Marketing Tips

Is Your Website Current?

February 1, 2019 by Cliff Tillery

February 1, 2019

Is Your Website Current?

Your Website Could Be Chasing People Away

We’ve all clicked on websites that were so dated that we feel like we’re taking a tour through the history of the internet.

These sites aren’t necessarily bad at all. In fact, they were the bomb in their day (in fact, that expression was probably in style when the website was built!)

But, are they really doing what we need them to do now.

In today’s world of digital marketing, your website is the hub of all your marketing. It’s where people go to get a feel for what type of business you are and whether they want to contact you further. It’s still the front door of your business. But, is it a front door that your customer still wants to enter?

That’s why the staff at Make It Loud has developed a quick checklist that allows you to grade your website to see if yours is doing what it’s supposed to. So, let’s get started. By the way, this list is not prioritized. It’s in the exact order we thought of them:

What Do You Do? With all the websites we see on a weekly basis, sadly, there are still a lot that we look at and just can’t tell what they do. We’ve all heard of the 3-second rule when we drop food. Well, this should apply your business website. If your customer can’t immediately tell what your business is or what you do, that’s not good. Your site should tell your story, but tell it quickly.
Data Or No Data: Do you want to make data driven decisions with your marketing? (Psst, the answer is always “yes”!). Having actual metrics on your site can tell you how well your site is doing. This is why you want to have at least Google Analytics if not some other ways to measure browser behavior (we’re looking at you conversion optimization tools. Ask us more about that one!).
Got A Chatbot?: At one point, having a chatbot on your website was a nice dream, but now, it’s a reasonable option for any business. Chatbots help your business in a variety of ways- engage your clients faster, provide better customer service, convert browsers into customers faster, etc. (We can add those for you!)
Have an SSL: It used to be that only websites that sold things online needed a SSL certificate. These days, Google basically requires them. Not only is having an SSL a ranking factor, but Google labels your site as “unsecure” without it. This makes people question whether being on your site is safe, and that’s just bad juju.
Website Design Updates: If you’ve conceived and started raising a child since your last website update, it’s probably time. The average website design is good for 2-3 years before it starts looking dated. Remember when denim leisure suits were in? Yeah, neither do we. Don’t let your business website get to that level of out of style.
Your Logo: yes, you need a logo. Real companies have them (and good ones!). If you only have your business name up in the left corner of your site, this can bring into question the legitimacy of your business. Having a logo is not only a good business decision; it inspires trust in your company.
Color Scheme: It’s standard design practice to take the colors in your logo and use them throughout your site. Far too often, we see websites that look like an artist’s palette exploded. This can confuse the browsers- not to mention turn them off. Just say no. Stick to colors that make sense for what you’re trying to do.
Pop Ups: This can get tricky because there are popups that really help with conversions, and there are those that really irritate your browsers. Use them carefully, and remember, generally speaking, Google doesn’t like to see popups on your site, so consider using them with caution.
Call To Action: Like all of us, your website has a purpose in life. First, think about why you wanted a website to begin with. Next, think about what you’d like your website’s special purpose to be. Now, go look at your site and see if it takes the browser by the hand and leads him/her to do exactly what you want that person to do.
Phone Number: You’d be absolutely amazed at how many websites we see where the business owners wants more phone calls but doesn’t put the phone number on the home page. Enough said.
Clear Navigation: Your menu needs to be simple and easy to understand. It has to have a natural flow. The more complex your menu, the more likely you are to lose people.
The Design Of The Site Is For The Boss: This is a common mistake that a lot of business owners make. They hire a designer or worse, design the site themselves to make it attractive to themselves. Having a good looking website is important, but if we’re being honest, it’s way more important that your target market thinks your site is attractive than the boss does. The checks he writes depend largely on the checks your new customers write first.
Mobile Friendly: At this point, we shouldn’t even have to say this, but since roughly 60% of all browsers are on their cell phone, if your website doesn’t look good on a smartphone, you’re losing business. Period.
You Don’t Have Enough Content On Your Site: While it may be true that a picture is worth 1000 words, Google is paying more attention to your words than your images. This means you have to balance your pretty pictures with text that explains your business in quick, simple terms.
A Blog: It’s a great way to add keyword rich content, and depending upon what you do, it’s a great way to put content out there that helps people find you before the understand they need you. But, here’s the problem with having a blog- you have to maintain it. If you don’t and your next customer clicks on your “ever so helpful” blog page to find that the last blog post was in 2004, your next customer just bounced away to your competitor. Don’t be that website.
Page Load Speed: If we can roast a turkey in the time it takes your website to fully load, you can bet it won’t be a happy Thanksgiving. These days, we all have the attention span of a goldfish, so if you make us wait to see your beautiful website, we’ll just move on.
Your Site’s So Ugly… Let’s be honest, there are some websites out there that are just ugly. Ask your sales team for honest feedback. You’d be amazed at how many sales people steer potential customers away from their company website because of how dated or embarrassing it is. If your site is ugly, you’re just helping out your competitors.
Contact Us: It just makes sense that if you want your possible clients to contact you, you have to make it easy for them- and give them different ways to contact you- on their terms. This means, put a contact form in a prominent place, an email address, a phone number, etc.
Audio/Video: It’s been awhile since we’ve seen this, but there are still websites out there that have audio or video that cranks up on auto play. This is just a terrible idea. Don’t start your relationship with your customer by having them dive for the volume control as soon as they hit your website. It doesn’t engender trust. It breeds irritation.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Being on page one of Google means your business has more visibility and opportunities for more clicks. You may not be an SEO ninja (but we are!), but having your website at least set up for good SEO is a step in the right direction. Not doing any SEO means your site might just not get found.
Website Changes: We get a lot of walk in traffic at our shop, and far too many of our walk-ins tell us they don’t have access to their own business website which means they can’t edit or update their own content. This means they have to reach out to their designer, pay more money and wait for their nerd to get around to it. That’s just no way to operate a business.
Buying A Vowel: Watch the spelling and grammar on your website. Having errors in your content (or anywhere on your site really) can send your browsers back to Google. We’d also warn you about random capitalization. We see that periodically on websites and for the life of us, we don’t know why some things are capitalized.
Big Honking Text Blocks: this one explains itself, but unless your website contains chunks of “War & Peace”, you really want to avoid huge blocks of text. Break it up, add pictures, add titles. Make it interesting.
Copied Content: NEVER (and yes, we’re going all caps here) put an image on your website that you just “found” on the Internet. You are most likely violating copyright law and running the risk of a hefty fine. Also, don’t “borrow” text from other sites. Just like in High School, copying is still not good. Only this time, Google is the one that will send your site to detention.
Watch Your Tone: All content has a voice. Make sure your content has a consistent voice throughout your site. This also has to do with first person content to third person. Generally speaking, we like when you’re talking to us (the reader), so use “you” wherever appropriate.

We’re sure we could come up with more things to think about but we figured you’re tired and want to stop reading.

Last thing- go check out your company website and see how it’s doing along these points. If the news is bad, call us. We’d love the chance to help you get more business. Even if the results are pretty good, we do things like social media marketing, search engine optimization, email marketing and other stuff that can help you get your phone ringing more. Let’s talk. Call us 678.295.9466. We’d love to help.

For nearly 15 years, Make It Loud has been working with business owners of all shapes & sizes to help them increase their revenue. Nothing is as frightening as the sound of your phone not ringing. That’s our goal in life- get you next customers to reach out to you.

We do this by helping you with amazing looking websites that convert well. From there, we help you market your business through search engine optimization, social media marketing and more.

Most of our clients come from around the local Atlanta area like Suwanee, Johns Creek, Alpharetta, Dacula and more, but through the magic of the Internet, we can work with any business across the U.S. Call us at 678.325.4007 and let us help you improve your digital marketing.

Why Many Websites Don’t Work

September 12, 2018 by miladmin Leave a Comment

September 12, 2018

Why Many Websites Don’t Work

Websites that Work vs. Sites that Don’t

Why Many Websites Don’t Work
There are a host of reasons that websites underperform for businesses that have them, even if they enter the website design process with the best of effort and intentions. Here are some of our thoughts on why websites don’t generate the business that company’s hope for:

1) They don’t understand their own target market. It’s one thing to know your business and another entirely to know who is your “sweet spot” with respect to your target market. Without that, your web developer will be guessing when he creates the site, particularly if they don’t ask good questions
2) They don’t consider other marketing options other than a website. Believe it or not, websites are competitive. There is only one top spot on Google, and you either have it or you don’t. Often times—in fact most times, it takes work to achieve a top spot either through search engine optimization (SEO) or pay per click services. This is the most overlooked and underbudgeted issue with respect to website design.
3) Web designers don’t do their job. We’ve seen some terrible work over the years with the basics in website design completely violated. Believe it or not, there’s a definite psychology to converting a viewer of a site to a client, there are SEO basics that must be done, and even colors and style matter tremendously in getting a client to call or fill out a form. This is also a real problem with site design– the basics aren’t even done because many web developers don’t know what they’re doing.
4) And lastly– Business owners treat their websites with an “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” Attitude. They think that having a site is enough to generate business, when that’s not nearly enough in most situations. Believe it or not, most websites have expiration dates. What? You say? Yes, they do. Technology changes and so should websites. This past week we had a client who was irritated when his website didn’t support Internet Explorer, a platform that Microsoft, who created it, hasn’t supported since 2016. We also don’t support Netscape and other antique browsers. The same is true of your website– you can have a “Model T” for a website. Just because you have one, doesn’t mean that you’re able to drive on the highway. Design changes quickly, as does technology. You’d be amazed how many websites are out there that are still not mobile friendly, which means that their sites are devalued in Google, not to mention hard to surf on a mobile device. Realize that your site should be updated every 2-3 years in order to stay current.

As always Make It Loud is always available to help you with your digital marketing. Assessments of your digital marketing footprint are always free, and we can help you craft a winning strategy that drives business to you. Call anytime– 678.325.4007

Making Your Website Work for You

August 20, 2018 by miladmin Leave a Comment

August 20, 2018

Making Your Website Work for You

Websites that Drive Traffic to Your Business

Many of the people who have websites don’t know exactly how much they can serve you and can drive you business. When websites were new, it was easy to just create a website and get found. In 1992, there were only 10 websites on the world wide web. When Make It Loud Web Results entered the market in 2004, there were only 51 Million. Now, we are approaching 2 billion sites on the net, and the number of websites online continues to increase by the second, literally.

That being said, when our owner, John, built his first website for his first paying client (and by the way, almost 15 years later that person is still a client!) in mid November. By the time the middle of December came around, the client had local rankings on page one of Google and she had clients in the door who had found her on the web. Those days are gone, and I mean really gone.

In an environment of limited competition it’s still possible to get a result like that, but for the rest of us, google results need to be worked.

There are a couple of ways to go about it.

You can start a pay per click campaign. Pay per click can be a great add for clients who want calls, but it needs to be researched. For some it would work great. For some, it would be a trainwreck. We’ve also found that clients who use tools like Google Adwords Express are paying for clicks they shouldn’t be paying for, so word to the wise, watch out if you use that tool, or you could be spending tons more on PPC with no results.
Start an SEO Campaign. Normally, this requires help. Make It Loud provides those campaigns and it’s a lot of work. Are the results good?
Facebook Ad Campaigns. Facebook is a wonderful thing, particularly for a business owner. I tell the people who are on Facebook all the time– “You are not Facebook’s client. Their advertisers are.” So if you own a business and want to advertise, the good news is that FB has been extorting information out of their sheep for a decade now, and they know exactly how to put you in front of your target market. It can be quite affordable, and is really a proactive marketing endeavor.

You may be thinking, “Well what can I do to help myself?” Perhaps the best thing you can do for yourself is to blog. Research shows that businesses where people blog on their websites consistently outperform those that don’t. Fact. On top of that, you’re adding new content to your site all the time, which the big G loves.

Proactive vs. Reactive Marketing

August 8, 2018 by miladmin Leave a Comment

August 8, 2018

Proactive vs. Reactive Marketing

Sit Back And Watch What Happens or Chase It? It’s Up To You.

When it comes to digital marketing, you may not have had it described like the title suggests, “Proactive vs. Reactive” marketing, but when you’re trying to reach your target audience, both are important. Let’s dig in.

Reactive Marketing requires something specific– it requires the potential client to be looking for you already. Reactive marketing clients already understand their need for your product or services. Not only that, but they are searching for you already. You put the marketing in place, like Search Engine Optimization, or Pay Per Click, and they react– or respond to it.

Proactive Marketing is different. Proactive marketing helps unearth potential clients who may not even know they have a need for your services at the moment. I’ll give you an example: A year or so ago I was using Facebook, and there was this ad and video for something called a Nato Mount. It’s basically a magnetic car mount for your telephone for your car, which is now a necessity in the State of Georgia because apparently we can be trusted to hold a Quarter Pounder with Cheese and a large drink in our hands while driving our cars, but we can’t be trusted to hold onto our phones– but I digress. In any event, I didn’t really think I needed one of these things, or I would have bought one years ago. The seat or the cupholder was a fine place for my phone, or so I thought. I wasn’t looking for a phone mount. If I was, I’d have googled it or amazon’d it.

Then entered Facebook.

I saw this pic and this vid of the thing, and thought, “that might work in my car.” I drive an old car and it has some unique features– like no heating or AC vents on the dash– so lots of mounts wouldn’t work. It looked great, so I ordered. In fact, they had such a great upsell deal on them, I got 8 of them, really cheap– and they work AWESOME. I’d buy one again, and will likely in the days ahead. But I didn’t know I needed one. It took the FB ad to even generate the idea. Nato Mounts stuck this awesome piece of advertising in front of me, that advertising generated the idea in my head, and then I bought. It’s kind of like a road sign stuck in my face as I drive down Hwy 20– “Wow there’s a McDonalds. I hadn’t thought about it, but now that I see the sign– I’m hungry!” That’s proactive marketing. You stick your advertising in front of people who don’t even know they really need your services, and your ad generates the desire and the idea. Facebook and social media in general, does that well. Email marketing can do this well too, however the hardest thing there is the absolute glut of information that comes through an inbox– it’s so hard to get through that to get someone to open the email.

So what about you? Is your marketing proactive or reactive? Primarily one or the other? The truth is, you need both. There are people out there who don’t even have an idea about you. They need the idea. Then there are others who are already looking for you. Your advertising needs to be their response.

Make It Loud

The Coming HTTPS Changes for Every Website

June 26, 2018 by miladmin Leave a Comment

June 26, 2018

The Coming HTTPS Changes for Every Website

Search Engine Optimization | Sugar Hill | Duluth GA | Suwanee | Buford

There are changes to Google’s algorithm all the time. Some of the changes are so big they name them– usually after an animal, like “Panda.” They’re also making minor adjustments to their algorithm constantly, in order to keep search, “pure”– which is to keep it unmanipulated. That being said, there are search engine optimizers all over the planet who strive to rank websites for clients all the time. We’re an agency like that, where we take a site, work it through our process, and rank websites for clients all the time—which gets them business.

One of the things we’ve been made aware of that is going to significantly impact the web and rankings in Google is the new HTTP vs. HTTPS issue. You may notice in Google Chrome, as with other browsers, that they verify whether or night a website is secured with an SSL certificate. Up until now, most websites weren’t secured with an SSL, with the exception of ecommerce stores– security is a necessity for those. If you go to a site that is not secured, you will not see a secure sign in the top left URL bar, and if you do see one, it will say “Secured” and be green (again to the left of the URL bar).

The new catch is that Google is moving to an environment where they want sites that are secure now in order to rank them. These SSL certificates will figure significantly in the days ahead in ranking a website. If your site was created prior to now, you likely don’t have one on your site. Even the sites we’ve done over the years, again with the exception of ecommerce sites, weren’t secured with an SSL certificate. Now they’re going to need to be, whether you have an ecommerce site or not.

If you’re a client of ours on our Sitebuilder system– the good news is that the Sitebuilder folks have adjusted their platform already to accommodate this change, and all of our sites on this platform have already been updated with SSL. However, if you have a WordPress or other website, these SSL certificates need to be purchased at the hosting level, so that your site can be secured. We recommend checking with your web developer to make sure that your site is secure, or come August, when Google rolls out this new change– you may find yourself falling from page one of Google, or dropping in rankings significantly. This can truly affect your business. So make sure you take care of this now, in preparation for the upcoming change.

Navigating the Digital Marketing Maze

June 19, 2018 by miladmin Leave a Comment

June 19, 2018

Navigating the Digital Marketing Maze

Digital Marketing Services in Atlanta | Lawrenceville | Suwanee | Buford

When it comes to digital marketing, it’s easy to turn a blind eye to it. Many of the clients we’ve seen (in fact most!) have had a bad experience with a digital marketer– and why not, marketing is a roll of the dice anyways, right? That may be so, as some marketing is more effective than others, and add to that the uniqueness of industry to a marketing endeavor and you have a grand roll of the dice.

There was a day when it wasn’t quite like that. The Yellow Pages ruled, and it was the magic bullet, the gamechanger for most who wanted to start a business. Then the internet entered the equation, and websites became the new magic marketing bullet.

In the past 15 years with the rise and fall of search engines and social media platforms, it could never be more confusing to navigate your way through the digital marketing world—from websites to Facebook, LinkedIn, Pay Per Click Services in Suwanee and the Atlanta metro area– to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and what remains of traditional marketing.

If you need a trusted advisor in the marketing world, Make It Loud can help. Not only are we the providers of all of these services– we can help you learn to manage your own, or to be your outsourced digital marketing agency. From coaching to consulting, to actually doing the work, we can assist.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising Company | Google PPC Services

May 15, 2017 by John Lehmberg Leave a Comment

May 15, 2017

Pay-Per-Click Advertising Company | Google PPC Services

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising Services in Atlanta

Several local business owners are taking part in this quick and easy to track advertising platform and have doubled their business in a matter of months! Pay per click allows businesses the chance to get to the top of Google and gain clicks while they are pursuing their organic SEO, as long as the math makes sense.

The discovery process for this platform is half the battle. To start of the process Business owners or marketing managers will need to complete four easy steps:

Identify Top Performing Keywords
Use Keyword Data to identify monthly budget
Determine what an avg. new client is worth to them
Calculate ROI

After the business owner determines that this makes sense for them, they can choose to either set up using the AdWords Express outlet or the full AdWords account.

I will tell you benefits and drawbacks to each and let you decide.

AdWords Express benefits include an easy to use interface that automatically adds keywords for you based on the landing page and website information you enter and the primary keywords you enter at the beginning of setup.

The dashboard shows how much of your budget has been spent, how many conversions so far, and your list of keywords.

A few key drawbacks and major problems with AdWords express would be that the keywords cannot be edited and are very broad and a lot of times unrelated to what your company does.

I have used this previously for one of our clients and quickly realized that it was not the most efficient or accurate method. AdWords express had the keyword “plumber Chicago” listed even though I had specified the company only services the Atlanta, GA area. This presented a serious problem paying and bidding for keywords that had absolutely no use whatsoever to my client.

A full AdWords account has a wealth of information right at your fingertips and the ability to change nearly anything you would like to in the interface and draw data you did not even know was available. The drawback to this powerful tool is that it is not intuitive. If you are interested in using AdWords it is going to take you some time to get up to speed with using the interface, but this aspect of marketing can be very lucrative for your business, but we also understand that learning how to manage it all can feel like your drinking from the fire hose. Give us a call to explore whether AdWords is right for marketing your business.

If you need a consultation about SEO or Web Design, our company, Make It Loud, can at the very least help you to discover if SEO or a good website fits into your budget. It doesn’t cost anything to find out and we’d be honored to serve you, face to face when geographically possible. Feel free to contact us by email at: info@makeitloud.net, visit our website at: www.makeitloud.net, or call us at: 678.325.4007. Even if you’re not local to Gwinnett or Atlanta, we’d be happy to do an assessment.

How to Track Website Traffic

May 15, 2017 by John Lehmberg Leave a Comment

May 15, 2017

How to Track Website Traffic

Google Analytics: What Do All the Pretty Numbers Mean?

Because of their size, Google sometimes gets a bad rap, but the truth is, when it comes to figuring out how well your website is doing, installing Google Analytics is a great way to get started. In fact, you could insert the obligatory “drinking from the fire-hose” analogy here when you consider exactly how much data Google Analytics gives you. It’s easy to get lost in all that and give up because it isn’t always clear what data is helpful and what’s too advanced for where you are now.

We recently held a boot camp where we walked some business owners through some of the basics and takeaways of Google Analytics (GA) so we thought we’d share some of the lesson here.

First, if you’ve never installed GA on your site, contact your friendly neighborhood web designer and get that done. Here’s why: without some analytics program, you have no way of knowing how your website’s doing. It’s like having an employee work for you that you never see, never hear anything from and have no way of knowing if he or she is being productive. You need to have an idea of how much traffic your website’s getting as well as some other handy information.

So, that’s where we can dive right in. Once you log into GA, you can click on the “all web data” line and that’s where the fun begins (or in some cases, the confusion). Right away Google hits you with a chart of all the traffic your site’s been getting. You can slice and dice that any way you want. Want to see how much traffic you’ve had all year? No problem. Just change the start and end dates in the left corner and your chart will adjust along with the numbers below.

Website Reviews & Consultation

From there, the numbers below the chart are very important to consider. In the old days of SEO, you could take a website that, well, let’s just say wasn’t pleasing to the eye (read heinously ugly) and rank it well. Well, along came the Panda update and changed all that. An engineer at Google made the argument that while they were tracking information like Time on Site, Pages Read and Bounce Rate, they weren’t doing anything with it. He convinced his bosses that these three-metrics indicated how well designed the site. His argument was that people don’t stay on ugly, useless sites and they sure don’t read many pages of them. That’s when they started taking these numbers seriously. In fact, you could say these three metrics are now the most important ones to consider after how much traffic your site is getting.

digital marketing services in Atlanta, what are good numbers? It can depend on what you want people to do on your site. Take the time on your site for example. I like that metric to be around a minute and thirty seconds, but if you have a contact form on your homepage (or on every page), that time could be less. You’d want to measure that with the Pages Read metric to try to develop a story as to what the data means. Bounce rate refers to the percentage of people that come to your site and immediately “bounce” off again. I like the bounce rate to be under 50% for most sites. If it creeps too high above that, then you need to look at your keyword strategy. People bounce off sites that don’t meet their needs which means they may be finding it with keywords that aren’t on target.

Imagine being able to look over the shoulder and see where people that come to your site click around. There are two ways to do this with GA. One is with the Behavior Flow which lays out where people are going in a flow chart presentation. The beautiful thing here is that you can see where people go on their first, second, third interactions with your site along with drop off rates. You can tell where most your traffic is leaving which gives you data you can use to make some design changes or add content to lower the drop off rates. Also, you can load In Page Analytics and get exact percentages of where your traffic is clicking (and where they’re not). You can even click on the colors and get a heat map of where people are clicking on your pages and elements they’re outright ignoring. Naturally, this is handy information to have because you can begin to make changes on where people are clicking on your site.

Digital Marketing Firm Atlanta

Wouldn’t it be great to know where your traffic is coming from? Act now and you can! Under the Acquisition tab, you can hit Overview and see exactly where your traffic is coming through. Click on each category and you’ll learn specifics like which social media site is bringing the most traffic to your site.

Digital Marketing Atlanta

This is only the beginning of some of the practical information you can get from Google Analytics. If you’d like to learn more, contact the staff at Make It Loud. Make it Loud is a digital marketing firm located just outside of Atlanta Georgia that specializes in great website design, search engine optimization, pay per click management, social media management and so much more. We have at least 2 free boot camps every month where we teach local business owners about various digital marketing topics.

Marketing Services in Alpharetta

Affordable Digital Marketing Services For Small and Large Companies

May 15, 2017 by John Lehmberg Leave a Comment

May 15, 2017

Affordable Digital Marketing Services For Small and Large Companies

SEO Marketing Services in United States Georgia

When it comes to business, we all need to think of strategies to get more business through the front door. Considering some companies have a bricks and mortars front door, some have only a website as a front door and some have both. Clearly, if you have a website, it’s important to figure out how to get more traffic and search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most prominent ways known.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising Services in Georgia

Not that SEO is the only way. There’s also pay per click (PPC) to increase your site’s visibility as well. But, the math may not always work out for PPC. For instance, if you sell a product that is less than $100, a $500/month budget means you must sell at least 5 “things” to break even- not that breaking even is a good goal to shoot for. Considering that it can take about 5 ads clicks (people clicking on your ad) before one person calls you, then you need a fair amount of impressions and clicks to get the sales you need. If you have an average client sale of, say, $2000, then a monthly budget of $2000 means you only need 2 sales a month to make money with PPC. The odds of getting that with a strong ad campaign are good.

But, with SEO, the numbers aren’t that simple and clearly outlined. It can take weeks to month to get on page one- which is clearly one of the goals or key performance indicators (KPI). Many SEO experts joke about hiding Jimmy Hoffa’s body on page two of Google’s search results. There’s a lot involved in getting your website to page one. There’s what you can do to the site itself (on-page optimization) and the stuff you do to get the site noticed externally (off-page optimization)

Website Services in Atlanta

Keep in mind, the list of on page optimization stuff is not inclusive (but it’s good). If you knocked out everything on the list, it doesn’t guarantee page one ranking because A). there are no guarantees in SEO and B). a lot depends upon your search engine competition (i.e. what comes up when you type in your primary keywords). It isn’t all about your actual industry competition. Sometimes, your biggest competitor isn’t even on page one.

But, speaking of keywords, it’s important to think like your target market and consider what the searching masses might type in the search box to find what you do. There are some tools you can play with to discover traffic patterns for specific keywords. If you go through the motions to set up a PPC account with Google, you’ll have access to the Google keyword planner. Keyword Eye also has a pretty user friendly tool and Google Trends has a nice tool to find out the regional interests of certain keywords or phrases.

Once you have determined the keyword strategy, here’s what you need to do on each page for SEO:

Use a keyword in your page titles, but write them for conversion rather than SEO
Use a keyword in your meta descriptions but write those to get the clicks as well
Whether you’re writing a blog post or landing page, use keywords in:
Early in the content
Last sentence of the content
Use variations throughout the text, but use them naturally
Use keywords to label each image on the pages (called alt tags)
Link related pages together on your website
Link to authoritative sites occasionally
Have a blog post on your site & add posts at least weekly
Always have at least one image on each page with alt tags
Check the size of your images and watch your page load speeds

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For off page optimization, there are two primary strategies- increasing social signal and getting backlinks. With backlinks, it’s quality over quantity. There is no magic number, but it’s a pretty good idea to try to get industry specific sites to link back to you. There are a variety of strategies you can use to get that to happen, but avoid reciprocal links (where they link to you if you link to them). These types of backlinks can hurt you these days. Another type of backlink which can be useful involves directory listings. This is where you list your site in directory sites like yelp, merchant circle, hotfrog, etc. These links just sit there and point back to you.

Social signal is all about how often your business gets mentioned on social media sites or social bookmarking sites. Google can see these mentions and while they say they don’t use them as a ranking factor presently, it is a sign of credibility for your site.

Doing most or these basic SEO tasks will help get your site moving in the right direction. Every business owner needs to consider whether it’s worth their time to try SEO on their own or leave it to the professionals. We’ll be happy to help.

For the past 10 years, Make It Loud has been working with small to mid-sized business owners to establish and maintain a professional web presence. We help design great websites, social media marketing campaigns, SEO and more. Call us today or visit our retail storefront for a free consultation today.

5 Best Marketing Strategies

May 5, 2017 by John Lehmberg Leave a Comment

May 5, 2017

5 Best Marketing Strategies

5 Top Best Ways to Market Your Business

For many small to mid-sized business owners, marketing is a mystery. Some have a plan while others have a more “Field of Dreams” approach (If I build it, they will come). The reality is that once you have a “Wow!” website, your marketing doesn’t end there. You must work it, but that’s where some folks just shrug and hope for the best.

We’d like to make it simple because there’s elegance in simplicity. We talk about this stuff all the time, so we thought we’d blog about it. The question is, “How do I market my website (which is really marketing your business)?” We’ll give you our top 5 best ways to market your business to bring your target market to your digital front door. (The order of these just depends upon your business and industry):

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): marketing is all about getting your business in front of as many eyeballs as possible (within your target market). SEO is all about getting your website seen by putting it on page one of the search engines. It’s not an overnight process, but it puts your business where it needs to be seen the most.
Pay Per Click (PPC): Many people are afraid of PPC because they don’t understand it. It works like this- what is your average customer worth to you? $100? $500? More? Now, how much are you willing to spend to bring in one customer? For example, if your average customer brings in $500, then you only need one new customer a month from PPC to break even if you spend $500/month. With 2 new clients, you’re making money and so on. We recently saw a client double his monthly business through PPC!
Social Media Marketing: This is using Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. to market what you do. We advise people to define their target market and work on establishing a presence on the social media channels where those people spend time. This approach to marketing is more about starting conversations with your people rather than hard selling. There’s a lot to be said about establishing yourself as an industry expert or helpful resource to draw people into what you do.
Email Marketing: We are still surprised at how many business owners don’t collect customer emails or do collect them and don’t do anything with them. Email marketing is based around this thought, “Would you rather do business with someone you know and already trust or do business with a stranger?” This isn’t about spamming people as much as it is about getting customers to opt in for deals, specials and news about what you do. This drives traffic to your site and through your front door.
Networking: Yes, this means getting out there and shaking a lot of hands. The more people see you and get to know you, the more they can help you be successful. There are plenty of networking groups and opportunities through the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce and other groups. You can visit most closed networking groups twice before you must decide on joining, but this gives you a great chance to get to know a lot of helpful people out there. It’s been the key to our success here at Make It Loud.

When you’re a small to mid-sized business owner, you wear a lot of hats. It’s easy to spend so much time working in your business that you don’t leave time to work on your business. Balancing it all often requires some outsourcing. We manage most of these resources for our customers who often pick and choose what resources they want and which ones they can budget for. Most importantly, it’s critical to keep an eye on what resources are available for your success and stay focused on what works. We can help. Call Make It Loud to talk to one of our consultants today!