Categories
Web Design

8 Web Design Considerations for Nashville Websites

Nashville is unique. That’s why it’s become not only a popular place to live, but also a frequent vacation destination. We have a lot to offer and it’s no longer a secret. And with this upward trend of popularity comes an increasingly competitive economic market.

Unique Nashville Business and the need for Local Websites
Nashville Local Businesses

This means you need to make use of every opportunity to set yourself apart. And there’s no bigger tool to bring attention to your business than your website. This is your online headquarters. It is how many potential customers will first learn about your goods and services.

So how do you tailor your web design to Nashville? What systems can you put in place to bring attention to your website. What can be done to make the most out of these visits once they occur?

Here’s 8 Things you need to Consider when designing a Nashville website:

  1. What is on Your Competitors’ Websites
  2. Local Stories on Local Websites
  3. Web Design Trends
  4. Location Pages for Your Website
  5. Accurate Contact Information within Your Website
  6. Link Social Media Accounts from the Website
  7. Implement Internet Marketing into Your Website

1. What is on Your Competitors’ Websites

There’s a good chance you have others in your industry in the Nashville area. Do some market research by visiting their websites. Look for similarities and differences between them. Make note of what held your attention, what you found confusing, and what you would have liked to see if you were a potential customer.

Use this information to put together a list of wants and needs from your web design. The goal is to view your website from the point of view of someone learning about your company. What tools would you like to have at your disposal? What information would you like to have up front?

2. Local Stories on Local Websites

Keep in touch with local events and reference them on your website when possible. This could be done either through a blog/news section, or banners that can be updated on top of your homepage. For instance, many websites currently have a COVID-19 banner letting their visitors know how they are addressing the pandemic.

Another example could be an HVAC company alerting people to new specials during the summer — or a trucking company addressing shortages in local supplies. Inserting yourself into local stories increases your ties to the area.

3. Web Design Trends

There are always going to be trends in music, books, movies, and television. There will also be trends when it comes to web design. It’s very easy to spot a website that was built ten years ago. Websites that look out of date will tell your visitor that you aren’t on top of changes within the industry.

A fresh-looking and current website invites the visitor to dig deeper into your content. It intrigues them because it’s more interesting and more attractive.

4. Location Pages for Your Website

Location pages help directly address your community. And if you have multiple locations, this helps call out that fact. Addressing each location individually — even if there’s only one — will provide SEO benefits as well as improve the experience of your local visitors. 

This is your chance to directly address the community. It’s also a chance to include relevant keywords and headers to better help search engines find your page when someone makes a relevant search query.

5. Accurate Contact Information within Your Website

Including accurate contact information is essential to effective Nashville web design. This includes your email address, physical address, and telephone number. These need to be included not only on a dedicated contact page, but also on the footer of each webpage.

Updated and consistent contact information is essential to help search engines find your website, and customers find your business. You still need to include this information even if you don’t have a physical location. It grounds you in Nashville and shows your visitors that you are local.

6. Link Social Media Accounts from the Website

Your business should have a presence on social media. This is where a large portion of people in Nashville find their information. You’re missing out if you’re not participating in this free avenue to connect with potential customers.

You can link these accounts to your website in two directions. For instance, your Twitter feed can automatically update a sidebar in your website. Your website can also have links directly to your social media accounts. User engagement can be hugely beneficial and this is a great way to facilitate that.

7. Implement Internet Marketing into Your Website

Integrating the various forms of internet marketing into your Nashville web design gives you the best chance of connecting with your audience. Content creation, PPC advertising, social media advertising, and SEO target the people that are more likely to be interested in your product or service. 

Nashville web design can be set up to better support these tactics. Strategic content placement, inclusion of a blog section, and optimized images can assist your website in finding your customers. It also helps assist your customers to find you.

Categories
SEO

The Value of SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a means of getting your website’s content to rank higher in search results. There are a variety of methods to accomplish this. Employing SEO services can help your Nashville business become more visible to potential customers and hopefully lead to more conversions.

SEO is used by many companies, but not everyone. The question you have to ask yourself is why would you not make use of an effective tool when it’s readily available? All you’re doing is putting yourself at a disadvantage, especially if your direct competition is employing SEO services to help boost their content.

The main question that comes up is how does SEO services provide a ROI for my Nashville company?

Here is how SEO can provide value to your local business:

  • Increased Traffic
  • Strengthen Branding
  • Continuous & Ongoing
  • Value to Vistors
  • Increased Visibility
  • Increase in Sales

Let’s look a little deeper into how SEO can be valuable to you and your website.

Most Traffic Comes From Organic Search

Most people will find your website by going to a search engine and typing in a query. Your website’s performance has a lot to do with how well it connects with organic searches relating to your industry. And because this is an act performed by others on the internet, it can be easy to assume you don’t have a way to impact your results.

But that is wrong. SEO directly targets specific keywords. These keywords are what your customers are likely to search. And if you can perform well for these keywords, you stand a much better chance at appearing higher in the listed results.

SEO Strengthens Your Brand

Your company’s brand is a combination of many different factors. This includes your products, the tone of your public communications, how you interact with your customers, and more. In fact, everything your company does can either help or hinder your brand. Cohesive statements and actions will strengthen your brand identity in your customer’s mind.

SEO helps to further your brand identity by narrowing your focus. Recognizing the keywords relating to your industry and creating content based around them strengthens your theme. There are many different branches of most businesses and websites, but a centralized idea guides decisions and helps your customers understand your brand.

SEO Provides Ongoing Benefits

SEO can be implemented into many different areas of your website. This includes the text on all of your pages, the titles, and even the URLs. SEO can be used for additional content like blogs and news articles. And once those pieces of content are posted to your website, they factor into your overall search rankings while also ranking for keywords themselves.

There’s no time limit on search rankings. This is why you’ll frequently find articles from years earlier when performing searches of your own. Blogs, articles, and website copy continue to factor into search results for as long as they are posted on your website. So the more you make use of SEO services, the better your Nashville website will perform on search results.

Provides Immediate Value to Visitors

Blogs are a very popular means of attracting visitors to your website. SEO can make sure these articles attract readers. The idea behind this is that creating content based around your industry will bring in visitors that are already inclined to be interested in your services.

These blogs provide an immediate value to your customers. Quality content not only serves your customers by providing useful information, it also elevates your brand. Being seen as an authority in an industry based on useful information puts you in a good position to be their choice for services or products.

Increases Visibility to the Right People

Bounce rate refers to the habit of people finding your website and leaving without clicking to another page. This often happens when people don’t find the information they are looking for. Directing SEO toward the proper keywords will help your Nashville website to attract visitors that will actually be interested in your content.

SEO is about much more than simply manipulating the system to reach the top of any search query. You want to be at the top of the correct search query. Attracting people interested in your topic and in need of your service is the only way to turn these visits into actual sales.

Increases Sales

This is the ultimate goal of SEO and the reason many companies are utilizing SEO services. More visitors to your website means you have a higher likelihood at converting them into customers.

The internet is full of information. It’s estimated that there are currently 1.5 billion websites. It’s essential to make use of any available means of setting yourself apart from the pack. SEO services are an affordable and effective means of doing this.

Categories
Web Design

The Importance of Schema Markup for SEO

All websites are not created equal. There are many unseen factors that go into how your website shows up in search results. Strict attention to local SEO will help your rankings, but those who take an all-encompassing approach will be rewarded not only with higher rankings, but featured snippets.

Schema Markup is an important tool to help your Nashville business with your local SEO efforts. But what is it? And how does it help?

What Is It?

Microdata is a specification located within the content of web pages. Search engines extract and process this microdata and use it to provide stronger and more specialized search results. Schema Markup is a form of microdata. It adds what’s known as a “rich snippet” (which is basically an enhanced description) which helpsschema markup the page appear in relevant search results.

Schema was built back in 2011 through a collaboration between Google, Yahoo, Yandex, and Bing. Tools that help search engines return accurate search results helps everyone, so they worked together to provide better capabilities to achieve this.

There are a few different versions of Schema Markup codes:

  • JSON-LD (Javascript Object Notation-Linked Data): This is a method of structured markup that uses a system of name-value pairs. It is popular because of its ease of use.
  • RDFa: This method works with a variety of document types.
  • Microdata: This is the most common and easiest to use method

Contact NoSweatWeb for professional help with local SEO in Nashville!

What Can It Help?

There are a fairly wide variety of enhancements that can be made to a website through the use of Schema Markup. However, you need to be conscious of what enhancements will be useful for your particular industry. Otherwise you could spend a lot of time performing enhancements that won’t actually affect your search engine result rankings.

There should be a primary objective you are focused on completing. This will help dictate which markups you will implement and which ones you can skip. Read through the material on the Schema website for information on which enhancements will best benefit your website.

A few examples of possible enhancements include the addition of your address, upcoming events, or even images to your search result listings.

But this is where the specificity in relation to your industry comes in. You can dictate which of these possibilities can show up. For instance, the results for a web page including a recipe might want to include the recipe itself, calories, and website information.

Using Schema for Local SEO

One of the most useful results a business can get are the “near me” results. A person searching for your service without knowing local options might search for a keyword relating to your business with the addition of a tag relating to their particular location.

For instance, perhaps you’re visiting a new city and want to order some food. You search “pizza near me” and local results populate your screen. This is an advantageous list to be on.

Local businesses need to find the associated section of the Schema website which can be found here. You will find the applicable codes to help include your business’ name, address, phone number, and more.

This will create what’s known as a featured snippet for your company. These entries are very visible by search engine users and are a coveted position to hold. The addition of Schema Markups won’t guarantee your company to be at the top of these search results, but they will help your chances.

How to Implement It

The implementation of microdata can be daunting for those of us that don’t have experience with coding. It takes some work, but it can be done by just about anybody. And for those that aren’t feeling adventurous, the professionals at NoSweatWeb can help include the necessary tags to help your Nashville company improve your local SEO.

You will need a basic understanding of HTML processes and techniques. Tutorials for this can be found here.

You will also need the Schema library to find the appropriate codes for your industry.

Search through the library and locate the additions you would like to make to your search engine results. The results will give you the lines of code you will need to enter on your web page. Placeholder information will need to be replaced with your particular specifications. Simply swap these out, copy, and paste it into the lines of code for your website as dictated by the instructions.

Google provides a tool which tests the structured data of your website, which can be found here. This helps verify your work and find any errors in the codes.

Visit NoSweatWeb for help with any and all website needs!

Categories
Web Design

Why User Intent is Important in Web Design

No matter what your industry, there is a lot of website competition for potential clients. This is true both in the physical world as well as online. And when it comes to attracting potential customers on the internet, the search engine is king.

Websites jockeying for position with search engine optimization has been a contested point since search engines were first introduced. The ways in which a website could position themselves at the top of these results have changed over the years.

Gone are the days of peppering your website and copy with specific keywords without regard to the rest of the content surrounding them. Internet users are more savvy, as are the search engines that serve them.

And that’s the main focus — serving the searcher.

This is where user intent comes in. The term “user intent” refers to what a person using a search engine is looking to find with their query. What question do they need answered? What product are they looking for? The most effective means of search engine optimization is simply to provide helpful content.

How Does User Intent Affect My Website?

User intent is the main focus of a search engine. Therefore, search engines reward websites that most adequately address user intent. The goal of a website should be to align with user intent as closely as possible for the benefit of both the website and the visitor.

On average, you have around 15 seconds to prove your worth to a new visitor. They’ll quickly hit the back button and move to the next search result if you don’t address what they’re looking for. Search engines take note of this.

Factors such as the amount of time a user spends on your website, the percentage of users that view one page and leave the site without clicking around, and how many people click into your search result in the first place play a big role in your rankings.

Properly addressing user intent will positively affect all of these aspects. This will lead to higher search result rankings.

Your content should aim to address a concern, answer a question, or otherwise provide a service. The point of a website isn’t solely to get people to click in, it’s to keep them there. And for websites that offer a product or service, there’s an additional step of creating a sale.

But if your content doesn’t give visitors a reason to stay, you won’t be able to convert on the rest of your goals.

Does your Nashville company need help with search engine optimization? Contact NoSweatWeb today!

How Should I Think About User Intent?

User intent can be separated into three different varieties.

Informational

The searcher needs an answer to a question.

Transactional

The searcher is in search of something to purchase.

Navigational

The searcher has a specific goal in mind, such as a particular website.

These distinctions are important when considering how to address a concern. After all, you can’t address a concern if you don’t understand what the searcher is looking to gain.

How Do I Address User Intent?

The chances of showing up in a search are fairly low unless the searcher is directly seeking your website. Providing relevant information that directly benefits your target market is the best way to attract attention and build your search result rankings.

Think of it this way: Gain the attention of a searcher through an informational search and convert it into a transactional interaction.

People searching for information related to your industry will be predisposed to be interested in your services. But this only works if your content alights with your product and/or service. A really well-written and informative article on brake pads won’t do a tech website any good.

Your title should work in conjunction with your content. You don’t want to trick someone into your website with a title that doesn’t reflect what they will find. This will only result in a quick departure from your visitor. It also creates a distrust of your brand and can damage your rankings.

The goal isn’t to simply make it to the top of any list of search results. Properly addressing user intent benefits everyone involved — both the business and the consumer.

How Do I Figure Out User Intent?

Imagine yourself as the person typing in a query to a search engine. What are you trying to learn? What are you looking to find?

One way to do this is to actually type your topic into a search engine. The top results most likely align with user intent. Occasionally a top-tier website will usurp a better article or page, but you can generally rely on these results. See how others have addressed the idea or question and learn from their methods.

Buyer personas can be a big help in figuring out what your potential customers might be looking for. Learn about the motivations and needs of the people your business serves and learn how they interact with your site. Create content that addresses their needs.

Visit NoSweatWeb for intelligent search engine optimization in Nashville!