At Ally Digital, we know that being found online is only step one of the process (a giant step, but the first), once people are at your website, what then? Is it easy to read and follow? Is it outdated? Can users get around to pages they want to visit easily? Is it mobile compatible? Allow us to cover these questions and explore just what makes a great digital-first experience.
Creating a website is only the beginning, you have some content and you've put it out there on the internet. What next? The website needs to rank well to begin generating traffic to your site. Ranking is determined by a plethora of factors, some estimate it to be over 200, but we will cover the main ways to gain site authority and raise your site ranking.
⦁ Website Age - Google places ranking based partly on the age of the site itself, after all, a business that has been around for ages and ages has more community trust, and the internet works in the same manner.
⦁ Web site content - Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthy. Does your content come across to the reader as someone who knows what they're talking about? Or is it seen more as a fluff piece full of mistakes? Does it contain unique and useful information about the subject matter? Google is a great reader, it knows if it's seen content before or if its generally new information. Ally Digital creates content with our customers that their customers will come to love and trust.
⦁ Keyword relevancy - Since Google is a great reader, it picks up on keywords and phrases used in your website, and modifiers of those keywords. If you promote "power tools", you will want to include that phrase often into your site, without over-use. Then modify the phrase, "Best power tools", "Power tools in Denver", "Local power tool repair", "cordless power tools" and on and on.
⦁ Backlinks - A mention of your website, specific page, or brand, found on any other website. These are the backbone of the internet, generally the more the better, but where they come from is an important factor. You want backlinks found in your industry. Using power tools again, finding a backlink to your power tool website on a cooking site, in another country, probably won't help increase your site ranking and may hurt it if the linking site is found to be spammy. Ally Digital will build quality backlinks in your specific field as often as possible to gain site and page authority.
⦁ Blogs/Social Media - Any company in 2023 should have a social media presence. Create a page on Facebook, Twitter, Instragram and others, then post regularly. Its a great way to spread content to millions of untapped users. While these are also considered backlinks, they bring traffic and authority to your site that otherwise might be missed. A well written blog may be picked up by other organizations and spread the word about your company organically, creating a backlink.
Okay, now that you know how Ally Digital works to rank your website, what about the site itself? This is referred to as on-page SEO (search engine optimization) and it includes some of the same factors used to rank your site such as: usability, keywords, internal backlinks (linking to your own pages, such as a logo linked to the HOME page), and overall structure of the site, like page count and word count. Lets go over a few of these topics
⦁ Useability
- Can users get to any page they want to, when they want to? Something as simple as a menu across the top or side of the screen provides internal backlinks to each page of a site so that users can access any portion of the site from any other page. We thoroughly test each link that we implement on both desktop and mobile variants, to ensure that a site is usable.
⦁ Keywords and Content
- Does the site mention enough about your product without over doing it (called 'keyword stuffing')? This is speaking about your product or brand clearly, (power tools), what advantages it can provide (cordless power tools), where are you located physically (Denver's power tool emporium), and then modifying them with phrases like 'best', 'cheapest', or 'buy'. Keywords play a big role in site traffic, and the user intent needs to be thought of in advance. Is my traffic more informational, or intent targeting? If only traffic is desired, then informational keywords would be preferred, but when selling a product the site needs to target buyer intent, i.e. "buy power tools in Denver".
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Mobile Compatibility - about 60% of web traffic is done from a mobile device, so every website out there should be mobile compatible to reach the most of the potential traffic. This means that page titles need to be shorter to show all of the text, about 55 characters and that page descriptions should not exceed 160 characters. While they can be longer, the preview on Google will cut off in the middle of a sentence, not good. Images and text also need to be smaller, and fit into the mobile page. Ally Digital will ensure that each page of your site is mobile friendly, reaching the widest portion of internet users.
Whether you have a digital presence, want more of one, or want an entirely new website built just for your customers, Ally Digital can help. Let us be your Ally online and upgrade, update, or completely imagine your website from scratch. We offer monthly SEO tactics to raise your existing sites ranking or to start fresh with a new site and begin the journey. Speak with an Ally Digital nerd by emailing Support@allydigitalnerds.com, sending us a message, or calling us at 330-960-2559.