Deesse Media is a full-service digital marketing agency that builds custom websites and ensures those websites are driving sales. Over the years, we've conducted many case studies for our clients to determine if their SEO strategies were effective. Unfortunately, many of these case studies have revealed unsuccessful SEO strategies that cause problems with site discoverability, traffic, and sales conversions. Using SEO tools to build an effective strategy can make all the difference in how well your website works for your brand.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tools help you earn the most coveted top spots on search engine results pages (SERPs). Research shows that higher-ranking websites and pages have a greater chance of being clicked by someone searching for a product or service. Further, a lack of SEO can mean big players like Google are hesitant to display or index your website at all. In other words, SEO tools are a critical path to making your website visible and gaining traffic and sales.
Keyword RESEARCH TOOLS
Why You Need It: Keyword research tools can be used to hone in on relevant keywords associated with your business, so they can be incorporated into your site content. Building a semantic core strategy helps you garner web traffic from people most interested in your services or product.
The Google Keyword Planner is the go-to free keyword planning tool for website developers. You can get insights into how certain words and related phrases are performing, as well as how much competition there is for certain terms.
The Moz Keyword Explorer gives you up to 1,000 keyword suggestions for free. You can enter either keywords or a URL to find out which keywords would be best for you to target to support traffic to your site.
The Ahrefs Keyword Generator helps you find thousands of potential keywords to use on your website in seconds. Simply enter words or phrases you suspect are good for your industry and get access to keyword reports to help you decide what to use.
Indexing/Crawling Tools
Why You Need It: Indexing and crawling tools help Google discover your site, so you get the most out of your crawl budget.
Use the Google Search Console to check the indexing status of your site and optimize overall visibility. You can also measure the performance of your website and see which search queries specifically are leading traffic to your site.
A well-designed sitemap helps search engines crawl your website and know how to navigate to it. Yoast offers the Sitemap tool to help you create individual sitemaps that are perfectly built for proper indexing.
Hosted by Schema, this tool allows you to test the structured data on your website. By doing so, you can make sure all metrics are appropriately tagged and labeled so the site is properly crawled and indexed.
The Rich Results Test shows you how your site is crawled according to "rich results," which are items like context elements and content.
competitor research
Why You Need Them: The more you know about what your competitors are doing online, the more you get a step ahead of them and rank better. The following tools can get you instant insight into websites that are similar to your own.
Screaming Frog - Screaming Frog crawls websites and URLs to determine several things, such as issues with duplicate content, what metadata is being used, and more. By using this tool on similar websites to your own, you can get valuable insight into what your competitors are doing that is making a difference in SERPs.
SimilarWeb - SimilarWeb automatically yields information about websites that are similar to your own and what their monthly ranks look like. You can also get insight into competitor bounce rates, average ranks, and how many pages the average customer visits.
Wayback Machine - The Wayback Machine is a huge Internet Archive that acts as a digital library for historical web pages and sites. You can search through more than 600 billion web pages to get a glimpse at how your competitors have changed their websites over time. This can be incredibly valuable if a site has recently made changes that pushed you lower on SERP pages.
analytics Tools
Why You Need It: Analytics tools help you analyze your web pages in terms of SEO, make adjustments where needed, and improve. Using these tools periodically helps ensure your site remains capable of both attracting and converting traffic.
Google Analytics allows you to track site traffic, find out what content works best and does not work at all, and get a look at traffic conversions (i.e. how many visitors bought a product or requested an estimate).
The Google Tag Manager allows you to further track traffic conversions based on various metrics. This allows you to update website tags to boost traffic conversion performance.
link building
Why You Need It: Google puts more trust in websites that have a nice collection of both inbound and outbound links to authoritative sources. The more Google trusts your website (Google calls this domain and page authority), the better your SERP ranks will be.
Moz Link Explorer - The Moz Link Explorer gives you a comprehensive look at the link metrics for your website or webpage. You can also find competing backlinks that may be driving traffic to your competitors.
Ahref Backlink Checker - If you have broken links embedded in your web pages, this can easily drop your page authority. The Backlink Checker hosted by Ahrefs checks your website for dysfunctional outbound or inbound links in a matter of a few seconds. You can also get a look at what websites are currently redirecting your traffic to other domains.
Help a Reporter - Help a Reporter by Cision connects site developers and content creators to high-authority sources that can be used to build brand and domain authority.
local seo TOOLS
Why You Need It: Local SEO builds your web presence among the people in your geographic vicinity that are most likely to be searching for your products or services. Ensuring local search visibility on SERPs drives people to your website that are most likely to become paying customers.
Listing your business on Google is totally free, and doing so is extremely important to building your online presence. You simply create a profile, add business information, upload photos, and easily connect with anyone searching for your business on Google.
Gathering Google reviews is a great way to build your brand reputation. Whitespark offers a free Google Review Link Generator that you can use to guide customers to your Google Business profile to leave a review. You can also create a unique QR code that can be included on business cards and printed materials.
Moz’s Local Business Listing Checker helps you see how your business appears in the most important commerce directories across the internet. Moz will check numerous attributes, such as if your citations are showing up on Google Maps, Bing, and otherwise, and offer recommendations to optimize your listing.
site speed / performance tools
Why You Need It: Page load times and site performance are critical to SEO. Google will purposefully not include slow or unresponsive websites or pages on SERPs. The following tools can give you an idea of how quickly your website and its pages are loading. For reverence, the highest conversion rates occur when pages load between 0 and 2 seconds.
Google Lighthouse is an automated analysis tool that helps assess web page quality according to several metrics. After plugging in your URL, Lighthouse discloses an overall performance rating, speed index of the page, and time to interactive capability.
PageSpeed Insights is a simple, free-to-use tool that gives you a Core Web Vitals Assessment. This gives you a good insight into what each visitor experiences when they try to visit a certain page. For example, you can find out how long it takes before the page becomes fully interactive and the overall speed index.
Pingdom by Solarwinds offers a number of useful site analysis tools, one of which is page speed monitoring. Sign up for a free trial, and you get access to a comprehensive page load test that shows you the load time, performance grade, and more.
On GTMetrix, you can simply plug in a page URL and get instant feedback regarding everything from load time to the load time of certain elements on the page. For example, GTMetrix will tell you if the largest content elements are loading too slowly or how quickly the layout shift happens.
content Marketing Tools
Why You Need It: Content marketing tools can be used to analyze and build the content on your site to ensure it supports healthy traffic flow and visitor impressions. Good site content builds ever-important engagement with your brand and brand trust.
Also Asked - Also Asked is an invaluable tool that allows you to get insight into the most-asked questions surrounding your chosen keywords. For example, if you are looking to learn what customers ask about "garage conversion" or "gold coins," simply plug in those terms and get a full collection of questions that could be beneficial to work into your website pages to see better SERP ranks.
Google Trends - Google Trends offers key information regarding how much people are searching for certain relative terms and where those searches are coming from regionally. You can also get insight into related queries and search topics. Look at trends from the last 12 months and compare the activity of certain words and phrases compared to others.
Copyscape Comparison Tool - If the content on your website is identical to another page, this lowers your trustworthiness to visitors and can mean your SERP ranks take a hit. Copyscape allows you to analyze the content you have on your pages to content on other sites. If there is a lot of matching text, you can easily rework the content on your pages to make it more unique.
mobile SEO Tools
Why You Need It: Over half of all web traffic occurs from a mobile device. If your website is not optimized for mobile functionality, you could be inadvertently leaving over half of the prospective site visitors essentially blocked from interactive access.
The Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool offered by Google is perhaps one of the most straightforward and valuable options for evaluating mobile site translation. You can plug in the page URL or website code you are using and get a quick rundown of if the page is mobile-accessible.
GTMetrix can help you analyze your site to determine how well it is functioning when accessed from a mobile device. You get insights into everything from speed index rating on mobile devices to content load times and quality.
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touch
Shopify vs WooCommerce
WOOCOMMERCE VS SHOPIFY PROS & CONS
You can use both of them to build and manage a money-making website. Both can be user-friendly for customers and your website manager, but they have some distinct differences.
Shopify
Fast load time
Includes SSL certificates
Built-in mobile optimization
Optimized CSS & HTML5 coding
Lower up-front costs
Fewer customizations force a ceiling on website performance
Limited blogging capability makes it harder to rank and engage
Limited URL structure customization. Can't put keywords in your URL
Limited structured data support limits access to prime search visibility.
Can't access code for real search engine optimization
You may have disreputable server neighbors who can threaten security
WooCommerce
Uses customizable SEO-optimized code
Search engine-friendly URLs you need to truly SEO
Rich snippet support to capture prime real estate in search results
Robust blogging support to generate authority and relevance
Better control over outstanding website experience and performance
Any cons can be easily addressed by professional developers
For Advanced Shopify, you'll pay $299 per month or you can get custom pricing for Shopify but it still limits your customization. You also have a high probability of having to migrate to a custom site as you grow, which adds to the cost.
Alternatively, custom web design with WooCommerce gives you all the features of Shopify + independence. You have full control over the website experience and that experience grows with you. Most of the cost is upfront, so your website quickly becomes an asset, not a monthly liability. You'll know how much you'll pay before we begin, so you can make the right decision for you. Ultimately, you'll spend less over time on getting a custom site.
WooCommerce seamlessly integrates with various existing systems, including inventory management, accounting, and CRM software. This integration streamlines your operations, reduces manual work, and improves efficiency, ultimately contributing to long-term cost savings and profitability.
WHO'S IT GOOD FOR: WOOCOMMERCE VS SHOPIFY
So, when it comes to WooCommerce vs Shopify, Shopify is perfect for beginners and time-pressured startups who are only focused on today because they need to prove their concept.
Shopify hosts your website for you, which is nice. With Shopify integrations, it does handle some limited backups and security. But that's extra.
Choosing Shopify means limited blogging capability.
Bottom line: You need blogging for SEO and complete control over the code behind the blog editor to truly optimize. Blogging provides high-quality, high-intention traffic and links from other reputable sites to build authority. Content is valuable for helping people choose your brand over the competition.
WooCommerce is for established businesses and startups who want the freedom to grow quickly.
Does this sound like you? You want creative design freedom to meet specific business needs with custom functionality like cost estimators and interactive experiences. You understand the value of presenting your unique beauty. You don't want a website that looks like everyone else's.
You might also be in high-end markets where people have exquisite visual taste. They appreciate beauty deeply, and your website communicates that your brand can deliver that experience.
Your website needs to speak your values (and only your values). WooCommerce gives you the independence to do this. You need to stand out from the crowd and make an impression to build a brand people love.
If you value freedom, independence, and beauty, along with lower monthly costs, your business will benefit from a made-for-you site.
Having a fast-loading website is key to search marketing success. Slow page speed and load time can drag your website rankings down, as well as disappoint your customers. But is your website a cheetah or a sloth? And how can professional services help you fix speed issues and remain consistent?
What Makes a Website Fast?
Page speed refers to how quickly your website pages load to display all content and the server to receive information. This is a key metric in your search marketing strategies, since a site with slow load times will have lower search visibility, traffic, and leads.
Google search algorithms use page speed as a factor in their ranking. When your pages take too long to load, the algorithm won’t display your website on search engine results pages. Google’s 2021 update now penalizes slow loading sites and will rank them below faster loading sites, regardless of content or other SEO.
And it’s not just the search engines you need to worry about. Customers will quickly grow irritated by slow loading sites. You’ve probably experienced this yourself when searching for a local business and becoming frustrated as the seconds pass and the page hasn’t loaded. Often, after only a few moments, you’ll leave the website and go find a competitor that has a quicker site.
In fact, data shows that 47% of customers expect a site to load in less than two seconds. After that point, customers start to bounce and leave your pages.
How Professionals Speed Up Websites
In order to help speed up websites, professionals can employ a number of different techniques that will improve page speed, including:
Choosing a different web host
Utilizing caches
Minimizing HTML and CSS code
Limiting plugins and page elements
Using Content Delivery Networks (CDN)
Optimizing image and file sizes
Including trailing slashes on URLs
Limiting page redirects
Why Go with Experts vs. DIY?
Search marketing is a complicated business, and it takes a lot of time and devotion in order to maintain best practices to improve your speed across all your pages. When your website doesn’t have a fast load time, you can go through serious repercussions from search engines, damaging your search marketing efforts.
Experts who are professionals in the field of page speed and load time can help your site go from slow to speedy more efficiently and with a better strategy than a DIY patch job. When you have a team of professionals from a search marketing agency on your side, you don’t have to worry about missing key page load elements and can instead focus your time on other tasks.
If your website is a sloth and you find yourself overwhelmed with keeping all the practices that increase page speed in mind, our agency is here to help. At Deesse Media, we’ll walk you through the steps to improve loading times. Contact us to start a site audit today.
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Digital Marketing 101: The Who, What, Where, When, Why Answers You Need To Know
Do you want to grow your business and drive tons of traffic to your website?
Our digital ...
Digital Marketing 101: The Who, What, Where, When, Why Answers You Need To Know
Do you want to grow your business and drive tons of traffic to your website?
Our digital marketing agency is perfectly positioned to help market your business / services. The only barrier between your success is our service agreement and contract, which is begging for your signature as we speak.
If you haven’t heard of digital marketing by now, you must have been enjoying a decade-long vacation on a remote island somewhere in the world. If that’s the case, our agency can help your business reach new heights so you can get back to your well deserved R&R. For any other business owner that has stumbled upon this page, we welcome you and hope you learn a thing or two about the importance of online marketing.
This article is geared to complete two tasks:
1) teach you and/or elevate your current knowledge
2) explain why you need to invest in SEO and other strategies for your business.
We know your time is valuable, so we won’t waste anymore of it on this intro. Let’s dive into Digital Marketing 101.
What Is Digital Marketing And How Does It Work?
What is digital marketing, you ask? It is an online business strategy that focuses on key elements that allow your business to reach its target audience online. All marketing efforts that are devised online can be brought under the umbrella term of digital marketing.
Now, how digital marketing strategy is achieved is even more important than what it is. Through a combined effort of online marketing tactics, such as content creation and developing an online presence, certain Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are achieved.
These KPIs can encompass long-term achievements, like getting a high rank for your main keywords, or short-term goals that are required to capture leads and increase traffic. An example of this would be achviewing a 50% open and 35% click through rate on an email marketing campaign.
This type of marketing is not limited to one idea. In fact, the old adage of “this is the way we have always done it” is thrown out the window. This type of marketing for businesses is always evolving and changing, which makes answering the question of how it works slightly complex. Essentially, any online activity directed by a business that is aimed at reaching its target audience is accomplished through online marketing.
What Is The Role Of Digital Marketing To A Company?
The role of digital marketing to a company is huge in this day and age. Since so many consumers are spending their time online, a business that wants to grow needs to be in the same place as their intended audience. This means companies can have teams working around the clock to connect with prospects.
If a company wants to meet its KPIs and close more deals, it needs to accept online marketing as one of the single greatest sales drivers for its business. The examples we will cover below need to be core strategies that are implemented at the right time in order to be successful. This means some companies will have an entire department dedicated to just one aspect while others will simply outsource the work.
What Are Some Examples Of Digital Marketing?
As we mentioned, digital marketing is always changing and no one specific example represents online marketing as a whole. However, we will go over some of the most popular tactics and strategies that are utilized by many businesses today.
SEO: In order to rank well online when customers complete an online search, search engine optimization must be employed. This online marketing tactic requires specific on-page and off-page elements to be implemented on the website. To see the results from these efforts, it is important to hire an SEO specialist.
SMM: Social media marketing can include organic or paid efforts. Organic efforts are actions like making a post on the business’ Facebook paid. Paid efforts include boosting posts and running targeted ads.
SEM: Search engine marketing focuses on running paid ads for popular search terms. Instead of appearing in the results where the page is ranked, the company’s website will appear at the top.
Email Marketing: We know you love and hate emails that advertise sales for an item you don’t really need, but we would certainly love to have. You have been exposed to email marketing for years and will continue to for years to come.
Content Marketing: Content has reigned king since the beginning of the internet. Content marketing focuses on digital assets that can be consumed online, such as blogs, social media posts, and videos.
Digital Advertising: Digital advertising focuses on running paid campaigns anywhere online. This can be small ads that appear on the side of a website or large pop up advertisements that promote a new sale.
Digital Marketing Assets
The number of digital marketing assets available continue to grow each day. As new technology comes out (such as virtual reality), the number of assets will only continue to grow. To avoid overloading you with information, we will provide a brief life of some of the online marketing assets you are most familiar with:
Video Content
Images
Written Content (e.g blogs)
Online Products
Tools (e.g. calculators)
Free Downloads (e.g. guides)
These online marketing assets are crucial for connecting with customers. It is important to remember that the content that drives sales are the videos, images, and words that provide value to your target audience.
What Does A Digital Marketer Do?
A digital marketer is the knight in shining armor your company relies on to deliver leads and sales to your business. As you can see, the world of online marketing can be confused and time consuming. You didn’t get into business to sit on your computer for 20 hours out the day and learn a new skill. Rather than you focusing on digital marketing for your business, a digital marketer takes those tasks off your plate. This allows you to get back to business and deliver quality goods or services to your customers.
The digital marketer you hire will focus on the specific KPIs for the services you need. Some businesses thrive on email marketing while others see better ROI on SEO, paid advertising, and social media marketing. Your digital marketer will know exactly which tactics will provide the best growth for your business.
Types Of Digital Marketing / Digital Marketing Services We Specialize In
Our digital marketing agency is the one to trust with a number of services. We do not only work with well established brands either. If you just opened your doors, we will scale along with your growth and celebrate every milestone with you.
We specialize in the following types of digital marketing services for businesses across a number of industries:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Social Media Marketing
Content Marketing
Pay Per Click (PPPC)
Online PR
Inbound Marketing
If you want to boost your SEO, rank well online, build links that provide value, and reach a wider audience, please do not hesitate to contact our digital marketing company. You’re only one click away from gaining momentum online and securing more leads this quarter.
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Is Your Website a Cheetah or a Sloth?
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