The Impact of Website Redesign on Search Engine Rankings

A website redesign can be a pivotal moment for any online business. It’s a chance to refresh the brand, improve user experience, and potentially boost engagement. However, one crucial element often causes concern: the impact on search engine rankings.

In truth, the effect of a website redesign on rankings is a double-edged sword. It can either significantly boost visibility or lead to a drastic drop, depending on how it’s implemented. Let’s delve deeper into the potential positive and negative impacts and how to navigate them effectively.

Positive Impacts of Website Redesign:

An effective website redesign can lead to a range of positive impacts on SEO rankings. By prioritizing user experience and technical SEO, businesses can enhance their online visibility and attract more organic traffic. Here are some of the potential positive impacts of a website redesign on SEO rankings:

Improved User Experience:

A well-designed website with intuitive navigation and faster loading speeds provides a better user experience. This can lead to increased user engagement, longer session times, and lower bounce rates, signaling to search engines that the website provides valuable content and a positive user experience.

Enhanced Technical SEO:

A redesign can be an opportunity to address any existing technical SEO issues, such as broken links, crawl errors, and slow loading times. By fixing these issues, businesses can improve their website’s accessibility and visibility to search engines, potentially leading to higher rankings.

Fresh Content:

Redesigning a website often involves creating new content and updating existing content. This fresh content can act as a signal to search engines that the website is actively maintained and relevant, potentially boosting rankings for relevant keywords.

Increased Mobile-friendliness:

In today’s mobile-first world, a mobile-friendly website is crucial for maintaining search engine visibility. A website redesign can ensure the website is responsive and optimized for mobile devices, leading to better user experience and, consequently, higher search engine rankings.

Negative Impacts of Website Redesign:

While a website redesign has the potential to boost search engine rankings, there are also potential negative impacts that business owners need to be aware of. It’s important to carefully plan and execute a redesign to mitigate these risks and ensure a smooth transition. Here are some of the potential negative impacts of a website redesign on search engine rankings:

URL Structure Changes:

Changing the URL structure of a website during a redesign can be risky. Search engines may not recognize the new URLs as being related to the old ones, resulting in a temporary drop in rankings. Proper redirects and communication with search engines are essential to mitigate this risk.

Content Loss:

Removing or significantly altering existing content can have a negative impact on SEO. It’s important to maintain the core content that drives traffic and rankings while introducing new, valuable content.

Technical SEO Issues:

If the redesign process is not carefully planned and executed, it can introduce new technical SEO issues, such as broken links, duplicate content, and slow loading speeds, all of which can negatively impact rankings.

Temporary Traffic Fluctuations:

During and after the redesign, there may be a temporary drop in traffic as search engines adjust to the changes. This is typically short-lived and can be mitigated by proper planning and communication.

Mitigating the Risks:

To ensure a successful website redesign that doesn’t hurt search engine rankings, business owners should take proactive steps to mitigate potential negative impacts. By following these essential steps, businesses can navigate the website redesign process effectively and minimize any negative effects on search engine rankings:

Plan and Prioritize SEO:

Make SEO a key consideration throughout the redesign process. Conduct thorough keyword research, identify potential SEO risks, and implement a plan to mitigate them.

Crawl and Index the New Website:
Ensure Googlebot can crawl and index the new website easily. Submit the XML sitemap to Google Search Console and major search engines and monitor for any crawl errors.

Implement Proper Redirects:
If changing URLs, set up 301 redirects from the old URLs to the new ones. This helps search engines understand the relationship between the old and new pages and maintain your SEO rankings.

Monitor and Analyze:

Continuously monitor your website’s traffic, rankings, and SEO performance after the redesign. This allows you to identify any issues quickly and take corrective action.

In today’s competitive online landscape, the importance of a well-executed website redesign cannot be overstated. As a business owner with a website, it’s crucial to understand the potential impact of a redesign on search engine rankings and take proactive steps to mitigate any negative effects.

When approaching a website redesign, it’s essential to strike a balance between enhancing the user experience and maintaining or improving search engine visibility. By understanding the potential positive and negative impacts of a redesign, business owners can make informed decisions. If you still have questions about how to move forward with website redesign, Turek Web Design is here to help you.
Schedule your 20 min free consultation!

Landing page vs Website

As a small business owner, it’s crucial to understand the difference between a landing page and a website. While many people use these terms interchangeably, they are wrong. These two web and marketing tools have key differences in functionalities and objectives. A website is a digital representation of your business, and acts as a gateway to your company’s entire range of services and offers. On the other hand, a landing page is a temporary page designed for a marketing campaign, focusing on selling one particular product or service. In this blog post, I will explain the key differences between landing page and a website and help you identify which one is suitable for your needs.

  1. Landing page and Website Functionality:
    The primary function of a website is to provide an overview of your company and direct potential customers to other sections of your website. A website usually has multiple pages and they can include blog, online store and contact pages. It should be designed with clear navigation and provide easy access to different parts of your website. On the other hand, a landing page is a single page that has a distinct purpose to capture leads or sales by focusing on one specific offer. It includes a clear call-to-action (CTA) that encourages visitors to take a particular action, such as subscribing to a newsletter or buying a product.
  2. Messaging:
    A website should feature a concise message highlighting your brand’s values and key offerings. It should address the needs of different user segments by providing a general overview of your company’s services. A landing page, on the other hand, should be laser-focused on one service or product. Its messaging should emphasize the unique value proposition of the offering and convince visitors to take action by using persuasive language and compelling visuals.
  3. Design:
    The design of your website should reflect your brand’s style and visual identity while being clear, intuitive, and easy to navigate. It should have a consistent layout, color scheme, and typography throughout the website. A landing page design, however, has more freedom to be creative and unique, as it’s designed with a specific objective in mind. It should grab the visitor’s attention and convey a sense of urgency with bold visuals, crisp copy, and a prominent CTA or action button. Another difference between a website and a landing page is the structure. Websites have a hierarchical structure, with the homepage as the starting point and various sections and sub-pages branching out. In contrast, landing pages are singular web pages with a clear focus and a linear structure designed to guide visitors to take action. Landing pages also tend to have fewer links than websites, thereby reducing distractions and keeping visitors focused on a single goal.
  4. Tone:
    One of the most significant differences between a website and a landing page is their tone. Websites are generally informational and designed to communicate a brand’s voice and style. In contrast, landing pages are sales-oriented and use persuasive language, engaging visuals, and a clear call-to-action. Landing pages are designed to elicit instant gratification from visitors and encourage them to act immediately. They are created to drive conversions and usually have a higher conversion rate than websites.
  5. Traffic source:
    A website receives traffic from diverse sources, such as organic search, social media, or referral links. As such, it needs to be optimized for search engines, target audience, user experience, and accessibility for all types of visitors. On the other hand, a landing page is often linked to a specific marketing campaign or ad campaign, and the traffic that it receives is targeted and intentional. Therefore, it needs to be consistent with the ad’s messaging, design, and CTA, or action button. A landing page life cycle are different than a website. Landing pages are temporary, some are used for one day only, or one week or one month, depending of the marketing purpose they were designed for.
  6. Analytics:
    Finally, the analytics for a website are focused on overall website performance, such as bounce rate, time on site, and user behavior across different sections. A landing page, on the other hand, has a more specific set of metrics that are related to its objectives, such as conversion rate, click-through rate, and lead generation.

Conclusion: As you can see, both home pages and landing pages are essential for a successful online presence. However, they have different purposes, audience, and functionality. Understanding how each of these pages works and how to use them to your advantage can make a significant difference in your digital marketing efforts. By having a clear objective, message, design, traffic source, and analytics, you can create a compelling online experience that engages your visitors and drives conversions. So, whether you need to boost your brand awareness or sell your latest product, choose the right type of page for your specific needs, and let your website do the rest!

Collaborating with an SEO expert ON A WEBSITE PROJECT

In today’s digital age, having a website for your business is essential. However, having a website alone is not enough to ensure online success. Your website must be optimized to rank high on search engine result pages (SERPs) to reach your target audience. This is where SEO (Search Engine Optimization) comes in.

SEO is the practice of optimizing a website to improve its visibility on search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. SEO involves a series of techniques, including keyword research, on-page optimization, and link building, among others. To achieve the best results, it’s important to involve an SEO person in the planning phase of your website. Here are some of the advantages of involving an SEO person in your website planning:

Proper Keyword Research:

Keyword research is the foundation of SEO. It involves identifying the keywords that people use to find the products or services that you offer. An SEO person can help you identify the right keywords to target on your website, which can help your website rank higher in search engine results pages. We can teach you how to use the keywords on your service pages and how to write an SEO friendly blog post.

Optimization of Website Content:

Content is king when it comes to SEO. An SEO person can help you optimize your website content to make it more appealing to search engines. This includes optimizing your titles, meta descriptions, and tags, among other things. Proper optimization of website content can improve your website’s visibility on search engines and attract more traffic.

Proper Website Architecture:

The architecture of your website is critical to SEO. An SEO person can help you create a website structure that is easy to navigate for both users and search engines. This can help search engines crawl your website and index your pages more effectively, improving your website’s visibility on search engine results pages.

Improved User Experience:

SEO is not just about optimizing your website for search engines; it’s also about creating a better user experience for your website visitors. An SEO person can help you create a website that is easy to navigate, loads quickly, and provides a great user experience. This can lead to higher engagement rates, longer session times, and more conversions.

Competitive Advantage:

Finally, involving an SEO person in your website planning can give you a competitive advantage. With the right SEO strategies in place, your website can rank higher than your competitors’ websites on search engines, attracting more traffic, and generating more leads and sales.

In conclusion, involving an SEO person in the planning phase of your website can be extremely beneficial for your online success. An SEO person can help you with keyword research, website content optimization, website architecture, user experience, and competitive advantage. So, if you’re planning to launch a website or redesign your existing website, make sure to involve an SEO person to help you achieve the best results.

How to receive more Google reviews

Let’s talk about Google reviews

Believe me, if you have a client and something goes wrong, they will not hesitate to share their negative experience, write a bad review and tell the world about it. However, this can be offset by having a balanced representation of positive, satisfied, and happy client reviews.

Online reviews from customers are important for businesses because they provide valuable insights into customer satisfaction and can help increase the credibility of a business.
Google reviews are big deal for businesses, those are the social proof that they provide a great service. And let’s face it, we all want to know if a business is worth our time and money before we try it out. Plus having a bunch of positive reviews can help boost the business’s online presence, making it easier for potential customers to find them. 
And as a cherry on top, Google pays attention to how many and what kind of reviews a business gets, which is actually affects where is shows up in search results.

How to ask for reviews? 

In working toward the goal of reviews on Google, the first step is to request reviews from your happy clients. Aim for quantity, and quality as the reviews should be new, unique and previously unpublished anywhere else. They can be displayed on your website, or other trusted review sites. When placed on your website, there should be a different one on each relevant page or practice area.

Here are a few ideas for how a business can ask for reviews:

  1. After providing great service:
    You could say something like, “We’re so glad you had a great experience with us! If you have a moment, we’d love it if you could leave us a review on Google. It helps others see just how much they can trust us too.”
  2. In an email follow-up:
    You could write, “Thanks for choosing us! We hope you loved your experience. If you have a second, would you mind leaving us a review on Google? Your thoughts mean the world to us.”
  3. Email signature:
    Place your direct review link to your email signature, which is one of the most viewed marketing tool for a business. 
  4. Send a text message:
    Write a nice email with your direct link and send it as text message. Most people submit reviews via mobile devices and due to various technologies, including dictation typing, clients can often do this more easily than via email.
  5. On social media:
    You could post, “Hey everyone! If you had a great experience with us, would you mind leaving us a quick review on Google? It would mean the world to us! Thanks in advance!”
  6. On your website:
    You could add a simple call-to-action such as, “Love our products/services? Let others know by leaving us a review on Google.”

These are just a few examples, but the key is to make the request in a friendly, non-intrusive way. Making the request in person increases the chances that customers will be willing to leave a review.

In conclusion, asking for Google reviews is a great way for businesses to increase their online visibility and credibility. By providing excellent customer service, following up with satisfied customers, and including calls-to-action on your website and social media, you can encourage customers to leave a review and improve your online reputation. 

Increase Your Google Five Stars Ratings

Boost Quantity

The more four and five star ratings you have, the better your average will be. If you are starting to acquire reviews, focus on quantity. Ask for a review when you are finishing a project, or when the customer is at a big milestone. 

Keep Providing Great Client Service

As with any service-based business, great service often leads to great reviews. Do not forget to share this with your employees, especially if they are interacting with the customers.  

Do Not Ignore Negative Reviews

Although they can be discouraging, everybody receives a negative review once in a while. This is normal and nothing to worry about. Resist the temptation to freak out, and do not ignore the negative review. Consider the following tips for responding to negative reviews:

  • Do not respond immediately. Take time and think it over to avoid responding out of emotion or defensiveness.
  • Gather the facts related to customer concerns.
  • Proceed with empathy.
  • Compose your thoughts and write out a draft before posting anything.
  • Be as brief as possible. Three or four sentences might be best.
  • Realize that some people cannot be satisfied, so after trying your best, simply move on.

Note, that Google reviews can be changed by the reviewer. If you resolved the issue with the client, ask them politely if they would change the 2 starts rating and update their review. 

What To Do When a Google Review Is Not Showing Up

Because too many fraud reviews were on the Google Business Pages, right now Google is more strict about publishing them. Many times the reviewer sees the review on his own account, but it is still not published.  Even real client reviews can be flagged. 

Below, you can find out what to do when a Google review is not showing up:

  • Gather evidence.
    If a Google review is not showing up, gather any evidence you can that relates to the new review you cannot see on your GBP listing. This typically involves getting screenshots of both the email notification you received of the review and the reviews currently listed on your GBP profile to demonstrate that a review is missing.
  • Seek support.
    If Google recently suspended your GBP listing, speak to their support team and use your reinstatement details and case number to transfer any missing reviews to your new listing. In contrast, if Google did not suspend your listing, ask Google’s support team to help with locating your missing reviews. Try this link first to get support
  • Ask the online community.
    If Google’s support team does not resolve the issue, consider posting your issue on Google’s community forums. Doing this, you may attract the attention of a helpful Google employee who might assist with this matter further.

Summery

Reviews are very important for clients and therefore they are important for businesses.
The main thing is that your should start doing it. Don’t be shy! Reviews are an important part of your marketing and growing your business. 

10 Reasons Why LinkTree is killing your SEO

Everyone has an Instagram account these days. If you operate a business of any type, your social media platforms are essential for connecting with both potential and present customers. Social media is a powerful tool if it is leveraged right. Each platform has tools that are designed to help you leverage its power to reach and connect with your audience.

That’s what LinkTree is to Instagram. With the help of LinkTree you are able to connect your audience to other accounts; to a landing page, to an article, to a shop or a signup page or your other social accounts.

However, it is not in your best interest to use LinkTree when it comes to your site.

Do not enter and wrong way traffic signs

What is LinkTree?

LinkTree is a tool inside Instagram. Since Instagram only allows a single link in your bio area, LinkTree offers you a way to store all your links in one place. Then you put the link to your list of links in LinkTree in your bio. From this one link, you are supposed to be able to grow your followers and increase traffic to multiple links. LinkTree provides room for several links based on the package you purchase. You can include your Amazon affiliate link, your website, and your Facebook pages too. All your links housed in one link sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? There’s just one problem.

LinkTree is not good for your website SEO!

10 Reasons You Do NOT Want to Use LinkTree on Instagram

If you don’t have a website, you are fine using LinkTree, because there is no better alternative. It will work for your purposes, help grow followers, and send them to your other social sites, etc. But if you have a website and you’ve filled it with great content and useful information, you do not want to use LinkTree.

Here are 10 reasons why:

  1. Your social link send traffic to LinkTree website and not to your own domain. When a user clicks on your social link, the first thing they’ll see is LinkTree’s site, not yours. Their site offers users their first impression of you and your brand outside of Instagram. And lets face it, it is not much customization that you can do. 😞
  2. The user will have to click at least two times to even get to your real website.
  3. Users are less likely to click beyond the LinkTree page.
  4. Some users may click on a different link or button once they land on the LinkTree page. That means your site gets zero clicks. You miss out on traffic that could have benefited your SEO.
  5. The LinkTree website isn’t customized to your brand – it’s great for theirs though!
  6. LinkTree’s free plan doesn’t even allow you to customize your landing page on their site to your brand. You miss out on some important branding opportunities! This can lead to users feeling disconnected from your brand on Instagram and it may prevent them from pursuing clicking any further.
  7. Users may not ever see your website URL. That means they won’t be able to return to your site later.
  8. Studies indicate that 98% of the visitors to a website do not engage in a transaction on their first visit to the site. That means that a user’s first visit to your site is not likely to result in a booking, consultation, or appointment with you.
  9. To ensure that potential clients have a cohesive experience with you, your brand, and your practice you need YOUR URL in your bio.
  10. When you have the URL to your website in your Instagram bio, it allows potential clients to build familiarity with your brand. They will be more likely to read your blog, learn more about you, and pursue more information about you and your services.

If You Do Not Use LinkTree, What Should You Use?

Use your own website and create your own version of LinkTree inside of your website.
You get the benefit of sending traffic to your site instead of letting LinkTree get the traffic you have created. Traffic to your site is great for its SEO. Why is that important? Ultimately, organic traffic generation increases your conversions and sales. You can use Google Analytics to find out exactly how many visitors you are getting from Instagram.

That just makes sense, right?

You spent your effort, time, and money on creating your brand. When you set up your Instagram landing page, you kept all that consistent, right? You’re creating an image. You probably used your logo to build brand recognition and used professional images to tell your story. It took a lot of work to create a consistent story and connect your products and services to users. It wouldn’t make sense to give that all away. Leverage your IG account for YOUR benefit.

Final Thoughts

LinkTree is fine if you are just starting out and you need a place to put your links. However, if you are serious about leveraging social media and using it to create brand recognition, increase your followers, and make more sales, you will benefit more from using the link to your website in your IG bio.  If you want to, you can create a landing page that houses all your links. It would serve you as well as LinkTree, but provide you with a lot more!

6 Reasons Why Blogging is Important for Your Business

You’ve probably found yourself spending more time online lately. Since you are searching, working, or socializing more than usual, you may have noticed a lot of buzz about blogging. Blogs are not new they got their start in the late 90s. They started out more as an online journal. But over the last few years, they’ve evolved into an integral part of businesses both small and large. It may surprise you to learn that blogging can provide numerous benefits for your business. Here are six reasons why it’s important to maintain a business blog.

Quality Content Helps Drive Traffic to Your Site

Ultimately, your blog posts will need to provide your audience with value-rich content. Most business websites use blogs as a way to drive more traffic to their sites. Blogging is an ideal way to increase your search ranking. There are basically two main ways a blog helps search engine optimization.

  1. A business blog gets updated regularly. Every time a new blog is posted, it offers another opportunity to make your site more visible to your potential clients. Search engines tend to take notice of sites with fresh content. Well-optimized content can help your site appear in search engine results for a variety of search terms. This ultimately brings more visitors to your website and over time, gradually increases traffic.
  2. Blogs can be beneficial for increasing your social media performance. When you have blog post content that adds value, is compelling and engaging, users tend to share it across social media outlets. As your content reaches a wider audience, your social media engagement and reach expand.

Blogs Can Keep Your Audience Updated About the Business

You as a business owner can think of blogging as a direct communication channel with your audience. It can be leveraged to keep customers and potential customers in the loop about your business. Your website content is more straightforward and practical. A business blog is more flexible and casual making it easier to connect with customers. You can share updates in such a way that it demonstrates who you are and not just what you do. It’s the perfect space to go into more depth about your products and services, comment on industry trends, and share timely content.

Get Valuable Feedback from Customers

A business website does a great job of presenting customers with the information they need. It’s only one-way communication. Customers don’t usually have room to ask questions, start a conversation, or comment. This is what gives a blog power. It can be designed to give your customers a voice. You can encourage feedback and discussion in the comment section of a blog. When you engage in great conversations with customers, you build trust, rapport, and authority for your brand. You also get to see your business from their point of view so you can make improvements where necessary.

Relay More Information About Your Products

Relevant content gives you the space to go into more in-depth explanations about your products or services. You have room to discuss how they are used and their advantages. You can share reviews, provide case studies, explore some of the specific benefits, or provide “how-to” guides with your target audience. This type of content helps to establish your company as an authority in the industry. This builds a knowledge bank; it also helps breed creativity and innovation. When you provide readers with deeper, more complex information on your posts, you are more likely to generate more ideas.

Quality Content Are Useful For Generating Leads

Search engines index blogs separate from the rest of your site. This provides a great opportunity for it to generate leads if you add a CTA or “call to action” to each post. This can be as simple as asking the reader to give you a call or schedule an appointment. It can also be an offer such as a free eBook, template, free trial, or some other type of content that visitors are willing to trade their information to receive. It’s not difficult to develop a CTA and involves just a few steps.

  • Create a piece of valuable content your visitors are like to exchange their information for.
  • Offer the free content and call-to-action by adding a popup or banner in your post.
  • Set up a landing page to send people who click the call-to-action. This is the page you will use to capture their information.
  • Once a visitor provides their information (email or phone number), they get access to the promised content.

You’ve got the lead and they receive valuable information in exchange.
Now you ask how to write a SEO friendly article?

Blogging and Boosting Your Brand Identity

The term branding doesn’t just mean your logo and slogan. Branding is now used to refer to how customers and potential customers respond psychologically and emotionally to your brand. Your blog should be a reflection of your brand and it should incorporate the same slogan, color scheme, and motifs as your brand and your website. You’ll want to continue solidifying your branding that you’ve used on your website and social media platforms. This helps keep your brand consistent. Maintaining a blog helps build your brand identity as it becomes an extension of your brand on a level customers can easily engage.

Final Thoughts

These are just six great reasons why consistent blogging is important to your online presence. As a matter of fact, blogging as a business entity hasn’t ever been more important than it is right now. Your business could experience more leads, more site traffic, well-established industry authority, and a better relationship with your customers. If you haven’t been blogging, then now is a great time to start. If you have been blogging there’s never a better time than now to make the most of it to increase your online visibility. Developing an effective blogging strategy can be just the boost your business needs!