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How Responsive Design Can Improve Your SEO

SEO is hugely important when it comes to showing up in search queries and having Google rank your website higher in its search results. One of the most important ways to boost SEO rankings in 2018 is through responsive design for your website. Let’s break down what SEO is and how responsive design can improve it.

SEO = Search Engine Optimization. Essentially, SEO involves getting your website to appear higher up in the search rankings for websites like Google and Bing. There’s tons to SEO, and you can learn more from websites like Moz or read more about it on the Cabedge blog.

Responsive design is only one of the tactics you can use to improve your SEO. Having a responsive design means your website will function smoothly no matter what device you are using to access it. You can easily use your website on a desktop, cell phone or tablet without compromising the user-friendly features or changing the functionality.

As devices other than desktops are increasingly being used to access data and information online, responsive design is becoming more and more important for SEO. Google is also set to launch its mobile-first index sometime in 2018, meaning that Google is going to start ranking websites based on their mobile friendliness. If you want to stay up to date on strategies to increase your SEO, responsive design is a great place to start.

Having a responsive design implemented for your website also means that you’ve increased the number of consumers you can reach without having to create an entirely different platform, like a downloadable application. Responsive design isn’t always the easiest thing to achieve, but all the hard work on the front-end will mean better results and less work in the long run for your company to maintain your website and boost your SEO.

If you’re organization is looking to create a website that utilizes responsive design, look not further than Cabedge. With years of experience in website design, back-end coding and SEO management, Cabedge is your one-stop shop for your website development needs. Reach out to us today, and we’ll get started on your personalized plan and design.

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Setting SMART Goals

Companies are always rushing to create, promote, and engage audiences because that’s what makes money. But it’s important to know why you’re doing it before you start throwing money down the drain. The first step to any successful business practice is to set goals. You’ve got to know what you want to accomplish before you get anywhere with your consumers. Cabedge considers itself an expert on setting SMART goals, so let’s get started!

Let’s Get SMART
There’s a difference between setting goals and setting SMART goals.

SMART goals don’t have anything to do with your intelligence, but they do have something to do with your strategy. SMART stands for: Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound. Let’s break that down further.

Let’s try and understand SMART goals by using the example of a dog grooming company, Bow Wow Cuts. Bow Wow Cuts is launching its first website, and it wants to increase traffic to its website by 15 percent in the first three months. Let’s analyze how this goal is SMART.

Specific: Because they are launching a website, it makes sense for Bow Wow Cuts to focus on the traffic that goes to that site specifically rather than tracking in-store visits or chew toy purchases. Without worrying about anything else, Bow Wow can track the impact that the website will have on its online presence.

Measurable: By determining that it wants to increase traffic by 15 percent Bow Wow has made this goal measurable. It knows how much it wants to increase traffic by, therefore it knows when it has hit that goal and can set a new goal.

Attainable: Bow Wow knows that it is launching a new website which is not likely to get an 80 percent increase in traffic, but 15 percent is a good number to reach in a reasonable amount of time.

Relevant: Bow Wow wants to focus on its online presence in this goal because of its recent website launch.

Time-bound: Bow Wow Cuts knows it wants to reach a 15 percent increase after three months of the site being live. After that three months is up, it can determine new goals. A deadline means a time-bound goal.

Having this SMART goal setting system determined before beginning any projects gives an organization and its team focus. It helps team members knows what the organization wants to achieve, and everything they do is catered toward accomplishing that goal. Including a unit of measurement and a due date provides a framework for the team. If the goal is too big or has an ambiguous end date, organizations are less likely to reach it because it becomes daunting or procrastination sets in. When you’ve got an end date for your goal, it gives you a new chance to evaluate success, adjust goals and set additional goals to continue moving forward. Goal setting is an endless cycle that provides organizations a chance to refocus themselves.

Setting goals can seem like an unnecessary step when there are 1,001 things to accomplish, but it’s the most important step because it sets the tone for the rest of the journey. If it’s done properly, goal setting leads to more determination, easily accomplished tasks and future success.

For help with professional goal setting for your organization, reach out to Cabedge today.

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Web Design Principles for the Modern Age

Design principles are always changing, meaning web design principles are changing even faster. Here are the top five trends Cabedge is anticipating for website design in 2018:

Broken Grid Layouts
If you’re not a designer, you probably don’t know about the grid method of design. Basically, you use a grid to lay out all the elements on a page (web or print). Using the grid, you can determine the appropriate amount of space between elements, height of text, size of photos, etc. Going into 2018, designers are going to be breaking the grid to create more white space on the page and interest for the reader. With a broken grid layout, elements overlap and intersect at unexpected points leaving the user pleasantly surprised by the organic feel and appearance of the website.

The Rise of Brutalism
Minimalism has been living in the foreground of the design world for quite some time now. Designs that incorporate minimalist features are clean, utilize plenty of white space, and have key elements that are repeated throughout a website. Going into 2018, designers are seeing the emergence of a very different styles of design that has nothing to do with minimalism — brutalism. Brutalism is most easily described as throwing everything you know about design principles out the window. It’s a movement that says goodbye to design frills and focuses on bringing the user information in whatever manner necessary. Brutalism originates from design in architecture in a post-World War II world. The architecture was raw and free of frills in a world that needed to rebuild quickly, and that is what the web design movement is trying to achieve.

Large, Bold Design Elements
Minimalism is falling to the wayside as maximalist design is on the rise. Maximalist design utilizes bold colors and designs to draw the reader’s attention to the screen. Sometimes it can be overwhelming, but that’s kind of the idea. Along with maximalist design, bold design elements like large oblique and organic shapes are becoming common elements on web pages as design evolves from a minimalist to maximalist approach.

User Interaction
2018 is all about clicking, scrolling, and shifting — essentially, websites want to catch user’s attention by engaging and interacting with them in big and small ways. Web designers are focusing on getting the user to stay on the page with small things like a Parallax effect on background photos and page transitions to engage the user, even when engagement isn’t 100 percent necessary (like you don’t need them to click on the button). Designers are also trying to engage users in a more direct manner by including elements like videos for user to click on to play and watch. Social media is also capitalizing on this element of website design by increasing users options to interact with their friends’ posts. (think of Facebook’s addition of emotions like “love,” “haha” and “sad” to the “like” button).

Video as a Key Element
The auto-play element that Facebook has incorporated on its platform is beneficial for multiple reasons — it grabs a scroller’s attention and gets them to stop and watch something (at least for a few seconds), it increases the video’s view count, and it increases engagement on a website.

Ultimately, adding videos to a page’s design elevates the look and feel of the website while also improving SEO rankings.

Bold Fonts
Thin fonts have been covering our screens for years, but bold fonts are ready to take center stage. Fonts have the power to make or break a brand and a design. It’s important that it’s legible, eye-catching, and stands out among the crowd. There are millions of fonts to choose from these days, and designers are going for bold in 2018. Fonts can be used as the only element on the page for a clean, minimalist design look, or they can be mixed and matched to reach a brutalist design. The choice is yours, but we suggest you choose bold. Also, keep your eye out for serif fonts as they grow in popularity. You can never go wrong with a classic.

If you’re looking to update your website for the new year, contact Cabedge today! With years of experience in web design and a knowledge of all the latest trends, Cabedge is the perfect company to help you accomplish your web design goals.

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Why Video Creation is Essential to Your SEO Ranking

In 2018, users are going to increasingly be looking for video content to give them information. YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, and more and more people are searching for videos now than ever. Video content is growing in popularity as a way to virtually teach lessons and share information to a wide audience, which is more often than not an international audience.

Video content made specifically for YouTube has the ability to increase SEO rankings for your organization because Google owns YouTube. Therefore, if you are creating content for YouTube, it means that content will get double the attention from Google. Google is already displaying videos as search results for general searches and image searches with 55 percent of search results containing a video of some sort.

YouTube viewers can also turn into website visitors or patrons. It’s easy to click on a YouTube video, listen to what a creator has to say, and click into their description box to find a link to their website or to products they were talking about. YouTube, like other social media platforms, serves as an advanced form of generating viewers for your other, targeted content.

Additionally, you can embed videos in your written content to boost SEO rankings and views and encourage users to stay on your page longer. The added work of creating and editing video content will pay off when your written content soars through the rankings in 2018 due to your improved SEO.

Looking for some help creating video content or in utilizing your current video content to promote sales of your product? Reach out to Cabedge today to get started!

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How to Make Friends and Influence Link Earning for Better SEO

Link building has always been important to a website’s SEO, but now more than ever, the practice is about engagement and relationship building. As Google’s machines get smarter, they can realize when links are disingenuous, and then stop giving those links as much credit in their SEO formula.

That’s why it’s crucial to build relationships with people before asking for a link. It isn’t easy, but nothing worth having ever is. To build relationships with potential linkers, start with engaging on their platform — blog, website, social media, etc. This shouldn’t be hard since anyone you’re reaching out to for links should be writing/producing content you’re interested in. Guest posting is also an important way to cultivate links and relationships. Because guest posts are give-and-take (you’re giving content and taking a link), others are more likely to work with you in the future. And, if you have the ability, try to meet people in person. Reach out to get coffee or meet over lunch. It can be intimidating to meet people offline in the digital age, but it could lead to a very beneficial relationship down the road.

Paying for links and leaving links in comment sections is a thing of the past (the very, very long ago past). Search engines are smarter than that now, and they are increasingly looking for genuine links and relationships between link givers. Put in the time to build relationships with people in your online community, and the links will come organically.

For help growing your link building community, look no further than Cabedge. With years of experience in SEO, Cabedge can help you come up with a personalized strategy and link building plan to help improve your organizations SEO.

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The Age of Voice Assistants: How to Get Noticed

You might have gotten used to calling Alexa for your every waking need, but Google is still trying to figure out how to rank these searches properly.

Voice searching is on the rise with gadgets like Alexa and Google Home. Searching is a whole different ball game than it was five years ago, and SEO is changing because of it. Elements like search terms, keywords, and mobile-friendliness change how people are searching with their voice, and therefore, how Google indexes those searches.

One of the biggest changes, is in picking up on human’s natural speech patterns. Typically, when a user searches for something on their desktop or mobile device they are using different syntax than they do in their normal language. For example, say someone is trying to find out if Domino’s is open on Thanksgiving. If they are typing in the search they might try, “Domino’s hours,” but, if they were to speak the search, they are more likely to use full sentences, “Hey Google, is Domino’s open today?”

Because of the need to pick up on varying syntaxes and search words, things are changing for SEO rankings. To appear in a voice search now, it’s important to be featured on the first page, and it helps if you’ve got a featured snippet. Featured snippets look like this:

And they sit at position zero on a search page. This featured snippet would be the first thing a Google Home would read out to its user in an answer along with the website name.

Along with featured snippets, elements like long-tail keywords, mobile-friendly sites, and including a question/answer format in web pages are growing increasingly important with the rise of voice searching.

One thing is for sure — with changing technology comes changing SEO practices.

If you or your organization need help staying up to date with SEO trends, reach out to Cabedge! With years of experience and an understanding of how swiftly SEO practices are changing, Cabedge can help with it all. Contact us today, and we can get started on a plan personalized to your needs.

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Google’s Mobile-First Index to Launch in 2018

Over the last decade, more people have turned to their mobile devices to perform searches than ever before. In 2017, mobile searches accounted for 55 percent of all traffic. With the increased use of mobile devices to find answers to user’s questions, Google is working to release its mobile-first index in 2018- an index that has been highly anticipated for years.

According to Gary Illyes, a webmaster trends analyst working for Google, at the SMX Advanced Conference in Seattle in June the mobile-first index should launch sometime in 2018. This index is different from how Google is currently indexing content in that it searches mobile sites first, therefore if a website gets searched a lot from a desktop, but doesn’t have a mobile website, this index might hurt its rankings. The good news is that if you’ve got a responsive website design, mobile-indexing shouldn’t affect your traffic all that much.

Illyes emphasized that Google is committed to making this transition as seamless as possible, so it may take a bit of time for the index to be fully completed. He even noted that Google is trying to create this index without hurting non-mobile-friendly sites — a feat that seems hard with a mobile-first index, but time will tell. Google is also being very thorough in its communications with publishers about the launch so there are no surprises when it’s finally released.

No matter how prepared Google or publishers are, this mobile-first index is sure to shake things up for SEO rankings in 2018.

If you’re organization is looking to compete in this mobile-first era of indexing, reach out to Cabedge. With years of experience in SEO trends and responsive website design, Cabedge can help with all your needs.

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The Knowledge Box Takeover

Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) are constantly changing — becoming smarter to show users exactly what they are looking for. When this happens, it means fewer people are actually clicking through to websites because they can find the answer they are looking for right on the SERP.

In 2012, Google introduced what are known as Knowledge Boxes.

Knowledge Boxes (also known as Knowledge Panels or Knowledge Graphs) are quick blurbs of information answering search questions from users. Typically, these excerpts come straight from Wikipedia pages and make searching easier and faster for users. These knowledge boxes are increasingly taking over for Featured Snippets.

A featured snippet is an excerpt of information from a website other than Google and serves as position zero on a SERP.

Featured snippets used to be a great way for websites to increase their click-through-rate, but with the takeover of Knowledge Boxes, they are slowly becoming a thing of the past. To improve SEO rankings in the age of the Knowledge Box, users need to be working earnestly to link build, promote, and ensure their sites are on page one or two of the search results.

Knowledge Boxes are not the end of the SEO world, but they do mean users need to adapt. While Featured Snippets haven’t gone away entirely, content creators need to work with intent to ensure their content is seen around these large information boxes.

If you’re looking to improve your SEO in the age of the knowledge box, contact Cabedge — a digital marketing firm that understands the intricacies and trends of SEO to help your organization get to the top of the rankings.