Shawn’s Blogs

What happens when you don’t know how something works or the definition of a word? You Google it, as in you search the word or phrase on a search engine such as Google and a couple of websites pop up below it. The only way to be a website that is on the top of a search engine is SEO which is also known as Search Engine Optimization. SEO will help you bring your website up to the top when a person searches up keywords that are close that what your website has to offer.

So we have gone over Search Engine Optimization as an example of a way to boost your website. Another important term that one should know about websites and how to make it better is SERP. SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page and this is a big phrase to know if you want your website to rank well. Let’s be honest here, if your website is not in the first page when someone searches for the keywords, your website is not going to be clicked on very much. Even the first page is a stretch, you essentially want your website in the top 5 websites on the Search Engine Results Page. So now you know all the little nicks and knacks about SEO and SERP. What is there left now? Well, there are still some things we have to go over such as the actual ways to improve your website ranking.

When doing research on website ranking and improving it, the same five or six answers keep coming up. The first way that I believe will help you rank higher is to publish relevant content. One piece of advice to achieve this is to find one keyword/phrase that users will search up that will directly link to your website. You could also use several key phrases instead of just one, but it would need to be relevant key phrases to each other. Key Phrases that are not similar will not work and will throw your SERP off. The second way to help your website rank higher is to update your content regularly. No one wants a website that has content from years ago that will not help anyone out. Search engines will recognize when a website is stagnant and will be ranked down for users benefits. The third way is to make sure you have metadata in your websites. Metadata is defined as information about the contents of your page. Three metadata’s that will benefit your website are Title, Description, and Keyword metadata. The fourth way is to make sure you website has click worthy data. Instead of just adding “Click Here”, actually put words that have to do with your website and that will provide additional key words to help with your search optimization. The last way that I believe is really important is to use alternative text descriptions, or alt tags. Alt Tags are really important and useful because it allows search engines to locate your page. It seems like this is really obvious and people already know about it, but believe me, there are people out there that are wondering why their website is not ranked and they do not have any Alt Tags. A honorable mention that is not included in the top five but should also be mentioned is that make sure your website is scrollable, and you don’t have to click on a lot of links to get to the end. Scrollable means that people are able to just read your entire passage by scrolling down the page and not clicking on the next button on the bottom.

It seems like this blog should be helpful for people that are wondering why their website is not ranked. Make sure you follow steps 1 through 5 and that will definitely help your website rank higher, if not get to where you want it to be.

Website Links

https://blogs.mtu.edu/webmaster/2016/04/best-practices-search-engine-optimization-and-usability/

https://www.mtu.edu/umc/services/digital/seo/

When first approaching this topic, most people don’t really have a clue as to what a landing page conversion is, or even just a landing page. To start off this blog, I want to first dig deeper into the definition of a landing page and then the definition of a conversion. A landing page is when someone clicks on a website link and a page pops up as a websites “home page”. For example, it’s like when you search up “Google.com” and the home page of Google pops up with the search engine and categories under it. A conversion is basically defined as the goal of a website, whether it can be sales or clicks, just depends on the company/website itself. Now that we have covered the basics of a landing page conversion, it’s time to move onto 5 ways to increase landing page conversions.

1. The first step of a successful landing page conversion is to Never Build A Landing Page Without a Campaign or also known as NBALPWACG. To define this even further, it basically means that without a solid goal/campaign, building a successful landing page will not prosper as well as one would like it to.
2. The second step of a successful landing page conversion is to test out what works best for your website. How would someone ever know what works or doesn’t work if they don’t try and test things out. As Burt Rutan once said, “Testing leads to failure, and failure leads to understanding”. From this quote, one can take in that Testing is a step that is needed for success and it can show what else needs to be done. In this scenario, a way to do this would be to possibly try out one ad and throw it onto 4-5 different landing pages and see which one works out best.
3. The third step is to follow the seven principles of conversion-centered design. The first principle is Attention and it is to grab the attention of your viewer. It can be with a funny quote or punny first line. The second principle is Context and that basically means to make sure your content matches with your page with the link on it. Without following this step, people would immediately question why they are even on this page in the first page if nothing makes sense. The third principle is Clarity and it is making sure that your consumer understands how to complete the conversion. This step is extremely important because it closes out the transaction. The fourth principle is Congruence and it is to make sure that the buyer knows how to directly access the conversion. The third and fourth step are very similar and both are trying to close out the transaction. The fifth principle is Credibility and this is a very important one because you need your customers/consumers to trust your landing page and product. This essentially happens with positive product reviews. The sixth principle is Closing and that talks about having a low attention ratio so people keep coming back for more. Having a successful month of conversions is great but what keeps the business afloat is having a consistent amount of conversions yearly. The last principle is Continuance and it is pretty similar to closing in the sense that you are trying to retain the customers that you just sold to. Ways to do this include offering good deals in the future, or even just making sure they are satisfied with what they received.
4. The fourth step in a successful landing page conversion is to make sure your media channels are proficient. Social media is the biggest trend in today’s society and it is quite possibly the easiest way to reach a lot of viewers with just a couple of ads. Make sure your company has social media accounts in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even Snapchat or Youtube. All of these platforms have advertisement options and it would be a great idea to invest more into it if you haven’t already.
5. The fifth step in a successful landing page conversion is to make sure your landing page is mobile-friendly. Just about everyone is browsing the internet with their phones nowadays just because it is a lot easier and you can do it wherever you want. Just because your desktop version looks good your computer does not mean it will look good on a smartphone. Make sure that you have a mobile page so smartphone users are able to buy your product from there too.

Sources:

https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-conversion/

https://blog.hootsuite.com/drive-conversions-social-media/