The purpose of a website is to reach as many people as possible to get your message across. With 25% of adults in the U.S. experiencing a disability, be it auditory, visual, physical, or cognitive, that goal is only achieved when all of us make an effort to improve accessibility of our sites.

Web accessibility is about designing and developing sites, tools, and technologies that can be enjoyed by 100% of internet users, so the suggestions we make here will not only improve your site’s accessibility for those with disabilities but will also make visiting the site more enjoyable to all users. If you make an effort to apply them, you can increase your reach, improve user experience, express your commitment to inclusivity, and avoid legal snags.

As you optimize your website to improve accessibility, seek the counsel of those who live with disabilities to test your site. This can accurately inform your changes and improve overall user experience.

Make Your URLs Descriptions Descriptive

Before users even get to your website, they have to find it. Many users with visual impairments rely on screen readers to read out which sites have the answers to their questions or the products they are looking for. You can help your site to rank better by giving your content more descriptive URLs.

For example, https://www.performancedrivenmarketing.com/4-ways-to-spot-great-web-design/ is a more descriptive URL than https://www.performancedrivenmarketing.com/web-design/

Organize Your Content

No one wants to read an article that is full of big blocks of wordy text. This is the age of quick information retrieval, and the human attention span is shrinking to mirror the speed of search engines. You can improve accessibility and generally make your site easier to digest by keeping paragraphs and pages succinct. 

Use clear section headings to help users find the information they are looking for readily. It is also usually a good idea to leave off industry-specific jargon or colloquialisms if you are writing general web content. Keep the language simple and easily digestible.

Enable Adjustable Font Sizing

While large font sizes tend to clutter a site, some users need them to access the information presented. The solution to this dichotomy is to add a text-resizing tool that allows users to choose for themselves just how large text is displayed on their screens. In addition to this method to improve accessibility, make sure your website works at different browser zoom levels.

Optimize Contrast on the Page

The contrast between elements on your page enables users to receive the information you put out. This is why it is important to incorporate foreground and background elements with high contrast. Avoid using thin fonts or coding features such as JavaScript or CSS that prevent visually impaired users from increasing contrast levels.

Be mindful of the color palettes you employ. Black text on a white background offers the best contrast for those who suffer from visual impairments involving low color contrast sensitivity, conditions such as cataract, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, and retinitis pigmentosa. Avoid using combinations of red and green, which are indistinguishable for colorblind users.

Steer clear of bright colors that are too intense for those with high photosensitivity. It is also unwise to make the most important elements in your site too heavily color reliant. These principles apply to images as well as to text.

Incorporate Alt Text with Your Images

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but only if they can be clearly viewed. Digital elements like images prove problematic to users who have vision-based disabilities. Screen readers and online Braille readers help such users access text by using synthesizers or Braille displays. Unfortunately, these resources can do very little to elucidate online images. 

The Alt Text option for your website’s images is an excellent tool to improve image accessibility. Synthesized readers can pick up the descriptions included there as ordinary text. This ability makes it important for content creators to make their alt text as descriptive as possible to give visually impaired users the full experience. The “Longdesc Tag” function is even better for lengthy descriptions. Use tables appropriately.

Improve Accessibility of Video and Audio

If images are a challenge for visually-impaired users, video and audio content prove to be such for the hard of hearing. You can improve accessibility of video and audio in two ways: transcripts and closed captioning. 

A transcript captures all the audio of a media file into text description while closed captions appear on a video as it plays. Closed captioning can include things other than true speech, such as descriptions of laughter or sighs and scoffs. Be mindful of the contrast between text and the video behind, and remember that auto-generated closed captions are not always accurate. Add your own to properly convey your message.

To make your site accessible to those with visual impairments, consider adding audio descriptions as companions to videos. These shouldn’t be overly long, but they can be helpful in conveying gestures, visual aids, and changes in setting to those who cannot see them.

Utilize Keyboard Navigation

Navigating with a mouse is not a viable option for those who cannot see. These users rely on keyboard shortcuts to navigate websites. In order to improve accessibility, all interactive elements of your site (drop-down menus, forms, dialog boxes, widgets, URLs, etc.) should be accessible via the keyboard.

Anchor text or buttons like “Click Here” or “Read More are unhelpfully undescriptive and should be avoided. However, directional cues are helpful additions for those with cognitive impairments, new internet users, and those who are not very tech savvy. To further improve clickless navigation, enable text-to-speech navigation.

Social media is among the most popular and effective ways for people to stay connected. With its ever-growing popularity and ever-changing strategies, running an effective social media account can be difficult. One way to simplify social media is to know whether your primary goal with it is engagement or SEO.  

Why Does Your Business Need Social Media?

A strong social media profile can boost the rest of your digital marketing efforts. While social media isn’t a ranking factor, the benefits of social media can still reflect upon your SEO efforts. Social media accounts affect the reputation of your business. Not having them or not managing them well can cause your business’s reputation to fall, while managing them well can increase visibility and potentially business.

Regardless of whether you wish to use social media more for engagement or for SEO purposes, people look to your social media accounts for an idea of your business. 

If you do not have social media or you do not maintain the accounts you do have, this can give the impression that your business is not “with the times”. If you have social media accounts that you abandoned, this can cause people to speculate that something happened. 

However, if you have well-maintained social media accounts, this gives you the opportunity to establish your brand, manage your online reputation, and give your company more traffic.

What Is Using Social Media For Engagement?

When you use social media for engagement, your goal is to engage with people. Some people and businesses thrive in the social media realm here.

You likely have a few influencers or brands in mind – social media accounts focused on creating an experience for viewers, engaging with people who interact with their content, and building relationships- perhaps that one clothing brand that really knows its niche and goes all in or how popular fast-food chains have snappy online personalities and get into it with each other, to the delight of all.

Businesses focused on using social media for engagement tend to craft a specific voice and personality. Their content gives viewers the chance to contribute and be recognized, such as by asking questions in captions. It builds awareness and trust and engages with the customer in a way that leads them to use the brand’s services. 

What Is Using Social Media For SEO?

While some people and businesses fit right into the niche of using social media for engagement, it’s not for everyone. Other businesses prefer to use their social media more for SEO purposes. What this means is that they use their social media in order to bolster content from their website. Rather than focusing on customer engagement, they focus on content promotion. 

For example, if you wrote a blog, you could then link to your blog across your social media, adjusting to each platform accordingly. This spreads the distribution of the blog, gathering more interest. If people share and link to it, this can increase awareness and traffic and improve your SEO.

Many businesses prefer using social media for SEO as opposed to engagement. This is especially true for smaller businesses or for businesses that would rather have customers call them and schedule appointments rather than try to maintain an online personality.

Social media for SEO can help in a variety of ways, such as:

• Boosting your content
• Increased opportunities for backlinks
• Ranking for search terms
• Increased site traffic
• Building trust
• And more!

Social Media And Your Reputation As A Business

Depending on the type of business that you run, how you operate, and how you would like to be perceived, you may prefer using your social media for engagement or you may prefer to use your social media for SEO. Whatever you choose, it’s important to remember that social media plays a major role in your reputation as a business.

Professional Reputation Management

Performance Driven Marketing offers social media management along with our online reputation management services. We can help you manage your social media for SEO and ensure that your business is presented in a positive, trustworthy light online. We can also help you with other aspects of reputation management, such as responding to reviews.

In addition to reputation management, we provide a wide range of digital marketing services, from SEO to content writing to graphic design and more. Contact us today to schedule your free consultation and let us help you get the results you need.

Ranking well in search engine results helps boost business. As such, it’s only natural to want to do whatever you can to improve your ranking. One hotly debated topic involving Google ranking involves domain authority. Some SEO specialists say that your domain authority is an important ranking factor for your site, while others say it does not matter and that you should spend your time and energy focusing on other aspects of SEO. 

Whenever it comes to questions involving search engine ranking factors, it’s always best to turn to the search engines themselves and see what Google has to say about the matter. Here is what you need to know about domain authority, Google ranking, and what to keep in mind when choosing a domain for your site.

What Is Domain Authority?

There are two things people could be talking about when they discuss domain authority. One is the simple concept of the matter while the other is a metric by Moz.

The Concept

Domain authority as a concept is how relevant your site is for a targeted area in regard to search words. People think that in order to improve the authority and ranking of their site, they need to put keywords into their domain. For instance, if you sell fantasy books in California, you may think that a domain name like buyfantasybooksCA would be best to get your site to rank.

The Metric

Domain Authority as the ranking score by Moz predicts how likely a site will be to rank in search engine result pages (SERPs). This ranks sites on a score of 1 to 100, with higher scores indicating a better likelihood of ranking. You can put your site through Domain Authority and it will calculate factors such as the total number of links and linking root domains into your score.

Is Domain Authority A Ranking Factor?

In short? No. 

Neither the concept nor the score you get from Domain Authority affect the overall authority of your site. Moz itself states on its site that: “Domain Authority is not a Google ranking factor and has no effect on the SERPs.” 

When asked about domain authority, John Mueller from Google has acknowledged that domain authority exists as a tool by Moz. However, he also stated that Google does not use domain authority when it comes to indexing, crawling, or ranking. 

Over the years, when asked about domain authority as a ranking factor, he has repeatedly denied it. He noted that Google does not call anything that they do internally “domain authority”. 

Mueller states that: “Just because a website has a keyword in its domain name doesn’t mean that it’s more relevant than others for that keyword”. He also mentions that putting keywords in your domain could put your business at a disadvantage in the future, if you evolve and expand and your domain no longer makes sense for your business. You would then have to move domains, which can be difficult.

How Do You Get Your Site To Rank?

In order to get your site to rank well in SERPs, you’ll want to invest in proven SEO practices. These include high-quality, relevant content that isn’t stuffed with keywords, optimized pages and images, and more. You always want to adhere to Google guidelines and stay away from anything that is spammy. 

You can hire an SEO marketing firm to create a strategy for you. Bear in mind that it takes time to see the results from SEO, so be prepared to wait as long as 6 months for the SEO work to do its magic. 

How Do You Choose A Domain Name?

It used to be that exact-match domains were valuable for SEO. These are domain names that are exact to a search result, such as Hotels.com. Historically, they ranked well, and in the case of Hotels.com, continue to.

Unfortunately, many exact-match domains have been purchased by domain squatters, webmasters, and others looking to make money from those who want them. Other exact-match domains had very low-quality, spammy content. 

Google does not mind exact-match domains, as long as they are not spammy. However, given that so many have been taken, this segways into the topic of domain authority and putting keywords into your domain in order to rank better.

However, you don’t need to do this. Google laid out its guidelines for coming up with a good domain name like this:

• Less is more. Pick a domain no longer than 2-3 words.
• Keep it simple and spelled correctly.
• It should be close to your brand name and website name.
• Strive for good, not perfect. 
• If relevant, you can include keywords.

You shouldn’t stress too much about your domain name. If you want your site to rank, there are other ways to do this.

Performance Driven Marketing is an SEO marketing company. We use proven SEO practices to help our clients rank in SERPs. Contact us today to schedule a free consultation and let us help you boost your site traffic!

Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, includes a broad series of strategies employed to improve a website’s ranking among search engine results. A good SEO score can raise a site’s visibility and consequently its revenue, but how can business owners find that golden ticket? How do those new to the game begin learning SEO, and how can seasoned veterans continue to improve their strategies for good results?

How Do I Start Learning SEO?

The path toward learning SEO starts with a desire to do so. The resources are all there; you just have to really want to improve your understanding to make the most of them. For example, there is an abundance of SEO courses available online for those who enjoy having a structured educational process. Google recommends several courses for those wanting to learn SEO though it doesn’t have its own SEO course yet.

If you really want to learn SEO, the onus of doing so will fall on you.

Can I Teach Myself SEO?

Teaching yourself SEO is really the best way to do it. That does not mean that there aren’t excellent resources available. Sites like Moz offer free guides for the basics of SEO, and when you are thoroughly versed in these fundamentals, you can run circles around many of your competitors. You can also subscribe to SEO magazines to get updates on up-and-coming strategies. Our very own PDM blog is always full of helpful new insights.

For those who are really committed to learning SEO and all of its ins and outs, there are conferences held every year for the purpose. Sometimes the minutes of these or footage of actual sessions are available online. These are not required to get a thorough grasp of SEO processes. The key is to invest a sufficient amount of time and energy into your research. If you do that, you have every opportunity to become an SEO expert.

As a side note, understanding the business models for search engines will also help you have a better understanding of what they are looking for. Read up on Google’s history and the history of other search engines. How do they make money and what goals do they have beyond making money? Tailor your strategies to what you find.

How Long Does SEO Take to Learn?

The industry estimate for becoming proficient in SEO is one to three months for the foundations and a year to really master the minute techniques. This number depends on a lot of different factors, including how much time you devote to learning SEO, the resources you use, and how quickly you start applying what you learn. 

Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that SEO is always changing, so there will never be a point when you have learned everything about it. To really understand successful SEO and stay on top of the most accurate strategies, you must make regular SEO training a goal.

What Is the Most Important Thing to Know about SEO?

Questions like this usually have subjective answers, but across the board, SEO experts are pretty much in harmony about this one: the most important thing to master as you are learning SEO is quality keyword research. This strategy is based on finding out what your customers are searching for.

Keyword research is important because it is much more difficult for people to find your websites and content if they are not searching for the keywords you target. There are many keyword research tools available, including Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer, Google AdWords, and Google search trends. The goal of your keyword research should be to strike the balance between finding the terms people are searching for and creating content that hasn’t been written about ad nauseum.

How Can I Put What I’ve Learned Into Practice?

The two best ways to solidify what you learn are to apply them and to teach them. Even as you are still learning SEO, build your own SEO strategy based on the things you have learned. Utilize link building and good keywords and on- and off-page SEO, along with the other methods you discover in your research. 

Remember that success takes time. The time it takes a website to rank in Google is dependent on a lot of factors. A site must build up authority, or “street cred” if you will. A rough average for this timeline falls between six months to a year. Don’t be impatient. Play the long game.

As you continue to build up your SEO knowledge base, teach others what you have learned. This will cement them in your mind. If you plan on having others manage your site’s SEO, having a good grasp on the fundamentals will help you evaluate potential candidates and encourage employees to succeed.

If you are in the marketing sphere in any capacity, you will have heard of using keywords to rank your content for Google and other search engines. Utilizing specific keywords will help you reach your target audience, help get your products seen, and make your website see more traffic. Long tail keywords are more like phrases but can help boost your SEO and take your business above the competition. 

Performance Driven Marketing stays on top of SEO trends and the changes that Google makes daily. Our team is here to help your business get seen by the right people and increase your profits. 

What Are Long Tail Keywords?

In order to properly utilize long tail keywords we will need to discuss what they are and the basics of how they work. Long tail keywords are phrases that have better conversion value because they see less search traffic than other generic keywords. For example, “sofa” is going to give you millions of results, but “fold-out couch” or “black leather sectional” are going to give you more specific results and are more likely to lead to a sale. 

These phrases are often three to five words long. There are keywords longer than that, but not all of your long tail keywords need to be that specific. Because they have a lower search volume, your site or product page is more likely to come to the top of search results when it has been properly optimized for SEO. 

Long tail keywords get their name because of this curve of the graph showing search results per keyword. Since long tail keywords have a lower number of search results but are better for the long term, it creates more of a tail. 

Google has reported that 15% of searches are new, which means that more and more people are searching specifically for a product or service. The use of long tail keywords is often because of voice search, which has become more helpful for SEO in recent years. You can learn more about voice search and SEO in our blog here. 

Less Searched, Thus Easier To Rank

When searching on a search engine for a product, service, or answer, you have probably seen the number of results Google yielded in a specific amount of time. All of those results can be hard to comb through when you need something quickly. This is why most searchers click within the top 2 or 3 search results and why your content needs to be search engine optimized to get clicks. However, using long tail keywords will help you rank much easier because there is less information on the internet for that specific term.

When your ranking is better on product pages, blogs, or other web pages, your entire website does better. Using these phrases to boost your SEO ranking may get you more genuine clicks and result in returning customers in the future.

Reach Your Target Audience

Because long tail keywords are much more specific, it is true that you probably won’t see an influx of sales from that keyword. However, using this method will help you reach those who are wanting a specific quality product or service, and will thus result in a more committed customer. 

The best way to approach using these keywords strategically is to think about what audience you want to reach. Is optimizing for voice search going to be helpful for your business? Are you seeing growth from Google Ads and want to keep that momentum going? You are more than likely to benefit greatly from long tail keywords, just maybe not overnight.

Bigger Profit From Google Ads 

Higher ad words have a higher cost per click. Advertising bucks can work better for you when you utilize long tail keywords because clicks that you are getting on your Google ads are more likely to turn a profit. Because long tail keywords are targeted, they have a higher conversion rate and lower costs per click (CPC). 

While long tail keywords will save you money on CPC, you will need to rank for multiple of them to produce the same about of traffic as one general keyword. 

How To Find Long Tail Keywords

If you are ready to test out long tail keywords, it can be difficult to know where to start. Here are some examples and websites to use for quality ideas. 

The easiest option to learn more about long tail keywords is Google’s auto-complete options. While you are typing a question or phrase, Google auto-populates other search terms and questions asked by other users. 

Google also lists their PAA or “people also ask” farther down in the search terms. These can be helpful to see how searches changed their original search. People also ask can help you write more quality content that can add to your website.

The popular site Answer The Public lets you type in one to two words and produces common questions asked by the public. Not only will this help you produce longer keywords, but you can also find new blog topics or ways to better serve your customers. 

WordStream has a free keyword research tool to help writers and business owners determine what keywords can work for them.

Doing research about what keywords will be most beneficial for your business and your customers is worth the time. Look at Google Analytics and watch what your customers are looking for to better optimize your content. 

Let Performance Driven Marketing Upgrade Your SEO

Our marketing team has dedicated writers, SEO specialists, and Google Ad specialists. Our team at PDM wants to help you take your business to the next level. SEO is the biggest way to improve your profits and see more quality clients. Learn more about all of our services on our site, or reach out for a free consultation.

Performance Driven Marketing wants to highlight the work of our amazing team members. We have recently added two new members to our team and would love to introduce them to you. Below are their responses to some get-to-know-you questions about hobbies, how they stay productive at work, and what makes them smile. We are happy to have you as part of the team Christi and Max! 

1) What inspired you to pursue a career as a (graphic designer/web developer)?

Max: “I worked in a call center and hated every second of it so I decided I’d do something about that and get educated and find a better job. I have always loved learning about technology and I enjoy art so I figured web development would be a great fit for me.”

 

Christi: “I have always been drawn to anything artsy including typography and drawing on napkins. In fact, in school, I got in trouble on my bubble test for drawing a butterfly.

I love being creative!

 

2) What is your favorite part of this job?

Max: “I love learning. It’s just so satisfying learning how to do something new and then being able to use that knowledge on more projects and expand my existing skills.

For example, I do a lot of CSS styling work so far at this job and that is something that I loved doing before this and really wanted to improve so thanks to this job I’m getting tons of experience doing that every day.”

 

Christi: “ My snacks…just kidding! Being able to share my creative brain with clients and the people that I work with.”

 

3) What are your hobbies? What is your favorite thing to do outside of work?

Max: “I’ve been into video editing/photoshop most of my life (just random stuff, mostly fun effects I wanted to try) and I recently started a podcast (discussing movies/media) with my friend. I also enjoy art. I used to do tons of charcoal drawings but I’m trying to talk myself back into doing more of that. I’m also finally getting back into reading books (just started the Mistborn series) and I enjoy some Xbox as well.”

 

Christi: “Can you have too many hobbies? I enjoy reading, anything crafty, being a giant kid at heart, dancing, anything outdoors, and having fun. You could say I am a jack of all crafts. I also love to surf in the ocean and have traveled all over the world 

 

I work on VW buses for fun and I enjoy trying anything new and exciting or challenging.”

 

4) Have you read any books or seen any movies/shows lately that you’d recommend?

Max: “YES. I’m a Star Wars fan but having said that, you don’t need to like Star Wars at all to appreciate the Andor series. I think it’s amazing. Also, I really enjoyed Better Call Saul and some of my favorite movies this year are: Everything Everywhere All At Once, Prey, and Glass Onion.”

 

Christi: “This one is tricky, books are hard. I read a bit of everything and am learning constantly. As for TV, I am not a huge fan but can watch The Office on repeat.” 

 

5) What are your favorite productivity hacks? How do you stay focused?

Max: “I like the Pomodoro technique: every 30 minutes take a 5-minute break at the end but no breaks in the 25 minutes leading up to that.”

 

Christi: “I have to multi-task to change things up. I also really like a 30/30 timer, it helps with my fluidity and challenges me.” 

 

6) How do you get energized for work?

Max: “I enjoy music or podcasts on the way to work! The Stuff You Should Know podcast is pretty great.”

 

Christi: “The goofy movie soundtrack! Sometimes Hamilton ha ha.”

 

7) While you work, do you like music or shows in the background, or do you need quiet? If you listen to something while you work, what’s your favorite thing to listen to?

Max: “I prefer music, usually background type stuff like Lo-Fi or ambient noise but sometimes normal songs too.”

 

Christi: “I go back and forth between podcast, audible, and music of all types. I am pretty eclectic.” 

 

8) What’s something that made you smile recently?

Max: “This is gonna sound cheesy but getting this job was huge for me so I’m always happy to be here.”

 

Christi: “When I was a total Karen in the auto shop (sorry if you’re reading this and your name is Karen). I know a little something about cars…”

 

9) What is your best piece of advice?

Max: “CONTROVERSIAL OPINION (and IDK if it even counts as advice??)

Original Oreos> double stuff by far. Also, Cheeto puffs > regular Cheetos.”

 

Christi: “ Be real in the unreal world. Don’t be afraid to live a full exciting life full of adventures.”

 

10) Got any favorite quotes?

Max: “‘Give a man a program, frustrate him for a day. Teach a man to program, frustrate him for a lifetime.” -some dude on Twitter named Francesco.” 

 

Christi: “‘Sometimes you just need to wear stretchy pants!’ and ‘Kevin’s a girl?’

 

We are grateful to have Max Lythgoe as our new web developer and Christi Spencer as our new graphic designer! Thank you for sharing your thoughts and we hope our clients and others enjoyed getting to know the newest members of our team.

 

Trust Our Team At PDM

As our team continues to grow, the way we serve our clients continues to become better and better. We offer a variety of marketing services beyond web development and graphic design.

If you are looking to take your business to the next level and improve your SEO ranking, fill out our contact form to get started!

It used to be that AIs were only found in dystopian sci-fi stories. Over the past few years, however, they’ve risen in popularity. People wonder at the ability of art AIs to generate pictures with a few words as prompts or content AIs to generate entire blog posts within seconds. In the world of marketing where people are always trying to find ways to make processes more efficient, these content-generating AIs seem like a good tool to do that.

However, you still need humans to write your content. Here’s what you need to know about these content-generating AIs and why you shouldn’t use them to replace real human writers.

AI-Generated Content Goes Against Google Guidelines

When it comes to things that you should and should not do in online marketing, it’s always best to look first to Google before anything else. If Google says that something is alright, you’re good to go. However, if Google guidelines state that something is not permissible, doing said something will result in your site getting penalized. 

Such is the case with AI-generated content. Automatically generated content, which is what AI-generated content consists of, is against Webmaster Guidelines. Google says that content automatically generated with AI is considered spam. This can result in a penalty.   

While Google systems are still learning how to detect AI-generated content without the help of humans, if it is detected, it is flagged as spam. It’s best to avoid any penalties by steering clear of using content-generating AIs in place of a human to write your content. 

Reasons To Resist The Temptation Of Content-Generating AIs

Why hire a content writer when you can just give a content-generating AI a few prompts and have it spit out a page that passes plagiarism checkers? While art AIs steal from artists in order to generate images, so much content out there is basically the same, spun in different ways. What’s the harm?

Aside from the most important fact that content-generating AIs go against Google guidelines, there are a few other reasons why you should stick with humans to write your content for you.

#1. It Reguritates What’s Already Out There

Content-generating AIs can only generate simple pieces of content about things that are widely agreed upon. They cannot add new insights, nor keep up with current events. They can display outdated biases. If you want something more specific, they can start repeating themselves over and over and go completely off-topic. 

A human writer, on the other hand, can provide new insights into topics. They can go into detail about things that most people don’t know. If you want your content to be more specific and detailed than what can easily be found on Google, you can share your industry insight and expertise with your content writer.

Content writers can also do in-depth research into publications and consult with industry professionals in order to write on more nuanced topics.

#2. There’s No Uniqueness

Sure, content-generating AIs can automate a blog that will pass a plagiarism check, but that doesn’t mean it’s unique. You may argue that humans can do the same thing, by spinning articles that have already been written and just changing a few things here and there so that they can pass a plagiarism check. 

Unfortunately, people who just take what other people have done, make tiny adjustments, and pass it off as their own are always going to be out there. Fortunately, though, this is something that Google is aware of. The Helpful Content Update addresses this issue. 

The Helpful Content Update encourages unique content that is actually helpful. When you have a human write your content for you, they can create just that. They can write content that has original insights, narrative structure, evidence to back up points, and new information. This is especially good for when you want content written about something that isn’t very Google-able, such as for niche topics and industries. 

Can AI Be Helpful In Content Writing?

AI is constantly changing and improving, especially as more people use and train it. It could be helpful in some aspects of content writing, such as in helping writers with brainstorming topics to write about. However, it’s important to adhere to Google guidelines.   

Performance Driven Marketing provides professional content writing services, SEO services, and more. We offer free website consultations to help you pinpoint how you can improve your site so that it works better for you and your business. Contact us today to learn more about our services or to schedule your free consultation. 

Whether you are looking for ways to enhance your web design or are looking for an excellent web designer, there are certain things that you need to be on the lookout for. A great web design will fulfill certain requirements including Google’s SEO conditions. That is why we at Performance Driven Marketing have created a list of ways to spot a great web design. If you are in need of premium web designing services, feel free to reach out to us today. Continue reading to learn more about what great web design looks like.

Aspects Of A Great Web Design

#1: Easy To Navigate

The worst thing that a web design can be is hard to navigate. If web viewers are unable to find your content, your contact information, your products, or whatever it is that you want your audience to see, then your website is virtually useless. Not to mention, if web visitors have to jump through several hoops to do anything important on your website, they are likely to bail and find a new website to solve their problems immediately.

#2: Pleasing To Look At

Another piece of a great web design is a visually appealing appearance. It is important that a page has several compelling things to look at, but that it not be overwhelming to consume. The colors used on your web pages should emulate your company but should also be aimed at attracting web visitors’ attention. 

Use word fonts that are easy to read and bold words and titles that are important for people to read. Also, make sure that you have images and videos on your page that give web visitors something to look at and interact with. The overwhelming finding about web design is that people prefer websites that are easy on the eyes, or in other words straightforward and basic. So just keep it simple!

#3: Engaging And Consistent Content

An important part of a great web design is content. The content on your website is what your an audience will come to your website for and what they will stay for. If your content is not engaging or does not help answer a web user’s question, then people are unlikely to stay on your website and make conversions. And as the number of visitors that you have coming and staying on your website increases, the higher your website will be ranked on search engines and the better your company will do.

#4: Quick Loading Time

The amount of time that it takes for a website or a webpage to load is inversely proportional to the number of visitors that will visit your website and stay on your website.

The longer it takes for a page to load, the worse your conversion rate will be. A great web design is simple and clean enough to load quickly and immediately grab a consumer’s attention.

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Optimizing websites is a process that continues to become ever-more refined. While it can be easy to get lost down rabbit holes explaining the current SEO methods, a good optimization strategy is built on just a few SEO basics. As you continue to broaden your horizons to improve your websites, here are a few key points to never lose sight of.

What Is SEO?

You can’t get more basic than a subject’s raw definition. SEO, short for search engine optimization, is the process by which an owner optimizes his or her website to improve its rankings in search results, thus increasing the site’s amount of organic (non-paid) traffic.

Search engines like Google have search bots that “crawl” the internet to find, catalog, and rank websites. This allows search engines to deliver a list of relevant websites catered to a user’s search query. Good SEO strategies help content rise to the top of that list. The goal of SEO is to generate visibility and ultimately revenue for a business. 

As you learn the SEO basics, you’ll need to know a few key terms:

• SEO: search engine optimization
• SERP: search engine results pages
  • The goal is to rank highly, with your content coming in close to the top. Users often only look at the first one or two search results, and rarely do they go to the second results page.
• CTR: click-through rate
  • This indicates the number of users who visit a website from an ad with a hyperlink. The metric itself is determined by the number of clicks to the site divided by the number of views. Higher click-through rates indicate greater ad success.
• UX: user experience

This is certainly not a comprehensive list of SEO basic acronyms or terminology, but it is a good jumping-off point.

4 SEO Basic Strategies

While the number of methods site owners can employ are abundant, here we focus on just four of the most important. Starting your SEO strategy based on these strategies can help your content thrive online.

Key-In

Keywords are the staple of good content. They follow the search terms people look for when conducting online searches and can help shape the content you put on your website. Keywords should be weaved throughout your content naturally and fluidly, not just crammed in to improve ratings. In fact, with each update Google makes to its searching systems, keywords thrown in haphazardly are more likely to be detrimental to a site’s ratings.

Specific keywords target traffic better than generic ones. To this end, there are two kinds of keywords, short-tail and long-tail. Short-tail keywords include only one or two words while long-tail keywords have three or more. Long-tail keywords refine the focus of a page and generate better interest, but keywords that are too niche may alienate some of your searchers. 

Make Content for Human Audiences

While there are many SEO basics to make your content more visible for search engines, at its heart, content should be written for people and not search bots. Target your content creation and changes to improve the user experience. These may include design and material changes that make the functionality, accessibility, and content more palatable and digestible for users.

For example, longer posts are, as a general rule, more helpful in helping users find the information they are looking for, while shorter paragraphs within those posts make them easier to read. Users are likely to leave hyper-short posts or those with hefty blocks of words quickly, injuring a site’s CTR.

On top of formatting, the content itself must be worth reading. SEO is not just a matter of stringing a bunch of keywords together. Only real quality content can produce positive ratings. Such material, which is additive to the internet’s information base, improves the relevance ratings of a post and its attractiveness as a result compared to other content.

Speaking of being additive, make sure you are bringing something new to the table, and make sure your words are your own. Plagiarism is the enemy of good integrity and good SEO. Google penalizes phrases and sentences that have been copied from other sources.

Link Building

If you want to reference what others have said, links are the way to do it. Links are one of the most effective SEO basics. Links to external sources and to other pages of yours give your content credibility, while internal links to your own content informs your readership about what you have to offer. When links to your content are used in other materials, those links can bring in online traffic that would not ordinarily find your content. For all these reasons, links remain one of the top three ranking factors in Google.

On-Site vs. Off-Site SEO

On-site SEO is the content you directly create, threading your keywords through meaningful content. Off-site SEO is determined by others’ impressions of your content: third-party mentions and social media marketing, etc. Though off-site SEO can be more difficult to control, you should have strategies for both on- and off-site SEO.