• FAQs

          Search engine optimization (SEO) helps businesses drive visits to their website through organic search traffic. Given that the top organic search results receive a third of the clicks, a decline in ranking could be detrimental for your business. Implementing SEO best practices on your website will help to ensure that your web content is seen by as many potential customers as possible. The more visitors you have, the better your chances are of converting those visits into sales!

          Local search engine optimization (SEO) helps local businesses gain visibility by optimizing their local business listings for local search. A business that leverages local SEO will include its address, phone number, local opening times, and exact location in the form of a local citation. The goal is to rank for local searches which are usually performed by people in a specific geographical region looking for a business near them.

          We typically see results within the first 30 to 60 days, but when it comes to SEO, there are many factors at play. It's important to remember that SEO is a long-term strategy and results may not come as fast at you wish.

        • FAQs

          Digital advertising uses the internet to send advertisements to customers who are online through different websites and social media platforms like Google, Bing, LinkedIn and Facebook.

          The price for Google Ads management depends on the monthly ad spend. For accounts with $1,000 in monthly ad spend, the price is $550/month. Between $1,000 and $5,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $950/month. For $5,000 to $10,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $2,000/month. For more than $10,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $4,500/month.

          The price for Social Media Ads management depends on the monthly ad spend. For accounts with $1,000 in monthly ad spend, the price is $550/month. Between $1,000 and $5,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $950/month. For $5,000 to $10,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $2,000/month. For more than $10,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $4,500/month.

        • FAQs

          This depends on the complexity and size of a redesign and if eCommerce is needed. On average, it takes around 14-18 weeks from the web design intensive stage to launch.

          If your website experiences the following issues: it’s not responsive on all devices, has a slow loading speed, the design appears old and tired, users don’t spend long on the site, sales are stagnant, or your business is going through a rebranding - your website needs a redesign to boost your brand awareness and sales.

          Sometimes there’s no need to rebuild a website. Minor edits, refreshing page content and images, or restructuring page layout for SEO best practices can boost traffic and sales.

        • FAQs

          Semantic search launched in 2013 with the release of Google's Hummingbird update. Since then, Google's search engine has become more complex. The integration of machine learning, with RankBrain, and NLP, with BERT, has enabled the search engine to better understand the context of a query and deliver more personalized and targeted results. Semantic SEO is the process of creating machine-readable content using structured data and linked open data to help search engines better understand your content.

          On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing individual web pages in order to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines. On-page SEO refers to both the content and HTML source code of a page that can be optimized, as opposed to off-page SEO which refers to links and other external signals. From meta tags to page content, website structure, and HTML, on-page optimization services are focused on making your website more visible to search engines.

          Structured data refers to any organized data that conforms to a certain format, such as information in a relational database. When information is highly structured and predictable, search engines can more easily organize and display it in creative ways. Structured data involves using a piece of code that is laid out in a specific format easily understood by search engines. The search engines read the code and use it to display search results in a more dynamic way.

        • FAQs

          An SEO agency has experts in different areas of search engine optimization that may be out of the realm of your marketing team's abilities. SEO can be very complex and time-consuming. Furthermore, as search engine algorithms change it can be difficult to stay current on the latest ranking factors and strategies for improving online visibility. You will likely see a greater return on investment and better results from using a professional SEO agency than you would from tackling this on your own.

          As a digital marketing agency, SMA Marketing provides products and services in four areas: SEO, Local SEO, Digital Advertising, and Web Design

          We focus on building authentic, long-lasting relationships with our clients. We’re goal oriented and results driven and believe in doing good and making a difference in the world.

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How to Use Website Design to Inspire Your Visitors to Engage

Ryan Shelley, CPBI

February 22, 2016

When it comes to your website, the goal must be engagement, not just traffic. What’s the point of driving hundreds or thousands of visitors to your website if they just turn around and leave? Your website’s design plays a large role in either connecting or deterring people from engaging with your business online. No matter your design preference or industry, there are a few tools, tricks and tips you can use to help increase visitor engagement and create a website that works for you and more importantly your visitors!

If you’re starting from scratch, don’t fret. You don’t need to have extensive web design experience to actually create a website that can carry your business. You can take advantage of web building services that offer all-inclusive plans~from domain creation to layout optimization. These days, more and more businesses prefer to use pre-built templates designed by industry professionals. These templates have been tried and tested to yield results, so your knowledge of web design (or lack thereof) shouldn’t be an issue. You can easily customize them yourself based on your business needs and create an aesthetic that fits your brand identity.

As business owners we have our own ideas of the way we want our website to look and feel. Our site is a direct reflection of our brand and a place to showcase our company mission to the world. But our websites are not for us, they are for our customers and prospects. Before ever contacting your company or small business, a majority of people will first visit your website. So let’s take a look at how to optimize our websites to ensure better engagement.

Creating Your Baseline

engaement bounce rateTracking how your website is preforming is essential. Google Analytics is a free tool that many site owners have enabled, but very view ever look at, much less understand. Understanding the metrics is key to determining what to do next. One of the most important factors in determining whether or not your visitors are engaging is bounce rate. Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page. Statistics show that you have very little time to engage visitors. In fact, a stunning 55% spent fewer than 15 seconds actively on a page. – Tony Haile.

In order to transform your website from an online brochure into an active marketing and sales tool, engagement is the key. If your site has a bounce rate of 70% or more, you should take a hard look at your design. Below are a few baseline metrics for bounce rates according to industry.

Product Information Pages

  • Minimum Bounce Rate ~ 3.24%
  • Maximum Bounce Rate ~ 50%
  • Average Bounce Rate ~ 33.03%

Lead Generation Sites

  • Minimum Bounce Rate ~ 5.24%
  • Maximum Bounce Rate ~ 81%
  • Average Bounce Rate ~ 47.38%

Web Stores and E-Commerce Sites

  • Minimum Bounce Rate ~ 14.3%
  • Maximum Bounce Rate ~ 68%
  • Average Bounce Rate ~ 33.9%

News and Media Sites

  • Minimum Bounce Rate ~ 25%
  • Maximum Bounce Rate ~ 81.4%
  • Average Bounce Rate ~ 55.56%

Other Types of Sites

  • Minimum Bounce Rate ~ 13%
  • Maximum Bounce Rate ~ 85%
  • Average Bounce Rate ~ 41.13%

By looking at these numbers, you can set your own target baseline for what you consider as an allowable bounce rate for your website. This way, it’s easier to determine which pages are irrelevant, confusing, or difficult to use for your visitors.

Determining the Issues

Once you have established that you have an engagement issue with your site, what’s next? While Google Analytics does give a ton of great data, it leaves many of the next steps open for interpretation. Engagement has to do with the user and their behavior on our site. The statistics tell a story, just not the whole story. To truly understand how and where your users are falling off we need a better tool. This is where Hotjar comes in. There are a few other great heat mapping tools out there, but after our research we found this tool simply offers more features at a much better price! (Sign up for free here)

In a nutshell, a website heat mapping tool creates a visual clickmap that breaks down the patterns of your users’ mouse activity. It monitors clicks, taps, and scrolls that land on different pages of your website. Using Hotjar you can see how real users are interacting with your site. One of the best features is the recording tool. This logs user visits for you to go back and watch later. Focus on the visits that leave quickly and compare them to the ones that engage. Take notes and see if you can find any patterns.

A Growth Driven Solution

The old way of “setting it and forgetting it” no longer works when it comes to having a website. With over 644 million websites out there, why should a user engage with yours? Creating an experience that engages the users and drives them to take action is what sets the growing companies apart from the ones falling behind.

Growth Driven Design is the process of building and growing your site around your users. Unlike the traditional approach of launching a full-blown website at once, growth-driven design uses an incomplete ‚Äòlaunchpad website’ and uses data from web analytics to make regular touch-ups. By analyzing where your site is failing and succeeding, you can tweak and change your design to better fit your visitors’ needs. If you think about it, it’s easier to follow your users’ behavior and give them what they seek, instead of continuously trying to convince them to accept what you’re offering. The main thing to remember here is that you’re never done. Your site is a living and breathing part of your business and it’s time to start treating it that way!

Humans are visual. Good design moves us to engage and take action. If your website is not working for you, it’s time to take a look under the hood. Use Google Analytics, or whatever other analytics tool you use, to understand if your users are engaging. Try Hotjar and get a real look at how your users are actually using your website. Finally, embrace a growth driven solution to your problem. Your website is for your users so it needs to be designed in a way that encourages them to connect. Increase your engagement and you’ll increase your conversions.New call-to-action

Ryan Shelley, CPBI

Ryan is passionate about helping companies make a more personal connection online with their customers and prospects. He is a regular contributor to Search Engine Land, the largest and most popular SEO news site on the web. His works have also been featured on the HubSpot Blog, Business2Community and by LinkedIn Marketing Solutions.

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