435 Digital » responsive design

Responsive Design is Good SEO

Christy Grant — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 18:06:02 +0000

You’ve heard of responsive design. You’ve heard about businesses going mobile. You know you need a great mobile site if you don’t have one already. You may have heard many reasons for all of this, as well. Have you heard that one of the huge benefits of responsive design is the mobile SEO value you get from having your entire site and content all under a single URL?

There are many published reasons for going mobile. One that is not mentioned as frequently is the clear benefit you get from simply having one website that lives under one domain name. All the searches that people have done in the past and all the bookmarks and backlinks will still be valid and will count towards your website’s ranking power in search engines. With the focus you’ll need to pour into good mobile design and determinations about how to display content on smaller device screens, you can at least be assured that your entire history of your site will continue to be valuable.

8 Ways Responsive Design is Good for Business and Good for SEO

You keep your current domain name, and your entire site continues at the same URL.

You do not purchase additional domain names or add subdomains.

All SEO value you currently have will continue; you will not have to start over.

You’ll have just one site you’re promoting.

Using CSS, HTML5, and perhaps javascript, your website will flexibly respond to every user’s screen size, regardless of whether it’s a desktop, tablet, or smartphone.

Users will have a better experience with your site, and will like your business better for that.

When users share links or bookmark pages on your site, those links will always work – with anyone on any device.

If your current desktop site has links from other sites, blogs, Facebook posts, tweets, Google+, and more, those will all continue to work, as well.

The benefits are clear. Maintain the SEO quality of your site even while you go mobile by using responsive design. So don’t wait on either improving SEO or going mobile.

435 Digital’s SEO Director, Carolyn Shelby, is presenting all the SEO basics in the 312 Digital Marketing Class on January 22, 2013. Start the new year by improving your SEO, and go mobile while retaining all of your SEO efforts. It’s a win-win.

The post Responsive Design is Good SEO appeared first on 435 Digital.

What We’re Reading: Thursday, September 27, 2012

Julie DiCaro — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 12:39:52 +0000

First, a huge “thank you” to everyone who attended our panel on Integrated Digital Marketing yesterday. We had a great turnout and a terrific audience. If only we’d had two more hours to chat and answer all the great questions that came our way!

The 435 Digital Team kills it during their Integrated Marketing Panel.

As Social Media Week winds down here in Chicago, we continue to hit the books (okay, really, our laptops and smartphones) each morning to stay on top of the latest news in digital marketing. Here’s a look at what we’re reading today:

We got a lot of questions yesterday about paid search and whether online ads are worth the cost, given that so many people claim they don’t pay attention to them. iMedia Connection weighs in on this very subject:

Getting started is relatively easy. To determine the incremental value of exposure to unclicked ads, marketers can easily compare samples of users who previously encountered a display ad to users who arrived at a site without exposure to an ad. Marketers can also look to search data. There’s a small mountain of evidence showing that even if you don’t click on a brand’s ad, exposure to the ad makes you more likely to search for the brand and click on its search ads.

But the best case of all for view-through is perhaps that it dates back to the origins of advertising itself. Or, in other words, view-through is not so different from offline advertising in many respects. Agencies running off-line campaigns can point to powerful correlations between campaigns and increased sales, but, in most cases, can’t definitively prove that any given customer is responding to campaigns. And yet no one would suggest that offline campaigns have zero value or that attempting to measure their success is pointless.

And view-through is superior to most offline campaigns in an important respect. If someone arrives at a Walmart store, Walmart can’t be certain that they saw the Walmart billboard on the highway or the full-page ad in the local paper. With a view-through, a brand at least knows that the user was exposed to the ad, even if only briefly.

Think that you don’t need a responsive or mobile website? You might want to think again, says Google:

In this world of constant connectivity, consumers expect to find the information that they want, when they want it – especially when they’re on the go. We know that this applies to their web browsing experiences on mobile, so we took a deeper look at users’ expectations and reactions towards their site experiences on mobile. Most interestingly, 61% of people said that they’d quickly move onto another site if they didn’t find what they were looking for right away on a mobile site. The bottom line: Without a mobile-friendly site you’ll be driving users to your competition. In fact, 67% of users are more likely to buy from a mobile-friendly site, so if that site’s not yours, you’ll be missing out in a big way.

Finally this morning, if there’s a more creative ad out there right now, we haven’t seen it. Coca-Cola turns its print ad into an iPhone speaker.

The weekend is almost here. Thanks for stopping by!

The post What We’re Reading: Thursday, September 27, 2012 appeared first on 435 Digital.

Why Does Your Business Need a Mobile Website?

Christy Grant — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 17:20:46 +0000

Your customers and potential customers are looking for information on the web.

They are using desktop computers, laptop computers, tablets,and smartphones — with screen sizes ranging from 3 inches to 27 inches or so. They’re on wired networks, wi-fi, 3G and 4G cellular networks. Some are sitting and browsing patiently, some are browsing intermittently while getting out of the car or sitting on the train, while shopping for some great new jeans or ordering dinner, while getting the kids ready for soccer practice or feeding the baby in the middle of the night — even while walking down the street or waiting for their friends who are always late.

Is your website a good experience in most situations on any device?

It’s a question worth considering since good user experience is good customer service, which leads to satisfied, happy, and returning customers.

According to Internal Google Data, via mobiThinking, mobile searches have quadrupled in the last year. A significant percentage of searches are now mobile.

• 1 in 3 mobile searches are local. After looking up a local business on their smartphone, 61 percent of users called the business and 59 percent visited.

• 71 percent of smartphone users who see a TV, print, or online ad, do a mobile search for more information, but 79 percent of large online advertisers still do not have a mobile optimized site.

A large percentage of businesses in general still do not have a mobile–optimized site. Yet you may wonder what the big deal is about mobile optimized. If your website can be viewed on a mobile device — and many can be — why optimize? What’s the difference?

Here are five great reasons it matters:

1. People can read mobile–optimized sites.

A site that is designed for a mobile–sized screen is a great experience. People can see all the content you have to offer right away – no squinting, zooming, sideways scrolling, reaching for the reading glasses. Why would anyone bother doing all of that just for your site? More than likely, they’ll leave and spend time exploring sites that work well on their beloved smartphones.

2. Mobile–optimized sites load more quickly.

Who doesn’t get frustrated waiting for sites to load on their phones? Who waits around when it takes too long? Especially when someone is trying to take a quick look before crossing a street or before making a purchasing decision. You have a strong edge if you’re simply there when your customers need you.

3. Video and graphics look good on mobile–optimized sites.

A good mobile site does not use Flash. It won’t work on a lot of phones. Flash technology is frequently used on desktop sites to display videos, but it just doesn’t work at all or doesn’t work well on many smartphones or tablets, including iPhones, iPads, Windows 7 phones, Blackberries, and some Android devices. Your valuable content will be lost if it is not served in a way that actually works.

4. Smartphones are used by 58% of American consumers.

And smartphones are used by 76% of those under age 44, according to a 2012 study by Frank N. Magid Associates. That’s a lot of potential customers you can lose or gain in mere seconds based on their experience using your website on their mobile phones.

5. At least 46% of smartphone owners browse the Internet on their devices “several times per day.”

This is according to the Edison Research/Arbitron Internet and Multimedia Research Series. The percentage of smartphone owners who browse the Internet at least once every day is much higher.

Here’s your opportunity:

With so many businesses not yet providing a great mobile experience, you still have an especially prime opportunity to be ahead of the competition — to pleasantly surprise people, gain their confidence, and sell your product or service all because you provided a mobile–optimized website that served the desired content when and where it was needed.

The post Why Does Your Business Need a Mobile Website? appeared first on 435 Digital.