SEO: What It Is, and Why It’s Essential For Your Business

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

2019 Top SEO Agency, Scottsdale, Phoenix

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. 

AVINTIV Media Metadata Example

 

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.

Introducing Avintiv Media’s New Branding

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:

  1. We needed to reposition our agency.
  2. Our resources and in-house capabilities are far more advanced than when we first launched.
  3. 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…
  4. 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.

AVINTIV Wins Top Creative & Design Agency in Arizona Award

“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.

Avintiv Media Wins Best Web Designers in Tempe by Three Best Rated

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We are extremely humbled to receive the Best Web Designers in Tempe award by Three Best Rated for the past 3 years running. It’s an honor being recognized among some of the top web design agencies throughout Arizona.

Three Best Rated does a phenomenal job looking out for small business owners who are looking to get quality work done. You deserve only the best in life. Three Best Rated® was created with the simple goal of finding the top 3 local businesses, professionals, restaurants, health care providers, and everything in-between, in any city. 

Every business is meticulously handpicked by their employees. They check the business’s reputation, history, complaints, ratings, proximity, satisfaction, trust, cost, general excellence, reviews, and more, using their 50-Point Inspection. They only display businesses that are verified by their employees. Other places will call this “hard work” and “unnecessary”. They call it “due diligence” and “the right thing to do”. Their website is updated on a regular basis for quality and the latest business information.

If you haven’t met us either yet, here’s a quick intro into who we are.

“Avintiv Media is an award-winning boutique agency in Scottsdale, AZ that solves problems for its high-end clients, turning them into industry dominators. We offer award-winning brandingweb design, and SEO, services, yes, but we’re much more than that…we’re an agency filled with hustlers, visionaries, creators, designers, and marketers that simply do one thing: GET THE JOB DONE RIGHT THE FIRST TIME! Quality is at the core that fuels our agency.

We aren’t the biggest guys nor are we the little guys anymore.

We certainly aren’t cheap but our quality is unmatched which is why we’ve been blessed to work with brands like Scottsdale Ferrari, Scottsdale Maserati, Scottsdale Lamborghini, Penske Automotive, 3Win Corp and so many more.

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 your brand but inside our agency.”

It is unquestionably an honor to be named as the Best Web Designers in Tempe. Thank you to Three Best Rated for including us in their rankings, we genuinely appreciate the positive feedback. More importantly, thank you to our clients — we are looking forward to turning more clients into industry dominators.

If you’d like to work with Avintiv Media, you can request a discovery call on our contact page.

Top Arizona Web Designer Awarded to Avintiv Media

With the world’s modern technological advancements, digital marketing is vital to business success. We at Avintiv Media provide award-winning branding, web design, and coaching services, so you sell more. Our passion is ensuring that our clients utilize digital marketing to its fullest potential. We’re very honored to receive ‘Top Arizona Web Designer’ by clutch for the second year in a row.

We first joined Clutch, a B2B ratings and reviews platform based in Washington, D.C., to see how we compare to competitors in our industry. Clutch offers a database of information to prospective buyers that are searching for a business partner. They analyze companies in various industries based on certain qualifications: industry expertise, social media presence, and former client projects.

Now, we’re proud to announce that Clutch has included us in their latest press release as one of the best web designers in Phoenix.

What we’re most proud of, though, is our former client reviews. Clutch conducted telephone interviews with our former clients to hear how our work has served them. The positive feedback so far speaks for itself:

“I highly recommend them. They offer a wide range of services and provide great value.” – CEO, 11th Hour Matchmaking

“The whole team is very friendly, knowledgeable, and definitely on top of their work.” – Owner, Black Diamond Supplements

Read the full reviews on our Clutch profile. We want to make our process simple and effective for each of our clients’ needs, so we’re glad to hear our process has been delivering results.

Clutch has two sister websites, The Manifest and Visual Objects, and we’ve achieved positions on both of them. The Manifest, where we list as one of the top web designers in Phoenix, is a collection of industry reports, how-to lists, and agency rankings. Visual Objects, where we place as one of the top web design companies, is a visual compilation of past projects for companies of diverse industries.

We’re grateful to our friends at Clutch for these recognitions, to our former clients for their reviews, and to all who have helped our company. As our company continues to expand, we hope to continue providing superior client service, ascending these rankings until we reach the summit of our industry.

If you’d like to inquire about how we can develop your dream website, you can inquire on our contact page.

Our CEO, Jon Boles, Top Entrepreneur and Visionary by Entrepreneur.com

In August 2018, Entrepreneur.com released a press release naming the top entrepreneur and visionary. They said, “Entrepreneurs under 40 are a special group; they have achieved significant standing at a young age, while setting the “entrepreneurial standard” for those striving for independent success.

Regardless of their specific age, or the vertical they work in, these entrepreneurs are successful in ways we cannot always understand. They share similar characteristics, and the ability to put their goals — and their businesses, first.

On a daily basis, they are changing the very definition of success. While entrepreneurship isn’t for everyone; for the people in this article, it is the very cornerstone of their existence.”

Jon Boles is a visionary and serial entrepreneur having launched 8 successful brands of his own and exited from one in 2018. Over the past decade alone, Jon has helped build and consult for over 140 brands across the country, grossing myriad millions of dollars for his clients along the way.

Top Entrepreneur, Top Visionary, Jon Boles, CEO, Entrepreneur.com, Avintiv Media, Feature, Press

With the recent cover of Scottsdale health, Jon talked about his latest endeavor,  Avintiv Media, which has won 8-awards in under one year and is being recognized as one of the fastest growing marketing agencies in Phoenix, AZ. Avintiv Media’s clients range from Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini, a handful of celebrity fitness clients, and many more.

Jon’s passion is being a “High Performance Business Coach” under Avintiv Media where he coaches 30 premium clients around the country to increase their performance in their personal and business life.”

Avintiv Media Wins Top Digital Marketing Agency in Phoenix for 2017, 2018, and 2019 by Up City

Top Digital Agency, Avintiv Media, Top Digital Marketing Agency, Best Marketing Agency Scottsdale, Best Marketing Agency Phoenix

We are extremely humbled to receive the Top Digital Marketing Agency in Phoenix award by Up City for the past 3 years running. It’s an honor being recognized among some of the top agencies throughout Arizona.

UpCity’s Top Local Agency marketplace is a resource designed to connect small and medium-sized local businesses with high-quality digital marketing service providers in their local area, allowing business owners to get the services they need quickly, from a service provider they can trust. The UpCity team independently reviews agencies across North America to determine the best service providers in each local market, ensuring that no matter where you are, great digital marketing services are never more than a click away.

If you haven’t met us either yet, here’s a quick intro into who we are.

“Avintiv Media is an award-winning boutique agency in Scottsdale, AZ that solves problems for its high-end clients, turning them into industry dominators. We offer award-winning brandingweb designand SEO, services, yes, but we’re much more than that…we’re an agency filled with hustlers, visionaries, creators, designers, and marketers that simply do one thing: GET THE JOB DONE RIGHT THE FIRST TIME! Quality is at the core that fuels our agency.

We aren’t the biggest guys nor are we the little guys anymore.

We certainly aren’t cheap but our quality is unmatched which is why we’ve been blessed to work with brands like Scottsdale Ferrari, Scottsdale Maserati, Scottsdale Lamborghini, Penske Automotive, 3Win Corp and so many more.

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 your brand but inside our agency.”

It is unquestionably an honor to be named as the Top Digital Marketing Agency 2017-2019 by Up City. Thank you to Up City for including us in their rankings, we genuinely appreciate the positive feedback. More importantly, thank you to our clients — we are looking forward to turning more clients into industry dominators.

If you’d like to work with Avintiv Media, you can request a discovery call on our contact page.

Avintiv Media Wins Top Web Design Agency in the United States for 2018

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“How you do anything is how you do everything” is our mantra at Avintiv Media. Our work ethic in creating a wide range of award-winning web design and development services has provided positive digital experiences for major brands across the country. As one of the top web designers in the United States, we continue to receive accolades for our hard work. 

Most recently, we are thrilled to share that Clutch has featured us in their press release among other great web design agencies across the country.

At Avintiv Media, It’s our mission to not only develop an industry-disrupting website that has our client’s competition gawking but to give our clients an amazing experience in the process.

Customer experience is king and creating a custom online experience lets the world know who you are and what you stand for. It will act as a playground for your customers to interact, learn, and grow with your brand and its products and services.

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 matchmaking service for Scottsdale and Phoenix locals, reflects our high-rating and awards.

Brian, CEO & Owner of Black Diamond Supplements, needed branding, web design, social media, and marketing services.  Working with Brian over the last two years, we have been able to rebuild his entire business from a digital standpoint. “Return on investments in the advertisements has tripled, and overall website performance has improved. Avintiv Media is dedicated and organized. The team is friendly and knowledgeable, making collaboration easy. ”

It is unquestionably an honor to be named as one of the best web design agencies in the United States. 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 turning more clients into industry dominators.

If you’d like to work with Avintiv Media, you can request a discovery call on our contact page.

Why Your HTTP Website is ‘Not Secure’ Starting July 2018

Most of us have heard the rumors that websites that stick with HTTP and don’t adopt HTTPS will be marked “not secure” come July 2018. We first hard about this through a blog post published back in February by Chrome Security Product Manager Emily Schechter.

Over the past several years, Google has moved toward a more secure web and user experience and have been strong advocates for sites that adopt HTTPS encryption.

What is HTTPS Encryption

You may be asking yourself, “What is HTTPS encryption?” According to Instant SSL by Camodo, “Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is the secure version of HTTP, the protocol over which data is sent between your browser and the website that you are connected to. The ‘S’ at the end of HTTPS stands for ‘Secure’. It means all communications between your browser and the website are encrypted. HTTPS is often used to protect highly confidential online transactions like online banking and online shopping order forms.

Web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome also display a padlock icon in the address bar to visually indicate that a HTTPS connection is in effect.”

Instant SSL by Comodo also shares, “When you request a HTTPS connection to a webpage, the website will initially send its SSL certificate to your browser. This certificate contains the public key needed to begin the secure session. Based on this initial exchange, your browser and the website then initiate the ‘SSL handshake’. The SSL handshake involves the generation of shared secrets to establish a uniquely secure connection between yourself and the website.

When a trusted SSL Digital Certificate is used during a HTTPS connection, users will see a padlock icon in the browser address bar. When an Extended Validation Certificate is installed on a web site, the address bar will turn green.”

What Does This Mean for You?

What does this mean for your business? Beginning in July 2018, as Google Chrome launches Chrome 68, Chrome will mark all HTTP sites as “not secure.” This means that your website will not be shown on Chrome which now owns 58.4% market share. That means that you could potentially lose 58.4% of your traffic. A good way to find out that exact number is by going to your Google Analytics reporting and figure out how much of your traffic is coming from Chrome. Otherwise you can use the same amount of time in getting your website an SSL certification. If you need help with this, make an inquiry on our contact page and we’d be happy to assist you.