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Digital Marketing: SEO for Beginners

If your company or brand has an online presence, it’s likely you’ve heard recommendations to improve your search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is a board term for a lot of different strategies and techniques for making it clear to the search engines that a site is a good resource and therefore worth ranking highly in search results. Done right, SEO will increase your website’s chances of showing up in organic search engine results. These are the sites recommended by the search engine, rather than the paid results. Each search engine uses a different algorithm to filter the list of results when a user enters a certain keyword, location, or phrase. The goal of the algorithm is to provide the best search results. By implementing various SEO tools, techniques, and strategies you can increase the chances that your site will appear in top results. MLT Group provides expert services for digital marketing, content creation, and organic, white hat, SEO.

While the help of a digital marketing and SEO provider will likely be the most effective way to increase your audience, grow your brand, and improve your user interactions, there are many ways to improve your own SEO. To start your understanding of SEO, it’s important to differentiate between good and bad practices.

White Hat vs. Black Hat

Practices for SEO are often labeled either “white hat” and “black hat.” SEO techniques that are white hat are the ones you should utilize. These good SEO practices follow search engine rules and are implemented to help users and bring better value to search results. Black hat SEO, on the other hand, attempts to trick search engines, spam results, and manipulate users. These practices can be effective in increasing site traffic, but if you get caught, your website will be penalized. Penalized sites are often removed from any search results or blacklisted in other ways. Black hat SEO is also widely considered unethical business behavior.

Basic Principles

Each search engine has a set of principles on which they base their search result algorithms. Not only do search engines want to help websites that use white hat SEO practices, they also often offer SEO guidance and tools to increase your own abilities. For example, Google has a helpful community search console, analytics that can track traffic, and many other products available to website owners, largely free of charge.

The algorithms change over time and vary between search engines, but for the most part, they will include the following for site owners to follow:

  1. build your website for users and not for search engines
  2. don’t trick or lie to users or search engines
  3. use white hat SEO
  4. create a website that is valuable and unique (don’t duplicate content)
  5. build your website to be clear, accessible, and relevant
  6. incorporate social media platforms
  7. build a fast-loading website
  8. avoid automatically-generated content
  9. don’t hide text or links
  10. do not cloak your website so search engines see different content than users
  11. do not duplicate your own content
  12. don’t overfill or “stuff” keywords into your content
  13. have short, descriptive URLs that include relevant keywords
  14. do not have non-character letters in your URL
  15. insure that title tags, description tags, H1s and H2s include relevant keywords/keyphrases
  16. add relevant original content to your site regularly
  17. encourage related sites to link back to your site

There are many other SEO techniques and practices that you can utilize to make your site more attractive to search engines, but these general rules can get you started. It’s a good idea to thoroughly read the fine print of Google’s guidelines as well. Google is by far the search engine that will impact your SEO tactics the most.

How Search Engines Work

There are three steps to how search engines work to find and sort search results. They use site crawling to analyze content on the internet, looking over the code and content of each website. Crawling bots examine keywords, the date content was published, URLs, duplications, and much more to determine which sites best fit a user search. This determination process is a part of their indexing.

When search engines index pages, they are organizing, categorizing, and storing all the information gathered. Indexed content is then available for search engines to rank when a query is made. Ranking is triggered with a search, and the engine will provide results in an order that answers the query according to their algorithm. With SEO, you are providing information to crawling bots that can change how your site is indexed and ranked.

There are ways to see how much of your content is indexed in a search engine. With Google, if you enter into the search bar “site:yoursite,” Google will tell you the number of hits that come up. The social media platform of instagram.com brings up about 631 million hits. Our site, mltgroup.com, brings up 940 hits. You can also use the Google Search Console to get more accurate and specific index reports. You can measure additional SEO success with key performance indicators (KPIs).

Key Performance Indicators

There are many KPIs that sites use to measure audience demographics, site traffic patterns, conversion rates, and SEO success. Common KPIs include sales, downloads, reviews, email lists, submission on contact forms, phone calls, and more. Establishing your KPIs will depend largely on the goals of your brand and intent of your users. Is your goal as a company to sell a specific product? Do your users come to your site through a search to find a local service provider? By knowing your goals and your users’ needs, you can build a website with the right SEO and KPIs.

Local, National, or Global

Another thing your goals and user intent will determine is whether you should be using local, national, or international SEO practices. Local SEO will usually include keywords with geo-target searches. For example, a user might search for “sushi near me” or “best sushi in Minneapolis.” Building keywords tied to target locations will help you increase local SEO results. However, many businesses want to reach broader audiences, and in that case using geo-targets might actually reduce the effectiveness of your SEO. If you want to use national or international SEO, there are other ways to reach users, such as using country-targeting or language-targeting.

With local, national, or international SEO, you can help to fulfill the different intents of users. The majority of user intents are informational searches (such as, “what should I wear to a spring wedding?”), navigational searches to specific sites (such as, “Nordstrom”), or transactional searches (such as, “spring dresses on sale”). One way to determine user intent is to Google a keyword you have incorporated into your website and look at the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). You’ll see your top competitors, images, hit counts, and more information that can help you choose the best keywords and ways to improve your SEO. Google Ads also offers keyword planning services.

Pairing with SEO

SEO practices can be paired with different ad services like pay-per-click marketing, retargeting, and Google ads, as well as enhanced through social media marketing.

Digital Marketing

These basics can help you get started on an SEO and digital marketing plan. When you begin implementing your own SEO strategies, keep in mind the importance of keywords, valuable content, white hat practices, user intent, and your goals as a brand. To learn more about SEO, check out our blog for more related articles. We offer practical, informational advice and more about different kinds of SEO and content creation tactics.

To benefit from our digital marketing advice and services, contact MLT Group at (507) 281-3490, sales@mltgroup.com, or online today.

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Video Production and Why Audiovisual Content is the Most Engaging Media

Since the rapid improvement of smartphone cameras and microphones, it’s become easier than ever to create quality visual, audio, and audiovisual content. The days of heavy, expensive, and difficult to use cameras and other equipment are past. No longer are whole camera crews needed for content creation. However, those kinds of tools still have their uses in professional spaces. For film, high quality photography, best sound capture, and video production, using more than just an iPhone goes a long way. That’s where digital marketing and audiovisual production specialist services can really boost your brand and increase your audience with expert, cohesive media content creation. At MLT Group, we’ve worked to expand our video production services into a comprehensive range of capabilities. Not only do we provide audiovisual media production for training and educational videos, commercials and digital ad media, industrial videos, corporate videos, and social media/web video content, we also provide animation services at competitive rates, surveillance video enhancement, video duplication services, and aerial video with 4K drone videography and drone pilot technology.

Video Production

MLT Group video production services can provide design for audiovisual content that will captivate your audience and make your brand more engaging and memorable. With video content accessible through your website, social media platforms, and other digital marketing strategies, users will be more likely to spend time on your site, share your media, and show more overall interest in your brand.

Around 70% of marketers using multiple types of digital content report that their videos lead to the most conversions on their site. Conversion rates are the measurement of how many users take the next step on your site, from signing up for a newsletter to making a purchase. Many studies show that users retain about 95% of messages when consumed in a video format, whereas only about 10% is retained when users process the same information as text content.

Human brains naturally engage with movement and sound. Because of that, videos are the most effective content for marketing and brand awareness. If we break down why we engage so well with audiovisual content, it makes perfect sense when you take into account the following aspects of well-produced video:

Story-telling:

Videos are excellent at making even the most complex and technical information digestible in comparison with any other type of content. They’re the best storytellers because they have both visual imagery with movement and multiple kinds of auditory information. You can use a human voice, body language of people and animals, and our ability to empathize with facial expressions to convey your message quickly and extremely effectively. Videos are essentially teaching tools that help users learn in as little as a few minutes everything they need to know to take a step that will increase your conversion rates. Using videos to tell a “story” about your brand will also provide a comfortable space for users because it gives them a solid understanding of a product in a very short period of time.

Imagery:

Visuals are an important part of the storytelling aspect of audiovisual content. Imagery matters, especially in a world with thousands of references, connotations, inferences, and implications tied to even the simplest visuals. You can use imagery in a video to your advantage and create visuals that best play to your audience while retaining all the information and aesthetics of your brand. Depending on your audience, you can use nostalgic imagery, modern aesthetics, rustic imagery, family-forward settings, etc. The list of stylized imagery is never-ending. If you know your audience, you can incorporate visuals that elicit positive responses and help educate your users about your brand or product. Many websites use imagery in their videos that trigger dopamine releases, empathy, instinctual communication pathways, and other ways to prompt the interest of your users.

Music:

Along with imagery, music can be a powerful part of a video. Even if a video doesn’t obviously use a song or soundtrack, background musical threads can add a lot of depth and emotion to audiovisual content. Background musical effects can enrich a narrative, impart a professional atmosphere, make child-friendly spaces, impart lightness and fun aesthetics, and so much more. Even with simple background music, videos can build layers and nuances that audiences will engage with more readily. In addition to background music, contemporary songs, music of the past, stylized musical themes, cultural genres, and many other aspects of music that can be incorporated into audiovisual content will change the way your aud犀利士
ience interacts with it even more.

Sound effects:

Apart from music, dialogue, narrative, and other audio components that can be worked into a video, sound effects can also be highly potent tools that help you connect with your audience and communicate information in quick and lasting ways. Sound effects include a broad range of audio, but each effect can have highly specific results when that content is used in a brand’s video. We all interact with different noises in different ways, but you can predict some effects of sounds by generalizing. For example, laughter can impart a joyous environment, dog and cat sounds might make pet owners feel empathy, emergency sirens create a sense of danger, and the sound of a crackling fireplace might make some viewers feel cozy. Sound effects could easily become the most complex part of creating audiovisual content, but they can also be some of the best ways to make a video have a natural and professional flow. Because the majority of your users live in a world where they interact with the sounds you can incorporate, there will always be referential undertones and emotional reactions.

Return on investment:

Not only do all components of audiovisual content spark the interest of our brain, release dopamine, encourage empathy, and open communication instincts, but video is known to have an excellent return on investment (ROI) as well. High quality filming, set, and production will bring awareness to your site, create a user-friendly platform, and increase conversion rates. This means any cost put into creating a video or other audiovisual content on your site will likely increase revenue and grow your audience effectively.

SEO tool:

Videos are also very productive search engine optimization (SEO) tools. Implementing good SEO systems will help search engines prioritize your site in keyword and location-based searches. Google and other search engines use ever-changing algorithms to pull websites that fit the requests of users the best. For the unforeseeable future, video content is favorable for many kinds of searches because of positive user engagement. Not only do websites with video content have more effective SEO, they also garner the largest percentage of user shares. A significant example is YouTube (a Google owned company), which has the third highest rate of shares in the US, just after Google.com and Google images.

Videos are one of the most direct ways to communicate with your audience, generate further engagement, and increase conversion rates. By far, audiovisual content is one of the quickest ways to grow your brand and still get the best return on your investment. One final, and often unexpected way, that videos can be excellent beacons of content on your site to guide users is their ability to act as “end-caps.” Videos can wrap up a significant chunk of information that your audience can then use to take their next steps on your site and continue interacting with your brand.

To learn more about MLT Group’s capabilities for comprehensive, professional video production and content creation, contact us at (507) 281-3490, sales@mltgroup.com, or online today.

 

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Core Values of Effective Web Development in Minneapolis, MN

If you’re building a brand, you need to have an online presence for long term success and audience growth. Ideally, that would include a website and social media presence on multiple platforms, as well as digital marketing and ad placement, but at the very least, your online presence should include a website. Building a website can be intimidating if you’re unfamiliar with the tools, but with the right support systems, you can put together a quality site that meets your needs and holds space in search engines. Many popular website builders available today make putting together a website easy, but to create a well-designed site that increases user engagement and accessibility for a diverse audience, it’s important to understand core values that make up good web development. At MLT Group, we specialize in SEO-based designs for websites with quality content that users will respond to positively. When you work with us to build your website, you benefit from our extensive understanding of effective web development in Minneapolis, MN and across the country.

Web Development

It doesn’t matter if you own a business, manage a nonprofit organization, or are a public figure, you will benefit from a quality website. As soon as you establish a website that operates as your own platform, you can start to grow your brand with search engine optimization, digital marketing campaigns, and more. Your website will be the central component of your digital marketing. Quality web development for your website should be guided by four core values in order to achieve the best site possible for your brand and users.

Design

You probably have something in mind for the aesthetic design of your site, but remember there are other aspects of design that are critical for making an effective website. These design aspects don’t have anything to do with the superficial “look” of your brand, but they are key in formatting a site that makes your ideal aesthetics work for you in other ways.

When you design your site, you want to make it as user-friendly as possible. First of all, this means a fast loading time is a must. A slow load time causes significant bounce-back results, meaning users immediately go back to the search results page. About 50% of users report bounce back if your site takes longer than two seconds to load. Additionally Google penalizes sites that take more than two seconds to load, negatively impacting search rankings. Make your site design load quickly by reducing cluttered code, eliminating media that slows things down, creating caches, and implementing technical SEO tactics.

If you’ve got a fast load time down, make your site user-friendly by reducing cognitive load without compromising key information. This essentially means relying on a standard of simplicity. Have a well-organized site with pages that each have information easily available. Text content should be written concisely and plainly, however word counts are important to Google and other search engines so don’t skimp on text… just be sure it reads well and is visually pleasing in the way it is displayed. For many sites, that text should also use objective language. Making use of the negative space will also help break chunks of information apart to be more easily digestible.

Another way to design a user-friendly site is by using convention without compromising your design aesthetic. There are certain conventional design standards used on the internet, and users are accustomed to those standards. Drop down menus, contact forms, tags, and having a home button in the top left corner of a page are all examples of conventions you can use to make your site easy to navigate.

When you design your site, think about how you operate as a user. Think of some of the most confusing and difficult websites you’ve come across and avoid the things that you didn’t like about them. Even some large companies with plenty of access to quality designers have been called out for their poor site designs like RiteAid (poor use of negative space and difficult to find what you need) and the Yale School of Art (confusing graphics, unreadable overlays). If you sacrifice good design for your aesthetics or if you have too much information on your page, users are less likely to enjoy interacting with your website.

SEO

Implementing search engine optimization (SEO) is how users find your site through search engines. Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing use algorithms to find sites and display them in a specific order. Using SEO will increase your chance of your site ranking highly among those results.

There are many ways to implement SEO, such as including keywords in your text content, creating meta descriptions and title tags, and using geo-locations in your H1 and H2 tags. Combining all of these SEO techniques is important to a comprehensive search engine optimization of your site. On social media platforms, for example, hashtags are a basic SEO-like tool. Building SEO into your site takes work, but it’s worth it because it will exponentially increase your audience over time.

One example of effective SEO is building a blog or news page into your site and posting new content regularly. Google and other search engines favor fresh, original content in their algorithms, and you can incorporate keywords frequently and with variety in blogs. Additionally, blogs give you the opportunity to give more information to your users and increase the nuances of your brand.

MLT Group offers comprehensive SEO services for many aspects of your site, including onsite SEO, content development, link building, and search engine marketing. Incorporating SEO into your site yourself is doable, but it does take time to do the research and build the content. Getting help from a professional like MLT Group lifts the majority of SEO from your shoulders and helps you enjoy a better, more effective website.

Adaptability

You never know what device someone will use to interact with your website. Smart phones, tablets, PCs and other screens all have different dimensions and they handle code slightly differently. Because of this, it’s important that your website is adaptable to all kinds of device displays.

When you’re building your site, keep in mind it’s easier to optimize a site for mobile, tablet, and computer screens from the start, rather than after it’s been built for one type of screen. To alter your site’s designs to fit smaller screens, think about how to shrink a page down without making text and images microscopic. Make sure the page will still load quickly (you can test load times with Google’s speed tester), and ensure your content is reorganized and resized appropriately instead of having text and media jumbling on top of each other.

If possible, the ideal solution for mobile optimization is to build your site using responsive coding. Ask your website professional how this works.

Accessibility

Most brands make it their goal to cater to a diverse audience, but to do so, you need to make your website accessible to people with different abilities and needs. This includes people with hearing, vision, cognitive, and processing impairments. That poses some challenges because a website is often a fully visual resource. However there are many ways to create accessibility in your site.

MLT’s site, for example, has several installed profiles that make it possible for people with disabilities to interact with our content. Users can adjust the profile of our site to be seizure safe, have enhanced visuals, make it easier to focus on information, and eliminate potential distractions. We also have keyboard navigation and screen reading options for blind users. For even more customization of our site profiles, users can adjust content such as resizing font, letter spacing, alignment, contrast, and text colors. Click the blue circular button in the bottom left corner of our website to learn more.

Following ADA compliance guidelines for website accessibility can give you a good starting point for making your site useful for all kinds of users. Making your site accessible is not only an ethical decision, it avoids potential fines from legal action, and it gives your audience a better opinion of your brand. Making  this an important part of web development.

Design is the main component of core values for website development, and with it comes SEO use, adaptability, and accessibility. With these in mind when building your website, you’ll be on the path to establishing and improving your image, growing your audience, and making a space for your brand.

To learn more about web development in Minneapolis, MN with MLT Group, contact us at (507) 281-3490, sales@mltgroup.com, or online today.