website content – Iceberg Web Design https://www.icebergwebdesign.com Tue, 14 Sep 2021 20:04:21 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.8.3 https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-iceberg-favicon-32x32.jpg website content – Iceberg Web Design https://www.icebergwebdesign.com 32 32 Creating Your Ideal Customer Profile https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/2021/09/creating-your-ideal-customer-profile/ Tue, 14 Sep 2021 13:00:28 +0000 https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/?p=16456 Part of establishing your brand identity is identifying your ideal customer and creating a customer profile for them. This is essential because if you don’t market to the right people, you will waste a lot of precious time, money, and energy on people who aren’t right for your brand. Your Ideal Customer Profile Could Change—Proceed […]

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Part of establishing your brand identity is identifying your ideal customer and creating a customer profile for them. This is essential because if you don’t market to the right people, you will waste a lot of precious time, money, and energy on people who aren’t right for your brand.

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Your Ideal Customer Profile Could Change—Proceed with Caution!

Imagine you are a nutritional supplement company that has historically marketed to men in their 50s, and you decide to release a new line of supplements for women over 45. Not only is your customer profile going to change, but you will also need to carefully rebrand so that you don’t alienate your base while you bring on new customers. This means considering how you will keep past promises you have made as a brand while taking on a new role in the market.

How Do You Discover Your Ideal Customer’s Profile?

Base your ideal customer profile on solid, current research. For example, if you are an established company, you can look at your existing sales data.

If you are a new company or are marketing to a new type of customer, such as in our supplement company example, you will want to use market research studies and surveys. It can often be most effective to hire an outside consultant to do this research.

What Information Do You Need for Their Profile?

While you want a thorough profile of your ideal customer, don’t get bogged down in the weeds of details that don’t matter to your marketing campaign. It doesn’t matter what their kid’s names are, for example. What matters is what their needs are and how you can meet them. If you are doing the research yourself, here are some things you will want to find out.

  •       Name- Give them a name to make them more human
  •       Gender
  •       Age
  •       Job Title and Industry
  •       Income Level
  •       Ways they connect with businesses like yours. What social medial platforms do they use? Do they prefer mobile or computer?
  •       Pain points. What matters the most to them right now? What keeps them awake at night worrying?
  •       How will your product/service help solve their problems?
  •       Any questions specific to your business; For example, if you are a flavored water company, you will want to ask what flavors they currently drink and what flavors they would like to try. Then give them some unconventional options that you are thinking of about trying to market. Finally, ask why they choose flavored water over other beverages. Your sales and marketing department will be able to determine any other specific question that would be helpful in their campaign.

Do the Research!

There are so many ways that you can get the information you need. Use online surveys, direct or mass email with or without an incentive to participate in the research. You can also do post-purchase surveys of your current customers.

Compile the Research

As a team, compile the data. Once you input all the responses onto a spreadsheet, you will start to see some patterns. List more open-ended questions, such as those dealing with pain points, separately to gain new ideas and insights that you may not have had before.

Now, look at the data and create 3-5 ideal customer profiles. For each profile, you will answer the questions you asked during your research as if you are the person whose profile you are creating.

Here is a super simplified, non-scientific example. Imagine you are marketing a long-term memory-care facility for people with dementia. Even though your clients will be the facility’s residents, your customer profile needs to be the primary decision-maker. Naturally, that will be the adult children or spouse of the client.

Name

You can choose to name your ideal customer anything you want, which will help them feel more like real people to you. Of course, it helps to know the genders before you choose names.

Gender

For example, if 2/3 of respondents were women. You might create one male profile and two female profiles. So, let’s call our profiles David, Andrea, and Jessica. You can give them last names, too, but it’s not necessary.

Age

The respondents’ ages were between 28 and 79. Men tended to be older than women. So

  •       David is 76. His wife has severe dementia. As a result, he is no longer able to care for her himself at home.
  •       Andrea is 48. Her dad has developed dementia and lives alone in another state.
  •       Jessica is 31. Her mom has early-onset dementia. Jessica’s dad cared for her until he contracted Covid 19 and unexpectedly died from its complications. Now Jessica is caring for her mother.

Job title and Income Level

Of the respondents, 1/3 were business owners or professionals in high-income fields. 1/3 were professionals making $60-75,000/year. And 1/3 were retired.

  •       David has an annual income of $142,000 from his retirement accounts. He was a petroleum engineer.
  •       Andrea makes $65,000 a year as a public relations specialist.
  •       Jessica makes $20,000 a year providing part-time daycare services out of her home. She will have access to her mother’s social security and her father’s insurance funds to care for her mother.

Pain points

The obvious pain point for all of these people is the pain of losing their loved one, if not physically, emotionally, and mentally, as their memories fade. But there are other issues, too, including:

  •       Safety
  •       The ability to ensure access to medical care and medications on the proper schedule
  •       Ensuring no one takes advantage of their loved one
  •       The guilt associated with placing a loved one in long-term care

Think about what it is that your customers worry about most.

How will your product/service help solve your customers’ problems?

Your brand needs to speak to these pain points and reassure them that you can help them with these issues.

Ways customers connect with businesses like yours

Do they use social media, email, direct mail, or do they prefer to call? Do you need to plan in-person events that you should promote on your website?

Are there other service providers that you could connect with to market cooperatively? For example, as a long-term-care provider, would a local medical equipment supply store be willing to display your brochure in exchange for a link on your website. Think creatively!

Now, Use It!

Use the information you’ve gathered and compiled, or it will have been a waste of time and resources for you and your company. Once you have your ideal customer profiles created, you know who you are speaking to every time you write a piece of marketing copy, a web page, or anything else that you hope will reach them.

Do you need a website makeover?

Partner with the best! At Iceberg Web Design, we’re experts at helping businesses connect with their ideal customers. We have a website-based business solution for you! First, read Our 5 Star Reviews!  Then, Contact us today.

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Use Categories to Organize Your Website https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/2021/09/use-categories-to-organize-your-website/ Tue, 07 Sep 2021 15:59:29 +0000 https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/?p=16453 How Do You Organize Your Website? When we consult with a new client, we talk about the content for their site. How will the content on your website be organized? We begin by planning out a site map that will help us plan the menu and be a roadmap for the developers as they assemble […]

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How Do You Organize Your Website?

When we consult with a new client, we talk about the content for their site. How will the content on your website be organized? We begin by planning out a site map that will help us plan the menu and be a roadmap for the developers as they assemble the various parts of the website. In WordPress, your content is either put on a page or a post.

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What is a Page?

Pages are static, permanent parts of your website. They aren’t affected by the date, and while they can be edited, their overall structure doesn’t change. Pages are listed in your site’s menu and include your home page, about page, and contact page, among others.

What is a Post?

Posts are more like newspaper articles. You frequently update them with new content to keep your readers coming back. They can be displayed in chronological order or reverse chronological order. You can also customize the way they are displayed. For example, some people like to keep one post pinned to the front of their blogs. This is called a sticky post.

When people think of posts, they usually think of blog posts. But there are other kinds of posts. For example, many businesses share press releases on their website using a custom post type.

On e-commerce sites, products’ sales pages (which are actually a custom post type) are organized into categories, just like they would be in a brick-and-mortar store.

Organizing Your Posts

Recently we met with a client who is a prolific writer—and a good one! He has been adding content to his blog for years and now has hundreds of posts. In planning his new website, we discussed ways to make it easier for readers to access the specific content they search for on his site. We came up with several solutions that would create an appealing, well-organized website. But the first job was to put the content into categories.

Organize Your Website With Categories

If you put the posts from your website into a book, you would want to do it in a way that makes sense. You would organize it in whatever way works for your business, and the names of those categories would be the table of contents, showing readers the main topics you would be covering. If they prefer to get right to the matter, they are interested in, and they can bypass the chapters that don’t pertain to them and read the one that does. That’s what categories do.

Don’t Let Your Website Be “Uncategorized.”

All WordPress posts must be categorized. If you don’t organize your posts, WordPress will do it for you, placing them under the heading “uncategorized.” By the way, it is a good idea to change that to something else like “other.” “Uncategorized” looks like you didn’t finish the details of the post.

If you have a health and nutrition site, your categories might be:

  •       News
  •       Nutrition
  •       Mindfulness

These are Pretty Broad Topics 

That’s why you can also use subcategories to organize your website posts.

 News

COVID-19

Nutrition

Vegan

Keto

Gluten-Free

 Diabetic

Weight Loss

Mindfulness

Mindfulness Apps

Mindfulness Techniques

Even the subcategories are broad, but at least they will get your readers pointed in the right direction (of course, you don’t have to use subcategories).

Limit Your Categories

Try to limit your posts to one category (occasionally two). At the same time, limit the overall number of categories to no more than ten. Keep the number of subcategories to a minimum, as well. This is better for SEO and the overall organization of your website.

There are, of course, exceptions. For example, large e-commerce sites often have many more categories.

Leave it to the Experts

At Iceberg Web Design, we create unique custom websites. We also offer hosting and maintenance packages that will give you security and peace of mind. Contact us today!

 

 

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Robot.txt Files & Robot Meta Tags https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/2021/08/robot-txt-files-robot-meta-tags/ Mon, 16 Aug 2021 16:18:24 +0000 https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/?p=16341 Have you ever wondered how Google and other search engines can efficiently organize all the content that ends up on their search engine results pages? They do it with the help of search robots. They aren’t literal robots, but virtual ones that crawl the internet, indexing titles, summaries, and entire contents of websites faster and […]

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Have you ever wondered how Google and other search engines can efficiently organize all the content that ends up on their search engine results pages? They do it with the help of search robots. They aren’t literal robots, but virtual ones that crawl the internet, indexing titles, summaries, and entire contents of websites faster and more completely than human beings ever could. This content includes web pages, PDFs, images, and videos. Then, they rank that information for search queries.

Because of how these virtual crawlers work, many people call these bots spiders, crawling the world wide web. It is their work that allows us to retrieve information so quickly when we search the internet. It’s pretty mind-blowing when you think about it.

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Managing Bot Traffic with robots.txt Files

There will be times when you won’t necessarily want everything on your website to be found by everyday people searching the internet. These would be pages meant for employees, thank you pages, and other internal business-use-only pages.

You can usually manage to keep search engine bots out of these pages, at the directory level, by using a robots.txt file. The robots.txt file is just a request. Even though Google’s crawlers are generally respectful of these requests, there is no guarantee that their bots or those belonging to other search engines won’t ignore your request.

Robot Meta Tags

Robot meta tags (also known as robots meta directives), like other meta tags, are pieces of code. They tell the search engine bots that crawl websites how to index web page content. Unlike robots.txt files, these meta tags aren’t suggestions. And rather than trying to keep bots out of your site, they tell crawlers that a page should not be indexed.

Two Kinds of Robot Meta Tags

There are two kinds of robot meta tags:

  •         Directives that are part of the HTML page
  •         Directives that the web server sends as HTTP headers

These directives tell search bots how to crawl and index specific web pages on your site. Even though these are directives (meaning they are orders), bots can still ignore them.

Why Wouldn’t You Want Something Indexed?

  •         To block an element on a page, such as an image or a video, rather than the entire page.
  •         Content not written in HTML, like flash or video, should not be indexed.
  •         If you can’t access the <head> section of a page’s HTML
  •         When you can’t change your site’s global header

Since bots need to crawl your site to read robot meta tags and follow them, having robots.txt files will be counterproductive. The robots.txt file will keep the bots out, so they never see your directive. If you are unsure which one you should use, opt for a meta robots tag with “noindex, follow” parameters over a robots.txt file.

Beware!

Even if you correctly use a robots.txt file or meta tags to allow or disallow search bots from visiting and indexing your website, you will want to get your website set up in Google Search Console. This will let you see what is being indexed. It will also allow you to request that Google remove specific URLs from its search index.

Never count on either of these to keep private information out of the public eye. For that level of security, you will want to keep your data under password protection.

Always be careful when using these files. They have their place, but occasionally, people will inadvertently make their entire site inaccessible to Google’s bots which is no good for your SEO at all.

Your Best Bet with Bots

Iceberg Web Design builds custom websites every day. We also have SEO services available for new and existing sites. Are you looking for your next website-based business solution? Contact us today to see how we can help.

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Are Your URLs Hurting Your SEO? https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/2021/07/are-your-urls-hurting-your-seo/ Tue, 27 Jul 2021 16:13:21 +0000 https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/?p=16250 URLs create your website’s taxonomy. Taxonomy is the practice of classifying things or concepts. Remember back in High School Biology when you learned about taxonomy? You had to classify various living organisms into domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. Don’t worry! Website taxonomy isn’t nearly as complicated, but if it isn’t done […]

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URLs create your website’s taxonomy. Taxonomy is the practice of classifying things or concepts. Remember back in High School Biology when you learned about taxonomy? You had to classify various living organisms into domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. Don’t worry! Website taxonomy isn’t nearly as complicated, but if it isn’t done properly, your SEO could take a hit. 

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The Structure of a URL

You should structure your website’s URL in a way that helps Google and your site’s users make sense of what they are going to find on the page they are opening.

The first part of the URL is the protocol.

This is the URL for Iceberg Web Design’s SEO Services page. You can see that the website is using HTTPS protocol.

https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/services/seo/

The next part of the URL is the subdomain.

This is the URL for Iceberg Web Design’s E-Commerce Development page.

https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/services/ecommerce-development/

The third part of the URL is the domain.

Notice that on all of these URLs, the domain is the same. That is because they are all on the same website, listed under the same domain.

https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/services/website-development/

The fourth part of the URL is the TLD

This stands for “top-level domain.” The most common is com, but you will also see org, gov, and net, among others.

https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/services/website-design/

The fifth part of an optimized URL is the subfolder

All of the URLs we’ve looked at so far have fallen under the services subfolder because they pertain to services offered by Iceberg. Subdomains should be organized by topic rather than by keyword.

https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/services/website-hosting/

But this next one is categorized under a different subfolder- the about subfolder.

https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/about/our-team/

Finally, we come to the lowly slug.

It actually isn’t so lowly. The slug is the name of your page or post.

https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/services/reputation-management/

How to Optimize your URLs

Always think about the subfolder and the slug when you name your pages. Put the content into the proper subfolders so Google and your readers can easily find what they are looking for. Avoid using dates and other meaningless information in your URLs because this doesn’t show how pages within your site relate to one another.

Start organizing from the beginning.

It is so much easier to plan your sitemap out from the start than have it evolve. By planning it, you will know how your site will be structured. If it is an evolving process, you will soon have a mess to deal with in your URL structure. Not only will it take a lot of time and effort to clean up, but it will also cost some of your hard-earned SEO as you restructure.

How to make Your plan

The first thing we do when we build a website at Iceberg is to plan the sitemap. We talk about your business goals and how your website can help you achieve that. Even if we aren’t immediately implementing some parts of the site, we still plan for them (for example, a blog that will be added later or a porch page for a home construction company).

As we build your site, we plan for internal links (links that connect two different pages on your website together). Internal linking helps site users naturally discover other pages related to the one they are already reading. This allows pages deeper within the site to rank better over time.

How to Ensure Your URLs are Correct

If you need a new website or SEO services, Iceberg Web Design will have everything in the correct order, optimized for Google and your customers. Contact us today!

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The Benefits of a Multilingual Website https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/2021/07/the-benefits-of-a-multilingual-website/ Fri, 16 Jul 2021 21:14:56 +0000 https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/?p=16202 The goal of your website is to reach current and prospective customers. But what if many of those customers don’t speak English? How are you going to connect with them? With your website, of course! The Benefits of a Multilingual Website Your Content Will Reach a Wider Audience Worldwide Worldwide, only 25.9% of internet users […]

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The goal of your website is to reach current and prospective customers. But what if many of those customers don’t speak English? How are you going to connect with them? With your website, of course!

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The Benefits of a Multilingual Website

Your Content Will Reach a Wider Audience Worldwide

Worldwide, only 25.9% of internet users are native English speakers.[1] The next three are:

  •         Chinese 19.4%
  •         Spanish 7.9%
  •         Arabic   5.2%

If you have a business that could benefit from a worldwide audience, you must serve a worldwide audience by adding another language to your website.

Your Content Will Reach a Wider Audience in the United States

Even though most people within the United States speak English, many don’t or prefer to use websites in their own language, especially when making purchasing decisions for products or services online. 

According to the American Community Survey in 2017, in the U.S., these are the ten most common languages spoken at home by people five years of age or older[2]:

  •         English only – 239 million
  •         Spanish – 41 million
  •         Chinese (including Mandarin, Cantonese, and Hokkien) – 3.5 million
  •         Tagalog (including Filipino) – 1.7 million
  •         Vietnamese – 1.5 million
  •         Arabic – 1.2 million
  •         French – 1.2 million
  •         Korean – 1.1 million
  •         Russian – 0.94 million
  •         German – 0.92 million

Do you live in a Multilingual Region?

If you have a product or a service that anyone can use and are only marketing to people in English, you could miss out on much potential business! This is especially the case in some regional regions where languages other than English are spoken in more significant numbers. For example, if you live in California or Texas, it would be worth considering adding Spanish to your site. If your business is in San Francisco, Chinese would be an excellent language to consider adding. You know your business and the area it serves. Do some research and decide for yourself.

A Multilingual Site Will Also Improve Communication with Customers

It is important to be able to serve your customers beyond the website, as well. You wouldn’t want to have your photography site translated into Russian and have no one at your business who can speak Russian when the customer comes in to get portraits taken. You would need to figure out how you will serve that customer.

One example is Bienvenidos Law. They are specialists in immigration law in Anoka, Minnesota. Clients can read their site in English or Spanish by choosing the language in the menu. When you go to their law office, the people who work their also speak Spanish, so it is a seamless system that serves both English and Spanish speakers well.

https://www.bienvenidoslaw.com/en/opening-doors-united-states/

This is also an obvious example of a business that should have a multilingual site since their client base is usually not native English speaking.

Businesses that Should Consider Adding Languages to their Site

Aside from businesses serving non-English speaking clients, other types of industries that should have a bilingual or multilingual site are:

  •         International Ecommerce
  •         Travel and Tourism Companies
  •         Hotels and other accommodations
  •         Sightseeing and cultural centers
  •         Transportation
  •         Event Organizers
  •         Companies in countries with more than one language

Another business that has a multilingual site is La Perla Tortillas. Because they sell their products in restaurants and grocery stores, English and Spanish speakers alike will be purchasing their products. Customers can choose in which language they would like to read the website’s content. All they need to do is click on the flag of their choice on the upper right-hand side of the page. Go ahead. Open the site and try it for yourself!

Reaching Your Audience

If you need help reaching your audience, contact the experts at Iceberg Web Design. We look forward to talking to you. 

 

[1] Johnson, Joseph. “Internet: Most Common Languages Online 2020.” Statista, 27 Jan. 2021, www.statista.com/statistics/262946/share-of-the-most-common-languages-on-the-internet/.

 

[2]American FactFinder, Census Bureau, 2020

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On-Page SEO: Why Good Content is King https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/2021/06/on-page-seo-why-good-content-is-king/ Thu, 17 Jun 2021 13:54:21 +0000 https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/?p=16116 The most important thing to pay attention to when creating or modifying your website is its content. That’s because content can make the most significant difference in your website’s overall SEO. Let’s look at why that is and how you can create content that will give your site an edge over the competition on the […]

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The most important thing to pay attention to when creating or modifying your website is its content. That’s because content can make the most significant difference in your website’s overall SEO. Let’s look at why that is and how you can create content that will give your site an edge over the competition on the search engine results page (SERP).

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Good Content is Likable

It is even more than just likable. It stands out from the crowd as having what other content on the same topic is missing. It might be a unique perspective, an expert voice, a deeper dive, or a fresh way of explaining the topic. Whatever your content has, it makes it irresistibly readable, shareable, and something that people want.

Good Content is Linkable

Your content can be the most enticing information in the world, but if you can’t link to it, search engines won’t like it and won’t rank it. Examples of this kind of content include slide shows and content that you can only access after logging in (and even then, it can’t be shared).

Good Content is Optimized for the Right Keywords

When you are trying to decide what keywords to focus on in your content, do your research. You will want keywords that are a natural part of the content. Don’t over-use them. This is called keyword stuffing. Search engines don’t like it, and they will punish websites that employ such tactics. The keywords you choose should be in demand enough that people are looking for the topic, but not so in-demand that your content will never make it to the top of the pile. It often takes a little trial and error to find your sweet spot, but you will soon get the hang of keyword research.

Good Content gets Updated Regularly

Don’t allow your site to sit stagnant for too long. It sends the message to site users and Google that your content isn’t fresh or relevant anymore. Instead, update your content regularly by adding to your blog, updating an event calendar, refreshing a page’s content, etc. This will send the message that you are paying attention to your content, and that means it is more trustworthy than stale content that hasn’t been changed in two months.

Professionally Written Content Makes a Difference

Iceberg Web Design offers professional SEO content writing services for custom websites, subscription sites, and SEO services. If you would like to take your business to the next level, we have the solution for you. Contact us today!

 

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Why Content is the Foundation To A Website that Converts https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/2021/06/content-is-foundation-of-seo/ Tue, 08 Jun 2021 14:00:48 +0000 https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/?p=16015 At Iceberg Web Design, we always start a website project with content. That content may come from an old website that you are updating. It might come from a writer that the company has hired. But most often, it is created by our SEO Content Writers. We spend time with someone from the company, finding […]

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At Iceberg Web Design, we always start a website project with content. That content may come from an old website that you are updating. It might come from a writer that the company has hired. But most often, it is created by our SEO Content Writers. We spend time with someone from the company, finding out what they need from their website. We talk about what they envision, and we consult with them on best practices and industry standards.

Then the writer assigned to the project will do a deep dive, researching the industry and deciding how to portray the company best to put them on top.

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Well Written Content 

Your content will profoundly affect a customer’s perception of your business. If your content is disorganized, visitors will assume that your business is, as well. That organization rests on the shoulders of your content.

It has never been more critical to make a good impression on your website. Because of COVID-19, many customers are vetting businesses by visiting their websites first. This can often save them time and potential health risks by ensuring a company can meet their needs before going into their brick-and-mortar business.

SEO Strategy

Your SEO strategy should include both on-page and off-page SEO. Your content writer needs to be adept at using these concepts. User experience is the number one thing that will affect your SEO. User experience is behind all of the rules that are part of Google’s algorithm. Having a content writer who knows how to maximize the user experience will not only make Google happy and boost your SEO. It will also make your site visitors. It may even improve the chances that they will want to do business with you.

Avoid the Fluff: Display Your Expertise

Offering Free Knowledge is a great way to show your customers that you are an expert in your field. Many people want to understand the problem they are hiring someone to fix. Then, they feel secure in the knowledge that they are getting the right service for their needs.

Your website is the first impression many people will have of your business. Customers can find fluff anywhere. By sharing something of value, you are helping them feel comfortable with your level of expertise. If you can’t articulate your business, customers aren’t going to feel secure working with you.

Yet, some companies are fearful of giving away free knowledge. They hold onto it like it’s Grandma’s secret recipe. But sharing knowledge with your site’s visitors will help to create a bond between them and your business over time. They will see your generosity and good-will.

Iceberg Web Design Can Help

We have SEO Content Writers who care about helping your company make a good first impression. We’ve worked with hundreds of businesses over the years, and we would love to work with you. Contact us today to learn how to make that happen. Read our Reviews if you don’t believe us! 

 

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Business Locator Page for Your Website https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/2021/04/business-locator-page-for-your-website/ Mon, 05 Apr 2021 14:00:38 +0000 https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/?p=15940 Some people allow their site to sit on the web like a glorified business card. But smart business owners know that their website is the most valuable employee they have. They can put their site to work, saving them money in the long run by automating tasks and integrating business solutions. It can also be […]

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Some people allow their site to sit on the web like a glorified business card. But smart business owners know that their website is the most valuable employee they have. They can put their site to work, saving them money in the long run by automating tasks and integrating business solutions. It can also be a powerhouse sales tool when optimized for search engines and user experience. One tool you should have on your website is a business locator.

Map Location Computer

Business Locator

If you have more than one brick and mortar location, having a location page is an essential complement to your local SEO because it is a great way to target location-specific long-tail, location-specific keywords.  

Hirshfield’s

One great example of a store locator the one Iceberg Web Design built for Hirshfield’s.  For this page, the customer has several ways from which to choose a location.

  •         If they want to allow location services, GPS will enable the list to automatically show the closest stores to their location at the top of the left sidebar. You can accomplish similar results by putting in the zip code of the area you are looking for.
  •         Perhaps they have a favorite store already. In the lower-left is an alphabetized list of links to all Hirshfield’s stores.  
  •         You can also look at the interactive map. The map links to store hours and other information a customer may want to have.

For a business locator as in-depth as this, it is important to ensure that all locations have a unique page for that specific store only. The address and GPS location allow location services to find the store that the customer is looking for quickly.

Stonegate Builders

Thinking outside of the box can lead to new ways of using old tools. For Stonegate Builders, a Division of Gonya Homes, we built a location page to help potential homebuyers find where they had available homes for sale. The way theirs works is through a map that shows the various neighborhoods with Stonegate Builders homes for sale. When you click on the link, it takes you to a page where you can learn about the community, the houses in it, and how to get more information.

Stonegate Builder’s location page is different from Hirshfield’s because each of their customers has their own unique buying habits. In the end, it comes down to what the customer is going to respond to best.

Select Eyecare

Select Eyecare is an eye care clinic with an in-house lab and three locations in the northern Twin Cities metro area. Iceberg Web Design created a location page for Select Eyecare that had their locations on a single page as part of the company website. We chose to have their location page laid out this way because it best suits their needs and customers’ needs.

Avoiding Doorways in Your Location Pages

It’s essential to make your location page unique and useful for users, and if possible, have one location for each of your physical stores. That’s because of something known as “doorway pages.” This black hat SEO tactic can become a trap that is easy for you and your customers to fall into. To learn more about doorway pages, read this article by Google Search Central. Follow Google’s recommendations, and have a separate Google My Business page for each location.

To avoid any pitfalls and reap the rewards of a business locator page, it is best to use an experienced website developer like Iceberg Web Design. We would be happy to meet with you and discuss your next project. Contact us today!

 

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How Do You Know It’s Time for a New Website? https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/2021/03/how-do-you-know-its-time-for-a-new-website/ Thu, 25 Mar 2021 14:00:06 +0000 https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/?p=15944 In our business, we often see websites that haven’t been changed in 8-10 years. It’s usually because business owners don’t look at their websites the same way that clients and potential business partners do. In general, we recommend a total website makeover every two to three years to keep up with current design and development […]

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In our business, we often see websites that haven’t been changed in 8-10 years. It’s usually because business owners don’t look at their websites the same way that clients and potential business partners do.

woman looking at website

In general, we recommend a total website makeover every two to three years to keep up with current design and development trends. Security is another reason for revamping your website every few years. But there are other indicators that it’s time for a new online look.

You’ve made changes to your core values or processes

Has your business received an internal makeover in the last year, but your branding hasn’t received an external one? Maybe you’ve hired new employees or had significant employee turnover. Perhaps you’ve increased your product offering or niched down to serve a more specific audience. Your website should reflect your business – values, services, staff, and processes. Businesses are ever-changing entities, and as yours grows and changes, so should your website.

You’ve Decided to Add Integrations to Your Site

Websites are no longer just for bringing in clients. They are business tools that you can use to hire people, portals for members, renters, or employees, payment centers, and more! If you can imagine it, it most likely can be done.

You’ve started investing in SEO or online ads

If you’re focusing on bringing traffic to your website, you want to make the best possible first impression on your new website visitors. Your website should be up to date and have a straightforward design that lets your website traffic know what they should do. Powerful calls to action on every page will help convert traffic into customers.

Your Site Doesn’t Have a Mobile-Friendly Design

Half of all website traffic comes from mobile users, yet not all websites are mobile-friendly.[1] When encountering a website that is difficult to view on smartphones or tablets, mobile users often become frustrated and leave for another site.

<side by side images of mobile-friendly vs. non-mobile design>

Your Page Loads Slower Than 3 Seconds

Google ranks websites primarily for customer experience. Page speed is an essential factor in a website user’s experience. People are impatient and will click back on a slow site.

  •         The ideal website load time for mobile sites is 1-2 seconds.
  •         53% of mobile site visits are abandoned if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load.
  •         A 2-second delay in load time resulted in abandonment rates of up to 87%.

How fast is your website? You can find out by using Google’s Page Speed Insights. Just put the page URL into the search bar at the top of the page, and within a minute, you will know whether it is fast (green), slow (red), or somewhere in the middle (yellow).

You Wrote Your Website Content

Most business owners write too technically because they know their business’s ins and outs and want to share it all. Professional content writers write from a sales standpoint. We know how to attract site viewers and convert them into customers. We also know how to increase your ranking on a Google search engine results page. This will make your site easier to find when someone searches for a business like yours online.

Nobody is Filling Out Your Website Contact Forms

If people visit your page, but they aren’t filling out your contact form, it is a good indication that you need a layout upgrade, content with the right calls to action, and maybe even a giveaway or lead magnet.

Your top competitor just redesigned their website

If you are going to compete, you have to play on the same field. We always look at what the competition is doing when we redesign a website.

Are you ready for your new website? Contact us today!

 

[1] Clement, J. “Mobile Percentage of Website Traffic 2020.” Statista, 19 Nov. 2020, www.statista.com/statistics/277125/share-of-website-traffic-coming-from-mobile-devices/.

 

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How Long Will It Take to Build My Website? https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/2020/12/how-long-will-it-take-to-build-my-website/ Mon, 14 Dec 2020 18:36:50 +0000 http://dev2020.icebergwebdesign.com/?p=15505 One of the questions we always get from potential customers is, “How long will it take to build my site?” It can be a tough one to answer until we do some deeper digging. A website is never one-size-fits-all. Some take as little as six weeks, while others take up to 24 months. Today we […]

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One of the questions we always get from potential customers is, “How long will it take to build my site?” It can be a tough one to answer until we do some deeper digging. A website is never one-size-fits-all. Some take as little as six weeks, while others take up to 24 months. Today we will look at some of the factors that affect the length of time it takes to get from Kickoff to the day the site goes live.

Business Coworkers Consulting by a Computer

Subscription vs. Custom Sites

When we build a subscription site, we put content unique to your business on a framework that we have used many times before. It’s similar to how every adult has about 206 bones in their body, laid out the same way, yet we all look different on the outside.

When we build a custom site, many details have to come together in new ways. Often the process can be complicated. Because of this, subscription sites take far less time than custom sites.

The Time it Takes to Write Content

Before we can send your project to the developer, we need to assemble the content. It takes much less time for us to write your content than it does for you to do it. That’s because we do this every day. We’re experts at writing content that converts!

The first thing we do is schedule a content interview. That’s when we ask you about your business and decide how to communicate your passion to your customers. About five days later, we send you the first draft of your website content. You make any changes you would like, and after we edit the content, we go through the process again. After those two revisions, the content goes to design and development.

Some people choose to have us consult rather than write the content. This often means several rounds of revisions, so it takes longer.

The Time it Takes to Gather Assets

Assets are things that will give your site visual appeal, like photographs, logos, and custom graphics. Do you have professional quality photos ready, or do you need to hire a photographer? We have a photographer that can usually get the photos taken and edited within two to three weeks. If you employ -your own, the time it takes will depend on their schedule and speed.

Logos usually take about two weeks since there is a questionnaire, revision, and design consultation. Custom graphics will take more than a week. Of course, these things are done concurrently rather than consecutively.

The Time it Takes to Design and Develop Your Site

The basic design of your site will take about a week. During this time, we create a home page and an interior page. The time it takes beyond that will depend on how complex the design is and how many revisions are needed.

After approval of the mockup, the site will go into development. The development of a basic site without features takes about five to twenty business days.

Other Factors that Affect the Time it Takes to Build Your Website

The overall size of a custom site makes a big difference. If you need twenty pages, it will be more time consuming than a ten-page site.

Features will also add time—especially if we create unique custom features for your site.

E-commerce sites are time-consuming. Just how much time they take will depend on the number of products you want to be listed. Sixty products will take less time than 6,000. A small e-commerce site will typically take at least 6-months.

You have much control over how long it takes to get your site live. Revisions, changes, options, and delivering assets late will cause your project to take longer.

We are Experts at This

Our tried-and-true process will keep your project moving forward while focusing on its unique needs. We’ve built hundreds of websites, and we do it well. If you are looking for a professional web developer, contact us today.

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