prevent your viewer from completing their purpose on your site.

Don’t be afraid of colour

Choose a soft, yet colourful palette for your website. Complementing colours will create balance and help your content stand out if you use contrasting colours that are pleasing and professional.

When it comes to colours – think about what colour represents your business and your message. Every colour carries a meaning and feel. For brand recognition and continuity you want all your marketing materials to deliver your business message, so keep your website aligned with all your other marketing materials.

Add graphics

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, right? Leverage your business online by including infographics and other images that directly speak to your business. Often times, they can effectively communicate a thought and directly target your average consumer. There are plenty of free stock photo websites where you can find appropriate images to suit your needs.

Intact Marketing can make this happen for you

Designing a website and the content, infographics and images that go with it is a lot of work. If you don’t have experience in the design world, you may find it frustrating to create your own website while ensuring it has all of the above.

That’s where Intact Marketing comes in. We’re a full-service marketing company that can assist you with your digital imprint. Whether you need a brand new website designed, or need changes to your current one, we offer flexible packages to suit your needs.

We invite you to take a look at our extensive portfolio – Intact Marketing has designed and managed many company websites. You’ll notice they’re interactive, eye-catching and professional. All of these elements help your business thrive. That’s our mission when it comes to developing your website and personal brand online.

Make a strong impression online with a website that’s designed for success with Intact Marketing!

Is Your Website Mobile Ready for Google’s New Algorithm Change?

April 16, 2015/in Search Engine Optimization /by Piri Darabont

If your website is not ready for Google’s next update and fully optimized for mobile, you could see a pretty drastic decline in your rankings.

Google is changing its search algorithms on April 21 for mobile devices so mobile users will have an easier time finding results that will display properly on their device when they run a search and also pulling results from apps.

The change will rearrange search results so that mobile-friendly websites that display well on mobile devices will be ranked higher than unfriendly ones that don’t. Simply put, those who want to keep their rankings or rank higher on search engines must optimize their websites focusing on mobile devices.

There are several tools and services to help you make your website more mobile-friendly in preparation for the change.

First take the Mobile-Friendly Test. This is a simple tool where you can enter your website URL. The site then scans the page and makes an estimation on how it performs on most mobile devices and gives a preview of what it looks like on a mobile screen.

Also check out the various website-building tools that Google offers. The detailed guides offer users tips and steps to take in order to use their chosen software effectively when it comes to mobile visitors.

A new guide for mobile search engine optimization was also released, giving specific technical details the new algorithm looks at, common mistakes sites may fall for, and advice on how you can increase your website’s ranking on searches with tweaks and fixes.

So really the question most website owners are asking now is: how important is Google’s mobile-friendly algorithm and how it will impact their rankings?

Google’s Zineb Ait Bahajji from the Webmaster Trends team was quoted as saying that the upcoming mobile-friendly ranking algorithm that will launch on April 21st will have more of an impact on Google’s search results than the Google Panda update and the Google Penguin update did.

If you take in consideration that about 50% of all searches done on Google are on mobile devices, this in deed reflects hat this would have a “significant impact” on the mobile search results.

What can you do to optimize your website for mobile devices?

Review your site to make sure it is mobile friendly by taking the Mobile-Friendly Test.
Check the touch elements on your site, such as buttons and links to verify that they are easy to use.
Redirect mobile users to the appropriate mobile URL, if you use separate URLs.
Avoid having your website rely on Flash.
Check your page load time.

A well-optimized responsive website can help you to achieve higher mobile search engine results rankings, while also making it easier for customers to locate the information they need about your business.

At Intact Marketing, we have been building only responsive web design in the last two years because we fully understand search trends and we closely followed how mobile search grew significantly in the last few years. If your website is not mobile ready please contact us for an estimate and we’ll be happy to position your business well online.

How to Optimize your Video for Search Engines?

January 20, 2013/in Search Engine Optimization /by Piri Darabont

We all heard “Content is King” and most of us work diligently to provide valuable information for our visitors, but more than ever Visual content is the “New King”. No matter what industry you’re in, there’s no better way to promote your business than via video. It’s the fastest growing medium on the Internet – yet, many businesses are still not incorporating video promotions in their marketing.

Simply by having a video on your website, your customer is 53 times more likely to search and find your company online.

Why video optimization is important?

Video optimization is becoming more and more important as a mainstream aspect to SEO as search engines include videos in general search results.

It’s well known, that videos are more engaging and convey more in less time. Businesses that use videos as part of their online promotional strategies are able to create a more personal interaction between their business and their customers.

Did you know that 182 million U.S. internet users watch online video content in December 2011 for an average of 23.2 hours per viewer! Now I don’t know about you, but that sounds a lot of time!

Statistics show that companies had a 6%-20% increase in sales with videos and 30% of internet traffic is form videos.

If you are looking to increase your website traffic, receive more leads and sales, then you can’t ignore the potential of video marketing.

I will share some tips on how to optimize your videos:

Create a dedicated video section on your website
- Embed videos on your website
- Add description snippets and thumbnails
- Create a video library page that will list all your videos
Create final video pages with unique URLs
- Create catchy video titles and description that will get people’s attention
- Have transcripts and links to other related videos
- Incorporate your ling tail keywords
- Don’t forget to add tags
Allow sharing
- If you want your video to go viral, it is crucial to incorporate a social share button to encourage your visitors to share your videos.
- And last but not least don’t forget to syndicate to other video platforms like: YouTube, Yahoo Videao, MetaCafe, Mevio, Vimeo, MySpace, and BlipTV.

When it comes to video promotions remember to keep it short, if possible have your videos about one minute length. If you have different points to make, tell them with different videos. There’s more of a chance of one gaining traction.

If you’re ready to take your online marketing to the next level and need custom designed videos for your company or would like us to optimize your videos contact us. Intact Marketing offers video creation as well video optimization.

7 On-Page SEO Tips Using Keywords or Keyword Phrases

January 6, 2012/in Search Engine Optimization /by Piri Darabont

When it comes to Search Engine Optimization you have to understand that there are two sides to search engine optimization (SEO). They are on-page SEO and off-page SEO and simply put the on-page SEO includes elements on your website or web page and the off-page has to do with back links that you will get to your site.

The following SEO tips will help you optimize your webpages for better rankings in major search engines.

Using the right keywords and phrases will affect your page’s ranking in the search engines and your overall SEO and social media marketing campaigns.

Determine your keywords – Keyword research is a vitally integral element of SEO. Creating a list of keywords relevant to your business is absolutely crucial if you want to rank high in search engines. Think about which keywords or keyword phrases are the most likely users put into the search area when looking for your product or service. Once you have your list you will want to create a webpage that focuses on that keyword or phrase. Optimizing your site for the wrong keywords can lead to huge amounts of traffic and business loss. Oftentimes, websites are optimized for keywords that are perceived to be of high-value – however, perceived value and actual value can greatly vary.
Create a web page with the right keyword density – The goal of every website owner (whether business or personal) is to get higher rankings in the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. With this in mind you have to be careful to not get involved with duplicate content. Google robots are intelligent to find duplicate content.You also need to make sure you have valuable content. Content is king and search engine robots are looking for fresh and relevant content. With that in mind you should include the keyword that you want to rank for in the search engines in the page’s content at a percentage of 1-4%. For example, if you have 400 words on your page you should have the keyword present 4-16 times. Having the right keyword density is one of the most important tips for SEO.
The first 50 words in the body – There are software that grades a page’s potential for ranking by determining a number of on-page values. One of my favorite tool grades your site’s SEO potential by making sure your keyword or phrase is mentioned once within the first 50 words of the body text. Incorporating you main keyword or keyword phrases in the first paragraph of the body is an important on-page SEO step.
Include keywords in Page URL – Whenever is possible having the keyword in the page name of the website is valuable. Most search engines consider the text in the page name to determine what the web page is about. When you create your website is important to set up search engine friendly permalinks (often know as Search Engine Optimized permalinks) to improve your on-page SEO.
Include keywords in Page Title – The Page Title is one of the most important things that Google and many major search engines evaluate to determine what is on a web page. Your keyword or keyword phrase must be in the title of the web page if you ever want to rank better in search engines.
Keywords in the Meta Description – There are several “meta” tags in each of your web pages and they have their own importance. Part of your meta tags includes your website’s description. It’s a snippet of HTML code that belongs inside the section of a web page. It is usually placed after the Title tag and before the Meta keywords tag (if you use one), although the order is not important.

The proper syntax for this HTML tag is:
META NAME=”Description” CONTENT=”Your descriptive sentence or two goes here.”

If you’re using a content management system (CMS), look for a field to fill out that’s called Meta Description, or possibly just “Description.” When it comes to on-site SEO tips this is another one that you need to follow. My recommendation is to always use description tags on every page where you get search engine visitors (or hope to get them). Make them very specific to the page they’re on by describing what someone will find when they click through to the page from the search results, while also using variations of your targeted keywords.

If you’re optimizing a page for 3 different keyword phrases, you could write a 3-sentence Meta description tag, with each sentence focusing on a different phrase. You could probably even insert more than 3 phrases in those sentences if you’re a good words. The idea, however, is not to stuff this tag full of keywords, but to write each sentence to be a compelling marketing statement – a statement that naturally uses the keywords people might be typing into Google to find your site.

Your Meta description tag can be as long as you want it to be, but keep in mind that Google will show only show around 20 to 25 words as your description.

Keywords in your H1 tag -The H1 text is usually the title of an article or some larger bold text at the top of your page. Because many search engines will use the information from H1 tags, and give it more weight over normal page text, it is a valuable tool for improving search engine placement. Make sure your keyword or keyword phrase is there.

At Intact Marketing we tailor our keyword research to you and your needs, ensuring that you can optimize for the keywords that are most likely to bring you the valuable, targeted traffic that you want. Our On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO services can help you establish higher ranks in Google as well as other search engines.

How to Make Call to Action Landing Page for your Website

September 27, 2011/in Search Engine Optimization /by Piri Darabont

How to Optimize your Landing Page to increase your Click through rates

Having a compelling – call to action – landing page is absolutely crucial if you want to convert your website visitors into customers and ultimately increase your Return on Investment (ROI).

Businesses often invest in Search Engine Optimization or in Search Engine Friendly Website Design and while they get a lot of traffic they are still unable to convert that traffic into customers and eventually in sales.

If you fall into this category you should consider setting some goals for what actions you want your visitors to take once they reach your web page such as:

Request more information
Email or call you
Fill out a form
Sign up for services
Or purchase your products online

Once you clarify what your online goals are, you then need to create powerful action statements or a – call to action – to encourage your website visitors to take the desired action.

Creating a compelling call to action landing page is crucial if you want to increase your conversion rate, get more customers and increase your sales!

Start with an Offer Your Customers Can’t Resist

As a business you must have a “unique selling proposition.” This is what sets you apart from all of your competition and what should compel your target market to buy from you.

It makes sense to design your compelling offer or proposition so that it responds to a problem your target market is dealing with.

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. When they sit down at their computer and search for a term such as, “buy portable air humidifier unit” what do they want to see when they click on your website? On the other hand, if the customer sits down and searches for “tips for installing a humidifier unit” they will expect to find something very different.

When designing the offer, answer these three questions:
Who is your target market?
What problem do they want to solve?
How do you offer the best solution to their problem?

These questions probably guide most of your business decisions. Your website is no different. Keep your answers to these three questions in mind throughout the entire process of writing Call to Actions for your website.

Six Tips to Create Effective Call to Action Landing Pages:

1. Focus on Your Target Audience

You would speak very differently to a Business Lawyer than to a Tradesman such as an Electrician. As such, you need to match your action statements to your audience. Focus on your audience’s needs and focus on using an appropriate tone.

2. Stay Focused on the Next Step

The purpose of a “call to action” is to help visitors take the next step. Your landing page should include one primary call to action, which leads the viewer deeper into your site. Any secondary call to action should not be in competition with your primary call to action. Overwhelming visitors with too much choice can leave them paralyzed instead of moving forward. It is your goal to help the visitor take the next step.

3. The KISS Principle

Keep it shot and simple! Be clear. Be specific. Be simple. Your home page is more than just an entry portal. It is your opportunity to let people know what makes you unique. Position your value statement above the fold and make it stand out from surrounding content using font size and color. Write the statement so that a 10 year old can understand and act upon it.

4. Establish a Context for the Response

In any real world situation, without context to a command, most people are unwilling to respond. For example, you wouldn’t donate $500 dollars just because a non-profit organization called you but you would probably consider it if they offered “Donate $500 to the Children’s Hospital and your company website will be listed as sponsors on their site”. In some instances you need to provide grounding for the call to action and in others you need to help the visitors realize their need before they will consider taking the next step. In the example of a Humidifier, you may need to provide a web page outlining the benefits of having a humidifier unit in the winter in order to convince the visitor to download your catalog.

5. Add Value

It is human nature to carry a – what’s in it for me – mentality where it may take additional persuasion to convince them to act. In essence, your – call to action – will state, “Do this so that you can get that.” Always try to connect the action with a direct benefit in order to show value.

6. Create a Sense of Urgency

In our human nature we tend to procrastinate and put things off. To overcome this tendency add urgency to your call to action. Create a deadline so that the offer expires or only lasts for a short time. If the visitor doesn’t act upon the statement immediately chances are they will not come back to your site to do it later.