How to Improve Your Website: The Role & Importance of SEO, Branding, Content, Usability & Beyond

Workshop for Small & Local Businesses
How to Improve Your Website
The Role & Importance of SEO, Branding,
Content, Usability & Beyond

SCORE - about us
SCORE is a nonprofit association dedicated to
helping small businesses get off the ground,
grow and achieve their goals through education
and mentorship.
Ulster SCORE: http://ulster.score.org/
@etela @ruaralph

DragonSearch about us
• Full Service Digital Marketing Agency
• Founded 2007
• Office Locations:
New York, NY
Kingston, NY
• Presenters
Etela Ivkovic, General Manager, @Etela
Ralph Legnini, Senior Project Manager, @ruaralph2

DragonSearch about us
@etela @ruaralph

DragonSearch clients
@etela @ruaralph

DragonSearch way
• Metrics-Driven
how will we know we’ve won?
• Constant Testing
how can we win better?
• Industry Leaders in Digital
Marketing Process & Strategy
what are new ways to win?
@etela @ruaralph

DragonSearch core services
• SEO | Search Engine Optimization
evaluate, research, optimize
• PPC | Pay-Per-Click Digital Advertising
analyze, restructure, test, improve, test again
• SMM | Social Media Management
research, strategy, engage, roi
• CRO | Conversion Rate Optimization
analyze, optimize, test, increase leads/sales
• Creative & Content Marketing
video, copywriting, graphic design
• Web Development
design, programming
@etela @ruaralph

DragonSearch core services
• Strategy
• Execution
• Governance
• Special Projects
• Consultation
• Training & Workshops
@etela @ruaralph

Who Am I? Start with Your Brand
• What does your brand stand for?
• How would you describe your business in
1 to 3 words?
• What is your voice & personality?
Fun? Playful? Formal? Serious?
• Are you, the individual, representing the brand, or will you create a company that
has its own name and brand?
• How are you different & better than your competitors?
• What is your unique value proposition (UVP)?
Define your brand, voice & personality
@etela @ruaralph

Do Your Homework
• What is happening in the industry?
• Is it in line with what you are about?
• Who are your competitors?
• How well do they define their brand?
• What are their strengths and what are their weaknesses?
• How will you focus on opportunities they may be missing?
Analyze competitors and the industry
@etela @ruaralph

Trust
• Does your website project trustworthiness?
• Does it look hokey or outdated?
• Is your brand message clear?
• Is it cluttered with too much information?
• Are there too many CTA’s (calls-to-action)?
• Does it look like a cheap haphazard website?
How are you broadcasting the image of your brand
to potential customers?
@etela @ruaralph

What Name Should I Use for My
Business?
• Don’t rush choosing a name; think it through.
• You will be building a whole company & brand around this name.
• Search online and pay attention to the results.
• Are there other established brands with that name?
• Is there any negative sentiment or results associated with that name?
• Do not use different variations of your name; spelled out, truncated or any other
deviations.
• Why? Because it will be confusing to customers & the search engines.
Once you decide on the business name, STICK WITH IT!
Use only one version of your business name consistently.
@etela @ruaralph

Choosing Your Domain Name
• Try to get your company’s name as your domain.
• Stick with the .com if possible.
• If you are an organization use the .org extension.
• Avoid using hyphens “-” if possible.
• Wonder if you should use a keyword rich domain name?
• Read a bit more about exact-match domain names in this article
Keyword Rich Domain Names – Should You Invest?
@etela @ruaralph

Design, Navigation & Structure
• Your website’s design should reflect your brand’s personality and connect with
your audience.
• Make sure that you have a well-designed logo that is a true reflection of your
brand & style.
• Make your logo small enough on the website so that it is clearly visible and
readable.
• Understand how your customers think about what you offer & structure your site
and its navigation with that in mind.
• Will users be able to understand where they are on your site and navigate to other
areas of it?
• Have clear navigational labels.
@etela @ruaralph

Optimizing for Users & the Web
• Web users’ attention span is short.
• You have only a few seconds to impress visitors before they hit the “Back” button.
• Copy is important.
• Every page should have content with unique topical focus.
• Are you speaking to your audience?
• What are you telling them about your brand that will make them trust you?
• Does the content contain all the pertinent information about what problem you are trying
to solve?
• Create content that others will share.
• Do keyword research and optimize your copy with rich, semantic language using synonyms
and related terms.
• Use Schema markup on your site. Visit schema.org for more.
Create great content
@etela @ruaralph

• Use original images.
• Name each image with a descriptive name
(i.e. red-corkscrew.jpg not IMG3429.jpg).
• Use lower case letters with hyphens in between the words.
• Include a full sentence describing what the image is about in the Alt Attribute and
the Caption.
• The copy surrounding the image will also signal to the Search Engines what the
image contains so make sure images are topically relevant and described in the
content.
• Make images easy to share (i.e. Pinterest friendly).
Images
@etela @ruaralph

Title & meta description
• The page’s Title & Meta Description goes into the code of each page and does not appear on
the page .
• They generally show up in the search results.
• The Title is seen in the browser.
• The Title and the Description work together to entice people to click through.
• The Title Tag is one of the areas Google is looking at to help identify and evaluate what the
page is about.
• Title Tags will truncate after 512 pixels, approximately ~55-60 characters.
• Descriptions will truncate after approximately ~160 characters, ~920 pixels.
• Google may choose to pull descriptions or even titles from other sources depending on the
searcher’s query, but this is your opportunity to stipulate what you would like them to see.
• Optimize your Titles and Meta Descriptions so they are uniquely focused on the topic for
each page.
@etela @ruaralph

Blogging & Strategic Ongoing
Content Creation
• Content is key on your website.
• Every new blog post is a new page that has the potential to become a “door” to
your website through which visitors can enter it.
• Every page can be a new opportunity to be found, to talk to (and with) your
audience and to convert them.
• Content helps search engines better understand what your website is about. So
keep your pages & blog topics relevant to your website’s overarching theme.
• A blog is not static. It is an opportunity to have conversations with your readers
through the comments and on social media.
• Go beyond just thanking them; try to continue the conversation, ask questions, etc.
@etela @ruaralph

Blogging & Strategic Ongoing
Content Creation
What do I blog about?
• Your audience will typically care and connect with you much better if you talk about the passion points
behind your brand and your offerings.
• Find those passion points and the issues/needs your audience is dealing with and that you can help with.
• Take a look at some of the large brands to see how they are focusing on these passion points instead of
on their products purely.
• i.e. If you are a local business, you can include events and other local topics in your blog that you know
are of interest to your customers.
How often should I blog?
• It’s not about the frequency but more about the quality and consistency.
• Find the frequency that works for you and try to be consistent.
• It is much better to write high quality content less frequently, than to write low quality content often.
• Low quality content will not only turn your audience away but will also dilute your website’s overall
value.
@etela @ruaralph

Conversions &
Call to Action (CTA)
What is a conversion?
• What defines a conversion will vary from site to site and business to business.
• Conversions can also change overtime depending on the objectives of your
campaigns.
• Determine what should be a conversion by defining your goals that tie into the
main business objectives.
• Don’t focus on ranking in the search engine results pages (SERP) as your goal.
• Here is a good summary of why rankings should not be your goal.
• Driving more quality and targeted traffic to your website is a much better goal.
• Here you’ll find some examples of common goals to help you get started.
@etela @ruaralph

Conversions & Call to Action (CTA)
How do I handle Calls-to-Action?
• Ensure that your design and structure make it easy for your visitors to convert on the
website.
• Where will you place the call-to-action? Will you have a form?
• Have good landing pages focused on converting visitors.
• Include enticing calls-to-action (CTA) on your site to lead potential customers to those
landing pages.
• It’s important to have CTAs but too many calls-to-action will be distracting and overwhelming
for your visitors and they will be much less likely to follow them.
• Make submission forms easy to submit to; only ask for information you HAVE to have in the
first contact.
• If you have a multiple step conversion funnel, like in ecommerce platform, closely plan each
step and make it easy for them to understand where in the process they are.
@etela @ruaralph

The Importance of NAP
Name, address and phone
• Inconsistent NAP information (Name, Address and Phone) confuses your customers and the
Search Engines too.
• Search Engines want to identify one consistent NAP across the web to confirm your correct
information and identity – your site, your social platforms and any directories or other sites
you are cited on.
• Don’t have “Smith & Smith Law” AND ”Smith and Smith Law Firm” AND “The Law Firm
of Smith and Smith”.
• Remember, decide on your brand name and stick with it.
• The same is true for your address – be consistent.
• Some sites can self-generate your NAP info, pulling it from other sites so if you are not
consistent, a big mess can be quickly created.
• It is hard and time consuming to clean it all up!
@etela @ruaralph

Using Google Tools for Insight
Google Analytics (GA)
• Google Analytics is a free tool that will tell you everything you want (and
should) know about the traffic to your website.
• Install the GA tracking code on every page of your website.
• Start exploring the collected data and little by little get comfortable digging
deeper and deeper into analyzing your website and audience.
Google Webmaster Tools (GWT)
• Google Webmaster Tools are a free tool that will provide you with valuable
information about your website and how Google sees it.
• Set up email forwarding to get notified if Google finds any issues with your
site.
• Among other things you can submit new pages to Google, see if their crawler
is hitting any roadblock or issues when crawling your pages, links to your site
that Google is seeing, etc.
@etela @ruaralph

Monitor, Test & Experiment
All the Time
• Keep a close eye on how your website is performing at all times.
• Continually tweak and test things.
• There is no “one way” that will be true for all websites, you have to find out what works best
for your.
• The way to do that is by testing, experimenting and constantly changing.
• For additional, more advanced SEO considerations and tips check out this summary and presentation of
our advanced SEO workshop we gave at Webgrrls in New York City.
@etela @ruaralph

DragonSearch
Consultation, Workshops & Training
• Professional Digital Marketing Consulting
Focusing on Your Needs
• Advanced Workshops & Training
Customized for Your Team
• Workshops at the DragonSearch Offices
Open to the Public
• Learn more about DragonSearch’s Consulting & Training Services
@DragonSearch

Thank You
Ready this presentation’s accompanying two part blog post here:
How to Improve Your Website - for Small & Local Businesses
dragonsearchmarketing.com @DragonSearch

How to Improve Your Website: The Role & Importance of SEO, Branding, Content, Usability & Beyond

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