https://www.straightnorth.com/blog/rss.xml en Mapping The User’s Journey On Your Site https://www.straightnorth.com/blog/mapping-users-journey-on-your-site/ <p>In our fast-paced e-commerce world, every second a customer spends on your site matters. With how quickly consumers move on to the next thing, you must do everything feasible to make the site appealing and enhance the customer’s experience. Doing so requires taking a close look at the user’s journey, mapping it and improving it where possible. </p> <p>To help, let’s briefly go over user journey mapping and a few tips on how to improve the user’s journey on your site.</p> <p>First, what is a user journey map? Put simply, it is a diagram offering a visual illustration of the path, or user flow, through your site. It starts with the discovery or initial contact, then continues through the process of engagement and ends in either conversion or departure. The map works to identify key touch points and user interactions with the site or mobile app. </p> <p>With these insights, brands may gain a better understanding of the target customer’s feelings, motivations and experiences. In the end, this could lead to an enhanced buyer persona profile, enriched site design and other elements capable of better guiding the customer.</p> <p>How else might the user journey be improved? One simple step is to boost load speeds. As mentioned above, every second counts and users nowadays expect almost immediate site access. Along the same lines is optimizing for mobile access. Consumers want fast, seamless shopping experiences across all their devices. As such, your site and app must be up to speed and well designed for mobile use.</p> <p>Another great place to start is the landing page. An attractive, well-planned design often makes a big difference in the customer’s initial perception of the site as well as the brand. Going forward, consider using the data gained from a user journey map to create a singular focus that drives the buyers down a specific path and boosts conversions.</p> <p>For further information on optimizing the user’s journey, please see the accompanying resource.</p> <p><img src="https://www.straightnorth.com/sites/default/files/sn-map-im-v2%5B17%5D.jpg"></p> Friday, 17 March 2023 Mapping The User’s Journey On Your Site The Basics Behind Domain Authority https://www.straightnorth.com/blog/basics-behind-domain-authority/ <p>Thorough and repeated evaluation of your business’s digital strategies is a key part of finding success in the hyper-competitive e-commerce market. One metric you would be remiss to exclude from that evaluation is Domain Authority, or DA. Below is a brief exploration into what Domain Authority is, how its calculated and how SMBs can use it to improve their Google rankings.</p> <p>What is DA and how can it measure a website’s value? Essentially, DA is a score developed by Moz ranging from one to 100 used to predict how likely a website is to rank among search engine result pages, or SERPs. The higher the score, the greater likelihood of ranking and, therefore, being seen by more users.</p> <p>It’s important to note that Domain Authority does not have an effect on the SERPs, as it is not a factor used in Google ranking. Rather, the score is used as a means to gauge a website’s performance in relation to its competitors and track its "ranking strength" over time.</p> <p><img src="https://www.straightnorth.com/sites/default/files/DomainAuthority.black[64].jpg"></p> <p>How is a DA score calculated? First, data from a site’s Moz Link Explorer index and other sources are gathered. Then, that data is put into an advanced machine learning model to determine the most suitable algorithm to generate the predictions and an overall score. The calculation accounts for the quantity and quality of links that a webpage receives, as well as how often the domain appears in search results.</p> <p>Because DA is founded on machine learning calculations, scores often fluctuate as the data points and other variables change. As such, it is essential that businesses refrain from using a DA score as an absolute system of measurement. Instead, it should be used as a comparative one. It’s also vital to check DA scores routinely. Companies can do so through Moz, in the SERP Analysis section of Keyword Explorer. Since this metric’s creation by Moz, other SEO tools have created their own version of Domain Authority scores.</p> <p>Despite the fact that it isn’t used as an official ranking factor by Google, Domain Authority is valuable in that it provides insight into the health of your website. Going forward, you can use it to better gauge the link profiles of competitor sites within your target SERPs and include it in the evaluation of your digital strategies. That way, you can take steps to increase your score where you can, improve your ranking and gain the advantage over your competitors.</p> Thursday, 19 January 2023 The Basics Behind Domain Authority Do You Need More Marketing? … Or Less? https://www.straightnorth.com/blog/do-you-need-more-marketing-or-less/ <p>For many companies, figuring out how much to invest in marketing is a tricky business. Mainly this occurs when company leaders are unsure about the ROI of their marketing spend. Is the marketing working? Is it not working?</p> <p>These questions can be tough to answer. Sometimes the unsure feeling comes from not having enough data, and in other cases, from having too much. Here are a few signals to help you figure out whether you need more marketing or less.</p> <h2>You May Need More Marketing If &hellip;</h2> <ul> <li>Competitors are eating into your market share.</li> <li>You&rsquo;re facing new competitors or new types of competitors.</li> <li>New business from existing customers is flat or declining.</li> <li>New customer acquisition is flat or declining.</li> <li>You are rolling out new products or services.</li> <li>You are moving into new markets.</li> <li>You get few leads from your website.</li> <li>Your brand reputation has taken a hit.</li> <li>You need sales to spend more time selling and less time generating leads.</li> </ul> <h2>You May Need Less (or Different) Marketing If &hellip;</h2> <ul> <li>You lack the budget and/or staff to effectively support all of your campaigns.</li> <li>Your sales force is clearly and decisively better at obtaining and retaining customers.</li> <li>You are eliminating or rolling back products or services.</li> <li>You are pulling out of certain markets.</li> <li>You cannot achieve a consensus on marketing strategies.</li> <li>Your margins have eroded substantially.</li> </ul> <p><img src="https://www.straightnorth.com/sites/default/files/Do You Need More Marketing-sn-blog-quote.jpg"></p> <h2>Changing Gears</h2> <p>Sometimes &mdash; oftentimes &mdash; a different marketing approach is better than scrapping a marketing effort altogether. Consider the problem of eroding margins. When a product or service has become commoditized, expensive marketing campaigns with hard-to-calculate ROI, such as social media and print advertising, usually don&rsquo;t pay off. However, a well-managed email or PPC (pay-per-click) ad campaign could produce a very appealing (and easily measured) ROI.</p> <h2>Focusing In</h2> <p>One aspect of marketing where less is definitely more occurs when a company is spreading its marketing efforts too thin. Marketing campaigns are most effective when they are done with intensity and a critical mass of breadth and depth. In contrast, just scratching the surface with social media, SEO or email, etc., is likely to produce minimal or no ROI.</p> <p>The real question is: Which marketing campaign offers the best opportunity?</p> <p>If you&rsquo;re not sure how to answer that question, contact us. We&rsquo;d love to know more about your situation and help you develop a winning strategy.</p> Friday, 18 June 2021 Brad Shorr Do You Need More Marketing? … Or Less? Post-Pandemic Internet Marketing — Opportunities Everywhere https://www.straightnorth.com/blog/post-pandemic-internet-marketing-opportunities-everywhere/ <p>Wherever you live on the planet, you know firsthand how radically COVID has reshaped buying behavior. The adjustments have been difficult in many respects, but the post-pandemic environment does include many positives for online marketing.</p> <h2>A New Era Emerges</h2> <p>On the consumer side, a sure sign the pandemic experience will have long-lasting impact is the flurry of new marketing acronyms used to describe what people are doing as they shop:</p> <ul> <li>BOPIS &mdash; Buy on-line, pick-up in-store</li> <li>BORIS &mdash;&nbsp;Buy on-line, return in-store</li> <li>ROPIS &mdash;&nbsp;Reserve on-line, pick-up in-store</li> <li>ROPO &mdash; Research on-line, purchase off-line</li> </ul> <p>People in all demographic categories were forced to make purchases in these ways when the lockdowns started, and guess what? A lot of us &mdash; millions &mdash; grew to<em> like</em> these options and are happy to continue taking advantage of the speed, flexibility, and convenience of a blended online and brick-and-mortar shopping experience.</p> <p>On the B2B side, lockdowns put an end to conventions, tradeshows, live sales calls, live product demonstrations, and most other physical interactions between buyers and sellers. As with consumers, business buyers have become more reliant on &mdash; and more comfortable with &mdash;&nbsp;virtual meetings, video presentations of products/equipment/services, and other Internet-based purchasing and communication options.</p> <p><img src="https://www.straightnorth.com/sites/default/files/post-pandemic-pullquote[1].jpg"></p> <h2>Marketing Shift to Digital Accelerates</h2> <p>Although intuitively the rapidly rising popularity of the digital marketplace is easy to see, strong numbers do back up strong gut feelings:</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2021/03/15/adobe-digital-economy-index-covid-19-report.html#gs.0s88r7">According to Adobe</a>, COVID-19 has already boosted retail e-commerce an extra $183 billion &mdash; a 20% YOY increase that is expected to continue.</li> <li><a href="https://www.emarketer.com/content/us-digital-ad-spending-2021">eMarketer forecasts</a>, not surprisingly, a 25.5% increase in U.S. digital ad spending.</li> <li>Turning to B2B, <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/survey-global-b2b-decision-maker-response-to-covid-19-crisis">McKinsey reports</a> that most buyers now prefer cross-channel selling, 80% of sellers are convinced that omnichannel marketing is superior to traditional methods, and 60% of sellers plan to increase digital marketing budgets.</li> </ul> <h2>How Can You Capitalize on the Opportunity?</h2> <p>So how can you take advantage of the post-pandemic marketing environment to generate dynamic growth in online revenue and sales leads? Important strategies and tactics include these.</p> <h3>B2C</h3> <ul> <li>Create onsite content and site functionality to support BOPIS, BORIS, ROPIS and ROPO. This will help SEO and lay the groundwork for improving CTRs on paid search campaigns.</li> <li>Make sure your site is fully optimized for local SEO &mdash; Most new customers start their journey on Google.</li> <li>Expand paid search into YouTube, Facebook, and perhaps other social platforms.</li> <li>Upgrade your website&rsquo;s functionality and improve user experience, especially for e-commerce and businesses (such as restaurants) that use the BOPIS model.</li> </ul> <h3>B2B</h3> <ul> <li>Shift a portion of the trade show, live event, and travel budgets to online marketing.</li> <li>Create and market persuasive and informative product/equipment videos.</li> <li>Develop paid search campaigns with online webinars as a primary or secondary offer.</li> <li>For SEO, optimize video and images for desktop and (very important) mobile viewing.</li> </ul> <h2>Need Help Developing Your Strategy?</h2> <p>If you&rsquo;re not sure where to start, <a href="https://www.straightnorth.com/request-quote/">contact us here</a> or just call toll-free <strong>855-883-0011</strong>. We will help you evaluate your competitive situation and best online marketing options.</p> Monday, 7 June 2021 Brad Shorr Post-Pandemic Internet Marketing — Opportunities Everywhere 10 Things You Know About SEO — That Are Wrong https://www.straightnorth.com/blog/10-things-you-know-about-seo-are-wrong/ <p>It&rsquo;s easy to get the wrong idea about SEO, because half of what&rsquo;s written about it contradicts the other half. The Straight North blog strives to be a source of accurate information, because you&rsquo;ll never have a successful SEO campaign without it. Here are 10 of the most popular misconceptions.</p> <p><img src="https://www.straightnorth.com/sites/default/files/Nov16_SN_pullquote.jpg"></p> <ol> <li><strong>SEO is all smoke and mirrors</strong>. SEO is complicated and often technical, but done properly it is based on data and systematic research.</li> <li><strong>SEO is a magic bullet</strong>. The opposite misconception is also wrong. SEO takes time and usually a significant investment. For many companies, SEO is the primary and dominant form of Internet marketing, but seldom the only one.</li> <li><strong>All SEO companies are the same</strong>. SEO companies vary widely in expertise, market focus, campaign focus (e.g., e-commerce or lead generation), organizational stability and experience. An SEO partner must be carefully vetted.</li> <li><strong>It&rsquo;s all about keywords</strong>. Keywords alone won&rsquo;t cut the mustard. Content quality matters, and Google is trying hard to make quality matter even more.</li> <li><strong>Keywords don&rsquo;t matter</strong>. Nope, that&rsquo;s not right, either. Based on the data, keywords still matter quite a bit. They cannot be ignored, though the use of keywords isn&rsquo;t as precise and mechanical as it was in the early days of SEO.</li> <li><strong>The more inbound links, the better</strong>. The sheer number of inbound links is less important than the quantity and <em>quality</em> of those links. Links from irrelevant or shady websites will hurt you rather than help you.</li> <li><strong>SEO gets in the way of presenting our brand</strong>. Actually, the opposite should be true. Well-executed SEO-driven content and SEO-informed website structure should bring clarity to your communication and ease of navigation to your site visitors.</li> <li><strong>Higher rankings are the highest priority goal</strong>. No. Obsession with rankings can take you far off track. What good is ranking highly on a term nobody searches for, or is not relevant to what you sell? Keyword targeting is a much more complicated affair. <a href="https://www.straightnorth.com/faq/seo/what-keyword-strategy/">Learn more</a>.</li> <li><strong>More organic traffic is the highest priority goal</strong>. No, again. Having more organic traffic is good (from an SEO perspective) only if it generates sales leads.</li> <li><strong>More conversions from organic traffic is the highest priority goal</strong>. While this is true for e-commerce websites, when it comes to lead generation websites, more conversions (phone calls and form submissions) doesn’t necessarily mean more sales leads. Many of these conversions can be triggered by inquiries for customer service, job applicants, sales reps trying to sell you services/products, spam or miscellaneous requests. Make sure you are measuring campaign conversions using qualified sales leads from your CRM software.</li> </ol> <p>Contact us now to discuss <a href="https://htmlcheatsheet.com/seo/" rel="nofollow">your SEO</a> challenges and objectives. We can help.</p> Thursday, 13 May 2021 Brad Shorr 10 Things You Know About SEO — That Are Wrong How To Be A Great SEO Client https://www.straightnorth.com/blog/how-be-great-seo-client/ <p>Of course the SEO agency is responsible for making a campaign successful, but the client plays an important role as well. If the client steps up its game even slightly, that seemingly small margin of improvement makes a big difference in sales leads or online revenue. Here are attributes of great clients we&rsquo;ve noticed over our many years of managing SEO campaigns.&nbsp;</p> <ul> <li><strong>Great clients ask questions</strong>. Our approach to SEO and Internet marketing in general is collaborative. We love when clients are interested in learning more about SEO. The more knowledge you have, the better questions you ask, and the more you help us identify creative strategies and tactics.</li> <li><strong>Great clients provide honest feedback, early and often</strong>. We think we&rsquo;re doing a great job &hellip; but are we? Clients should never be reluctant to share their impressions of how the campaign is going. If there are problems, solving them early on is easier than waiting until they mushroom into bigger ones.&nbsp;</li> <li><strong>Great clients approve work quickly</strong>. The bulk of SEO work involves the creation of high-quality content, both on-site and off-site. To keep campaigns moving at the fastest possible pace, fast approvals are crucial. Without fast approvals, getting content published &mdash; essential for earning links and building domain authority &mdash; can be pushed back weeks or even months. In the meantime, rankings could remain in a holding pattern.&nbsp;</li> <li><strong>Great clients are great at turning organic traffic into revenue</strong>. An extremely important SEO success factor is what happens to organic traffic once it hits the client website, and this is where an SEO agency has limited influence.&nbsp;</li> <li>If it&rsquo;s a lead generation campaign, does the website make it easy for visitors to inquire by form or phone &mdash; and, once a lead is captured, does the client have a fast and effective handoff to the sales team?</li> <li>If it&rsquo;s an e-commerce campaign, does the website make the online shopping experience safe and easy?</li> <li><strong>Great clients are patient</strong>. Clients are 100% correct to want results from an SEO campaign as quickly as possible. However, difficulties arise when there are different perceptions of what constitutes &ldquo;quickly.&rdquo; Sometimes those different perceptions exist between the client and the agency, and sometimes they are internal within the client&rsquo;s leadership team. Either way, recognizing that all companies have a unique starting point for an SEO campaign and that this affects how quickly a campaign gains traction is important. Giving up or changing course too early can easily short-circuit what could become a highly successful campaign. In SEO, patience pays off.</li> </ul> <h2>Let&rsquo;s Talk&nbsp;</h2> <p>If you&rsquo;d like to discuss an SEO campaign, please contact us. We&rsquo;re eager to learn more about your marketing objectives.</p> Tuesday, 17 November 2020 How To Be A Great SEO Client SEO Insider News https://www.straightnorth.com/blog/seo-insider-news/ <p><em>We thought you might enjoy reading what we&rsquo;re reading at Straight North about SEO developments. The articles below were collected from the staff and reviewed by our Director of SEO, Colleen Moran.&nbsp; </em></p> <ul> <li>Are keywords in URLs important for SEO? <a href="https://www.seroundtable.com/google-keywords-urls-seo-29981.html">This Search Engine Roundtable article provides the answer</a>. (The short answer: Not terribly important.)<br><br></li> <li><a href="https://www.searchenginejournal.com/managing-successful-seo-migrations/336087/#close">Managing Successful SEO Migrations</a> deals with SEO issues during a domain change, merging domains, moving to a new platform, changing host providers, going from HTTP to HTTPS and restructuring URLs. VERY important reading if you are contemplating or in the midst of one of these activities.<br><br></li> <li>Going from big picture issues to small but important details, this Search Engine Journal article reports <a href="https://www.searchenginejournal.com/chrome-86-insecure-form-crackdown/377868/#close">that Google Chrome is going to start warning users about insecure forms</a>. This is important because if your form uses HTTP protocol instead of HTTPS, prospects and customers may be scared off before submitting their inquiry or question. It&rsquo;s possible HTTP could be used on forms even if your website has converted to HTTPS, so this one can catch even diligent companies off guard. <em>Straight North is already addressing this issue with our SEO clients.<br><br></li> <li>Web accessibility has become a hot SEO topic again. The best way to describe developments is to quote from Colleen&rsquo;s internal memo: <br><br> &ldquo;Web accessibility has always been an important subject in Web Design and SEO. Since people are generally using the internet more during COVID-19, it&rsquo;s a topic that has re-surfaced in our industry. Here&rsquo;s an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-accessibility/379582/">overview on web accessibility</a>&nbsp;and how to optimize content to ensure those with disabilities can access content. Additionally,&nbsp;<a href="https://medium.com/@krisrivenburgh/the-ada-checklist-website-compliance-guidelines-for-2019-in-plain-english-123c1d58fad9">here&rsquo;s a great write up</a>&nbsp;that explains accessibility thoroughly and helps break down some of the legal jargon surrounding this topic.&rdquo;<br><br></li> <li>Your website can lose ground in Google rankings through no fault of its own &mdash; external factors often play a significant role. This article, <a href="https://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-sites-lose-rankings/378482/">4 Reasons Why Sites May Lose Google Rankings</a>, explains what can happen and what you can do about it.<br><br></li> <li>As a writer, I love this nerdy (but important) article about <a href="https://www.searchenginejournal.com/pipe-or-dash-in-title-tag/378099/">the merits of using pipe bars instead of dashes in title tags</a>. The pipe bar &mdash; &ldquo;|&rdquo; &mdash; takes up less width, allowing more of your title tag to display on screen. In addition, pipe bar separation is more readable. It&rsquo;s small details like this that add up to make good SEO campaigns great ones.</li> </ul> Thursday, 24 September 2020 SEO Insider News Inside The SEO Industry https://www.straightnorth.com/blog/inside-seo-industry/ <h2>New Google Ranking Factor: Page Experience Signal</h2> <p>In late May, Google&nbsp;<a href="https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2020/05/evaluating-page-experience.html">announced</a>&nbsp;that a new &ldquo;Page Experience&rdquo; ranking signal will go into effect in 2021. This ranking factor combines&nbsp;<a href="https://web.dev/vitals/">Core Web Vitals</a>&nbsp;(page speed, responsiveness and stability) with other known metrics such as mobile-friendliness, HTTPS, intrusive interstitials and Safe Browsing to evaluate the overall experience that pages provide users.&nbsp;</p> <p>This announcement isn&rsquo;t a huge surprise. Page speed load time and other metrics such as mobile-friendliness and HTTPS are already ranking factors. Google has been telling us for years to make our sites faster and to focus on providing great web experiences for users. With Google set to combine these known ranking signals, it&rsquo;s definitely something to prepare for going into 2021. However, Google has made a point of saying &ldquo;Page Experience&rdquo; will be less important than having high-quality, relevant content. Content is king, after all.&nbsp;</p> <p>Core Web Vitals metrics already have been incorporated into Google Search Console, Page Speed Insights, Lighthouse, Chrome Dev tools and the Chrome UX Report. So, SEOs and developers have plenty of time to get acquainted with these metrics and begin testing.</p> <p><img src="https://www.straightnorth.com/sites/default/files/Aug1220-pullquote.jpg"></p> <h2>AMP Requirement Changes</h2> <p>Google also stated that the &ldquo;Page Experience&rdquo; signal will be factored into how content is ranked in the Top Stories carousel on mobile. Traditionally,&nbsp;<a href="https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7496737?hl=en">AMP</a> (accelerated mobile pages)&nbsp;has been required to rank within the Top Stories section, but Google will be&nbsp;<a href="https://searchengineland.com/amp-wont-be-required-for-googles-top-stories-section-335276">removing this requirement</a>. In other words, AMP pages will still have the potential to rank in Top Stories, but they will compete with other pages for those rankings starting in 2021. This news&nbsp;<a href="https://searchengineland.com/will-publishers-drop-amp-when-its-no-longer-a-requirement-for-top-stories-335612">has some publishers wondering</a>&nbsp;if they should continue to allocate resources toward AMP in the future. The best course of action seems to be wait and test.&nbsp;</p> <h2>E-Commerce Corner&nbsp;</h2> <p>As a result of COVID-19, people have been doing a majority of their shopping online. In fact,&nbsp;<a href="https://theblog.adobe.com/online-shopping-during-covid-19-exceeds-2019-holiday-season-levels/">online spending in May exceeded holiday 2019 online spending</a>. We may see some of this shift as stores begin to re-open, but it&rsquo;s clear that e-commerce websites are going to need to stay competitive in organic search results. Moz&nbsp;<a href="https://moz.com/blog/preparing-ecommerce-for-the-postcovid-bounce-back">provides some helpful tips</a>&nbsp;to prepare e-commerce websites for a post-COVID bounce back.</p> <p>In April, Google&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.google/products/shopping/its-now-free-to-sell-on-google/">announced</a>&nbsp;it was going to bring free product listings to Google&rsquo;s Shopping tab. And in late June, Google began&nbsp;<a href="https://searchengineland.com/free-google-product-listings-expand-to-knowledge-panels-336797">expanding these listings</a>&nbsp;into knowledge panel results within main organic search results. Here at Straight North, we&rsquo;ve been working on developing processes and workflows around this to ensure we&rsquo;re providing optimal results for our e-commerce clients.&nbsp;</p> <h2>Featured Snippet Changes&nbsp;</h2> <p>We&rsquo;ve seen some&nbsp;<a href="https://www.seroundtable.com/google-featured-snippets-highlight-answers-web-29557.html">interesting changes</a>&nbsp;made to featured snippet results on desktop. When clicking on a page that is ranking in the featured snippet, Google sometimes scrolls you to the relevant content section and highlights the exact text in yellow. It&rsquo;s an effort to help users quickly locate the information displayed in the snippet within the ranking page content. There is not any special tagging or markup needed to enable a featured snippet. Google will automatically highlight the text.</p> <h2>New Head of Search at Google</h2> <p>Prabhakar Raghavan is the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.searchenginejournal.com/prabhakar-raghavan/371570/">new head of search at Google</a>. He previously ran the Ads and Commerce team at Google, and will now oversee the Search and Ads teams. The reorganization and merging of teams comes at an interesting time for the company as the Justice Department is expected to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/15/doj-and-state-ags-likely-to-file-antitrust-lawsuit-against-google-wsj.html">file an antitrust lawsuit against Google</a>&nbsp;later this year.</p> <h2>Other Helpful SEO Articles:<strong>&nbsp;</strong>&nbsp;</h2> <h3>Using Singular vs. Plural Keywords in Content</h3> <p>John Mueller, Senior Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, discussed the usage of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.searchenginejournal.com/singular-plural-keywords-google/373297/">singular vs. plural keywords</a>&nbsp;in content and diagnosing the intent behind keywords. It&rsquo;s nice to receive validation that the Straight North SEO team has been approaching this correctly when conducting content optimizations.</p> <h3>Bounce Rate Is Not a Ranking Factor</h3> <p>A friendly reminder that&nbsp;<a href="https://www.seroundtable.com/google-analytics-bounce-rates-for-ranking-29622.html">Google does not look at bounce rate when ranking web pages</a>.&nbsp;</p> <h3>Google Search Console and Google Analytics Combined Report&nbsp;</h3> <p>Google is currently working on a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-combining-search-console-analytics-data-into-one-report/372952/">combined Google Search Console and Google Analytics report</a>. This will allow for an easier way to see which keywords may be driving traffic to certain pages. It will also make it easier to correlate whether site changes had a measurable impact on traffic. It&rsquo;s currently in beta.</p> <p><em>This post, compiled by Straight North&rsquo;s Director of SEO, Colleen Moran, summarizes recent and important developments in the SEO industry. </em></p> Wednesday, 23 September 2020 Inside The SEO Industry When To Optimize Image Alt Text For SEO https://www.straightnorth.com/blog/when-optimize-image-alt-text-seo/ <p>Alt text (alternative text) can be added to website images at your discretion. Alt text is usually added to images for <em>accessibility</em> &mdash; in other words, to help website visitors who can&rsquo;t see the image.</p> <p><strong>Image alt text can be useful for SEO</strong>, which is the topic of this post. You may have seen SEO advice telling you all images on your website should have optimized alt text. This is not always the case. Sometimes optimizing image alt text is a good idea, and sometimes it is not worth the effort.&nbsp;</p> <h2>Will Optimizing Image Alt Text Drive Sales Leads or E-Commerce Revenue?</h2> <p>This is the basic question for deciding whether to optimize image alt text as part of your SEO campaign. In order to answer this question, you need to understand the path the user will take:</p> <ul> <li>Google Search or Google Image Search is the starting point.</li> <li>Users will enter keywords describing products they wish to purchase.</li> <li>Google will return images.</li> <li>Users may choose to click on your images and visit your website.</li> </ul> <p><img src="https://www.straightnorth.com/sites/default/files/AltTextSEO-quote_SN.jpg"></p> <p>If the optimized image will drive Google users to your website, and if those users convert by placing an order or generating a sales lead, the image alt text is worth optimizing. If not, SEO efforts should be directed elsewhere.</p> <h2>How Do You Determine If You Should Optimize Your Image Alt Text?&nbsp;</h2> <p>Several factors come into play in sizing up whether image alt text will generate conversions. The first step is to evaluate your business type and what keyword possibilities exist for the images in question.&nbsp;</p> <ul> <li>Your company should sell products (not services).</li> <li>Your products need to be unique enough (you don&rsquo;t have many competitors selling an identical product).</li> <li>People need to search for your products using keywords that drive conversions.</li> <li>There needs to be monthly search volume in Google for these keywords.</li> </ul> <p>Take a company that sells &ldquo;golf club shipping boxes&rdquo; or &ldquo;horizontal packaging machines&rdquo;. These companies have products that can be described using keywords that are relevant, have search volume and drive conversions.</p> <p>On the other hand, if your website only utilizes stock imagery, then it does not make sense to optimize image alt text. The same can be said for a website that sells commodity products.</p> <h2>The Proper Role of Image Alt Text Optimization in an SEO Campaign</h2> <p>Image alt text optimization may be helpful for SEO when there is an opportunity to connect your product images with targeted organic traffic that converts into sales leads or e-commerce revenue.</p> Tuesday, 2 June 2020 Brad Shorr When To Optimize Image Alt Text For SEO Go Public With Privacy https://www.straightnorth.com/blog/go-public-privacy/ <p>Protecting privacy on the Internet became a major issue in 2019, and figures to be even more important in 2020. Data breaches, ad tracking, misuse of personal data and other issues have rattled the public, justifiably so. To illustrate:</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://selfkey.org/data-breaches-in-2019/">SelfKey</a> reports that 2019 data breaches exceeded 5 billion records as of last November. As many of us know, stolen records include credit card numbers, home phone numbers and other sensitive data. While many data breaches occurred without much media fanfare, enormous attacks on major brands such as Capital One and Evite raised public awareness &mdash; and fear.</li> <li>Major news outlets (<a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3078835/t/online-privacy-fears-are-real/#.XgoW7RdKjFw">NBC News in this case</a>) regularly report on online privacy fears, with focus on data breaches and various ways advertisers abuse or misuse personal data. The story linked to above includes frightening stories about stalking and fraud.</li> <li>Facebook, the world&rsquo;s largest social media site, <a href="https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-privacy/another-facebook-privacy-breach-this-one-involving-developers/">cannot stay out of the news</a> when it comes to privacy abuse. The extent to which these issues will hurt Facebook is open to discussion, but without question the public scrutiny has taken public awareness to a whole new level.</li> </ul> <p><img src="https://www.straightnorth.com/sites/default/files/privacy_Apr24_SN.jpg"></p> <h2>Differentiate Your Small or Midsize Business&nbsp;</h2> <p>Small or midsize companies with or without e-commerce websites have an excellent opportunity to get in front of privacy issues. If your company handles personal data ethically and with technical care &mdash; as most do &mdash; it can be talked about as an important customer benefit. Two or three years ago, your customers and prospects may not have cared. Today, they will.&nbsp;</p> <p>How do you make the privacy message part of your overall marketing message?</p> <ul> <li>Do an internal audit and make sure you are handling personal data ethically and with technical care.&nbsp;</li> <li>Make sure your website&rsquo;s privacy policy is thorough and written in plain English. The Better Business Bureau has a terrific resource to help, its <a href="https://www.bbb.org/greater-san-francisco/for-businesses/toolkits1/sample-privacy-policy/">Sample Privacy Policy</a>. This document can also serve as a framework for your internal audit.&nbsp;</li> <li>Add brief, boiled-down privacy statements to your website&rsquo;s contact page(s), shopping cart pages, and on any other forms, login pages or landing pages where customers and prospects enter personal data. To get an idea of how to write one, <a href="https://www.privacypolicies.com/blog/short-privacy-policy/">check out this primer</a> from PrivacyPolicies.com.</li> <li>Educate your sales and marketing teams on privacy issues and how to talk about them with customers and prospects. Arm them with slide presentations, brochures, email content and other tools to help them communicate your company&rsquo;s commitment to protecting privacy online.</li> </ul> <p>Emphasizing privacy may not cause orders to magically fall from the sky, but privacy could be a crucial tiebreaker when the order comes down to you and a competitor. Furthermore, emphasizing privacy enhances your company&rsquo;s image in a larger sense, conveying to the market that you put customers first and understand the need for balance between business generation and security.</p> <p>If you haven&rsquo;t considered moving in this direction, 2020 would be a great year to start the ball rolling.</p> Tuesday, 28 April 2020 Brad Shorr Go Public With Privacy