RJM's
Insights

2017 is well underway—but are your digital strategies? If you were living under a rock the past few years and don’t understand how important search rankings are—93% of online experiences begin with search. When it comes to SEO, not only are Google’s algorithm updates changing rapidly, but also customers’ usage and expectations. Usability has heavily influenced Google’s algorithm in the past year. Here are my top 3 SEO updates of 2016 influenced by consumer usability:

Fifteen years ago, Google was barely a newborn. Literally only a month old as a company, Google consisted of nothing more than a few founders and some loosely tied together hardware in a Menlo Park garage. By 2004, Google was a billion-dollar company being publicly traded on the NASDAQ. But this isn't a story of their meteoric rise; it's a story of how they have pulled your business into their journey.

After all is said and done, what do we know for sure? First, we know that it's rare, if not unheard of, for a business owner to say that their website isn't important to their business. Years ago it was established that to not be online was to miss out on opportunities that could elevate business sales to numbers beyond normal expectations. Second, we know that the average business is reaching thousands of people per month with their site. This in itself deserves congratulations for many business owners.

While certainly not the only solution, a commitment to marketing a business website will be one of the ways to reverse the trend of non-returning visitors. Building feedback loops into the site, where customers can easily subscribe to a secondary source of information, be that a newsletter or Facebook account, provides a way to bring a visitor back to your site. If these methods of marketing are not utilized, continue to expect that 75% of your visitors will only see your site once.

One of the great privileges that RjM has enjoyed over the years is to have built well over 200 websites for businesses of different sizes serving a variety of industries in many of the fifty states. This allows us to take a look at online trends at a macro level that many people will never be able to see. We can see where the trend lines are pointing, but often individual businesses have no way to compare themselves to their peer group. That's about to change.

You've just clicked the final button on the beginning of your Google AdWords campaign. If you've selected the right keywords, traffic is starting to see your ad and click through to your web site. In a matter of days, you can see the difference the AdWords campaign has on your web site's traffic logs. Success, right? Well, maybe.

Search Engine Marketing is supposed to be easy. The entire theory around the process is that the customer is already searching for your website and they only need a sign pointing them in the right direction. While the theory still holds true, the truth is that like any other marketing opportunity, it takes thought and strategy to make the effort worthwhile.

Last year, $9.6 billion dollars was spent by companies advertising online – and that number is only growing. 2005 saw spending for online advertising jump another 4.3%, to $2.8 billion dollars for the first quarter alone. With nearly 70% of the American population online, the fight for the eyes of the online consumer is heating up at a record pace. And it's starting at the most common Internet site, the search engine.