The following is an excerpt from, A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing, ch. 1, pp. 14 …

In plain terms, content is the copy (words) and imagery found on your website and blog. And, when it comes to content and SEO, there are two important factors to keep in mind.

The Relevance Factor
Just like a human, Google is judging your content and determining whether it’s rich and relevant or boring and “thin.” Rich, relevant content helps each of your web pages and blog posts gain more authority in Google’s eyes, which means ranking higher in search results. It also increases credibility and engagement with actual people, too.

Thin content accomplishes the opposite, and it might lead your website or blog toward what I call the “black hole of Google Panda” — never to be found in organic search results. The good news is that if you take the time to create quality content, your site is already partially optimized!

The Freshness Factor
Freshness is an important factor in how well your website ranks in natural search results on Google. But where you add that fresh content to your site is just as important as how rich, relevant and useful it is.

Many novice SEO practitioners will tell you that the best way to inject new content into your site is to “freshen up” your homepage and subpages with new copy and keywords — sometimes on a monthly basis.

Taking this approach on a well-optimized site will most likely backfire.

Why? Because once your site is well optimized, changing the SEO on your homepage or subpages is similar to changing your phone number every month: It makes no sense. Just as your customers depend on your phone number as a means to reach you, Google is depending on your optimized content to find you and connect you with individuals who need you. Once you change the SEO on a page, the result can often be going back to square one — losing some or all of your page authority (credibility) with Google.

In other words, unless something changes — like a service or product — or one of your pages starts to perform poorly, you’ll want to leave well-optimized content alone on your home page and subpages.

So, if you need fresh content, where does it come from?

Fresh Content Comes from Your Blog
Use that blog of yours (like I’m doing right now) to generate the fresh content Google — and your viewers — are looking for. Adding a minimum of one blog post per week can do wonders for your “freshness factor.” Why? Because every time you publish a blog post, Google notices and gives your website credit for having some new, fresh content.

And, by the way, each blog post is excellent fodder for your social media efforts, too. Speaking of which, we’ll be tackling that topic in part three of this series.

Ready to learn more online marketing tips?

You’ll find hundreds of additional ways improve your online marketing in my book, A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing …

The post Marketing Tip of the Day: The SEO Pie — Content appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

Why this is important
The user experience on your website is a critical component of helping visitors feel comfortable, know the “lay of the land,” and making it easy for them to understand what to do next (without twisting their arm).

Your website navigation may not be the first thing a visitor looks at when they land on your site, but it is a critical component to their user experience. It’s almost like Google Maps, helping lead visitors to the destination they want to arrive at. Hence, it needs to be clear, easy to understand, and distraction free.

Thanks for visiting, Cuppa SEO Web Design.

I hope this video helps you create a better user experience on your website!

Want more tips and insights from Cuppa SEO?

The post Just One Thing: Improving the User Experience of Your Website Navigation appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

• Does it attract visitors on its own?
• Does it make those visitors feel comfortable when they arrive on the site?
• Does it make it super-easy for visitors to take the next step in becoming customers?

Unfortunately, many don’t.

Before we talk more about what goes into a successful website, let’s talk about why so many websites fall short on what I’ve mentioned above.

It’s because of lack of knowledge. Let me explain …

Not all websites are created equal. But to those who are outside the industry, there’s no way of knowing what’s good and what’s not good. It’s almost like someone going to buy an automobile who knows absolutely nothing about cars.

If the options are a 1979 Ford Mustang (my first car), and a 2021 Subaru Outback (my current car), and both look good from the outside — it may appear that other than the shape, size and color — there’s no difference between the two. Realistically, how can somebody who knows nothing about cars know the difference? Especially if they don’t know the right questions to ask? They may be thinking. “a car is a car — and they’re all the same. I like the blue one, and it’s also less expensive …”

Same deal with a laptop. If you know nothing about computers, there’s no way of telling which computer is more powerful than another — because you don’t know what to look for, and you don’t know what to ask. So you may judge on color or price, thinking they’re both the same …

These examples may sound far fetched, but this is EXACTLY what happens when most businesses hire a web developer to build them a website. They think that the product is the product, no matter who builds it — and this is not surprising because the business doesn’t know what to ask for, or to look for, in a well-built site. So they trust the web developer to take care of it for them.

Since all websites are not the same, here’s a list of what needs to be baked into your new site. This will equip you with some knowledge — and the ability to ask specific questions — to make sure you’re not paying someone for a clunker of a website.

The following criteria will help you attain a website that functions well, and gives you a good ROI …

1. Custom Web Design: Your site should be customized to your company’s personality, goals and needs. Avoid cookie-cutter sites that make you look like everybody else.

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Every nook and cranny of your site needs to be optimized with SEO in an effort to bring more visitors to your site. Ask your potential web design firm IF they do SEO, and HOW they do it. They should tell you they optimize every single title tag, meta description, image name, alt image name, headline, copy and text link. Don’t say this to them, just know they should be saying it to you! I will bet you a cup of coffee they don’t mention most (if any) of these optimization methodologies. Oh, and they should be creating a custom keyword report for you — and meeting with you to review and explain it.

3. User Experience (UX): UX is exactly what is sounds like — the positive, negative or neutral experience a viewer has when they visit your site. This needs to be discussed. If it’s not, you could wind up with a lot of noise and distraction on your site, which is a big turnoff to visitors. Visitors need to immediately feel comfortable when they arrive on your site, and easily understand the lay of the land. Content, imagery and calls-to-action need to be easy to digest — without having to think about it. This adds up to a pleasant experience that helps build trust. Same deal here. Don’t divulge this info to the web design firm you are considering, just ask them what they do to ensure a solid UX and see what they say …

4. Conversion: A solid website conversion strategy ensures that the visitor knows exactly what to do next. Whether it’s filling out a contact form, giving you a call, or downloading some complimentary content, conversion strategies need to be crystal clear. The best way to create a conversion methodology is to focus on the solutions you provide to ease someone’s pain. In other words, provide a benefit. Never use fear tactics, or try to strong arm — or over promise.

5. Desktop & Mobile Design: Your site needs to be responsive, AND be designed for both desktop and mobile so the user experience and conversion methodologies do not suffer because of a different screen size.

There’s more to it than this, but these five items can put the power in your hands to make sure you’re hiring the right web design firm to build your website.

For more information about SEO …
You can download a free chapter from my book, A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing.

Buy the book …
If you’d like to learn more about the entire web design process, you can buy A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing on Amazon.

Thanks for visiting!

The post What Successful Web Design Looks Like appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

Technical debt is a bill that always comes due, whether in the form of a hack or painful upgrade …

If you’re not familiar, “technical debt” is a concept from software development that refers to essentially kicking the can down the road and choosing the easier solution now that will ultimately result in additional work or rework later.

Prepare for some tough love about keeping your website current from a functional standpoint.  Obviously we always want to make sure our content is accurate and fresh, but maintaining an updated website is about so much more than that. Here are four things you can implement today.  

1. Stay on Top of CMS Updates

Periodically, your CMS will push out updates to address security, bug fixes, user experience, etc. You’ll want to implement these as soon as they become available to protect your site from security threats.

2. Keep Those Plugins Updated

The same is true of your plugins. If your CMS is regularly updated, they will need to keep up.  Make sure you keep those updated too!

3.  Keep an Eye on Google

Keep abreast of Google’s announcements and adopt their prescribed best practices. Google has a great deal of control over how consumers find us online. As they did prior to “mobilegeddon,” sometimes Google even gives us a heads up that an important change is coming. When this happens, don’t procrastinate getting your digital house in order. You will be ahead of everyone else who wasn’t paying attention and it will show in your search rankings.   

4. Have a Contingency Plan 

You need a contingency plan if something breaks. That is not the moment you want to begin hunting for a programmer. Make sure you know exactly who you’ll be calling if you need support. Your website should also be configured to back up on a regular schedule so it can be rolled back in an emergency.  

How are you feeling about your technical debt?
If you don’t know how to answer that question, that’s okay! We can help. Contact Cuppa SEO Web Design for a complimentary consultation.

The post Technical Debt is a Bill that Always Comes Due appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

Yes, we understand it’s only May, but …

… don’t overuse your keywords, it could make Google angry!

Overuse of a keyword phrase is something you want to avoid. This is referred to as “stuffing,” and although it’s great on Thanksgiving, it’s best to avoid stuffing altogether on your website and blog.

Why? Because if you get caught stuffing keywords into your pages, you could get a penalty from Google, and it’s one of the factors that can land you in what we at Cuppa SEO call, “the black hole of Google Panda.”

In a nutshell, Panda is part of the algorithm Google uses to assess the website authority and SEO value of each page of your website, and your website as a whole. Best to stay on Panda’s good side and avoid the black hole — so don’t stuff!

Check out this fun one-minute video about stuffing, starring our fearless leader’s kids!

To sum up, keyword stuffing is exactly what it sounds like — jamming the same keyword or keyword phrase into your content as often as possible, just like the example the kids provide in their video.

Reasons to avoid keyword stuffing are:

1. It has the potential to land you in the black hole of Google Panda. In non-tech terms, this means the page you stuff — and possibly your entire website — may never be found again in search engine results. Stuffing is bad for SEO, and just as importantly…
2. Even if Google doesn’t hit you with a heavy penalty, your readers will not appreciate this tactic, and they very likely won’t come back. In other words, it’s a bad user experience. There’s a good chance you’ve seen writing like this on somebody’s website: “Our dentist will take very good care of you. Our dentist is a pain-free dentist, so make an appointment with the dentist today!” Yuck.

Now imagine this, paragraph after paragraph, page after page, and you can see why Google would take a site like this and hide it from view.

There was a time, back in the wild west of the internet, where adding a bunch of the same keywords could elevate a page in search engine results. Google quickly said “no way!” to this tactic, labeling it black hat SEO for good reason.

A better strategy is to write rich, relevant content that connects with customers, solves a problem, offers insightful info, or highlights a benefit you offer that can help with a pain point.

In summation, leave the stuffing for Thanksgiving. It has no place on your website or blog.

This article was gleaned from Joey’s book, A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing, which is chock-full of tips and marketing strategies to help you grow your business. Learn more about the book.

The post Leave the Stuffing for Thanksgiving appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

With the advent of the pandemic we all know what it’s like to feel lonely and isolated. And I got to thinking, maybe that’s what a website feels like when nobody visits: alone, in a void.

Of course, I’m using personification here, as a website (to my knowledge) doesn’t have feelings. But this brings up an important question that every business owner faces …

What are some of the top ways that we can get more visitors to our website?

More visitors (traffic) would make our website happy (let’s just pretend websites have feelings). And it will DEFINITELY make the business owner who’s website is experiencing more traffic happy. More traffic means more opportunity to develop relationships with potential customers, right?

So what are the top ways you can get more traffic to your website?

• Create solid content that is customer facing. In other words, make it about them and not you — and address their pain points/problems.
• Blog at least one time per week. This will add freshness to your website (Google likes that), which in turn can help improve your search rankings
• Have your website robustly optimized with SEO. The six critical areas that need to be optimized are title tags, meta descriptions, headlines, copy, imagery and text links. Make sure you find a reputable firm with a proven track record to do this — and avoid retainer based SEO.
• Post regularly (1-2 times per week should be enough) on social media — including your Google My Business listing — which is the most important of all for SEO
• While we’re talking about Google My Business, it’s highly recommended to optimize your entire Google My Business listing, too!
• Citation (directory) listings are a great way to create HONEST, solid backlinks to your website. Using a resource like Bright Local can help you get dozens of legitimate backlinks that have high domain authority, which in turn can up  the domain authority of your own site — which is a very good thing …

Need help accomplishing some of these items?
My book, A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing, goes into depth about these strategies. Or you can get in touch with Cuppa SEO Web Design anytime to set up a complimentary consultation to chat about what you ‘ve got going on and how we can help.

The post Is Your Website Lonely and Isolated? appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

You know the way you cringe when you see, “in 2018 we will pursue…” on a website you’re browsing? An annual content audit of your website will minimize a potential client associating that feeling with your business. Here’s how to start a repeatable process you can implement year after year.   

Step 1: Make sure your site map is accurate.

Don’t have one? Get started! A site map is an outline that lists all the pages on your website. There are a number of web tools, like Flowmapp, to help you build an elaborate site map or you can simply set up an outline in a Word or Google document.

Step 2: Determine what you can delegate.

Are you lucky enough to have a team? Great! Start deputizing folks as subject matter experts (SMEs) and assigning them pages on the website to review. I prefer to do this by color coding my site map, creating a key, and sending it to my team for approval. Explain they are receiving this because you think they are the organization’s experts and best suited to confirm if the information on their assigned pages is current and accurate. Everyone loves to feel important, right? Ask to review the list and confirm their assignments are appropriate.

Step 3: Transcribe Away!

While you’re waiting for confirmation you’ve selected the right SMEs, you can get to work transcribing your website. You’ll start with your site map and add in your web copy page-by-page. At Cuppa SEO, we like to use a program like Google Docs for this because it allows for real-time collaboration and visibility. 

Step 4: Your Review

It’s best if you require all changes to be made in “suggesting mode” in the document. If you’re working in Word, you’ll use a feature called “track changes.” This way, you’ll know exactly how much of the content needs updating when it comes time for implementation. If you haven’t finalized your SMEs yet, use this time to do a cursory review of the document for anything you would normally own (grammar, spelling, etc.) and make updates as needed. Still not ready for delegating? Charge ahead and complete the pages you’ve assigned to yourself. It will help your team to understand how to make their edits if they can see how you’ve begun the process. 

Once everyone has confirmed their SME role, share the document with them and clearly explain your timeline, how you would like them to log edits and how they should confirm to you they have completed their review. 

Step 5: Implementation

Get rolling with those website updates! Do this at least once a year to keep your site fresh and current.

The post When Was the Last Time You Did a Proper Website Audit? appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

The post User Experience and Website Navigation appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

Although we’re talking about website design here, I’d like to take a step back and share a real-world experience that shows how choosing form over function can cause a poor user experience — and ultimately make a product unusable, or at the least non-optimal for the end user.

Choosing Design Over Functionality: a Mini Case Study

I recently upgraded my iPhone and purchased a case to protect it.

The design of the case was beautiful, complete with wood inlay art on the back.

Regarding function, the online description of the case promised a “raised bezel” for screen protection. Since protection was an attribute I was looking for, I bought the case.

The Problem

Upon placing the case on my phone, I noticed there was NO raised bezel to protect the phone’s screen, and that putting the phone face down exposed the screen directly to whatever surface it was placed upon.

What’s happened here is two major things …

My expectations weren’t met, and they should have been based on product specs. This raises the issue of delivering what you promise, which we won’t dive deeply into here (maybe in a another post).

The other issue is the fact that the company that makes these cases chose form over function.

In a tech world where Jonny Ive (Apple’s long-time product designer) strives for an ever-slimmer aesthetic, case makers have followed suit to make cases ultra thin. What the fascination with thin is, I don’t personally understand, especially when a slightly thicker iPhone would make the back of the phone FLAT, as opposed to having a camera protrusion, which would be a better design — and a better user experience — for all of us iPhone users.

Regarding the case in question, the problem is the MAIN function of a case is to protect your phone, and removing a protective component to add a few less millimeters of thickness defeats the purpose of the product.

In this case (pun intended) the manufacturer of this case, and many other cases I’ve researched, are all choosing form over function — which means they’ve gotten it all wrong.

Good design is design that holds functionality at the forefront, allowing the design to SUPPORT functionality, and actually make the product more intuitive to use. Think Mac vs. PC (sorry Microsoft, but it’s true).

What This Has to Do With Your Website Design

When a visitor arrives on your website, they typically have a specific reason: to attain information, buy a product or service, schedule an appointment, etc.

The function of your website is to make it as easy as possible for a website visitor to take the action YOU WANT THEM TO TAKE NEXT, which means you need to make it as easy as possible for the visitor to understand what you offer and if it solves their problem (what I often refer to as a pain point).

If the design of your website supports this philosophy, that’s great! It’s also following a solid, proven user experience and conversion methodology.

For example, the Cuppa SEO website homepage provides brief descriptive copy that lets you know exactly how we can help, followed by two (and only two) calls-to-action that lead the viewer to where they want to go. No distraction, no confusion.

Here’s another example of a homepage where function is fully supported by design:

On the other hand, if the design of your website looks like this, offering you’re in trouble …

As you can see, it has no less than FIVE navigations (I’ve counted the ad at the top of the page as a navigation element as this is prime real estate, and typically where your navigation should live). This homepage also offers no clear conversion strategy.

The result? I’m left with not really knowing where I am, what I’m looking at or what to do next. The desire to design this website without placing functionality at the forefront has created confusion — which is a bad user experience.

Want more info about this topic and others like it?
Check out my book, A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing.

The post Website Design 101: Never Forsake Function for Design appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

On November 21, 2019, my book, A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing, was published.

I’d like to take a moment to express my gratitude to the Universe, my wife and kids, as well as Eric Olive (editor), Jon Wuebben (coach), Kathy Watson (editor), Robert Rubin (formatter), and Hannah Sandvold (graphic designer) for their expertise through this long, and often-times grueling process.

One of the best decisions I made early on was to gather a team of professionals to support the creation of the book — so all I had to do was write it!

What the Book is About

The book provides a global view of online marketing — looking at your website, blog and social media efforts as a whole.

In Part 1, three major disciplines are discussed and defined: SEO, user experience and conversion — providing a solid understanding of what each of these methodologies are, and why they’re important. 

In Parts 2 through 4, we dive into a practical approach on how to APPLY each of these methodologies to your website, blog and social media efforts, respectively. Chock-full of actionable steps on how to assess your website, blog and social media — the book can help new and savvy marketers make meaningful improvements to their online marketing efforts.

You can check out the book on Amazon.

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