SEO vs. PPC: Which Method Do You Need to Work On?

Both search engine optimization and pay per click come under search engine marketing are commonly used by digital marketers for gaining an increased exposure for their brand in addition to expanding the online reach. Everyone today uses search engines for finding the required information on the internet. So it makes sense to target all those users to increase your exposure and sales eventually on the internet. This is where marketers consider using SEO or PPC for increasing the traffic.

SEO and PPC: Basic Overview

SEO is also known as “organic search” is all about optimizing a site and its content for a high ranking in the search results against popular keywords. When selling baby clothes, you will want to target queries such as “baby clothes”, “baby clothing store”, “cheap baby clothes,” along with a city name. SEO also requires the webmaster to properly optimize web pages through coding and creating keyword-focused content which search engines easily categorize for building website back links.

PPC is a method that is about buying an advertising space on the search engine result pages against a particular set of keywords. You are required to pay a specific price-per-click for every user click through to your site as a result of your ad display. For running a PPC campaign, you will have to create ads, plan a budget and target the relevant keywords to gain ad visibility. 

You can also check out the detailed infographic to learn the main difference between SEO and PPC by Medialinkers SEO firm.

Knowing the Difference between UX and UI

UX and UI are common terms in the design field, however, differentiating them is as important for users as it is for designers since many people wrongly consider these terms similar. For a user, the main difference lies in the appearance and functionality of a design. UI is all about the appearance of a website whereas UX is about its experience.

From a designer point of view, you must be clear about the area you need to work on, whether it’s UX, UI or both. You can work on both, but for that, you will have to be exceptionally talented. Designers working on both UX and UI are known as full stack designers. But to work smoothly, you will have to be familiar with these tasks in order to successfully perform as a UI and U designer.

UX designers are those who are mainly concerned with the way their product feels. They have to explore the different ways to solve and address user issues. For creating a good UX, designers need to strictly focus on the logical flow of the product including work on different elements such as design and content. UX designers also need to analyze the user’s interactions with the services/products to evaluate its working.

UI designers also are known as User Interface Designers mainly focus on creating a product instead of improving its experience and feel. This makes UI designers accountable for creating a design deliverable serving the needs of a user. In short, both roles are important to the success of a product, and UX designers are critical for designing a great end product. Medialinkers web design agency highlights the entire main difference that there is between UX and UI.

Social Media Dominating Trends of 2016

Standing out in the social media world is an increasingly difficult experience. 3 years ago in 2012, it was quite difficult to get pictures on Instagram’s discovery page where you can get loads of followers within a few minutes. Instagram today has more than 400 million active users. To stand out in the network and get followed by thousands of followers has become difficult. However, by following new emerging trends, you will be able to have a better reach and influence in the network

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Similarly, missing out on the emerging trends will reduce your chances of success. Investing more money becomes difficult to close the gap between early newcomers and adopters. Take an example of Nike, which joined Instagram 4 years ago to now stand at an extremely healthy following of 43 million followers without any paid advertising.  On the other hand, Adidas joined the network in 2012 and has only reached a figure of 8 million followers. This means that jumping in at the right time and adapting to the new technologies and trends will help in your growth.

For more information and statistics about the dominating trends of social media, feel free to check out the infographic by Medialinkers web social agency.

Knowing When to Revamp a Website

A lot of business owners do not know when to revamp their website and this is a reason why about 95% of the businesses have got outdated sites. Small businesses either do not think of their site or don’t realize the fact it’s outdated. Some ways suggested by Medialinkers web developers to know if it’s time for a site redesign are:

1.       1/3^rd of website traffic comes through mobile devices, which means that your site must be easy to use and work across all the mobile devices such as tablets and Smart phones.

2.       When a business site doesn’t work on a mobile device of prospective customers, they will turn away to a site that does. Make sure you are not sending the customers away.

3.       When using an adaptive mobile site, you need to upgrade to responsive design. This has SEO benefits and is also the industry practice these days. The responsive site design is a new technology which will make your site to work flawlessly across all devices through automatic adjustments.

4.       You also need to make sure that your site has the right security and is not outdated or at risk. Out of date sites or plugins are the main reason behind the sites getting hacked.

WordPress offers a simple and easy to use CMS development system for people with little to no knowledge of computers, but need to use a CMS for their development. Best feature of WordPress CMS is that it can be implemented and used by any person having basic computer knowledge.

It also offers additional functionalities for people who are not proficient with programming techniques. In case, you have a blog requiring additional pages, WP is the right web solution. You can also manage the page content through WordPress CMS. Medialinkers website designers share some information about the platform.

WordPress Installation and use

Installing WordPress is a straight forward process. It has a graphical user interface which makes it extremely efficient and simple to use unlike other platforms that have got a complicated administrative set up. Its good interface makes the procedure of managing and creating content productive and quick at the same time. The platform can be used by anyone without having an in-depth knowledge of computers.

Available CMS Themes

WordPress CMS offers multiple options to help users in selection of comprehensive appealing themes and templates, making it an ideal platform for the beginners. The platform also gives option allowing experienced developers to make changes in their own designs without a lot of restrictions to customize designs, templates and themes according to their requirements. The CMS has the ability for easy modification and promotion.

WordPress Plugin CMS

The plugin helps you embed several helpful features in a site letting you integrate the use of different plugins and tools. The plugins help in enhancing the site features by offering users extensible options to interface with a site.

5 Tips to Increasing User Engagement on a Site

A lot of business owners are ready to invest a big time in their online stores and want to keep the bounce rate to as minimum as possible. Wondering what a bounce rate is? Well, a bounce rate is a term used for referring the percentage of users who turn away after viewing the front web page.

Google Analytics is the best source of determining a site’s bounce rate. It will give you an exact idea about the number of users navigating from a site on the basis of the impression a site has on them. Bounce rate is also an important factor to consider not just for enhancing the user experience terms and engagement but also for SEO. It is also one of the most serious issues for multiple sites; however, it can be easily dealt with if effective techniques are worked on.

Given below are some tips shared by Medialinkers web developers Kennesaw to keep in mind for increasing your site’s productivity, while reducing its bounce rate:

1.       Improve Website’s Loading Speed

Website’s speed has become one of the most important factors today. A web user only waits for maximum of 5 seconds for a site to load. If a site takes longer than the 5 seconds then you cannot expect visitors to wait for it. They are certainly going to jump to another site. You can consider this as a way to serve to your competitors to gain an edge over you.

2.       Focus on Quality Instead of Quantity

When learning to focus on quality instead of quantity, you will put your site on the right track. Hire good writers to get quality content to assist in portraying the message to your business prospects while delivering informative stuff to audience relevant to their research. You can also split the lengthy articles into small parts to gain users’ attention at first look.

3.       Make Your Website Mobile Friendly    

As the population of users accessing web through mobile device increases at a competitive rate, you need to make sure that your site is accessible across the modern day mobile browsers. Otherwise you will only push your customers away. Getting a site to respond to small screens will increase your conversion rate while improving a brand’s visibility.

4.       Organizing Site Structure

Whether it is an internal or external link, it has to be connected to a landing resource. Try to open external links in a new window. In addition, linking to the relevant articles through your blog will increase your site’s authority.

5.       Easy to Navigate

Many designers forget that the navigation needs to be understood easily in trying to achieve something unique. More often than not, it can lead to something disastrous. This is why; you need to keep your site’s navigation clear, understandable and easily accessible to make sure the visitors don’t find it confusing.

Follow the above mentioned workable tips shared by Kennesaw web developers to make your business site engaging and interesting for the targeted audience. 

7 Common Terms Used in the Digital Design Industry

Every person has the potential to become a designer. They can understand the basic design principles whether they know it or not. For instance, when approaching a door, you will clearly know if you have to push or pull it open. You push or pull a door according to the icons displayed on it.

There are moments where a handle is not labeled correctly as a push or pull, causing confusion for the public, who think about if it could be designed better. Similarly, there are specific terms in the web design world, which everyone must know even if they are not a designer, to be better connected with their site design and its usability. A few important design terms are shared by the Medialinkers webdesign team:

1.       User Interface (UI)

The interface n a computer screen refers to the LOGIN button to your favorite site as it open its virtual door to it. The LOGIN button makes it easy for you to enter a site and the background behind it makes everything easy on the digital screen to become part of the site’s user interface. The User Interface needs to be created the same way a physical object or space is treated. It has to be super intuitive, direct and clean in purpose.

2.       Usability

When taking the interface into consideration, there is another method which makes interaction of user interface and user possible.  This communication between the two is called “user experience” and usability” of the interface measures how successful the interaction is between both parties.  If you are not able to navigate successfully through a site, then that is called a bad user experience. Pin pointing the weaknesses of a specific User Experience is a key to increasing the user conversions and its effectiveness.

3.       Visual Hierarchy

When entering any building, the first thing you need to see is its entrance. Second is to see the entrance name where as third is to see if you are pushing, swiping, pulling, scanning a retina or hastening through the door for entering the building. Visual hierarchy makes sure that you do not see the PULL lettering in large letters before knowing the door to enter through in the first place.

Visual hierarchy is about guiding the users through user experience, taking a narrative form about what will happen next.

4.       User Conventions

Another great way is to think about a design convention by understanding the benefits of consistency. Every time a doorway method to open a building changes, minutes and seconds of time is spent unlearning the previous method and for learning the new one. This comes under inconsistency which can be fixed by maintaining conventions.

If a door had a same push bar to push and pull a door then it becomes hard to forget how to open any door. This consistency is also called convention and saves many people a lot of time into thinking twice about it. Another term to refer it is known as UI pattern.

You need to research great looking designs and embed the similarities between these campaigns and designs you see and respond t in your designs.  These will layout these in your design.

5.       Intuitive Designs

Ever tried pulling a door which has no handle and just a flat metal panel? Most cases, the design of the door is such that your only intuitive option is to push the door. This design type is called affordance as it makes the available options obvious to process to the users. The elements displayed on the page needs to behave in accordance with how things feel like they need to behave naturally.

6.       Responsive

This is quite easy to explain. You may have pets at your home and whenever they walk in to your home, they use a small vent in the door, installed to meet their small body needs. Same is the case with a website design. It has to be different in size for a desktop, tablet and Smartphone screen. A good design needs to behave according to the different device sizes and screens.

7.       Minimalism

Take example of door again. If you have installed features that allow push on one side and pull on another, you have created an intuitive and minimalist design. Simplicity in a digital design helps to avoid unnecessary details and confusion at the same time.

You can also gain knowledge from Kennesaw web design experts about the common terms used in web design.