Archives for December 2021

The Importance of Images in Content Marketing

December 22, 2021 by David Henderson

In content marketing, images are vital. Adding visuals to practical, well-researched content can help to resonate with your audience over time. They don’t just stand out at first sight; they are also easier to remember. But it isn’t just the images themselves that help your page stand out, image optimization for SEO must also be implemented to help your site gain the ranking it deserves.

Eye-catching visuals can help the reader to focus and get a better idea of what a message is genuinely trying to say. They can give a better understanding of the message but can also explain easier and faster to some rather than just a cluster of written words.

Plan Your Content

When creating content for your site, always start by planning the content with its messaging, audience, and goals in mind. This thought process should include some compelling visual content. From the very beginning, you should consider what type of images, infographics, or other rich media could be added to the content to enhance its messaging.

Web content containing visuals has been shown to perform approximately 94% better than content with no visuals. Email marketing campaigns are no exception, and any emails that include images have a higher click-through rate compared to campaigns that have no visuals.

Image Optimization for SEO

It is not only important to have the images in your content, but they must be optimized for SEO. Image optimization is considered as an integral element in SEO optimization. It is essential to optimize the image for a better user experience and is also needed for search engines.

Images can give search engines important contextual information and speed up page loading, increasing user engagement and search engine rankings. It is vital first to understand the basics of image optimization before attempting optimization.

What Is Image Optimization?

Image optimization is the process of creating and delivering high-quality images in size, format, and resolution required for the channel. It also includes accurately labeling images so search engine crawlers can read them and understand page context.

File names for your images are extremely important and should be chosen even before uploading them onto your page. Before uploading, name the file with relevant, descriptive keywords to get the most SEO power. Use target keywords at the beginning of the name and separate them out with hyphens.

Alt tags are essential in the world of SEO. Without properly labelled alt tags, search engine crawlers can’t accurately index your image content. Provide more detail in the alt image than you would in the title, and aim for 10 -15 words that convey something about the image.

Images That Please Your Audience

In today’s digital climate, customers are more likely to be quickly captivated by an image than just words on a page. The trend of images within content is unlikely to change anytime soon. With the dramatic shift in content preferences with the growth of faster phones, faster internet connections, better picture quality, and more, it is critical to have visuals that will please your audience. Unwired Web Solutions can help to make sure all images on your website are up-to-date and have the proper SEO to accompany them.

As an SEO company in Kitchener, we understand the needs of our local clients. As a local business, appealing to the community is important for your success. Let our team help with your content needs that can help drive more customers and sales your way. Contact us today!

Website Design Trends for 2022

December 15, 2021 by David Henderson

The new year is right around the corner, and it is time to consider how your business will stand out in 2022. With increased eCommerce and online presence over the past couple of years, there is more competition than ever. This is why it is so important to keep your online shops and websites as up-to-date as possible. Unwired Web Solutions offers custom web development and custom web app development to help your business thrive in the upcoming year ahead.

One of the biggest trends for the upcoming year is an increased sense of playfulness in web design. Many designers have started creating sites that simply exist for play and delight. Web design is moving into the future by using advanced interactions and animations built with no-code tools, enabling designers to create them faster and easier than ever before.

Scavenger Hunts

Creating a scavenger hunt can work incredibly well when trying to make a website more fun and engaging. This new trend creates website structures that lend themselves to puzzles and scavenger hunts. Pages are daisy-chained and password-protected, making visitors provide answers or find clues to unlock the next page in the series.

Web designers are coming up with many creative ways to reveal prompts, clues, and answers. Some common ideas for clues include drawing a shape, finding a hidden clickable element on the page, and finding a word hidden in your main site.

Just remember to give your audience a workaround if you want everyone to be able to make it to the end. The scavenger hunt can be very useful for revealing a product launch, releasing a new video, or giving customers a hidden piece of information.

Art Deco Design Motifs

Art deco motifs have been trending over the past few years. Associations with the art deco style are often ornate Speakeasy sites or Gatsby-themed pages, all of which can make for beautifully minimalist designs.

For 2022, the trend takes inspiration from the curved, clean lines and repetitive graphic shapes of art deco illustration. These elements can inspire fonts, logos, spacer motifs, and illustrations in web design.

Oversized, Interactive Typography

A fresh new bold design trend for this year includes typography of unusual size. Beyond a specific size, text becomes more of a graphic element than simply part of the content. This unique technique can be used in minimalist or maximalist designs just as effectively and can suit many different styles.

Typography can be used as an overlay on a moving film or image, and the text can partially block the image making the viewer curious to see more. Or it can simply be used to create a sophisticated ultra-minimalist design on a neutral background.

But designers aren’t stopping there. Many are taking text even further and finding creative ways to make it move and play with the user’s mouse. In 2022 we will see more oversized typography that becomes animated when the cursor hovers over the text. This design element on a website has been shown to make the site feel more immersive.

Design In The New Year

While these are just a few examples of the web design trends for 2022, you can get an idea about the way designs are moving in the new year. At Unwired Web Solutions, we offer custom web development to incorporate some new trends for the new year. Staying up to date with your web design shows your customers that you care about your brand and always bring it into the future. For more information on our services, contact us today!

Why Product Content Optimization is Needed

December 7, 2021 by David Henderson

When it comes to selling your products online, the eCommerce industry has developed high standards. Whether you’re selling through a Google shopping product listing ad, an Instagram ad, or another site, you always need to provide accurate and up-to-date content. Making the most out of your revenue potential means your product data needs to be complete and informative as possible.

Product content optimization is anything that improves the product attributes in a feed to ensure you are producing high-end content for your sales channels. It not only helps drive SEO, but it also helps to build trust in your brand. Your content is unlikely to be found by your audience without content marketing optimization. Search engines, people, and potential customers can only find you when you rank well on search engine results pages.

Why Is It So Important?

In eCommerce, your business will be competing against product listings from thousands of different online merchants, and each sales channel only accepts products that meet the basic feed requirements. So, choosing not to optimize your product content means possibly missing out on thousands of sales.

Content optimization is part of every successful content marketing strategy. When you get your optimization right, your whole marketing function will be successful. Content optimization involves ensuring that the content is technically built, so it reaches the largest audience possible. Optimization means including relevant keywords, meta and title tags, links, headers and subheaders, calls to action, image sizes, and many other factors.

Consistency in product content is vital to a business brand. For example, suppose you display one set of information in a Facebook ad and an entirely different set on your phone website. In that case, you are guaranteed to gain a bad reputation and lose potential sales. Your content across all channels should be consistent, correct, and accurate, improving the overall shopping experience.

Feed Management Tool

Sometimes algorithms and requirements for optimization change, so it is important to be able to change all of your product listings easily. In some cases, it may be possible to carry out manual optimization of product content without help. However, for those who have many listings, a feed management tool may be helpful. This software can let you apply changes and alterations to hundreds or thousands of products all at once.

For content optimization services in Canada, contact Unwired Web Solutions. Our experts can help to ensure your content marketing strategy is up to date, including your product listings. We understand the importance of optimization for products and ensure you are not leaving any sales behind. For more information on product content optimization, contact our team today!

How Does Google Rank Your Local Business

December 2, 2021 by David Henderson

For local small businesses, it is vital to understand how Google ranking works. Without a firm grasp on it, business owners could end up spinning their wheels. If you own a small business, you most likely already know that potential customers turn to Google to search for what you offer. But if they can’t easily find you, they may turn to your competition.

No matter what type of business you may be, a local SEO company such as Unwired Web Solutions may be able to help grow your online presence. Over the past five years, Google has changed dramatically in the way it ranks local businesses.

A Continuous Process

Optimization needs to be done continuously to make sure your website gets the ranking it deserves. The days of hiring an SEO specialist to get your website ranked and then sitting back and doing nothing for ten years are gone.

Although there have been a lot of changes, the core factors for SEO haven’t really changed. They still depend on keywords on the website and links from external sites. But because of Google’s new changes, SEO professionals need to stay ahead of the game and find ways to help clients rank.

A Different Way of Looking at SEO

A few years ago, when Google started changing results based on local intent, local businesses needed to change the way they thought about their SEO strategies. Google Business Profile was also launched, allowing local businesses to claim their business listing and add information similar to a Facebook business profile.

Google Business Profile changed the game for several reasons. Customers could now learn about your business without even clicking on your website. Google Business Profile and local search algorithms also added new core ranking factors such as:

Reviews
The proximity of the user on the map
Photos, posts, and videos of your products and services
Description in the “About” section

More Complex

Over the years, ranking factors for local businesses and franchised locations have become much more complex. There are over 100 factors that may impact how your company ranks in the local area. Experts suggest that the most important part of ranking locally is through keyword optimization. It is extremely critical to take the time to do the research as there are hundreds of keyword combinations that can be used to find businesses. When thinking of keywords for your business, you will need to consider which ones have the most search volume and which describe your core service or product.

Understanding keywords can be tricky. Those with the most searches aren’t always the primary keywords for targeted optimization. Sometimes it’s better to be ranked number one for the secondary keyword for a profitable service than being ranked number 18 for the keyword with the most searches. Keyword optimization is a constantly evolving process, with rankings changing every day. With the help of a local SEO company, they can help you track average rank and analyze search traffic to determine your monthly adjustments.

Social Media

All search engines and social media platforms are paying attention to each other. When Google looks at ranking a local business, they are closely watching every aspect of your business. Some of the most significant factors in Google ranking include:

Are you actively using Google Business Profile?
Are you actively logging in and using listing sites such as Yelp and Bing?
Are you updating your events and information?
Are you posting on social media regularly?
Are you uploading photos and videos to Google Business Profile and other platforms?

As you can see, activity is critical when Google is ranking you. When Google looks at solid and active businesses, they appear as thriving companies using these platforms, which shows they care about their customers since they are showing concern about their online reputation.

A strong, active online presence will help your reputation and clickthrough rates to help convince more customers to contact you. As Google is the search leader who has a highly advanced algorithm, it may be essential to work with a local SEO company that can help with the process. Contact our team at Unwired Web Solutions today to get started with your local SEO plan.