Missouri Website Builders

The goal of search engine optimization is to show the search engines that your website is important. The single most important thing you can do to (after implementing basic SEO on your website) is to get quality links to your website’s link on other sites to generate increased traffic. In order for your website’s organic search engine ranking to reach full potential, your linking campaign must be well organized and developed.

Links can be directories, social media, blogs, articles, white papers and optimized press releases. Directories are one of the most comprehensive ways to generate incoming links. They are designed to promote links and are sometimes free of charge. Social networks and blogs have also become a great way to generate incoming links to your web site. You should try to control the anchor text of links coming to you as much as possible. Having your best keywords in the link anchor can be a huge help.

When it comes to SEO, linking is a popularity contest. The search engines consider your site more important and rank it higher depending on the number of your sites incoming links. Every link that you do manage to gain, whether it’s from a directory, blog or website, will help build your site’s core strength.

Here are just a few of the benefits of link building:

• Links are viewed as a ‘vote’ for your site
• Inbound links offer a route to your site from other sites
• Links to and from relevant sites help search engines assess what your website’s overall theme is
• A higher link profile can boost your site’s credibility and trust
• More links means more avenues for website traffic to find you
• Improved rankings for your targeted keywords
• Improved search engine robot crawl rate

When mapping out your linking strategy, don’t forget to focus on the quality, in addition to the quantity of the links.   A single, link from a credible website is worth more than dozens of links from junk sites. The relevance of the link and the strength of the site that has provided it, will often determine just how much strength you gain.  If you want to increase the search engine rank of your website, boosts your page rank with the search engines, and generate and increase in the flow of traffic to your site, then quality link building is a profitable investment. Having a good mix of quality and quantity in your inbound links will greatly increase your search engine results rankings and thus, drive more traffic toward your website.

Lastly, do not give up if you are not immediately seeing the positive  results of your linking efforts. The results of an effective linking program do not happen overnight, but rather something that grows over time. Remember, be consistent, be detailed and never stop. Your competitors are not stopping, even if you are ranked number one on Google, you can never stop.

The linking process provided exclusively by The Net Impact assures that links have a smooth feel in the page content, adding to user experience while also contributing effectively to the search engine optimization process. Contact The Net Impact today to learn more about how your business can benefit from a strategic linking campaign!

Source: Original Post from Blog.TheNetImpact.com

User Testing –  One Small Change can Make a Big Difference

Let’s  say you have just launched a new website.  Your marketing team loves the web design.  Your IT team is thrilled with the security and efficiency and the C class folks are all lining up to salute.  It’s perfect right?  Maybe, maybe not.  What about taking that quantum leap and testing your site with your intended audience, your customers?  Or, as The Net Impact, an a St. Louis based online interactive agency, recently determined for the City of Wentzville MO, why not test the site from the perspective of your citizens?

When it comes to a municipality website, the usability of the site by its citizens is a necessary condition for performance.  If the  website is difficult to navigate, people leave. If a landing page fails to clearly state what the municipality offers and what users can do on that page, people leave. If users do not like the access to pertinent informationof the website, they leave. If a website’s information is hard to find or doesn’t answer their questions, the visitors will be left hanging or will  soon be clicking away to a differetn website. Notice a pattern here?

So how do you determine if your website is user-friendly? User testing allows you to roleplay how citizens will navigate your site. At the same time, you record their comments and responses to their efforts to navigate and move through the site in order to accomplish a designed task.  Sound complicated?  It’s really not.   

For an excellent example of  usability testing review the  recent case study conducted by The Net Impact for the City of Wentzville’s website.  After The Net Impact  launched the  The City of Wentzville’s new website, the city worked with their Web marketing team to conduct a series of usability tests to gauge how user-friendly the website’s navigation and overall experience was for visitors and to get a better idea of ideal traffic flow for visitor satisfaction. TNI created a series of scenarios and tasks for testers to complete on the City of Wentzville’s website.  These tasks were specifically designed to take testers through the navigation pathways of the site and to recreate the experience of a typical visitor to the website.  An impartial  third party service was enlisted to select a broad sample of testers.  A random sampling of testers, with diverse backgrounds including gender, age,  income level, and computer skill level, was determined.  This group best represented the  profiles of actual visitors to the site. As testers performed each task, their mouse movements, clicks and live feedback were all recorded.

Once the user tests were complete, the team of Internet marketing specialist analyzed videos and tester feedback to generate a recommendation report and next steps in order to improve the user experience. From the results we concluded that overall the testers were impressed by the amount of information provided.  Several commented that they wished their own city provided this information and thought this site set the bar high for other municipalities.  However, there were still ample comments from  testers reflecting confusion and difficulty in  finding information .

The Net Impact’s recommendations included consolidating menus, eliminating redundant information and making links to highly requested information more obvious. Some of the tester’s comments also regarded  web design.  The majority of the testers found the site aesthetically pleasing.  Many liked the colors and the rotating photos, but wanted to see more pictures of the city. In addition to suggesting Wentzville add more images to display the character of the  city, The Net Impact suggested different options for the city to make other tools, such as their community calendar easier to find and more simple for visitors to use. – Read more TNI  Case Studies

In conclusion, based on the invaluable feedback from the user testing, the TNI team continues to work with the City of Wentzville to revise aspects of their website to in order to continue to increase effectiveness and functionality. 

Bottom line: User testing is an important aspect of any Internet marketing campaign. The Net Impact employs usability testing as part of our analytics methodology in order to construct  complete online marketing strategies. Remember as well that website testing is an ongoing process, but when managed properly it will drive your efforts and help visitorsrealize a greater satisfaction with your municipal website. Contact The Net Impact today to learn how we can help you find the most effective way to make your website visitors take action.

When Website design lacks the sustenance to convert visitors, the Internet marketing strategy suffers. Just because a Web site commands top page ranking does not mean that it is impervious to low conversion rates.

 A well-balanced Internet marketing diet consists of cross spectrum of web marketing supplements.

Website testing provides an analysis of sorts.  Through a series of algorithms, web design landing page testing and other analytics, Web site tests and assessments identify the following:

Redeeming qualities – identify what features of web design appeal to the target audience

Deficiencies – which aspects of the website design fail to convert unique visitors to take a buying acting.

Potential market niches – reveals other potential market niches necessitate fulfillment thus and new business opportunity.

If the Internet marketing diet is deficient in social media, the web marketing strategy could be suffering from social media malnutrition.

•  Does your Web site analytics tell a story of unique traffic statistics generated from Twitter, Facebook Linked In?

Social media has become an essential vitamin for Internet marketing. Formerly, exchanging links with other complementary organizations used to be a primary supplement for Internet marketing. With social media networking being in perpetual evolution, Internet marketing instruments are in constant flux. Aside from the website design,  email marketing campaign and search engine optimization, social media networking enforces link popularity (i.e. exposure).

Does your site have a nutritional, Internet marketing diet of:

• Solid Website Design
• Email Marketing
• Press release optimization
• Website Traffic

The aforementioned components fuel the Internet marketing cause.

• Has the company web site been tested for efficacy, website conversion?

 Read more, please click on “website testing” for a complimentary website design analysis.

March 20^th marks the vernal equinox. Farmers are familiar with how the vernal equinox influences the need to commence a stringent harvest regimen. Unlike the arduous labor involved in sowing the seeds, tilling the soil and keeping the crop adequately hydrated, an Internet marketing plan encompasses a web design and brand continuity to assure the highest retention rate.

The prospects that are courted today become new clients tomorrow. Sowing the seeds is comparable to link building. Links from microsites, social media pages (Twitter and, Facebook), press release optimizations, and even fan sites procure new business opportunities.

Are all the pages of your web design attuned for the Internet marketing strategy?

• When your consumers and clients ponder your products, what does your brand call to mind?
• Is your online brand identity achieving proposed benchmarks and consumer loyalty?
• How does your company plan to bolster consumer loyalty?

Whether your business development and strategic planning departments have the answers to the aforementioned questions or not, social media networking provides the immediate solutions and answers to these brand identity inconsistencies and Internet marketing assessments. Twitter and Facebook are narrowing the communication gap between corporations and consumer commentary. By humanizing a product, service or behemoth corporation, brands nurture steadfast loyalty.  With the ability to initiate the dialogue with prospects and clients, companies can use the online audience to fine tune the brand id. 

Thanks to these social media design and networking instruments, inept, unproductive products have a short lifespan. With a mélange of effective web design, social media and the fulfillment of consumer demand, any-sized organization can develop an immensely effective Internet marketing strategy.

As your company plans its Internet marketing strategy for the year, approach it with the same cultivation and diligence that agriculturists employ to assure a fruitful crop for the vernal equinox.

Contact The Net Impact to customize an exacting Internet marketing strategy for your company.