Tag: search-friendly

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Intentions – good or otherwise?

SEO prospect intentions

Despite all the chatter about AI and big data a lot of the basis for success in online  marketing comes down to sussing out your prospects’ intentions. This is a very human process. 

People can be characterized into a number of personality types. There are a number of well-defined systems for analyzing these types. One is the DISC system. 

This system is useful both for its simplicity and accuracy even when you have little observational data to work with.

Your online presence can satisfy the needs of all of the different personality types with the proper strategic planning. Carefully oversimplifying would mean: Be succinct and clear about benefits everywhere for D types. Be upbeat for I types. Cultivate your business on social media for S types. Provide information about your business with microscopic granularity buried on your website.

How do you gauge your prospects’ response to these items?

  • Website analytics: Look at the webpages your visitors visit, how long they stay on, and their activities. Patterns and trends can indicate your visitor’s goal. For example, pages with high bounce or exit rates may indicate a mismatch between content and visitor expectations.
  • Surveys and market research: Ask questions about customer preferences, needs, and motivations.
  • Customer interactions: Analyze customer service logs, call center recordings, and online chat sessions.
  • Visitor identification data: See who’s visiting your website and what they’re doing there.
  • Buying signals: For example, when prospects sign up for a free trial or complementary offerings, it’s a clear sign of their interest in the product.
  • Clicks a link in your email: Analytics of their behavior on where your link directed them to can show their buying intent. For example, if they click on a link like the content of your email but may want some time to do some research on their own before speaking with a sales rep, you can follow up with them relatively quickly while their attention is focused on you.

This is an overview of the process that we follow at sem[c].

Contact us for greater detail or to get started.

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The Importance of Technical SEO for Business Growth

sem[c] perfect SEO performance

Technical SEO Overview

In today’s digital landscape, a business’s online presence is crucial for success. A well-optimized website can attract potential customers, increase brand awareness, and generate leads. However, without proper technical SEO, a website may struggle to achieve its full potential. Most frequently when we begin an SEO project at sem[c] we find that we are working with a slowly loading website. This is true regardless of what platform the site is built upon. Technical SEO focuses on whatever the underlying infrastructure of a website might be, ensuring that it is easy for search engines to crawl and index. One of the most critical aspects of technical SEO is site loading speed. A slow-loading website can lead to a higher bounce rate, reduced user engagement, and ultimately, lost revenue.

Five Benefits of Improved Technical SEO and Site Loading Speed

  1. Improved Search Engine Rankings: Search engines prioritize websites that load quickly and provide a positive user experience. By optimizing site loading speed, businesses can improve their website’s rankings in search results, leading to increased organic traffic.
  2. Enhanced User Experience: A fast-loading website provides a seamless user experience, keeping visitors engaged and reducing bounce rates. When users can access information quickly and easily, they are more likely to return to the website and make a purchase.
  3. Increased Conversion Rates: A study by Google found that the probability of bounce increases 32% as page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds. In addition, a one-second delay in page load time can lead to a 7% decrease in conversions. By improving site loading speed, businesses can increase the likelihood of visitors converting into customers.
  4. Reduced Bounce Rates: A bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave a website after viewing only one page. Slow loading times are a major contributor to high bounce rates. By optimizing site loading speed, businesses can reduce bounce rates and keep visitors engaged for longer.
  5. Improved Mobile Friendliness: With the increasing prevalence of mobile devices, it is essential for websites to be mobile-friendly. Site loading speed is particularly important for mobile users, who may have slower internet connections. By optimizing site loading speed for mobile devices, businesses can ensure that their website provides a positive user experience for all visitors.

Optimizing Site Loading Speed for Technical SEO Success

There are several techniques that businesses can use to optimize site loading speed:

  1. Image Optimization: Optimize images by reducing their file sizes without compromising quality. Use appropriate image formats and dimensions for the intended use.
  2. Minify Code: Minify code to remove unnecessary whitespace, comments, and characters. This can significantly reduce page load times.
  3. Leverage Browser Caching: Enable browser caching to store static content, such as images and CSS files, on the user’s device. This can reduce the amount of data that needs to be downloaded each time the page is visited.
  4. Utilize a Content Delivery Network (CDN): A CDN distributes website content across multiple servers worldwide, reducing latency and improving page load times for users across different geographic locations.
  5. Choose a Reliable Hosting Provider: Select a reliable hosting provider that can handle the traffic demands of your website and provide adequate bandwidth and server resources.

Conclusion on the Importance of Technical SEO for Your Website

Technical SEO is essential for businesses that want to maximize their online presence and achieve their business goals. By optimizing site loading speed and addressing other technical SEO issues, businesses can improve their search engine rankings, enhance user experience, increase conversion rates, reduce bounce rates, and ensure that their website is mobile-friendly. In today’s competitive digital landscape, investing in technical SEO is a wise investment in the future of your business. Your best choice in improving your site’s technical SEO is sem[c] so contact us today.

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What’s the difference between SEO and SEM?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a service that helps businesses improve their online visibility and ranking on search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo! SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is a paid method of driving traffic, such as buying ads against target keyword searches.

SEM is a great way to get quick results and drive traffic to your website. However, it can be expensive and requires ongoing investment. SEO is a more long-term strategy that focuses on optimizing your website to rank higher in organic search results.

SEM can be used in conjunction with SEO to maximize your online visibility. By using both methods together, you can drive more traffic to your website and increase your chances of converting visitors into customers.

When it comes to choosing between SEO and SEM, it’s important to consider your business goals and budget. If you’re looking for quick results and have the budget for it, SEM may be the way to go. However, if you’re looking for a more long-term strategy that will help you build your online presence over time, SEO is the better choice.

At sem[c] we offer a range of digital marketing services including SEO and SEM. Our SEO services include keyword research, on-page optimization, link building, and content creation. Our SEM services include paid search advertising, display advertising, and social media advertising.

Contact us for more information.

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Want to refine your online presence but not break the bank?

SEO coaching by sem[c]

sem[c] offers a coaching service to give you the flexibility to have a professional review of your marketing at your convenience for a fraction of the cost of a full program.

Many businesses have questions about online marketing. No matter whether you are doing the marketing in-house or you’ve hired a consultant there are times that you’d just like to touch base with someone who knows more about marketing than you.

sem[c] can be that resource for you.

Find out more at https://semc.subkit.com/

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CMS v SEO

Did you know that there is a very important relationship between Internet marketing and website Content Management Systems (CMS)?  Many people don’t.
It has become very popular in the last few years for businesses to choose to develop their websites with a Content Management System (CMS). The benefit is that a CMS gives a business the ability to add and change content on their website without special software.Unfortunately there is frequently a hidden cost to deploying a CMS: a search-unfriendly website. The consequence of a search-unfriendly site is that search engine optimization (SEO) becomes much more difficult. This, in turn, means that the marketing project will take longer, cost more and have a reduced potential for success depending on the competition.

There are many possible indications of such a website: a “?” in the page addresses, javascript statement in links, addresses that read like gobbledygook rather than clear statements of what is on the page and so on. Clarity and relevance are what leads Google to see a site as worthy of a high search engine return placement (SERP).  A search-unfriendly CMS reduces both clarity and relevance which means it will be less likely to achieve a desirable SERP.

This has been a known issue for years now but there are still developers that are either ignorant or so vested in the system that they developed that they deny this very important point. Many of the popular open source CMS have made quite a bit of progress in becoming search engine friendly. Any site that we develop at sem[c] will be created to be optimized from the onset whether or not it uses a CMS.

If you have any question about your CMS or Internet marketing please feel free to contact me for a quick analysis.  Remember, we’re Internet magicians and will make your search-invisible website appear dramatically in Google and other search engines.

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Mobile rising?

Do you see people with smart phone and tablets everywhere? Everywhere I look on the train people are reading, texting or surfing (even, occasionally, talking). With the news that Google has entered into the handset production business mobile has moved to the front burner. They made the acquisition of Motorola in defense of the Android operating system. Google now owns thousands of patents related to mobile computing. This acquisition clearly makes the statement that Google sees itself as a mobile company.

Some of the various sites that we monitor are showing over 15% of the total visits coming from mobile devices. This emphatically underscores the importance of making sure that your website is mobile-friendly. If your site relies on Flash-based navigation alone it is likely that many mobile visitors will not be able to get any of the information that they are searching for. Apple’s iOS that runs on iPhones and iPads cannot see Flash animations. This makes it very unlikely that they visitors will return to your website on their mobile devices. The good news is that the Flash can be converted to HTML5 which will preserve the functionality while, at the same time, make it accessible to all Internet-connected devices.

It should be noted here that the Web crawlers used by Google and other search engines don’t handle Flash very well either.  For SEO purposes it is a very good idea to limit Flash usage or convert it the the HTML5 alternative.

Please contact us if you have any questions about search engine optimization, social media marketing for all types of Web browsers from the desktop to your mobile handset.