Equipment, Tools, Party and Event Rental Stores Improve Customer Service by Enabling Account Information Access
In a world where the clock never stops, one way to improve customer service is to enable your clients to check things off their list when convenient to them… without having to use up your precious human resource.
The Customer Portal integration between WordPress and Alert Rental allows rental businesses’ clients to view and interact with live data connected to their customer account. An easy to navigate dashboard provides all key elements of viewing important admin documents, making payments, event taking items off-rent early!
The standard Alert Rental Customer Portal integration includes:
View current balance
View open tickets
View open invoices
View closed invoices
Search closed invoices by Invoice Number
Search closed invoices by Date Range
Download PDF of open tickets and invoices
Make payments via credit card (ACH not supported by Alert Rental)
Courtesy one-time bulk upload of Customer Portal users per provided Excel Sheet by Client
Enable Sales to manage Customer Portal Users without managing website
Customers can create accounts and recover password without employee help
Login screen with automated password reset Self-registration of new users
Rental businesses’ staff will be able to:
Manage user accounts
Modify the portal with appropriate information you’d like to display
Collect your money faster
Alongside the standard integration, a number of customizations and add-ons are also available depending on how you want to further improve your customers’ experience:
Custom Customer Portal registration page
Enable same user to have access to multiple accounts
Take items Off Rent
Off-rent email notification by location (requires “Take items Off Rent”)
Off-rent print notification by location (requires “Take items Off Rent”)
We are on a mission to improve business efficiencies by utilizing already available technology and enabling integrations.
Allowing website users to access their accounts with rental businesses (party or equipment) online can provide several benefits:
Efficiency and Trust: Allowing your clients access to their account information speeds up processes for everyone involved, which leads to overall better experience and more trust.
Improved revenue collection: The convenience to review and pay your bills online removes a big friction between businesses and their clients. Enabling your client to access their open invoices and make full or partial payments will speed up your collection of precious revenue.
Improved customer experience: Providing a hassle-free experience to customers who are inquiring about your services can improve their overall experience with your business. By providing an easy and streamlined way to get an update on their account, you’re demonstrating that you value their time and are committed to providing excellent service.
Ease of equipment flow: To take an item off rent likely means having to make a call to your store (during business hours). Why not enable your customers to do that when they can. Freedom of making choices and acting on them is a big part of earning customers trust and long-term business. You also can get your equipment back earlier if not needed to get the next order going!
Your customer portal can be the newest motor in your business in a few short weeks! If you are interested in implementing Customer Portal on your website, please contact us:
Equipment, Party and Event Rental Stores Improve Efficiency and Offer a Better Customer Experience
Save a few manual steps.
Focus your team on closing business vs. documenting requests.
The WordPress website integration with Alert Rental WebRequest allows your clients to select the items they are interested in renting and request a quote without having you engage your team via email, phone, etc. Take the first steps into modernizing and improving your website’s experience. In just under a month your website can become a more valuable asset to your business!
The Alert Rental WebRequest integration allows your website users to:
Browse your rental catalog
Add rental products to WebRequest
Include billing & event details in WebRequest
Select pickup or delivery, and preferred dates and times
Submit WebRequest
While WebRequests are being submitted, you and your staff will be able to:
View requests for quote in your Alert Rental dashboard – no more chasing emails and worrying if something went to spam
Convert request for quotes to bids straight from your Alert Rental dashboard with a few easy clicks
Track all requests for quotes in your website dashboard and if/when needed resend confirmations
Alongside the standard integration, a number of customizations and add-ons are also available depending on how you want to further improve your customers’ experience.
We are on a mission to improve business efficiencies by utilizing already available technology and enabling integrations.
Allowing website users to request a quote for your rental products (party or equipment) online can provide several benefits for your rental business, including:
Convenience: Offering online quote requests makes it more convenient for your customers to inquire about your event and equipment rental services. They can do it from the comfort of their own home or office without having to make a phone call or visit your physical store.
Time-saving: By enabling online quotes, your customers can save time as they won’t have to wait on hold or leave a voicemail. Instead, they can submit a request at any time and expect a response. In turn, responding to quote inquiries with WebRequests saves you and your team time as all items from the users’ lists are already in Alert Rental. With a couple clicks of a button you can turn them into a bid and send to your customer.
Reduce risk of errors: By enabling your customers to select the items they are interested in, review their cart and submit their list to you, you immediately reduce the margin of error of having someone on the phone writing down the list, for example. No matter how diligent rental employees are, human errors happen and when we can minimize those the outcomes instantly improve.
Increased sales: When you make it easier for potential customers to request a quote, you’re increasing the chances of turning their interest into a sale. By providing a smooth and straightforward process to request a quote, you make it more likely customers will follow through and ultimately choose to rent equipment from your store.
Improved customer experience: Providing a hassle-free experience to customers who are inquiring about your services can improve their overall experience with your business. By providing an easy and streamlined way to get a quote, you’re demonstrating that you value their time and are committed to providing excellent service.
Enhanced data collection: Online quote requests allow you to collect customer information that can be used to create targeted marketing campaigns and tailor your services to meet their needs. By collecting data, you can better understand your customers and their rental needs, which can help you improve your business in the long run.
Overall, allowing website users to request a quote for your equipment online can benefit your business in numerous ways, from increasing sales to improving customer experience and data collection.
You can have your WordPress website ready to integrate with Alert Rental and start taking quote requests online in less than a month! If you are interested in implementing WebRequests on your website, please contact us:
Twelve Legs Marketing would like to share a big update. Recently, at the American Advertising Federation Colorado Icon Awards honoring the best of the Colorado Springs advertising community, Twelve Legs Marketing was recognized for outstanding work in three significant areas.
Volen Kiskinov was nominated for Media Strategist of the Year.
Jason Carter was nominated AND WON Producer of the Year.
And the entire Twelve Legs team (two- and four-legged alike) was nominated for AND WON Full-Service Agency of the Year.
How did this happen? Dogged pursuit. Throughout our team, we chase what’s best for our clients and partners with all our heart. We love the chase. We can’t get enough of it. It’s why we do it all day long, every day.
Thank you so much for trusting us to be part of your pursuits, helping us to grow as a team, and striving along with us. And know that these awards won’t lessen our love for the chase. In fact, they serve to make our pursuit even more dogged.
A HTTP Archive (HAR) records all web browser requests including the request and response headers, the body content, and the page load time.
A HAR file can include sensitive details such as passwords, payment information, and private keys. You can manually remove sensitive information from a HAR file via a text editor before providing to your Twelve Legs Marketing Support team.
Currently, only Chrome and Firefox can access the HAR feature by default. Other browsers either require a browser extension or cannot generate a HAR. When installing a browser extension, follow the instructions from the extension provider.
Export HAR File in Chrome
1. In a browser page, right-click anywhere and select Inspect Element.
2. The developer tools either appear at the bottom or left side of the browser. Click the Network tab.
3. Check Preserve log.
4. Click record.
5. Browse to the URL that causes issues. Once the issue is experienced, right click on any of the items within the Network tab and select Save all as HAR with Content.
When creating a website, your first priority should be to make it look good. WRONG. When developing a website, most business owners overlook how many people will be able to see it and how they can attract more visitors.
The issue is that most people who create websites are not professional web designers; rather, they are business owners with limited knowledge of HTML and other related coding languages.
This is not to say that you should not create a website if you are unfamiliar with coding or whether your web pages should be blue or orange!
On the contrary, a few simple tricks can assist you in developing an SEO-friendly website for high search engine rankings, increasing its visibility to search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo so that more people can find your site when they search for something relevant to your business.
What Is SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of practices that help websites appear in search engine results pages. It involves changes to the website and its content to help search engines understand its relevance to specific search queries.
SEO helps users find your website by making it more visible to search engines. Effective SEO and web design are essential for any business looking to thrive online. You can’t expect visitors to find your new website, let alone return again and again, unless you implement the best SEO web design practices from the get-go.
Here are some reasons why you might want to include an SEO strategy in your web design process if you plan to launch a new website or change the way your current site works:
Better Visibility and Brand Awareness
SEO increases your visibility in online search results, which leads to increased website traffic. The more people who visit your website, the more likely they are to make a purchase or subscribe to your service.
Many factors can influence visibility, including the quality of your site’s content, the linking structure of your site, the social presence of your brand, and the use of relevant keywords.
SEO, like increasing website visibility, can help raise brand awareness and make your brand more recognizable. A strong brand is essential for any business because it can help you stand out from the crowd.
SEO Drives Search Engine Traffic
SEO can assist you in driving relevant traffic to your website, which can lead to increased conversions.
Traffic and conversion rates are important factors that influence the success of a website and, more broadly, a business. If the majority of visitors to your website do not make a purchase, you are passing up enormous profit opportunities.
SEO Helps Build a Company’s Reputation
SEO, like brand awareness, can aid in the development of a company’s reputation. One of the most important aspects of any business is its reputation, which can make or break customer transactions. SEO can help a company’s reputation by increasing the number of positive reviews on its website.
SEO Can Help Build a Foundation for PPC
Paid search marketing (PPC) is a type of advertising that charges for ads on search engine result pages using an auction model. So, if you have an e-commerce site or a business that assists people in finding work, you can use PPC to increase traffic and leads.
How to Implement SEO in Your Web Design
The importance of SEO in website development cannot be overstated. After all, your website will not receive visitors unless people are aware of its existence.
Here are a few SEO website development practices you can use to create a search engine-friendly website.
Build a Responsive Website
Nowadays, many people use their smartphones to access the internet. The last thing you want is for your users to visit your website only to discover that it is incompatible with their device.
As a result, the first thing you should do is create a responsive website. In other words, ensure that your website is compatible with all types of computers, laptops, tablets, and phones.
This ensures that your website is compatible with all devices and accessible to all users, regardless of platform.
Improve Site Load Speed
Websites that load quickly and easily are rewarded by search engines. Slow loading times are becoming a major concern as more people use the internet for information and shopping.
If your website takes longer than 5 seconds to load, you risk losing a lot of traffic and potential sales. Choose a hosting company with a fast server and add caching plugins to your website to make it load faster.
Develop Content That is Unique and Valuable
Creating unique and valuable content is another essential SEO practice in website development.
You can accomplish this by conducting extensive research to gain a clear understanding of your target audience and their needs. Create content that addresses their concerns once you have this information.
Optimize Your Website For User Experience
Optimizing your website for user experience is another important SEO practice in website development. Simply put, you should ensure that your website is user-friendly and free of bugs and broken links.
When dealing with a brand-new website, you don’t have to start from scratch. You can always have your website redesigned to meet these requirements.
Keyword Research and Content Development
Many people believe that using a lot of keywords will help them rank higher in search engines. However, this is not the case. In fact, you should use keywords sparingly. You don’t want to stuff keywords into your content just to boost your rankings. This will make your content appear spammy.
For better results, include title tags and a meta descriptions.
Conclusion
When it comes to digital marketing strategies, the possibilities seem limitless. You must be creative and think outside the box to stand out from the crowd and reach your target audience.
Sadly, we may never have a definitive answer to those age old questions. But what about the most profound dilemma of all…
Should you outsource your marketing or keep it in-house?
Whether you’re a 3-person startup, a blossoming business with dozens of employees, or a large and established organization, there are pros and cons to both options. Ultimately, it all comes down to your unique situation. Here, we’ll focus on some of the key benefits to hiring a marketing agency—and a few best practices for getting the most out of your partnership.
Marketing Agencies Are Cost Effective
Let’s start with obvious: hiring a full team of talented marketers is not only challenging and time consuming, but also mighty expensive. According to the recent 2020 Salary Guide: Creative and Marketing, their combined salaries alone will set you back more than $850,000/a year, and that’s before you open your big heart and offer benefits.
Chief Marketing Officer: $164,000
VP of Marketing: $145,000
Digital Strategist: $79,750
Marketing Manager: $78,000
Content Strategist: $73,500
Copywriter: $72,500
Web Designer: $69,250
Video Editor: $59,500
Social Media Manager: $59,500
Account Executive: $55,000
Maybe you’re just looking for help with digital and video. Perhaps content and copywriting is your current need. Or website development and social media could be a concentration right now. A marketing agency can provide specialized focus and expertise depending on your budget and business needs, and if it’s the full service treatment you seek, any good marketing agency will provide the services of all those specialists for far less annual cost.
Pro tip: Commitment = savings. Quality agencies prefer to avoid small, one-off projects. Partnering to share in long-term success often makes the most financial sense for all involved.
Marketing Agencies Can Scale…Fast
If you need to raise awareness, increase leads, drive sales, launch a campaign, or overhaul your website, starting from scratch internally is a herculean (and time-consuming) effort. Posting the job, pouring over resumes, several rounds of interviews, checking references. When you finally get the right person or people in place, then begins the on-boarding, training, and finding the right tools and equipment to help them succeed.
Even if you currently have a team in place, there’s always a constant battle of turnover and new talent acquisition, more training, more implementation…
When you hire a marketing agency, they come pre-equipped to hit the ground running. It’s all about fast and efficient innovation, and your ability to boost your efforts and scale increases exponentially. Outside experts and specialists from marketing agencies are ready for all phases of your mission-critical projects, so they can begin, progress, and reach full maturity in a fraction of the time.
Pro tip: Sharing is caring! If you have current messaging, brand guidelines, customer personas, past collateral, examples of marketing you like/don’t like, etc., it can greatly expedite the process and help your agency partner succeed even quicker.
Marketing Agencies Stay Ahead of the Trends
The marketing world never stops evolving. More than ever before, today’s digital age requires us to not only keep up—but stay ahead of all the tactics, techniques, and trends that seem to shift almost daily.
And with that fact comes a hard reality: very few in-house marketers can keep up. They’re so bogged down in day-to-day tasks—simply checking the box and moving onto the next assignment—that learning, growing, and adapting with the industry always seems to sit on the back burner.
Marketing agencies are different. It’s their job to fully understand the latest Google algorithm updates, overnight Facebook policy change, content marketing best practices, SEO nuances, and everything else moving the needle in the marketing world.
On top of all that, you can rest easy knowing your marketing will benefit from unprecedented access to the latest marketing tools and platforms. We’re talking premium-level softwares, services, and analytics reporting that would cost you a lot of time and money to implement and learn.
The expansive, cutting-edge suite of industry research, trend monitoring, and social media listening tools used by Twelve Legs Marketing would cost your in-house marketing team thousands of precious budget dollars each month, for example.
Pro tip: Trust in your agency’s process.Becoming a “client” may be a transition for you. If results don’t come overnight, know that your success is your agency’s success…you chose them for a reason.
Marketing Agencies Reduce Your Stress
CEOs and Marketing Directors who choose to keep everything in-house have to manage employee stress, squabbles, and the inevitable interoffice politics that can often derail progress. Professional development, performance reviews, and everything else that comes with managing a team is laborious.
Agencies on the other hand, are set up to manage themselves. The good ones employ a full team of experts who are fine-tuned to function as one cohesive unit, with a full suite of internal processes, procedures, and daily check-ins to ensure each client receives the care and attention they deserve.
Ultimately, this gives you the freedom to set your marketing efforts on auto-pilot with the knowledge that your goals are being met and objectives exceeded by a trusted team of skilled professionals.
Pro tip: Lay it all on the line. If there are tensions or challenges among your in-house teams, executives, and decision-makers, tell your agency. Keep it professional and on-the-level, but full transparency makes it easier to execute and deliver on a collective vision.
Is Hiring a Marketing Agency Worth It?
Are there benefits to keeping marketing in-house? Absolutely. Homegrown expertise, ease of communication, and 24/7/365 commitment to your brand vision and company values, to name a few.
But as we’ve shown, agencies certainly offer a lot of value.
Many businesses choose to use a combination. Maybe you have a talented writer on staff, but digital marketing is just too far out of your comfort zone.
We recently hosted a small networking event here at the Twelve Legs offices in downtown Colorado Springs.
It was a true joint effort, not only among our team, but also our event partners—ANB Bank and local non-profit Pawsitive Kidnections.
In the end we had about 50 professionals turn out for a fun and productive evening. It was a pleasure to welcome our current clients, prospects, and friends to check out our (relatively) new office space while enjoying good food, good drink, and good company.
If you’re considering planning/hosting an event at/for you business, good for you! It can be a very rewarding experience, but it does take a fair amount of effort. We learned a few things from our recent event, and wanted to share some quick tips to keep in mind and questions to ask if you’re preparing for a company event of your own.
Determine which organizational employee is best suited to plan or act as the liaison to your selected event planner. Clearly communicate your intentions to this employee.
Decide the main purpose of your event and don’t try to combine too many objectives or dilute your intentions. Will it be a customer appreciation, prospecting, employee appreciation event, or something else altogether?
Decide on the size and budget for your event. Plan on a 20 to 30% attendance rate based on invites sent (with very few RSVPs).
How will you send the invitation? Hard invite, Facebook, email, or a combination of all methods? Will you send reminders?
Do you have enough employees available to meet and greet your guests to maximize your objective?
Every event will be a little different, and every company will have its own objectives. But if you answer the questions and check the boxes above, you’ll be on your way to a smooth and successful event that impresses your attendees and leaves you feeling accomplished.
The headline calls it the foundation. It could also be described as the cornerstone. Linchpin. Epicenter, heartbeat, lifeforce…
Whichever hyperbolic term you prefer, that’s how critical a website is to your business. A website can make or break your success. That’s not hyperbole—it’s a fact.
The average person spends 5 hours online every day…and Google alone logs more than 3.5 billion searches. What are they all doing? Well, 82% of consumers conduct research online while 79% shop online, according to Forbes and Tech Crunch, respectively.
The importance of a website extends to every aspect of your marketing strategy. As the backbone of your company (last one, we promise), every piece of content, every advertisement, every communication (digital or traditional) will compel customers to visit your website.
So when your target consumer is acting on an ad, researching, or shopping products or services in your market sector, chances are they’ll visit your website before ever setting foot in your store or speaking to a salesperson.
And you know what they say about first impressions.
A website is your frontline marketing and sales workhorse, 24/7/365—promoting your brand to interested users while educating, informing, and hopefully driving action.
What Are The Essential Elements Of A Good Website?
Easy Navigation: The best websites are all about function over flash. User experience (UX) is paramount. Visitors should be able to find what they need in just a couple of clicks, and while every website is unique, they don’t have to be over-complicated. For most businesses, Home> About Us> Services> Contact Us are the only sections necessary. With clear menus and calls-to-action throughout, of course.
Mobile-Friendly: 88% of consumers will start their product searches online, and 68% of them will be on their tablet or mobile device. Back to the importance of UX, if your website isn’t optimized for mobile, potential customers will be annoyed. It’s a detriment to your brand.
Clean and Alluring Design: Your site is the most important extension of your brand, so it should be attractive, enticing, and use only the colors, fonts, images, and logos that visually align with your business.
Strong Copy and Compelling Content: Much like a good-looking design can visually communicate your brand, the voice and tone of your message is essential to helping you stand out. Weave in relevant, action-oriented keywords, influential content, and customer testimonials. When you greet your visitors with thoughtful copy, you humanize your brand and differentiate your company.
Speedy Load Times: We’re an impatient species, and it’s only gotten worse in the digital age. If your site doesn’t load within a few seconds, users may bounce. Professional web design will always keep UX and load times top of mind.
Clear CTAs, Easy Conversion: Whatever it is you want your visitor to do, it should be crystal clear the moment they hit your site. Fill out a contact form, download an asset, learn more, or straight-up “Buy Now,” it must be obvious and seamless for users to convert with a quick click.
Search Engine Optimization: You may have checked every box leading up to this bullet point with a website fine-tuned to drive sales—but just because you built it doesn’t mean they’ll come. Your site structure and content need to be optimized for search engines like Google. Professional website design includes SEO services that will illuminate your site and produce targeted, relevant clicks.
Does Your Business Have a Good Website?
If you have a website that’s firing on all cylinders, pulling in impressive analytics, and attracting and converting customers, that’s great! Chances are you’re optimized with most (if not all) of these essential elements. But if your website could use a little freshening up, or (gasp!) you don’t even have a website to begin with, the skilled and experienced web development team at Twelve Legs Marketing is here to help.
Learn how to add a Manager to your Google Analytics account in 5 easy steps. Why would you want to add a manager to your Analytics account? Well, there could be many reasons from adding a colleague to allowing partners to help you track and read the available data.
1. Start by logging into your Google Analytics account. Once there, please navigate to the bottom left and select the gear icon.
2. Next, select “User Management”.
3. In the top right corner, select the “+” button, which will open a secondary menu.
4. From the available options, select “Add users”.
5. You need to add users who have Gmail accounts, either GSuite email accounts, which can be custom or addresses ending with “gmail.com”. Once the address is added, scroll down and review the options you have available. If you are adding a partner, you would most likely need to give them “Edit” access. If they should also be able to manage users, the very last option will have to be selected too.
Once all needed options are selected, don’t forget to click on “Add” in the top right corner. That will trigger an email to the new user, informing them that they now have access to your Google Analytics account.
The Internet User Today – Optimizing for a New Generation of Searchers
Often times we measure time in the sense of seconds or minutes. So what does a minute mean in digital terms? There are some impressive infographics out there such as the What Happens in an Internet Minute? created by Intel, but here are a few pieces of data for context:
In one minute there are:
• 38,194 photos uploaded on Instagram
• 57,870 page views on Pinterest
• 347,222 tweets on Twitter
• 100 hours of video uploaded on YouTube
• 4.1 million searches on Google!
Yes, Google serves 4.1 million queries in an average minute every day of the year. In case you didn’t know, Colorado is 32nd most connected state in the US, with 99.8% of the population having access to mobile broadband service and 96.2% of the population having access to fixed wireless service. But why are the above numbers important?
In Colorado nowadays (as well as the U.S. altogether), there are hardly any people who do not have access to the Internet. The Internet is a significant part of our lives – the way we spend our time, the way we spend our money, the way we entertain our selves, the way we communicate with friends and family, as well as the way we seek, obtain and manage information. If you still do not agree of the importance of online presence, let’s look as a few more statistics.
86% of consumers use the internet to find a local business. (Pew Research Center)
95% of mobile users who perform searches, look at local results. (Google Statistics)
It is now a fact that Search Engines are the #1 resource used by consumers looking for products and services from local businesses. (Nielsen/NetRatings, a service of The Nielsen Company).
So what we can summarize from above is that nearly everyone in Colorado is connected to the Internet, people are very likely to have used a search engine at least once in their endeavors online and they are not necessarily limited to only one device. If you are in business, the Internet is for you!
Why is Page Two of Google Search Results the Best Place to Hide a Dead Body?
Moving forward in this discussion, I will be focusing on Google as the main example of a search engine. Why you ask? Well, Google holds approximately 65.44% of the search engine market share (followed by Bing with only 15.82% market share). In addition, most search engines have similarities in the way they determine what results to display and if you are well optimized for Google searches, you are likely to be well optimized for most other main players.
If you have a website currently you might have searched for specific terms, relevant to your industry to find where you stand against your competition. What a standard search engine results page (SERP) looks like is this:
As you can see, there are three main components of search results:
• Advertisement
• Local Results
• Organic Results
In the next few paragraphs we will focus on Organic results, however, will also dedicate a blog post for each of the other two types of results.
When you perform a query Google’s promise is “to determine the most relevant search results to be returned (“served”) to you.” What you end up seeing in the organic search results are what Google (and most other search engines alike) have indexed (made sense out of) as they most relevant and high quality content available. In the screen shot above you might have noticed that Google found 184,000 pages relevant to our search and due to real estate space on the page it only displayed 4 in the organic search results. The rest belong to page 2, 3, 4, etc. You probably are wondering “So what!?”
Page one results enjoy 92% of all search traffic. Only 4.8% of traffic continues to page two. I don’t know about you, but often times of I don’t find what I am looking for on page one I put myself at fault for not searching for the right term. Who would think Google doesn’t display the right thing!
So if that is not competitive enough, let add to the equation the importance of not only being on the first page of Google but being in the top 3 results!
What you see in the graph below is the percentage of traffic by Google results position. What is key to point out is that the first position of a search results gets 33% of all the clicks. The second position gets almost half of the clicks (17%) and the third one only 11%. So if we were to add the top three results on the first page of Google search, we can conclude that they take 61% of the 92% of all search traffic!
Let’s put it in simple math, if 100 people searched for the same thing today, 92 of them will not go on page two. And out of those 92, potentially 56 will select one of the first three results Google delivers.
What Does it Take To Get To Page One of Google Results? / The Four Main Pillars of Good Optimization
Once my clients understand the importance of being well and strategically optimized for search results the next question I usually get is “How long until we can be on page one?” Believe it or not that question is as tough as figuring out life, because there are a number of variables that come into the picture, such as:
• As everything else with marketing, there has to be a strategy in place, in this case a content strategy – what is this website about and who are the targets we will be addressing
• Your website needs to be in top condition from a technological and a user experience stand point
• Intensive research is needed before anything can be put in play
• Search algorithms (search engines’ bread and butter) change all the time, so Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not a one time deal, but has to be worked on constantly and needs dedicated time and attention
As vague as the above might sound, through our experience, we have derived four main pillars supporting optimization efforts:
1. Content Strategy
2. Content
3. Design
4. Technology
Why Are We in This?
Strategy is the key to any marketing success. Based upon strong understanding of our business and ideal target clients, it helps us determine the WHY is the whole picture. Why do we need a website with specific content and functionality? Why do we engage social media channels and why now dive in all social media channels at the same time?
Content Is King!
The actual content is the meat we start putting around our strategy. It is the WHAT of the puzzle. Knowing who our audience is and what vehicles we will be using to reach and converse with them is essential to successful and engaging content. The reason we need all of the in-depth knowledge of WHY is because at the stage of building high quality content we need to start understanding behaviors. What information does a certain demographic need and find valuable? What excites our audience vs. make them scroll without paying attention? When our target is looking for a solution to their needs what term do they use?
Keyword research is crucial to providing high quality content, which is searchable, because in the very essence of searches being matched with results, search engines connect words with words. There are high-volume words people use and lower-volume words. For example, in Colorado on average people search for the word “car” 14,800 times, while the word “vehicle” is searched for 880 times.
In Colorado Springs, the word “car” is searched for 1,300 times, while “vehicle” is searched for 90 times.
In the examples above, there is a clear difference in volume of searched terms, showing that more people are likely to search for “car”, instead of “vehicle”. If you only used the word “vehicle” in your content, you would show for the relevant word, however, would be missing a great opportunity by not implementing the synonym. And vice versa, if you only used “car” you would potentially be ignoring everyone who uses an alternative word.
As people perform their research they go through multiple stages. The difference between initial interest and final decision can be big when it comes to the search terms they use to find what they need at that exact moment. In the second example, focusing on Colorado Springs search volumes, there are two additional examples throwing “red convertible” in the mix. While the volumes here are much, much smaller, the intent shown by the user is different – they are more likely to be in the lower end of the purchase funnel, as they are very particular about the car/vehicle they are searching for. Even though the shear volume of traffic is not there, these keywords might end up having much higher ROI for certain businesses.
To quickly summarize, keyword research is a very important stage of SEO. Knowing what your clients call your products or services, as well as, what alternatives they might be using will help you provide them with relevant content. And in addition, volumes are not the whole picture. Being able to drill deeper down and discover what people might be searching for right before they convert with help hone down your ROI models.
Designing For the Users
Often times when we mention design, clients only think of looks. As much as looks are important, they are a component of the overall experience a user has on your website. How easy can I find what I am looking for? How easy can I navigate the options you are giving me? Are there any technical difficulties preventing me from moving forward or going back?
In today’s very noisy and segmented environment, we have evolved to be very distracted and more importantly, very impatient. The average attention span for the not very focused goldfish is nine seconds. According to a study by Microsoft Corp., people now generally lose concentration after eight seconds, highlighting the affects of an increasingly digitalized lifestyle on the brain.
Now knowing how easy it is to lose someone’s attention, let’s revisit user experience (UX) – if I cannot find something interesting (short if possible – I know this post you are reading is exactly that) or get to the bottom of what I am looking for within seconds, I will leave your web property and very likely never return. Guess what! Google tracks users on your website – how long do they stay for, how many pages they look at, etc. If Google senses that something is off with your user experience and it happens over and over again, it will most likely lower your ranking = push you further down in search result and give your spot to a competitor.
You might have heard about Google’s mobile friendly update released in April 2015, “Mobilegeddon”. That was not so much
Technical Health of Your Website
Research performed by ComScore revealed that PC/Laptops are primarily used in the beginning stages of a local business search, while phones and tablets tend to be used more in the middle and end stages.
What that hints at is that if our business does not show for a user in a search, despite the device they are using, there is a very high chance that we will be missing a huge opportunity to capture the user in very important stages of their buying decision.
Allow us to help you navigate the world of SEO. We’ve helped numerous businesses establish local visibility and connect with the right prospects to grow their business.
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