Here is our latest website redesign, just launched for Synergy Solutions Group of Virginia.
The new SSG website was recently launched with rotating home page images creating a professional, modern feel that is easy to navigate. The site is mobile-responsive, clean and concise, and provides a one-stop resource for potential and current clients.
Visit the new SSG site at http://synergysolutionsgroupofvirginia.com/.
Does your About page grab potential clients’ attention or does it leave them yawning? We’re sharing tips on tone, content and format for creating an engaging About page that will make people want to work with your agency today!
Tone
When a potential client reads your About page they should feel like they are meeting you face-to-face for the first time. You have the chance to make a good impression by adopting a conversational and human tone while still communicating what makes your services unique and superior. An easy way to do this is embrace the use of “I” and “we” rather than writing from a formal, third person perspective. Your tone should be authentic and relatable while remaining professional.
Content
What should you talk about? Focus on telling your story with simplicity rather than filling an About page with industry jargon or fluffy descriptions. People want to know where you came from, what you can do for them and why you are a credible choice. Show that you understand your potential client’s challenges and use examples of things you’ve done in the past to let them know you can solve their problems.
Finally, always include a call to action. What do you want them to do next? Your goal with your About page should be to motivate potential clients to contact you about your services. Place contact information visibly on the page. Include several ways to get in touch including a contact form, email, phone number and physical address.
Format
Your About page offers a glimpse into who you are as a company – your history, the principles by which you do business and the people who make up your team. It is your first chance to establish trust with a client by showing who the people behind the brand are. Don’t be afraid to move away from the traditional corporate About page format and get a little creative with what makes your company unique. Include images of your team that put a face to the name. We like what Brio Benefits has done to showcase their team by incorporating a corporate portrait and a funny, personable candid photo along with each employee bio. To view their About page, click here.
Think your About page needs a revamp? Contact us today and we’ll get you started!
Here is our latest website redesign, just launched for The LBL Group.
The LBL Group website was recently launched with distinctive home page images and single long page style for the subpages. We used an alternating subpage color scheme, stock icons as section dividers, and a bevy of employer and client resources. The site is mobile-responsive, easy to navigate, clean and concise, providing a one-stop resource for potential and current clients.
Visit the new LBL site at http://www.lblgroup.com.
Here is our latest website redesign, just launched for Group Insurance Associates.
The Group Insurance Associates website was recently launched with unique animated videos custom-made for GIA embedded throughout the site. We also embedded an HR360 login widget, link to a custom EBC demo, and UBA news feed. The site is mobile-responsive, easy to navigate, clean and concise, providing a one-stop resource for potential and current clients.
Visit the new GIA site at http://gianow.com.
Writing a blog post -like all other writing- is a skill. In order to keep your reader interested, you should think about structuring your text and writing in an appealing style. You should help your readers to grasp the main idea of your post by providing headings, subheadings and clear paragraphs. If people understand and like your text, they are much more likely to share, like, tweet and link to your post. And that will increase your rankings! So, in order to improve your ranking in Google, you should definitely try to maximize your writing skills!
For some, writing for SEO purposes and writing to attract and keep attracting your audience could appear as two contradictory goals. However, I totally disagree. Indeed, if you not only want a good but also an SEO-friendly blog post, your text should be written in such a way that the words you want to be found for have a very prominent place. And, using your keywords too often severely damages the readability of your text. So, you definitely should not do that!
In this post, I would like to give some tips on writing blog posts that are both very readable as well as SEO-friendly. I genuinely think those two goals should (and can easily!) go hand in hand!
Before anything, your blog post just has to be a good piece of writing! A lot of bloggers just begin to write after creating a new blog post. They just type what comes to mind. For some, this may be sufficient, because they are natural writing talents. Others may need some help. I always follow the next set of ‘rules’ myself.
Think hard about the message of your text. What do you want to tell your readers? And what is the purpose of your text? What do you want you readers to do at the end of the page? Write down the answers to these questions before you begin writing.
Every post should have some sort of introduction (in which you introduce your topic), a body (in which the main message is written) and a conclusion (which should summarize the most important ideas or deduce some new idea). Write down what you want to write in all these three sections. You now have some sort of summary of your post. The real writing can begin!
Everybody uses paragraphs, but make sure to use paragraphs that make sense. Do not start a new sentence on a new line, just because it looks nice. There should be a reason for making a new paragraph. Every paragraph should have a main idea or a main subject. Ask yourself what the main idea of each paragraph is. You should be able to grasp that main idea in only one sentence. If you need more sentences, you simply need more paragraphs!
If you want people to find their way in your articles, you should use subheadings. Subheadings will lead people, help them scan your page, and make the structure of your articles that much clearer.
Signal words help people to scan through your text and help people to grasp your main idea. If you, for instance, have three reasons for wanting to sell a product, you should use signal words as: First of all, Secondly and Finally. Also, words as Nevertheless, Surely and Indeed also give a clear signal to your readers. Readers will instantly get that a conclusion will follow after words as Thus, So or Therefore. Signal words are thus very important to structure your text.
Before publishing your post, let someone else read your post first. Ask him/her whether or not he understands the main idea of your post. Correct typo’s and sentences that are not formulated correctly.
Why Should You as a Small Business Owner be Concerned About Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Because you want to provide visitors to your website with such a fantastic user experience that they will tell others! Because you want to provide search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo critical information so they will place your site in the
top 5 spots on the returns page!
The job of a search engine is to take the information typed in by the user and locate the most relevant websites using those keywords. Simply put, if you are not engaging in SEO, you are not on that first page of results – the other guy is! By investing in search engine marketing, you are staying competitive with those other guys while giving your brand name exposure 24 hours, 7 days a week and are sure to gain new customers – even while you sleep. Let’s take a look at what a good SEO service can do for you while you take a snooze…
SEO is ultimately about providing the user with the friendliest, fastest, best experience possible. A search engine wants to provide the user with what they are looking for, and when it can do that, both parties are happy. A happy visitor will become a returning visitor.
People unconsciously trust search engine results. If Google places Dave’s Donuts in the top spot of a search, then it must have earned that place and it must be good. User then tells all his friends on Facebook and Twitter that he’s going to Dave’s and he invites them, leaving the link for them to click as well. The laws of multiplication can work pretty fast, and before you know it, a dozen hungry teens show up at Dave’s Donuts! Why? Because the search engine matched everything perfectly, and it all pointed to Dave’s.
Internet marketing, including SEO, attracts people who are already looking for your product or service. You don’t have to scream, dance, or wear cool clothes to gain an audience; they are already convinced of their need which is why they went searching in the first place. No bold print ad placed front and center on the magazine page is required. You just have to present yourself in one of those top 5 results and – voila! They were looking for you and you showed up right on time! You still have to convince them that you are the better company to purchase from, but half the battle is over. Once they come to your website, if you have invested the same tedious work to optimize the user’s experience with you by providing the content they seek, then you are well on your way to gaining a new customer.
As stated in point #2, people unconsciously trust search engine results. If Dave’s Donuts is #1, then Dave’s serves the best donuts. But most users do not just run over to Dave’s the next hour and buy a dozen donuts (unless they are local teenagers)! They do, however, file it somewhere or bookmark it. They go clicking around the world numerous times before making a final decision. If your website is employing top notch SEO services, how often might that user come across your company name while conducting his search? What if your company came up 3 of the 5 times they searched for that desired product? Next thing you know, they have clicked through to your website.
If your website is properly optimized, it will increase your search engine visibility, usability, and credibility, all of which increase traffic to your site. Now that you are enjoying higher numbers of visitors, Google Analytics (which every website should have set up) can track valuable information about your visitors. Find out what browser they use, what key words, the technology they use, their geographical location, the days and times they are most active, how much time they spent on a page…on and on. This information will help you discover your target market, hone your advertising, and determine strategies based on facts rather than just educated guesses. The better you know your customers, the better product or service you can provide, the higher the ROI.
Search engine optimization is no longer an option for businesses that want to be competitive, grow, and see returns on investment. But it is only one piece of the puzzle. If your website does not contain viable content, then no matter how much money or time you spend on SEO, it is wasted. Content will always be king. But when used in conjunction with other important marketing tools, SEO will provide visibility, traffic, credibility, branding and help you gain valuable insight into customer behavior.
Statistics overwhelmingly show that your website is very likely your customers’ first impression of your brand or store. That being said, keeping your site up-to-date and relevant is definitely in your best interest. An upgrade may mean a new site, but in some cases may be just mean fixing up what you already have. Here are 10 signs that it might be time to make some changes to your website:
1. You cannot update your website’s content. The content on your website is the reason why people visit your site and also why they choose come back again or why they may lose interest. Not to mention the affect that out-of-date or irrelevant content has on your site’s SEO affecting the ability for search engines to find you. And, accordining to PR Newswire study, 89% of Consumers Conduct Their Product Research Using Search Engines. (Source: PR Newswire). Having the ability to update content or add new content is a must and some content management platforms, like WordPress, are as easy to use as editing text in a Microsoft Word document. So, if you cannot add content, you could be missing out on traffic.
2. Your website does not link to your social media sites. Did you know that 78% of Consumers Say That the Posts Made by Companies on Social Media Influence their Purchases. (Source: Forbes). The conversations that are had on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are beneficial to your website visitors as well. Linking the sites can open the gates for traffic to access your brand in more than one place online. This can give the user a deeper sense of your brand and your existing community.
3. Your website is not set up to convert visitors to prospects. When a user visits your website, this is your chance to grab them by the hand and give them a tour of your brand, products and services, much like you would if they walked into your brick and mortar location. If your website doesn’t invite them to look around or give them opportunities to interact, you may be missing opportunities to filter users into your sales funnel. Look at your homepage. Are there opportunities for one to sign up for a newsletter, watch a video, view products, shop or browse? Is the call to action clear?
4. Your website is not mobile friendly. If your website is built in Flash (which is not mobile or search engine friendly at all), you’ll definitely want to look into a new site. But, even if your website does not render well on a mobile device, or if you don’t have a mobile version of your website, you could be missing as much as 27% of your website traffic, according to Smartmetrics.
5. Your website is not user friendly. If one can’t figure out how to navigate through or use your website, why would they visit or ever come back to your site? When thinking of how best to organize your website, try to put yourself in the seat of the user. What do they want to know? In what order do they want to know it?
6. Your website loads slowly. If your site loads slowly, people are leaving your website without even giving it a chance. 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less. Learn more about faster load times: http://www.rcpmarketing.com/faster-website/.
7. Your website is not as good as your competitors website. People use the Internet to shop and learn about the products and services they are looking for or are interested in. So, chances are if they found your website, they also have looked at your competitors sites as well. If their site is more user friendly, draws them in and looks better than yours, you might be losing more money in missed prospects than it would cost to upgrade your website.
8. Your website is more than 3 years old. The world of web development is ever-changing and in three years, the options have exponentially increased and changed. There are so many new options, widgets, apps and integration opportunities that make your website more user-friendly and appealing to your audience more than ever before. Sometimes this means an upgrade to what you already have and sometime this can mean a completely new website.
9. Your website is an online brochure. People expect more than just text about your offerings and brand when they come to your site. In fact, they need more to take full advantage of getting to know you. A website no longer benefits you or them if it doesn’t encourage and facilitate interaction.
10. The purpose of your website has changed. If your marketing strategy has changed, it may be time to change your website to match the new plan. For example, at the time that you built your website, your goal may have been to sell products. Now, your goal may be to increase repeat business. In order to keep your website relevant, you may want to evolve your website navigation and options to match your goals.
Source: – RCP Marketing