SEO Web Design Tips

Friday, October 3, 2014

How Microsites Benefit Inbound Marketing

Microsites is a website that meets a specific goal and has a narrow function, often carrying a unique address or domain.

Microsites are a great tool for promoting an individual/niche product or service, and are a valuable resource for inbound marketers who want to create more online visibility and expose their brand to more customers.

A Microsite Offers A Focused Message to Customers

A typical corporate website often requires the input of several different products/services that your company offers, and must deliver many different messages at once.

By creating a microsite that focuses on one specific segment of your business, it allows you to provide more in-depth information about that particular product or service that you want to highlight. It also enables you to search engine optimize with greater contextual relevancy for your product/service's niche.

For example, if your Internet marketing company provides SEO services for companies of all industries and sizes, but you find that providing SEO for surgeons is a niche that you have had great success with, it might make sense for your company to create a microsite dedicated to SEO and Internet marketing services for surgeons.

A Microsite Gives Potential Customers New Ways to Find You

Another benefit of creating a targeted microsite is having more online real estate, which increases your chances of getting your brand in front of consumers. Also, because microsites by their nature appeal to a more niche audience, you'll get more conversions from the people who find their way to your site.

A Microsite Allows You Flexibility to Take Risks

Sometimes, putting together a microsite is also a good way to experiment with messages that don't necessarily fit into your company's current public image. Microsites allow you the opportunity to create new campaigns with an entirely different personality with creative design and content that you might not want featured on a traditional corporate website.

Smaller, more targeted websites can be relatively simple to create, not difficult to launch, and cheaper to produce. As such, they offer more room for innovative types of branding, more opportunities for dialogue with customers, and more chances for conversion.

Are you using microsites as part of your inbound marketing strategy?

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

3 Ways User Interface (UI) Influences SEO

The front-end user interface (UI) of a website, which is often tied to a site's design and layout, can have a profound impact many different performance variables.

Although UI is often concerned with usability, conversion rate optimization (CRO), web design and development, UI can most definitely influence SEO.

So whether your re-designing your website or building a new one, there are a few ways in which you can ensure your site's front-end interface is SEO-friendly. Let's dive right in.

Strategic Use of Rich Media

Dull, text-heavy pages usually offer crappy UI. However, text-heavy pages are often good for SEO and properly establishing keyword relevancy.

When it comes down to SEO, integrating rich media is a strategic balancing act. It's easy to make a page look pretty with hi-res images and perhaps a video. But often times, these rich media files can slow a pages load speed (and thus hinder SEO performance.)

Conversely, rich media files can actually improve your SEO (and CRO) efforts when integrated properly. SEO advantages can be gained when you:

perform video and/or image optimization techniques (to better establish on-page keyword relevancy and help your pages pop in blended Google search results.)
optimize robust file sizes to minimize the time required for media to load on a page.
use rich media to leverage better calls-to-action and conversion elements.

Engagement Metrics Contribute to Site Authority

A clean and clear UI (that includes a balance of rich media) can greatly contribute to higher levels of engagement. Because Google and other search engines use website metrics like time on site and bounce rate to determine site authority, UI and SEO are practically cousins in the same family of strategies.
Like any meaningful relationship, first impressions are immensely important. Avoid cluttered page layouts, be creative with your copywriting, and use media that's unique, engaging, and purposeful (hint: stock photos usually suck.)

When crafting your optimized pages, focus on content that's educational, enlightening, and/or inspiring. Keep your visitors around longer (and convert them into leads/customers) with content that's near and dear to their interests. In essence, be empathetic and be real.

Without Conversions, Traffic is Meaningless

Perhaps you're site is inbounding loads of organic search traffic after a few months of SEO. But if that traffic is not converting in leads or sales, what's the point?

It all comes back to UI and CRO. A solid website that's geared toward conversions is the underlying foundation to a successful search marketing strategy. Below are some simple questions you might want to ask yourself, or your web marketing team.

are we using specific calls-to-action?
are our pages boring, and thus contributing to high bounce rates?
do we have specific conversion goals or a conversion funnel?
is our site's web design outdated and looks like it's from the 90's?

You can't afford to invest in SEO if your site just sucks. There are far too many affordable website resources available to make cost your excuse.

So whether you're doing SEO for a client, or SEO for your own business, be sure to respect UI and the level of value you offer your users (beyond your products or services.)

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