Every time a search engine user enters a keyword related to your business, you want your website to appear on the first page of the search results. Search engine optimization (SEO), the process of making your site more visible to people using search engines, makes that possible. Many companies follow the same basic SEO strategies, making it difficult for one company to break ahead of the pack and reach the top of the rankings. If you want better SEO results, try these five SEO strategies your competitors aren’t doing.

1. Investing in Content Marketing

Content marketing refers to the practice of creating and distributing relevant, valuable content to the people in your target audience. Blog posts, e-books, videos and case studies are just a few examples of content that can be used as part of your content marketing strategy. The key to using content marketing effectively is to do it consistently. Publishing one blog post isn’t enough to improve your rankings and attract new customers. You need to publish new content regularly, whether that means blogging three times per week or adding to a library of downloadable e-books on your website.

Even though consistency is important, it’s only one piece of the content marketing puzzle. You also need to focus on quality, as Google looks for quality signals when determining if one page should rank higher than another for the same target keyword. These quality signals include original analysis, in-depth topic coverage, relevant links and a close match between the user’s search intent and the content on the page.

2. Targeting Low-Competition Keywords

Some keywords are more competitive than others, meaning it’s more difficult to rank for them. For example, “diamond jewelry” is extremely competitive, as it’s short and attracts a high volume of search traffic. One of the biggest mistakes a website owner can make is focusing on these ultra-competitive keywords instead of searching for keywords with less SEO competition.

For a jewelry store owner selling diamond jewelry, it might be easier to rank for a term like “emerald cut diamond engagement rings,” even if fewer people are searching for that specific phrase. Finding less competitive keywords gives you time to build your site authority so that you can eventually start targeting more competitive terms.

3. Prioritizing the User Experience

Many of Google’s quality signals focus on the user experience. When someone visits your website for the first time, is it easy for them to find what they need? Do they have to click link after link just to find more information about your products or services? Is it easy for them to contact you? How long does it take your pages to load? If you deliver a high-quality experience, a new visitor is more likely to buy from you. A poor user experience, on the other hand, drives people away from your website.

Google also assesses your website based on its technical capabilities, such as mobile responsiveness and online security. Mobile responsiveness refers to a site’s ability to display correctly on different screens. To deliver an excellent user experience, your website should look and function well whether the visitor is using a laptop with a 15-inch screen or a smartphone with a much smaller screen. If you’re not already prioritizing the user experience, doing so can help you improve your search engine rankings and build a loyal customer base.

4. Focusing on Quality Link Building

It’s long been known that link building is one of the most important aspects of search engine optimization. When other websites link to you, it’s like their owners are giving your content a vote of confidence. They’re telling their visitors that you’re a trustworthy resource in your industry. Outbound links are also important, as they tell Google and other search engines that your website provides in-depth coverage of each topic and makes it easier for users to learn more.

Although inbound and outbound links are essential for improved rankings, it’s important to understand that not all links have the same value. If you have an inbound link from a sketchy website, Google may view it as a sign that your content isn’t as helpful as it could be, causing your site to drop in the rankings. To prevent this from happening, focus on building quality links. Here are a few tips:

• Participate in podcasts and television interviews to attract inbound links from traditional media outlets and podcast networks.
• Write guest blog posts for other websites. Make sure that the owner of each site agrees to link to a relevant page on your site in exchange for your expertise.
• Use social media to share your blog posts and other types of content.
• Check your inbound and outbound links regularly to make sure they work correctly.

5. Repurposing Existing Content

When you first start using content marketing as part of your SEO strategy, the thought of creating thousands of pages of new content can be daunting. The good news is that you don’t have to create every piece of content from scratch. Once you create an article or blog post, you can repurpose it in several ways. As a result, it’s much easier than you might imagine to put your content marketing strategy into practice.

Here are just a few examples of how you can repurpose existing content:

• If you have a blog post with several statistics in it, use the statistics to create an infographic.
• Old podcast episodes gain new life when you transcribe the audio into an article or how-to guide.
• Use a series of blog posts on the same topic to create an e-book.
• Search through past blog posts to find ideas for podcast episodes or media interviews.
• Use an article as the basis for a new YouTube video.

Start Optimizing Your Website

At Infogenix, we know the ins and outs of each ranking algorithm and understand how to optimize websites accordingly. To start getting more organic traffic, call (801) 724-7483 or email sales@infogenix.com.

It depends on what you need! A simple, information-based website can be built in a matter of hours, but these days, it’s likely you want and need something more: something dynamic and scalable, with a content management or e-commerce system that’s easy for your team to figure out and update on a regular basis, something that can grow with your business.

While there are tools out there that can help you build a website without learning to code, they often require expensive plugins, yearly subscriptions or frequent updates, and eventually you might reach a point where you can no longer expand your site to suit your needs, meaning you have to start all over again.

Things to consider before you build a website

To begin with, you need to have a decent sense of marketing and design — not just in theory, but in practice. You’ll want to consider imagery, color combinations, branding and copy, as well as the experience someone will have when they come to your site. How will they navigate it? Where will they find the information they need? What standards should you conform to? Additionally, you’ll want to think about Search Engine Optimization: what will you need to do to build a site that is “search-engine friendly?” Having an understanding of what coding languages do to make a website work can help you build a better website with a design that functions well visually and mechanically, and it means you’ll know how to fix things if something goes wrong.

How to get started building your own website

Building a site that’s clean, scalable, and dynamic means learning how to code. Gone are the days when HTML was all you needed to build a simple informational website. Websites now are built to perform, using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, or any number of other web programming languages, all of which do different things. Programming languages manage the way your site looks on the front end, and they manage the way it works behind the scenes. There are even programming languages that conduct the conversation between the front end and the back end of your site. Your site’s appearance and functionality can even determine if and how search engines show your site in search results.

If you choose to build your own website, you’ll want to start with four basic programming languages: HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP, the most widely-used languages for building basic websites nowadays.

What do web development programming languages do?

HTML, which stands for Hypertext Markup Language, controls how objects are displayed at the most basic level, including text, images and buttons. This is what the origins of today’s web was made with. It’s fairly easy to learn, but of course, pretty limiting, which is why you’ll want to learn CSS next.

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. CSS allows you to display content in a slightly more sophisticated fashion and, indeed, it controls the style of the content on your page. The “cascading” refers to the styling rules, which “cascade” down from different sources. Some rules take a higher precedence than others (for instance, some rules control how text appears over the entire website, while others control how text might look in one small box), so the “cascade” of style moves down this hierarchy. CSS can even detect whether a user is looking at your website with a phone, a tablet, or a screen, and display your site accordingly.

With these two languages, you can build a website with text and images. People will visit your website and see information that you have coded to display in a static fashion, and they might potentially be able to click on an email address to contact you. If you want something more dynamic, such as images that change when a user moves their cursor over them, JavaScript, another front-end coding language, is next on your list.

With these three languages, you can create a visually appealing website, but you won’t be able to accomplish much with it. If you want things like login or pop-up subscription forms or even something as simple as a contact form, you’ll want to learn PHP, which is known as a “server-side” or “backend” language. PHP, which stands for Hypertext Preprocessor, is the language that takes things from the back end (a database on your server) and hands them to the front.

Again, with these four languages, you can build a basic website that lets people get information about your business, but if you want to take it any further, you have a lot of options. There are many programming languages that serve different purposes, so you’ll need to research them to figure out which one works best with your server configuration and your specific needs. Oh, and also, you probably want to know at least a little about databases and how they manage information, too, if you’re collecting user data from your website.

The reason companies like ours exist

As you can see, creating today’s websites is a time-consuming affair. Unless you’re thinking about a career change, you likely have better things to do with your time, like build your business, manage your teams or sales processes, or easily update your site’s content without worrying that you might “break” something.

We can help. We’re one of the best for producing customizable websites that do exactly what you want them to. Not only do we know these languages, but we’ve grown with them and have a diverse team of designers and developers who know which languages work best for different needs. We understand how to build a site from the ground up, taking into consideration not just who will be using your website but how to build it so that it can grow with you.

We’ve worked with small businesses and multinational corporations, as well as everything in between. Visit our portfolio page to see some of work we’ve done. When you’re ready to make your vision live, we’re here to help.

Websites are the public face of your business, so you must have everything on it set up in a user-friendly method. Web design is one of the most critical aspects of creating a public image that accurately represents your business.

Planning your website’s design means you have to consider visitor behavior. People visiting your website want to find the information they need quickly. Ideally, navigating to the most popular places on your website will take a maximum of three clicks. Consider these five tips to boost your company’s website design in 2022:

#1: Organize the Web Design

A website that’s neatly organized can help visitors find what they need quickly. The focal point for most websites is the upper center of the page. This is where a customer’s eyes will land just below your logo or header.

Each element in the web design process should be checked before it’s implemented into the website. This makes it much easier to determine if there are issues with a specific part of the code for that element.

Contrary to what some people think, the homepage of a website should be easy to navigate. A minimalistic approach to this page is crucial, so visitors don’t become overwhelmed. The subpages on your website are where you can include relevant information.

Ideally, your homepage will include the most important at the top of the page. This is because you want readers to be able to see that vital information before they start scrolling.

The homepage should also include vibrant imagery and a call-to-action button or link that makes it easy for visitors to make a purchase or initiate contact.

#2: Make Reading Easy

Your website should be easy to read. It’s essential to consider the page’s visual hierarchy when designing it. Start with the vital information at the top of the page. Use bolded, large titles to draw attention to those areas, so visitors know what they will read in that section. Make sure that each section of text is labeled correctly.

Having large blocks of text on a website isn’t a good idea. It’s always better to break things up into smaller chunks. Most readers aren’t going to read through your entire website. Instead, they’ll only scan content looking for keywords. Once they see the keywords they’re looking for, and they may read that section.

As you’re considering the text for your website, choose a contrasting color from the background to make it easy to see the letters. Opt for a single font face so that readers aren’t distracted by many different fonts.

If you have long lists of information to provide, consider using bulleted lists to relay them. Visitors to websites tend to focus more on those since they’re digestible bits of information. If you have much information to relay, consider using infographics to make it more attractive and easier to spot.

#3: Include Mobile Design

The vast majority of visitors to websites now are on mobile devices. This makes mobile-friendly web design a priority for all designers. Creating a mobile website is a little different than creating one for a desktop computer.

Typically, mobile websites have fewer page elements and are less cluttered than the standard website. The bottom line is that all visitors to your website, no matter what device they use, should be able to enjoy the website.

Because you’re creating websites for computers and mobile devices, you should avoid using background music. While it might seem like an excellent concept to have music, this can slow down a website considerably. Mobile users might be shocked if they open your website and random music starts playing.

#4: Comply with Accessibility Guidelines

Websites are expected to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. You can do this in several ways, and they’re relatively easy to implement into your website. The key is to ensure that someone who’s blind or hearing impaired can still navigate through your website and get information. These points can help you ensure ADA compliance:

• Enable keyboard navigation controls
• Use alt tags to describe media elements
• Provide captions for all videos and audio clips
• Make authentication accessible by allowing password managers and copy/paste
• Leave controls visible and make dragging controls optional
• Highlight ways for users to get help with the website

Making your website ADA-friendly could open your business up to a new demographic of customers. Many people appreciate inclusive companies, so showing this on your website is beneficial.

#5: Focus on Speed

One of the final tests that you need to run on your website is for speed and responsiveness. As you do this, you can determine what elements need to be altered. Some interactive elements might have to be resized to function correctly and work on all devices as intended.

Visitors to your website don’t want to wait for the elements on the page to load. The only way you can combat this is to ensure there isn’t any lag. Too much lag increases the chance of a bounce. A page with a 5-second load time has an increased bounce probability of 90%, rising to 106% at 6 seconds.

According to Adobe, around 47% of people expect a website to load in a maximum of two seconds. If your website takes longer, you risk visitors leaving for another website. This could take business away from your company and send it to a competitor.

Contact Our Experts in Web Design

Building a website is complex work that is best handled by professionals. The team at Infogenix makes it easier for you. Give us a call to learn more about how having a dedicated account manager and our easy-to-use Content Management System can benefit your company.