7 Things Often Overlooked When Designing A Website

When you create a new website, it’s easy to look for aesthetics rather than practicalities. You want it to look nice for your visitors, and while that certainly is important, you may be ignoring essential elements. Here are 7 of the most overlooked features on websites:

Meta Data

The meta data of a website is usually hidden in the underlying HTML code that makes up the page and allows it to be visible in a web browser. However, this data is vitally important as it is read by the search engine spiders to affect your rankings. The meta data of a web page includes the page title, the description, page headings, and subheadings. Understanding these important elements of search engine optimization will make your site more competitive online.

Google Analytics Tracking

This is an online analytics and tracking service that is freely available to all, courtesy of Google. You need to set up a Google Analytics account (http://www.google.com/analytics/), and then simply follow the easy on-screen instructions to analyze your web traffic and know where each visitor came from, and more. You can also set up dashboards for at-a-glance information and have your most important data emailed to you on a regular bases.

Mobile/ Responsive Design

Mobile use now accounts for more than half of all Internet access, so it is very important that your website has a responsive design, and not a static design. You need to have an HTML template that can respond properly with no sideways scrolling on even the smallest screen size, if you want to do business online. Services like MobileEasy are helpful for a small business without a large budget for a website overhaul.

Clear Calls-To-Action

Just having a great sales page is good, but it isn’t good enough. People might be convinced that your product is just right for them, but if you don’t have a clear call to action, they probably won’t buy from you. Tell them clearly and distinctly to buy now!

Testimonials

It’s all very well for you to say your product or service is great, but it’s much better when other people say it too. Always try to get satisfied customers to provide you with a testimonial, and display it proudly on your website.

Security (SSL Certification)

Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL, is essential if you do e-commerce. In short, SSL encrypts sensitive information. If you accept credit cards on your site without an SSL Certificate, for example, it would be possible for someone with the right equipment to harvest the credit card numbers.

Contact Information

All too often a website doesn’t make it easy for their visitors to make contact. Always have a prominently displayed contact page. Include an email and phone number at the very least, if possible. Having contact information on your website increases visitor confidence.

Bring Customers to Your Door Using Google My Business

How Using Google My Business Can Help Grow Your Business.

Google My Business is the free upgrade to the services from Google previously covered by both Google Places for Business, and Google+ Pages Dashboard. Both of the previous services were also free, and were a way for businesses to manage their information online. Google My Business combines the best of those services, while adding better functionality.

It might be natural for some business owners to think that if they already have a well-built, comprehensive website that ranks well for its main keywords, then they really have no need for something like Google My Business. This is a short-sighted view, as the free Google service is an excellent complement to a company website. It provides your business with a unique presence on the world’s most influential online company, and it costs nothing, apart from the simple task of gathering the necessary company information together.

Google My Business works primarily at a local level. It’s about connecting with potential customers and getting relevant leads from them. If you are to take full advantage of this service, you need to start by filling out your business information as fully as possible. Make the page that people land on a rich information-packed place where people can find what they need, and go on to make contact with you.

TIP: Make sure your business name, address, and phone (NAP) are used consistently throughout all online directories, and especially Google My Business. It should be an exact match to the NAP info found on your website. This ensures your message is consistent for potential customers who may try to locate your business, and is beneficial to the health of your website in regards to SEO.

Google My Business is designed to include a wealth of different, highly-relevant information, so make full use of it. The greater the detail on your Google My Business page, the higher it will rank, and more people will come across it in their searches.

Features of Google My Business

The features of the service are impressive. You're provided with a dashboard that is virtually a backroom CRM where you can control everything and view traffic stats. You're not limited to just having text on your Google My Business page either. You can, and should, add photos, video or podcast audio – or better yet, all three.

Google My Business gives you direct access to your Google+ account, Reviews, Insights, Analytics, AdWords, Hangouts and YouTube, all from a single dashboard. Properly set up and managed, this free service is really all you need to successfully bring crowds of willing customers straight to your door.

Need assistance? CC Communications will ensure your business is claimed and optimized to provide you with the full benefits of the Google My Business tool. Contact our team at marketing@cccom.com to learn more.

Why is Responsive Design Important?

If you've been following our blog, then most likely you have seen us use the term "responsive
design" a number of times - and for good reason. In 2016, it's a primary design strategy when creating or redesigning a website. If you’re unclear as to why responsive design is important, then here is a quick primer.

How Does it Work?

Responsive design, also known as a mobile-friendly website, ensures your website visitors experience a pleasant browsing experience, regardless of the web-enabled device they use to visit your website. Mobile phones, tablets, and desktops all come in different shapes and sizes, and a website with responsive design responds to the device you're using and automatically adjusts the site to best display in the device.

Why is Responsive Design so Important?

Do you have a smartphone? Do you use it often? I'm not a mind reader, but I'm willing to bet your answers to both questions are yes. We’ve all visited a website that was NOT Responsively Designed from our smartphone. There was a lot of scrolling, pinching, and resizing to view the entire website. Annoying, right?

The size of the smartphone market, which is estimated at 68% of Americans, makes it more crucial than ever to ensure you’re providing the best user experience. And as we’ve mentioned in prior posts, the better the user experience, the better your search engine optimization will be. This is one reason why Google gives search rank priority to any business with a mobile-friendly design.

How to Know if Your Site is Responsive?
There’s an online tool provided by Google, and you can use it to run a free test of your site. If your results come back with anything other than “Awesome! This page is mobile-friendly,” then you’ll want to take the necessary steps required to get your website in line with today’s technology. Our team at CC Communications specializes in designing functional, visually appealing responsive design websites and we'd love the opportunity to speak with you about how our team can transform your business' online presence.

Connect with our team at www.CCCom.com/ContactUs for a no obligation analysis of your current web design. Ensuring you have a responsively designed website will be an investment into your future, put your business ahead of your competitors, and most of all will provide your website visitors and customers a pleasurable experience on your website.

The Beginner's Guide to SEO - Part 2

Are you new to search engine optimization? We're detailing some of the key strategies you'll want to consider when auditing your website for Search Engine Optimization performance. This is part two of a series. If you haven't read it already, be sure to start with the Beginner's Guide to SEO - Part 1.

Why should you concentrate on SEO? Because when consumers are searching for a specific product, business, or service, they don't venture past the first page of Google. If your website isn't appearing on the top page, then your competitors are edging you out, which means you need to take proper measures to regain that lost traffic. So, what can you do to boost your SEO health? Take note of the following tips and contact the CC Communications team. We've been tailoring successful SEO campaigns for clients for over 22 years, and can provide an in-depth assessment to help get your site back on track.

Internal Links
Most SEOs and businesses focus on link building to websites outside of their own, but it's often forgotten that it's also important to link between pages on your own website, too! Internal link building provides an information trail through your website for users to easily navigate, and creates a hierarchy of information. Creating links from your more popular website pages to your sub-pages also gives you the opportunity to share your SEO 'juice' and increase the visibility of linked pages on your website.

Page Titles and Descriptions
One of the bigger errors you can make is generically titling your pages. For example, titling your homepage 'Home' does absolutely nothing for your SEO health. What does 'Home' tell the search engines? Consider page titles that speak to who you are and what you offer. Take for example, the CC Communications page title for our homepage: Charlotte Web Design & Development | CC Communications. It outlines our location, targeted keyword terms & main service offerings, and the company name. Be mindful to keep all of your page titles to 70 characters or under.

Your page description allows you to go more into detail about what one will find on a selected page of your website. Do not simply copy and paste a generic message onto all pages of your website. Duplication will not serve, but hinder, your On-Page SEO campaign. Write descriptions that are no more than 155 characters and uniquely speak to the content of the given page.

Become Social
Social Media has become increasingly important to SEO. Not only does social media activity show the search engines that your website hosts authority and is valuable, it also increases your opportunity to become indexed more quickly. The more fans, followers, likes, and friends you have on your social networks that interact with your business, the more authority you create, meaning you have a strong possibility of showing in their social media news feeds and personalized settings in the major search engines. Social Media is viral and the more 'shareworthy' content you provide, the better chances you'll have of having the word of your business spread like wildfire.

Ensure Your Website Has a Site Map
Though it seems minor, implementing a site map hosts bold benefits, such as easier website navigation and better visibility on the major search engines. Each time you make changes to your website, or add pages, your site map alerts the search engines of these updates for proper indexing.

###

CC Communications has been helping our clients thrive online for 22 years... How can we serve your business?

The Beginner's Guide to SEO - Part 1

5 Tips to Aid Your On-Page SEO Campaign. 

By now, most people have a basic understanding of what SEO is or at least know how crucial it is to implement a strong SEO campaign to expand and maintain your online presence. If you're a new kid in town or need a refresher, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is essentially the strategy and techniques that are used help a website achieve high rankings in the search engines, like Google and Bing. The better your website ranks for relevant keyword terms that one would use to find your business online, the better optimized your website has become or is becoming. You can reasonably assume you'll have more website traffic and more potential clients exploring your products or services.

Truly, if your website is not ranking well in the search engines, your competitors websites are...

Website Content 
While engaging in an SEO campaign or correctly conveying your services to your website visitors, content is king...Hands down. What content you have on your website truly is of utmost consideration for your SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Be mindful; just because you have a lot of content on your website, it doesn't mean it is always helpful. Make sure to infuse keywords or keyword terms (common terms that one would use to describe and find your website) into your content as you're able. For example, it's no secret that 'Charlotte web design' is obviously a keyword term that we'd like to rank well for and through our content, we take the consideration to implement that term as we're able.

Also consider hyper-linking specific keywords to internal (hosted on your website) and external (outside of your website) destinations, which is of huge benefit, too. Make sure that the keywords that you link to are relevant to what one would find on the linked page. Avoid using phrases like "click here" as you're missing out on an opportunity to fully optimize the phrase. An example of this practice would be adding a link here for our webpage on SEO services.

Side Note: Save the flowery writing, or what I call 'puppies and kittens' writing for somewhere else. I'm an admitted 'puppies and kittens' writer, but when it comes to SEO and keyword driven content, there is no room for that. Make your content as focused and meaty as possible.

Blog 
Blogging has multiple benefits for your business. When you create relevant, keyword-rich, original content, not only does your website benefit, your business savvy spreads by positioning yourself top-of-mind to your audience. If you create posts that are useful, interesting, and original, you add value and take the steps to earn your spot as an industry expert. I must caution that haphazardly posting a few blog entries will not cut the mustard; you need to be consistent with blogging and keep posts coming at a steady pace.

Name Your Website Images
When you save a document or image to your desktop or server, how are you labeling the image? Search engines do not read images as we do; they read images by the title. Take this for example. Your business is in the food & beverage industry, specializing in creating sweet treats. You're adding a new image to your website via your CMS and you title it Pic1948459.jpg. How does that benefit your SEO? It definitely doesn't. Take the extra few seconds to correctly title the image:  Charlotte-MiniCupcakes-CCBakingCompany.jpg. Not only does your image include your region, what the picture entails, it also includes your business. Much less, fully and correctly labeling your images will go a long way to ensuring that you're able to stay organized, without flipping through hundreds of pictures.

Leave Out the Meta Keywords 
In the past several years, Google has publicly noted that they do not take keyword meta tags into consideration for an SEO campaign. Check out what Matt Cutts of Google had to say about this fact. In the past, search engines 'read' the keywords that were embedded websites.  However, some websites began an unethical approach called 'keyword stuffing', where they would input dozens of keywords into their website meta data that they wished to rank for, whether it was relative to their to their business or not.  Put your focus into filling out your Title Tags and Meta Descriptions instead, which are of great consideration to your On-Page SEO.

Don't Forget the ALT Tags 
Similar to labeling images copiously, ensure that you also fill in the ALT tag associated with your images. An ALT tag is the text that is associated or alternative to viewing your image. You don't need to write a novel about your image; instead, just a few words that describe what a picture entails. For example, if you have a puppy training business and you're looking to create an ALT tag for a picture of puppy training, consider having the ALT tag read, 'German Shepard Puppy Training Charlotte NC.

There are obviously more than five things that need to be done for a strong SEO campaign, so please consider this blog post one in a series. Take a second to follow the CC Communications blog to ensure that you don't miss a beat!

Can we help you in the meantime? If you're interested in the comprehensive SEO and Internet Marketing services that CC Communications offers, or would like more information, please contact Marketing@CCCom.com or call us at 704-543-1171.