Wieting Design

Improve SEO For Your CT, NY, NJ Business

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Ready to improve your SEO strategy?

Keeping up with ever-changing marketing best practices can be tricky, but if there’s one to rule them all in the digital age, it’s SEO for your CT, NY, or NJ business.

At Wieting Design, a full-service marketing agency, we can help your business improve its search engine ranking. More visibility online means more clients and more business!

How important is the first page of Google for websites?

According to Hubspot, “75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results.”

So even if you’ve got a great business and are creating great content on your website, it’s the search engines that determine much of your online success. If potential clients can’t find you on the first page, then your chances of being discovered significantly decrease.

How can you improve your website ranking?

The easiest way to improve your online presence is to work with an experienced digital marketing agency like Wieting Design based in Fairfield County, CT.

If you’re planning to improve your business’ search engine ranking on your own, you need to understand:

-SEO (search engine optimization) best practices – Click for a recap from Moz. In addition, we’ve created a list of practices that may be hurting your SEO.

-Keywords that your clients are searching – Define your target market and what you do, to incorporate relevant keywords into your web content. Remember not to stuff keywords, but to create valuable content for your audience.

-How search engines work – SEO experts estimate that the top search engine uses more than 200 factors to determine a website’s position. Click to learn more.

Free tools to help you understand your website’s SEO & performance:

Search engines use several factors to determine where a website shows in Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others. Use these free tools to better understand how your website is doing and what can be improved:

Website Grader – Use this tool to type in your website address and learn more about the site’s performance, mobile responsiveness, SEO, and security.

Monitor Backlinks – A free trial will show you which websites refer visitors to your page. Backlinks are important because they build credibility and help search engines find your page.

Do you need help with your SEO in CT, NY, or NJ?

Improving a website’s ranking and keeping its position is an ongoing process. Here are just some of the things to pay attention to for better SEO:

-Keywords
-Site navigation
-XML sitemap
-Title tags
-Alt attributes
-Url
-Meta description
-Inbound links
-Outbound links
-HTTPS site security
-Mobile-friendliness

And it doesn’t end there. Emerging technologies are already affecting how search engines rank results. For example voice technology for Alexa, Siri, and more.

There are many tools available online to help your CT, NY, or NJ business outrank the competition. But if you need additional help, we’d love to connect and assist.

SEO & Digital Marketing | Full-Service Marketing Agency | CT, NY, NJ

Wieting Design is a full-service marketing agency in Fairfield County, CT serving Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and beyond.

We are committed to sharing our expertise in search engine marketing (SEM & SEO), website design and development, graphic design, social media, and more.

Whether your goal is to grow your brand, drive more website traffic, or set up a marketing plan, we will adapt our approach to get you the results you need with the services we provide. View our services here or Contact us to learn more.

Practices That Could Be Hurting Your SEO

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We all know the importance of using SEO (search engine optimization) best strategies, but are you familiar with practices that may be hurting your SEO? These may often be done unintentionally yet can have a big impact on your website’s ranking.

The following can negatively affect your SEO:

Bad Website Links

Inactive links or broken links go nowhere, and should be fixed or removed as needed. You can manually search for these, or easier ways include using Google Analytics or the plugin MonsterInsights for WordPress. While auditing, also check for nofollow links and redirects – if they exist, ensure they’re correctly placed where needed. Inactive links can stop web crawlers in their tracks resulting in a page not being indexed for search engines.

Spam Blog Comments

Spam links in your blog’s comment section can affect how you’re ranked; watch out for spam bots inserting irrelevant links like these. Using bad SEO strategies, these spambots try creating their own backlinks by commenting on others’ posts but this can hurt your ranking in the process. Links on your page help Google understand what kind of page you are, so a bad or irrelevant link can give Google the wrong impression. Have a good spam filter or monitor your comments to ensure no bad links exist in comments.

Slow Site Speed

You may have tons of awesome content on your page, including videos and high resolution images, but make sure your page is not overloaded. Watch out for oversized images, embedded videos, bad code, and overdue theme or plugin updates. A slow site speed leads to a longer load time that negatively impacts user experience, leading to increased bounce rates. Additionally, search engines may not be able to crawl all your pages when your site is slow (as to not overload). Use Pingdom to check your site speed and see if it needs improvement.

Not Using HTTPS

Safety online is important – users know this and so does Google. Search engines will rank safe sites higher because they want to send visitors to pages worthy of trust. Switch to HTTPS if you haven’t already; an SSL certificate ensures secure data transmission with encrypted data between the server and your site. Check if your hosting package includes this or if you need to purchase a security certificate.

Low Visitor Engagement

Posting quality content can improve your SEO, but there’s much more to it including how users engage. How are visitors interacting with your website? Are they engaged, completing calls to action (CTA’s) or sharing? How much time are visitors spending on the page? Google ranks sites based on how relevant they are, and if you have a high bounce rate it may lower your relevancy score.

Non Responsive Design

Searches being done on tablets and phones are increasing, which means your website needs to be responsive to these different devices. If not, visitors may leave quickly when the page doesn’t load or show correctly, in turn increasing your bounce rate and potentially hurting your SEO. Google is aware of the device trend and has even started indexing the mobile version of sites to make sure that users get the best access to what they’re looking for on phones. AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) can help with mobile speed.

Irrelevant Keywords

Keyword stuffing and using irrelevant words in the hope that your page gets noticed can backfire. Words that don’t match the content on the page will most likely result in a higher bounce rate when visitors realize they haven’t found what they were looking for on the site. Stay true to what your page is about without overdoing it; remember that it’s quality content that counts. (Note: Are you noticing a trend here? It’s all about being pertinent to the subject matter.)

Duplicate Tags and Descriptions

Make sure Google can successfully index your website; factors that may affect this are duplicate content tags or noindex tags. One can confuse search engines while the other will prevent the page from being indexed. Make tags relevant and also remember to tag your images correctly by describing what’s actually on them vs just listing the words you’re hoping to rank for. Be relevant for your topic and Google will reward you rather than penalize.

At the core of SEO rankings is the question – is my site relevant for what I offer and working properly? Keep this question in mind because Google is constantly analyzing this to sort pages in search engine results. At the end of the day, search engines exist to provide users with the best results and this is based on many factors. Some are easy to do on your own while others may require help from a search engine marketing expert like Wieting Design. View our SEO services.

With more than 20 years experience in marketing for local businesses in CT (Connecticut), we can work with you to improve and maintain your search engine ranking. View our past projects or contact us to discuss your local business marketing needs.

Wieting Design | Website Design CT

Wieting Design is a full-service, graphic and website design agency based in Fairfield County, CT and serving all of Connecticut (CT). We are committed to sharing our experience and expertise in website design, graphic design, social media marketing, search engine marketing (SEO), and video production to help build powerful tools and campaigns that work for your Connecticut business. Whether your objective is to grow your reputation, create client loyalty, drive traffic to your website or set up a marketing strategy, we will adapt our approach to get you the results you need with the services we provide.

 

Why Is Customer Experience So Important?

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Many factors determine why people choose to buy including the obvious quality and price point, but did you know that improving customer experience can improve your sales? This is often overlooked, but the way clients interact with your business from start to finish affects conversions, SEO, and brand awareness / brand loyalty.

According to Forbes, “Today, 89% of companies compete primarily on the basis of customer experience – up from just 36% in 2010. But while 80% of companies believe they deliver ‘super experiences,’ only 8% of customers agree. In other words, companies have a long way to go. And, that means there is tremendous opportunity to disrupt a competitor or gain market share in an industry.”

Conversions

How potential and existing clients interact with your company ultimately determines if they complete your call to action or not; from learning more, signing up, visiting a location, or completing a purchase. Your brand is synonymous with the experience it provides. Remember that clients want to be treated like humans and want to know your company cares. Know your audience and know their expectations so that you can provide the best customer experience for them, in turn improving conversions.

SEO

Search engines rank sites based on their quality and relevant content, so improved website engagement can benefit your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. When creating content and layout for your business site, consider how customers will interact with it. Provide a seamless experience for visitors that keeps them interested, interacting, sharing, and revisiting the site. An improved website experience will decrease the bounce rate and increase your click through rate (CTR) – all working to benefit your SEO. Learn about Wieting Design’s search engine marketing services.

Branding

A good experience makes people want to keep coming back, and in business this builds brand awareness and loyalty over time. The print material, website, social media, physical location, and all interactions with business staff attribute to the experience from start to finish and help define the brand. Consider every touchpoint and how to make it pleasant and memorable for consumers, so that they become loyal customers. Maintain consistency for all points of contact and know that building brand awareness and loyalty will increase your sales over time. View our design and branding services.

Given this information and the importance of user experience, consider how clients are interacting with your business – Are they satisfied? Are they engaged? Are their problems being solved? Consider how the process can be improved from start to finish, because your sales depend on it.

Your CT business can increase sales by improving user experience, and Wieting Design can help. Together we can plan your marketing strategy to focus on the entire consumer experience from initial discovery, learning phase, purchase, and follow up. Consumers are faced with countless options for products and services, but at the end of the day they choose to do business with ones they feel good about. From online interactions to in person meetings, customer experience is vital in decision making. Contact us today for help with your marketing strategy in Fairfield County CT and all of Connecticut. View our past projects.

 

Wieting Design | Website Design CT

Wieting Design is a full-service, graphic and website design agency based in Fairfield County, CT and serving all of Connecticut (CT). We are committed to sharing our experience and expertise in website design, graphic design, social media marketing, search engine marketing (SEO), and video production to help build powerful tools and campaigns that work for your Connecticut business. Whether your objective is to grow your reputation, create client loyalty, drive traffic to your website or set up a marketing strategy, we will adapt our approach to get you the results you need with the services we provide.

 

Website Design Checklist

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It’s exciting to get a visitor to your website, but that’s just the beginning of the journey.

Websites must be well designed and functional, with a clear call to action in order to turn visitors into customers. That’s why your website design is important and below is a checklist of website essentials that will ensure you get the most out of your page. Use this checklist to help answer the question “What should my website include?”

Your website should have the following:

Your own style.

A website is an extension of your brand. It should match the style that defines your business and speaks best to your audience. (Note that you should have a clear understanding of your target market in order to make a meaningful connection with them.) Include a strong, defining design, but remove any excess noise and distractions that may prevent visitors from seeing the most important points such as your competitive edge and call to action.

A clear goal.

While your website should be appealing to the eye, good looks will only get you so far and your website is no exception. It’s more than just a collection of text and images; the site has purpose and everything on it must work together to help achieve this. Determine the goal of your website (this depends on type of business) – is it to drive traffic, generate leads, make a sale, build trust, be a resource of information, etc? You may have multiple goals, but be certain to define these objectives to ensure website success.

User friendly experience.

The journey through your website should be pleasant and engaging. Visitors typically scan sites quickly and within 5 seconds decide if they’ll stay or go, so make the site inviting and easy to read. Once your site passes the first impression test, visitors should be engaged in the content and geared towards the call to action. To ensure a good user experience, the site must be responsive to different platforms (computer, tablet, phone) with the ability to work correctly on various devices. Also make sure that all links, buttons, and forms work.

Easy navigation.

Your website should be informative with easy-to-find facts that explain the who, what, where, and how. Beyond that, have a logical roadmap that makes sense and leads visitors to where you want them to go. Put yourself in the client’s shoes to decide what you’re trying to accomplish and how to best get there. Offer the path of least resistance; have clear links to the most important pages and make navigation and searches simple. Remember that obstacles may deter clients from staying on the web page. Also have strategically placed buttons to put focus on your call to action.

Call(s) to action.

Don’t let the connection you’ve made with visitors on the website stop there. Turn your viewers into clients with a clear call to action (CTA). Depending on the type of business, decide what the CTA is: to buy, sign up, contact, visit, etc. Call attention to this CTA by making it visible with strategic placement that can increase lead conversions. Remember that even if your CTA includes a contact form, you should also include visible contact information throughout the site. In addition to the contact page, you can include contact info on the top and bottom of each page. Be certain to include multiple contact methods such as phone, email, and address. Reaching your business should be easy.

SEO for searchability.

To increase visitors, make sure that the website is search engine optimized. For a higher search engine ranking, use SEO best practices, targeted keywords, external and internal links, and post original and relevant content. Maintain visibility by keeping the site fresh and engaging. Remember that text from images cannot be searched, so make sure that important keywords are visible.

Content management system (CMS).

On the back-end, a great website allows for easy edits and updates. Trends are constantly changing and it’s important to keep up with these changes to stay relevant. To increase a website’s ranking, fresh content helps. Keep your website current with powerful client testimonials, current case studies, blog posts, etc, through the website’s CMS. Remember that successful marketing is an ongoing process, and not a set it and forget it one-time deal.

By following this website design checklist, you can ensure that you create a website with purpose. And that purpose is to bring you closer to your business goals.

Wieting Design offers custom solutions for websites with original designs, as well as WordPress and Squarespace themes to ensure the best option for your business needs and budget. By creating a new site or revamping an old one, we will do more than just create a pretty page. We give these pages the power to work for you as a sales tool that turns visitors into customers. We also offer database management, hosting packages, search engine optimization (SEO), content management systems, and analytics.

See our website samples here https://wietingdesign.com/portfolio/website-design/ and discover the perfect balance of design and function.

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Wieting Design | Website Design CT

Wieting Design is a full-service, graphic and website design agency based in Fairfield County, CT and serving all of Connecticut (CT). We are committed to sharing our experience and expertise in website design, graphic design, social media marketing, search engine marketing (SEO), and video production to help build powerful tools and campaigns that work for your Connecticut business. Whether your objective is to grow your reputation, create client loyalty, drive traffic to your website or set up a marketing strategy, we will adapt our approach to get you the results you need with the services we provide.

 

6 Reasons To Keep Your Blog Alive and Active

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In the era of digital marketing, content is the unmistakable king. There is no doubt, all your digital marketing initiatives will surely fall flat unless you have strong content marketing skills. Your blog is one of the most effective tools in content marketing. An irregular or dying blog does not add good value to SEO in which you have been investing a lot of time and money for long. Many business owners do not realize the power of an active blog in search visibility, leads and sales growth. They reluctantly begin with by posting once a month and eventually stop.

Here are 6 reasons on why you must keep your blog alive and active. 

Keeps Readers Engaged

In order to keep your target audience engaged, you need to strike a chord with them. As the time changes interest of readers shifts along with the way they search for a particular topic or product.

An effective SEO practice tries to grab this ever changing tendency. It keeps itself continuously improving and adjusting with the change. SEO and blogging goes hand in hand.

A successful blog meets searchers interest by providing them with relevant and engaging posts. Strong readership and repeat visitors of the blog eventually increase website traffic.

Establish Your Authority and Expertise

You need to establish your online authority and expertise in order to rank higher in organic search results. This establishment organically boosts SEO ranking.

  • The best way to attain this is to post regular blogs on topics related to your business.
  • Answer your readers’ queries.
  • Try to cover all the relevant areas and subtopics to show your expertise.
  • The more you provide useful and authentic information to your searchers the more they spend time in your website.
  • Google’s spider is continuously indexing all the websites to measure their relevancy and authority. When people spend more time on your website and make repeat visits, your authority and expertise gets built. Your rank improves.

Provide Internal links With More Pages to Help Your Readers

A well managed blog always have relevant internal links in each of its blog posts.

  • Internal links connects a post with another relevant post of the same blog.
  • Logically placed useful internal links help searchers touch all the sub-topics easily.
  • It helps the visitors understand the topic much better.
  • It makes the visitors spend more time in your website.
  • Google finds it easier to understand the subject matter of the topics when they are interlinked.
  • Goggle focuses more toward the meaning behind the searches and webpage; it shifts from keyword matching.

Google Wants You to Keep your Website Updated

Google wants you to keep your website regularly updated and relevant with the time. It must cater the needs of a search query relevant to your website or blog. The best way to do so is to create relevant blog posts on regular basis. When a website grows by adding new content and web pages with regularity, Google rewards them by improving its rank.

Active Social Media Presence

Digital marketing is incomplete without an active social media presence. For that you require constant supply of high quality contents on social media.

  • You need to post interesting, high quality blogs in different social media channels.
  • Good social media blog posts are the most effective way of redirecting relevant customers to your website.
  • Getting likes and shares on your post improve your popularity and online presence.

Helps in Humanizing your Brand

When you show human side of your business in your blog, you actually connect more with your present and potential customers

  • Posts about how your employees are putting their efforts and passions in the business helps in humanizing your brand.
  • You can also touch issues and concerns relevant to your interest. It gives you unique chance to connect with your customers and build trust.

Your blog provides you a unique voice to present your expertise to build trust in your readers. Make your blog an active participator in establishing your online presence.

If you have any questions please email us or give us a call at 203 414 9692

Wieting Design | Website Design CT

Wieting Design is a full-service, graphic and website design agency based in Fairfield County, CT and serving all of Connecticut (CT). We are committed to sharing our experience and expertise in website design, graphic design, social media marketing, search engine marketing (SEO), and video production to help build powerful tools and campaigns that work for your Connecticut business. Whether your objective is to grow your reputation, create client loyalty, drive traffic to your website or set up a marketing strategy, we will adapt our approach to get you the results you need with the services we provide.

SEO Competitor Analysis: Key to an Effective SEO Strategy

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It is good to keep your friends close and your enemies closer. The saying goes true also for enhancing the efficacy of your website’s SEO strategy.

The most important aspect of determining your SEO strategy is to analyze how your competitors are performing. Researching and analyzing your competitors are the key aspects of designing a successful SEO strategy.

SEO makes base for your online marketing practices and you cannot afford to have a spurious SEO marketing strategy.

 Why Competitor Analysis is Important

If you do not know what your competitors are up to then how will you be able to beat them? The world of SEO is highly competitive and fast changing. Your SEO strategy needs to be analyzed at par with your competitors.

The prime aspects of analyzing your competitor’s SEO strategy are-

  • You can’t keep guessing about what your competitors are doing. It is important to identify the tactics adopted by them to attract customers.
  • Find out the areas where their strategy is performing well and try to adopt them without getting into any legal hassle.
  • Prepare a sound counter strategy based on data you receive and not on your speculations.

How to initiate SEO Competitor Analysis

  • Analyze where you stand- Before analyzing others, first, take a dig at where you are currently standing. Get accurate data of your website on following areas-
  1. How many visits you get per month
  2. True visit-to-enquiry conversion rate
  3. Visits you receive from non-branded organic search
  4. Keyword density and word count in each page of your website
  5. Quality and number of inbound links you receive
  • Find out your potential SEO competitors– Use your target keywords in search engine and the first 10 websites that come up are your competitors. You are competing with them as you are using same keywords. This is an important step when you have begun building your SEO marketing strategy from scratch.
  • Ascertain your Competitors- Now take up keyword research to validate the companies, who are competing in your space. You need to diligently follow the online activities of your competitors. Closely monitor their successes and failures. Find out the keywords, which are really getting good page rank.

Keyword analysis usually yields data like-

  1. average monthly search
  2. keyword competition
  3. CPC indicator
  4. URL competition.

Such analyses usually open up newer avenues to design SEO strategy in an effective way.

  • You can’t stop here- It is not over here rather, it is just the beginning. Values of SEO performance metrics do not remain constant. The factors that ensure your visibility and higher page rank keep changing. As the market behavior changes, remember, your potential customers are also changing the way they type a query. A new competitor can also pop-up any time. So, keep analyzing and keep boosting the metrics. Also, you need to keep measuring following metrics side-by-side-
  1. Your average visibility
  2. Average position
  3. Keyword distribution

Compare the performance of short-term metrics against long-term metrics. In addition, identify the pattern of how good or bad those metrics perform. It will help you in further refining your SEO strategy.

Conclusion

An effective and powerful SEO strategy comes out through intense human research along with the help of some useful SEO competitor analysis tools. You need to implement these analysis results in your regular workflow and measure their outcome religiously on a regular basis.

 

Wieting Design | Search Engine Marketing Fairfield County CT

Wieting Design is a full-service, graphic and website design agency based in Fairfield County, CT and serving all of Connecticut (CT). We are committed to sharing our experience and expertise in website design, graphic design, social media marketing, search engine marketing (SEO), and video production to help build powerful tools and campaigns that work for your Connecticut business. Whether your objective is to grow your reputation, create client loyalty, drive traffic to your website or set up a marketing strategy, we will adapt our approach to get you the results you need with the services we provide.

 

 

CONTACT US

Wieting Design, LLC
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o: 203.414.9692
e: cindy@wietingdesign.com

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Serving: CT, Fairfield County CT
Hartford  CT, New Haven County CT