We’re proud to announce that we have not one, not two, but six new website launches to share with you! From storage facilities to a family therapist a beauty guru, take a look at our newest additions to the UplinkSpyder web.
Family Roots Therapy
Family Roots Therapy, based in Portland, helps young children and families through trauma. The psychiatrists at Family Roots believe that too often, children’s issues are treated as an afterthought and because of that, they commit themselves to deliver timely help. Their website features an easy-to-navigate layout with friendly imagery. There’s also a simple portal where clients can make appointments, pay bills, or send a secure message to therapists.
Castle Storage
When you visit Castle Storage in Eugene, you’ll immediately notice a large dragon. Her name is Ophelia and she guards her treasure as well as yours.
The Castle Storage website was built with Ophelia in mind. The imagery was fun to work with on this one! Rich brick textures and gold highlight the site, while information and a payment portal for users are easily accessible.
Planet Storage
Planet Storage’s website is just plain fun. Buttons glow green and playful alien caricatures (hand illustrated by our designer, Alina) guide visitors through the website.
Based in Eugene, Planet Storage has out of this world staff who readily help answer any questions you may have.
Swiss Clinique
Swiss Clinique treats clients to the pampering of a lifetime. This new website (our second build for this Orange County day spa) features information on owner Evelyne’s luxurious services and hosts an upgraded e-commerce portal for sales of “Swiss Approved” skin care and makeup products, some of which Swiss Clinique is the sole US distributor for.
Elizabeth Rumley
A pharmacist turned lifestyle blogger and entrepreneur, Elizabeth Rumley’s website has a deliciously clean layout. If an ocean breeze scent could exist on a website, this is where you’d find it. Elizabeth writes about her two sons and husband, her life in San Antonio, Texas, and her love for Monat hair products.
KKNX Radio 84
Who doesn’t love the classics? Hosted by “The Voice” John Mielke and the most knowledgeable DJs in radio, KKNX Classic Hits radio (105.1 FM) spins only the best tracks (plus news, weather, and sports!). Listeners don’t have to tune in to the radio though – they can listen anywhere, thanks to the website’s live streaming option.
If you’re in the market for a website, marketing help, or content creation, give UplinkSpyder a call. We specialize in creating personalized websites for your brand. If you work with Uplink, you can rest assured that no one knows the web like a Spyder.
Search Engine Optimization – or the art of getting your website’s content to rank well – is a complex and misunderstood practice. Many variables make up the algorithm that determines how your content will rank against your competitors. However, one variable that is becoming more and more important is the readability, or reading level, of the content. How this is rated is by using the Flesch Reading Ease formula. Let’s dive into that a bit more.
Why is readability important to Google and other search engines? Because they want to deliver relevant content to their users AND they also want to provide interesting and engaging content that the user will want to read. If the user can’t read the content or finds it to be too hard to read, they will likely leave your site. Google doesn’t like this.
So how do you know if your content is readable? One useful tool used throughout our industry, and that we use to help our clients get better rankings is a test known as Flesch Reading Ease.
What is the Flesch Reading Ease?
Also known as the Flesch-Kincade Reading Level, this digital test uses English language structures, word count, syllable count, and average sentence length to determine how difficult content is to read. The original concept was created by Rudolf Flesch.
In 1975, in partnership with J. Peter Kincaid, Flesch developed a formula to test the complexity of written materials. That test was then implemented by the United States Navy to evaluate the reading level of technical manuals used in training service members. A few years later, other branches of service began using the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Formula as well.
How is the Flesch Reading Score Calculated?
Each piece of content has a score. The higher the score, the easier the content is to read. Short sentences and small words are scored higher on the scale than long sentences and long words. Here’s how to scores break down:
0-30 are considered college level and are more suited to academia.
60-70 are considered 8th to 9th-grade reading level.
100 indicates a 1st to 2nd-grade reading level.
Many numbers floating around, depending on where you look, but the overall census is that most people are at the 8th-grade reading level. Since Google wants as many people as possible to be able to read and understand the page or article they rank, the content needs to be at or near an 8th-grade reading level. While this sounds easy enough, we find that we often have to simplify content we naturally write.
Increasing Your Readability Score
By paying attention to certain factors, your content can shift from a massive and hard-to-read wall of content into an easily consumable source of valuable information.
Shorten Your Paragraphs
Shorter paragraphs visually break up the content and allow your reader’s mind to digest the information in smaller chunks. It’s easier to process content while scrolling if it’s broken down. Bullet and numbered lists are your friend! How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
Choose Fewer Words With More Power
When writing, use a more active voice. In other words, keep your reader’s attention by writing more directly. For instance, instead of saying, “The woman was advised by her doctor. ” say instead, “The doctor gave her advice.”
Also, avoid using excess words. For instance, you don’t need to say “a long marathon.” The word “marathon” already assumes it is “long”. Often, to get to a specific word count, you might be tempted to switch to passive voice or add “fluff,” but this will hurt your readability.
Write As You Talk – Not Like You Were Taught
When we talk to people in person, we have natural pauses and sentence stops. Also, we start sentences with “but” and “and” and “however” and other transition words. When we were in language arts classes, we were taught not to use these words at the beginning of a sentence, but in writing for the web, these words, as well as short sentences, make for easier reading.
Simplify Your Vocabulary
No one likes to feel upstaged, and not everyone is a walking thesaurus. There’s no need for “fancy talk” on a website. Use the simplest word to convey the same meaning — for instance, use “deep” instead of “profound.”
Additional Tips for Writing Blogs
Website content (often called website copy) is a different ballgame than the content for a blog. Here are a couple of tips to help you keep your blog full of good information and remain easy to read.
Focus
There are so many tangents that a blog can go on, but barraging a reader with a ton of different topics is only going to confuse. Find a focus topic, and elaborate on that one concept. Save the tangents for another post, and link to other related posts later.
Keywords
Google and other search engines use keywords for searching content to bring pages to the eyes of the reader. The keyword should always be in the first paragraph of the blog, in at least one header, and within 2-3% of the content. That means the keyword shouldn’t just be thrown around but used very strategically and intentionally. If your content has too many key phrases, you’ll struggle to stay on top of searches because Google hates what we call, “keyword stuffing.” Make sure it’s natural and don’t overdo it.
Consider Your Target Audience
Your blog will be easier to read and hold more attention if you follow the concepts of the Flesch Reading Ease score system, but it’s not the “be-all-end-all” of website copy or blog writing. Always consider your audience along with your readability score.
The Flesch Reading Ease is a guide, and it’s essential to follow your brand voice in your content. If you cater to a higher education level, then you can adjust your content to reflect that. We work hard to learn your business voice and your audience and write content that suits their needs.
Building website content can be overwhelming, and that’s okay. If you have any concerns about content, give us a call. We’ll put our team of Spyders on the job to make sure you see the results you’re looking for.
No one wants to invest a great deal of effort in writing content for their website only to find out that they’ve made huge mistakes in helping search engines find it. In our work developing websites and helping our clients to improve the optimization of each piece of content on their site, we’ve found there are many common mistakes when business owners try to write their own meta descriptions. In this article, we’ve outlined some of the most common meta description mistakes made and not only how to avoid them but how to publish content Google will want to show off.
What is a Meta Description?
When you search something on Google, the first page shows you the most relevant content to your search. One of the things that contribute to the popularity and relevance of one web page over another is the light grey description below the title and web address, known as the meta description. This text can be a direct quote from the page it references but ideally, the description is a carefully constructed sentence strategically formatted to get the best search results and most clicks.
There’s no law that dictates what you can and can’t put in this area. If you want to write, “this is my page, click here click here, CLICK HERE”, you absolutely can. But we guarantee that won’t convince Google to rank you higher when compared to your competitor’s pages. If you want Google to take you seriously, you’ll want to strategically formulate your description.
Length
One of the first things to consider when writing your meta description is the length. There is a limit to the number of characters that your description can contain before Google cuts it off. If you Google anything, you’ll see that half the time, a given description clearly isn’t finished, but Google finished it with an ellipsis.
Whatever the synopsis of your page says, it should be anywhere between 120-158 characters, which if you’re geeky like us, maxes out at 920 pixels.
Just so you know, these and the following words equal 158 characters. When the last word is “stop”, you’ll know that I’ve reached the maximum possible – STOP.
It’s almost nothing! That last “stop” shows exactly what Google does to your sentence. If it’s incomplete it doesn’t matter. So write carefully and pay attention, because we all know how easy it is to ramble.
Think About Your Copy
Now that you know how much to write in your meta description, the next step is to think about content. You only have a limited amount of space, so be sure to maximize it. A common mistake we see is that the meta description author does not consider their audience.
When you have a customer or a target audience, you want to understand them. You want to know the words that they respond to and use them. If you know the language that makes your audience tick, tailor that language into a readable, clickable phrase.
You don’t have to (and shouldn’t) use big words. Don’t even write out numbers, just use the symbol. In fact, using numbers or symbols in your text catches the eye and can be very useful to convince readers to click on your page rather than someone else’s.
Think about what makes you click on a page. What are the things that convince you to choose it over another? Remember these tips when creating your copy and you should be able to craft a catchy meta description with no problem:
Talk to your customer
Use compelling phrases (calls to action)
Use numbers/symbols
Keep it simple
Don’t Try to Trick Google
Some people think they can pull one over on Google. Let’s face it, Google is smarter than all of us. Let’s not anger the A.I., shall we?
When writing your meta description, keep it similar to the content of your page. Sometimes people try to write a description that’s catchy but not really relevant to lure visitors to their site, but what they may not realize is that Google knows. Google always knows. It’s kind of like Santa in that regard. If you’re strategically honest, Google will reward you, but if you’re bad, it’ll give you coal in the form of hiding your website on page 100. So just don’t do it.
Keyword Content
A big mistake people inadvertently make is not utilizing keywords to their full advantage. If you have a blog post or a page that serves a specific purpose, it’s guaranteed to have keywords, even if you haven’t ranked for them yet.
If you have a blog about ways to lose weight, a keyword could be “weight loss”. Try to choose specific keywords based on your existing content to strategically amp up each page’s optimization through the meta description.
No Duplicates
Just because you can copy a meta description that you’ve already written, doesn’t mean that you should. Some people think that if one description is really good, it’ll be good for multiple pages. Not true. You’re just being lazy and not doing yourself any favors by having similar or repeated messages across pages on your website. By having variety, your pages will more likely come up in different searches, rather than all showing up at once.
In the end, there are many simple mistakes you can make when writing a meta description. The good news is that there are also simple solutions. If you pay attention to your audience, your content, and your keywords, you’ll be writing tantalizing meta descriptions in no time. For more tips and tricks on optimizing your website, visit our blog or better yet, talk to a Spyder.
How to use Instagram, in an effective way, for a business is the most common topic requested when we hold a workshop or host a marketing class. Its use has exploded in recent years and it is the #1 social media network that is viable for reaching millennials. Additionally, businesses in industries that are highly visual such as real estate, restaurants, any kind of retail or commerce or beauty/health-related businesses such as spas, hair salons, and fitness centers should be using Instagram regularly.
How To Use Instagram for Your Business
There are a few things to consider before jumping into Instagram with both feet.
First, you can only post to Instagram from a phone. This has been a very frustrating issue for most business owners. For one thing, they usually must make use of their personal (or their employee’s personal) cell phone in order to complete the task and it’s much more time consuming than writing.
Second, as Instagram grows, so does the complexity of what you can do with the platform. It’s no longer all about single selfies and cheesy quotes. Learning all the nuances, abilities, and tricks/trends can be time-consuming, but it is worthwhile.
Basics: Consistency and Clarity
An alternative headline could’ve been “Crisp and Concise.” Still, however you want to “c” it, what matters most is Cultivating your identity and brand. Instagram is a visual story and you are the storyteller. Begin by ensuring that what you are sharing fits in with your brand and is simple, clean and informative.
Separate Personal from Business
Make sure you are separating your personal Instagram from your business Instagram. One phone can hold five separate profiles so make sure you’re logging in to the “right” one. Business accounts are public whereas you can make your personal Instagram private if you wish.
Profile Image & Bio
Create a profile picture from your logo or another part of your brand (your face can be your profile image if you are your brand). Then leave it alone. The rule of thumb with social media in general is that when you’re bored with it is about the time everyone else is noticing it.
Write something catchy, witty, and descriptive of what you do in the Bio and include a link to the best place, which is hopefully your website (**ahem…designed by us) that people can get to know you. You can use that bio link more strategically later.
Learn To Follow
You want someone to follow you? Follow them. Start with businesses that know and love you or are your neighbors. Vendors. Local government bodies. Groups you belong to. Media. Any person or organization that could check you out, recommend you, “share” your content, or otherwise support you or that you could recommend or share content from. Later, you’ll want to be following fewer people than follow you but you have to start somewhere.
Curating and Brand Creation
Now comes the fun stuff. Charlie’s Cascade Canines isn’t going to take off without a little care and attention. Just like your pups, your profile needs to be groomed. Instagram continually ups the ante as far as profile curation is concerned.
It’s not good enough to snap pictures on your phone and upload them without any thought. Think about how your Instagram grid looks as a whole. Create consistency related to content, colors, patterns to cultivate a professional and/or impactful look. Remember, you’re trying to attract followers – that is where your grid matters most.
One thing: You don’t want to do the same thing every time. Mix it up with video. Have some posts that are one image and others that are multiple. When you’re first starting out you might be gung ho to do something cute like a checkerboard grid or other fancy things. We’ve even pinned a few of our favorite ideas here. But when you’re first getting started, it’s best to stick with basics.
Remember! Consistency doesn’t mean boring and unique doesn’t mean far out. Don’t stress too much about what will get the most attraction. Just commit to something that pleases you and stick to it.
One quick side note: down the line, you might be thinking about some of the more advanced grid techniques that require you to make 3-9 posts at a time. While this looks cool, don’t do it often. It will annoy your followers and look weird in their feed since they only see one at a time.
Hashtags
How do you gain followers on Instagram? Besides following others, the best thing you can do is #hashtag. On Instagram, hashtags are search keywords. It’s a pain in the ass, yes. But you’ve probably already figured out that hashtags are the least of the pains.
The best hashtags you can use have a combination of being descriptive of what you do and what you’re posting about and are something people actually search for.
No one is going to search for #thebestwebsitemakeraroundyeahbaby. But they will search for #websitedesigner.
When you start typing a hashtag, Instagram will give you a clue whether it is good or not by telling you how many times it has been used. Now that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use humor once in a while or come up with your own fun hashtag. You are creating content, after all, and wit works. Just don’t expect the crazy long & never before used hashtags to bring you, followers.
It’s also not wise to exclusively use super popular/generic hashtags. For instance, #love may get you some attention but #love is the most used hashtag on Instagram. On the other hand, #dogsofinstagram for a dog grooming business or even better, #dogsofinsertyourtownhere is a little more suitable for your business and will generate follows from people genuinely interested in what you do. You can use both–no shame in that.
Incidentally, when we’re helping our clients with SEO – this is very similar advice. You want keywords people use but not necessarily the ones that are the very most popular. Depending on your business, the sweet spot is finding your niche.
Also, follow your competition. What hashtags are your local competitors using and what hashtags are used by the national brands? You can even start your own hashtag so that all your work is easily found, and people using your service can use your hashtag, and it’ll all be collected in one neat area. Why do you think wedding hashtags are so useful? AutoHash and Display Purposes are free apps that help you find popular hashtags and create catchy new ones.
Interaction
You’ve followed a bunch of people, right? Now start interacting with them. Interacting gets your name out there for people to see and click on. Further, interacting increases the likelihood that your posts will show up more often for your followers and hashtags. Interacting means liking, sharing and commenting on posts.
Next Steps
Once you’ve mastered everything we’ve discussed so far: you’ve created your profile, and posted a few times, and followed a few people, and dabbled in the world of hashtags, and interacted with others, and gained a few followers, and cultivated a little of your own brand – you’re ready for the next step: stories, highlights, and ads.
Here’s the nutshell version for each and if you’d like to learn more, just let us know.
Stories: This is a separate area of Instagram (stories show up at the top of your home screen), where shorter and less cultivated posts and shares go. They expire in 24 hours and are a great tool for those who really want to maximize their Instagram exposure and interactions.
Highlights: Highlights are “compilations” of things you’ve posted under stories that can be featured above your grid. For instance, a restaurant might highlight all the posts of their food that customers have shared.
Ads: Want more exposure? Ads and promotions are a great way to gain more followers and engagement.
And there you have it! While we couldn’t cover everything Instagram is- this is a great starting point for any business. Be sure to head over to our Pinterest board about Instagram grids we love– there are a lot of neat things you can do to stand out. And of course, for help stepping up your Instagram, reach out to us anytime.
For every dollar you spend on email marketing, there’s an average return of $32. Not bad, right? But as with all marketing, you can’t just throw anything out there, wish upon a star, and hope it works. The key to getting the most bang for your buck is knowing how to write a newsletter that is effective and speaks to your audience. It’s extremely rare that you will meet someone that doesn’t have an email address, and with the number of promotional emails that are sent out daily, it’s crucial that the newsletters you send out have a purpose.
8 Tips for Writing an Awesome Newsletter
So, how do you make sure your email gets opened, read, and ultimately, sends the reader over to your website?
1. Know Your Audience
Even if your business is one that would ideally benefit anyone, it’s likely that you have an average demographic that you cater to. For example, a fitness center that is located near a university campus likely has members of all ages and walks of life, but the main audience they likely want to target is college students looking for a place to work-out.
The most effective email marketing strategy is one that speaks to your target demographic. These emails generally perform better than an email that’s “designed for everyone,” because you are better able to focus your message.
So, before you begin an email, ask yourself: what kind of person do I want to reach?
2. Define Your Goal
Every newsletter you create should have a clear goal. Some goals may include:
Directing traffic to your website to share a new service your business is offering
Sending traffic to your website to get customers to read your latest blog
Bringing attention, and sending traffic to your website’s online store to sell a product
Selling a specific promotion or special offer
The key to writing a great newsletter is making sure that you appeal to the reader, and that there’s a clear call-to-action. While we love high open rates, that shouldn’t be the main goal, because opens don’t automatically mean conversions.
Select your goal and allow that goal to shape your newsletter.
3. Organize the Pieces with the User Experience in Mind
Decide which content you want to include and the order in which you want to present it. If the reader opened your email and had to decide in two seconds whether or not they’re going to read the whole newsletter (because this is often the case), how are you going to keep them there?
If one of your most popular products is on sale for 50% off, that’s a pretty clear and appealing message to hit them with right away, but it’s not always that easy. If you’re announcing a new service or showcasing a new blog, think of how that service or blog can really make your reader’s life better and use that to shape your initial message.
4. Keep It Short
We understand that as a business owner, you are very passionate about what you do and want to shout every reason why it’s awesome from the rooftops, but as we touched on earlier, you only have a short window of time to keep your reader’s attention.
If you’re covering multiple topics within your newsletter, condense them into concise, but powerful, paragraphs. Give the reader a taste of that topic, and a clear link or button to a destination where they can learn more. But, be sure to keep a consistent voice throughout the entire newsletter, because you don’t want to confuse your audience.
Throughout your entire newsletter, your tone should match your brand. Not sure what we mean by that? Check this out.
5. Add Personalization & Personality Where You Can
Readers respond well when it feels like they are being communicated to directly. We aren’t suggesting you create a custom email for every contact in your audience (because who has time for that?) However, there are many easy ways to add a personal touch, which include:
Add a name-tag code that automatically enters the reader’s first name at the beginning of the email.
If you have your audience segmented into groups (people that are clients vs. people that are not yet clients for instance), create a couple of versions of the same email, with a slightly different message in each.
Also, the more you can make your business fun and relatable to your audience, the better:
For local businesses, insert community references that residents in your city will appreciate. Go Ducks! 😉
There are so many ways to have fun with your newsletters, and each business can find unique ways to appeal to their audience.
6. Proofread
We cannot stress this enough: make sure you have multiple sets of eyes on each newsletter before you press the Send button. There’s no better way to get someone to exit out of your newsletter than major typos and grammatical errors. These common errors erode trust and credibility and make your newsletters look careless.
Take a few extra moments to read through your newsletter, and read it again… and again.
7. Make Sure It Looks Good
You know how much we love good content (hint: we REALLY love it), but we also know that humans are visual creatures, and if your newsletter doesn’t instantly catch someone’s eye, they are probably going to click away rather quickly. All of the awesome content you’ve written for your newsletter needs to be presented in a beautiful way.
Here are a few quick tips from our designers:
Stick to 1-2 fonts, and select font sizes strategically.
Incorporate striking images and colors that are true to your brand.
Make sure images aren’t too big or small – big images take too long to load, and small images will be blurry.
When looking at the entire email from top to bottom from a distance, ensure it flows nicely and looks like a cohesive flyer or poster.
Add social icons to all of your newsletters.
8. The SINGLE most important tip is this: Tell your reader why they should open your email in your subject line.
Emails that perform are not tricky. The subject line tells the reader why they should open it and then delivers on that promise. Write subject lines that give away what’s inside. Don’t make the reader guess. They won’t. They’ll just pass. If you’re offering a coupon, say that. If you’re telling about a new service, say in the subject line what the service is. This way those people that open it are already interested in what’s inside.
We honestly could write all day about this subject but for now, we hope these tips not only help you write your next newsletter effectively but also help you to gain more traction with your overall strategy. You can do it!
And if you’re like one of the many busy business owners we work with, and you just don’t want to do it or don’t have the time, keep in mind that we create newsletters every day, and would love to explore ways to boost your business with a bomb-dot-com email strategy (let’s just pretend people still say bomb-dot-com).
For Newsletter Help, Contact Us Today
If you want help from our techy/writing/designing Spyders, contact us today and let’s chat. As our owner, Deanna, says, “There is still NO better marketing for return on investment than email when it’s done right.”
2018 was a busy year for us – and an exciting one at that. We’ve introduced new Spyders to our team, renovated and expanded our work-space (our “web”, if you will), added more businesses to our already awesome list of clients, and spent many hours doing what Spyders do best: writing, designing, and marketing.
To celebrate this incredible year, we have compiled a list of some of our favorite 2018 projects for your viewing pleasure. But first, a word from our fearless leader and CEO:
Our ten year anniversary as a company is this year — April 2019 — and it’s pretty remarkable to take a look at how far we’ve come and how much has transpired in those ten years. We started out of a home office with two clients.
When I look back, I see the huge mistakes we’ve made and tried our best to learn from and I see a landscape of beautiful and impactful work — but most of all, I see the relationships we’ve built over the years and continue to build. That’s why we do this work. Because we love to serve others and help other businesses grow and have successes of their own.
I want to take this moment to say thank you to all of you who have trusted UplinkSpyder — and the Spyders that work here — with your website, design, marketing and content needs. We have big plans for the next year. I’m really excited. I never thought of myself as a business owner, much less a successful one, but God has graced Emmanuel and myself with many extra chances to learn and grow. Employing others is one of the hardest and most rewarding experiences of our lives and I’m so very grateful I continue to have that opportunity.
Please take a look at a very small sample and a few cool statistics from the last year of our first decade. And stay tuned for more awesome to come…
Happy New Year!
Deanna Rivera, CEO
2018 at a Glance
13,506+
Hours Creating Awesome
In 2018, our Spyders spent over 13,500 combined hours working on your website, blogs, social media, newsletters, and more – and guess what? We loved every minute of it. We find joy in creating a website with a beautiful, mobile-responsive design that wows both your customers and search engines. When we see your keyword rankings improving, or a Facebook ad generating tons of clicks to your website, we literally high-five each other for a job well done. Your success is our success.
183,000+
Words Written *Since June
Just over the last 7 months, we’ve written over 183,000 words to help increase website traffic and pull customers in based on careful SEO research. This is done through your website’s “normal” content outlining your services, but also through our new content marketing packages for blogging, which…not to toot our own horn or anything…are pretty freaking great. We can’t stress how important it is to regularly post blogs to your website. Don’t think your business needs a blog? We’d love to tell you why that’s not the case.
439+
Newsletters Sent
Over this past year, we have sent over 430 newsletters for our clients, and that doesn’t count the additional efforts we make to ensure each of those newsletters get opened and clicked on. This includes automated emails (triggered by contact forms, pop-ups, etc.) and newsletter re-sends, with new subject lines, to people that didn’t open them originally. With email marketing, and all of your marketing efforts, consistency is key! We help our clients stay in their customers’ inboxes through well-crafted newsletters, helping grow their audience along the way.
+53%
Average Website Growth as Compared to 2017
Our existing websites, that we maintain and update regularly, experienced an average of 50% growth, compared to 2017. That’s because we don’t just launch a website and then wave good-bye. We become business partners with our clients, constantly helping them discover new ways to grow their business. When you work with UplinkSpyder, you work with a team of individuals that become your friends, and treat your business like our own.
23 Websites Launched
2018 was the year of experimenting with new design methods, further content analysis, and improved user experience. Through all of the 23 websites we built and launched in 2018, we were able to create something unique, which we are very proud of. Your website is the heart of all your marketing, so if it doesn’t truly reflect your business, has false information, or doesn’t show up properly on a mobile device, it’s not benefiting you at all. In fact, it may be hurting you. Luckily, we happen to know a group of talented Spyders (not the creepy, crawly kind) that can fix these issues for you.
25 Brands Created
When a new business owner comes to us and says “I don’t have a logo yet,” or “I don’t have a brand yet,” – it’s music to our ears. Our favorite projects are the ones that we help you shape from the beginning. In 2018, we helped 25 businesses find their identity. Check out some of the highlights below.
Thanks for reading all of that, but the proof is in the pudding.
Check out a few highlights from our web design and branding of 2018:
While the terms and practices aren’t new to us, you’ve probably never heard of them. However, in a day and age where more and more businesses are being sold a lie when it comes to Search Engine Optimization, we’re finding it’s important you (the business owner) know about white hat SEO techniques.
So why are we talking about headgear accessories? What does it mean in terms of search engines? Fortunately, white hat (and its opposite, black hat) are pretty simple terms, but they cover a comprehensive attitude toward SEO and a variety of techniques geared toward that attitude.
For the record – UplinkSpyder is strictly White Hat SEO – we don’t even dabble in that grey hat that everyone else seems to. Read on.
What is White Hat SEO?
In a nutshell, white hat SEO techniques are the good guy method of Search Engine Optimization. White hat SEO follows the rules, such as Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, while still maximizing the search engine rankings of a website.
Quickly defined, “white hat” is any practice that will improve search rankings AND maintain the integrity of your website AND follow the search engine’s rules.
Why are White Hat SEO Techniques so Important?
When a webmaster, or your amazing digital marketing firm (hint hint), delivers quality content with integrity in a fast, user-friendly format, that is white hat SEO. Marketing firms that employ white hat SEO make content easy to find through the use of descriptive keywords and meta-tags.
White hat SEO is important if you want to maintain a good relationship with Google, and thereby get better rankings and standing in search engine results. If you follow the rules, i.e. the Webmaster Guidelines, and keep the search engines happy, you can climb rankings, please customers, and not get banned by Google.
Why do People Use Anything Other than White Hat SEO Techniques?
It’s always a temptation to pick the “quick and easy” path to meet your goals, even if it leads to breaking some rules or using dishonest redirects, cloaking, etc. What a lot of people don’t like is that white hat SEO takes time. It’s natural and can be a slow process (especially for industries with lots of competition). Black hat SEO likes to speed up that process by using unethical techniques. It’s so common, unfortunately, that there’s even what some people call, “grey hat.” Grey hat is pretty much still black hat but deemed ok because “everyone else is doing it.”
Big Bad Black Hat
Black hat SEO is the practice of using tricks and manipulation to bump up traffic and engagement but doesn’t follow quality guidelines. Black hat practitioners think that by using underhanded methods, they’ll trick users into engaging with their content or giving them traffic; they consider fast and dramatic results are more important than building a loyal customer base or a strong brand.
Digital marketers who use black hat SEO don’t consider the risks or take them seriously. What’s really heartbreaking about this is innocent, hard-working business owners will hire these marketers and pay too much, only to have their site flagged by Google. And these days a website that can’t be found online can mean death for a new business.
Some Common Black Hat SEO Tactics are:
Keyword Stuffing: We just don’t do this. It’s dumb. Your target keyword should only be used as it fits in the content naturally.
Duplicate Content (stealing it from other successful sites): We use industry-standard tools to ensure every.single.word we write for you is absolutely nowhere else on the internet.
Splogging: This is where so-called writers or SEO experts throw keywords in a program that spits out “content.” If you’ve ever seen content that literally makes NO SENSE – that’s what happened.
Paying for Backlinks: Backlinks are your friend. But paying for backlinks is like paying for friends. Just don’t do it.
Google takes extreme measures against any form of spam or dishonesty; they may block part or all of a website, or merely drop that site’s rankings in search results. This is clearly not ideal.
5 White Hat SEO Techniques
At this point, hopefully, you see the advantages in knowing what the guidelines are for white hat SEO. Read on to learn the top 5 best techniques for practicing white hat SEO so you know what to look for when hiring a digital marketing firm.
1. Provide Quality Content
This is the obvious one, and the most difficult. It’s tempting to pull content from other websites or throw thin, quickly-researched content onto your site just so you have something for users to look at. Putting the time and work into creating and curating quality content for your users will reap the most benefits in the long run.
2. Research Keywords
Keywords are the best tool for finding the right demographic for your business and website. When users run a Google search for their keywords, you want the right users to find your content. In other words, the users who are most likely going to benefit from and engage with your content because they are the ones that are most likely to convert. Google’s Keyword Planner tool is extremely helpful for keyword research and your white hat SEO techniques.
3. Create Easy Navigation
Develop your website so that it is fast and easy to find specific content. Also, make sure to speed up your site’s loading times as much as possible so that users don’t have to wait impatiently. Making your site mobile-friendly is imperative so that you can engage with all of the smart device users. This will help you keep users who stumble on your site because it’s not difficult or time-consuming for them to use.
4. Follow Search Engine Policies
As mentioned earlier in this article, following Google’s Webmaster Guidelines will keep your website safe from penalties and is the mark of good white hat SEO. You and Google have this in common: you want your website visitors to be happy and to keep coming back. Following guidelines will help you do that.
5. Post Frequent Content
The more consistently you update and post on your website, the more you will build a loyal consumer base because they know they can depend on you for up-to-date and fresh information, whether it’s a blog, formatting updates, or new events or products.
So that’s the scoop on white hat SEO techniques and how you can use them to build a reputation for integrity and honesty online. UplinkSpyder can assist with any of your business’ web development or internet marketing needs. We are a full-service provider and dedicated to making our clients successful.
When it comes to the steps of brand building it can often be overwhelming, whether you’re a startup or simply rebranding. That’s why we decided to give you 5 steps in the brand building process that you can begin doing right now. So what is this branding thing all about? What does it mean for your business? How do you develop a unique brand that will not only draw customers in but keep them?
What Exactly is a Brand Build?
In an article written by Deanna back in 2015, she describes the building of your brand as “not one thing. It is the TOTAL experience you provide, either to your clients or your employees. Everything someone sees, smells, hears, touches or tastes, as it relates to your business, is a part of your unique brand.”
A recognizable brand is worth its weight in revenue. You want customers to think of your brand first when a specific need comes up, or to associate your brand with a positive business trait, such as friendliness, speedy service, or honest quoting. Building your business’ brand is an essential phase in creating a strong business presence, great marketing, and a devoted customer base.
However, how do you go about building a successful brand like that? Read on for our top five steps in the brand building process so that you will be ready to develop your own business strategically.
The 5 Steps of Brand Building
1. Research The Target Market for Your Brand
You need to make sure you know who you are selling to before you can strategize further on what you are selling them and how. With that in mind, you need to:
Identify your target market
Find out what they need
Brainstorm the best ways to meet their needs
Determining your market and finding out what makes them tick will help you understand what your short- and long-term goals should be. You want your ideal customer to feel appreciated and satisfied with the product or service that you’re providing them.
One helpful exercise for this step is to brainstorm “buyer personas” for your potential customers. What kind of person would be interested in your product? Your research should inform you of your target market’s geographical location, economic status, age, and gender.
2. Write a Mission Statement for Your Brand
This should address all of the following areas:
Your brand’s personality and voice. Is it sassy? Clever? Sensible?
Your brand’s business image and style. Is it professional? Informal? Thrifty? Top-of-the-line? What is your business aesthetic in advertising? What style of writing will stand out as belonging to your business?
Your brand’s specific strengths. What is your brand better at than anyone else?
Your brand’s unique place in the market. Why should customers choose you over others?
Answering these questions will allow you to set specific goals for your business to maintain consistency with your brand’s mission statement. Once you do this, you can make decisions based on whether an opportunity or idea matches your mission statement. This clarity will also help keep your business consistent, which will help you build a reputation as being reliable to customers.
3. Strategize Your Advertising
Promotion is essential to starting and maintaining a thriving business. Whether it’s online, in person, or on a billboard, you need strong advertising to remain consistent and thereby help your brand. Today’s digital age all but demands social media and a blog for your business.
Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are the “Big Three” social media platforms that you should make a part of your brand building in order to maintain a presence online. A blog for your business is good, but not if you can’t update regularly. Consistent content online will keep you in the front of your existing customers’ minds and bring you to the attention of new customers. If you can afford other advertising, utilize the avenues that will be consistent with your brand’s mission statement.
4. Figure Out Your Pitch
This goes hand-in-hand with Step 3 but is geared more for fellow industry professionals and investors. Keeping your mission statement in mind, practice an “elevator pitch” for what your business is all about. This pitch will come in handy when you make contacts or develop relationships for your business. Along with a pitch, make sure you can quickly write or verbalize your brand’s strategy. You want to clearly and concisely interest them in getting involved or investing.
5. Network, Network, Network
Got your pitch ready? Good. This step is all about making friends and getting people interested in your brand. If your business has a blog, make a list of potential companies that might be interested in co-branding. Don’t look for companies precisely like yours; look for businesses that offer something that can complement but not replace your service or product. Reach out to them and see if they’re interested in linking to you (you can link to them in return) or teaming up on advertising.
Also- get away from the desk and computer and join your local networking groups. BNI is a popular one throughout the nation, and most towns have networking groups unique to them.
Following these five steps to brand building will provide positive results for your business. Besides that, however, it will make your work a lot easier: The more specifics you have nailed down for your brand, the less time you waste figuring out which direction to go or whether an idea is right for your business goals.
Most importantly, the better hold you have on your brand, the stronger it will appear to your customers, and the more they will remember it.
If you don’t have the time or resources to strengthen your brand yourself, consider hiring someone to help. Our team is equipped and ready to begin the steps of brand building for your company. Contact us today to set up an appointment.
We’re not saying you need to be Jimmy Fallon funny, we’re just saying it certainly wouldn’t hurt if you were. That’s because more and more studies are coming out confirming what we kind of already know – humor in marketing works.
However, we don’t just want to tell you what to do, we want to show how effective humor can be, especially humor in marketing strategies. Let’s take a look at a company that has mastered humor in their marketing and see what lessons we can take from it.
ChatBooks- Humor in Marketing Perfection
ChatBooks. Yep – you heard us right.
Chatbooks – those plain square books that pull your pictures from Instagram and categorize them all by the tag you choose, then print out the month’s pictures in a nice book – all for 8 bucks. If you go to their website, it’s expected. In fact, it’s kind of “ok cool, another automated something I could just do myself and save 8 dollars a month. That’s 2 Starbucks!”
Humor in marketing perfection. Absolute perfection. We know you’re LOTI (laughing on the inside) and thinking,“PRAISE THE BABY JESUS WHERE HAVE THESE BEEN MY ENTIRE LIFE?”
“And only 8 bucks! Take.my.money.”
All of a sudden, something you weren’t willing to spend 8 bucks on is something you now can’t live without and have to have. So what changed? Do you suddenly need to have these photo books? No. Not even close. We all grew up with those photo albums with the sticky backs and plastic covers from the 80’s just fine, thank-you-very-much.
Do you all of the sudden just lack the desire to make the memory books yourself, like you would have five minutes ago?
Nope, you’re still just as capable as before.
So, what in the world changed?
1. Humor Proves The Brand Relates to its Audience
Chatbooks related to you. On a seriously personal level, but in a way that made you laugh, because of #life, amiright?
Chatbooks took something that, deep down, all Moms (working or not) felt: the overwhelming exhaustion over the huge responsibility of raising kids and oh, by the way, don’t forget to write down everything because time is so fleeting – and turned it into pure comedy. And what most people miss about this: You can’t truly be funny unless you actually GET IT.
Deep down, that’s what people want: to be deeply understood.
Now, all of a sudden, you want these Chatbooks. These Chatbooks won’t only give you pictures in hard copy to look at it, but it’s somehow going to relieve that stress and help you just exhale and feel, maybe for the first time, understood.
And how do we know that? Because it already did, just by making you laugh.
2. Humor Tells the Audience it’s OK to Need Help
Isn’t that what we want all our clients or customers to know? That it’s OK to need your service or product? That they can’t, in fact, do everything on their own? Of course, that’s what we all want, and humor does this in a non-offensive way.
Nothing is worse than feeling like you have to keep up with a world where you take time to smell the freshly pressed, organic, free-range leaves, on your handmade photo album. Who has time for that?
Chatbooks not only relates to its audience with humor but uses it to say, “hey, if making photo books sucks the life out of you, it’s OK.” What’s brilliant about this is that there’s no fancy jargon here. No big words, and even, to be blunt, some slang. Chatbooks calls it like it is because it’s true. There’s zero shame. None.
By the brand having no shame, the target audience is given permission to also have no shame as they click, “order now” and get on their merry way.
3. Humor in Marketing Builds Brand Loyalty
When we share something as intimate as a laugh with someone, way in our brain and nervous system, all the happy chemicals are released. These happy endorphins are the same ones released when a mother has a child, when people exercise, or even when an addict uses street drugs. And the entire purpose of those happy endorphins is to create a bond, a need, an addiction of sorts.
Or, in the world of business, loyalty. Not only does a brand want to win new customers, but they want to keep customers, too. We could get all into the science about it, but we’ll spare you (you can thank us by sending wine or coffee).
Chatbooks, by getting you to laugh and releasing those endorphins, is tying that happy feeling to those books. So now, just by looking at the books, your brain will immediately go back to that feeling you had when you first experienced Chatbooks. A feeling of happiness and of being understood and relieved of meaningless stress.
Forking brilliant, Chatbooks. Brilliant.
How to Use Humor in Marketing
So, now what? How the heck do you infuse humor in your already-there brand? How do you make sure you’re taken seriously but still, you know, not? How do you be funny in a virtual world?
1. Blogs
Blogs, by nature, are always more casual than website copy, so there’s a lot more freedom to just have at it. Blogs allow you to take the readers through a story where you can have them laughing in one minute, and converting in the next. Blogs make humor in marketing easy and natural and should be started as soon as you possibly can.
Here Are a Few Tips to Ensure There’s Humor in Your Stories:
Talk about something funny that happened, and tie it to what you want the reader to know.
Use relatable gifs or memes to drive home a point.
Refer to something trending and poke fun at it in a very nonchalant way.
Don’t forget to use those funny blogs in your email marketing, too!
Fun side note: We’re really stepping up our blogging and content services, as we’ve seen how vital high-quality content is to the success of our clients (that’s you!) so if blogging isn’t something you have time for, but know you need, give us call.
2. Facebook and Twitter
Facebook and Twitter are great ways to humanize the brand to consumers with humor. Don’t take things too seriously with these platforms and instead use it to poke fun at yourselves and show that lighter side.
While showing that more relaxed side of the brand does many good things, the most important thing it does is make the business far more approachable, far more “human.” This is that final push that people still in the informational gathering stage need to get up and walk through your door (or to click that call to action).
Here Are a Few Actionable Ways to Humanize the Company and Brand with Facebook or Twitter:
Skip the professional graphics from time to time and get a candid one of you, the team, the office dog, or the sink that decided to overflow (oh no!)
Do live videos. Forget about how you look and just do them. Don’t plan. Don’t script. Just get in front of that phone camera and educate your followers on how to use your product or service in a fun and light-hearted way. Bonus points if you’re like everyone else and have to hide in the supply closet to get one second without interruption.
Share funny and related memes that always seem to float all over FB and Twitter, and do so with a quick and witty caption.
3. Know That You Can Have Professionalism and Humor in Marketing
There seems to be this mindset that anything work-related has to be boring and “professional.” Yes, professionalism matters, but not to the point that the brand is forgettable and dry. Chatbooks does this perfectly – their website is professional and easy to use, but their ads are brilliantly funny and relatable. You can, and should, have both.
While we want to finish this off in a clear, professional way, we’re going to just leave you with another video ad that we find to be a-freaking-amazing in how it uses humor. Marketing in humor for-the-win (for more funny ads, just watch all the Old Spice commercials)!
Enjoy. Laugh. And don’t forget we’re here to help you navigate all things digital and funny.
Recently, our CEO, Deanna Rivera, hosted a small 2 hour marketing workshop for mother owned businesses. The focus, after polling attendees about their largest concerns, was primarily on social media tips. The day to day care of social media can be an overwhelming subject for most business owners, particularly those who are “doing it all on their own”.
Summarized below are what we feel were the most important takeaways from that conversation. UplinkSpyder may host more of these workshops in the future, so please let us know if you’re interested in attending.
1. Social Media should be used first and foremost as a branding tool for your organization.
Facebook, Instagram and the like provide a way to give potential and current customers consistent information that help to tell your story. Most people won’t buy from your business page directly and your individual posts are only seen by a small percentage of your total audience, so what you want to think most about is the overall impression your page is leaving. If someone were to scroll through all your posts and photos, what feeling would they be left with? Is that feeling consistent with your brand? A great way to influence that feeling is through strategy (see #4 below).
2. Social Media is also a directory.
When looking for you online, your social media channels will be listed along with your website, so it’s important that when people visit you, the information is current and correct and looks its best (and is consistent with your website, other social channels, business cards, and materials.) Note: It’s also important that when you put your business name in to a Google Search, that you personally visit each and every one of the listings that come up with your information and if possible, control the content listed about you.
3. The most successful companies are those that can effectively engage their audience.
This can be done with welcoming questions and comments and interacting online. One of the best ways to do this is through video. Video can especially help to differentiate you from others in your field as it does something no logo or static post can…adds in personality, warmth, and charm. Video can be used in so many ways and always attracts more attention than any other type of post or information.
4. The most important takeaway is about strategy.
If you are posting each day and not thinking about the bigger picture, you’re not only missing the opportunity to craft the impression you’re giving, you’re wasting time. Plan out a week or month of posts at a time. Sitting down once, instead of once or several times daily, and scheduling or planning posts, saves a lot of time that a busy business owner needs. You’re also less likely to forget something and you’re more likely to hit people during peak hours when your posts will make the biggest impact. If video is part of your strategy, create a month’s worth of video posts at once and schedule in when you’ll go live instead of trying to find moments within the busy week.
We discussed much more than this…differentiation between social channels, how to reuse posts, how best to use ads, and a bit about content marketing. The most important thing to remember when marketing your business is that all of these things are tools. Just like you wouldn’t use a hammer before knowing what you want the project you are making to look like…don’t use social media without goals and a vision of where you’re going and how your goals fit into a bigger strategy. Need help with any or all of that? That’s what we’re here for.
