Seems like you can’t leave your computer to see how dinner’s coming along without Google pushing out a new algorithm. Just this year, for example, we had 2 big core updates. Before that, we had Pirate, Pigeon, Panda, and Hummingbird among a long list of others. That makes it hard for even the most seasoned of SEO pro’s—and for newbies, it’s like running through a minefield.
Above all, site developers need to know what’s new, and what’s going to impact how their companies appear in search results. To simplify matters (if only a little), here are 3 of the biggest SEO trends for 2019:
1. THE RAPID RISE OF VOICE SEARCH
“OK, Google.” You hear it more and more these days. The preeminence of voice search is rapidly changing the way people get information from the search engine, and that means site developers need to change the way they respond.
As Forbes notes, “The number of people who use voice assistants is actually growing year by year, at a very rapid rate; for example, 35.6 million Americans use a voice-activated device at least once a month, and one in six Americans now own smart speakers. While it’s true that the world of search engines and SEO is constantly changing and evolving, the increase in voice search usage is one of the biggest changes yet. That’s because it’s something completely different and it requires a completely different optimization strategy.”
What does this mean for your SEO strategy? Well, to begin, it means delivering content that conforms to the more natural language queries typical of voice search. And it means providing more concise responses—the average voice search response is delivered in just 29 words.
2. MOBILE-FIRST INDEXING: SPEED COUNTS
It’s only been a year since Google announced that 60% of all searches were now on mobile devices—and quickly followed that announcement by rolling out its mobile-first algorithm—but it’s already having an impact on search results. For one thing, sites that aren’t fully responsive will soon feel the sting, moving closer to the back of the pack (if they haven’t already). For another, it means that load time is more important than ever.
Said differently, Google is clearly convinced that speed is among the most important factor in mobile searches and mobile user experience. Add to that nugget the fact that (according to Big Commerce) a delay of just one second in page load time cuts conversions by 7% and page views by 11% (do the math: for a store that makes $50,000 a day, that’s about $1 million in lost sales per year), and it’s clear site developers will be doing everything possible to speed up mobile site load times.
3. BLOCKCHAIN TECH MEETS SEO
When you hear “blockchain,” you probably think Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general—but understanding blockchain technology is also increasingly important for SEO. That’s because Blockchain can verify that users are who they say they are in online transactions with 100% accuracy.
Augmenting their sites with a ramped-up ability to record the identities of site visitors—or spot which visitors have added value to key content—is something that’s grabbing the attention of search engines and site developers alike. It’s one of the reasons, for example, Microsoft among other industry giants is already working with blockchain identity systems (like Blockstack Labs and ConsenSys) to enhance its apps and services.
CONCLUSION
Admittedly, search engine optimization is not for the faint of heart. It can be both confusing and frustrating, even for those relatively well versed in its nuances—and the stakes couldn’t be higher. If you don’t have the in-house talent to keep pace with the rapid change and need for immediate response inherent in the SEO universe, your best bet is to partner with SEO experts who can give you the advice and guidance you need to stay at the front of the pack.
To learn more about the ways we can take your SEO and digital marketing to the next level, contact us. Better still, get your free SEO audit today.
Located in Scottsdale, AZ, Avintiv Media is an award-winning agency specializing in solving problems for high-end clients. Our team is composed of hustlers, visionaries, creators, and designers that are highly skilled in web design, branding and SEO services. Being a boutique agency allows us to form close-knit relationships between our teams and clients. We are proud to announce our hard work has paid off and we have been named a Top Automotive Web Designers for 2019.
Clutch is a B2B platform dedicated to connecting prospective buyers with the leading firms in a wide variety of locations and industries. On Clutch, buyers can view verified customer reviews and a carefully crafted rating based on an analysis of industry data. Additionally, Clutch features industry rankings of top firms for buyers to peruse. We are proud to have a 5-star Clutch rating thanks to our client’s participation in the interview process.
Along with our Clutch listing, Avintiv has been featured on Clutch sister sites, The Manifest and Visual Objects. The Manifest team’s research has contributed to creating a business news style reviews platform. Likewise, Visual Objects focuses on the creative work of B2B agencies by posting a portfolio of past work on each profile.
Each and every employee at Avintiv Media is proud to be named a leader among web design firms.
“This award allows us to showcase the hard work and out-of-the-box type thinking that we infuse into every project we work on. So many of our clients have had bad experiences before working with us, so awards like this, allow us to work with so many grateful clients.” -Jon Boles, CEO of Avintiv Media.
With the boom of the cannabis industry over the last couple of years, it’s no surprise that an easier go-to-market solution has emerged and is BOOMING. Cannabidiol (CBD) is the new craze and everyone wants in. Even if you already own a CBD brand, keep reading to learn how to start and market your CBD brand correctly.
Starting and marketing your CBD brand is not as easy of a task as it was two to three years ago. The market is extremely saturated and there are some extremely big players in the game now with unlimited funding. CBD is officially mainstream in the entrepreneur and investor world, which makes everyone want to join the bandwagon.
We’ve been waiting for our 80yr old grandparents to give us a call saying how they are launching a CBD brand. All jokes aside, it seems like everyone is wanting a piece of the pie. How big is the CBD pie?
What is CBD?
Before we dive into how big the CBD market is, we want those of you that don’t know what CBD is.
CBD is short for Cannabidiol. CBD is one of over 100 known compounds found in the cannabis Sativa plant. This compound is found in both THC-rich strains of marijuana and also hemp. These plants are both classified as cannabis but the difference is that hemp produces only small amounts of THC, which are less than 0.3%. The compound carries much higher amounts as CBD, which is non-psychoactive eliminating the “high” feeling that THC has.
How Big is the CBD Industry?
Before we dive into how to start and market your CBD brand, you need to know how big the industry as a whole is.
Brightfield states that the market for hemp-derived CBD products was around $591 million for 2018, and speculated to grow to $22-23 billion by 2022. Yes, that is a B for billion!
Below is a chart of the industry’s growth and future sales forecasting.
• 2014 – $108 million industry
• 2017 – $190 million industry
• 2018 – $591 million industry
• 2022 – $22 billion industry
Is CBD Legal?
Everyone wants to know, “Is CBD legal?” If you’re growing industrial hemp with the sole purpose of extracting high-quality CBD, that sole purpose is currently backed by the federal government. In December 2018, the 2018 farm bill was enacted. Among many of its other provisions, it removed hemp (not cannabis) from the list of prohibited substances. Hemp is now a legal agricultural commodity, and so are the products made from it.
Some individual states have taken a much different stance on this and have chosen to ban CBD products which is key for anyone who has an eCommerce CBD store. You can always see which states CBD is legal.
CBD is still available to purchase and consume across the majority of the United States and in most places products still appear to be available, although some cities have banned the sale of food containing CBD. “CBD cannot be lawfully added to food or be labeled a dietary supplement,” was stated by the FDA with their public hearing on May 31st, 2019.
How much THC can your CBD have to be Legal?
Hemp and certain forms of CBD are federally legal, but you need to understand what aspects to look for when purchasing a CBD product. Many CBD brands that start decide to work with white-label CBD manufacturers because they don’t have the necessary capital to go to some of the larger manufacturing companies. Do your homework before deciding to work with a white-label manufacturer.
For CBD to be considered legal, the industrial hemp must contain .03% or less of THC. Any more and the plant is classified as marijuana and has many different laws that will drastically affect you and your customers.
There is still much confusion between CBD vs THC, which leaves a lot of questions for the general public. Federal agencies have started enforcing 0.3% or less THC policy much harder, which will keep the public much more well informed and safe.
Start Your CBD Brand
After reading the above information, you now realize how much work you have in front of you. At Avintiv, we are very data and research-driven. Everything we’ve done with building and scaling over 200 successful brands, starts with research and strategy.
This information will help new start-up CBD brands and CBD brands that have hit a plateau. We highly recommend building a brief business plan or investor pitch deck that you can use as a roadmap towards success.
CBD Business Plan
Writing a business plan is a good idea even if you never plan on getting a loan from a bank or bringing on investors. You are able to use this business plan as a road map and allows you to benchmark your progress to see how on or off track you are. We won’t go over all aspects of a business plan today. We will point out the key factors to focus on.
Market Analysis – The market analysis will give you a break down of the CBD market, what segments there are, and what type of consumers your company will be marketing to.
Competitive Analysis – You must research and present a clear comparison of your business to your direct and indirect competitors. You need to know your strengths and weaknesses between your business and the competition.
Products and Services – What type of CBD products will your brand carry? Are you launching CBD oil, edibles, topicals, cosmetics or vapes? What will differentiate you from the competition?
Marketing Plan – Your marketing budget must clearly explain how you’re going to reach your ideal customers to hit your sales forecasts. You must clearly define how it’s going to be done and what your marketing budget is.
Sales Strategy – This portion of your business plan explains how you’re going to be selling your CBD. Are you only selling on your eCommerce website or do you have national CBD wholesalers or retail accounts?
Funding – From personal experience, Avintiv Media is currently growing many CBD brands, and the average monthly marketing budget is $10,000 – $20,000. You need to list out how you are going to fund your CBD brand. Whether that’s personal cash infusion by the owner or going for funding.
Sales Forecasts – You must create a realistic sales benchmark of what your business can do in sales over the next 3-5 years. Break the first year down to monthly sales goals and then do years 2-5 by year. This will help you determine if you’re on or off track from your goals.
Grow and Market Your CBD Brand
Growing your CBD brand in 2019-2020 is going to be much harder than it was years ago. The market is flooded with new CBD brands every single day, so what is going to set you apart from the competition? We’re going to go over how we’ve been able to grow our CBD clients.
Branding for Your CBD Brand
Branding is and will be one of the most important aspects of your CBD brand. This part is often overlooked as many business owners want to rush to market. They care more about Instagram, influencer marketing, and getting sales. Don’t fall victim to this or you won’t stand a chance with how competitive the CBD market is right now.
Company Naming
A lot of business owners pick a company name that they like for some reason and it never becomes a massive company because the owner was thinking about themselves versus the customer. When picking a company name, ask yourself these questions:
Can I build a $100 million brand with this type of name?
Will customers know exactly what we do when they hear the name?
Does this name clash or interfere with any other CBD brand? (hire a lawyer for this)
Is this a name that our company can build a community or tribe of customers around?
Logo and Brand Styleguide
Developing a logo and brand style guide is much more in-depth as this but for this article’s purposes, we are going to go in order with how our creative team decides on branding direction for our CBD clients.
What is this brand’s ideal target market (customers)?
What type of color scheme is this market used to?
What are other major brands these customers buy from?
What does our brand want to look like? Create a storyboard of brands, colors, and styles your company represents.
What does our brand not want to look like? Create a storyboard of brands, colors, and styles that your company doesn’t want to represent.
Hire an agency or freelancer to help begin the logo sketch phase
Have them finalize 3 variations of logos to choose from (black and white – no color)
Choose the top logo direction
The agency or freelancer will then take your market research and decide on the 3 top color schemes to go with
They will then present your main logo in 3 different color options to go with
Once that is completed, the agency or freelancer should create your brand style guide so everything you do moving forward matches your branding 100%
We won’t go into detail on how to develop your CBD product design or packaging as there are far too many steps to list in this article. Just know that this is by far one of the most important aspects of where your money should be going. If you want to win in the CBD game, it’s going to be the companies that products look better, feel better, and gives the customer a far greater experience.
Here are some examples of recent products we’ve designed in the CBD market.
Marketing Your CBD Brand
SEO
Anyone who’s been in the Cannabis or CBD industry knows the trouble everyone has run into with properly being able to advertise or market their brand. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is by far going to be one of the best investments you can make for your marketing plan.
You will want to have an agency that are experts at SEO as the CBD market is a completely different ball game when it comes to SEO versus many other industries.
Just like SEO, content creation for the CBD industry is extremely important. For one, not everyone knows what CBD is just yet and people are wanting to learn more about CBD before investing in it.
Writing content around your ideal customers and your keywords that were chosen from your SEO strategy will help you choose what articles to write.
If you’re a CBD brand, you should be launching 2-4 blogs per week of at least 750 words. Below are things to make sure you do:
Install Yoast SEO for WordPress
Make sure your blog has an A+ readability score
Add in your keywords throughout the blog
Carefully choose what your Meta Title should be
Carefully choose what your Meta Description should be
Make sure your slug is done correctly
Make sure you internally link 2-4 times throughout your blog
Make sure you link external sites 1-2 times throughout your blog
Social Media
Social media has been the craze over the last 5-10 years but it has gotten extremely pricey to play on the advertising end of social media. For today’s purposes, we’re going to focus on posting organically on Instagram with 0 paid ads.
Tips for social media content:
Thinking of your ideal customers, decide on what types of pictures or posts they will want to see
Think of the verbiage or messaging your ideal customers will want to see
Create a grid mockup over posts that all flow well with each other from an aesthetic standpoint (See below)
Use a social media scheduler like Hootsuite to preschedule all of your future posts
Make sure to engage with everyone that DM’s you or comments on your posts
Example of Instagram Grid that we did for our client, Goat Grass CBD.
Advertising
As Facebook and Google start to loosen up with CBD advertising, there are still other ways to advertise your CBD brand.
A number of our CBD clients hire Avintiv to run retargeting ads for their online CBD stores. Below is just one of the options that’s available to advertise for the CBD industry.
Avintiv has access to a private display network that uses artificial intelligence to
aggressively optimize for click-through rate and conversion using a number of different
data signals that generate excellent results. On average our CTRs range from 1-3%
and up to as high as 8% (No this is not a typo). We offer this in the form of standard
display advertising, site retargeting or a blend depending on how much traffic the site
has.
We can run as many creatives as you like and can track conversions from the campaign as well.
This is helpful for tracking ROI.
Below are some examples of display advertising creatives that we’ve created.
In Conclusion
As you’ve read through our article, we hope you’ve learned how to start and grow your CBD. As you can see, there is a lot of information that you need to know before launching and growing your CBD brand. The days of quickly getting to market and making a million dollars are long gone.
If you’re interested in seeing how Avintiv Media can assist you with growth, feel free to reach out to us on our contact page.
Page one ranking guaranteed! SEO services starting at $500 per month! We’ll optimize your site in 24 hours! If these taglines remind you of cut-rate used car dealerships or late night weight loss infomercials, you have good instincts. You need to cut through the BS and really ask yourself, “how much should SEO cost?”
While you can absolutely compare “before” and “after” SEO results, there is no magic pill to boost your website rankings. Effective optimization is a customized, multi-phase process, and honest SEO cost estimates reflect reality-based strategies.
Keep that in mind as you read on.
There’s no cookie-cutter template for determining the cost of SEO, but when you’re shopping for a search engine optimization firm, these are the points to keep in mind when you’re accepting proposals:
Important Factors That Positively Impact SEO
1. Website architecture
Search engine optimization begins with responsive, fast-loading websites and user-friendly navigation. Outdated servers, media-heavy sites, and cumbersome coding aren’t as easy to remedy when a site has hundreds of product pages or content assets. Clients in a position to take advantage of our free SEO audits are often ready for a top-down website overhaul, though our comprehensive analytics often reveal opportunities to streamline existing properties until our clients are ready to invest in a redesign.
2. Management practices and preferences
Prior site management factors into pricing. We encounter more than a few clients who have assigned their digital marketing managers with the task of in-house updates and SEO management. Digital marketing and content managers are experts in their own field and often rely on the elementary and often incorrect advice of popular SEO “gurus”.
We respect the desire to manage websites in-house—for some businesses, it’s a necessity. If that sounds like you, you’ll want an SEO firm prepared to help you establish SEO best practices for continuity and performance, with scheduled audits and evaluations for course corrections.
3. Relevant keyword research
Who’s your intended audience, and how will your SEO strategy predict their query habits? Is your brand competing for high-volume keywords, or targeting a local niche? Do your keywords attract qualified leads or traffic that will increase your bounce rate?
Dynamic keyword research, integration, and reporting demands time, skill, and intimate knowledge of the customer’s audience and goals. SEO is less about competing for high-value keywords than it is about understanding your user’s search intent. That requires your SEO team to understand your market as well as you do.
4. Technical page optimization
Do your page titles, URLs, and schema send the right signals to search engines? Can search engine crawlers understand each page’s purpose when the on-page content is limited to alt text? After all, crawlers can’t “see” images or videos so metadata and page descriptions must advocate for your page’s value and relevance.
Snippet-savvy site descriptions help Google decide that your content aligns with user queries, and URLs and titles containing your prime keywords induce a better click-through rate. Your SEO consultant should identify and test technical page optimization techniques not just for SERP placement, but for traffic quality and conversion rates.
5. User-valued, optimized content
It’s true: Quality content reinforces your brand’s legitimate use of keywords. But more important, content that’s useful to your audience keeps them engaged and draws them through the sales funnel. Longer dwell times improve SEO, as does content your audience shares on social media or their own sites. Blogs, infographics, and video generate legitimate, quality backlinks while elevating your brand as an industry authority.
Content isn’t about stuffing keywords. We believe quality transcends quantity, and we connect our clients with creators who adapt to your brand character, speak to your buyer persona, and write with the skill and knowledge you’d be proud to present as your own.
6. Backlinks and off-site authority
How often is your brand referenced by other authoritative sources? On-site content generates backlinks, but we can help you identify and use off-site opportunities to generate domain and brand authority. Engage your audience on third-party review sites, update your Google My Business posts, and exchange guest posts with strategic partners and high-profile industry bloggers. Genuine, organic backlink acquisition takes time and effort, but it scores higher with search engines than do purchased backlinks or other “black hat” cheats.
7. SEO analytics, reporting, and interpretation
Any SEO—or do-it-yourself site operator—can generate traffic and conversion reports. There are excellent keyword research tools available to anyone willing to pay the subscription costs. Even free plug-ins can provide useful insight into SEO success, but context is key. Your SEO success isn’t measured by charts and graphs alone. SEO strategies include A/B testing, industry-specific conversion experiments, and benchmarks set to monitor visitor behavior during cross-channel campaigns.
Who you are and what you do influences your SEO strategy
We at Avintiv Media service clients in a variety of industries, tailoring our services accordingly. Our approach for optimizing a regional luxury auto dealership website will barely resemble our recommendations for a national organic skincare line, and both would very much differ from an eCommerce CBD brand. Site structure, content, keywords, and local SEO emphasis all differ among the three, as do customer intent and behavior.
Think of us as your strategic partners. Like you, we’re not cheap; we’re experts in our field delivering measurable results. Quotes for our average cost of SEO reflect our dedication to your business’ growth and market agility, and we encourage you to regard the cost of SEO in terms of value rather than price. Contact us for a FREE SEO audit.
Once we know more about you and where you stand, we can tailor your SEO roadmap to help you achieve your goals. See how our Cannabis/CBD client grew 2000% in under a year or how our Supplement eCommerce client increased organic traffic by 600%.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the core of digital marketing. Still, the question is asked, “Why should you invest in SEO?” Over 93% of online experiences are happening every day due to search. More and more brand experiences begin with a simple query through search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
By not optimizing for search engines, you will lose relevant traffic from over two trillion searches launched every year on Google alone. To help, we’ve offered six ways to assist you in deciding if you need to invest in SEO.
6 Reasons for Deciding to Invest in SEO
Remember that keyword searches are about focused, intent-driven browsing. Your content should be clear, comfortable, and just right for the user when you optimize for intents. Likewise, considering an investment in search engine optimization forces you to consider all elements of your investment strategy. Here are six reasons to get started.
1. You need to save on advertising
Many businesses devote much of their marketing budget to advertising, but those dollars may be more sustainable when invested in SEO. If you need to save money on advertising, try allocating resources to SEO instead to increase your visibility. An increase in visibility will translate into more customers.
2. You need to increase conversions and lower bounce rates
I’m sure you’ve run into your fair share of aggressive ad campaigns that don’t bring you that laser-focused target customer that you had hoped for. Organic traffic from SEO brings in much higher quality traffic than unpredictable ad campaigns. At a much lower cost as well.
It may be time to invest in contextual, long-tail keywords in your search engine optimization and content creation strategy. As you do so, express yourself in an evergreen, future-proof voice so that all users who find your content experience value in your content.
3. You need more customers
A search result page usually contains under 10 positively-matched links. To make sure Google will place your site in one of these top spots, you may want to invest in helpful, search-optimized content instead of ads and social. Most users will not look beyond these first ten results when choosing a solution, so make sure you’re among the top picks.
4. You need to establish authority, trust, and loyalty
Most searches seek expert, authoritative, and trustworthy information. This is another reason to invest in well-researched, optimized content and use only phrases matching target intents. A good SEO strategy will demand that you create content that increases trust among your target customer and feeds the customer’s journey.
5. You want to grow your brand
Searchers often seek specific, highly relevant information, so you can increase the discovery and enjoyment of your site by optimizing to answer common queries. SEO can help solidify your brand platform by structuring your copy and taking advantage of query trends, giving you a competitive advantage and a USP.
Search engine optimization will require you to consider what a user is after when they say [best pizza near me] and structure your content to match. Brands are built on a sound approach to search engine optimization.
6. You need to create relationships and increase your rank
Search engines will better find and rank your content with links from those who found your site useful. Investing in smart SEO strategies for building links can help your content get found by potential advocates and increase its rank.
You’ve now seen 6 examples of reasons that an investment in SEO would make sense for you. If you want happier customers that value your online brand, we recommend you consider launching an SEO campaign.
To play devil’s advocate, we offer two ways for you to evaluate whether now is a good time to invest in SEO or not.
Key Questions to Ask Before Investing in SEO
Optimized search is about getting the user intent right the first time. It may be keyword-rich, focused, local, and just right for you, but does it delight your users? Search optimization encourages you to push the value envelope and make three considerations.
1. Do I have a budget for an intelligent SEO strategy?
By cutting spending in ad categories and prioritizing your position for top search queries, you may find you have some budget for search engine optimization. But, if your aim is to dominate the niche and top spot, consider giving your budget a much-needed boost.
2. Will my SEO feature a thoughtful, evergreen strategy?
On the search for the right answer or product for them, users want speed as well as human and helpful information. If your aim is to delight people with value while saving money on ad spend, bounces, and conversions, you should investigate your content with a professional and invest in SEO.
3. Do I have fair, measurable expectations of SEO?
If you know you want to make a connection with the problems, and passions that your users suggest with their queries, your next step is to consider if you can accept the positives and negatives of an SEO strategy. If you are able to appreciate that SEO will require smart investment, patience, and careful metrics, this makes it more likely that an SEO investment is the right choice for your business.
If you are saying yes to these two important questions, you may very well be ready to invest in SEO and optimized content. Get a FREE SEO audit from Avintiv Media to learn more.
You might have heard of the term “off-page SEO” but what do you actually know about it? After today, you won’t ever have to wonder. Off-page SEO (or off-site SEO) refers to actions that are taken outside of your own website that has an impact on how your website ranks within search engine result pages (SERPs).
If you haven’t started with enhancing your on-page SEO, make sure you start there before diving into your off-page SEO campaign. If you’d like to know the difference between on-page SEO vs of-page SEO, we wrote a blog on that as well.
Off-page SEO is one of the most important aspects of your SEO campaign. There are a lot of variables that come into play when perfecting your off-page SEO campaign. Like anything in life, it comes down to a site’s popularity, relevance, trustworthiness, and authority. You can improve search engine rankings through other reputable places on the internet, such as sites, pages, people, social media, etc.
Creating popularity, relevance, trustworthiness, and authority
On-page SEO is doing everything you can to make your site awesome. You have a great looking and functioning mobile-friendly site, you’re writing great content and have a solid site structure. You’re off to a great start.
Off-page SEO, on the other hand, is focused around making your site an authority online so Google search engines rank you higher.
One great aspect of writing quality content is ranking higher in Google’s search engines. Getting relevant sites to link to your content is going to increase your chances of increasing your ranking. As important higher rankings are, you want to make sure that you’re creating trust and a sense of authority with your visitors.
A great way of building trust with your visitors is with reviews, which can be found off your site. Reviews affect your rankings, which is why you want to make sure you have plenty of 5-star reviews on as many third-party review sites as possible. Popular ones are Facebook, Yelp, and Google.
Before we dive too deep into off-page SEO, let’s go over why it’s a must!
Why is off-page SEO Important?
Off-page SEO is tremendously valuable as it tells Google and other search engines that your website is more important than others on the web. The majority of any company that knows what they’re doing with SEO will have their on-page SEO fully optimized. Off-page SEO, on the other hand, is much more difficult. Think of it as a tie-breaker for websites so search engines know the best site to rank on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Although we don’t know the lengths of the full algorithm Google uses to rank, Search Engine Ranking Factors study show that off-site SEO related factors likely carry more than 50% of the ranking factor.
Links and Off-page SEO
One of the most important aspects of off-page SEO is building backlinks. Google and other search engines use backlinks to indicate the quality of the linked content. A site with many high-value backlinks will usually rank much better than the same site with fewer backlinks.
There are three main types of links that can be used:
Natural links are given without any action being done on the owners part. Once a site has authority, other sites will want to link their content and pages to yours. Example: Entrepreneur.com is writing an article about an entrepreneur and they reference your company in their article backlinking it to your site.
Self-created links are created by the site owner when adding backlink from sites like an online directory, forum, blog comments, press release, etc. Just make sure you stay away from black hat SEO techniques.
Manual links are acquired through planned link-building initiatives. This can be done through many outlets. One major one is content syndication.
Links that have the most value are the ones that Google and other search engines will be ranking the highest. There are quite a few variables that define “value” to Google. Some of those are:
The authority of the linking site
The relevance of the linking site’s topic to the topic of the site that created the link
The “freshness” of the link
The number of other links on the linking page
The trustworthiness of the linking site
Non-link Off-page SEO
Links are by far the most popular term to talk about when discussing off-site SEO, but there’s much more that goes into off-page SEO. Nearly every activity that happens off your website is considered off-site SEO.
Other forms of off-site SEO are:
Social Media
Social media by itself is not essential for ranking high in search engines. It does assist with your rankings and more importantly, allows your visitors and customers to connect with you and your content. Your social media popularity will add to your brand’s credibility and trust factor, more so than your off-page SEO.
Social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, and other various forms of social media, help to get your content out there. This can then lead to other sites wanting to link to your site if you have authority in your space.
NAP Citations
NAP citations are online mentions of your business and the contact information (Name, Address, Phone).
All local businesses should be utilizing local listings. According to Moz, citations are one of the top 10 local off-page ranking factors. This is a great way to get into Google’s “3-pack.”
Brand Mentions
There are linked and unlinked brand mentions, which Google talks about in one of its patents. Google started to notice that many brands get mentioned without ever receiving links. They thought that brands who receive unlinked brand mentions should also be added to Google’s ranking algorithm, just like linked brand mentions would. You’d still want to prefer linked versus unlinked but both are now taken into account for ranking.
A couple of good options for linked brand mentions are:
Be on a popular podcast
Write guest posts for other sites
Launch a blogger outreach campaign
Press releases
Influencer marketing
Google My Business
Google My Business (GMB) is a free business profile from Google and essential to your local SEO strategy. Just creating a Google My Business profile won’t be enough. You will need to continuously optimize your Google My Business profile as it is the most important ranking factor to rank in the Google “3-pack” and the fourth most important factor for regular local organic search results.
If you’re a local business, this is an absolute must for you.
Reviews
Reviews are an incredibly important factor for ranking in Google’s “3-pack,” as well as ranking for local organic search results. The most positive and genuine reviews you have on your Google My Business profile will not only make you rank higher but add trust and comfort when visitors are researching your business.
Grow Your Business With SEO
If you’d like help auditing how good or bad your off-page SEO is, you can use our FREE SEO Audit resource.
You might have heard the term SEO but a lot of you want to know, “What is on-page SEO?” On-page SEO is the practice of individual webpages in order to rank higher in search engines, earning more relevant traffic. On-page refers to the content and HTML source code of a webpage that can be optimized, versus off-page SEO, which refers to links and other external signals.
One of the biggest factors that Google makes as it becomes more sophisticated is relevance. How relevant is your page or content to the search query? Google doesn’t want to give its user a bad experience by showing a page that has nothing to do with what they were wanting.
Think of it like you’re at a restaurant (Google), you order a hamburger (search for local hamburger restaurant) and the server (search engine) delivers a taco (local taco restaurant). Tacos are still delicious but it’s not what you ordered. Get the point…
With how fastpaced the world operates today, it takes a user about 50 milliseconds (ms) to form an opinion of your website. Even scarier is the average of 6-8 seconds before a visitor leaves your website. The more relevant and interactive your website and content are, the more the visitor will engage with your site. It’s all about the visitor’s experience.
What You Need to Know about On-page SEO
There are more companies now than ever before. It seems like everyone is blitzing to either launch a new online business or carry expand their business to online sales. Google averages over 40,000 searches every second, which equates to 1.2 trillion searches worldwide per year.
What are you doing to optimize your online presence so your brand’s voice can be heard? It all starts with the basics. You can’t plop your brand-new dream house on a piece of land without drafting the blueprint and then building the foundation. On-page SEO is the foundation for your SEO campaign. On-page enhancements will provide peak performance to your website which will result in greater visibility to your target audience.
Over the years, Google SEO has changed quite a bit. We’re currently working with ranking algorithms that include Hummingbird, Panda, Rankbrain and semantic importance within the page.
Meta Tags
One of the most important aspects of your on-page SEO is meta tags. Meta tags are snippets of text that describe a page’s content to search engines and crawlers.
Meta tags provide more relevance syncing between your content and a search query searching for similar content. You will get higher rankings if the relevance of your meta tag matches the user’s satisfaction.
Title Tags
The most important meta tag we’ll be discussing is your title tags. These tags have a drastic impact on your search rankings and are visible to the average user searching Google. The words will appear at the top of each tab in your browser for both organic results and paid ads.
If you’re working inside of WordPress, we highly recommend the Yoast SEO plugin. The SEO plugin allows you to create a custom title tag within each page very easily. Make sure to keep your title tags descriptive and short.
Think of this as you standing outside next to your competitors with billboards in your hands. What would yours say about your webpage versus your competition? Make sure to add in your relevant keywords and location if you’re a local business.
Meta Descriptions
Search engines determine the page’s topic and the audience that will find value through your meta description. More importantly, the meta descriptions explain what users will find on the page.
When writing meta descriptions, keep in mind quality is still king (or queen). A very well written meta description can generate higher rankings in the search results, which will create a higher click-through rate for the user.
We recommend keeping your description between 165 and 175 characters long.
Add in your brand’s name, a keyword or two and what users will find on the page. This could be the first interaction visitors will have with your brand. Make it a great experience.
Heading Tags
Heading tags are a necessity for any success with on-page SEO. Your landing pages and blog pages should include multiple heading tags, ranging from the H1 to the H6. The most important heading tag is the H1.
The H1 heading is usually the page title or name of the page or post. On a category page, your H1 would be the name of that category. On a product page, your H1 would be the name of that product.
As you write your content, you can also use the H2 and H3 headings to introduce different sections of your page or content. An H2 heading is like a chapter in a book. The section you’re reading now is an H3 heading since it’s a sub-section of a chapter (H2).
It’s extremely rare for most content to get ‘deep’ enough to need the use of H4 tags and beyond unless you’re writing extremely long or really technical content.
Authoritative Content Importance
As we mentioned earlier in this blog, Google is looking to match its user to relevant content to provide a great experience to its user. Your content should clearly explain what you’re offering or what the page or post is about.
The internet is now more cluttered than ever, which is having Google constantly updating their algorithms.
You have to make sure you’re taking the time to write quality content that your target audience finds useful otherwise you’re being drowned out in the noise. You need to stand out from the competition with quality content. Content will always be king (or queen).
SEO and content creation do a lot of overlapping and they’re both needed to create an industry-dominating SEO campaign. After all, they compliment each other.
When creating content, don’t just write to write. You need to write being “the authority” in your field. You should relate to your readers so they feel safe and comfortable with you before ever making a decision to spend money on your products or services.
You want to focus on providing tons of value to them before ever swooping in for the sale. They can go to a used car lot for that type of experience.
If you want to improve your on-page SEO and increase your organic traffic, content must relate to a user and either provide value or offer a solution to their problem.
Internal Links and External Links
Links are detrimental to the success of your overall SEO. Earning high-quality links from authoritative domains will strengthen your SEO by a long shot. We’ll go into more detail when we talk about off-page SEO.
Internal links throughout your site and blogs will deliver a better user experience for your visitors and will also enhance your SEO.
Internal linking to other pages of your site will strengthen the keywords and have Google determine where to rank a particular keyword. The crawlability of your site will improve drastically when you internally link your pages, products, categories, and blogs. This will result in Google showing the site’s most important pages.
When you add a new link to your homepage, it becomes easier for Google to see that you’ve updated your site with new content instead of crawling the entire site again.
Internal links also provide a higher chance of your visitors to stay on your website longer. Google takes notice when there is more engagement across your site and relevant pages.
When doing internal links to other pages on your website, we recommend staying between 4-6 links. You want to make sure that these links open in the same tab so the user can see the flow.
When doing internal links to external websites, we recommend staying between 2-5 links. When these links go to external websites, you want to make sure they open up in a new tab so the user doesn’t leave your site.
When doing internal links, make sure you’re using anchor text that relates to the URL that it’s pointing to so you don’t get penalized by Google.
Optimize Your Images for SEO
When choosing what images to use with your site page or post, make sure they are unique and page relevant. Users are much more likely to react to an image before they begin reading a post.
With how popular Instagram has grown to be, our society is trained to look at images first.
Same as social media, when using images on your site, make sure you’re using the highest quality possible. Google and other search engines prefer higher resolution images.
You always want to keep page speed in the back of your mind when adding in images. Scale down your images below a 150KB file size to ensure that it doesn’t affect your website speed in a negative way.
When adding in an image, you want to make sure that you always add in the image alt-text. An optimized alt-text gives Google another clue on what your page is about. The alt tag should be used to describe what the image is about so it’s visible by Google’s crawlers.
Optimize Page Speed for Google
As we mentioned at the beginning of this blog post, it takes a user about 50 milliseconds (ms) to form an opinion of your website. Speed is in 2019 and SEO is no different. If your website loads slow or a page doesn’t load right away, a user will find a website that will.
Nearly all mobile users will leave if a site doesn’t load within the first 3 seconds. Google is even ranking websites higher that load faster.
As time goes on, if you’re not making constant updates to your website, it will start to get slower with time. Below are some tips on how to speed up your website:
Minimize HTTP requests
Minify and combine files
Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network)
Use WP engine for your web hosting
Use a caching plugin
Add expires headers to leverage browser caching
Compress your images
Clean up your database
Compress your website with gzip
Fix all broken links
Reducing your redirects
Minify your CSS and JS files
Turn off all plugins you don’t use
Minimize round trip times (RTTs)
Put CSS at the top and JS at the bottom
If this is too technical, you can always get a FREE SEO Audit by our team to see what needs to be done to speed up your site.
Mobile Responsive
In 2019, this seems like a given but you’d be surprised that many businesses don’t have 100% mobile optimized websites. For your website to be found relevant and your on-page SEO to make an impact, your website needs to be mobile-friendly and responsive.
A mobile-friendly website will give the user the same experience of your site no matter what device they’re using. At AVINTIV, we custom develop our sites for all of the latest devices and web browsers to just ensure our clients are always giving their customers a great experience.
Google mentioned that starting July 1, 2019, mobile-first indexing is enabled by default for all new websites (new to the web or previously unknown to Google Search). Google is slowly notifying existing site owners that their site is having issues being seen.
As Google stated, “Mobile-first indexing means Google predominantly uses the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking. Historically, the index primarily used the desktop version of a page’s content when evaluating the relevance of a page to a user’s query. Since the majority of users now access Google Search with a mobile device, Googlebot primarily crawls and indexes pages with the smartphone agent going forward.”
If you’d like assessing how your On-page SEO is, use our FREE SEO Audit.
Search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t a marketing buzz phrase. It’s the strategy required to connect your brand’s online presence with your intended audience, and it drives your site’s design choices as well as its content development.
There is no off-the-shelf solution to SEO; your strategy must adapt to your industry, market segments, and brand. Here’s what you need to know to put search engine optimization into context.
The big-picture approach to SEO
All the elements of effective website design appeal to user experience (UX), user interface (UI), and search engine rankings metrics—the latter of which determines where your site appears on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Google’s goal is serving its users with the most useful, user-friendly content. Your goal is convincing Google that your site delivers while keeping that promise to your visitors.
It’s not enough to achieve high rankings if you’re attracting the wrong traffic. Google also takes into account how much time your visitors spend on your page (“dwell time”) and how often other sites link to your content as a source. Keywords and content must speak directly to your intended audience, and website design should be intuitive for your visitors.
How site architecture affects SEO
The website interface is dictated by server quality, aesthetics, and interactive design. Start-up businesses often begin in-house with template-based websites on shared hosting services, or with all-inclusive plug-and-play platforms. Very quickly they find themselves limited by server performance, content management, and potential for custom coding.
Fast loading times
Attention spans are short, especially among younger audiences who demand efficiency, quality, and integrity from their information sources. Sites that take too long to load have higher bounce rates and lower dwell times. Google takes into account load speeds, and so should you if you want to keep your visitors engaged. Servers, site design, media management practices all contribute to site speed.
Responsive design
All websites should translate seamlessly to whichever mobile device or platform the visitor is using. There is no excuse for a potential customer to have to scroll left to right to view the content on your sight (akin to a “keyhole” view) or click a “mobile version” link. Responsive content allows the user to scroll vertically, clearly read the text, and view scaled-down graphics and images with ease. Navigation menus also adapt to smaller formats on responsive websites. Truly “responsive” site designs communicate their status to Google crawlers, increasing their ranking potential.
Searches from mobile devices have surpassed those made on desktop and laptop computers, and the gap will continue to increase.
Ease of navigation
Visitors want to find the information they’re seeking without having to jump through hoops. Simplified navigation menus, clear page titles, and accurate, non-sensationalized blog headlines help shape your credibility with your visitors.
Metadata
The content contained in site title tags, URLs, and image metadata reinforces your site’s claim to its target keywords while making it easier for crawlers to interpret and categorize your website content. Less-experienced SEO managers often overlook these crucial steps.
Why quality content is important for SEO success
“Isn’t content just the medium for adding keywords?” It’s a common question and one that perfectly underlines the problems associated with internet SEO “gurus” targeting non-professional webmasters. Our philosophy is this: What’s the point of using the right keywords if your content doesn’t build relationships with your audience?
Good content, which may be written copy, infographics, video, or images, achieves the following:
Validates your claim to keywords by educating visitors on keyword-relevant topics
Engages your audience, increasing dwell-time and return visits
Establishes you as an industry authority, encouraging SEO-boosting backlinks and name mentions
Pulls your prospects through the buying cycle, cementing brand trust along the journey
Encourages visitors to fill out contact forms and newsletter forms in exchange for even more useful information
Educates your audience, empowering them to feel confident when they’re ready to convert
Effective, engaging content, especially when it’s organized in topic-oriented clusters, appeals to both users and search engine algorithms. Create content for the user—not rankings—in mind, and you’ll achieve both goals with optimal success.
An outside-the-box agency doesn’t use off-the-shelf solutions
Search engine optimization success requires top-to-bottom best practice implementation. There’s no single plug-in, tutorial, or template to fix existing problems, nor is there a one-size-fits-all manual for launching a new, perfectly-optimized website. But there is a way to get on the right track. Get a free SEO audit from Avintiv, and learn how you can increase your digital marketing ROI through targeted lead generation, sleek and efficient site design, and conversion-focused content.
Hi, I’m Jon Boles. I’m the Founder & CEO at Avintiv Media. I launched Avintiv Media in late 2016 and it has been a wild ride since.
I’m excited to share with you a project that has been very dear to our hearts for over 6 months now. The rebranding and identity of Avintiv Media.
Why did we rebrand?
We’ve spent the last 3 years assisting some of the most amazing clients to break through some of the most competitive industries, becoming industry dominators. We launched in late 2016 as a very small boutique agency and although we still have a boutique marketing agency feel, a number of our clients went from David and turned into Goliath. We aren’t working with many small businesses or sole entrepreneurs anymore.
With that said, our primary reasons to do a full rebrand were:
We needed to reposition our agency.
Our resources and in-house capabilities are far more advanced than when we first launched.
We wanted to deliver an entirely new experience to not only paying clients but every single person that interacts or engages with our brand. Our rebranding is very refreshing, exciting, edgy and energetic – it’s full of life…
It was time for us to showcase our real talents on our own brand since we’ve only focused on our clients for the last 3 years.
1 | Repositioning our agency
Since our launch in late 2016, we have worked with many clients in many different industries. We’ve learned that our sweet spot are clients that have been in business for over 2 years and are doing $1,000,000 – $150,000,000 in gross revenue. We knew that we needed to be the authority in our 7-9 figure niche industries that we service clients in. It wasn’t even a question if rebranding was needed.
2 | Our resources are far more advanced
Like any company that launches without venture-backed money; you start small with a younger team. As time goes on, as a business owner, you learn and evolve noticing that things can be done quicker, better, higher-quality, etc. Our team has evolved about 4 times since 2016 and it’s safe to say that we have the most amazing in-house team of rockstars. In over 10 years of being a seasoned entrepreneur, I’ve personally never worked with such talented people in my life and that’s not me being biased. The capabilities and resources we have now are light years ahead of where we were when we first launched. It just seemed like the right time to use that to our advantage.
3 | Delivering a better experience
Our motto at Avintiv Media is, “how you do anything is how you do everything.” How could we keep building award-winning brands that are destroying their competition but neglect our own brand? We treated ourselves like we were a client and put our team through the entire process of building a brand. Every aspect of the new Avintiv Media is built to deliver a remarkable experience that is unmatched in the agency world!
4 | It was time to showcase our talent
If you’re an agency owner, I know you can relate to putting your clients above all else. Even if that means your own marketing, branding, and goals have to be put on hold. If you don’t own an agency, let me walk you through a day-in-the-life quickly. When you own a digital marketing agency that’s growing very drastically, you tend to put all of those needs before the needs of the agency. If the agency is growing and the systems and processes are working, clients are getting amazing results, then why change things up right? As an agency owner, it sometimes feels like you own 30 companies because, at Avintiv Media, we treat our clients as if we owned the company. Everything is on the line with everything that we do. With that amount of pressure, it doesn’t leave much time to make your brand pretty or special when you’re doing that for so many other businesses each week. It was time that Avintiv Media took a step back and truly showed the talents of who we have working at our agency and what we’re capable of.
The Process
This was the fun part of the process. We actually treated ourselves as if we were a client and went through every step that we do with clients. We audited the experience, the pros, the cons, and how we would want to be treated. We started with a full-day brand workshop with all key stakeholders at Avintiv Media which translated into a 10+ page brand identity and positioning guide.
Our creative team then went into the logo design stage. After days of sketches, drafts, crumpling papers, going to the whiteboard – we finally found a logo/branding that could evolve into a $100 million brand. An iconic brand. Not just a marketing agency.
Once the logo and other assets were chosen, we went into what colors we wanted to use to show where Avintiv Media was headed. We wanted to use very popular but futuristic colors that won’t be going out of style any time soon.
I could go on and on but let’s take a look…
The Avintiv Media logo
Before we introduce our new branding and direction, we wanted to showcase the branding that got us started. Below is the logo that brought this 10-year dream and idea in the clouds to life. It’s the logo that shared many laughs and many cries. Lots of projects were developed under this logo. It’s the original logo that won so many amazing clients over and let them get better sleep at night as we gave them their life back.
So… Before we shed the old, we wanted to reflect on what got us to where we are and say THANK YOU to every team member, past team member, clients, fans, followers, and anyone else that has ever believed in us. Every day at work is a dream come true as we change so many people’s lives for the better.
Introducing our new Avintiv Media logo
We’re beyond thrilled to share with you our new logo and identity and make even more memories under it.
We wanted to create a more bold, confident, and edgy logo and identity. Avintiv Media prides itself on offering customized award-winning solutions for our clients, not cookie-cutter, template, or bandaid style solutions. Quality is at the forefront of everything that we do not only with our client’s brand but also inside our agency. We feel that our new logo and identity captures that perfectly.
With our new brand direction, we wanted to showcase a brand that can be seen as an iconic brand, not just another typical marketing agency. Avintiv Media is heading in the direction of working with some of the largest brands in the world and we needed an iconic identity to fit the part over the next 10 years.
Our iconography
We wanted to ensure our iconography had brand recognition and a similar look and feel. To achieve this we sprinkled in Avintiv’s gradient element into every icon.
We used familiar industry iconography to attach to each service we offer so that users do not have to overthink our iconography.
Each icon holds the same visual weight – we do not want one icon to outshine the other when interacting on a page together.
Our new font
We wanted our new font to be fresh with clean sans serif elements that create clean forms and interesting negative space. We also wanted a face with an extensive collection of weights. We think Nexa is a great compliment to our logotype and strategic brand direction.
Our color palette
Our color palette is bright, bold, and in your face. We use gradients as a graphic and color element to evoke emotion and positivity. Our secondary color palette is used for internal branding of our services and to help clients using multiple services to be able to differentiate all client-facing materials without having to search for a number on an invoice.
Welcome to the all-new Avintiv Media
You’ll notice all of the changes from today on. Currently, our website is the biggest change you should notice if you’re not a current client of ours. You’ll start to notice entirely different marketing and the way we’re positioning ourselves.
This is just the beginning for Avintiv Media. We’re so excited for all of you that are sharing this amazing journey with all of us. We have some very big projects we’re working on with major brands that we cannot wait to share with all of you.
Thank you for your support and for being apart of our journey and for letting us be apart of yours.
“How you do anything is how you do everything” is our mantra at AVINTIV. Our work ethic in creating a wide range of award-winning web design and development services has provided positive digital experiences for brands. As one of the top web designers in Phoenix, we continue to receive accolades for our hard work. Most recently, we are thrilled to share that Clutch has featured us in their 2019 report among the leading B2B companies in Arizona, specifically within the creative and design category. We are beyond grateful to have won the Top Creative & Design Agency award.
Clutch is an independent platform that collects objective feedback from clients about each company registered on the site. Analysts at the ratings and reviews firm conduct in-depth interviews with customers about the quality of their interaction with each Clutch-registered company. Based on the data gathered, they formulate honest ratings of all the firms for prospective clients to view.
We’ve been able to maintain a 5-star rating and consistently rank on the platform based on the reviews provided by our clients to Clutch analysts. One project in particular that we did with 11th Hour Matchmaking, a dating service for Scottsdale and Phoenix locals, reflects our high rating and awards.
Rebecca Fowler, CEO & Owner of 11th Hour Matchmaking, reached out to AVINTIV to help build her brand, which consisted of a brand workshop, business plan, branding, custom-built website, and social media management. From the discovery process and market research to now managing social media and the website, AVINTIV was able to help 11th hour become a success. “Positive user feedback responded to an impressive social media presence and functional website,” Fowler stated. “The results reflect the team’s ability to be energized and motivational while executing timely deliveries in a professional manner.”
Beyond the generous reviews that can be found on our Clutch profile, our success extends to the firm’s sister sites: Visual Objects and The Manifest. Visual Objects publishes portfolios of top agencies, like us, and other creatives to share their work with prospective clients. Likewise, The Manifest gives a brief description of our services as well as our notable projects and clients. We’re proud to say they have listed us among the leading digital marketing agencies.
It is unquestionably an honor to be named one of the best in the industry and receive the Top Creative & Design Agency award. Thanks to Clutch for including us in their rankings; we genuinely appreciate the positive feedback. More importantly, thank you to our clients — we are looking forward to giving more entrepreneurs their lives back.
If you’d like to inquire about how we can develop your dream website, you can inquire on our contact page.
We’ve been able to maintain a 5-star rating and consistently rank on the platform based on the reviews provided by our clients to Clutch analysts. One project in particular that we did with 11th Hour Matchmaking, a dating service for Scottsdale and Phoenix locals, reflects our high rating and awards.