Author: infogenix

How User Experience Influences SEO

Posted on by infogenix

How User Experience Influences SEO

Creating a great website is one thing, but generating the traffic you need to drive sales is another challenge altogether. Unfortunately, millions of business owners across the world struggle with search engine optimization, even after they have focused on generating unique content and filling their blogs with the perfect keywords. However, one aspect that many budding web designers struggle with is user experience.

What Is User Experience?

Put simply, user experience is how visitors interact with your site, and what they think of your page after they are done. While an easy-to-use website prompts visitors to navigate deeper into other pages of the website exposing them to more content, a confusing page might prompt them to jump ship sooner—which can hurt that specific pages visibility significantly. In fact, research has shown that visitor behavior affects organic rankings, with over 70% of users abandoning pages if the content is confusing and unoptimized. Fortunately, you can improve your website’s search engine optimization by focusing on user experience.

5 Easy Ways to Improve User Experience

Make Content Easy To Scan

Web readers like content that gets right to the point, which is why you should avoid packing your pages full of single-spaced text. Instead, use white space and formatting marks like bullets, headers, and italicized text. Focus on quality over quantity, and don’t be afraid to link to your sources.

Avoid Background Music

Just because you can make your favorite song autoplay whenever a new user visits your website doesn’t mean you should. In addition to potentially annoying anyone who visits your website, background music can slow down your page and make it hard for people to visit your website in public settings like their office.

Focus On Page Speed

Research has shown that 87% of users tend to abandon webpages that load slower than two seconds, which is why you should do everything you can to ensure fast page load speeds and that your website is mobile responsive. Avoid adding things like images that are bigger than they need to be, interactive tools that don’t need to be there, and bulky, inefficient code.

Use Great Pictures

Great pictures do more than make your website more interesting. With the right images, you can create the exact look and feel that you are going for, which can put people in the right frame of mind to spend some time on your website, blog, or online store.

Hire Professionals

If you aren’t sure where to start with improving your user experience, consider hiring a team of professionals to handle the job, such as the experts at Infogenix. In addition to helping with everything from web design to content updates, these professionals understand the intricacies of search engine optimization and can help your website to stand out from the crowd.

A New Site for a New Year

Posted on by infogenix

A New Site for a New Year

It’s nearly 2017, and we live in a world so technologically advanced that people don’t even bat an eye when they hear about technology like self-driving cars and pocket-sized mobile printers. However, even in a society of smart watches and home automation, many businesses are offering customers outdated, unsightly, and poorly-functioning webpages. In an increasingly competitive marketplace, your lackluster website may be the tipping point that drives consumers elsewhere.

This new year, in addition to your own list of goals, make a few for your business, including revamping your website. Responsive, attractive, and optimized websites can make a great first impression with web visitors, improve your conversion rates, and ultimately drive your sales.

Signs Your Website Needs A New Year’s Makeover

Wondering whether or not your website needs an update? Read through these signs that your site needs to be overhauled, and how working with the right web design company can help.

Pages Load Slowly

One of the hallmarks of an unprofessional website is pages that take forever to load. Loading problems are caused by a long list of offenders, ranging from music that plays automatically to the wrong image format to bulky, unnecessary code. Unfortunately, even a few seconds of lag could be enough to send potential customers running. Research has shown that 53% of web users abandon a website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load, which is why every business owner should spend the time to evaluate the load speed of their site.

If your website loads slowly, consider having your entire website rebuilt by a professional web design company like Infogenix. In addition to preserving and optimizing the content that you have produced over the years, the web experts here at Infogenix can help you to streamline your website, improve the flow of your pages, and update the look of your site.

Traffic Is Low

Web traffic isn’t always easy to come by, with the top Google listing nabbing nearly 33% of your potential customers. The further down your search ranking, the less likely clients are to find your website and research your company, which is why SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is so important.

Search engines like Google use a complex set of algorithms to determine which websites are relevant to any given search. Among other things, these web crawlers look for keyword usage, meta tags, headlines, and updated content. SEO services like Infogenix can carefully evaluate your website, updating your content, settings, and headlines to more closely align with what search engines are looking for—improving your search ranking and encouraging traffic.

Your Conversion Rates Are Terrible

When it comes to your website, what are your goals? Are you trying to encourage people to buy from your online store or do you want people to follow your blog? Your success or failure at being able to guide people towards your goals is known as your website’s conversion rate. The higher your conversion rate, the more likely your web visitors are to use your website like you want them to.

Unfortunately, poor conversion rates often mean that your website is non-functional, confusing, or filled with pages that fail to load properly. The national average for conversion rates across all industries is 2.35%, with the top 25% of businesses averaging about 5.31%. If your conversion rates are lower than the national average, or you simply want to strengthen your site’s performance, consider having a professional evaluate your website to check for problems.

Don’t let your website fall short of phenomenal. Enlist the help of our team at Infogenix. With over seventeen years of experience and a deep understanding of design, SEO, and conversion strategies, our innovative Utah web design company can make your business shine online.

What is Google Really Looking For?

Posted on by infogenix

What is Google Really Looking For?

Google is the world’s most popular search engine by far, with over 75% of Internet users reporting Google as their first choice. Yahoo, which was once one of the most popular search engines on the market, came in at around 8%. Because of their vast market share, Google’s policies and protocols matter more to businesses than ever before. They essentially get to decide who is seen by consumers–and who isn’t. So what do they want from the web pages they sort?

Staying Ahead of Google Updates

Google is constantly tweaking its algorithms to deliver the most relevant results to web searchers. Since Google doesn’t usually come out and announce that they are changing their metrics, your page rank might drop suddenly without warning or explanation. With first page search results enjoying the lion’s share of traffic, placing on even the second page of Google listings means that your website is completely overlooked by the vast majority of web users.

The only way to protect your page rank is to constantly stay ahead of Google updates, which can be difficult to do. Previous Google updates have included changes to the way the system treats certain URLs, how local businesses are displayed, and which kinds of tags the system looks for when indexing sites. Some Google updates have targeted websites that use duplicate, redundant, or excessive information, since these pages are inherently less useful to web users. What used to bump your rankings up drastically may now shove them down.

Fortunately, websites like mozcast.com are dedicated to monitoring Google’s web traffic to give people an idea of when changes might be occurring. Beyond watching these sites, here are some tips to protecting your web traffic so that your website can stay viable, no matter what kinds of updates Google throws your way.

Tips for Improving Your Search Ranking

Google’s primary goal is to promote sites that actually provide what searchers are looking for. For this reason, all their updates are geared toward identifying useful content. While other tips and tricks can help you get Google’s attention, the best way to stay on their good side through any update is to provide genuinely useful information.

Provide Value to Searchers

There is a reason that web developers and SEO experts alike tout the phrase “content is king.” When it comes to building a truly successful website, offering genuine, useful content to readers is more important than anything else. This means that instead of simply filling your site with poorly written, irrelevant pieces, focus on your business or website goals and offer content that readers would find helpful.

Make it a priority to use relevant sources, a professional, intelligent tone, and information that web readers aren’t likely to find other places. Before writing content for your website, think carefully about what readers will be looking for, and whether or not the content would be a valuable addition to your website.

Update Material Frequently

One of the things that Google web crawlers look for when they scan for valuable pages is new content, which is why you should never leave your website stagnant. Focus on updating your website frequently, even multiple times a day if possible. Adding sections that focus on current events or new trends can also help, since people are likely to search for that kind of content.

Create Content Without Click-Bait

Google also evaluates your webpage based on the number of ties that it has to other pages, since professional sites and blogs frequently refer people to other helpful resources. In the past, web developers could improve their site ranking by simply stuffing their posts with links to irrelevant webpages, but recent Google updates have cracked down on these kinds of practices. For this reason, avoid click-bait content, such as link stuffing or phrases like “click here for more information!”

Use Alt Tags and Metadata

Contrary to popular belief, the Google algorithm isn’t an all-seeing virtual life form that can reasonably and responsibly detect different kinds of data. For example, if you upload pictures to your website or blog, Google can’t tell what they consist of—unless you include alt tags and metadata. These important pieces of information can be added easily and will improve your page rank, since they give Google a more accurate description of what your page includes.

 

The Value of Professional SEO Businesses

Unless you have several hours each and every day to take care of your webpage, it can be hard to do everything from monitoring your page ranking to updating that blog. To make things much easier, consider hiring a professional Utah SEO company. Professional SEO companies specialize in learning more about the latest Google updates so that we can design smarter websites for our clients. Contact Infogenix to find out how we can improve your website or blog.