From one of Lanex’s BizInsights articles, some helpful suggestions for evaluating your SEM efforts in 2016: http://www.biztimes.com/2016/01/12/resolve-to-understand-search-engine-marketing-in-2016/
Content is king in the realm of internet marketing and if you don’t know who you are writing for you are in a world without sunlight. Going back to our previous post, like fish people feed off things that are fresh, colorful and appealing that is how you’re going to get the most bites (clicks).
Content needs to be fresh and relevant and then updated on a regular basis, your audience will notice stale content that has not been updated in years. Content building and consistency are ideal for your SEO [Search Engine Optimization] strategies.
The real question is how do you know who your target audience is and how do you reach them? Lanex suggests the following:
Lanex will provide you with guidance that will help you with your SEO and help to increase your page rankings through content development, link building, social media, blogging and more.
Congratulations again, your visitor has still not clicked the “Back Button”. This means that they have decided that you could, perhaps, maybe, be the organization to meet their need. You have not scared them away with a rundown web site and you seem to be a credible organization. However, the chance that they have landed on the exact page with the correct call to action about the exact product or service that they are seeking is small. Your ability to “set the hook” with this visitor now depends on the structure and organization of your site. Several factors contribute to your sites effectiveness in establishing a relationship with this visitor.
The first thing that your visitor will judge is how well the page layout and the content in the pages represent your product or service. Lanex will create visually appealing and effective page layouts. An effective page layout will be targeted to your audience, and the type of product or service you have. An audience of engineers will expect much different page content than will someone looking for an attorney to represent them. In one case it is all about capacity, dimensions, and features; in the other case it will be about personality and philosophy. Lanex’s expert design services account for this in the design process and are used to create page templates that are an excellent match for your needs.
The next thing that a visitor will take advantage of is the site structure. Your site will use one or more menus to facilitate the visitor’s journey as he or she explores your site. It is important to think in terms of the needs of your visitor, and not in terms of how your departments, for instance, are organized. This means that your will use your main menu area to make it easy to navigate quickly to the information your visitor is looking for. Site structure also includes footer and banner – areas that lead your visitor to explore, or inform them of new or unique items that they may not be aware of.
In many cases you may have more pages than can be comfortably navigated using a single menu. In this case, use tools such as site search tools and sub menus to help your visitor find what they are looking for. Provide direct links from pages to related content such as installation manuals, specifications, etc. that may be too cumbersome to show on each page.
Finally, make it easy to engage with your visitor. Provide easy-to-find contact information: where you are located, who they should contact. Provide your address and phone number on every page so they know that you are “real”. Provide appropriate inquiry forms, but give the visitor the option to provide the minimum information that you need to effectively connect your visitor to the correct person in your organization. Consider several forms that each routes to the correct person depending on needs.
We hope that you find the Lanex approach to effective website design as compelling as we do. We would like to talk to you about the ways we can serve you. Please contact us so we can help you meet your goals.
The visual design of the first page your visitor sees will set the initial impression they have of your organization. This is a scary but true fact: if the purely visual presentation of your page is not what the visitor expects and demands they are likely to click the browser back button and look for their information elsewhere. It is in our human nature to make broad judgments based on a quick visual inspection. Since these snap judgments are a fact of life a savvy webmaster will use that to their advantage. We have been trained to judge the quality of a car engine from the condition of the body, and visitors will do the same with your web site.
Lanex is expert in providing an up-to-date, appealing, and appropriate site design. What sets us apart in this day of open source web site platforms is the care and skill we put into your design. Lanex will save you money on your web site by choosing the best platform to meet your needs. The correct platform for your site may be an open source WordPress or Joomla based site, or one of our custom CMS platforms. All of them are able to reliably deliver web pages to a browser, but what the visitor judges first is the appearance.
All Lanex web projects begin with one or more meetings that establish your likes and dislikes regarding the appearance of your web site. Together we look at the type of content you will have, the primary audience that you are addressing, and what your industry or sector’s expectations dictate on design. There is no such thing as one-size-fits-all design, nor should all widget company web sites look the same. Your web site’s appearance is your 21st century front door and we take that very seriously.
Continue reading: “The First 30 Seconds: Establish Credibility”
A website can have a helpful, neutral or harmful impact on an organization. How your website impacts your organization depends on several factors. To be effective in today’s competitive environment your website needs to address the needs of two critical audiences.
The first audience is that of the search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. Why is the search engine listed as your first target audience? If your website does not effectively perform in the competitive environment of search engine listings your site will not be effective for your intended audience, that of your website visitors.
Your website also has to be effective in engaging your intended audience, that of your website visitors. For this to happen you need to attract the right visitors and provide the visitor with content that grabs and holds their attention. This is done with an attractive and professional web design and well-crafted content.
Fortunately at a fundamental level your goals and that of a search engine results page are largely aligned. For a search engine to be effective and profitable it needs to deliver relevant results to its users. If they consistently deliver search results that are too broad or not relevant they will lose users to another search engine.
SEO is designed to deliver your target audience to your website from search engine queries. How this is done is an ever-evolving art as there are hundreds of algorithms (sets of rules and evaluations) that search engines use to determine what website pages to list in the results pages and the location in the list of each of those results. Lanex has the tools, energy and experience to assist you in the critical task of getting your fair share of relevant visitors and ideally more than your share. A well-crafted SEO program can deliver a larger share of web visitors than your market share would dictate. Any organization with a commitment can outdo their competition in website performance.