3 Image Formatting Mistakes to Avoid on your Website

We’ve already established that well-written content on your website is the key to SEO success but sometimes it takes more than that to draw your audience in and entice them to stay. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. On your website this is especially true because that picture could turn a casual lurker into a lifelong member.

Adding images to your website is essential because it helps you communicate to your audience more effectively. Some people are very visual and so when they get hit with a wall of words, it can be overwhelming. That is why the use of imagery is one of the most powerful tools used in marketing today.

However, while images are powerful and essential, they can’t be effective if they aren’t displayed correctly on your website. Listed below are the top 5 image formatting mistakes to avoid:

1. Uploaded images are not optimized for web

Uploading images that are not optimized for the web can be an issue that slows down your website and increases load time. This happens because the file size of the image used is simply too large.

Helpful Tip:  If you have an image editing tool such as Photoshop, you will be able to optimize your images for the web easily.

2. Uploaded image is not displaying correctly

If you upload an image to your website and it looks blurry, then that can mean one of two things:

    • The resolution for the image is incorrect: You will want to make sure that you have an image resolution of 72 ppi to 120 ppi. Unlike print design, you can get away with a much lower resolution for the web.

 

  • The original image was small and re-sized larger. Many times, when you take a smaller image and make it bigger, it doesn’t always work out as the resolution for the original image was low and the image itself is not in a vector format. That means, when you size it up, it takes the ppi resolution that it has and stretches the pixels thereby making the picture blurry.

 

Helpful Tip: For the sake of image quality, it is much better to reduce the size of a large image and place it on your website than to take a smaller image and increase it in size.

3. The image looks disproportionate

You found the perfect image for your website but it is portrait and you need a landscape image. So, you decide to re-size the image so that it is wider instead of taller. When you upload it on your site, you notice that it looks odd.

Helpful Tip: Before you look for an image for your website, be sure to decide whether you want it to be in portrait format or landscape format. If you find a very large image you can sometimes crop it to the desired format (depending on the image), but I have found that it is easier to know which format you need before you find the image, that way you don’t have to deal with that hassle later on.

 

SEO Tip for Images - Lightbulb IconSEO Tip for Images: Don’t forget to give your images alt tags with descriptions when you upload them. Not only does this make your images more accessible for handicap users, it also adds to your website search engine optimization and helps your site rank higher in searches!

Apr 15, 2016 at 11:00 am by David Damstra
Posted in Web Services | Tagged , , | Comments Off on 3 Image Formatting Mistakes to Avoid on your Website

The Aftermath of Mobilegeddon

Last year around this time, we posted an article on Google’s upcoming Mobilegeddon, which discussed the coming change of the search platform and the potential of rank penalizing for websites that were not mobile-device friendly.

As of today, 25% of websites that were not mobile-friendly have adopted a mobile web presence.  Meanwhile, the divide between the websites that are mobile-friendly and those that aren’t is growing larger every day.

We know that Google continues to adjust its algorithm to give users the very best and most accurate search results possible.  That is why, Google is tweaking its algorithm once again in what some are calling Mobilegeddon II.  This newest update will happen in May (2016).

Here’s what you need to know:

  • Mobile-friendliness is becoming more of a requirement to rank high on searches done through mobile devices.
  • In May, Google will update it’s mobile algorithm to be a bit more aggressive in terms of SEO and mobile-friendliness.\

How aggressive this newest algorithm update will be, remains to be seen.

The world wide web is always evolving and new standards are put into place to make the user-experience even better and more serviceable. We know that having a solid web presence is important, which is why over the last several years, we at CU*Answers have been incorporating mobile-responsive design components in all of the websites we build.  It is our mission to always keep up to date on the latest technology, so that we can continue to deliver the very best to our clients.

If you have had a website designed from us within the last 3 years, then your website is likely mobile optimized.

Not sure if your website is mobile-device friendly?  Check out this great tool provided by Google!  Simply enter your website’s address in the toolbar and click “analyze”.   Note that the analysis of your website might take a minute.

If your website does not have a mobile presence, then it is time to consider a redesign. We have limited redesign slots available, and slots are filled on a first come, first served basis.

Mar 21, 2016 at 12:36 pm by David Damstra
Posted in News | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on The Aftermath of Mobilegeddon

3 Secrets to Effective SEO Copywriting for Your Website

Last week, we discussed the 5 ways you can prep your website for SEO success. The very first item on that list is content. Since the reason for search engine existence in the first place is to organize information and present a bridge from the user to the website and vise versa; the words, sentences and phrases that you use on your site are everything.

Imagine that the search engine is the bridge.  The user is at one end of the bridge and your website is at the other end.  Now imagine that the planks on the bridge are made from the text that you use on your website.  Your goal, is to get users to walk across the bridge to visit your website.  What words do you use to prompt them to cross?

As you probably already know, copywriting is the art of constructing written copy and presenting it to the public through digital media or print.  SEO copywriting is writing copy for your website that will rank well in search engines and make your website easily found.  Copywriting is a marketing strategy that has been long-proven to be effective.

Listed below are the 3 secrets to effective SEO copywriting for your website:

 

1. More Content

Blogs and news sites typically rank sky-high in search engines. Why? Because they are content machines! Adding a blog or news area to your site and then making an effort to regularly add posts will enhance the rank and visibility of your sites in search engines.

2. Know your Audience and then Answer their Questions

Typically, when we search for something on the web, we ask in the form of a question. Think of some of the questions that your credit union members or potential members might ask and then post articles about those questions. This is a great strategy because it helps your website visitors get to know your organization better all while helping you rank higher on Google!

3.  Grab their Attention.  Write Headlines that Engage

Let’s say that you have written a great article that you are sharing through various social media outlets (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and your hope is that the article gets a lot of attention…maybe even goes viral.  The best way to do that is by writing a headline to your article that engages them and prompts them to click! Chris Garrett from Authority Blogger has shared a great resource with the masses called 102 Headline Writing Formulas. If you get a chance, check it out.

 

 

 

Mar 15, 2016 at 10:50 am by David Damstra
Posted in Web Services | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on 3 Secrets to Effective SEO Copywriting for Your Website

5 Ways You Can Prep Your Website for SEO Success!

Behind the success of every great website lies a great SEO structure.  Implementing good SEO practices and structure to your website is likened to having a great marriage, the more effort you put into it, the better it gets!

Listed below are 5 ways you can prep your website for SEO success:

1. Content

As you may know by now, content is king.  Having well-written website pages filled with rich and engaging content is important to your audience.  Another important aspect to having rich content on your site is making sure that you are always posting fresh content.  Google and other search engines will crawl your site more often if you offer fresh and updated content.  Also, make sure that your content contains relevant keywords and keyphrases to your website and your business.

2. Website Architecture

Create a search-engine crawl-friendly site by making sure that your website URLs are short and readable (ex:  mysite.com/resources).  Additionally, If you have a robots.txt file, make sure that there are no directives in the file that would block search engines from crawling your site.  Finally, make sure that your website works well across all devices — not just for the desktop.

3. Headers

Make sure that your header tags (ex: h1, h2, h3, h4, h5) contain relevant keywords.  For example, your H1 tag should contain a headline that tells the reader and the search engine what the page is about.  Google’s algorithm gives a slight boost to those sites that use header tags.  Even though HTML5 supports the idea that you can have more than one H1 element on each page of your website, it is still considered better practice to only have one H1 element per page (typically the title of the page).

4.  Define your Images

It is important to add alt tags to each image you have on your site (ex: alt=”image description”).  Not only does this make your website more handicap accessible, it’s also another attribute that Google and other search engines look for when indexing and ranking websites.  Additionally, you will want to make sure that the file names to your photos are clear as to what the photo is (ex: red-balloons.jpg).

5.  Keywords

Do your keyword research!  Implement relevant keywords and keyphrases into your content and meta descriptions on your website pages.  There are many keyword tools available that can help you with your research.  They are simple to use too!  You can simply plug the keywords in to the search tool and see how they rank and what your competition is.  Google Adwords has a keyword planner tool that is free to use.  Additionally, you can search for “free keyword tool” and a number of options come up.

Having relative keywords show up in your content is a great way to be found in searches!

Want to learn more?  searchengineland.com has a great Infographic entitled “The Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors“.

 

Mar 10, 2016 at 10:21 am by David Damstra
Posted in News, Web Services | Tagged , , | Comments Off on 5 Ways You Can Prep Your Website for SEO Success!

  • Meta