Promoting a website in the 21st century is much more complex than was the case back in 1998. This blog post looks at the many changes that the many SEO and web design Manchester businesses have needed to implement in order to make the most of the online market at any given time.
While in those early days, it was as simple as building a website, submitting it to some online directories, and putting your URL on your letterhead, the 15 years since have seen things become much, much more complicated.
Now you have to balance technical concerns – such as user experience and responsive web design – with consumer psychology and branding, all while trying to avoid falling foul of a penalty that can remove you from Google’s first-page results overnight.
Here are a handful of the main issues in 2013, and how you can tackle them head-on to stay positive in your customers’ minds, competitive in the search engine rankings, and responsive on a range of different web-enabled devices.
Branding and Promotion
Social networks have a lot to answer for – they have not only increased transparency and accountability, with brands able to meet negative criticism proactively and turn it into a chance for positive press; they have also influenced tone of voice elsewhere, with blogs and even static website text now much ‘chattier’ than in years gone by.
Adopt the right tone of voice for your brand, and you can establish real rapport and even an emotional connection with your customers, turning them into advocates who will spread your branding message far and wide without necessarily expecting anything in return.
SEO and Search Survival
Each new Google algorithm update seems to cause even bigger ripples in the search marketing community, but the fundamentals of SEO have never changed – as long as you have a reputable agency managing your on-site content and external links in an organic way, your ranking is reasonably safe.
The problems seen following Google’s Panda and Penguin updates in particular arose not due to legitimate SEO and search marketing, but because of those who had ‘got it wrong’ by losing their focus on quality content.
Marketing on the Move
The current major trend shaping web design is the rise of mobile devices – not only smartphones, but also tablets, each of which have their own screen resolution, the option of viewing sites in a portrait or landscape aspect, and different capabilities for interacting with the page.
For example, it may be impossible to ‘hover’ over a link on a mobile site, or to double-click, or click-and-hold; effective web design in the 21st century means accommodating these new limitations on interaction, so that you do not run the risk of shutting visitors out of accessing the information they are interested in.
First Internet are web design and online marketing specialists based in Hale, Greater Manchester, with an extensive client base of businesses located throughout the north-west and across the UK as a whole.