Almost ten years ago, nearly everybody who was accessing the web was on a desktop computer. In 2006, only two screen sizes were responsible for 77% of all internet usage.

This trend has completely changed. According to a research study conducted by Mobify, today, ten different screen sizes comprising tablets, smartphones, web-enabled TVs, netbooks, and laptops represent 77%t of total internet usage.

It is interesting to note that there is no single screen size that commands more than 20% of the market share. Nowadays, when marketers design their websites, they must consider different types of devices accessing the internet-from budget-friendly Android devices to smart TVs and high-end iMacs.

A responsive and user-friendly mobile design is the answer for a digital world where tablet and smartphone users demand an intuitive and feature-rich web experience that matches the one on desktop computers. However, implementing responsive mobile design is not the total answer. It may resolve the problem of screen-size layout, but there are other fundamental problems with the responsive strategy that many marketers ignore.

 The following are some common mistakes that could impact your responsive mobile conversion:

1. Outsized, data-heavy images

Images represent a major responsive conversion problem. Since a responsive website utilizes one markup for various devices, it is crucial to make sure that only big and appealing images are loaded to Retina iPad displays. In contrast, older smartphones get fast-loading images that have a low resolution.

For websites with rich images, the problems start with mobile page speed because of the size of high-resolution images rendered to an inappropriate device. Wasting valuable bandwidth when sending images to the wrong devices is essentially like throwing money away.

Below are three methods for optimizing images for all resolutions and screen sizes:

• Resize images using imagemagick software to optimize their size.
• Utilize Lossy Compression to minimize the size of the image totally while at the same time retain depth.
• Use multiple servers to render images-ideally Amazon Cloudfront CDN.

By applying these hacks, you can increase your mobile conversion. This is because these hacks ensure that you can consistently convey the appropriate images to the right devices.

2. Poor page-loading times

Web pages with slow loading times face a big problem because slow-loading pages are annoying to users. An average retail mobile website in the US takes 6.9 seconds to load.

However, according to a study conducted by Akamai, 40% of users will leave a web page that takes over three seconds to load. In addition,64% of online shoppers that are unhappy with their website will move to another site the next time they shop.

Web-users will leave your site if they are forced to wait for a long time in order to view your web page content. Jakob Nielsen, the author of a book called Usability Engineering, says that people can tolerate a maximum of 10 seconds loading time before they abandon a page. Even a delay of a couple of seconds is sufficient to create a bad experience for the user.

Leading companies recognize that the performance of their website is crucial, and appreciating their users’ time can make them have a competitive edge in the market. This approach constitutes a major plank of Google’s commercial ideology.

Facebook designers value the time of their users more than anything else. In addition, they understand that quicker experiences are more effective and feel more natural. Users should not notice the performance of the website. 

3. Integrating long forms in your website

Many people don’t like to fill out long forms, especially on mobile. Avoid incorporating long and tedious forms that force users to type in a lot of information. Long forms discourage your users and harm your conversion rates when used for any transaction form. For example, Expedia lost $12 million due to using an irrelevant form field that left their users confused.

On the other hand, HubSpot (A marketing automation solution) increased their conversion rates by 50% when they cut the number of form fields on their site from four to three. Shorter forms are always better on the web- especially on mobile devices.

4. Not paying attention to the user’s goal on your mobile site

Responsive design will not solve all problems. Although having a responsive design solves a lot of mobile user experience(UX) issues, it does not always consider the user’s goals. Smartinsights.com notes that there is a 270% difference between mobile and desktop conversion rates. This is because people do not understand mobile websites.

When it comes to desktop computers, having many words and long titles has an impact that is sometimes completely different from what happens on mobile devices. Additional text on a mobile device will obscure that page and discourage the user from attaining their goal- which is usually the call to action.

Apart from the menu bar, it would be best to concentrate on helping your users navigate through your webpage more easily, particularly the call-to-action buttons. As you are designing your website, keep the mobile user in mind and ensure that their journey across your website is much easier, focusing on your conversion rate.

Conclusion:

Usage of mobile media is rising faster than TV, desktop, print, and radio. Today, more people than ever are accessing the internet using mobile devices. It is therefore critical to design mobile websites that are easier and more comfortable to use. A website that is hard to navigate annoys mobile users- causing them to abandon your site and search for other sites.

If you fail to ensure that your website is mobile-friendly, visitors to your site will decline to fill your forms, ditch their shopping cart, abandon your site and conduct business with your competitors. Ultimately, this will hurt your conversion rate.

If you need any help redesigning your old site or creating a brand new website that will be compatible with all mobile devices, Let’s Talk!

Despite the many ways Google has changed the search game over the last five years, one truth remains: content is the vehicle that drives your consumer interactions, engagements, experiences and, ultimately, conversions.  However, only 41% of marketers think their organization is clear on what an effective or successful content marketing program looks like, according to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI).

Marketers aren’t just lacking confidence in their efforts; these are real and measurable deficits. In fact, only 20% of B2C and 50% of B2B content earns any engagement at all. That’s a lot of wasted effort and resources invested in content that ends up just floating around the web, winning zero business benefit for its creators.

In this post, we’re going to take a look at content through the SMART lens. SMART is a goal-setting framework in which S stands for Specific, M for measurable, A for achievable, R for relevant and T for timely. Below explains how to apply search engine optimization (SEO) to your content within a SMART framework, giving you 14 concrete ways to make your marketing more effective and to win you more business.

S — Specific content wins every time.

Content is not about what your marketing team wants to say. It is about providing insight and information that your audience actually wants to hear.

SMART content is designed for a specific audience, based on your understanding of their needs, preferences and intent.

 1. Get to know your audiences

There’s much more to this than keyword research. Where do your consumers live online? What’s their intent when performing certain types of searches or engaging your brand in social? What action are they most likely to take at that point? Understanding the audience you’re writing for is the foundation on which SMART content is built.

2. Discover opportunities through topical research

How well do you understand the competitive environment in the verticals for which you’re creating content? Today, you’re competing for eyes and clicks. Your competitors may be other companies, but you could be competing for space in the SERPs against media brands, bloggers, influencers and more. Without that bigger-picture, bird’s-eye view of relevant search and social spaces, you’re flying blind.

Evaluating the content gaps not covered by your competition provides you with opportunities to create engaging content that speaks to people in the key moments that matter.

3. Choose content formats wisely

Which media will you incorporate to best illustrate your message, engage your audience and reach people across platforms?  Don’t limit yourself; a single piece of content can incorporate several types of media, including socially shareable images, quick video clips and embedded media, like SlideShares.  This gives you various ways to convey your message, but it also allows you to appear in different types of search results (like Google Images) and on different search platforms (like YouTube or SlideShare’s internal search), as well.

M — Measurable content delivers on the metrics that matter

Content marketers are getting better at proving the business value of their activities. Just two years ago, only 21% of B2B marketing respondents to CMI’s annual content marketing survey said they were successful at tracking ROI. Now, in 2017:

• 72% are measuring their content marketing ROI.
• 51% are using a measurement plan to provide both insight and progress toward the business goals.
• 79% are using analytics tools.

4. Choose metrics that matter and align with your business goals.

Which KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) tell the true story of your content’s success? Ideally, you’re going to measure your content’s performance through the entire funnel, right from lead generation and audience-building to nurturing, conversion, sales and right on through post-sales to retention and evangelism.  Site traffic, lead quality, social shares, time on site and conversion rates are among the top metrics used by B2B marketers to determine content success. Priorities are similar for B2C marketers.

5. Make search engine optimization a core component of content creation.

Improve your visibility and key metrics like engagement, time on site, sharing and conversions with strategic content optimization. Apply readability standards and optimize title tags, meta descriptions, subheadings, images and text in line with current SEO standards. Keep visitors clicking and engaged with smart internal linking that both improves user experience and resurfaces your most popular, highest-converting content.

6. Accelerate with automation.

Machine learning is growing in importance in search, especially where data sets are large and dynamic. Identifying patterns in data in real time makes machine learning a great asset to understand changes in your customer base, competitor landscape or the overall market. Ideally, your content automation system will include reporting to tell you not only how each piece is performing but also make recommendations to help you focus on your most valuable opportunities.

Automation allows you to manage routine tasks with less effort so that you can focus on high-impact activities and accomplish business goals at scale.

A — Actionable content is always on & ready for activation

By actionable content, I mean that which is ready to answers users’ questions but also is valuable way beyond the initial period of promotion after publishing.

7. Empower your content creators with technical SEO support.

Last month, I wrote about the importance of balancing technical and non-technical SEO within your organization. If you want your content to perform its best, you need to support your creative team with a technically sound, optimized online presence.  Site structure and hierarchy, meta data, mobile readiness, internal linking, site speed, coding errors and other technical SEO factors can all affect your content’s ability to rank.  Further, they can affect readers’ ability to access and enjoy the content and then take next steps. Get your technical and non-technical SEO in order to set your content team up for success.

8. Optimize for activation across multiple channels.

Search engine marketing is the second-most commonly used paid content promotion tactic, next only to social advertising.  Push your content to social channels like Twitter and Facebook, but don’t forget other channels like LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram and Google+.  Ideally, you’re going to have some understanding of your audience on each platform and which channels will be most receptive to each new piece. Make sure you’re optimizing your social posts for the platform on which you’re posting — cutting and pasting the same post across all channels doesn’t cut it.

R — Resonate with content promotion in relevant channels

Even if you build it, they will not come until attracted. The competition for eyes and minds is fierce; increase the efficacy of your organic efforts and promotional spend by targeting the right people in the right places at the right time.

9. Amplify in social channels for early traction.

Low spend minimums on channels like Twitter and Facebook make it affordable to run experiments against different audience segments and see where your content resonates best.  Plus, that initial boost of activity gives your content authority and appeals to the social networks’ ranking algorithms, helping you get more organic reach. If you are tracking and measuring correctly, you can see which audiences are not only engaged, but converting. That’s where you want to allocate your content-promotion budget, rather than having some predetermined amount of spend per channel that runs its course regardless of performance for each piece.

10. Syndicate and use paid promotion to reach targeted audiences outside your existing network.

Syndication takes content you’ve already published on your site and republishes it elsewhere, exposing you to another publication’s audience. You might be able to find organic syndication opportunities, and there are plenty of paid syndication services like Outbrain, Taboola or Zemanta.  If you’re looking at large-scale syndication, read Danny Sullivan’s caution on using links in syndicated pieces first to stay on the right side of Google.

11. Don’t forget email!

Your consumers want to hear from you. In fact, 86% want to receive emails at least monthly from companies they deal with, a MarketingSherpa survey found in 2015.  Make your call to action (CTA) to click through and read the content crystal-clear. Avoid placing competing CTAs in your email, and resist the urge to try to sell in every communication. Your content is designed to do the work of helping them take the next logical step.

T — Tangible business results are derived from SMART content

KPIs like social interactions and site visits give you a great idea of how well your content performs in search and social, but you need tangible business results to prove value.

12. Make content profitable with CTAs that drive performance.

What action would you like readers to take? Which of your site’s conversion pages is currently converting best and generating the highest-quality leads? These insights will help guide your CTA selection, but remember, your CTAs should also match the consumer intent you’re targeting with each piece. Don’t forget to include embedded performance tracking for both site traffic and conversions.

13. Incorporate elements that support multiple business functions.

Make your content multidimensional with elements to build brand authority, inspire or educate on product (or service), encourage engagement and more.  Incorporate testimonials into your content, where they can serve the purpose of providing social validation within the context of an existing consumer experience. Develop author personas to give your content greater authority and build the profiles of key employees and executives.

14. Improve ROI with ongoing content management and optimization.

How much content does your organization have sitting on-site and around the web? Each piece is an opportunity for ongoing traffic and lead generation, but only if it’s kept in line with constantly changing SEO standards.  Updating your entire catalogue of content every time Google releases an update would be a task so astronomical in scope that it’s not even worth considering doing manually.

Bringing it all together
Intelligent marketers are beginning to move the needle on content performance by embracing SEO and content as one. While it is true that both disciplines have high degrees of specialization (for example, technical SEO or branded content), the most prolific and tangible results come from a combination of both.

In a world where half of the population is now online, search engines are now at the core of business marketing. Research shows that 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine. If you’re a business owner, you have to work hard to remain relevant above the din of digital marketing.

Most of the internet searches are for brands, products, and services. A result in the first position earns a click-through-rate (CTR) over ten times higher than a ranking at position #10.

What Does an SEO Firm do?

If your website is not appearing among the top search engine result pages (SERPs) for target keywords, then you simply don’t exist. Search engine optimization (SEO) is about building your brand’s online visibility and reaching your target audience.

It entails using different techniques to boost the quality and quantity of website traffic. These SEO techniques increase the visibility of your website or a web page to users of all search engines.

This is where an SEO firm comes into play.  Outsourcing your SEO services to an experienced agency allows you to leverage technical expertise and cutting-edge SEO tools. The company works on your website with multiple objectives, including boosting ranking on SERPs, increasing organic web traffic, and converting more visitors to customers.

Your SEO partner achieves these goals using white-hat SEO techniques/tactics by following Google’s guidelines and Google algorithm protocols. The strategies might not guarantee overnight success but a gradual improvement in all SEO metrics.

These tactics also have an overall positive impact on your business. They range from social media marketing, link building, guest blogging to local SEO and others.

The best SEO firm deploys a comprehensive SEO program to deliver the desired organic results. This broad-based approach touches on the web design, structures, research, and development (R&D), content, links, UX, and analytics.

All of our designs incorporate best practices while ensuring the site is optimal for user and search experience.

 Essential SEO services you should get

When hiring an SEO company, it’s advisable to look at the specifics of the services offered.  An established SEO company should include the following services as part of the service level agreement (SLA):

Website Structure Analysis

You have to structure your website for easy navigation by both users and search engines. This is one of the essential services your SEO firm should offer. A web design team will look at key elements of the site structure, including:

• Site errors(Such errors include duplicate page content, 4XX errors, duplicate title tags, missing metatags, schema errors & mobile design)
• robots.txt /Indexing issues
• Metadata (the SEO team looks at issues such as duplicate title tags, meta descriptions, and site content)
• XML Sitemap structure and indexing
• Page loading speeds
• Indexed pages
• Site analytics. Actionable insights are derived from analytics that identify site progress and necessary improvements.
• AB testing to identify issues affect the user experience

Improving the site structure boosts the user experience (UX), which in turn improves site traffic. Better site speed reduces bounce rates. All these site improvements boost your site’s ranking on SERPs.

UX is essential to drive higher engagements, brand equity, search relevancy, and domain authority.

Optimizing Site Code and Structure

Some tweaks on your website can make a huge difference in your attempts to boost ranking on SERPs and increasing web traffic.  Good site structure also translates to a great user experience. Your SEO agency carries out some tasks to optimize your site’s code and structure. They include:

• Adding an XML sitemap
• Simplifying site structure for easy navigation
• Eliminate errors
• Internal linking. Links reinstate the relevance and authority of your website within your target markets.
• Neat, cleaner code

A strong site structure ensures overall ensures peak performance and search rankings.

On-page SEO

On-page optimization entails optimizing individual web pages for better ranking and higher web traffic in search engines. On-page content optimization is an essential service offered by an SEO firm. It’s all about improving the quality of the content through:

• Removing/rewriting duplicate content
• Keyword analysis optimization. Comprehensive keyword and market analysis informs and confirms the most appropriate strategy and budget.
• Analyzing E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness)
• Adding title tags, meta descriptions, Header tags
• Writing compelling headlines
• New landing pages to draw in other visitors
• Image optimization
• Content audit

On-page SEO factors establish the uniqueness and credibility of each page for visitors and search engines.

Optimizing Off-page Factors

Off-site presence matters a lot and your SEO Company should consider the following:

• Identify new, valuable directories to list your website
• Boosting your position on local SERPs
• Claim directory listings of your business on online directories like Yelp, Manta, and Google, verifying and updating them
• Leverage press releases

Website Content Analysis

Web content analysis helps improve the user experience which leads to better conversion. It also makes it easier to index content on your website leading to better ranking on SERPs. An SEO team covers various areas, including:

• Optimizing your content for voice search
• Keywords analysis and optimization
• Auditing poorly ranking content
• Resolving duplicate content
• Adding missing pages
• In local SEO, addressing Name-address-phone (NAP) number inconsistencies

Good content re-assures your audience and search engines of your authority, relevancy, and differentiation in the marketplace.

Off-page Analysis

Off-page SEO covers optimization techniques outside your site to improve your ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). This aspect of SEO focuses on what’s happening from outside your website but affects its ranking. A reliable SEO agency does off-page SEO analysis that should cover:

• Backlink profile (yours and those of competitors)
• Reviews
• Improving internal linking building
• Optimizing nap across every listing
• Mobile-friendly website
• Fixing your 404 errors
• Updating your local citation and directory profiles
• Guest blogging

Optimizing these aspects of off-page SEO for your business helps earn a top spot in search results, boosts traffic, leads, and revenue. It’s a crucial role played by your SEO firm.

Should I Hire an SEO Company?

If you meet any of the following requirements, you need to hire an SEO company, no ifs, ands, or buts.

1. The need to grow your business
2. You have no idea how your website contributes to your company’s bottom line
3. You want to expand your market reach
4. You want to gain a competitive edge
5. To enjoy better lead generation
6. For better sales conversions
7. You want to differentiate your brand from the competition
8. To guarantee your company’s future
9. You wish to outrank your competitors in the search results for target keywords.

Search engine optimization (SEO) holds the key to the success of your business. By partnering with a reliable SEO company, you’ll unlock your business’ potential in your niche. It’s the smartest decision you can make today.