Is Your Website Using Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)?
Is your website AMP’ed? If it is you most certainly know that I am talking about Accelerated Mobile Pages, and Google loves them.
If you are not, it is relatively easy to create an AMP page template for your HTML website. Just follow some of these links to learn more and to see examples.
As AMP’ed websites are important from Google viewpoint and Google is actively showing AMP pages in the mobile index, it is important to know and understand why your website needs to embrace AMP now.
The Web is a very competitive place, but I would like to share with you a case study of a recent customer that highlights if a service is trending, the price is right, and the website is optimized, you can get clients via organic search.
I have client who was just starting a business. He had very little capital, was selling local drone photography services, and was getting into a market that I felt was just starting to trend up.
My firm built him a website to showcase video and photos of projects and recent photo shoots. We optimized the site architecture, site content, page URLs and mentored him on keywords to use in his self-written content.
We used location specific keywords to help him place organically by county and state name using a smart use in his content and footer information.
On his side, he priced his services a tad below market average, and worked to offer more value than any other competitors.
As a result of our efforts combined with the client, business is growing and the phone is ringing, all without additional advertising.
The point I would like to make is that if the product is “right”, pricing is “right”, there is a need, then the smart use of keywords, content and location specificity can give free exposure that turns into sales and helps a brand new business get a footing from which to build.
Be on target to assure you make the right impression with your website.
Your website is all about more sales! That’s the reason you’ve hung out your shingle, but are you hurting leads and sales by having a website that’s not polished enough?
Polish is not about having fashion models in your content photos, although attractive people in your pics will not hurt, it is about the details.
These details communicate visually your professionalism and instill confidence in prospects when they visit. It’s the look and feel and you’ve got 10 seconds to make a favorable impression!
Here are my top polish points to check out on your own site.
Content blocks on the home page
These just must be the same word count and line up horizontally. When you have three different sized boxes it just looks bad.
Blog post excerpts in your footer
Control the word count! There are plugins you can use to assure your excerpt stays the same word count. Make sure to use them so you do not have giant blocks of blog content making the bottom of your website page look like jagged teeth.
Photos with no smiles
Staff photos where everyone looks grim or the business owner is frowning should be updated. Look approachable, you don’t have to be a model, but a pleasant look on your face is important.
Photos where the clothing is too casual
Owner and staff photos are important. If you work in a professional arena like a dentist or doctor – wear a white coat, lawyers – wear a suit, business owners – the higher dollar figure your sale, the more dressed up you should be. Polo shirts and super casual wear is great for your photo if your customers and competitors will be wearing those types of clothes. Careful – what you wear impacts your site’s polish and communicates professionalism.
Blog posts that are off topic that don’t match what you sell
If you blog yourself for your own website, make sure that you create and stick to a content strategy that works to build keyword density and authority for your website. Keep the your website’s polish going by being on topic. Blogging is not your online journal, but rather a way to build authority with search engines and provide new fodder for search engine robots.
We Are a Google Partner Specializing in Internet Marketing
Are you moving your law website away from FindLaw.com due to high monthly payments; sometimes over $2,800? You are not the only law firm that is planning ahead to move out!
As a professional internet marketing consultant, I find it very hard to believe that a $2,800 a month charge is not “bringing home the bacon” in regards to leads. Although FindLaw.com may be the perfect place for some law firms, I have one firm I am working with right now that does not feel that way and has complained about the high costs and low lead numbers.
We are moving this firm away from FindLaw.com and here are some tips to consider if you are considering moving out as well.
Do not wait until the last minute.
FindLaw.com requires a 90 day notice that you are leaving. Don’t miss this deadline or you will be forced to renew another year. That’s what happened to our client. He was so aggravated, that he made a note on his calendar for the next year and contacted us to move.
When you decide to move get started on a new website.
Don’t wait to get started on a new site. You may need 90 days to get your new site up. Although FindLaw says that the site you paid for and “own” (minus all their scripting that makes it work and images that makes your site beautiful) is yours to move, I can tell you that the static site is nearly worthless and you may pay more to try to fix it than to simply start over.
Consider the static site they give you as a temporary “Band-Aid”
The static site we got has missing scripts, missing images, the code is one huge glob, not even readable, navigation elements are missing or in our client’s case weirdly commented out to not show in the source code. Consider this a site you can use only after significant cleanup for one to max. two years.
Push hard and early to get your static site sent to you.
We had to push the FindLaw rep to give us the static site 70 days out from stopping services to allow us time to try to fix anything we could. What we got I would call marginal. Don’t let them give you the static site a few days before you leave. Your webmaster will need a minimum of 30 days to work it over for it to work and look “good”.
Make sure to check back Wednesday for more on moving your site out of FindLaw.
