In times of economic hardship, small businesses often have to make tough decisions about where to allocate their limited resources. One area that is often considered for cutbacks is search engine optimization (SEO) services. However, in this blog post, we argue that small businesses should continue with SEO even, and especially when the economy is down.
The Importance of SEO
SEO is a digital marketing technique that involves optimizing a website’s content and structure to increase its visibility and ranking on search engine results pages. This visibility can translate into increased website traffic, leads, and sales.
In today’s digital age, where the majority of consumers start their buying journey with a search engine, SEO has become an essential part of any business’s marketing strategy. In fact, a study by BrightEdge found that organic search drives 53% of website traffic, making it the most significant source of website traffic.
SEO is a Long-Term Investment
One of the most significant benefits of SEO is that it is a long-term investment. Unlike other marketing strategies that provide short-term benefits, SEO can continue to drive traffic and leads for months and even years after the initial investment.
For example, let’s consider a small business that invests in SEO services for six months. During that time, the business sees a significant increase in website traffic, leads, and sales. However, if the business stops investing in SEO, that traffic and revenue will likely begin to decline over time.
On the other hand, if the business continues to invest in SEO, that traffic and revenue will continue to grow and compound over time. In this way, SEO is a long-term investment that can provide significant returns for small businesses.
SEO is Cost-Effective
Another benefit of SEO is that it is cost-effective. Unlike other marketing strategies that require a significant upfront investment, SEO can be implemented at a relatively low cost.
Small businesses often find themselves competing with larger, more established companies with bigger marketing budgets. However, SEO can level the playing field by providing small businesses with the opportunity to compete with larger companies on a level playing field.
For example, a small business that invests in SEO can rank higher on search engine results pages, or SERPs, than a larger company that does not invest in SEO. This visibility can lead to increased website traffic, leads, and sales for small businesses, giving them a competitive advantage.
Conclusion
In conclusion, small businesses should continue with SEO even when the economy is down. SEO is a long-term investment that can provide significant returns for small businesses. It is also cost-effective and can help small businesses compete with larger, more established companies.
Established in 1998 and based in Orem, Utah, Infogenix was built from the ground up to be a different kind of web company. Rather than simply creating a website, Infogenix focuses on the whole of Internet presence, including managing, marketing, and advertising.
Search engine optimization has been around since 1997. Since then, it’s evolved into a very intricate system that includes algorithms from major search engines, particularly Google. There are three primary considerations when you’re trying to improve the SEO value of your website – widespread searches, local searches, and map pack placement.
For the most part, small businesses and those that only offer goods and services to limited geographical areas don’t have to worry about widespread searches. Instead, their SEO budget should include a primary focus on local searches and map pack placement.
Contrary to what some individuals believe, you can’t just throw in the cities your company tailors to and rank well in search engines. Each page of your website presents a unique opportunity to appeal to local searchers and to place better in local searches on different search engines.
Core Elements of Local Search Placement
There are three primary factors that Google considers when determining the ranking of a local business.
Relevance: Relevance deals with how your website relates to a specific search.
Proximity: This has to do with how close your company is to the searcher’s actual location based on their GPS or their targeted search area.
Reviews: Customer reviews are largely factored into the placement of your business among similar businesses.
Developing your local SEO strategy requires that you consider all these factors and determine the most effective and impactful manner to weave them into your website. Each page of the website is a chance to increase the SEO factors that will move your company higher in the rankings when targeted searches occur.
Online Review Management
Online reviews about your company play a huge role in building your virtual reputation. While it might be tempting to just leave those alone, it’s never a good idea to allow reviews to stagnate. Instead, use every review to boost your company’s online brand.
Companies that answer every review are viewed as more customer-focused and responsive. This gives some searchers a sense of security about your company. Even a couple of sentences acknowledging a positive review can be just as valuable as that review.
Negative or neutral reviews might initially seem like a bad thing to have posted online. Instead of looking at them in that manner, use them as a way to show that you want to make your customers happy with their experience. Reply to those reviews with concern. Contact the reviewer and try to correct the problem. Once the matter is resolved, follow up on the review thanking the reviewer for the opportunity to make things right.
Secondary Signals for Local Search Placement
Several secondary signals work together to affect search engine placement. While these don’t have as big of an impact as the three core elements of local search engine placement, they can mean the difference between staying stagnant in the searches and moving your company up higher in the rankings.
Review signals
Review signals are more than just how many favorable reviews your company has. Instead, it has to do with how diverse the reviews are, when they were submitted, and how many reviews the company has.
Linking signals
Inbound links to your website and outbound links from your website are important. The anchor text other websites use to link to your website is important. Your outbound links should be to high-quality domains. Some of the outbound links should be to other local websites for relevance.
Business listing signals
Business listing signals don’t have anything to do with your company’s website. Instead, it deals with where your company is listed online, most importantly, on popular local business listings, including:
Google Business
Bing Places
Yelp
Facebook
Apple Maps
LinkedIn
Better Business Bureau
Local Chamber of Commerce
InfoUSA
Local Directories
411.com
CitySearch.com
Foursquare.com
MerchantCircle.com
Other similar directories, including industry-specific ones
It’s crucial that you have the NAP (name, address, and phone number) for your business prominently displayed on your website because NAP is used to cross-reference these business listings with your company. Without this information, the search engines won’t include the information in your online search placement score. It is also important to make sure that the NAP is constant across the web. You don’t want to confuse customers or search engines that associate your address with your business.
Social media signals
Interactions with the social media accounts you have linked to your website are important. Search engines crawl things like votes, posts, links, and reviews on those social media profiles. Follower engagement on these profiles is important because search engines perceive good engagement as a sign that the company is relevant and has a high value.
Visitor behavior signals
The way visitors interact with your website also impacts search engine placement. The location of people who click through your website, how many clicks to call occur, and the number of check-ins at your company all play a role in how the search engine algorithm perceives the website.
Appealing to Local Searchers
Appealing to local searchers requires you to do several things. The goal is to have people in your target area view your company as an authority in your chosen industry. It should show visitors that you’re a local company that cares about the area and is investing in the community. Visitors to your website need to know that your company is reputable and authentic.
Claim your Google My Business account: This enables you to take control of the information in the search engine results. You can add features, including photos that enable searchers to take a look at your company. There’s also an option to upload a 30-second video to introduce your company.
Localize your social media profiles: Complete the location information and stay active on the profile. Add pictures. Tag local landmarks when you can. For example, if you take your team out for lunch, tag the restaurant. This adds authenticity to the profile.
Include local keywords: Local keywords include things like your proximity to popular locations, such as major attractions, airports, and similar points. Some localized content, such as neighborhood names and similar information can be sprinkled in but shouldn’t be overwhelming.
Create city pages: Each page should have different content, so the pages aren’t flagged as copies of each other. This strategy is best for companies that have multiple locations.
Importance of a User-Friendly Interface
Your entire website must be user-friendly. This includes the overall layout and the information you present. The days of keyword stuffing to boost search engine rankings are long gone. Instead, you must provide valuable information that’s directly related to the topic of the page.
Content should be broken down into chunks of content that are easy to digest. Remember, visitors to websites often skim content so having long paragraphs on a page is pointless. Bulleted lists, subheadings, infographics, and pictures can break up information as long as they aren’t intrusive or distracting.
The website should be easy to navigate for all users. It can’t be cluttered and all text should be easy to read. Using elements like alt text for pictures enhances the experience for visitors who may have vision challenges. This also helps to ensure that your website is compliant with Americans with Disabilities Act guidelines.
Inclusion of Core Web Vitals
You have to consider how your website’s pages perform when you’re developing your company’s website. These have to do with the page experience of visitors to a website. The page’s responsiveness, loading performance, and stability are all factors in the page experience, but these are difficult to quantify for the purpose of website evaluation and search engine placement.
Google introduced the Core Web Vitals to address the quantification difficulties. These three values include:
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): This is a measure of how stable your website is as it’s loading. Elements shifting as a page load has a negative impact on this metric.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): This is a measure of how fast a website loads based on the largest element on the page. All elements, including text and graphics, are considered.
First Input Display (FID): This is a measure of website responsiveness. All page interactions, including clicks and scrolls, are factored into this score.
Google uses red, yellow, and green visuals to help website owners know what their scores are for the Core Web Vitals. Having all three in the green range is necessary for the website to receive a boost in the rankings.
Conversion Optimization Increases Return on Investment
The conversion of either visits-to-sales or visits-to-clicks is important because a better conversion rate means that you’re getting the best return on investment possible. Your business’ website can be one of the greatest advertising tools you have, as long as it’s kept current and relevant to current needs and trends. Optimizing the website to encourage visitors to make a purchase or contact your company is highly beneficial, especially when it’s done in a friendly, non-intrusive manner.
Contact Infogenix to Improve Your Company’s Local Online Presence
Search engine algorithms often change, which makes it difficult for most business owners to stay on top of what their company’s website needs. The professionals at Infogenix keep track of the most current algorithm components to ensure our clients can place well in search engine results. Contact our team for a free estimate for our personalized local SEO service by giving us a call or submitting our convenient online form.
Established in 1998 and based in Orem, Utah, Infogenix was built from the ground up to be a different kind of web company. Rather than simply creating a website, Infogenix focuses on the whole of Internet presence, including managing, marketing, and advertising.
Search engine optimization improves your site’s page rankings, making it easier for potential customers to find your business. Whether you’re just starting a website or looking to drive more traffic to an existing site, one of the best ways to get results is to focus on site structure. Keep reading to learn more about why site structure is important and find out how you can use it to improve your search engine rankings.
Why Is Site Structure Important?
In simple terms, site structure is the way you organize the content on your website. A good structure is essential for delivering a positive user experience and boosting your search engine rankings It’s also part of your marketing funnel that leads people to become customers. From the visitor’s perspective, site structure is important because it influences how easy—or difficult—it is to find your products and services. If someone comes to your site and has to click page after page to find what they need, they might get discouraged and end up buying from one of your competitors.
Your site structure also helps Google and other search engines understand what each page is about. That makes it easier to determine if your site is relevant to specific keywords, which may improve your search engine rankings. For example, Google sees the pages in your navigation menu as some of the most important pages on your site. Those pages are likely to show up higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs) than pages that are buried under layers of other content.
Good site structure also has the following SEO benefits:
It makes it easier to acquire high-quality backlinks to your site.
Search engines will find new pages faster, giving you a boost in the SERPs.
It’s easier to determine if you have duplicate content, which can affect your search engine rankings negatively.
9 Ways to Improve Your Site Structure for SEO
Now that you understand why site structure is so important, here are nine things you can do to make sure your site’s structure works for you instead of against you.
1. Think Carefully About the Right Structure for Your Site
When you’re choosing a site structure, you have several options. The most common is the hierarchy, which starts out with broad categories and then gets narrower as the user makes navigation decisions. Retail stores often use the hierarchical structure, as it makes it easier for customers to find specific products. Shoppers start out with a broad category like “Shoes” and then click through to sneakers, pumps, sandals, or other shoe types.
The database site structure is based on the use of metadata and tags. Although this structure makes it easier for users to search for relevant content, it’s also one of the most complex to maintain. A sequential site structure is appropriate for sites that only have a few pages of content. You may also want to use the sequential structure if you need visitors to see your content in a specific order. For example, a fitness trainer that offers a five-step program for losing weight might use this structure to ensure the steps are displayed in the correct order.
The matrix structure relies on internal links for navigation. It’s ideal for displaying a large amount of information without having to worry about creating complex navigation menus. An online glossary is a good example of a site that works well with the matrix structure, as the site owner doesn’t have to worry about visitors viewing the content in a specific order.
2. Choose Relevant Keywords
A good site structure starts with in-depth research to find out what keywords people are using to find your website. If you operate a business in the outdoor niche, you may want to look for keywords related to camping, fishing, boating, and canoeing. Once you have some general topics in mind, you can find more relevant keywords by drilling down into each topic. If you’re working on the fishing category, for example, you might want to look for keywords related to lures, live bait, tackle boxes, waders, and other relevant items.
Once you have a list of target keywords, you can start thinking about the best structure to use for your site. In this example, the hierarchical structure probably works best, as customers will be able to choose a broad category and then search for specific products within that category.
3. Structure Navigation Menus Carefully
Your navigation menu tells the search engine bots which of your site’s pages is the most important, so you need to structure each menu carefully. Many sites use horizontal menus, but you can also use vertical navigation bars, “hamburger” menus, or dropdown menus. The right choice depends on many factors, including how much content you have and how that content is organized. If your site has thousands of pages, you may want to use dropdown navigation, which allows users to click on a broad category and then choose a subcategory. Horizontal menus work well for sites with just a few pages, or for sites that have just a few broad content categories.
4. Avoid “Hiding” Content
If you want to deliver a positive user experience, you must make it as easy as possible for visitors to find what they need. Generally, a visitor shouldn’t have to click more than two or three links to find a specific product or service. Whether you’re building a website or updating a site’s existing structure, make sure that your navigation menus and internal links make it easy for users to find helpful content.
5. Focus on People, Not Search Engines
SEO is important, but that doesn’t mean you should focus exclusively on SEO and forget about everything else. It doesn’t matter how good your rankings are if people can’t find the information they need to feel comfortable buying from you. Fortunately, it’s possible to deliver a positive user experience and improve your page rankings at the same time. Writing high-quality content, formatting it in a logical way, and making it easy for users to find what they need can all boost your rankings and improve the user experience.
6. Make Your Content Scannable
If you open a webpage and see a huge wall of text, what do you do? Most people just exit the page and look for another site with the information they need. Part of having a good site structure is formatting your content so that it’s easy to read. Content should be highly scannable, which involves using header tags (H2, H3, etc.), bulleted lists, numbered lists, bold text, and other formatting elements. As the user’s eye moves down the page, these elements will guide them along, making the content easier to digest.
7. Use Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs are navigation tools that help visitors understand how the content they’re reading relates to other pages of content on the same website. Many retail stores use breadcrumbs to make it easy for users to navigate. For example, Bed Bath & Beyond has broad content categories. When a user clicks one of those categories, they’re presented with several subcategories, such as storage bins and boxes, storage cubes, storage baskets, and storage totes. Each of these pages leads back to the main category, making it easier for users to find what they need.
8. Maintain Balanced Categories
When possible, make sure your content categories are well-balanced. Generally, you shouldn’t have one category with two pages of content and another category with 500 pages of content. Try to have about the same number of pages assigned to each category to make it easier for search engines to crawl your site and understand what each page is about.
9. Keep Your Content Up to Date
For search engine users, there are few things more frustrating than when a website displays old information that’s no longer relevant. One common example of local events calendars. Someone looking for a weekend activity doesn’t want to know what activities were available 3 years ago. They want to find an activity they can do this weekend or sometime in the near future. The same rule applies to e-commerce sites that continue listing discontinued products even though there’s no chance of those products ever coming back into stock. It’s disappointing when someone searches for a product, finds a listing, and then realizes that the item is out of stock and has been discontinued.
Updating your site regularly is also essential for good SEO results. Every time you update a page, Google and other search engines notice that there’s something new, which gives you a little boost in the rankings. Refreshing existing content can also help you drive more traffic to your website, showing the search engines that your pages are relevant to users’ keyword searches. If you do a search on Google, you’ll notice a date under each meta title. When that date is several years old, users may wonder if the content is still relevant, prompting them to click links with more recent dates.
Fresh content is also helpful for maintaining good site structure, as it can make it easier to get rid of unneeded categories and make sure your site’s structure makes sense for what your typical visitor is trying to achieve. As you work through your older content, you may decide to consolidate some of it or delete it altogether, leaving fewer pages left to organize.
Partner with Infogenix for Better Site Structure
At Infogenix, we know the search engines inside and out. Our SEO experts know exactly how to develop a site structure that delivers a positive user experience and helps search engines understand what your site is all about. If you need help implementing these tips or getting better SEO results in general, contact our Utah SEO agency at (801) 724-7493 or request a free estimate. We have custom SEO services available to help your business succeed.
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.
Established in 1998 and based in Orem, Utah, Infogenix was built from the ground up to be a different kind of web company. Rather than simply creating a website, Infogenix focuses on the whole of Internet presence, including managing, marketing, and advertising.
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.
Established in 1998 and based in Orem, Utah, Infogenix was built from the ground up to be a different kind of web company. Rather than simply creating a website, Infogenix focuses on the whole of Internet presence, including managing, marketing, and advertising.
Design Portfolio
