While Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and web design are often pitted against each other, the truth is that in order to have a successful website, that requires them working in harmony. While in the past, people thought there was a tradeoff between an optimized website and a good-looking one, that’s not the case anymore. Now, the user experience is the future of SEO. And the user experience requires SEO and web design to work in tandem.

Optimization Vs Design: Impacts

A site that is heavy on SEO without a mind to design is ugly and can be confusing. Generally, a website that is focused entirely on SEO uses heavy amounts of text with lots of keywords and lots of ads. They also may not be organized well, making navigation more difficult. People won’t stay on a site like that; they want something streamlined and easy to use.

On the other hand, a website that is gorgeous but doesn’t utilize SEO won’t be seen, because it isn’t optimized to show up in search results. Sites focused on design tend to be quite low on text and engaging. However, without SEO, they might be pretty, but they won’t get traffic. People won’t see a site that hasn’t been optimized.

How Can They Work Together?

So you see, in order to have a successful site, you need to utilize both SEO and web design. They are both important, they both affect each other, and together, they create a beautiful, functional site. Here’s how they can do that.

Careful Implementation Of Keywords

Keywords are an essential part of SEO. They’re what help a site pop up in search engines when people enter them in to look for something. Web design and SEO have to make a compromise here. Keywords are important, yes, but there can’t be an overwhelming density of them. That isn’t attractive and can annoy users.

Optimized Content

One way to speckle keywords throughout the site is through optimizing the content on it and how designers can spread them over the site. This means that keywords can be used in the alt text and titles of images on a site, the alt tags, and the page names. This helps keep the content engaging while also reaching the necessary amount of keywords.

Mobile Optimization

Nowadays, most people use their phones to search for things. As such, sites that aren’t mobile friendly get penalized by search engines. Plus, a site that isn’t optimized for mobile loses users, because it’s not as easy to read and navigate on a mobile device. An easy to read, optimized site generates more mobile traffic.

Site Speed

People don’t have the patience to wait for a site to load, and the speed at which a page loads affects its SEO ranking. Designers can help this through implementing “lazy loading”, which is when the site loads as you scroll, rather than all at once. They can also avoid large images, as these also slow down loading times, and ensure they are compressed.

Engaging And Unique Content

A site with unique, optimized content will generate more traffic than one that just repeats what other sites are already saying. It will keep people’s attention more to see something more original, and help SEO rankings, as search engines punish copied content.

Cohesive SEO And Web Design = Perfect

In order to have a site that is both attractive and performs well, you must consider both what people want to see and what they need to see in order for your site to rank well. An easy-to-read, optimized website generates more traffic than either a heavily optimized, ugly site or a beautiful, not optimized site. Web pages names, content layout, link structure, every bit of a website affects both its look and its visibility. It’s all about finding that perfect balance.

It used to be that if you wanted both an attractive website and one that was optimized for search engines, you had to find different places to do those services for you. This isn’t the case anymore. Here at Performance Driven Marketing, we offer both web design and SEO services. We keep both the look of your website and the optimization of it in mind for every aspect of it, from the design process itself to creating content. If you need SEO and web design services, we can help! Contact us at Performance Driven Marketing today to learn more.

You have started your website and are starting to receive traffic. Your content is tailored to your target audience and is what they are looking for. Your audience is interacting with your content, but you are not sure how to better your website or grow your customer base. One way to increase your sustainability and attract more users to your website is to implement mobile optimization.

What Is Mobile Optimization?

Mobile optimization is essentially making your website accessible and easy to use from a cell phone. Sometimes there can be issues going from computers to phones and so it is very beneficial to make sure that those problems are taken care of. The reason why mobile optimization is so important is because the whole world is on their phones these days. Or at least half the world. According to Statista, 50% of web traffic is from mobile devices. There are many benefits to mobile optimization.

Benefits of Mobile Optimization

Some of the benefits of mobile optimization are immediate and others are more long term. Following are some of the benefits that support why mobile optimization is important.

Customer Gratification

Because mobile optimization makes processes more efficient and effective, it makes individual customer’s experiences much better. Not only is mobile optimization supposed to make the screen smaller for a phone but it is supposed to make the ability to use the website significantly easier on a phone. Honestly, most customers will expect for your website to work well on their phone, so this aspect of mobile optimization is more about keeping your customer happy than exceeding their expectations. Essentially, having a good mobile experience is the bare minimum that your customer base will expect.

Better SEO Ranking

Another reason why mobile optimization is useful is that it can help with your search engine ranking. Having a website that can be accessed from several different types of devices is important to Google and other search engines. Having a mobile website with a quick load time and easy navigation will much improve your SEO ranking.

Better Geotargeting

Geotargeting is marketing to certain individuals based on their location. Geotargeting works using location data to help users find businesses near them and businesses find customers in their area. Having a mobile optimized website is crucial for geotargeting. If users cannot access your website from their phones, they will move onto the next website that could help them find what they are looking for in their area. In this way, having a well optimized website can also help increase users’ session times. This would also help out with your search engine ranking.

How To Implement Mobile Optimization

A lot of templates on different web providers have the ability to automatically readjust for mobile devices. However usually the template will do the bare minimum of optimizing your website by making the website small enough to fit on the phone. In order to ensure that your website gives your customers the best experience possible, there are several things you will need to implement.

Firstly, it is important to use a good web host and choose a theme that is easily manipulated. Make sure to work on the loading times for your website and change your ads so that they will work well on cell phones. Add more media including images and videos. These will make your customer’s experience easier because they are more likely to click on images. It can be hard to know where to start when it comes to optimizing your website for mobile devices. For efficiency and convenience, it may be useful to get professional help optimizing your website.

Need Help Optimizing Your Website?

Here at Performance Driven Marketing, we have experienced individuals who can not only build your website to your personal specifications but can exceed your expectations. We can create and manage your website and we can optimize your website for search engines and mobile devices. We have many services available to you to ensure your website fits your personal needs and is optimized to your customer’s wants. Contact us today to learn more!

Are you a small business owner impacted by coronavirus (COVID-19)? In Utah, small businesses make up 90% of all employers and represent just under half of the state’s total workforce, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. As many businesses are closed, or running at partial capacity, many business owners are looking for new ways to try and keep their businesses alive in a time of crisis. Fortunately, the Internet can help local businesses find way to stay connected with customers and continue turning a profit. Here are some tips that will help your business thrive right now, but also be prepared for any future crisis like COVID-19 that have forever changed how small businesses are run.

Creating short-term and long-term plans

Never stop marketing your business. Even if you run a dental practice that is currently closed to everything except dental emergencies, you need to continue online marketing. Internet traffic for many local businesses offering in-person services (dentistry, carpet cleaning, massage therapy, restaurants) are all seeing declines in traffic right now as many people are concerned about exposure risk, and businesses are following Utah state-issued guidelines.

The importance of online marketing comes down to this, when you STOP marketing your business, you will lose business. Pausing your marketing service will place your business in a situation when you are reactive in June, July and August. When businesses can start opening again, where will your website be as they search for local service? In time, markets will start to recover and many of our friends and neighbors will be back to work and back in their stores. Making marketing decisions based on fear will doom your business.

We recommend creating a business reality plan for 30 days, 60 days, and 90 days. Our expert marketing team is here to help you understand your market, and what you need to do in order to get through this crisis. We want to stress to you that there ARE options. While you can look at your past strategies that have worked, we can help you identify other tactics that you have not implemented before. In fact, we recommend local businesses owners should consider marketing MORE during this time.

How can you market with a cash flow shortage?

This is not the time to give up. What can you do if you are trying to stay alive, and have limited funds for marketing? Here’s a marketing game-plan to help you get started:

- Focus on your website. Is this the time to redesign or enhance your website? YES! When traffic is slower to your site, it’s a great time for a website revamp. In a month or two, you can set up a new marketing campaign as the economy reopens to announce your new website and how it makes your customer’s lives easier.
- Google my business. Your best friend online is always going to be Google. Whether you like it or not, Google organic search drives more than 50 percent of all website traffic. Don’t fight against Google recommendations, embrace them and your website will improve.
- Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. All your basic social media accounts NEED engagement. Social media provides one of the easiest and simple ways to get in front of your customers. Local business owners can control the messages that are sent to the customers. We have found great success with social media as it not only gets a clear message to the customer, it’s a great way to improve customer relationships. Over 80% of small business revenue comes from existing customers. If you aren’t getting in front of those customers with social media, you could lose them.
- YouTube. Explainer videos are a great way to educate your customers. For example, let’s say you own a plumbing business and you want to connect with your customers. A great way to do this is to film yourself working on a basic repair job. You can offer some troubleshooting tips to the customers on how they can make some repairs on their own. While you think you might be losing business, you won’t. 90% of online shoppers say they will use videos to help them make purchasing decisions. Basic explainer videos give you an opportunity to showcase your skillset to your customers and show people why YOU are the local experts in your industry.

PDM Pro Tip: “Explainer videos less than 15 seconds long are shared 37% more often.”

Print media. As local business owners are struggling to make ends meet, a number of print media resources are cutting print advertising costs. Ask your account representative about a print marketing campaign that will help you get directly to the doorstep of your target audience.

Know your traffic and clean up your website

If you want to create a comprehensive approach to online marketing, take a look at your analytics data. The referral data can show you if there are other sources you need to update and if there are other places you need to spend time working on in order to remain connected to your customers.

While we know not everyone is an online marketing expert, there are things you can do to clean up your website. Take some time to review every page on your website and ask yourself the following questions:

Is the content relevant to the page?
Are the images and content outdated?
Do we have a clear message on our website?
Is the website easy to navigate?
Are we driving customers to the right call-to-action areas?

Small business crisis marketing gameplan

Keeping your business connected is vital to business success. Follow our pro tips to make sure your business has a strategy for the next three months:

Let your customers know you are open for business
1. If you are still open, tell your customers! Inform people daily on social media how your business is responding to COVID (or whatever new crisis our country may be dealing with). If you aren’t telling people your business is open, your customers may assume your business is closed. Have a clear message on your website homepage and update those social media accounts! If your business has closed, inform customers what they can do in the meantime and when they can expect to hear back from you if they do try and contact your business.
Update your website with a pop-up banner
1. As previously mentioned, you need to update your website. Your website is your 24/7 sales team. Include a pop-up or banner message that clearly informs your customers how your business is responding to the crisis.
Update Google my business
1. If you do not have a website, focus on your Google my business listing. Your business listing is a valuable way to connect to your customers. Update your hours and you can post on there about staffing issues and why it may take longer to respond to messages during this time.
Blog
1. During times of uncertainty, people need to know that something is “the same”. A blog post is a great way to let people know that. Keeping your website updated with new and fresh content keeps your website in good graces with Google, in addition to giving you something new you can share with customers on your social media accounts.
SMS messages
1. Do you have a strong customer base that has signed up for a text message service? Text message marketing is a great way to provide an update on business hours and availability.
Social media
1. We already talked about social media, but we want to remind you of the importance of updating your social profiles. The entire world is facing COVID-19 and many people are stuck at home….and bored. People are spending more time on social media, giving your business ample opportunity to get in front of your customers and leads.

PDM Pro Tip: Use community-based groups to inform local customers that your business is open.

Nextdoor and other local community groups
1. Share relevant information with other local websites. Contact your city offices and ask them if they will provide an update about your business on their website and social media accounts. Join Nextdoor to connect with your local customers and share relevant information.

Handling customer contact during COVID-19

If your business is currently interacting with customers in the office, it’s a great time to make sure you are showing HOW your business is responding to COVID-19. Wearing facemasks in the workplace, practicing diligent hand-washing and cleanliness is essential. Bring our your brand message with some promotional materials you can hand out, like hand sanitizer! Showing people how you respond to COVID-19 is bringing them peace of mind as they know the risk of infection occurring from interaction with your business is low thanks to your adherence to OSHA and CDC requirements.

Community giveaways and local support

A great way to share good news with your local audience is by offering a community-related giveaway. There are some great benefits to working with your local city office and finding out how your business can help support current needs. It can be something as simple as donating facemasks, gloves, hand sanitizer, hand soap, etc. Local offices are working with businesses to give them adequate support during this time, which brings about some great exposure in the community. Here are a few suggestions on what your business can do to show support:

Donate supplies like hand sanitizer to key workers
Donate or sponsor a food giveaway for families in need or to nursing homes and local shelters

PDM Pro Tip: Customers want to know businesses care about them and the community. Do what you can to provide service to strengthen your relationship with the local community.

Strengthen your business reputation

Look for some ways to build your business reputation. Podcasts, digital conferences, and speaking opportunities in your niche market provide you with the ability to truly establish your business as the one “in the know” about your industry. Virtual conferences are a great way to showcase your skillset to your target audience.

Local podcasts are always seeking business owners to interview and discuss various topics. Find a good podcast and reach out to them. Establish yourself as an expert by offering your opinion and return as a guest time and time again to generate more buzz!

How about hosting a digital event? No matter what industry you are in, you can host a digital event. Restaurants can offer a free cooking class and teach people how to make sushi, or some other fun dish! Contractors can show some pro tips on how to correctly finish sheet rocking your business. No matter what industry, you can take your top customer questions and needs and create a date and time to show them to answer with a digital event.

If you have a particular skillset that you would normally charge money for, offer online training courses and charge a small fee. You’d be surprised to see how many people will sign up for a course if you are the expert teaching them valuable information.

PDM Pro Tip: A good email list and a clean marketing message will help deliver the correct information to your core audience and will encourage them to share it with others.

Deep breaths….online traffic will return

We don’t have all the answers, but we know online traffic will return. People are searching online, even if your business is currently closed. When things calm down and people begin returning to their workplaces, searches will increase. In the meantime, we recommend staying on top of Google Trends and finding ways to offer answers to questions. Find a way to make trending searches relatable to your industry.

Avoid Keyword Stuffing

One common mistake people make when blogging is keyword stuffing. Keywords are a great way to help the search engines find your blog, but keyword stuffing can kill your blog. The content on your blog needs to be readable to gain the right attention. A great way to find keywords that are useful is by signing up for a Google Adwords account. This will help you narrow down the list of popular keywords for your market. One tip to remember with keywords is to select a few localized keywords to reach your local audience. Adding the city name, state, and zip code to your website can boost local rankings, and will help you reach out to the targeted customers. To maintain a balance of keywords, select a few and use them for your posts. Start by adding the keyword in the title, within the first paragraph, and last paragraph of the blog post to assist in boosting rankings. You might find that the keyword naturally integrates itself into the content with you actually adding it in there. This is the best practice for SEO success as you want the content to be natural, original, and engaging.

Create Original Content

The search engines have started to crack down on duplicate content. If you are not creating unique, original blog posts, your blog will suffer. Take the time to create new blog posts that are different from all the recycled content on the internet. You need to express your point of view on different trends related to your industry. This can get the customers to leave comments and really start a discussion trend. When you start showing customers you have a voice, it will distinguish your company from others in the industry. Create goals for your blog so your customers will have a desire to read it weekly. Remain active with your posting and place new content on the blog 2-4 times a week to show the search engines it is an active blog.

Effective Marketing

It is common to see companies spend too much time trying to market a blog, and failing to market their website. A blog is a marketing tool that will boost interest in your company, but your main goal is to point people to your website where they can purchase products. Use the blog as a way to get people to sign-up for email lists and other promotional offers. Use social media sites to help build trust and credibility with the customers. A blog will assist in reinforcing branding that you have already set in motion. You must be accurate and honest with the information posted on the blog and social media accounts to effectively market to the customers.

Hire Professional Writers

One of the biggest mistakes people make is trying to write content they do not understand. We have seen a lot of people outsource content to freelancers, some without any experience in their industry. Hiring a professional team of professional writers is the best way to ensure the information you are posting on your blog relates to your audience. Contact Performance Driven Marketing to discuss your blog and content marketing needs!

website redesign More than half of all small businesses do not have a website. We have seen a number of small businesses pop up around Utah, only to see them fail within the first two years. One of the things that often set a small business apart from their neighbor is their website. You need a website as it is one of the first places people will go to learn about your company. If you do not care about growing your business or starting to make a mark in your industry, by all means, enjoy the no website land. However, with technology constantly pushing people to their devices, the time has never been more important than now to create an effective website. Here are five reasons why a website is absolutely critical to your business.

Reason # 1: It Provides a Face to Your Business

When you are talking to other business owners, they almost always tell you about their website. Your website is the foundation of all your marketing efforts. This is your salesman that is ready to sell 24/7. The website is indexed by the search engines and hundreds of other websites to provide you with an online presence. When people are searching for local businesses more than 88% of them will start with the search engines and reading reviews before considering your business. If you do not have an online presence, you are missing a large demographic.

Reason # 2: Customer Service

A website is the place to send people for more information. A good website will have a lot of content. Content is KING when it comes to Google, but it is also KING when it comes to providing effective customer service. When you take the time to create large FAQ pages and blogs, it helps to answer pressing customer questions.

Reason # 3: It is Cost-Effective

It doesn’t cost a fortune to create an appealing website. The cost of building a website is hardly anything when it comes to attracting a new client. In fact, experts estimate the cost of a website is 1/10^th that of all other marketing expenses combined to acquire new business.

Reason # 4: Branded Marketing Works

One of the other reasons why we prefer using a website is how it helps a business to integrate all aspects of marketing. You can have traditional marketing work with digital marketing, creating a smooth brand across the board. Customers will be able to find you online and can recognize your brand easily if you are in local trade shows and events.

Reason # 5: Remaining Relevant

If you want to stay competitive in today’s world, you need to get ready and create a website. Your competition already has one and you’d better be prepared to deal with a significant disadvantage if you do not have one.

At Performance Driven Marketing, we help businesses of all sizes to remain relevant and competitive in their industries. We have been able to create custom websites for a variety of niche markets. If you do not have a website, or you have an outdated website that needs a facelift, give us a call today 801.326.0582

If you own a small business, and you currently have a website, you may be thinking you are set. At Performance Driven Marketing, we see a number of small business owners forget about their website and assume they don’t need to do much for it to bring in leads. The truth is, the Internet is a vastly different world today than it was 10 years ago, in fact, lets take a look at what Amazon looked like in 2008 versus today:

We can see quite a few differences in the home page of Amazon. From the user-friendly design of 2017 vs. multiple menus and scrolling bars in 2008. Websites often fall by the wayside and they aren’t given a fresh look, which makes a website look dated and quite simply, not relevant. While your business might be booming, you may not realize that may of your customers are currently frustrated with the structure of your website. On average a website visitor will stay on a home page for less than 15 seconds. What this means is you have a limited amount of time to capture their attention and become the “solution” to the problem or specific need they have.

Don’t Ignore Your Website

Ignoring your website can have devastating consequences. Google continues to release updates to their search engine algorithm, which could take a website from page 1 to page 3 in a day. You need to make sure your website makes a solid first impression as it is often the first experience most people will have with your business.

What to Consider for a Website Re-do

As you start scouring other websites for ideas on what you’d like to incorporate into your website redesign, we recommend understanding the importance of color, layout, functionality, and user experience. While a great looking site might impress you, it is important to consider the back-end of your website and the work that must be done to help Google and other search engines actually FIND your website and start ranking it. At Performance Driven Marketing, we provide local search engine optimization services for customers all over Utah, Idaho, California, and surrounding areas. Our team will help you bring your vision of a new website to life, or we can create a vision for you. Here are some of the important elements that must go into refreshing your website:

Website Design

The overall design of the website is vital as it needs to have a design that reflects your company image. To be noticed online, the design needs to be relevant and useful while also being unique. To help your website stand out, we use the following techniques:

Implementing geometric shapes and lines
Creative styling and fonts
Multi-tone gradient imagery
Mobile responsiveness
Custom logo creation and home page design

User Experience

While the look and feel of the website needs to be impressive, the overall user experience is vital to keeping a person from clicking off your website. The viewer needs to be able to find their way around your site effectively for them to find what they are looking for. Web users do not have patience and they will jump off a site quickly if they cannot find the information they need right away.

We find that web users like to be told what to do. Well structured menus and organized information helps them to properly navigate the website, making it easier on the user to find what they want. We recommend a clear call to action on a page, and always have your contact information visible for customers that choose to call or email you.
Avoid extra buttons and unnecessary information that can overwhelm your potential customers. Keep a single call to action on a page and stick with a prominent search bar function at the top of each webpage and a link to the sitemap at the bottom. Clean, easy, simple websites are those that often gain the most visitors.

Content

Content is essential for your website to rank properly. Google has been working hard to remove spam websites from the search engine. Websites that clearly copy content from another site risks being banned from the search engines entirely. Content needs to be clear and immediately available for the potential customers to understand answers to their questions. With the right information at their fingertips, customers will start turning to your company as the authority figure and the source of information in the industry. Engaging, useful, and professional content is the best way to accomplish this goal.

How do you create quality content?

You need to start by defining your audience and asking common questions that pertain to them. Fill out each question with an insightful answer, similar to a face-to-face conversation. As you answer these questions, focus on your ability to solve your client’s problems. Quality content will be able to build trust with your industry and can help to spread your brand’s name across the Internet.

Bridging the Gap with SEO

The term SEO tends to cause skepticism to some people as they assume you don’t need to do much for a website once it’s live. However, without the right optimization of the website, your online presence can struggle to be seen. We want your website to meet its true online potential without costing you an arm and a leg. Modern SEO goes much further than adding keywords, ALT tags, and mobile-friendliness. Let Performance Driven Marketing help your website thrive with our proven techniques.

In the digital era of fast-paced Internet and impatient web user, you cannot afford to have an outdated, slow, poorly designed website. If you are planning a website redesign, or you want to see what you can do to improve your website’s visibility, call our Ogden SEO Company today.

Connect Utah Presentation by Victor Hubbard
Internet Marketing – 101

The term “SEO” has become critical for anyone who works in marketing, owns a business, or manages their own website. And, because internet marketing is growing tremendously in popularity, everyone should really at least know the basics of the SEO acronym. After all, SEO affects the why that we search for everything online.
To give you a straightforward answer of what the SEO acronym means, here’s what it stands for: search engine optimization. But, for someone who isn’t well-versed in marketing, those terms are probably just as foreign as the acronym. Here’s a more in-depth look at what SEO is and what it does.

Getting Further into the SEO Acronym

Search engine optimization is optimizing content on the web so it is found by search engines more readily. The ideal goal for someone practicing an SEO strategy is to get a webpage, blog, article, or related media to come up very first on a Google search result, or at least on the first page. When searching for a service they need, people rarely go to the next page of search results.
The concept of search engine optimization isn’t as simple as it sounds, however. There is plenty of behind-the-scenes work that goes on in completely optimizing web content.

How is SEO Done for Websites?

As if search engine optimization wasn’t difficult enough, Google and other search engines are constantly changing the rules. Playing with SEO is a complex system of appeasing search engines and writing excellent web content. If one or the other is not accomplished, your web content won’t succeed in its SEO goals.
At Performance Driven Marketing, we are constantly watching forums to ensure that we are on top of Google’s newest trends. If you want your website to use SEO, call the SEO experts of Utah today at (801)-326-0582!

As Google progresses, it finds more innovative ways to help businesses interact with their customers online. As one of the most prominent search engines and social media sites, Google is doing its best to help connect people, businesses, and products together in a way that works for everyone.
Until recently, Google + and Google Maps have been separate programs. With Google Maps, keywords related to your business pulled up both your website and your map listing so your potential customers could more easily connect with your company directly. Now, however, Google Maps and Google + have merged together to create Google + Local, which is almost an entirely new entity altogether.
What is Google + Local?
Google + Local is a combination of map listings and recommendations that help give users a more detailed look at the companies they are looking for. With Google + Local, your target audience can find pictures, reviews, contact information, and summaries of what your business is and what is specializes in.
These Google + Local listings will also connect your customers to your Google + business profile, which allows them access to even more information about your business in addition to drawing them into your circles.
Recommendations
Because Google + Local is interwoven with Google +, users can see whether the people in their circles have yet recommended the companies that the user is searching. This can greatly influence the likelihood of whether or not the user will choose to go through your company or not.
Since recommendations (and, conversely, bad reviews) from people your customers know are the single most powerful method of marketing, the advent of Google + Local will encourage business owners to vamp up their Google + marketing strategies, and the consequences of not joining in might include getting left in the dust of your competition.
If you are interested in getting your business listed on Google + Local or implementing a better Google + marketing strategy, talk to the internet marketing experts at Performance Driven Marketing by calling (801)-326-0582 today!

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The Importance Of SEO For Great Web Design