If your website has recently been suffering in terms of performance, you may be considering a few different approaches for helping remedy this. Two of the most common options within the SEO and online marketing world for websites dealing with these concerns: Either redesigning the website itself, or taking part in a process known as CRO, or conversion rate optimization.
At SEO Werkz, we’re here to provide a comprehensive range of private label SEO services, including CRO services, web design and numerous others to assist your site if your performance metrics have been lagging recently. What goes into either redesigning your website or performing robust conversion rate optimization services, and which of these approaches should you take? A hint: The answer to this last question depends in large part on your specific needs and the issues you’re facing, though there are definitely more situations where CRO is beneficial than the other way around. Here’s a primer on everything you need to know.
First off, let’s go over the basics of both these methods so you’re aware. A website redesign, as the name suggest, represents a total overhaul of the website from the ground up, including your layout, content, graphics and often even the platform the site is hosted on.
Now, that doesn’t mean a web redesign has to be overly complex. While some of these jobs will definitely involve some detailed work, there are also other processes that will take much less time, but offer great results. A redesign offers you the opportunity to align the website with various new products or information, or to change and update your branding. It’s also a great chance to optimize your site for mobile users, who are a larger and larger portion of web visitors with each passing year.
CRO, or conversion rate optimization, is a method of continuous testing for your site that’s often a preferable alternative to redesigning the entire site. It involves performing an analysis on the current site, then tweaking and changing elements – before testing the site in halves, with half of visitors seeing the new page setup while half see the old one.
Using this method, you will be able to gain tons of valuable information on the two different options. The “winning†page will be found by tracking the highest number of conversions, and then you will be able to implement the new page if appropriate. Meanwhile, the CRO process does not stop here – it continues on a regular basis, allowing you frequent opportunities to upgrade the site without changing it too broadly.
Our next several sections will go over some of the important factors to consider when choosing between these two options.
When it comes to setup, time factors and related themes, CRO is almost always the simpler and more straightforward process. There are some fairly limited forms of website redesign to consider, sure, but even the most bare-bones redesign will still take more time than a standard CRO setup and test. For a redesign, you will need to produce new content, an updated layout and potentially several new graphics, at the minimum.
One common reason for going with a redesign rather than CRO, however, is to obtain a new platform to host the site on. This is often due to issues with mobile responsiveness, where a new platform would be much more robust.
Here are some of the general setup, cost and acquisition factors to keep in mind when choosing between these:
From a broader perspective, a redesign is about starting fresh – while CRO is about improving your current product. Many redesigns allow you to format a completely new user experience and layout, adding features you never had before for a major upgrade. CRO, meanwhile, is meant for sites that are generally in good shape, but just need some minor attention in distinct areas – plus decisions driven by data – to improve the site. There will rarely be major user experience changes with CRO.
So how do you choose between these if your site is having some performance issues? By evaluating the factors we’ve gone over above, plus speaking to quality SEO professionals like ours. We’ve advised numerous past clients on which of these is the best approach based on the issues your site is having – are they systemic issues that affect multiple pages and even hit on platform concerns? If so, we may recommend a redesign, plus assist with it. But if your site is only having problems in a few smaller areas, we’ll likely advise you targeted CRO, which we’re also happy to assist with.
For more on any of our CRO or other SEO services, speak to the staff at SEO Werkz today.
It’s a common problem for internet marketing pros on either end of the spectrum: Either you have a great-looking site that struggles to perform from an SEO standpoint, or you have a fantastically optimized site from an SEO perspective, but it looks ugly and isn’t engaging to possible clients. These areas can be slightly tougher to optimize simultaneously than you might think, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
At SEO Werkz, we’re here to help. Our web design and SEO services are always carried out in coordination with one another, with each supporting the other in complementary ways. In this two-part blog, we’ll go over some of the tools we can help you use to get both a fantastic-looking site and one that’s fully optimized for back-end SEO.
Some of the key tools available to all online marketing pros here are webfonts, of which there are several options and varieties – Google, Fonts.com, Font Deck, Typekit and others all have their own styles. These are great-looking font options that allow your site to look good without sacrificing vital crawlability.
Generally, we’ll use these fonts in coordination with visual elements like banners and calls to action. These will be in image form, surrounded by excellent fonts and various type effects or treatments. By combining these fonts with HTML and CSS, we achieve what’s called “live text†– banners that look fantastic but can also be marked with various tags and updated dynamically, allowing you the best of both worlds.
Brands that struggle to combine SEO and web design effectively are often facing a common problem: They have site designers who want the site to look good and SEO pros who want the site to rank well and be crawlable – and their interests aren’t properly aligned.
Fixing this often simply comes down to design and SEO teams having a better understanding of what each side needs to make things work. There are numerous tools out there that can help both sides get what they need, from live text to various solutions like mouse-overs and others that allow for both great visuals and strong SEO. Maintaining both click-through rate and user experience is easily possible if both sides of the equation are properly addressed.
One more great tool that helps combine user experience and SEO is the expandable div, which allows you to present a product image of some kind that’s accompanied by additional information, such as product descriptions, prices and other content. Not only does this feature make a given product page far more accessible to users, it also offers significantly more long-tail text for Google to index – this is a huge factor for SEO. Rather than just having stand-alone images that only offer limited alt-text for Google and other engines to crawl, use expandable divs to both increase your visual appeal and make your pages more crawlable.
For more on how we can help you combine a great-looking site with high-quality SEO, or to learn about any of our other services, speak to the staff at SEO Werkz today.
The world of search engine optimization and internet marketing has long been a cyclical one in many ways, and a great example of this is the realm of web design. Top website marketers always need to have their eye on the latest capabilities and the trends that result from them – not doing so will result in being left behind by a fast-moving industry.
At SEO Werkz, we’re proud to provide a full range of web design services to all our clients. As we’re now a few months into the 2019 calendar year, there’s been a full quarter to take stock of the biggest themes taking hold within web design this year – this two-part blog will take a snapshot of a few of the biggest areas to keep an eye on.
We’re long past the DSL days, and more and more research is showing just how important the speed of a website is. Studies have shown that well over half of users expect their websites to load fully in roughly three seconds or less – anything significantly longer than this, and you risk significant page losses from people who will simply find other, more convenient options.
This isn’t just a user experience area anymore, either. Online marketers with their ears to the ground will remember Google’s speed update algorithm that was announced last summer, which means you’ll be directly dinged on search rankings if your page load times are too high.
Illustration has been a major point of emphasis in this world for several years, but one sub-category that’s begun to rise in importance this year in particular is personalization. People don’t want to feel like they’re just viewing the same rote image or text as everyone else – no, they want a unique, bold visualization their brain can latch onto. Illustrations have been shown to have a much stronger impact than photography, even.
Another major 2018 Google update was their mobile-first indexing, which placed increased importance on content and links from and to mobile pages. Roughly half of the world’s website traffic is already coming from mobile devices, a figure that will only continue to rise in the next few years, and areas like visuals and user experience become more important with each passing month.
One capability that’s growing quickly in popularity is using full-screen video backgrounds on major web pages, including home pages. These kinds of videos are much more effective than images or basic text at getting information across, and they’re also a great tool for increasing average time spent on your pages. Expect this area to continue to grow in future years as our ability to add dynamic video elements increases.
For those unaware, CSS3 refers to a technology that assists with animation for web design. This is one of the newest trends in the SEO world, one that many marketers are still wrapping their heads around fully, so those who are ahead of the game and can prioritize including these elements now will have a head start.
For more on the major 2019 web design trends you need to know, or to learn about any of our web design or SEO services, speak to the pros at SEO Werkz today.
In part one of this two-part blog, we went over some of the primary trends online marketing and SEO pros need to know in the year 2019 when it comes to web design. Website design is a constantly morphing field, and a lack of knowledge about these kinds of trends can leave you looking up at the competition when it comes to your rankings.
At SEO Werkz, our web design services are always ahead of the curve when it comes to popular trends. Here are a few others to keep an eye on, including some visual elements you may not have considered in the past.
We talked about mobile-first indexing in part one of this series, and responsive web design is up that very same alley. Marketers everywhere have to recognize that, even in just a few short years, the number of robust reading devices available has exploded – what used to pretty much just be desktop computers and laptops has now expanded to a full range of mobile phones, tablets, wearable devices like watches, and even smart televisions.
Combined together, these various forms of non-desktop designs now exceed desktop users in overall scope. Google has responded in kind, making several adjustments that increase the importance of responsive web design and how it impacts both UX and your rankings.
Our capabilities today mean that just a single color or theme in your design likely won’t cut it – you have the ability to easily do more, and you should take advantage of it. One big recent theme in this area is color gradients, a term that describes a range of position-dependent colors that will fill sections of pages with rich-looking imagery. More and more online marketers are experimenting here with loud, bold colors that really set their sites apart and make them memorable.
Some will tell you that minimalism is in style within web design for 2019, and while we’d disagree, our qualm here is only in the wording used. It’s true that many sites have begun to embrace something of a minimalist approach to design, but this is more of a byproduct than an actual goal – that goal, put more precisely, is simplicity.
While you have a ton of design and interactive elements available to you, you don’t want to go overboard here. Too much information or too many choices will overwhelm your audience, forcing them to try and process too many things at once and distracting their focus from your primary branding and messaging.
Another important area to track is page layout, and text is obviously a big factor here – it makes up a huge percentage of the information conveyed to customers on your site, and is a vital influencing factor for all users. Using strong, bold typography that matches your branding through fonts and imagery goes a long way toward maintaining your image and leaving lasting impressions.
For more on the trends you need to know in web design this year, or to learn about any of our SEO or PPC services, speak to the pros at SEO Werkz today.
In part one of this two-part blog series, we went over a few of the tools used by high-quality online marketing pros to effectively combine SEO and web design features. These two areas can sometimes appear at odds with each other, but the use of the proper strategies and features can allow you to maximize both simultaneously.
At SEO Werkz, our SEO services are designed to incorporate all important and related elements, from web design to PPC, social media and much more. Today we’ll go over some additional tools and themes to know here – how to make your images better-suited for SEO purposes, how to organize page structure, and some final implementation notes.
Many websites will contain numerous elements that are perfect for Google’s crawling bots – trust signals, billboards, calls to action and several others, for instance. But for many of these sites, these elements will be images. This means that many of their features are not crawled at all, including offers like discounts or free delivery that you want Google to notice.
The solution here is webfont usage, which we discussed in part one of this blog, as well as the use of CSS and HTML formats. These allow you to keep the same kinds of quality images you had before, which make your site accessible and aesthetically pleasing to potential customers, but also become much more crawlable to Google. With these tools readily available, there’s no excuse for these kinds of important calls to action to be hidden from Google and other search engines as they crawl your site.
We’ve gone over several tools in this series, but effectively using them means understanding the page structure that’s dictated by factors like your sector, customer base, and the kinds of content you’re looking to deliver. You have to consider the placement of your calls to action, plus the positioning of various pieces of information and trust signals on your page.
You’re looking for ways to take and hold customer attention – all while maximizing your SEO elements that will prop you up within search engines. Like with any visual design concept, you’ll be looking for the right positions to place images, messages and other elements that will draw people in. Even if you’re using all the tools we’ve discussed here, bad page structure can torpedo your efforts quickly.
This isn’t just technical speak that breaks down when it comes to implementation – all the best sites out there today use the tools we’ve discussed to infuse user experience and SEO quality. Online marketing experts need to be proficient in all three of HTML, CSS and webfonts, plus should know how to use live text that will help with mobile sites and overall accessibility. In today’s day and age, this kind of implementation is an absolute must for competitive areas.
For more on combining SEO and web design in intelligent ways, or to learn about any of our search engine optimization services, speak to the staff at SEO Werkz today.
Using animation as a part of your web design can draw more potential customers in and help improve the user experience for your site visitors.
If you aren’t familiar with all the ways that animation can improve your website design, you’re in for a surprise. Animation isn’t just for Saturday morning cartoons. It can provide an impressive boost to your SEO while making your website more approachable and modern.
We know from decades of psychological research that movement attracts attention and enhances perception. This ties back to the earliest days of humanity, when survival depended on detecting and paying attention to movement — because it potentially meant the possibility of a nutritious meal (having one or being one).
Even today, our brains compel us to pay attention to movement. And animation is the only way to introduce this powerful element to your website.
Adding animation as a part of your web design will grab your visitors’ attention. But it can provide many other benefits too. You can use this powerful design element for small animations or large-scale effects that underlie segments of your site.
With today’s technology, animations load quickly and use far fewer resources than video, with none of the headaches that come with the old-school Adobe Flash platform.
When we hear the word animation, it may conjure images of Scooby Doo and SpongeBob. But, today, this term encompasses everything from text moving on the screen to long-form how-to videos.
You can incorporate animation into the website design itself, but you can also use animation elements to demonstrate a specific feature or your products or services. You can use it for hover effects, for radio buttons and switches, and as a fun and creative alternative to basic website menu functions.
You can also add a slideshow to your web design or animate your website homepage. You can take a minimalist approach, or go all out with your homepage animation.
However you choose to use animation, make sure it guides your site visitors, adds value or tells a story. Animating aspects of your website simply for the sake of animating will not resonate with your prospects. Use this tool to build excitement and share information that your site’s visitors will find irresistible.
The key to using animation successfully in your web design is incorporating it as part of your overall web design and digital marketing strategy.
Knowing when to use animation — and when not to — can make all the difference between an effective tool for business growth and a flashy, expensive gimmick.
If your website design is static and staid, a little animation will bring life to the user experience. However, if your site is already “busy,†adding animation might serve only to confuse your visitors. Confusion leads to discomfort, and before you blink, your prospects will have moved on to your competitors.
SEO Werkz can evaluate your website and determine whether animation could benefit you by extending the time visitors spend on your site, and most important, increasing your conversions. Our experienced team works with businesses in our home state of Utah; however, we provide professional representation to a variety of clients, both large and small.
Contact us today to learn how your business can benefit from some of the most effective web design trends today.
In previous entries to this multi-part blog series, we’ve been going over everything you need to know about user search intent within the SEO realm. Vital for understanding how people search and capturing their true goals, user search intent is an area highly prioritized by Google and other search engines for web pages.
At SEO Werkz, search intent is just one of numerous SEO themes we’re here to assist you with in addition to our PPC, web design, social media marketing and other related services. As we’ve gone over much of the information related to user search intent and SEO, many have likely been wondering how they actually grasp a given user’s search intent for a query. Today’s section of our series will dig into several specific themes that help you make these distinctions in practically relevant ways.
If your site is the sort that’s often found through a few common keywords, one of the simplest ways to help determine search intent is to research your own keywords. Type them into the search bar and see what comes – the type of results you receive will give you strong indications of what Google or other search engines consider the most relevant search intent for a given term.
In addition, there are several ways you can both modify and filter your keywords to help grasp search intent within them. There are several such tools available, allowing you to filter terms with various modifiers, phrases or other variables.
One of the most common uses here is filtration by SERP feature. You can isolate keywords that rank in areas like featured snippets, for instance, if you’re focused on informational intent.
But in the end, much of identifying user search intent comes down to each of the specific intent types we went over in part two of our series. Here are some basics by type:
For more on how to understand search intent for a given query, or to learn about any of our SEO, PPC or other services, speak to the staff at SEO Werkz today.
In March, Google announced that their first ever “mobile-first†indexing on the web would begin after roughly 18 months of testing. This plan, which was first unveiled back in 2016, is aimed at changing the way Google search index operates, with algorithms changing to the mobile version of a given site to index pages.
Parts of this transition may have begun back in December, but a larger rollout is now taking place. Here are all the basics you need to know as an internet marketing pro.
In simple terms, mobile-first indexing means that Google will utilize the mobile version of a given page for indexing and ranking. The primary goal here is to help many users, especially mobile ones, find what they need – Google now sees the majority of its search traffic from mobile devices, a reality that’s been the case for a few years.
As part of this update, Google has been quick to clarify that there will only be one single index for all pages – not a separate mobile-first index in addition to the main index. So effectively, mobile web pages will be used to index web pages instead of their desktop version. Again, this is clearly a move to prioritize larger and larger chunks of demographics moving to mobile search.
Mobile friendliness is not the only factor in where your site will rank, but it’s clearly growing in terms of how it’s prioritized. Google began boosting mobile-friendly pages in their rankings as early as 2015, and has also recently added a signal that will utilize page speed to help with rankings – slow-loading content will begin to see down rankings by July of this year.
Be aware that this switch is just a first wave, for now. Google chose the sites that were already following best practices for mobile-first indexing, and those are already being shifted over will be notified by Search Console. Afterward, switched pages will show the mobile version for Search results, and in cached pages. Don’t worry if you haven’t seen the switch yet – most companies that only have desktop content will be in this category for now, and it’s uncertain when everyone else will be switched.
For more on mobile-first indexing, or to learn about any of our other SEO services, speak to the pros at SEO Werkz today.
If you’ve ever worked with SEO professionals or have taken part in the field yourself, chances are you’ve heard the term “site migration†quite often. This is a basic and common event that can have a major effect on your site’s visibility to search engines.
At SEO Werkz, our SEO services include helping with everything relating to site migrations. Here are some basics on what this means, some common types, and some examples for you to consider.
Site migration is a broad term that describes anytime a website makes major changes in areas that will affect search engine visibility. These changes may include things like structure, content, coding, performance or UX.
It’s important to note that your own research is vital here – Google’s own documentation on site migration is limited and tends to downplay the degree to which they can result in losses in traffic or revenue. You have to have a successful recovery plan in place with a site migration, which is part of what our pros are here to help with.
There are a few types of site migrations out there. The first is site location changes, which can be organized by those that involve URL changes and those that don’t. Site move migration types include:
There are also a few other types of migration that can be triggered by changes to content, structure, design or platform:
For more on-site migrations, or to learn about any of our SEO services, speak to the internet marketing pros at SEO Werkz today.
Within certain corners of the online marketing world, site migration has a bad reputation. Many in this world mistakenly believe that all site migrations, even the best ones, will result in significant losses to traffic and revenues – this simply isn’t the case.
That’s not to say that all site migrations will go without any loss; if you don’t take the proper steps, you absolutely will see these kinds of drops. Here we’ll go over why this doesn’t have to be the case for your website, plus some examples of good and bad migrations.
If you’ve been involved with a site migration, it’s likely you’ve heard this myth. While it’s true in some very specific cases, there are absolutely ways to avoid it in the majority of situations. You can migrate without losing traffic or revenue, and many of the best site migrations actually end with significant growth right after a re-launch. It just takes the right planning and execution.
Recently, a large retailer went about a site migration all wrong and lost 35 percent of its visibility in just two weeks due to a switch from HTTP to HTTPS. It took the company six months to recover, with a huge impact on revenue due to organic search.
That’s not even the worst of it, though – this recovery won’t be possible for all companies. Another big retailer made this same switch recently, but it resulted in a permanent visibility loss of nearly 20 percent. Our next section will go over the goals you have to prioritize to avoid this happening to you.
A successful site migration will depend on the type, the objectives, and the key performance indicators. That said, there are two primary characteristics that indicate a successful migration:
How to accomplish these will vary, but there are a few basics to know. Try to never include too many changes at the same time – if a single area goes wrong, it’ll be tough to pinpoint this area. On the flip side, don’t delay too long on major changes, as this will require more resources and might be more complex.
No matter what, make sure you have a good idea of the migration types available to you and the reason why many fail. This is one of the many services the pros at an SEO company like SEO Werkz can offer – call us today to learn more about this or any of our other high-level SEO services.
