How Can You Write Amazing Content for Your Website?

03/17/201905/07/2019 nettsolutions

Creating great content for your website is fundamental in any successful SEO campaign.

Of course, when we say ‘content’, that incorporates images, videos, slides, audio and text. But in this post, we’re going to focus on writing quality copy with the power to help boost your website’s performance.

Producing engaging, valuable copy isn’t easy, but there are a few things you can do to get on the right track.

Read Up on Your Competitors

What are other businesses in your sector doing with their content?

Are they publishing blog posts on a daily basis? Do they distribute press releases at regular intervals, keeping the world up to date on their latest news? How about their landing pages?

Take time to explore their websites and identify what they’re doing well. But don’t forget to take note of any mistakes or oversights you spot. This is a great way to understand what you need to do to get an edge.

Focus on Value

Don’t just create content as a flimsy excuse to pack keywords onto your pages. Not only will readers recognize your shameless attempt to manipulate search engines, but said engines themselves will know exactly what you’re doing too.

Write content people actually want to read and share with others. Take advantage of your own or your employees’ knowledge to share insights into topics relevant to your business.

Long-form content has its place too, with first-page results on Google having an average content length of over 1,800 words.

Know Who You’re Writing For

Have a clear idea of your target reader in mind. Consider creating personas representing different segments of your audience, and determine what type of content they prefer to read.

Keep this in mind when writing content. Know who you’re targeting with each piece and gather feedback to determine how successful it is. This can give you valuable ideas for future content, making it more engaging and effective.

Leave it to Professionals

It should go without saying that the quality of your content has to be of a high standard.

Trying to write your own content can be risky, especially if you lack the skills to do it well. Trusting professionals to handle your content instead is the smartest option.

They’ll know how to write engaging copy, insert keywords organically and structure pieces to aid readability.

At Nett Solutions, our Orange County digital marketing team is committed to helping you achieve stronger rankings through an effective SEO campaign. We’ll make sure your content is high quality and suited to your target audience.

Want to know more about how we can help? Just get in touch!

SEO Trends for 2019 You Have to Know

01/11/201901/11/2019 mwon

Each new year brings fresh SEO trends every business should embrace to stay on top of their marketing game.

2019 is on the doorstep, and we’re excited to see what it has in store for the wonderful world of SEO — so we’ve decided to explore the biggest trends you have to know about!

Faster Load Times

No one likes staring at a half-loaded page, waiting for content to appear. It’s infuriating, especially when you need answers in a hurry.

Keeping load times as short as possible is important — and this will only become even truer in 2019, as more of us depend on mobile searches. There’s still some way to go, though: the average mobile page-load time is 15.3 seconds.

The more time your pages take to load, the more likely visitors are to click away. Speed is now a ranking signal for mobile searches, so businesses have to focus on this to keep Google on side.

Longer, Deeper Content

Long-form content will be in vogue during 2019. You’ll need to give visitors content offering value, with useful or eye-opening information to take away from it.

Long-form content helps to keep readers on your site for more time too, opening up additional opportunities to hook them. Use content to build relationships with potential and existing customers, and try to make your headlines as irresistible as possible.

Going Social

Social media will still be a vital channel between customers and brands in 2019. Chatting on Facebook and Twitter is much faster and more convenient than calling a helpline.

People can access direct support while they communicate with friends on their social networks, without having to use a different channel. It’s also easy for your business to target prospects sharing interests and activities with your existing customers through advertising.

It’s essential to stay active on social media too: show your followers you care enough to respond quickly and share content they’re likely to enjoy.

Voice Search Matters

Voice search has made finding the information you want faster and easier than ever. You don’t need to type anymore — you just speak and Google does the rest!

In 2019, this will keep becoming more popular, and you’ll have to keep that in mind when coming up with keywords. Long-tail terms are helpful, as is an overall conversational tone that reflects the way in which people speak.

Adding FAQs to your site is a big help when targeting voice searchers too, so try to match the exact phrases people are likely to use.

At Nett Solutions, our Orange County digital marketing experts are here to help you in 2019! We’ll create an effective SEO campaign tailored to your business and audience, so what are you waiting for? Just get in touch now!

5 Essential Image Tips to Benefit Your SEO Campaign

12/01/201812/05/2018 mwon

Never underestimate the power of visual content.

Put yourself in potential customers’ shoes: if you landed on a website looking for a specific product or service, would you be impressed if there were no images? Would you feel this was a dynamic brand that cared about engaging buyers?

It’s unlikely one page after another consisting of blocks of text would win you over. Images are essential to convey information that complements your copy: you need to show off your products / services, introduce your team (even if just a few members) and, ultimately, make your website exciting to look at.

Images can make a big difference to your SEO campaign, and in this post, we look at 5 essential tips you need to know.

Be Original

Stock images definitely have their place. Quality stock pictures can fill a gap and still add a professional touch to your site, but use them sparingly.

Users will recognize stock images when they appear on countless sites, and if they see them on yours, they may feel it makes you a little less credible. Use original pictures as much as you can to be authentic, and ensure they’re of a high quality.

Slick, polished images help you stand out in search results and make your site unique.

Don’t Overload your Site

Too much visual content can affect your site’s performance, causing pages to load slower than they should.

JPEG images are typically best for maintaining decent load times, and cope well with compression, allowing images to load faster without too much of a drop in quality. PNG images are of a higher quality but too many can strain your load times.

Consider using PNG files for your most crucial images and JPEGs for the rest.

Keep your Captions Specific

Captions are a useful addition to your images. This is a brief line or two of text that explains the picture’s purpose, allowing readers to understand what they’re seeing straight away.

Captions can help search engines identify how relevant your images are to users.

Apply Descriptive Names to Images

Like captions, descriptive file names with quality keywords let search engines know the image’s content. It has to put the picture in context and boost your chances of being discovered by a user.

If a prospect runs an image search, a descriptive title can get your website put on clear display, hopefully driving more traffic your way.

Keep Background Images Minimal

Images in your page backgrounds and / or borders may add satisfying decoration to your site, but they only add extra data that has to be loaded.

If you find your site is taking longer to load, non-essential images like these could be to blame. You have to balance images that add obvious visual appeal with those that don’t.

Top SEO Tips for Niche Companies

07/16/201808/21/2018 mwon

Are you operating in a niche market?

If you are, then you’ll know marketing a smaller company can be incredibly difficult. However, an effective, well-structured SEO campaign can help you promote your company properly and grow your customer base significantly.

If you’re looking to expand your niche business’s reach in an organic way, read on for some top SEO tips.

Engage your customers to build brand loyalty

You need to make engaging your customers and prospects a priority from day one. Your digital marketing campaign should include social media marketing (SMM), incorporating both paid ads and regular posts.

Make a real effort to engage users, whether they’re current followers or not. Visual content is critical to grab attention on social media, so use images and videos throughout your posts.

The more eye-catching and clear to understand your marketing materials are, the more likely people are to share them. Brand posts with images have been shown to achieve more interactions than those without.

Never bombard users with a slew of promotional posts. Focus on captivating rather than selling, selling, selling.

Visual content is obviously just as important on your website. Keep your text brief and to the point, but make sure your blogs, product pages, and more are rich with visuals too. Short videos introducing your brand and your team can convey background information in a much more accessible way than expecting a visitor to read blocks of text.

Check out your competition

Even in niche businesses, you’ll face some competition. Unless you’ve created a product or service that nobody else on the planet has, you should be able to research what rival companies are doing to expand their reach.

What are they doing on social media? How are their blog posts distributed and what traction do they get?

Take the time to look at the competition ahead of you and behind you. See what to do and what not to do in your own SEO campaign.

Make friends in high places

One particularly effective SEO technique for niche businesses is to make connections with useful websites.

For example, if your business specializes in creating accessories for games consoles, consider trying to forge links with a high-profile blog focused on games. Can you get them to review some of your products, whether this is in blog posts or videos on YouTube? Are you able to make an impact with their audience?

However, only choose blogs or sites that aren’t in direct competition with you or already linked to other rivals of yours. Do your research first.

At Nett Solutions, our Orange County SEO team can help your niche business expand your reach and build a bigger reputation. Give us a call to discuss your options now!

5 Pro SEO Tips for SMEs

07/12/201807/09/2018 mwon

While some larger brands can rely on the power of a good reputation and repeat custom for ongoing success, SMEs have to work hard to establish an audience.

A well-planned SEO campaign plays a critical role in increasing your visibility and building authority, but organic search can be daunting to newcomers. How do you know which techniques are most effective for growing your brand?

Below, you’ll find five pro SEO tips for SMEs to help you reach a bigger, wider audience online.

Quality Content is Still King

Content is one of Google’s key ranking factors, and it’s vital to make it the best you can.

Avoid temptation to stuff keywords into every paragraph on every page: Google will penalize any website trying to use such outdated, underhand tactics.

Long-form content tends to rank better than shorter pieces, but the value it offers readers is paramount. You need to provide visitors with helpful, relevant information every time.

It’s okay to go into detail on subjects, rather than feeling you need to rush everything to suit today’s busy lifestyles.

Embrace HTTPS

HTTPS is another ranking signal for Google, and has been for a few years now.

HTTPS is used by a staggering 81 of the top 100 websites, and businesses that avoid upgrading to HTTPS may see a negative result soon.

Why?Because all HTTP websites will be labeled as ‘not secure’ in Google Chrome as of July 2018.

Potential customers may view your HTTP site as being a security risk in the very near future. All SMEs should make an effort to upgrade as soon as possible.

Build Solid Links

Not so long ago, companies could buy dozens or hundreds of links to their website to boost traffic. It was a case of quantity over qualify.

This has all changed now. Google and other search engines want to see high-quality links rather than those with little relevancy.

Concentrate on building solid backlinks from quality content, and choose popular websites that have similar themes or topics to your own.

Cater to Mobile Users

Google’s mobile-first indexing means the search engine crawls the mobile version of your website primarily, rather than the desktop site.

This makes perfect sense, given that more and more of us are searching on our smartphones and tablets. Any SME that fails to establish a mobile-friendly website is putting itself at a big disadvantage.

Pay Attention to UX

UX (user experience) is essential in any good SEO campaign. You want to make sure your website gives users everything they need to maximize your chances of conversions.

Focusing on the best UX you can achieve ensures your website is more accessible to visitors and search engines. Great navigation, solid CTAs, fast page speeds, quality content, and good link structure all contribute to outstanding UX.

At Nett Solutions, we can create a bespoke SEO campaign for your SME. Want to learn more? Just give our Orange County SEO team a call now!

7 Tricks for Optimizing Your Mobile Site

06/02/201806/01/2018 mwon

Google’s mobile-first indexing has been a long time coming, but is now underway.

Websites which offer users a stronger mobile-browsing experience will be more likely to secure higher spots in SERPs. Every business’s website has to be optimized for high-performance on smartphones and tablets, but how?

Here are 7 ways to get started.

Boost Load Page Speeds

We all know the frustration of staring at our phone, waiting for a page to load. Research shows 53 percent of searchers will leave a mobile site with load times above three seconds.

Mobile devices tend to have slower load times than desktops, so make sure you focus on getting yours as low as possible. Reduce the size of all images, cut unnecessary content, and consider using AMP instead.

Text Must be Readable as Standard

All text on your mobile site has to be easy to read straight away. Users shouldn’t have to zoom in to make sense of your content, nor should they have to turn their device to landscape mode to fit it all on the screen.

Convenience is key. Any hassle will only frustrate users when all they want is to read what you have to say.

Check Your Images’ Mobile Compatibility

Are your images failing to load on the mobile site? Do you expect prospects to wait 30 seconds to actually see a picture?

Using outdated or incompatible files will make a huge impact on your users’ ability to enjoy your website. The simplest way to check this is to access your site from a smartphone, and take note of those elements that don’t work as they should. Address them as soon as possible to benefit from Google’s mobile-first indexing.

Make Sure Your Site is User-Friendly

Interacting with desktop sites and mobile sites is very different. In the former, you have a mouse for precise clicking, which means buttons and links can be smaller.

In the latter, though, you have to make interactive elements big enough for fingers to touch. Sites with buttons and links that are too small can end up directing users to the wrong pages, making accidental purchases, and more.

Test your mobile site’s interactivity regularly.

Streamline Your Ads

Trying to scroll along a mobile website that bombards you with pop-up ads or automatic videos can be unbearable. Yes, you need pop-ups to generate leads and revenue, but try to keep them to a minimum.

Too many will only slow your load times and chase users away.

Focus on User Experience

User experience is critical. Your prospects should be able to navigate your site, jump from one page to another, make purchases, access information, and communicate with your business with ease.

Browse your mobile site with your users in mind. Can you see the different pages available? Is it simple to interact with?

If not, make some changes!

Swap Flash for HTML5

Avoid using Flash video on your mobile site, as it might not work on most mobile devices. HTML5 is the must-have today, to ensure smooth performance and widespread compatibility.

If you have Flash videos on your site, you could be risking your ranking in Google’s mobile-first indexing.

Want help getting your mobile site the best it can be? Nett Solutions is an Orange County digital marketing agency with years of experience helping businesses just like yours achieve their goals!

Is Blogging Still Relevant to Your Business?

04/30/201804/26/2018 mwon

Is blogging really still relevant in a world where social media allows you to communicate with your potential followers directly?

After all, if you can either write a 500 word post on your latest service or share the key points on Facebook, some businesses might now gravitate more towards one than the other for the sake of convenience.

The truth is, blogging is absolutely still relevant to your business in 2017 – and here are some key reasons why.

Blogs Fuel Your Social Content

You need something to say on your social media channels, and somewhere to direct your current and prospective followers.

Simply sharing images and links to your product pages suggests you’re only interested in trying to sell, rather than engage. With regular blog posts, you can consistently share high-value content on your social accounts to entice people to your site with something more than a purchase.

Share snippets of your blog posts as a teaser, along with eye-catching images that tell a story relevant to the content itself.

Blogs are Still Effective for SEO

Blogging on a regular basis enables your business to boost your visibility and authority in a number of ways.

For starters: keywords. Back in the day, brands could write blog posts consisting of endless search terms offering little value to the reader, but now Google’s algorithm is far wiser.

The emphasis is much more on the quality of your content rather than the keywords, but they’re still important. Use your most effective ones a few times in a post, but always make sure they don’t affect its readability.

Blog posts add fresh content to your site regularly, which is crucial for solid rankings, as are social signals. Bear this in mind: 82 percent of markets blogging on a daily basis converted a customer using their blogs, while only 57 of those publishing posts once per month did so.

Blogs can Help You Build Credibility

Having a wide variety of blog posts on your business’s website builds your credibility. How so?

Blogging gives your brand an opportunity to become a thought-leader, sharing innovative insights and influencing others. This can lead to your blogs gaining a wider readership by peers and customers alike, driving more traffic to your site over time.

Your business will appear more reliable and professional with a portfolio of well-written, well-presented blog posts, rather than a bare-bones site.

Blogs Allow for Deeper Communication than Social Media

You have to establish a style and voice for your business on social channels, and Facebook, Twitter etc. are ideal places to communicate with your customers.

However, blog posts enable you to tell deeper, richer stories unsuited to the shorter, sweeter structure of social accounts. Yourself and / or your team can explore your processes, motivations, missions, products, and opinions in more detail.

Your readers will get to know you better, and feel more invested in your brand.

Looking to start blogging for your business, or want to improve future posts? At Nett Solutions, we’re an experienced Orange County digital marketing agency dedicated to helping companies of all sizes build better results! Give our expert team a call now!

Are you Sabotaging your own SEO?

04/25/201804/26/2018 mwon

Are you Sabotaging your own SEO?

In our years as an Orange County SEO agency, we’ve seen businesses of all sizes trying to handle their own digital marketing campaigns.

We’ve also seen them make the same mistakes again and again.

You simply cannot underestimate the negative impact even the smallest errors can have on your rankings. You could be sabotaging your own SEO strategy without even realizing it.

How? Let’s take a look.

Are you Using Too many Keywords in your Content?

Choosing the right keywords to suit your brand, your customers, and your place in the market is key.

So is using them properly.

Keyword stuffing is less prevalent than it used to be, but some websites still try to manipulate search engines by overdoing it.

When you stuff keywords into your content, you’re sacrificing the readability for your visitors. Google has steps in place to penalize sites employing this shady tactic too, so you could be sacrificing your place in the SERPs too.

Google cares more about relevance and context today, so including keywords in a natural way without overloading them is vital. The most important ones should appear higher up the page too, to maximize their impact.

Are you Neglecting your Title tags and Meta Descriptions?

Your title tag and meta descriptions are vital to attracting prospects and improving your rankings.

Your title tag and description appear on the SERPs, telling searchers and crawlers what to expect from your site. You should include a keyword in your title tag and description where possible, and sell the value of your content honestly.

Pay attention to how your biggest competitors or those high-authority brands you want to emulate appear on SERPs. How do they phrase their titles and descriptions? What about them makes you want to click?

Does your Website load too Slowly?

How many websites have you left because the pages took too long to load, or simply didn’t load at all?

Think about how frustrating it is. Do you want to put your customers through that?

Google’s research shows that load times of between one and three seconds increase your bounce rate to 32 percent, while one to five seconds sees this figure jump to 90 percent.

Anything up to six seconds creates bounce rate increases of 106 percent. Load times of up to 10 seconds? Your bounce rates increase to a staggering 123 percent.

Compressing images and text can make a big difference to your load times. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) give you the power to make your mobile site incredibly fast, targeting the ever-growing mobile audience.

Is your Content Good Enough?

Your content should be well-written, informative, and offer visitors real value.

No prospects want to waste time reading text filled with typos, half-finished sentences, and baffling jargon. Your content has to give them the information they need in a clear, simple way.

It doesn’t need to be an industry-leading piece of work, but content should at least appear professional and provide searchers with the solution they were promised by your title tag and description.

If you think your website could be sabotaging your rankings, don’t worry. Nett Solutions is an Orange County SEO agency with the skills to transform your online performance. Just give us a call for a friendly, transparent chat!

5 SEO Trends Every Business Should Embrace

03/26/201804/26/2018 mwon

Struggling to keep up with the ever-changing trends in the world of SEO?

You’re not alone, but you have to make an effort to embrace the newest, most important ways to boost your organic search to beat competitors. What are the biggest SEO trends for 2018 you need to know?

Go Secure for Increased Rankings

Secure websites (those with a HTTPS in their URL) tend to receive higher rankings in search engine results pages. Though there are correlations between HTTPS sites and high placements, cutting-edge security is more of a tie-breaker used alongside other ranking factors.

If two sites are both well-optimized but one has better security than the other, the HTTPS element will win out.

Users are notified if a website they visit is not secure. Don’t give them a reason to leave.

Voice Searches for Accurate User Intent

Voice search is far more convenient than having to type your query using a cluttered mobile keyboard, and consumers are more increasingly likely to use it.

You need to focus on building content based around searcher intent rather than a strict list of keywords (though they are still essential). Your content has to be crafted to answer prospects’ questions, using a conversational tone.

More than ever, content must feel organic and valuable.

Focusing on User-driven Content

Following on from the point above, you need to make sure your content is worth readers’ time.

Put yourself in searchers’ shoes in relation to your products or services. What questions would you be asking, and what answers would you expect? What information do you need to be converted into a customer?

Try to avoid hitting readers over the head with directions to buy, buy, buy. Engage them, make sure you don’t waste their time, and they will be more likely to remember your brand even if they don’t actually make a purchase.

Video – A Growing Force

Video will account for 82 percent of consumer traffic online by 2021. It’s already everywhere, from social media to news pages and FAQs, and you’re missing out if you don’t use it already.

Create entertaining, informative videos on various topics. Make demonstrations for your products, take users on a tour of your business, introduce your team, and present customer testimonials.

Get on YouTube too: it’s the world’s second biggest search engine.

AMP for Stronger Mobile Engagement

The speed of your mobile site affects your ranking, and users simply don’t want the hassle of slow-loading pages. AMP is an ideal solution, creating mobile sites that are faster to load, easier to navigate, and make for a smoother browsing experience overall.

Integrate AMP into your campaign to make sure you maximize your mobile service.

Our team of Orange County digital marketing experts can create a bespoke SEO strategy for your business, incorporating the latest trends. Want to know what we can do for you? Give us a call!

What is A/B Testing?

02/22/201804/26/2018 mwon

A/B testing (or split testing) is mentioned again and again in the world of digital marketing, but what is it?

This can be an incredibly powerful part of optimizing your website and boosting your conversions. Performing an A/B test lets you compare two versions of a web page to identify which one works best.

This involves presenting the two pages to visitors at the same time, and whichever achieves higher conversion rates becomes the final version.

A/B testing gives you the power to make the most of your current traffic, and it can be applied to virtually any element of your website which impacts visitors’ behavior. This includes your headlines, sub headlines, testimonials, text in paragraphs, images, links, and more.

After all, Google is used to perform billions of searches each month, and you need to do everything you can to grab prospects’ attention.

Gathering Key Data

Before you run your A/B testing, you need to gather data that will ultimately help you identify the strongest variation.

Visitors’ behavior is one area to focus on, and certain tools can show obstacles that might prevent conversions or cause prospects to click away. For example, uninformative text which is too clustered together for comfortable reading, unattractive images, or an unclear CTA button can all contribute to a lack of conversions.

After exploring the results of such analysis, you would then be able to see where a potential new page would have to go. If you have problems with your CTA button or your text’s layout, you can create a new one with the same content presented differently.

If you can establish which of your options has the power to make a stronger impact on visitors, you should be able to increase conversions and build your user-base.

Trial and Error

It’s vital to make both variations as high-quality as possible, and give both a fair chance. Don’t be tempted to effectively sabotage one version of a page if you prefer the other, because what you prefer might not necessarily match your audience’s tastes.

A/B testing allows you to try different styles and presentation formats too. For example, if you feel your copy may be a little bland, your B page can be quirkier and funnier. If you find this garners fewer conversions during your sample period than the A page, you could perhaps try another new version that resembles the original more.

You can try again and again over time, eliminating less-successful variations and gathering data from the best to transform your site.

At Nett Solutions, our Orange County SEO team is passionate about helping businesses just like yours maximize your visibility, boost conversions, and ultimately achieve higher rankings. Give us a call now to see what we can do for you!