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Posts about search engine optimization

SEO Trends and Predictions for 2017

December 21, 2016/3 Comments/in Content Marketing, Email Marketing, PPC, SEO, Social Media, Video Marketing, Web Design /by Bob Kehoe

The beginning of 2017 may be a fresh start for you, but for Google, progress in the sphere of optimizing Internet search won’t slow for a second. The preference for mobile Internet consumption, the desire for quicker and denser content, mounting pressure to increase ad revenue, and the unstoppable development of digital assistants and voice search point to a new golden rule for search engine optimization (SEO) trends:

Make it for mobile.

Mobile-First Is Undeniable

SEO experts have been predicting the latest SEO trends as part of their jobs for years, and there’s one that keeps making an appearance in the latter 2010s: mobile is the future of Internet and search. Major search engines are putting mobile at the forefront as trends in SEO continually point toward the indomitable strength and convenience of mobile consumption.

More Americans are spending more of their free time watching the screens on their smartphones and tablets, according to comScore. If the amount of activity on social networks is any indication, it’s likely that most of those hours are spent scouring Facebook and Twitter feeds for images and videos. Social apps and mobile search are in line to become some of marketing’s biggest targets for paid advertisements and organic efforts. Changes in the way that search will respond to mobile users as well as desktop users point to an almost certain future of mobile takeover.

Mobile-First Indexing

In the latter half of 2016, at the beginning of October, the first iterations of mobile-first indexing became a reality. Mobile-first indexing resets the priority of Google’s indexing bot to read through a site’s mobile version when determining how a site should be indexed. That means Googlebot looks at the relevance, speed, and technical organization of mobile sites over desktop sites when it decides where your page goes on the search engine results page (SERP).

Desktop SERPs Match Mobile

December also saw a UI update for desktop search engine results pages that helped them match the appearance and function of mobile SERPs. Specifically, desktop users see more specialized cards such as featured snippets and maps when they perform searches that trigger those cards. Of course, in such early stages, the desktop experience isn’t quite optimized for desktop searchers:

As of 2016, producing cards for desktop searches runs into trouble when wording is ambiguous. In our example, it seems that Google understands our query to be something closer to “How long does it take, Google, to [get to] Index, [WA]?”

Fortunately, development of semantic search promises to inch ever closer to matching the meaning and understanding the context of searches and the searcher’s intent. Consistent improvements in machine learning allow more of your searches in 2017 to reflect the intent of your search rather than the face value of the words you have typed into the engine. While returning relevant search results has long been a goal of Google search, the rise of digital assistants and voice search has lit a new fire in the quest to teach machines to parse language in the same way as humans.

Progressive Web Apps

Google has created a streamlined way for business owners to build progressive web apps, mobile applications that integrate the in-app experience with web capabilities. In many ways, they are web pages that look and act like apps. The intent of progressive web apps is to keep users engaged with apps by:

Provided online and offline service
Drastically decreasing loading times
Eliminating the need for purchase and installation
Offering an app experience without the maintenance of an app

Progressive web apps are perhaps the first step toward creating seamless product and service shopping experiences without the need to download apps. Users can keep progressive web apps on the home screens of their mobile devices and load them instantly.

The goal is customer retention. According to Smashing Magazine, users are three times more likely to reopen a mobile application than a website, especially after receiving push notifications. If integrating the app experience with the web experience can make purchasing easier for users, SEO experts will need to focus efforts on driving more customers to those progressive web apps organically.

Video and Images Are Next

The Content Is King mantra is steadfast, but SEOs need to consider more than ever that content has a greater reach than text articles. Major search engines, too, are looking for ways to read and organize all types of content. The term content includes video, animations, and images as well as text. Quality videos and images are proven ways to increase customer engagement and retention, and SEO experts will need to find ways to optimize videos for search in 2017.

Multimedia works in all parts of the marketing funnel and matches the goals of SEO:

The intent to purchase of users who enjoy video ads increases by 97%
One-third of all online activity is encompassed by watching video
87% of marketers are using video content

These incredible facts from HubSpot make the user preference for video and image content clear. Check out some of the ways marketers are using video content in 2016:

Branded Video Content on Social Networks

Autoplay pushes social videos straight to the brain. When advertisements combine exciting content with beautiful presentation, customers watch – and buy.

Live Streaming

Anyone can instantly live stream a video on lots of social networks. Companies can get on-the-spot engagement by sharing stories, information, or just entertaining audiences.

Background Video on Home Pages and Sales Pages

Companies can capture attention instantly with moving backgrounds, then entice users to stay with text overlays or an in-video call to action.

GIFs everywhere

GIFs resonate with young audiences, and marketers are learning how to pull on their heartstrings with simple animations that celebrate their favorite people, movies, shows, and music.

Closer Ties for SEO and PPC

Ad-heavy search results mean that competition for top rankings in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising will likely push advertisers to improve the quality of their paid content. SEO experts must be ready to focus on improving quality scores for ads in 2017 as Google search moves toward a role as a PPC giant as well as an organic search engine giant.

Voice Search and Digital Assistants

The artificial intelligence that governs the functions of voice search and digital assistants is the focus of research for many of the companies developing such technologies, including Google. Digital assistants such as Apple’s Siri and Google Assistant use artificial intelligence to attempt to understand natural language and harness that knowledge to produce useful information and resources for live people.

If they weren’t already, SEOs should look to improve relevance, usability, and permanence of content so that digital assistants and voice searchers can utilize the real language contained within the content to find the highest quality information.

What Should We Focus on in 2017?

In anticipation of an even more quickly changing search landscape, SEOs should focus on:

Crafting all SEO strategies and making design decisions based on mobile use
Building a video strategy that integrates with other marketing solutions
Sharpening PPC and paid search knowledge to keep customer rankings high in the paid sphere
Optimizing organic content to be found by digital assistants that understand real language

Don’t be afraid of change, be ahead of it, and remember: Make it for mobile.

Leverage Marketing can take you every step of the way through the SEO process – but we also do so much more. If you’re thinking about changing the way you market your business, let us guide you through it. Start by getting your hands on our 2017 Digital Marketing Budget Guide and find out what it will take to pull your marketing into 2017.

Tips for Planning Your Digital Marketing Budget [INFOGRAPHIC]

December 7, 2016/0 Comments/in Content Marketing, PPC, SEO, Social Media /by Leverage Marketing

You know that if you want your business to grow, you need to dedicate a budget to marketing. Otherwise you could have an awesome product or service but no way to tell consumers about it. But how do you determine the amount of money you should be allocating to your marketing budget? And how do you decide on the size of your digital marketing budget compared to your offline marketing budget?

There’s no easy answer to the question, “What should my digital marketing budget be?” However, this infographic and blog post can help you choose a strategy to plan a marketing budget for your business.

Using a Tactic-Based Approach

One way to map out your digital marketing budget is to break down the costs of individual tactics, line by line, and add them up to get your total cost per month and per year. This approach can be good if your business is new and you don’t have a lot of historical data to work with.

It’s straightforward to calculate your internet marketing budget if you outsource your efforts to freelancers or a marketing agency on a per-project basis. However, it gets a little more complicated when you need to calculate the cost of marketing efforts that you keep in-house. You’ll need to start by estimating the number of man-hours for each project and the cost-per-hour for each employee assigned to the project. When calculating cost-per-hour, you’ll need to account for the cost of benefits, training, and vacation days.

Once you’ve determined the cost-per-hour for an employee, multiply that by the number of hours you expect them to work on the project. Repeat that for all employees who will work on the project to get the total cost of labor. In addition to labor costs, you’ll also need to factor in other resources (such as subscription-based software) to get your total cost for a tactic or marketing campaign.

Determining your Budget as a Percentage of Revenue

Most businesses determine their annual marketing budget allocation as a percentage of their revenue. Different sources will give you different estimates for what percentage of your gross annual revenue you should dedicate to marketing, but as a rule of thumb, businesses that are less than five years old should spend about 12-20% and businesses that are more than five years old should spend about 6-12%.

Businesses that are less than a year old and haven’t established their annual revenue can still use the Percentage of Revenue method, but they’ll need to use their projected revenue when crunching the numbers.

One thing to keep in mind with the Percentage of Revenue method is that it can help you determine your overall offline and online marketing budget, but it won’t help you determine how much you should spend on different strategies. You may find it helpful to research how much other comparable businesses in your industry are spending on different strategies (such as SEO and email).

Basing your Marketing Budget on ROI

If you’ve already established an annual marketing budget but are looking for a way to maximize it, consider adjusting the budget throughout the year based on your return on investment (ROI) for different tactics. For example, if you exceed your ROI goals for a paid search campaign one month, you could increase your ad spend the next month. This budgeting method will allow you to grow your revenue quickly and adjust your web marketing budget accordingly, rather than waiting until the next quarter or year to make changes.

The Tied to ROI budgeting method works best with direct-response strategies, such as pay-per-click (PPC) ads and social media ads. This method is more challenging to use with branding strategies, which may be more difficult to measure.

Looking for more advice on planning your online marketing budget? Download our 2017 Guide to Planning Your Digital Marketing Budget to learn how to audit your marketing efforts and determine costs for different internet marketing strategies.

The Best and Worst of Call to Action Marketing

November 30, 2016/1 Comment/in SEO, Web Design /by Bob Kehoe

Writing call to action phrases for your website can be a tricky task. It seems like it should be simple to throw together a few quick words for a call to action to engage customers on your site, but call to action marketing is more of a science than most people think.

If you’re not sure what an example of a call to action (otherwise known as a CTA) would be, chances are you’ve clicked on one at some point before. A call to action phrase is a lure that turns site visitors into leads that your company may eventually nurture into customers. Whether it’s the button asking a reader to commit to that newsletter signup or the red letters asking an online shopper to act now for the lowest price, the best call to action will invite a lot of value with only a few words.

On the other hand, a bad CTA can act as a barrier in front of your leads. Having poorly written or badly designed CTAs hanging out on your site is sometimes the only thing preventing success, and you may not even know it.

We’ve put together a list of a few great and terrible CTAs that are sprinkled across the internet. Beware – this may convince you to step up your website’s game. Read on!

Worst: “Submit”

Using almost any call to action phrase is better than using this word. Short of including no CTA at all, using the word “Submit” is the lowest you can go. No one gets particularly excited about submitting something – it makes most of us think about paying bills or filling out long forms, and no one wants to do that more than they absolutely must. There are better ways to compel a customer to follow through. Essentially, you need to come up with a better way to say “Please hit this button.” Such as…

Best: “Sign Up Now” or “Get Your Free Estimate”

Instead of using formal, tedious language that simply states what the button is for, use purposeful language. Good call to action phrases tend to accomplish at least one of these goals:

Tell the customer exactly what to do.
Tell the customer what they’ll be getting when they commit.

A command such as “Sign Up Now,” “Take a Virtual Tour,” or “View Our Top Models” explicitly tells the customer to take action. And “Get Your Free Estimate,” “View Our Free Whitepaper,” and “Claim Your Tickets Today” are CTAs that offer both a command and a promise of value to the clicker.

Worst: “Buy Now” or “Join Now”

This command is not ALWAYS a CTA no-no. If placed strategically on your site, a “Buy Now” as a call to action phrase can be surprisingly powerful. However, placement is everything. You can’t ask too much of your customers too soon. You should consider the buyer’s journey as they browse your site or look through the search results. Commanding users to “Buy Now” on your homepage or a search engine result page can sometimes be overkill, as customers may not be ready to make a commitment at an early stage of product or service exploration. This is especially true if what you are offering is expensive or if the purchase commitment is otherwise high. In other words, if you sell $0.99 kazoos, asking them to “Buy Now” is asking a lot less of the customer – and is likely to be slightly more effective– than asking someone to buy your $60K car immediately.

The type of customer that usually comes to your site is also a factor to consider before adding the words “Buy Now” as your call to action. Do your shoppers tend to browse a lot, do a lot of research, or consume large amounts of information before converting? Or do they tend to navigate straight to what they need and buy it right then? Check Google Analytics to get a better idea about what customers do and search for on your site.

Best: “Get Started” or “Learn More”

If your customer requires a little more convincing than a colorful button, there are still lots of good ways to incorporate call to action marketing that is more appropriate to their stage of the shopping process. Use informational commands, such as “Learn More,” to draw your customer further into your site without implying any serious commitment. If you offer a free service or benefit, such as a rewards program or consultation, draw customers towards a profitable conversion with call to action phrases such as “Get Started,” and follow up with a simple option such as a free sign-up. You’ll still be able to glean some vital customer information without asking for as much of a commitment from the shopper.

Worst: Mobile Unfriendliness

What’s worse than trying to do something quickly on your mobile device, only to find that the web page to which you’ve navigated requires messy zooming? Or that the site has confusing navigation options that are difficult to click on a touchscreen? It’s annoying, it’s a hassle, and research shows that mobile unfriendliness will cause around 60% of browsers to bounce off your site. These kinds of statistics have been out for a while, and if you’re familiar with Google’s search algorithm, you’ll know that sites that haven’t been optimized to fit mobile devices have seen heavy organic search ranking penalties as well as high mobile bounces.

As far as call to action marketing goes, it doesn’t matter if you have the best call to action on earth is if your site isn’t responsive – the game is over before the user even sees the CTA. Not sure if your site is mobile friendly? Google has a handy mobile friendliness tool that you can use to check and see if your site is good to go. Even if your site is mobile friendly, it is all too easy to stuff your CTAs in sidebars, headers, and footers, which users may not always be able to see or access on mobile devices.

Best: Responsive Formatting

In an age in which Google incorporates your site’s mobile friendliness into search rankings and users refuse to browse on mobile unfriendly sites, it is truly imperative that you convert to a responsive format. This may require you to switch to a new theme, template, content management system, or ecommerce platform, but the time and investment will pay off in better organic rankings and conversions.

Confident that your mobile-friendly site has no problems? Don’t get too passive– your site may be mobile-friendly, but it is still critical to make your call to action marketing efforts work for mobile formats. Make your CTA large, central, and colorful enough for every shopper to see. Try incorporating them strategically at the ends of content blocks to provide users with a seamless transition from information to conversion.

Have more questions about how to incorporate call to action marketing into your digital marketing strategy? Stressed about implementing a user-friendly site design? The Leverage team is here to help. Sign up for our newsletter or contact us directly, and we’ll be in touch with the latest and greatest for your site.

Why Google Analytics is Not Tracking Correctly: Your Troubleshooting Guide

November 3, 2016/24 Comments/in SEO /by Bob Kehoe

Google Analytics’ tracking capabilities make it a great asset for any website to have. However, when Google Analytics is not tracking correctly, or its data is inaccurate, the usefulness of the tool essentially disappears. Anyone who has ever used Google Analytics can tell you that there are a lot of intricacies involved that may not seem all that important until you’re sorting through a lot of useless reports, thinking, “How exactly did I get here?”

Luckily, when Google Analytics is not tracking or is having other issues, it usually isn’t a death sentence. Many fixes are even straightforward enough to tackle in a DIY fashion. If your Google Analytics data is not showing up or you’re just struggling to get things off the ground, this list is a good way to uncover any problems. If you haven’t set up Google Analytics on your site yet, even better – read through and save yourself the extra work later.

Ok, so you carefully followed all the instructions for adding and publishing the tracking code on your site, and you’ve been waiting for data to start pouring in, but Google Analytics apparently isn’t tracking. Or maybe your site had been tracking perfectly, but now something has changed, and you’re not sure why. What’s going on?

Before you panic:

Test it out by checking your Real-Time stats. Hop over to the Reports section in the property of concern and select Real-Time. If Google Analytics is tracking correctly, the Overview tab should give you an idea of how many people are on your site at that very moment. Test it out yourself – open your site in another tab, then refresh the Overview If your Google Analytics code is working, you should be able to see data on this page. You should be able to see your page view sitting on your site in the Real-Time report, and you should even be able to discern that it’s you by the location of the dot on the map.

“Hey, that’s me on the Real-Time report!”

You can also visit the Tracking Info section under your property name in the Admin section of Google Analytics, and click Tracking Code to verify if Google Analytics recognizes that your property has been recording traffic.

Verify that you’re tracking the correct property and view. If you’ve been using Google Analytics to track multiple websites or have already set up several views on this property, you might be using the snippet from another location. Sure, this may sound obvious to you – but why frantically disassemble the device before checking to see if you plugged it in?
Check out your filters. If you’ve been tracking your site for a while and have added some filters in this view, you should re-visit what filters you have set and if they could be unintentionally cutting off tracking. One important detail to note is that the order in which you apply filters in Google Analytics matters, and it can be easy to accidentally block your tracking by adding filters in the wrong order. For example, if you decide you only want to track traffic from Arkansas but you’ve already set the view to only track Alabama visitors, setting an Arkansas-only filter now won’t do you much good, because you already left all the Arkansas visitors out with the Alabama filter. This kind of mistake will quickly bring your traffic down to zero.

Unfortunately, if you’ve set some filters that seem to be excluding traffic you want to be recording, you can’t take filters back on that particular view. That’s why it is critical to always preserve an unfiltered view, such as the default view All Web Site Data. If you suspect you’ve overdone it with filters, you can try reordering the filters for better results or start over with a new unfiltered view.

If you’ve confirmed that your Google Analytics code is not working for a view that it should be tracking, it’s time to dig deeper. Answer these questions to get a better idea of what could be going wrong.

Have you reviewed your Google Analytics tracking code?

If you have recently set up your tracking code but Google Analytics is not tracking your traffic, this is an important step to take. When adding the snippet into a plugin or the tracking code onto the pages of the site, it is imperative that you copy and paste directly from your Google Analytics property settings to your site code. If you copy over to a word processor or similar program on your computer before putting it on your site, extra white spaces or small changes in punctuation may occur and can make or break your tracking. The tracking code is also case sensitive, so don’t neglect capitalization.

Have you added the tracking code to every page of your site?

Just adding the code to the homepage of your site won’t do – Google Analytics will not be tracking all pages of your site if you don’t add the code to each page. This includes subdomains and those less-than-obvious landing pages hiding on your site. If you’re the one installing the code onto your site and adding it to every single page sounds exhausting, you can browse the wide assortment of plugin options available on many of the more common content management systems (such as WordPress or Magento). These plugins will make adding code to every page of the site into a much simpler process. You can also enlist help from a web development specialist if the process is too daunting to take on yourself.

“Hey look, we’ve got traffic after all!”

Do you have duplicate tracking codes running on your site?

If you’re unwittingly recording Google Analytics data twice, you may notice that you’re having the opposite problem – your visits, page views, and bounce rates seem far too good to be true! However, having multiple tracking codes on your site is a bad practice and will cause your Google Analytics data to be seriously inaccurate, as well as vulnerable to malfunctions in multiple areas of data collection.

If your site has been around for a while and has had a few different developers, consultants, and managers working on it, it’s possible that things have gotten lost in the shuffle. If your Google Analytics code is not working correctly, rifle through your source code for signs of old Google Analytics tracking code. You may be surprised what you can find and purge from your pages. With the wide availability of Google Analytics-compatible features and add-ons available on WordPress and other popular platforms, it is easy to overlook a lurking plugin or buried code.

Has your site been penalized by Google?

Google continuously rolls out updates to its search ranking algorithm that help make the search experience richer, more accurate, and less dangerous for searchers. With every big change in the algorithm comes a new group of websites that see huge changes in their traffic due to big rankings promotions or demotions. In other words, a ranking penalty (or demotion) could bury your site on the 100^th page of Google without you noticing much other than a huge drop in site traffic in Google Analytics.

Why might you have received a penalty? It’s hard to say. Each algorithm change is different and may declare that a certain aspect of your site is positive or negative. By doing this, Google weeds out spam and punishes websites for using less-than-ideal methods to sit higher in search results. In short, you may think that Google Analytics is not tracking your traffic, but maybe people just aren’t finding your site due to a penalty or two.

If you’ve finished this list and suspect you have received a penalty or still think that Google Analytics is not working correctly, it might be a good time to look into hiring SEO specialists like the ones at Leverage Marketing to review your site. Our experienced Google Analytics experts can get your tracking moving, help you recover from penalties, and help bring your site to a place in the organic search rankings where users will be able to find you.

How to Create a Valuable Holiday Gift Guide

November 1, 2016/0 Comments/in Content Marketing, Email Marketing, SEO, Social Media /by Bob Kehoe

Why Create a Holiday Gift Guide?

It’s hard to believe, but the holidays are almost upon us. We’re around the corner from Thanksgiving, and the winter holidays are just a stone’s throw away in marketing time. What can you do to get your customers ready for the season? How can you make them aware of what products you or your partners have available for purchase?

With average spending reaching over $800 per consumer this holiday season, digital marketplaces are excellent places for consumers to buy gifts for everyone on their list without driving to multiple stores. 44% of US holiday shoppers bought gifts online in 2014, and for 2016, online sales are forecast to be as much as $117 billion. Making a holiday gift guide can help your company grab a chunk of this revenue.

With holiday shopping now starting as early as the day after Halloween, making a holiday gift guide early can be a great way to highlight best-selling and popular products. By creating a visual representation of your product selection, you can facilitate the holiday shopping processing and make buying easier for your customers.

Holiday gift guides are a way to take marketing and make it creative. Instead of just a boring sales email, you get to take the products you want to sell and present them in a visually enticing format that transports the reader where you want them to go.

Here are a few methods to make holiday gift guides that grab your customers’ attention:

Use a Data-Driven Approach

graph-holiday-gift-guide

Don’t just choose your favorite products to include in your holiday gift guide, use targeted products that are either currently popular or were popular last holiday season. Generate reports on the top sellers in various categories and try to find items that would make good presents. Furthermore, it’s important to get a good mix of products in your gift guide to appeal to a broad range of consumers. You probably don’t have only one type of customer, and your holiday gift guide should reflect that. Look back to your buyer personas and make sure your gift guide reflects the variety inherent in them.

It’s important to get the raw data to find what people are purchasing–use tools like Google Analytics and Hubspot. Track what people are purchasing and what their purchase path is. Use social media and online polls to ask your customers what items they’d like to see. All this data will help you create an approach to your guide that targets a wide swath of customers and reflects the diversity of your business.

Create an Immersive Experience

When creating your holiday gift guide, it is best to curate an experience that submerges the reader in your content. Try segmenting your gift guide into different gift collections by age or gender (if applicable), or by price point. The consumer is then drawn into a selection of items targeted exactly for the people on their gift list. By creating a seamless experience with colorful, high-resolution images of your products, readers are more likely to buy.

Use Pinterest and Other Social Media to Create Holiday Gift Boards

As much as you may segment your holiday gift guide, there is no way to account for every different group and taste. Creating a variety of simple holiday gift boards on Pinterest to augment your existing gift guide is a simple way to help your customers. You can create a specific board for the customer (or buyer persona) you’re trying to target, such as “dog lover” or “stay at home mom.” This strategy works better for some B2C businesses with audiences and demographics more likely to use Pinterest. Tailor your approach to your customers and you’ll have more success. Find out what platforms they use through Google Analytics and online polls and promote through those.

Marketing using Pinterest and other social media sites is incredibly useful in today’s digital age. You can target users who wouldn’t otherwise interact with your content and start new conversations about your products. Remember to continually engage the users from social media and offer them exciting special offers to pique their interest.

Continue Writing About and Promoting Your Holiday Gift Guide

Once your holiday gift guide is out there, don’t just leave it sitting in cyberspace. Write about it using blog posts to provide additional context to the products you’re recommending to your customers. Tell your customers why they should buy this particular item. Explain why your product will make the perfect gift for their friend or family member. Producing blog posts about the products in your gift guide creates additional engagement around your products and adds a framework for your buyers. Do keyword research so that you can incorporate phrases for a higher organic ranking.

Promote the gift guide and your blogs on social media. Don’t let them stagnate on your website waiting for organic hits. Include links in emails, launch a paid campaign, and perhaps even look for promotional opportunities with other blogs or websites in your industry for link sharing. These methods can further enhance the reach of your guide to additional customers.

Your holiday gift guide can be your customers’ entry point into your product offerings. Make sure it is inviting, accessible, immersive, and understandable. If you use these tips to create your gift guide, you’re more likely to succeed this holiday season.

The team at Leverage Marketing has been through many holiday seasons and knows holiday gift guides inside and out. If you have questions about marketing for the holiday season, we are here to help. We are experts in helping our clients meet their needs all year-round. Sign up for our newsletter today to get tips about SEO, social media, marketing, and lots more.

Prep Your Website for Black Friday: A Marketing Checklist [UPDATED]

October 21, 2016/2 Comments/in Content Marketing, Email Marketing, PPC, SEO, Web Design /by Leverage Marketing

This post was originally published on October 8th, 2015. We’ve updated it with several new checklist items for 2016.

With Black Friday coming up on November 25^th and Cyber Monday following right on its heels, your holiday marketing is no doubt well underway. In all the chaos, it’s easy to overlook some of the small but impactful online marketing tactics you can use to boost sales on two of the biggest shopping days of the year. With that in mind, we’ve put together a marketing checklist of things to do in the weeks leading up to Black Friday.

Download a PDF of our Black Friday Checklist

Click Here

Web Design

o Update homepage for Black Friday.

Make sure anyone who lands on your homepage in the days leading up to Black Friday/Cyber Monday knows about the deals you’re going to offer. Add relevant banners and calls-to-action, change your home page header/hero image to highlight your Black Friday offers, and consider adding a countdown clock to build excitement. You may also want to create a banner that you can place at the top of all pages to remind shoppers about your deals.

o Simplify forms and checkout process.

Take some time before the holidays to go through your checkout process and identify steps where shoppers are likely to drop out. Eliminate unnecessary form fields and try to minimize the clicks it takes to complete a transaction.

o Compress and resize any images that are weighing down your pages.

Unnecessarily large images can slow down page load times, and online shoppers aren’t going to wait patiently for your site to load. Take some time before Black Friday to check images on your home page and most popular product pages, and either resize or compress high-resolution images.

o Test site to ensure all pages are mobile-friendly.

By now you likely know how important it is to have a website that looks good on mobile devices. Even if you think your site is fully responsive or adaptive to mobile, it’s worth testing individual pages—especially new ones you’re adding ahead of Black Friday. Enter page URLs into Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test bar to determine if all pages meet Google’s criteria for mobile-friendly design.

o Set up live chat.

There are dozens of live chat systems available online, and you can easily set one up by adding a piece of HTML code to all the pages where you want the chat window to appear. If you don’t have a system in place yet, install one before your big holiday sales days so that potential customers can quickly get help from one of your team members.

Email Marketing

o Craft emails to build anticipation for your sales.

Schedule your emails so that subscribers receive an initial announcement about your holiday sale, followed by several messages designed to build anticipation and keep you top of mind. Consider revealing some of the upcoming Black Friday sales prices on top-selling items, or send out a sales offer that is exclusive to email subscribers.

o A/B test subject lines.

Remember: before you can get readers to click on email links leading to great Black Friday deals, you have to convince them that opening your email is worth their time. Businesses flood their subscribers’ inboxes with promotional messages around the holidays (MailChimp delivered 1.2 billion emails last Black Friday), so you need to make sure your messages stand out. Be clear about the deals you’re offering in your subject line, and A/B test different subject line variations to see what gets the most engagement.

o Write copy for transactional emails.

Tailor order confirmations, abandoned cart notices, and other automated email messages to your Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales. Consider adding copy about upcoming holiday sales to encourage visitors to shop with you again before the end of December.

o Write emails to remind shoppers that your sale is about to end.

Create a segmented list of email subscribers who haven’t purchased anything on Black Friday or Cyber Monday and send an email several hours before the end of sale, reminding them that there is limited time to take advantage of your discounts.

o Test email links.

Before running any of your holiday email campaigns, take a few minutes to make sure none of your email links are broken and that all links go to the appropriate landing page.

o Create landing pages that align with email CTAs.

It can be jarring for email subscribers to click on a call-to-action that takes them to a landing page with a completely different offer—and shoppers aren’t as likely to convert if the initial CTA and landing page don’t match. Check the copy in your email message and on the landing page to ensure it’s coherent.

SEO

o Make sure you’ve enabled ecommerce tracking.

If you sell products through your site, you should absolutely set up Ecommerce Tracking in Google Analytics (if you haven’t already). Ecommerce Tracking will give you more insights in your customers’ behavior patterns so that you can better tailor future sales to your audience. If you’re not sure how to set up Ecommerce Tracking, check out our step-by-step guide.

o Check page load times.

Go to the Site Speed tab in Google Analytics to check the load times of your web pages. On average, people will give a page three seconds to load before abandoning the site, so if you have pages with slower load times, you’ll need to fix them. If you’re not sure what’s causing the slow load time, have your marketing team perform an audit.

o Create landing pages for sales categories.

Include ‘Black Friday’ or other holiday-related keywords in your title tags, header tags, and content so that the landing page has a better chance of being served to web users who enter relevant search queries.

o Research long-tail keywords.

Long-tail keywords will have a lower search volume than more general Black Friday-related keywords, but they will also have less competition and are more likely to attract shoppers who are looking for your specific products or services.

o Pitch products to influencers who curate gift guides.

Backlinks from high-quality third-party sites are a ranking factor for SEO, so it’s always a good idea to make connections with bloggers and journalists in your industry who may be interested in sharing your content. Lots of sites begin publishing holiday gift guides in November and December, so try pitching some of your best gift products to relevant sites. In addition to the SEO-value of backlinks, having your products featured in gift guides can also help drive traffic to your site.

o Local brick-and-mortars: check your online listings.

If you own a brick-and-mortar as well as an online store, go through all the major online directories to make sure your address, phone number, and other important information are up-to-date. If you have not yet claimed your business on Google, do so now using Google My Business.

PPC

o Set up meeting with your PPC team.

Keyword bids will be high around Black Friday because this is one of the busiest shopping times of the year, so you need to get the most out of your budget by choosing the keywords that are most likely to lead to conversions for your business. Unless you are a PPC professional, you should meet with your PPC team to discuss strategies.

o Create PPC campaigns tailored to consumers who are researching before Black Friday.

Most Black Friday/Cyber Monday shoppers will be researching deals in advance so that they can get the products they want before they are out of stock. In the weeks leading up to Black Friday, tailor the copy in your PPC ads to your customers’ research phase.

o Prepare ads for several top sellers if you think you may run out of inventory.

Have you been promoting a particular product heavily? Is it possible that this product will be out of stock before the end of Black Friday? If so, write ad copy for several other top sellers so that you will have ads ready to go if you have to pull the ads for an out-of-stock item.

o Retarget web users who have already visited your site.

If you have a retargeting pixel set up on your site, start remarketing to customers who have previously browsed your site. This is a good way to stay top of mind and announce deals to people who may not be on your mailing list but who have shown interest in your products.

o Use day parting and bid scheduling to maximize your paid search budget.

Look at your historical data to see which times of day you’re likely to see the highest levels of traffic and conversions. Allocate more of your paid search budget to the top-converting hours of the day to maximize your ROI.

Social Media Marketing

o Use Facebook and Twitter remarketing.

Retargeting pixels on your website aren’t just for PPC ads—you can also use them to create ads for custom audiences on Facebook and Twitter. Facebook even lets you serve ads to Lookalike Audiences—that is, people who are similar to your existing customers and therefore likely to be interested in your products. If you’ve never done this before, talk to your online marketing team about creating targeted social media ads before Black Friday.

o Create exclusive offers for followers on social media.

Offering exclusive discounts is a great way to reward your followers on social media—and to encourage those followers to recommend your social profiles to their friends and family.

o Put together holiday gift guides and share on social sites.

Use a design template site like Canva or Piktochart to create visually-appealing gift guides in different categories (e.g. ‘Stocking Stuffers’, ‘Gifts for Grillmasters’, etc.), and share those guides on your social channels. If you have a following on Pinterest, keep in mind that you can now create buyable pins that integrate with Magento, Bigcommerce, and IBM Websphere.

o Use relevant holiday hashtags.

Do some research into hashtags that are being used around Black Friday and think about how they pertain to your sale. You can, of course, use tags like #blackfriday and #cybermonday, but keep in mind that everyone else will be doing this as well. To stand out and get customers excited for your sale, consider using additional hashtags related to your store name and location. Let social media users know they can get updates on your sale (or maybe even get entered into a contest) by using your business-specific hashtag.

o Make sure at least one team member can monitor Twitter on Black Friday/Cyber Monday.

If you have an active presence on Twitter, you should assign at least one team member to monitor this social site for mentions. If customers are tweeting at you because they have a question or complaint related to your sales, you’ll want to be able to respond quickly.

Having trouble with any of the action items above? We’d be happy to help you check all the boxes on your holiday marketing to-do list. Contact us to get started.

How to Set Up Ecommerce Tracking in Google Analytics

October 5, 2016/1 Comment/in SEO /by Bob Kehoe

You probably already know that Google Analytics is a great tool for tracking consumer behavior patterns and traffic to your site. If you’re already using Google Analytics to track activity on your site, great job – but that’s only half the battle! If you sell products online, one of Google Analytics’ most powerful tools is its ability to analyze not only how people use your site, but what they’re buying and how they’re purchasing your products. That’s where Google Analytics’ ecommerce tracking comes in.

As a newbie or even as a seasoned user of Google Analytics, implementing and understanding ecommerce tracking may seem a little intimidating. Not to fear – follow our quick-start guide to get moving with ecommerce analytics tracking.

PART 1: SET IT UP

First off, you’ll need to decide what kind of ecommerce tracking will fit your site’s needs. There are two kinds of ecommerce tracking available within Google Analytics:

Standard Ecommerce Tracking: Includes most of the major info you’ll need to analyze customer purchase activity, such as transaction information and average order value.
Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking: Includes all the functionality of Standard Ecommerce Tracking, but also allows you to analyze consumers’ paths to purchases and inspect other factors such as shopping cart abandonment. Enhanced ecommerce tracking is only available if your site uses Universal Analytics (recognizable by the “analytics.js” snippet in your analytics tracking code).

It’s up to you to decide what kind of ecommerce tracking will be best for your business. If you’re looking to get a better understanding of the way consumers make purchases on your site, Standard Ecommerce may be all you need, and the relative simplicity can be helpful. If you have more specific questions (for instance, if you’re noticing that your customers seem to be viewing a lot of pages but are struggling to complete the buying process), Enhanced Ecommerce might be a good way to zoom in on the deeper processes behind customer decisions.

So now that you’ve decided what kind of ecommerce journey you want to set off on, it’s time to implement tracking. We’ve broken the process down for you:

Enable Ecommerce on Google Analytics: The first thing you’re going to need to do is enable your analytics account to record this kind of data. Simply…

Sign into your Google Analytics account
Click on “Admin” at the top of your page
In the “View” column, select the view you’re ready to track
In the “View” column, select “Ecommerce Settings”
Set the “Enable Ecommerce” button to “On”
If you’re setting up Enhanced Ecommerce, switch it on as well
Click “Next Step” and then “Submit”

Set Up Tracking on Your Website: This next step can be a little tricky, so tread carefully! To collect ecommerce data, you’ll need to add JavaScript to your website (or Analytics SDKs for mobile apps) to track the data. If you’re comfortable with writing and editing code, this shouldn’t be too difficult, and Google offers a general guide to implementing it here. If you’re less well-versed in coding, reaching out to a web developer or Google Analytics expert for assistance is a better plan to prevent any mistakes that could incorrectly record data and negatively affect your decision-making process.

PART 2: WHAT IT ALL MEANS

The home of your ecommerce data

Now that you’ve implemented ecommerce tracking, what’s next? Luckily, once you’ve added your tracking code and set Google Analytics to detect it, your ecommerce reports will start populating with data and you’ll be able to start analyzing your customers’ shopping habits like a pro. Here’s a quick crash course in understanding your Google Analytics Ecommerce reports:

Finding Your Ecommerce Reports in Google Analytics:

-In Google Analytics, navigate to the view in which you implemented ecommerce tracking.

-Select “Reporting” from the main menu.

-On the left-hand side menu, select “Conversions”.

-Select “Ecommerce”.

Another cool feature that comes along with implementing Ecommerce Tracking is that you can now see ecommerce info directly in many of the reports in Google Analytics.

Select your favorite report and check out the ecommerce info that you can now find by selecting “Ecommerce” in the menu of the “Conversions” section at the right-hand edge of your reports. This is very convenient when you want to quickly segment your ecommerce data in relation to dimensions such as demographics, geography, or channels.

Looking at ecommerce info in a source/medium report

Understanding Ecommerce Lingo:

You probably already understand several of the metrics within Google Analytics’ ecommerce report, such as Revenue and Quantity, but there are some new metrics within this report that you may not be as familiar with. Here are a few important terms to keep an eye on:

–Ecommerce Conversion Rate: This is the percentage of sessions that culminated in an ecommerce transaction. Your ecommerce conversion rate gives you a quick way to determine if your shoppers are buying or if they’re just browsing.

–Unique Purchases: This refers to the number of times that a specified product (or set of products) was part of an order. In other words, if one person purchases two or more of the same item, that will only count as one “unique purchase”. This can be useful to determine how customers purchase your products and could help you identify if offering promotions such as bulk discounts could be a beneficial action for certain products.

–Transactions: Are a few customers buying a ton of stuff, or do you have a ton of customers buying one item each? The Transactions metric tells you how many times a customer made any kind of purchase on your site. When you compare your number of transactions to your total revenue, you can calculate “Average Order Value”, which is another useful Google Analytics ecommerce metric for understanding how valuable, on average, each customer’s transaction is to your business. Knowing the average value of transactions is key to efficiently planning your digital marketing efforts going forward.

Obviously, there is a lot more you can look at within ecommerce reports, especially if you have decided to implement Enhanced Ecommerce. If you ensure that your ecommerce tracking is installed correctly, the data collected in these reports can help you understand your customers’ behavior on a much deeper level.

If you’re ready to dive in but are still unsure where to start, contact the Leverage Marketing team today. We’re seasoned Google Analytics experts who are pros at setting up and analyzing ecommerce data, and we’re ready to answer your toughest ecommerce questions.

Should You Put Your Money on Video Marketing?

August 4, 2016/0 Comments/in Content Marketing, SEO, Video Marketing /by Leverage Marketing

If your online marketing efforts don’t include video, you’re now in the minority. An estimated 87% of online marketers are using video content in some form, and advertisers are spending $10 million annually on digital videos. Of course, “everyone else is doing it” isn’t enough to justify using video for marketing. Let’s look at some of the advantages of video marketing that may help sway you if you’re still unsure where to allocate your digital marketing dollars.

Benefits of Video Marketing

Informative and entertaining online videos can provide a great return on investment for your business. Videos can:

Increase your links and brand visibility. That’s because 92% of mobile video consumers share videos with people in their network, according to Invodo. Having videos from your site shared doesn’t just increase your visibility, it also helps your search engine rankings.
Increase a web user’s average time on your site. Many web users prefer to consume information through videos rather than text; in fact, Diode Digital found that video promotion is 600% more effective than print and direct mail combined. Web users are more likely to engage with your site if they can watch a video. More time on your site means greater engagement and a boost in search engine rankings.
Help your potential customers make a purchase decision. 90% of web users say that watching a video about a product helps them decide whether or not they want to purchase it, according to Insivia.
Help your B2B company reach its audience. Insivia also reports that three-quarters of executives watch videos on relevant business websites on a weekly basis.
Boost your email engagement. Forrester found that adding video to a marketing email can increase the click-through rate by 200-300%.

Determining Your Online Video Costs

It’s clear that there are numerous benefits of video marketing for your business, but can you afford the upfront costs? The good news is that the barrier to entry for video production is lower than you might think. You can even make company videos using a smartphone, some basic editing software (typically costing around $40-$100), and your in-house team. Of course, the quality of the video generally increases along with the budget. Marketing company Hinge estimates that a basic 1-2 minute video produced by a professional corporate team will cost about $5,000-$20,000, while a premium 1-2 minute video with top-level talent, high-end cameras, and a studio will cost $25,000-$50,000.

Free to $50,000 is obviously a pretty wide range, so if you’re thinking about using video for marketing, you’ll need to spend some time working out your own budget and determining if the cost is worth the benefits.

Your budget can be broken into three basic categories: time, labor, and equipment.

Time

If you’re making a simple explainer video with members of your in-house team, you might only need to set aside a few hours for shooting, but if you’re making a larger-scale video advertisement or case study, shooting might take a few days. In addition to actual filming time, you’ll need to account for pre-production planning, writing the script, traveling to and from the filming location, and editing. Remember that you’ll have to account for the time of everyone working on the project, so the more people you have, the more man-hours you’re likely to log.

Labor

Some companies are able to produce quality videos using employees as their actors, camera crew, and editors. However, if your in-house team has limited experience with video production, you may need to set aside part of your budget for hiring a professional videographer, editor, and/or spokesperson. The more experience these contract workers have, the more you can expect to pay.

Equipment

As previously mentioned, it is possible to make a DIY online video with a smartphone camera and basic editing software. However, for a more polished product, you may need to purchase (or rent) high-end cameras, multiple lenses, and sound and lighting equipment. Depending on the shots you have planned, you may also need specialty video production equipment such as a tripod, dolly or jib crane. Each of these items will add to the cost of the final product.

Investing in Video: Know What You Want to Achieve

Before deciding exactly how much you want to spend on video marketing, it’s important to determine exactly what you’re trying to achieve. For example, are you trying to increase your brand visibility with top-of-the-sales-funnel advertising? Are you trying to show consumers who are at the decision-making stage how to use your product? Are you trying to establish yourself as an authority in your industry? Make sure the goal of your campaign remains top-of-mind with everyone working on the project so that your online videos have a significant impact.

Still unsure how much your company should invest in video marketing, or any other form of online marketing? Talk to our team at Leverage– we’ll be happy to help you come up with a strategy for success.

How Long Does It Take Google to Index a New Site?

July 20, 2016/95 Comments/in SEO /by Bob Kehoe

It takes between 4 days and 4 weeks for your brand new website to be crawled and indexed by Google. This range, however, is fairly broad and has been challenged by those who claim to have indexed sites in less than 4 days. Even though Google’s inimitable search engine works on an algorithm, the eternal math that’s happening behind the scenes can’t produce a single, solid answer for us. Still, a guideline of 4 days to 1 month gives webmasters a small amount of comfort while they wait to see where their page will appear in the search giant’s results pages.

How Sites Are Crawled and Indexed by Google

The entire process of indexing is handled by Google’s search algorithm and bots like the Googlebot, which have real-world limitations of hardware speed and physical space for servers. The bots run constantly as they turn the endless digital fields of lost information into over 100,000,000 gigabytes of index. In this way, Google creates a map of the infinite library of the visible Internet.

Googlebot, the algorithm-equipped web-crawling digital robot, sets out to explore the Internet and stops at websites.
When it encounters a site, it reads the information on the website according to instructions outlined in the site’s robots.txt file. Bots like Googlebot prefer to read text and follow links that they find to bank more information, and will follow sitemaps provided by webmasters.
The content the bot discovers and what that content contains is sent back to Google servers, where it is added to a database.
Information in the database is fed to computer programs that keep track of which sites should be crawled, how often bots should visit them, and the number of pages to fetch.
Other programs determine the relevance and value of the content on crawled sites and reward the ones that meet Google’s strict criteria with rankings near the beginning of search results.

Googlebot has an affinity for new sites, changes to existing sites, and dead links. If you’re a new site owner and want your site to be indexed as quickly as possible, you may want to put the spotlight on your site using some of the methods listed below so that the bots looking for fresh reading are drawn to your domain.

Can I Make Google Index Faster?

Yes, many webmasters have found that taking steps to signal to Google that you’ve got a new, real website brimming with potential keeps the indexing time closer to the lower range of 4 days to 4 weeks. The steps follow the logic that making your site visible in the digital realm will also make it stand out to Googlebot.

Build a Site That’s Indexable

Before connecting your site to existing channels on the Internet, make sure your site’s structure is prepared for its very first presentation. Provide the following to the Googlebot:

Value – Produce content with text that a Googlebot can crawl
Ease-of-Use – Make sure you have a high ratio of text to code in favor of text
Navigation – Include a navigation bar that links to all of the major and permanent content on your site
Real Language – Use URLs on web addresses and alt text on images that explain the site content
Simplicity – Minimize Javascript or code it to load after the HTML (since Googlebot reads text and gets signals of the importance of text from HTML)
Direction – Check your robots.txt to see if it allows the Googlebot to crawl your site properly

These are search engine optimization basics that unlock the door to your website once the bot finds it. Delays in indexing may be caused when Googlebot can’t gain entrance even if it sees your site clearly.

Set up Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the comprehensive, free web analytics tool that collects and organizes website traffic data into customizable reports. Connecting Google Analytics to your website is a way of saying “Hello!” to Google. Though data may not appear in Google Analytics until your website is indexed, it still sends a signal to Google that you’re serious about building your web presence.

Set up Search Console

Google Search Console, formerly Google Webmaster Tools, gives you more in-depth information about how your website appears in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) and reports to you when Googlebot has a problem crawling and indexing your site. Before your site is initially indexed, you won’t receive any search console data. But showing Google that you are manually activating Google services sends another green light to Googlebot, who is on the search for all the green lights it can find.

As a bonus, setting up Google Search Console will also help you look for crawl errors so you can find ways to fix them.

Submit a Sitemap

If you want to create a sitemap, which is a rough outline of your site optimized for bots, take advantage of the Google Sitemap Generator. Though many content curation tools and website development kits now generate their own sitemaps, you’ll still need to submit one through Google Search Console. To do so, choose Sitemaps under Crawl in Google Search Console and click the Add/Test Sitemap button.

Google Fetch & Render

You can ask Google manually to send a bot out to your website via the Fetch & Render option or the Submit URL option in Google Search Console. Google makes no guarantees that submitting your URL will result in a crawl or indexing. Additionally, even if Google is able to render your website, having it fetched may not produce fast results. However, doing one or both increases the odds of an early detection by Googlebot.

Note: After performing a fetch & render, Search Console will provide an option to index what was fetched. Clicking this option further raises your chance of becoming visible.

Get Links

Grabbing links to your site before it is indexed creates pathways to your site on websites that Google is already crawling. Just getting links is not as easy as it sounds, though. You’ll have to search the web for places that you trust, trust you in return, and believe in your website enough to offer you a link. Traditional networking and marketing approaches may help you earn links, so don’t be afraid to hit real pavement in search of links that will accelerate indexing.

Start Outreach

While you’re searching for links, start developing digital relationships with your target audience, other business owners, webmasters through outreach. You can:

Send emails to potential connections
Look for guest writing and blogging opportunities
List your site on directories (blog directories, business directories, etc.)
Send out press releases

We are in an age of rule by social media, and whether you enjoy it or not, those who want attention to their websites and fast indexing must embrace social media tools as a means of creating links, customers, and fans.

Set Up Social Media

Choose social media outlets that you have the capacity to manage and make accounts for those. Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Pinterest, Instagram, and LinkedIn are among the most popular and well-used, but you’ll need a social media manager, a team of social media specialists, or the willingness to sacrifice the majority of your free time if you expect to keep a constant social media presence.

Create accounts with your business name and post links to your site as soon as it’s up. Most links created on social media are called nofollow links, which instructs bots not to go down the link’s path. However, Googlebot crawls social media quite a bit, and it will notice follow as well as nofollow links.

Anything Else I Should Know About Google Indexing?

Don’t fear the 4 days to 4 weeks range. Even 4 days gives you time to optimize your site so that when it finally gets indexed, it will top the SERPs. Before you begin signaling the Googlebot, read Google’s guidelines for valuable content and make sure each word you write adheres to them. Have patience, be active, and trust that Google and its hard-working team has the best interests of searchers in mind when it crawls and indexes.

Why Mobile Marketing Matters to Your Brick-and-Mortar Store

July 13, 2016/2 Comments/in SEO, Web Design /by Leverage Marketing

As a local business owner, it might seem to you as if web design and mobile marketing are the domains of ecommerce companies. After all, your primary goal is to get customers to make purchases in your brick-and-mortar store, not off of your website.

However, even if you don’t sell any products or services online, local mobile marketing still matters to your business, and you need to have a mobile-optimized website. According to the latest Pew research, almost 7 in 10 Americans now own a smartphone, and the majority of these smartphone owners have used their mobile devices to find information about local businesses. You’ve probably experienced this yourself—maybe you’ve pulled out your phone to search for a good lunch spot close to work, or you’ve searched for nearby bike repair shops after getting a flat tire.

As you no doubt know from your own mobile search experiences, people who look up local business information on their phones or tablets are typically motivated to take some sort of follow-up action. In fact, one study found that 55% of mobile-influenced retail conversions take place within an hour of the original search.

Your website serves as an online storefront, and it can be a powerful tool in getting customers through the door. However, a poorly designed website can create a bad first impression, and if mobile users struggle to find the information they’re looking for on your site, they’re much more likely to go with a competitor.

By developing a mobile strategy for your retail or hospitality business, you can make sure your potential customers get the right first impression and make the leap from your website to your brick-and-mortar location. Below are a few tips to help you improve your local mobile marketing.

5 Tips to Improve Customers’ Mobile Experience

Choose Your Mobile Platform: Site vs. App

There are two primary ways that users could find a business on their mobile device: they could open a web browser and go to a mobile site, or they could install and open an app. In most cases, a mobile website will be your best bet—it’s easier to create, and two-thirds of mobile phone users say they prefer getting local business information from a site rather than an app. However, an app might make sense if you are able to use it to provide additional benefits to customers—for example, you could use an app to send push notifications to users about the latest discounts and specials available at your store.

Test Site for Responsive Design

Responsive design is a popular choice when optimizing a website for mobile because it allows web content to adapt to fit any screen size. If you use responsive design for your site, perform your own user experience test by going to the site on your phone or tablet and making sure all pages are fully responsive and easy to navigate. And if you own a restaurant, make sure mobile users can view your menu without downloading a cumbersome PDF. Due to the relatively large file size, PDFs often download slowly on mobile devices, which can be frustrating for mobile users.

Make Key Information Prominent

When consumers access your website on the go, they’re most likely looking for some essential information. According to an eMarketer survey, a physical address is the most commonly searched piece of information about your business, followed by map and driving directions, open hours, and phone number. Make sure this information is readily available on your mobile site—consumers don’t want to waste time scrolling or navigating through different pages to find what they need. Business name, address, and phone number should appear across all pages, with a consistent format (this is important for search engine indexing as well as making it easy for people to find key information).

Promote In-Store Deals

If you’re competing with online retailers, use your mobile site to convince web users that it’s well worth their while to visit your physical location. Prominently display special discounts or deals that consumers can’t get online, or highlight additional benefits associated with going to a brick-and-mortar location. For example, if you own a running apparel store, write website copy that explains how customers can test shoes out by running on your treadmills and find the perfect fit with the help of a running footwear expert.

Pay Attention to Local SEO

In addition to optimizing your website so that it looks great on all screen sizes, you’ll also need to focus on technical and on-page SEO so that local shoppers can find your site when they enter relevant search terms on their mobile device. Here are a few strategies to try:

Optimize your copy with location-based keywords (e.g. ‘San Diego chiropractor’)
Make sure you have claimed and filled out your listing in online business directories (e.g. Google My Business)
Encourage customers to share their feedback on review sites that typically rank highly, such as Yelp
Create local content that is relevant to your business, such as a neighborhood guide or list of upcoming local events
Make sure your landing pages are optimized with location information

These tips provide a high-level overview of what goes into a solid mobile strategy for local retail and hospitality businesses. To learn more about how you can improve your online storefront through web design and SEO, contact our team of digital marketing experts.