Proliferation

Jul 15
0

What Is SEO?

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SEO stands for search engine optimization. Search engine optimization refers to the process of procuring increased organic (non-paid) traffic to your webpage from major search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo!

The more effort is put into optimizing a webpage for search engines, the more likely that webpage is to rank among the first page of search results for a particular set of search terms. For digital marketing companies, this is the end goal — a high-ranking, authoritative webpage that brings in traffic from all corners of the internet, whether consumers are searching from their homes in Utah or European coffee shops.

So How Does SEO Work, Exactly?

Let’s start with search engines. Search engines have two major functions: crawling the internet for information and indexing said information, and providing search users with the most relevant webpages according to their chosen search terms.

Search engine crawlers (or “spiders”) accomplish this by first gathering a backlog of information on the world’s websites. Search engine crawlers will take into account a site’s written content, overall site organization, URL structure, site elements, ALT attributes, rich media and more. All of this information helps search engines better understand what a webpage is about.

Search engine crawlers also gather information by way of links; if a number of webpages related to a particular topic all link to one external webpage that’s related, the webpage that is the destination of those links is determined to be the most authoritative of them all — and therefore the most likely to show up on the search results for that topic.

Say for example someone performs a search for “restaurants in Utah,” the search engine crawlers would go through millions of webpages and mazes of links related to “restaurants” and “Utah” until they come up with the most relevant and authoritative results for that search query. Getting your webpage into one of those top results is the purpose of SEO.

SEO Is for Humans and Search Engines Alike

Despite its name, SEO isn’t only important for search engines. Often, optimizing a webpage for search engines and optimizing a webpage for human visitors are one and the same.

A well-optimized webpage will do one of three things: provide a transaction, such as purchasing a particular product, provide information, such as the best restaurants in Utah, or simply exist as a destination to which people are trying to navigate. Not only that, a webpage that employs good SEO will accomplish one of these three things well, making the experience as smooth as possible for the consumer.

In the end, the webpage that accomplishes the searcher’s goal in the best and most efficient way will be the webpage that sits on the iron throne of the search rankings.

Jul 15
0

Keyword Research 101

By | SEO | No Comments

Keywords are the single most important aspect of SEO. As such, keyword research takes on an equal importance in the world of SEO; without keyword research, marketing companies cannot know what terms their target audience is using to find relevant products on search engines — something that can cost you dearly.

Get Inside the Customer’s Head

Keyword research begins with an in-depth analysis of your business itself. What kinds of products or services do you sell? What keywords do you want your website to rank highly for? Most importantly, what terms might a potential buyer use to look up something related to your product or service? When it comes to keyword research, the more you can get inside your customer’s head, the better.

Before you decide on a specific keyword or keywords for your SEO strategy, you need to figure out the relative value of that keyword for your business. First, pick a keyword that is immediately relevant to your business. If your business is a marketing agency in Utah, then your keyword might be “marketing agency Utah.”

Perform a Search for Your Chosen Terms

Plug that keyword into Google, Yahoo or Bing and see what results come up. Does that keyword pull up 15 million results or 150 million? For SEO beginners, the more specific your keyword, the better — keywords that target a niche market (such as “marketing agencies Utah”) tend to have fewer competitors, making it easier for your business to rank higher among them. Only once you’ve conquered the niche market you should expand to more generic keywords.

Utilize Keyword Research Tools

Once you’ve done enough of your own keyword research, it’s time to enlist the help of a keyword research tool. The Google Adwords Keyword Planner is the most popular option for this; Google Adwords can tell you how much traffic one of your chosen keywords is likely to bring in. Purchase a sample ad campaign and see how well one of your sample keywords performs; if it doesn’t look like it’ll bring in enough traffic, move on to the next keyword until you find one that works.

Find the Sweet Spot Between Search Volume and Buyer Intent

The best keywords are ones that not only bring in a decent amount of traffic, but are immediately relevant to your product or service — no matter to what point in the buying process they relate.

Whether you’re selling outdoor adventure products in Utah or nautical instruments on the East Coast, your keywords need to be relevant, searchable and not too difficult to rank highly for. Once you’ve got those keywords singled out, you’re well on your way to a highly successful SEO strategy.

Jul 15
0

Just the Basics: SEO FAQs

By | SEO | No Comments

The more effort put into optimizing a webpage for search engines, the more likely that webpage is to rank among the first page of search results for a particular set of search terms. For digital marketing companies, this is the end goal — a high-ranking, authoritative webpage that brings in traffic from all corners of the internet, whether consumers are searching from their homes in Utah or European coffee shops.

FSEO-FAQ

Jul 15
0

Web Development vs. Mobile App Development: Key Differences

By | web development | No Comments

Web development has been in production for the past 20 years — it’s not a relatively new field. It’s inevitable that web development trends will change; however, the details will always stay the same. Yet as soon web developers felt like they were getting the hang of web development, along came a curveball: mobile app development.

As more and more people use their mobile devices exclusively to search the web and connect with people, developers are scrambling to accommodate the mental shift involved with developing for mobile sites and apps.

Adjusting From Web Development to Mobile Apps

Don’t fret, developers; there are a few easy ways that you can make an easy adjustment from web development to mobile app development. The first step? Adhere to user guidelines. Unlike web development, which essentially offers the developer a blank page with which to work from, mobile app development adheres to a set of user guidelines that differ across platforms.

Don’t ignore these guidelines — doing so will ensure that you end up with a mobile app that doesn’t work nearly as well as it should.

Differences in User Experiences

One of the challenges that web developers face is ensuring that their sites can function across several different types of browsers. Generally speaking, the experience across all browsers will remain the same, allowing web developers to use one uniform design.

Mobile app development, however, dictates that each mobile platform is uniquely designed. Mobile apps can differ drastically depending on which platform they’re currently being executed on — and that’s okay. As long as the app is still visually engaging and functions well across every platform, the user experience will remain positive.

Single Purpose or Multi-Purpose?

Purpose is perhaps the largest difference between web development and mobile app development. While websites serve multiple purposes, mobile apps generally only serve either one purpose or a few related purposes. Refrain from attempting to design a mobile app with the functionality of a website — the app will have a high crash rate, and a correspondingly negative user experience.

Jul 15
0

Find Your Next Website Design Muse

By | web development | No Comments

Website design is always evolving. Take a look at some of the best sites from the 90s and early 2000s, and you’ll see how far web design has come. Still, like all great artists, designers need a muse. Without a little inspiration now and then, designers can go stale. Nobody wants that.

Here are a few of our favorite websites to help reignite designers’ creativity. One of them could become your new muse.

Responsive Design

User experience and responsive website design is so important on today’s World Wide Web. Responsive Design dedicates itself to furthering responsive website design. Unlike a lot of sites that feature galleries of different design approaches, Responsive Design also digs deep into the code that makes each design possible.

Crayon

Crayon is easily one of the most inclusive sites out there for gathering visual design ideas. Everyone from designers to marketers can use the site’s extensive search features to sift through more than 35 million websites. That’s a whole lot of inspiring material.

Webdesign Inspiration

The name says it all. Webdesign Inspiration is unique because it allows you to search for sites by industry. If you’re designing a website for a marketing agency, you can see how other industry leaders design their sites.

Dribbble

Dribbble works first and foremost as a portfolio service for website design freelancers. It’s used by a lot of new designers, which means it hosts a lot of new ideas. Since the site works like one large portfolio, it makes it easy to contact and connect with other designers to collaborate on ideas.

CSS Zen Garden

This site is like the super old and extremely wise grandma of all web design sites. CSS Zen Garden has been around for a while, but it’s still entirely relevant. It’s unique in that every design uses the same HTML code with modified CSS files. The entire site is basically one big example of the power of CSS.

Web Design Ledger

Besides just another awesome gallery site, you can visit Web Design Ledger for tutorials, blog posts, interviews with other designers and downloadable templates. No wonder the web community loves it so much.

Jul 15
0

The Most Influential Advertising Execs of All Time

By | advertising, Utah | No Comments

We don’t know about you, but when we think of advertising geniuses, we think of “Mad Men,” Don Draper, Roger Sterling — basically anyone from the AMC hit series. But there are real Don Drapers in today’s market of advertising, and they have killed the advertising world. Advertising agencies not only in Utah but around the globe have looked to these individuals for inspiration and tips on how to be a better advertising agency. They have mastered the art of advertising and have made billions of dollars in revenue for their companies.

Not all advertising is about giving great presentations and using the right colors, and these advertising agency execs, can prove that to you. Some of these names you might not recognize, but their companies you just might.

infuentialadvertisorsREDO

Jul 15
0

What Do Beacons Mean for SEO?

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The world of SEO is always changing, but SEO experts are predicting an unprecedented change is coming — that change is called a Beacon.

What Is a Beacon?

The word beacon conjures up images of lighthouses and shining cities on a hill, but in this case, a Beacon is a small, Bluetooth-enabled device. While most aspects of the SEO world are digital, Beacons are placed in physical locations. Using an app, consumers can select to have alerts sent from a Beacon directly to their phones.

How Does It Work?

For example, a couple could choose to receive alerts from their favorite restaurant in Park City, Utah. The next time the couple is enjoying an evening stroll downtown and walks past the restaurant, the Beacon will broadcast a notification with the latest dinner deal for two. The notification will pop up on the couples’ cell phones, and what do you know, they think, “Maybe we will eat out tonight.”

Obviously Beacons aren’t exclusive to Utah. They aren’t even exclusive to restaurants. Small businesses, large businesses, retail stores, non-profit organizations, major corporations, events, airports and even entire cities could use Beacons at their physical locations to advertise to consumers. To top it all off, Beacons are small enough to place on a desk and inexpensive, costing an average of $30.

Beacons and SEO

So what do Beacons mean for SEO? Beacon technology is still growing and developing, but its immediate SEO effects include ratings and website traffic.

Initial consumer groups give Beacons positive reviews. As a business’ Beacon draws consumers in, many of them use corresponding apps to give the business positive reviews. This, of course, contributes positively to search engine rankings.

As Beacons reach out to consumers, they provide another opportunity for more individuals to visit Beacon owners’ websites. This creates higher numbers of new site visitors, in turn improving Google rankings.

The ultimate impact of Beacons on SEO is yet to be seen, but whether you’re a small business in Utah or a major city on the East Coast, now is the time embrace the Beacon.

Jul 15
0

The Holy Trinity of SEO

By | SEO, Utah SEO | No Comments

While most marketers and other internet-savvy people have a general knowledge of search engine optimization, as known as SEO, fewer people understand the key elements of SEO. SEO is used from the East Coast to Utah, by businesses both large and small — but how does it all fit together?

So what are the various processes that make SEO work? There are arguably three main aspects of SEO: on-site optimization, off-site optimization and analytics, or measuring those key SEO metrics to make sure your website is performing as well as it should. Take a closer look at the three main elements of SEO: the holy trinity.

FSEO-Holy-trinity-full

Jul 14
0

Key Members of a Successful Content Marketing Team

By | content marketing, Utah | No Comments

If it takes a village to raise a child, then it is safe to say that it takes an entire team to create quality content. Content marketing can be difficult to master, but when done correctly — content marketing has the power to exponentially build business. From Utah to Europe, content marketing draws in consumers and functions as the driving force behind great online business.

If your business, be it located in Utah or beyond, wishes to grow its content marketing capabilities, it need only to create the content marketing dream team.

Strategists

No content marketing campaign is complete without the help of a strategist. A strategist looks at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing a businesses and helps generate content pertinent to those areas.

The strategist helps the team find the best places to put content, the best topics to write on and the most effective way to reach audiences.

Writers

You won’t have content if someone does not create it, so without writers, content marketing is non-existent. Quality writing is always in style and the better the writing, the better for business. Writers must incorporate SEO and know the voice of each client individually.

Designers

In an increasingly digital world, it is important that a marketing team use designers. Designers lay the content out in a way that is easy to read and easy to find. If readers can’t navigate the content, they are not likely to continue reading, thus designers are vital.

Designers are the bridge between visual and textual information. Without them, a content marketing team would be nowhere near complete.

The prefect content marketing team does not end there, though. For each individual business, other content marketing team members can be added to create a perfect and personalized team. Whether you’re in Utah or beyond, great content is generated by a great content marketing team.

Jul 13
0

The First Advertisement Was Aired 75 Years Ago

By | advertising, commercials, Utah | No Comments

Advertising agency employees from Utah to the East Coast use the month of July as one of remembrance. No, we aren’t mourning a loss. Seventy-five years ago, on July 1, 1941, the first legal commercial ran during a baseball game and television would never again be the same – except for baseball, that’s always the same *yawn*. This date is a reminder of the continuous cycle of innovation.

The Illegal Ads

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) originally ruled that advertisements weren’t allowed on television. Advertisers across the country were about as bothered by that fact as Tyrion is bothered by being short (“Game of Thrones” spoiler: he’s not).

Ad men thought television lacked the prestige that came with traditional media. As the men who “drink and know things”, they weren’t questioned. Radio reached 90 percent of American homes. It was hard to picture anything that could top that.

In the 1930’s the rebels of advertising who proved to be “bad to the bone” created product placement. The announcer of the baseball game ran an ad for Proctor & Gamble, Socony Oil and General Mills. He held a bar of soap, wore a cap and sliced a banana into a bowl of Wheaties — though it’s hard to imagine how awkward this looked, the loophole was a doorway for advertisers.

The First Legal Ad

Television’s first legal commercial was reminiscent of the radio ads that would run. Bulova, a watch company, ran a grainy, shaky, 10-second ad during another baseball game. During the live ad the announcer read, “America runs on Bulova time.”

The first ad cost Bulova’s advertising agency a whopping *gasp* $4 to create and didn’t even reach those in Utah. Television has now become a $70 billion market place.

The Future of Television

What was once considered the bread and butter of the advertising agency industry is now questioned for its viability. In an age where viewers can skip the commercials to see if Khaleesi will finally rule the seven kingdoms, it leaves professionals from the state of Utah wondering where the innovation will shift next.