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Mobile-friendly Websites: What are the Most Important Elements?

Mobile-friendly Websites: What are the Most Important Elements?

nettsolutions

With more than 60 percent of Google searches originating from mobile devices, your website must be optimized to deliver a quality user experience on smartphones and tablets.

Otherwise, visitors might find browsing your site so frustrating they give up and try another. And one of your competitors could win their business instead.

But what makes a website mobile-friendly?

Let’s explore five of the most important elements.

Simple navigation

Navigating the best mobile-friendly websites is a breeze.

One of the most common setups is a hamburger icon (a stack of three short horizontal bars) in a corner of the page. Users can tap this to open a vertical menu.

And every page should feature plenty of space — clutter will only confuse and irritate users on smaller screens.

Unclear page titles and illegible text can also make browsing your site more trouble than it’s worth.

Straightforward CTAs to guide users

A call-to-action (CTA) tells users what you want them to do next. They should be simple to spot and easy to follow, e.g. “get your free quote”, “sign up now”.

Lead customers to your CTAs with concise content that explains why they need to take the specified action.

How can you draw attention to CTAs? Display text in eye-catching colors, make the buttons big, and use a font that visitors can read without needing to pinch-zoom.

Responsive design suited to all devices

Responsive design ensures your site will adapt to fit any screen, across all devices. Pages will reformat automatically to avoid poor layouts and cluttered content.

Your customers will enjoy a seamless experience no matter how many devices they switch between.

Click-to-call buttons for direct communication

Click-to-call buttons empower visitors with a fast, direct way to contact your business.

This saves them the time and potential irritation of scouring your website for a number/email address or completing a form.

Let’s say you run a local Italian restaurant. A hungry customer is in the mood for a pizza, so they use voice search to find businesses like yours. They try your site, and find a click-to-call button on your homepage.

This makes it incredibly easy for them to book a table within seconds of discovering your restaurant, without trying to find your contact page while they’re standing on the street.

Images optimized for mobile

Images that work fine on your desktop site may cause issues on mobile devices if they’re too big. They’ll increase load times and leave users waiting longer than they should to browse.

And that’s a real risk when more than half of mobile site visits will be abandoned if a page takes more than three seconds to load.

Resizing and compression will bring images down to a more manageable level for mobile devices. Prioritize speed and convenience over visual flair.

These five elements are essential in mobile-friendly websites, so frequently check your site’s performance to identify improvement opportunities.

Want to learn more about how a fantastic mobile site can help your business? Get in touch with our Orange County SEO specialists!

 

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6 Tips to Enhance Your SEO Performance with Images

6 Tips to Enhance Your SEO Performance with Images

nettsolutions

Do you optimize images to improve your SEO performance? Or do you never consider their impact on your ranking?

If you aren’t taking the time to optimize your images, you could be missing an opportunity to drive more traffic to your site and boost your SERP position.

With the ongoing rise of visual search, images are returned for around 20 percent of Google searches. That’s why we named it one of our top SEO trends for 2021.

But what can you actually do to improve your SEO performance with images?

Be clear when naming image files

Descriptive file names are a must. Vague or generic names (e.g. “image001”) won’t help Google understand exactly what an image shows.

Think carefully about how a file name can help a search engine recognize the contents of an image. Be specific, descriptive, and include keywords (such as “men’s-black-Nike-sneakers”).

Take advantage of alt text

On a similar note, alt text brings a wealth of opportunities to increase an image’s visibility. Alt text is required under the American Disabilities Act (ADA) to ensure users with visual impairments understand what images contain (via screen readers or text-to-speech solutions).

But alt text also helps search engines clarify the contents of an image and the page it’s on. As with image file names, focus on clarity and precision. Include relevant keywords but be subtle (i.e. no stuffing).

Pick your image format carefully

JPEG and PNG are two of the most common image formats online (along with GIF and TIFF). But each has its advantages and drawbacks.

JPEG images tend to be of a lower quality but load faster than PNG. And with PNG, quality is higher but file sizes are bigger. So, choose carefully.

Always compress images before you publish

Uploading uncompressed images can have a serious impact on user experience: images, and the pages they’re on, will take longer to load. And users are more likely to abandon your site if they’re waiting too long — bounce probability rises 32 percent when page load jumps from one second to three seconds.

Various tools and plugins can compress images for you. Aim to keep images below 100kb to reduce the risk of performance issues.

Incorporate images into sitemaps

Sitemaps are crucial for good SEO, as they help search engines discover a site’s pages.

Including images in your sitemap will increase the likelihood of a search engine indexing your images. And that could bring more traffic your way.

Either add images to your existing sitemap or create a new one just for your pictures.

Keep images mobile-friendly for smartphone users

Responsive images will scale to align with your site’s size on any device. This is so important when so many of us use smartphones to find products or services. For example, half of mobile users are more likely to use a business’s mobile site when shopping instead of downloading their app.

If you overlook responsiveness, you could chase users away with slow load times and poor overall performance.

Nett Solutions is an Orange County SEO agency with years of experience helping businesses just like yours rank higher through tailored campaigns. To find out how we’ll optimize your site and increase your visibility, get in touch today!

 

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SEO Trends 2021

SEO Trends 2021: What can You Expect to See?

mwon

New SEO trends emerge each year, but what can you expect to see in 2021?

Our Orange County SEO specialists have picked five of the SEO trends you need to know about as we enter a new year.

Greater focus on analytics to understand customer behavior

A deeper dive into analytics is just one of the biggest SEO trends 2021 is set to bring.

Sure, it’s been crucial to study user/customer data for some time now, but intensive analytical research is likely to become increasingly prevalent. Businesses will delve deeper into:

  • what users/customers are doing
  • how they’re behaving
  • how products/services can improve their lives

This will help teams create more relevant, engaging content, and deliver a more tailored service overall.

Voice search optimization will help brands rank for hands-free queries

Smartphones, virtual assistants, and smart speakers have transformed search across the past couple of years. Users can get the number for their nearest Mexican restaurant, find local shoe stores, and browse media without having to physically interact with their devices.

And this is expected to grow even more popular in 2021, with around one in four American adults owning a smart speaker. That means businesses of all sizes will need to optimize content for voice search more effectively.

It’s not just voice search optimization that will matter more in the new year, either …

More detailed image search optimization to increase visibility

Many consumers may not even realize image search exists, let alone use it regularly. But images are returned for around 20 percent of Google searches. It’s also believed that brands redesigning websites to support visual search (along with voice search) could boost their revenue by 30 percent.

That’s why brands should be optimizing their images to help increase their visibility in 2021.

Featured snippets will become a more competitive SEO technique

Featured snippets are a common sight, and they’re an effective way to achieve first-page results. But only if you have the right information for the right query.

Brands should start to optimize content to answer questions and provide clear directions or advice when relevant. This increases the chance of displaying a featured snippet and, potentially, securing the user’s click.

Increasingly comprehensive mobile SEO for a better user experience

Mobile sites are the first port of call for countless users, with mobile accounting for around 50 percent of global internet traffic in 2020’s third quarter. This is likely to keep increasing as smartphones become more advanced and capable of delivering a better user experience.

Brands will need to focus more on creating the most user-friendly mobile site they can, rather than simply making it functional on smartphones. That means understanding what visitors want out of your site and how your web design can make that as easy as possible on any device.

Refining your SEO strategy to align with new trends or even starting from scratch can be a challenge for any business or organization. But our Orange County SEO experts are here to help you boost your rankings, visibility, and engagement through tailored campaigns.

Get in touch now to learn more!

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How to Make Thought Leadership Content Work for Your Business

mwon

Why is thought leadership content so valuable?

Because it can:

But creating thought leadership content that makes an impact isn’t easy, or every company would be considered an authority in its sector.

So, how can you make thought leadership content work for you?

Our Orange County SEO specialists have the answers …

 

Support Points with Original Research and Data

Conducting your own research is one of the most effective ways to help your thought leadership content stand out. This might be as simple as creating a poll on social media or as complicated as surveying industry experts around the world.

Regardless of its scale, original research provides readers with insights they can’t find anywhere else and ensures your content is unique. You offer more value than a competitor regurgitating others’ data, and establish your site or business as a useful resource.

 

Create Gated Thought Leadership Content to Generate Leads

Most of your thought leadership content might appear on your business’s blog or other websites e.g. industry news publications. But you can create longer pieces as gated content to capture leads.

For example, a free 40-page ebook packed with unique, actionable insights can inspire visitors to submit their email address more than the promise of a monthly newsletter.

Newcomers can check your existing content before deciding whether to sign up or not, and you can incentivize them further with a small discount or free trial.

 

Look at Competing Thought Leaders (and Do Better)

One simple step in creating thought leadership content is to explore your competitors’ output. What blog posts, articles, whitepapers, and even books are they publishing? How do they promote it? Do they use special offers to attract interest?

But remember: your content must be unique. So, be inspired by competitors but focus on establishing a distinctive presence.

 

Make Content Relevant to Industry Changes, Product Releases, and Events

Good content is relevant. Not just to your audience, but to industry changes and events.

That’s why it’s important to create a content calendar and schedule pieces to make the biggest impact. For example, if your business is attending an expo in two months, start gathering material for a deep post as soon as you can.

This might document the creation of a product you plan to reveal or explore said product’s expected market impact.

Whatever the topic, the content can generate interest in the product and vice versa. And both can bring curious new visitors to your site.

 

Thought leadership is a fantastic addition to a content marketing strategy and helps drive traffic. But what else can you do to attract more visitors, build authority, and boost engagement?

Our Orange County SEO experts are here to help. Just get in touch for your FREE Relevancy & Quality Score Report now!

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Social Media Marketing in Orange County

How to Get Social Media Marketing Right for Your Business

mwon

Social media marketing is a must for every business. Big or small. New or established.

Why?

So, we know social media marketing has big potential to get your brand and products in front of a huge audience.

But how can you get it right?

 

Know Who Your Audience is and What they Care About

When you know your target audience, their interests, their values, and their buying habits, you can narrow your marketing’s focus.

For example, let’s say you want to target millennials. You’re in luck: more than 90 percent of them use social media, compared to just 48 percent of baby boomers.

That means you have a high chance of reaching your ideal customer base through effective social media marketing. You need to:

  • Gather information on your existing customers (age, location, spending habits, purchase preferences)
  • Look at your competitors’ social media marketing: what techniques do they use to reach your shared audience?
  • Survey customers to discover which social networks they use, which days and times they tend to browse, etc.
  • Create buyer personas for different demographics within your audience

The more you know about your ideal customers, the more effective your marketing should be.

 

Focus on Engagement, Not Just Selling

It’s tempting to promote your products or services on social media shamelessly. But this is likely to bore and frustrate your followers.

Work on engaging your audience through relevant, valuable content. Use images, videos, concise text, and more to keep your posts diverse.

Another key element of engagement is interacting with followers, responding to comments on posts, and more. Be transparent and accessible. Build relationships with the potential to translate into conversions down the line.

 

A/B Testing is Your Friend

A/B testing (or split testing) is a simple but effective way to determine the best ads and content for your social media marketing campaign.

Create two versions of ads or posts, incorporating different images, language, video lengths, GIFs, and more. Run them both at the same time, split between your audience equally, for a fixed period.

Analytics will reveal which version secures the highest engagement. You may or may not keep it as is, or build a new variation implementing the strongest features of the most successful one.

 

Stay Consistent

Establish a voice and stick to it.

That’s not to say you can’t evolve over time and embrace a slightly different tone. But it does mean it’s best to stay consistent across posts and social networks.

So, if you use punchy language and humorous GIFs on Twitter, don’t be painfully dry on Facebook.

This can disorient your audience, and suggest your team behind the scenes is unprofessional or disorganized. Consistency helps your brand develop a recognizable personality, build trust, and ensure followers know what to expect during interactions.

 

Social media marketing isn’t easy, but it’s worth putting time into developing a sound strategy that suits your business goals, audience, and budget.

Focus on building brand awareness, gaining trust, and establishing a consistent voice to maximize your campaign’s performance. Want help from a seasoned Orange County SEO team? We’ve got a free marketing analysis with your name on it!

 

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SEO Mistakes to Avoid when Writing Content

mwon

Getting your content right is vital to maintain a solid online presence.

Blogs, articles, press releases and more can all contribute to building your brand’s visibility. But if you’re cutting corners or failing to make the most of your content, you could be missing out.

Below, we take a look at the SEO mistakes to avoid when writing your content.

 

Going old-school with keyword stuffing

Don’t stuff your content with keywords. It’s an outdated technique businesses used years ago to propel themselves higher up the SERPs.

No company in your niche worth its salt is resorting to this anymore: you won’t fool customers and you certainly won’t fool Google. This can make trying to read content incredibly difficult, as you’re constantly seeing the same phrases or terms again and again.

Google can penalize your site if you stuff your content with keywords. Focus on using relevant terms and phrases in as organic a way as possible. Google and consumers want content that reads well, offers value and is engaging.

 

Writing no content whatsoever

One big SEO mistake you can make with your content is … well, not writing any at all!

Putting well-written content together isn’t always easy, especially when you’re busy running your business. It can take time, especially when you’re putting the About Us, FAQ, Company History, and other key pages of your site together.

Likewise, blogs are another vital addition but take consistent work.

While writing the content demands time and effort, it’s well worth doing. Customers who visit your site only to find no information about your brand, your products or services may become suspicious and go elsewhere.

Your content has to grab users, tell them how you solve their problem and what they need to do. Likewise, your blog gives you a constant flow of fresh content (which search engines love) and offers plenty to share on social media (driving more traffic to your site).

Letting your content updates become too sporadic or dry up altogether can have a negative impact on your SEO campaign. Make sure you’re publishing regular blogs, articles, social media posts and more.

 

Ignoring the power of video

The prospect of creating your own videos to boost your SEO can be difficult.

But it need not be.

Your videos don’t have to be slick, lavish pieces. It’s just enough to be informative, engaging and friendly. Create introductions for your products or services. Take viewers on a tour of your offices or labs.

Webinars and Q&As are terrific video concepts too. Experiment with your video content and share them across social media. Video can bring more traffic to your site and help to build a stronger bond with customers.

 

Avoid SEO mistakes by hiring the professionals! At Nett Solutions, our Orange County digital marketing team will help to build your business’s online visibility through high-quality content that hooks your customers.

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How-Can-Video-Boost-Your-SEO

How Can Video Boost Your SEO?

mwon

Video is everywhere. It will account for 82 percent of all online traffic by 2021, and all businesses can boost their online performance by embracing its power now.

Whether you’re selling smartphones or video games, textbooks or cookware, videos can play a key part in your digital marketing. They offer a valuable way to engage your customers and increase sales, as proven by the 90 percent of consumers who admit that product videos help them to make purchasing decisions.

So, how can your business integrate video and reap the rewards?

Choosing the Right Content

So, your brand is going to start recording videos … but what should you actually be getting on camera?

One solid choice is an introduction to your company and your team. This may be easier if you have a smaller workforce, as each member can briefly discuss their role and contribute to the overall brand persona. For a larger company with multiple branches and many different departments, videos should show glimpses from various locations to create an overall identity.

Explore your company culture and your goals. Make viewers feel welcomed and part of your team. Be as transparent as possible.

Other options include how-to videos on your products, case studies of satisfied customers, tours behind the scenes of your offices / production floors, interviews, and creative pieces (such as humorous commercials, Christmas singalongs etc.).

Keep your video content diverse and strive to establish a unique voice for your brand.

Be Relevant

No matter how good your videos are, you need to actually get them seen.

Include subtle keywords when writing video titles, descriptions, and tags,. These will help search engines identify your videos and make sure their relevance to users is unmissable.

You should also integrate transcripts for your videos, allowing viewers to get an idea of the video’s content by skimming the text. This is another simple but effective technique to add extra keywords to the page’s content too.

Share and Share Alike

You should upload your videos to YouTube as well as hosting them on your own site. This is one of the world’s biggest search engines in its own right, and receives billions of visitors each month. Creating your own business channel, with strong keywords and descriptions, can expose you to more prospective customers.

Add your URL to the video’s description and in the video. Invite people to share via social media, and share them on your own accounts. 100 million hours of video are watched on Facebook each day, and having your business factor in that staggering amount is a challenge, but it is possible with enough hard work.

The more consumers your videos reach across Facebook, Twitter, and other social platforms, the more traffic you stand to drive back to your site.

Want to learn more about how videos can boost your SEO? Trust our Orange County digital marketing agency to help you! Give us a call on (949) 330 7060 or drop us an email.

 

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boost-your-ranking-with-video

5 Pro Tips to Boost Your Rankings with Video

mwon

Video has power.

Just think of all those videos of dancing cats or uncanny impersonations in your social media feeds, many with millions of views and thousands of comments. Facebook alone generates an average of 8 billion video views each day as users across the globe share favorites with just a tap or two of their smartphone.

Your business can use video to build your online presence and climb the search engine results pages, but how?

Make Your Videos Interactive

Integrate annotations into videos, either elaborating on topics discussed or offering links to related videos or pages. Annotated videos are more likely to grab attention, and give viewers an element of control over your content if they choose to follow links.

Furthermore, a call to action at the end of the video takes viewers to your site directly. If a video promotes specific products, add individual links to those too.

Create Transcripts

A full video transcript is great complement to your videos: you can basically tell potential viewers what to expect, allowing them to get a feel for the content with a skim-read.

The key benefit, though, is that you’ll be gaining some sneaky keywords and telling search engines the video’s exact content. This is particularly useful with interviews, or videos covering statistics, as viewers will be able to find details without having to search back and forth through the video.

Cannibalize Your Video Content

This is nowhere near as gruesome as the headline suggests – promise!

Repurposing your video is a great way to get more out of your hard work. One idea is to break them down into bite-sized chunks and categorize them based on the material covered.

You can create slideshows and develop infographics based off the video’s content, too. All of these are ideal for sharing across social media, driving more traffic to your site from multiple sources.

Host Videos Yourself

Producing videos to improve your rankings can be hard work, so you want to get the most bang for your buck (literal and metaphorical). Uploading videos to YouTube is obvious and smart, given that it caters to 95 percent of the world’s Internet users, but hosting videos on your own domain prevents traffic going to YouTube itself instead of your site.

Ideally, you should create a new page for each video, adding more content to your site and making indexing easier.

Don’t Forget Your Metas

As mentioned above, you should slip keywords into transcripts of your videos, but metadata lets you use extra keywords too.

Make sure your meta titles and descriptions carry keywords, and describe videos’ content explicitly (to improve indexing). Tell search engine crawlers and viewers alike exactly what they’re about to see, hear, and read.

At Nett Solutions, we’re an experienced Orange County digital marketing agency dedicated to helping your business’s online presence grow. Want to know more about how video can benefit your enterprise? Just give us a call!

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Why We Do Link Building The Hard Way

Brandon Celotto

link buildingLink building is an essential aspect of search marketing, but it can be a daunting area for businesses unfamiliar with the process.

Once upon a time, companies looking for short-term gains would pay for links as and when they could. However, Google’s regulations and penalties are tougher today, and so the risks of lazily buying links outweigh the potential benefits.

While simply paying a website to host a link to yours seems like a time-saver, any company looking to make a lasting, fair impact in the online marketplace must practice manual link-building instead of paying for placements. Here are the reasons why.

Donning Your White Hat

You may have heard of white-hat and black-hat strategies. The former are those SEO tactics that aim to bring real value to users, engaging your audience and boosting traffic through fair means. The latter, on the other hand, are focused more on gaining higher rankings through underhand methods.

Using black-hat tactics can see you penalized, which may affect your reputation. You will also need to invest time and effort to correct your mistakes, costing you resources that could be better spent elsewhere.

Building Ethical Links

You can create ethical links through the following techniques:

  • Publish regular posts with internal links (as often as you can, with high-value content)
  • Reciprocal linking (provided these are relevant and not excessive)
  • Writing guest posts for blogs and sites relevant to your industry (these must be high-value and not feature excessive links)
  • Create testimonials for manufacturers of products or service-providers you use

These are just a few ideas, but they can all play a big part in driving traffic to your website. If you can create valuable content, such as in your own blog or guest posts, you’ll build your brand’s visibility and credibility.

On the other hand, creating badly-written content which serves as thinly-veiled link generators for your site can have a negative impact on your brand in the long-term.

Take the time to build informative, entertaining content with natural links, and you will gradually create a stronger online presence.

One Link can be Stronger than the Other

Getting a link from a website with no authority and no relevance to your business or niche is not a terrific way to build visibility. All links are not alike.

The trick is to nurture relationships with websites that are relevant to your brand and are viewed as a trusted domain. Getting links from high-authority sites is an endorsement of your own site, whereas those from questionable domains can raise eyebrows.

Seek out websites covering topics related to your business or industry, prioritizing the biggest influencers, and reach out. If you can start placing guest posts at popular domains, you can drive real traffic your way over time.

Branching Out

Other options for manual link-building include:

  • infographics that people will want to share
  • lists
  • case studies
  • white papers
  • reports on your own studies

At Nett Solutions, our expert Orange County digital marketing team can help you build links that really matter. Give us a call to learn more!

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What Is Search Engine Optimization / SEO?

Brandon Celotto

Here’s a great, simple explanation of SEO 101 from the folks over at SearchEngineLand.

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