How to make your website efficient in 6 steps

How to make your website efficient in 6 steps?

How to make your website efficient in 6 steps

Your website is your storefront on the Internet. Its role is to attract visitors and convert them into customers. However, its appearance, content, positioning and the customer journey it offers greatly influence its performance.

It is therefore essential to invest in the optimization of your site to derive the greatest benefit from it. Below are the 6 key points to have a successful website.

The basics of a successful website

Having a successful website starts with the choice of the Content Management System (or CMS  : Content Management System). Opt for a reliable CMS that will ensure good performance for your site for several years.

Large CMSs like WordPress benefit from regular updates, which keeps your website constantly evolving. For a site developed from scratch, it’s not that simple. You will need time and resources to constantly adapt it to new technologies.

Also think about the choice of your domain name . A relevant domain name is an NDD:

  • ideally short,
  • easy to remember and write,
  • representative of your brand,
  • and have an appropriate extension (example: .ch if activity in Switzerland, .com if commercial activity, etc.).

1 A trendy and professional web design

To be successful, your website must instantly leave a positive impression in the minds of your visitors.

Its web design should reflect your brand identity and inspire trust, evoking a credible business. Likewise, the layout of your website must be designed to provide a smooth browsing experience for the user. We then speak of user experience .

Indeed, the human brain captures and understands images much faster than texts. The ideal is to adopt a minimalist design with professional and captivating photos of your products. Opt for an attractive appearance to make your visitors want to know you better.

2 Fast loading

A successful website is a website that loads quickly.

According to We are Social , 53.3% of internet traffic comes from smartphones, and this number is constantly growing. For Google, 53% of mobile users abandon a session if the site takes more than 3 seconds to load . But in addition to scaring away users, heavy websites are penalized by search engines.

To minimize loading time across your entire website, you should:

  • have a lightweight code,
  • remove unnecessary plug-ins (extensions),
  • optimize the size of images for the web,
  • have efficient hosting .

3 A successful website requires responsive web design

Responsive design is an important aspect of making a website perform well.

Your site must adapt to all the screens of the devices used to view it (computer, tablet, mobile, smart TV, etc.). A responsive design offers several benefits to your site:

  • good loading speed,
  • a better customer journey,
  • personalized content according to the user.

4 A quality text

The quality of text content has a considerable impact on the performance of your site. Your content must respond to the specific concerns of Internet users. This is what will grab their attention and drive them to visit your site .

This is the whole point of web writing: producing relevant and quality content to generate visitors to a website. To do this, you must target keywords relating to the needs and activities of your target.

For example, if you sell children’s shoes in Paris, you may be tempted to position yourself on the keyword “Paris shoe”. But it may be that sites selling adult shoes occupy the top positions in Google. It would therefore be more interesting to target the keyword “children’s shoe paris”.

5 Smooth navigation

Visitors access the content of a website by navigating between pages.

The tree structure of your site must therefore facilitate access to the desired content as much as possible . Remember to take care of the navigation levels of your menu, knowing that 56% of visitors use it to navigate on a site.

If you have a complex website or one that contains a lot of pages — a blog or a transactional site for example — it would be interesting to add a breadcrumb at least on the pages that do not appear in the menu.

Also add calls to action (CTA) to your pages to lead your visitors to more information.

6 Good SEO practices

Knowing that 94% of web traffic comes from search engines, natural referencing (SEO) becomes one of the most important aspects of having a successful website.

A good SEO optimization is the assurance of:

  • increase your visibility on Google,
  • generate quality natural traffic,
  • increase your conversion rate .

But to benefit from these advantages and improve the performance of your site , you must:

  • optimize the technical aspect ,
  • optimize your content (texts, images, infographics, etc.),
  • and get recommendations from sites relevant to your topic.

Now that you know how to make your website efficient, don’t wait any longer to get started!

If you don’t have time to take care of it, the AntheDesign team will be happy to offer you personalized support. In addition, our agency offers the creation of a high-performance website , the redesign and creation of your SEO strategy.

 

international seo agency

HOW TO CHOOSE THE BEST DIGITAL MARKETING AGENCY IN 7 STEPS

HOW TO CHOOSE THE BEST DIGITAL MARKETING AGENCY IN 7 STEPS

When it comes to choosing a digital marketing agency for you, it’s no small feat. More often than not, many businesses opt for a  digital marketing agency over  internal marketing, simply because it is difficult to maintain. With an abundance of new marketing tactics appearing every day, it can be nearly impossible for busy businesses to stay on top of the latest trends, to find the best ways to use different platforms;  essentially becoming a ‘jack of all trades’ in all areas of digital marketing. As a result, this is why having someone else do it for you can be of great benefit.

But when it comes to choosing the right marketing company, it’s not a decision that should be taken lightly, especially if it’s your first time. Follow these  seven steps  to make sure you choose the right digital marketing agency for you …

 


CHOOSE A DIGITAL MARKETING AGENCY IN 7 STEPS 

1. DETERMINE YOUR BUSINESS MARKETING NEEDS

When you start researching the best digital marketing companies, you need to prepare yourself and ask yourself a few questions, such as what do I want to achieve with an agency and how much am I willing to spend to achieve it? Understanding exactly what you want will help you find and refine exactly what you want, rather than wasting your precious time and resources.

Once you’ve determined your business needs, whether it’s increasing your business online presence or redesigning your brand, you’re ready to start actively researching the best digital marketing agency for you. .

2. FIND AN AGENCY THAT MEETS YOUR NEEDS

You may be wondering “how do I choose an agency for me?” First, assess the packages offered by a company: do they match what you want your company to achieve? This is an important question to think about, because if their marketing strategy was not what you are looking for, the agency is not “The One” no matter how much you love them.

Moreover, the cost is also a factor to consider. Remember, it really isn’t worth spending an arm and a leg on a digital marketing package that doesn’t meet your needs.

3. DO YOUR BACKGROUND RESEARCH

Before moving forward in the process, it is essential that you do some thorough research on the digital marketing agencies that you have investigated. Are they practicing what they preach? The main way to know if an agency is right for you is to look at the results they have produced themselves.

For example, if you are considering hiring an agency to do  content marketing  , how does it run its own blog? If you are considering hiring them for  social media  how do they handle their own social media – is it successful? The same goes for SEO; how do they rank in search terms for their industry? Did you find them on the first page of Google? If they do not “practice what they preach,” they may not be able to achieve what they promise or be able to provide the services they offer.  

Plus, another great way to find out if a  digital marketing company  is the best is through recommendations. Ask your friends and family if they have anyone in mind or if any friends of friends know about it. Alternatively, consider asking your professional network on LinkedIn, as there may be an acquaintance in your industry who has a specific suggestion for you.

Reboot  tip : Be very careful if you are considering hiring an overseas digital marketing agency. Agencies overseas often charge low prices, so you might think you’re getting a lot, but in reality you might have to deal with poor service. Not to mention the jet lag which can be a problem …

4. ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS You may be thinking, what to ask a digital marketing agency? You’ll likely have a hundred and one different questions, but it’s important to make sure you’re asking the right questions.

HERE ARE FIVE KEY QUESTIONS YOU SHOULD CONSIDER ASKING YOUR POTENTIAL NEW AGENCY:

        – Can I see examples of campaigns?

Ask the company for a  portfolio of successful work  , whether it’s effective PR campaigns,  keyword ranking,  and producing quality content with high click-through rates and  low bounce rates  .

        – Who will complete the work?

You may need different teams, like an  SEO agency  with an in-house content marketing team. Take the time to review the company and ask yourself, “Would I be happy for people to find this work on my company site?” “

        – How long do you keep your clients on average?

In short: the longer, the better.  

        – What results can you promise me? 

Keep in mind that if you’re in a fairly competitive industry, a digital marketing agency  shouldn’t promise ‘bottom-of-the-funnel’ results  because there are too many factors at play – it’s inevitable that results take longer if you are in a more competitive market.

        – How will the results and the ROI be measured?

Make sure it’s clear how the results will be measured, as well as your return on investment (ROI).

5. SEND A “REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL” (RFP)

Once you’ve narrowed down a selection of digital marketing agencies that you’re happy to continue with, contact the company to express your interest.

The next step is to send a  “Request for Proposal”  (RFP) to your selected few agencies to help you in your decision to choose the best digital marketing agency. A call for tenders allows you to collect information from different companies and select the company that best meets your criteria, both in terms of skills and budget. This should make it clear which agency works best for your business and which digital marketing contract you need to sign.

6. SEND THEM A JOB AND REVIEW

If you’re tired of reading testimonials and reviews and want to see what the business can achieve for you, consider asking them to perform a task for your business. This lets you know what they are capable of and if their clients’ results are still good as they can suggest on their website.

Have them create a  digital PR campaign  or content marketing article for your business, and have them prepare ideas to present to you. The best idea will then be implemented by the digital marketing agency, and you wait for the results to kick in. This can take the form of media coverage (links) or high post rankings (although it takes longer).

7. HOLD A MEETING WITH THE AGENCY

If you’ve been happy with everyone so far, it’s time to have a meeting with the digital agency . It is a good way to  get to know the team  and an opportunity to sort out any issues with the team before signing a contract.

This is where personality conflicts become evident, which can hamper the success of your business. Some people call it “the beer test” and it’s often used as a recruiting method: would you invite them over for a beer at your local pub or run a mile in the other direction? The answer to that speaks volumes.

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Digital agency vs creative agency: what are the main differences?

Creativity and design are always integrated with marketing solutions. Visuals, ads, and campaigns are becoming more and more important in bringing more people to websites or e-commerce platforms. There are many digital agencies out there that help any entrepreneur or company to promote their business with the right strategies to grow their customer base.

Every business involved in the world of e-commerce and B2B solutions must make a decision on whether to hire a digital agency or creative agency to increase their sales and revenues through marketing solutions.

A digital marketing campaign requires an attractive website and social media accounts, and businesses need to know the key differences between a creative agency and a digital agency in order to use them for their advertising needs.

There is a critical point in deciding whether they need to hire a creative agency to provide graphic design services for them, or a digital agency for search engine optimization and social dominance. Most people do not understand how they differ in terms of the services provided by each of them.

Here, we’re trying to end this confusion by explaining the main differences between digital agencies and creative agencies. This will help you decide what best suits your business development needs and expectations.

What is a digital agency?

A digital agency mainly offers digital marketing solutions to businesses, which mainly include website design, search engine optimization, social media marketing, content creation, and pay-per-click advertising.

In the digital age, it is very important to rank higher in search results and expand your online presence. As such, digital agencies are critical to running all marketing campaigns to promote a business and increase your ROI. You can read a more detailed article on hiring a digital agency here.

What is a creative agency?

Simply put, a creative agency provides businesses with experts in visualization and artistic concept development. Hiring a creative agency opens up a creative perspective as its services include designing logos, banners, infographics, TV ads, and video filming.

If you want eye-catching designs, graphics, or logos to add value to your brand, hiring a creative agency is a great choice.

Differences between Digital Agency and Creative Agency

Digital Agency or Creative Agency: Which is Best for Your Marketing and Advertising Needs? Let’s take a look at the 3 main differences between the two to help you decide how to choose one.

Market research or user research

So, in order to decide which one to pursue, you need to do a lot of research and be clear about your expectations. If you know what you need, then you can decide that either creative agencies or digital agencies will offer the right services for you. If your brand needs market research, you need to consult with a digital agency, and in case you need to do user research, you better find a creative agency that can offer you user-centric solutions.

Branding and specific targeting

A creative agency will design and build your brand for the long term so that your brand or your company can develop over the years.

This transformation can happen after regular market research and customer expectations of your brand. Creative agencies establish your branding and design your business needs in line with the inevitable changes in the process.

On the other hand, a digital agency will mainly focus on your brand design, SEO and marketing materials, rather than keeping track of the latest changes or trends in the market. They will try to bring you their best designs, best content, and the best digital marketing solutions with the materials you provide them.

They will not conduct market research or surveys to see how your brand can adapt to market needs.

As their names suggest, a creative agency is looking for creative solutions, some areas that even you can’t think of as a founder or company owner, while a digital agency mainly focuses on what has been given to them.

The difference in their approach to working with your brand is one of the main differences between a digital agency and a creative agency.

Creative versus go-to-market strategy

Another important difference between a creative agency and a digital agency is the process of developing a go-to-market strategy and how they deal with a creative strategic management position.

Most digital agencies may not have the experienced designers needed to provide professional design for the go-to-market strategy process.

For example, a digital marketing agency might find solutions to increase traffic to your website, improve your social media channels with much more new contacts, and focus on driving more customers to your brand’s digital presence. On the other hand, a creative agency will provide creative and quality content for your website or social media accounts for digital agencies to promote.

It’s like a digital agency will need the creative and professional support of creative agencies, and one creative agency won’t be enough, so you’ll need marketing agency digital marketing strategies.

Conclusion

If you want to have a successful brand that attracts the right customers, you will reap great benefits from both digital agencies and creative agencies. It’s just very important to understand the difference between the two.

As we said above, comparing and understanding a digital agency and a creative agency will play a key role in growing your business and contributing to your brand’s reputation. Both digital agencies and creative agencies will have great resources and a lot to offer your brand.

seo search engine optimisation

What is SEO and why is it necessary?

If you do not get visits in the content you create on your website, you may need to know what SEO is. Search engine optimization helps people interested in your content find it more easily. In this article, we will tell you in a general way what SEO is and how it can help you in your digital marketing strategy. After reading it and putting it into practice, you will surely be able to appear in the search results.

Meaning of SEO

Search engines are pages like Google, Bing, Yandex that try to organize all the content of all the webs, so that it is easy for users to find it. Behind every search engine there is an algorithm, and that means that we can always try to optimize our content based on that algorithm. The traditional search engine most used today is Google, which in All world has more than 98% of the market for web searches. The other two most used search engines are YouTube (also from the same parent company as Google) and Amazon, although they are two search engines of a different nature.

What is SEO?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization ) in all Globe is a discipline that tries to understand how the Google algorithm works. The algorithm has more than 200 ranking factors that determine where a URL appears in your records. These indicators are secret and Google barely gives guidelines to comply with. Some synonyms for SEO are web positioning, organic positioning, web page SEO … but they all refer to trying to appear in the first positions of a search engine. The ranking factors, apart from being secret, each have a different weighting, which also changes over time (algorithm updates). The SEO consultant must find out, by reverse engineering, what combination of strategies works at all times to get the first positions. At present we can group the positioning factors into three large groups: SEO on Page, SEO off Page and RankBrain.

SEO on Page

SEO on Page refers mainly to the set of factors that are taken into account by the algorithm that must be worked on within the content. SEO on page takes into account the headlines of the paragraphs, the paragraphs, the bold, the images, the videos … even the URL of the page itself.

SEO off Page

The concept of SEO off Page refers to the links that point to our website that are moving through the network. These links give a rating of the popularity and authority of each URL on our site and the domain as a whole. Links on social networks will give us popularity, but really those that help us to be higher are those that come from other sites with authority in the content that we deal with in our URLs (thematic links).

RankBrain

RankBrain is Google’s artificial intelligence that tries to find out which results are the best based on user experience. That is, Google is aware of what happens in each search to know if it has satisfied the user. RankBrain measures everything that happens on the Google results page (SERP) and tries to reward those results that solve the search intentions. RankBrain may even be measuring user experiences through Google Chrome for mobile.

White Hat SEO vs Black Hat SEO

We have already named Google’s algorithm, we have already said that you have to try to comply with its guidelines. What if we try to find flaws in the algorithm and take advantage of it? Well that’s Black Hat SEO. White Hat SEO tries to figure out how to rank better by following Google’s guidelines. Black Hat SEO tries to figure out how to rank better without taking Google’s guidelines into account. The great risk of not following directives and trying to find bugs to take advantage of them are the dreaded penalties. Some Black Hat SEO techniques are repeating your own content, repeating your own content with certain changes, repeating other people’s content, repeating other people’s content with certain changes, buying links to authority sites, trying to get false visits through the search engine … getting the top positions like this is getting more and more difficult. Halfway there is the Gray Hat SEO, where it is about maximizing our search engine positioning, going a bit beyond what Google says, but without trying to fool the algorithm.

Why is SEO important?

SEO is important because it is a highly qualified, highly qualified channel of entry of traffic, at free cost. SEO brings us visitors interested in our content, our products, our services … Organic results (SEO) and Ads results (pay per click) coexist in Google search results (SERP). Some appear without paying the search engine, and those of the old AdWords service pay for each click that generates a visit. SEO is an investment in the medium and long term. If we tried to buy that traffic through ads in Ads, it would cost us a not inconsiderable amount of money. There are sectors where each visit costs several tens of euros. With SEO we create content that our potential customers are looking for, which has a cost. But if we manage to position it and bring visitors, in the long term that investment will be profitable. The cost of acquiring SEO traffic is in the long run the lowest of all channels. If you are interested in the world of SEO and Digital Marketing, at the Instituto de Estudios Cajasol we have the Master in Marketing and Digital Communication. In it you will learn the latest SEO techniques, you will position a project throughout the course and you will also learn many more Digital Marketing strategies.

How do web search engines work?

We already know that search engines are great classifiers of information, but how they classify it, how they work on the inside. The reality is that a modern web search engine has nothing to do with those of a few years ago. Right now they all have a series of points in common that we will tell you right away.

Search Intentions and Keywords

Currently, Google tries to find out what the person who enters a word or does a voice search in its search engine is trying to find. This new SEO concept is called search intent. Search intent falls squarely into what we marketers call the conversion funnel. The user may be looking for simple information, deep information, commercial content, or transactional content. Depending on what the user is looking for, they should be given one content or another. If someone searches for the term “SEO”, Google itself will give the answer with simple information. If the search term is “SEO Factors 2020”, Google will propose articles with a list of factors. If you search for “Seville SEO Consultant”, it will show us a series of results from local consultants and some organic results. Depending on the search intention that we want to satisfy, we have to adapt in the best way to what Google presumes the user wants. Google groups search terms into search intentions. So we can express a search intention in many ways. For example: nose job, nose job and rhinoplasty share (for Google) the same search intent. Those user search terms are keywords for SEO consultants. That is, they are the words that have to appear strategically in our SEO on Page and SEO off Page. Google, based on the keywords it finds on our website, will give your content a search intent and it will appear in the search results for those keywords and that search intent.

Trackers or Crawlers

Crawlers are Google’s spiders that travel from link to link trying to find new web pages to analyze. These crawlers can be limited by webmasters, with which we can also make strategies to try to optimize them in the best way with files such as sitemaps.xml and robots.txt, among others. The crawlers have a limitation of resources per domain, depending on the authority, so it is very important that the pages are as fast as possible, to improve the crawling. This is what is called a crawl budget strategy.

URL indexing

Indexing is the process of registering our URLs with Google. A web page is indexed when it appears in Google and we can check it with the site command. For example: site:https://crossborderplus.com As we have already indicated, the URL will appear in Google when the user searches for the keyword related to a search intent that we satisfy. To control indexing, we can make use of Google Search Console, the tool that Google provides us to have data on how our web pages are performing in their search engine.

Google’s algorithm and Penalties

Algorithms are essential in search engines. Search engines order information based on parameters, which are contained in an algorithm. As we have already said, this algorithm handles about 200 indicators to give a final ranking to each URL, based on a search intention expressed in some keywords. Therefore, it takes into account the user’s experience in the SERP (rankbrain), the relevance of the content (keywords), the authority and popularity (links), the loading speed … to choose the first positions. Penalties have changed quite a bit in recent years. Not so long ago, trackers went hand in hand with the algorithm. In fact, the algorithm was divided into several parts that tracked the network. On the one hand, we had an algorithm part that looked at the quality of the content (Panda), on the other hand there was another part that investigated the links (Penguin), then a new part arrived that tried to understand the meaning of the content (Hummingbird) which was the forerunner of search intentions. Currently, the algorithm is a whole that works like an artificial neural network. For this reason, penalties are the order of the day and are almost imperceptible for non-technicians. The best way to detect a penalty is to check the traffic data and cross it with the public data from the algorithm updates.