Why it is important to have a Mobile-Friendly Website

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94% of people with smartphones search for local information on their phones. And 66% of ALL searches are done from a mobile device.

Back on April 21, 2015, Google released a new mobile-friendly algorithm that was designed to boost the ranking of mobile-friendly pages in their mobile search results.

Recently they have come back and announced that beginning in May of 2016 they will be increasing the mobile-friendly algorithm’s impact. So, if your website is not yet mobile ready, get ready for some significant rank dropping. Don’t think you are safe if you don’t see it take immediate effect. The rollout is expected to be slow and take months to take hold. It is liable to take a while for Google to rescan and assess every single web page out there.

Representatives from Google have stated, “You are either mobile-friendly or not, there are no degrees of mobile-friendliness in this algorithm.”

If your site meets the criteria, then when you do a mobile search, your site has the “mobile-friendly” label showing next to it in the results.Google says your site is not mobile firendly

Primary mobile items of concern as voiced by Google are:

  • Small Font Sizes
  • Buttons Are Too Close Together
  • Readable Content
  • Viewport Size
  • Page Speed

But there are more than 200 different determining ranking factors. You can test if Google thinks that your website pages are mobile-friendly at this URL: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

 

If your site happens not to be mobile friendly, then you may want to contact us to get your site situated correctly.

Difference between a Responsive Site, being Mobile-Friendly, and a Mobile Site

Responsive Site

Responsive website design is a way of making sites flexible enough to reorient and resize to fit the screen size of any device upon which you are viewing the web page. With the increased use of tablets like the iPad and smartphone devices such as the Android, it is ever more important that your site is responsive.

Mobile-Friendly

As mentioned above, some criteria needs to be met to be mobile-friendly. The most critical factors are page load speed and usability, meaning the text must be legible, and things can’t be so close together that it is difficult to click buttons properly. Images should resize so they fit into the device’s viewport. All of these things are important from a functional point of view and, to some extent, serve as a better experience to the user.

If you expect to rank well in Google’s mobile search results, it is imperative your site be mobile-friendly.

Mobile Site

A website that is mobile optimized has become critical for many local businesses. It is much more advanced than just being mobile friendly or responsive. Images are optimized. Differently, the site is completely reformatted to be quickly engaged by a customer looking at the site on a mobile device. It puts the most critical information such as the phone number, a map, appointment/reservation scheduling, menus, and other highly targeted details up front and center to focus on conversion.

mobile vs responsive website compare

Every Business Should Consider an Optimized Mobile Website

One you have your regular site Responsive and Mobile-friendly, it is prudent that you consider having a pure mobile site for your business. Mobile sites tend to convert traffic better than regular sites that are just mobile-friendly. Look at this example of the two variations and you will see why the mobile site converts better than the other variations.

 

As you can tell, the non-friendly site can’t even be read because it is so small, and forget about trying to click on anything. When a potential customer comes across this type of site, they immediately hit the back button and go to your competitors.

The mobile-friendly site is a little better from a user’s viewpoint, but there is a lack of prevalence of the most important information that a mobile user is looking for when they come to a site. How do you contact this business? How do you get there? How do yo make an appointment?

With a Mobile optimized website, the conversion rate of your traffic usually goes up. This is because all of the information a mobile searcher needs is all right there at their fingertips. The phone number and map are the most critical items that should be right at the top of the page, after that there should be significant things like a button to schedule an appointment, or a reservation if you are a restaurant. Other relevant services might also be considered to be located at the top of the page.

If you have found that your site is not mobile-friendly, or if you have determined that your business would benefit from a mobile optimized site, we can help you. Visit our Mobile Website Design page for more information.

Local Business Search Engine Optimization – Citations

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Getting your business found online is critical to getting new customers.  You may want to read a previous article about the importance of ranking your business in Google before you read through this post.

Today, we are going to discuss one component that helps build your brand, enhance off page SEO, and develop you exposure online.

Maybe among the best strategies to foster local business Search Engine Optimization is to ensure the uniformity and the accessibility of your company’s citation listings across a multitude of third party resources. Search engines like Google and Bing continuously scan these websites to come up with a more robust knowledge of your company as well as the local area in which you operate.

What are Business Citations

List of Business Citation SitesCitations are described as references to your business name and address on webpages from other sites—even if there’s no link to your website. A good example of a citation may be an online yellow pages directory which lists your company. Citations can be located on a local business organization page that features your business, even though they may not be linking to your website, or on the nearby chamber of commerce web pages.

Citations are an integral part of the position algorithms in Bing and Google. Other factors being equal, businesses with fewer citations will not most likely rank higher than businesses using a larger variety of citations. References from well-recognized and well-indexed portal sites (i.e., Superpages.com) assist in the level of confidence the search engines have about your company’s details and classification. But when your business isn’t recorded — or the info about it’s incorrect or incomplete — there’s a danger of negatively affecting your company’s placements in the search results.

Citations Are Critical to the Online Success of a Business

Citations are particularly significant in less-aggressive markets where companies may not possess a website. The major search engines depend heavily on whatever info they’re able to locate, so without a website, other digital assets become critical.

Hyperlinks and citations from most of these sites can drastically boost your internet search engine positions because they validate the company is relevant to that local area.

Establish, Set Up, and Update Your Business Citations

Build your listings out with website URL, videos, pictures as well as other essential info to make them more educational and appealing to potential clients.

Produce individual listings for every single location where your business is established to foster the visibility of your brand name and each one of your shops/offices.

Local citations can be gained from sites that are familiar to most people and range from Yelp.com, Facebook, and Google to YP, DexKnows, and Yellowbook. Ensure the brand, telephone number, and address are posted and that your company info is constant and precise across all citations. Make adjustments as required and delete duplicate web pages.

There are hundreds of good trustworthy sites from which citations may be received. Finding the websites, creating accounts, posting the company information, and verifying it is exactly the same across all citations can be a long and tedious process. Most small businesses don’t have the time or resources to spend on this type of work. This is just one more reason to find a good agency that provides this type of SEO service. The professionals have curated lists of directories and other citation sites at their fingertips and most likely have a well thought out and efficient system for creating accounts and entering the correct information about a local business.

If You AMP Up Your Website Will You Rank Better In Google?

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Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP) is a plan from Twitter and Google to make mobile web pages faster.

Spedometer with Google AMP textAt its substance, it is essentially a stripped down kind of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). It is an HTML page created to be super lightweight and renders quickly while loading. Therefore, a whole lot of others have thrown their hat into the mix — sort of in reaction to Apple News and Facebook Instant Articles.

There are specific labels of HTML you cannot utilize in the AMP version. Things such as form tables are excluded. Also, you must make use of a sleeker version of Cascading Style Sheets. It’s possible for you to use much of standard CSS, but some elements are not permitted to be used. Subsequently JavaScript is virtually prohibited in any way. You must make use of an off the shelf JavaScript catalog that you are provided by them with lazy loading.

And so the notion is that the entire platform was created only for real legibility and speed. Till they are scrolled into view items like pictures, do not load and add weight to loading processes. We expect that eventually the JavaScript library will be included in particular systems. And this all was created to be fully cached. Therefore, these web pages can be hosted by Google, and thus, they do not also need to get it anymore.

The standard desktop computer edition of the web page as seen on the site is we are accustomed to viewing. For those who have an AMP variation, you’ll select that using the “rel AMP” HTML hyperlink, which forwards around to your AMP site.

This can be built all on your domain name with this stripped-down kind of Hypertext Markup Language. It’s meant to be quicker. However, they have also rolled-out this free hosted cached system portion of the offer at the same time, which can be tagged using the label “gstatic” and can be a Google-managed variant that is cached.

How Does AMP Affect Search Results?

So let us discuss how this may appear in search results, a bit. So firstly, that which we understand at present is like it is mobile only. We are anticipating this to start being implemented by Google as early as this month – Feb in 20-16.

In the past, Google has told us that they are pushing for a faster web, so it is no surprise that they are committed to the AMP project. You may have noticed in your searches that some sites have been labeled as “Mobile Friendly.” And we have seen evidence in our statistics that sites with mobile friendly coding seem to rank higher, more quickly. It would seem prudent to apply this concept to sites that are also AMP friendly.

We at CreatiVants have existing services to help make your company website be mobile friendly – and this goes much farther than just having a responsive theme on your site. And today we are launching services to help enable AMP formatting to your site.

Ranking in today’s market can be difficult. Any advantage you can take over your competition should be pursued. We are at the forefront of this technology and helping clients get ahead of the curve. By the time your competitors get around to this, you will have already benefited from the early adoption.

We can help you get your site AMP ready and dominate your competition.

The Need For SEO For Any Phoenix Business

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Arizona highway sign with business seo textIf you are an AZ business without a website, your company, is missing out on access to a vast marketplace. Beyond needing a website, it is just as important that it show up in the top search results in the most used search engines like Google – specifically in the Phoenix-area.

Exactly What Does This Mean?

In the event someone enters a keyword or a key phrase into an internet search engine, your website should show up in the top portion of the first page. That is vital to anyone trying to find services or the products which you supply. Few people seldom look further than the first three sites to locate a provider.

Thus, the primary & most critical step to search engine marketing (SEM) will be to recognize the key words or terms which are specific to your business and ensuring they are a part of the text on your website. The more terms of these keywords that appear on your site, the much more probability your asset is going to be on top of the listings. Terms and keywords which are not immediately connected to your company can be included to increase the number of visitors to your website. In Arizona, the way in which we position your site with Phoenix Search Engine Optimization can assist you ranking for more keywords.

Internet search engine Optimization (or SEO) can be used to boost your keywords depending on providing posts on your site that contain the keywords. These posts should be original, and they are going to be omitted by the internet search engine when they include the keyword too frequently.

Posts also need to appear on different sites other than your business website. These posts need to provide a hyperlink that redirects straight back to yours. There are several places where they can be published for free, but additionally, it is strongly advised to fund posts or advertisements on different websites.

Advertising and Assessment

Assessing the visitors to your web site will assist in determining hyperlinked keywords. The evaluation offers the means to concentrate the information on the pages to capture the interest of the market section that is possible.

The business marketing techniques and methods could be acquired by way of an internet SEO firm to raise the visibility of a website on various search engines like Google. Complete search engine marketing techniques can be used to make the most of the effect of your brand.

Deciding On the Best Phoenix Arizona Local SEO Specialist

SEO is changing every day, and layperson is not going to be capable enough to maintain the continuously updated modifications, which is why it’s important that you just decide on a local SEO specialist to do the work for your business.

You will find many companies in Phoenix. However, they not all are created equal. These are a few of the factors that are paramount to take into account contemplating in this respect:

The business you decide on should execute ethical Search Engine Optimization and only “white-hat” industry standards. You can find firms that perform unethical SEO on websites, but when the search engines come to learn about it, despite the fact that these approaches may position your website faster at times, the website will soon be punished. Thus, it is important that the company does work on your site with care. However, it can require a while to position a website through systems that are clean industry standards.

It is essential that you employ an internet marketing specialist with excellent communication skills, as you are going to need to function together on a long-term basis.

Reporting ranks for your keywords should be adopted by the support provider. They need to be pro-active in communicating information that is significant about improvement and the position status of your websites

CreatiVants is a skilled SEO company in Phoenix, Arizona. We practice only “white hat” industry standard methods to rank your business. Fill out an exploration application to get started on pulling in more customers.

The Importance of Ranking Your Phoenix Business in the Search Engines

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has been around for nearly as long as the internet and is an active way to bring websites to the forefront of searches on Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines. Local SEO is a means of making it as simple for would-be customers to seek out info about your firm online, either when they search especially for the enterprise or for any related goods or services nearby them.

Are Potential Clients Finding Your Business Online?

Occasionally folks are searching for more knowledge about your organization. The name may be known to them, but would like to get the telephone number or address. Other times, they may be looking for a particular kind of business, such as a Phoenix Hair Salon, for instance, and want to find one near them.

Occasionally folks are trying to find the type of the merchandise you sell or services you supply. However, they do not always have a particular business in mind. Local Search Engine Optimization helps the search engines locate the companies – including yours – that can meet their requirements.

Picture someone hunting for an air conditioning repair company that will get the AC back on in the middle of a hot summer. They’re going to go to Google and type “24-hour AC Repair in Phoenix”, “Arizona Emergency AC Repair”, or “Fix my AC”. Although the company provides such services, if their site does not have Search Engine Optimization that is appropriate, it’s unlikely to appear in that query.

Local SEO Is A Critical Business Marketing Tactic

It is crucial to get your business website online and to use Search Engine Optimization best practices to generate a presence in top ranks of the search engines. It is a critical business marketing tactic. Without SEO, your pages might not rate highly and unless it rates on the very first page of the internet searches, prospective clients will have a difficult time locating your company website.

It Is More Than Just Ranking Your Website

Your website is not the only thing that needs to be ranked. The knowledge someone is searching for may be readily found on a page about your business like Angie’s List, Yelp, City Search, or DexKnows. The search engines will probably show those pages in the results when they are optimized. Thus, you could have MULTIPLE listings on the front page. By taking up more real estate on page one, you better your chances for traffic and more business.

With SEO, there is not one thing to do, like flipping a switch, but rather a systemic approach that is an ongoing affair. It will be different for each company, for each search term, and for each website, including the directory websites that mention your firm.

You Need An SEO Expert

Search Engine Optimization needs an expert’s touch. Otherwise, your site ranking could be damaged forever. That is why you should contact our Phoenix SEO Experts. Get found online!

Local SEO