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How Social Media Management Boosts SEO

How Social Media Management Boosts SEO

In the dynamic landscape of digital marketing, the synergy between social media and search engine optimization (SEO) is undeniable. As businesses strive to maximize their online visibility, the role of social media management services becomes increasingly crucial. If you are curious to know in what specific ways your social media presence can improve your business’ SEO, stick around. That’s the very subject we are tackling here today.

Content Distribution and Amplification

Social media platforms serve as powerful channels for distributing and amplifying your content. Reality Concepts strategically shares your website content across various platforms. This not only increases the reach of your content but also generates social signals that search engines consider when determining the relevance and authority of your website.

Building High-Quality Backlinks

Quality backlinks play a pivotal role in SEO, and social media management can contribute to building these valuable links. We encourage sharing and linking in the posts we create for you, creating a network of high-quality backlinks that positively impact your website's search engine rankings.

Enhancing Brand Visibility and Credibility

A strong presence on social media platforms enhances your brand's visibility and credibility. Reality Concepts ensures that your brand message is consistently communicated across social channels, fostering a positive online reputation. Search engines take into account the authority and trustworthiness of your brand, influencing your SEO performance.

Local SEO Optimization

For businesses targeting local audiences, social media management can significantly impact local SEO. We tailor social media strategies to include local keywords, geotagged content, and location-specific promotions, ensuring that your business is optimized for local search queries.

Optimizing Social Profiles for Search

Reality Concepts optimizes your social media profiles to align with relevant keywords and ensure consistency with your overall SEO strategy. Well-optimized social profiles contribute to improved visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs), reinforcing your brand's online presence.

Analyzing Data for Continuous Improvement

Social media management involves data analysis to assess the performance of your campaigns. Our team utilizes analytics tools to measure the impact of social media efforts on website traffic, user engagement, and overall SEO performance, and we then share that info with you. This data-driven approach allows for continuous improvement and refinement of strategies.

We understand that an integrated approach to digital marketing is key to maximizing online success. By combining social media management with SEO strategies, your business can enjoy a comprehensive and effective online presence. Whether it's building backlinks, fostering user engagement, or optimizing for local search, Reality Concepts is committed to utilizing social media to elevate your brand's visibility and impact in the digital landscape. Embrace the power of social media management with Reality Concepts and watch your SEO rankings soar.

By Reality Concepts 2-19-2024

10 Key Strategies to Convert Visitors into Clients

10 Key Strategies to Convert Visitors into Clients

Is your website falling short when it comes to generating meaningful leads and attracting clients? If so, you might be dealing with the common ailment known as "website non-performance syndrome." The good news is that your website doesn't have to be a victim of this condition. In this article, we'll explore 10 essential tactics that we ourselves use at Reality Concepts that can transform your website, turning visitors into valuable clients.

Start by evaluating your website's visibility on search engines for crucial phrases. Consider leveraging Google Adwords for pay-per-click advertising. Boosting your presence through strategic advertising can be the remedy your website needs.

Define Your Web Strategies

Clearly define the primary function of your website. Whether it's promoting your company, providing information, or generating leads, focusing on two or three strategies is optimal. Avoid the pitfall of trying to do everything at once – clarity in purpose resonates with your visitors.

Create a Landing Page

Direct traffic from Google Adwords to a dedicated landing page distinct from your home page. Think of the landing page as a persuasive sales letter, aiming to seal the deal and convert visitors into clients effectively.

Increase Website "Stickiness"

Keep potential customers engaged by preventing premature exits. Reassure them that they've found the right solution with catchy headings and benefits-focused content. Encourage visitors to explore further before making a decision.

Provide a Call to Action

Explicitly ask your website visitors to take action – whether it's a call, email, or online order. A clear and compelling call to action guides visitors toward becoming clients.

Provide a Guarantee

Build trust by detailing your return and privacy policies. Offering a sense of security to your customers can prevent potential issues and instill confidence in their decision to engage with your services.

Provide Social Proof

Harness the power of testimonials to add credibility and value to your business. Satisfied customers make powerful advocates. Don't forget to ask for testimonials and feature them prominently on a dedicated page.

Provide Contact Options

Facilitate communication by offering both a contact form and prominent contact buttons. Keep the form simple, including essential details like first name, company name, phone number, and email. Ideally, feature the contact form on every page for easy access.

Provide an Incentive

Encourage immediate action from potential clients by offering incentives such as discounts or bonuses. A little extra motivation can go a long way in driving engagement.

Ultimately, the key to unlocking website success with Reality Concepts lies in setting clear goals, measuring progress, and viewing web marketing as an evolving project with shifting priorities. Take small steps, be realistic in your goals, and watch as your website transforms into a powerful tool for converting visitors into satisfied clients. Of course, these are all things that our team handles for our clients. So if you really want help making your website and brand a success, reach out to us to begin collaborating!

By Reality Concepts 1-29-2024

Creating the Pigott Law Group Site

Creating the Pigott Law Group Site

One of the latest websites that our Reality Concepts team has worked on is Pigott Law Group. With a range of expertise from personal injury to family law, they are a collaborative team of attorneys operating out of the Buffalo, New York area who enlisted our team to help them reach their target audience. This is after we already helped them create their Denver based office’s website, Hampton & Pigott. Because they were so pleased with the results from that project, they decided to trust us to design and manage this new site, and here is how we did it.

Few people need to seek out the help of an attorney on a regular basis, and therefore many people find the thought of doing so rather daunting. That is why one of the main goals of the site was to make this process easier and less intimidating. A picture is worth a thousand words as the old adage goes, which is why the images we chose to display on the site were given careful consideration. Spotlighting the Pigott Law Group attorney’s friendly smiles on the home page as well as on each of their personal bios helps to convey the care that this professional group lends to all of their clients.

The color palette was also thoughtfully chosen. The soft white background gives the black and red details room to stand out without overwhelming the viewer. This color scheme is dynamic and striking, evoking power and confidence. Something that is hopefully felt by browsers as they explore the pages of the site.

The legal world can be complicated, but navigating the Pigott Law Group site is not. Simple and clear navigation allows browsers to easily find the information they need such as the areas of law that this group practices, such as personal injury, as well as their qualifications and accolades. Straightforward call to action tabs and buttons make contacting an attorney a breeze. Overall, the site is intuitive for users to navigate. It provides as much information as necessary without being cluttered with too many words.

All in all, this site has proven to be another success and we look forward to seeing them continue to grow. If you are in need of legal assistance with your personal injury case in the Buffalo, New York area, be sure to reach out to this caring and competent team of attorneys. If you need help building a website, contact our team at Reality Concepts.

By Reality Concepts 10-26-2023

Should You Use Videos in Website Design?

Should You Use Videos in Website Design?

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Therefore, shouldn’t a video made up of thousands of pictures be worth exponentially more? Logically, it should follow that a well-made video will add more engagement and dynamism to your website than a simple picture or slider would, right? Like most things in life, it’s never really that simple. Videos are themselves orders of magnitude more complicated to create than images are. Therefore, using them as part of your website’s core design should come with some careful consideration.

Length, Format, and Fallback

If you are going to use a video as some type of introductory banner at the top of the page, you will need to make sure the video itself is well-suited to this type of usage. The purpose of the video should be to give your audience a brief introduction to your site and what it’s all about. It shouldn’t be too long, since the meat of the information will be contained deeper into the site, and you probably don’t want your visitors spending multiple minutes at the top of the home page. More likely, they would get bored and scroll away if the video drags on too long. Data consumption and load times are also a big consideration, for mobile users especially.

The playback is going to be silent 99% of the time, so you will have to make sure the video gets your point across with no audio. Including an audio track at all will needlessly increase the file size.

Also ensure that the size and aspect ratio of the video are suited to the layout of the page. Most videos are designed to fit the aspect ratio of the full page. It can be cropped with CSS, as long as important images or text is not cut off; but the best practice for saving on file size is to make sure the video’s native aspect ratio is suited for the format to begin with, even if it’s an unconventional ratio.

Do not by any means try to use a YouTube embed as an auto playing background video. Trying to force that use case is a much bigger headache than it is worth. Vimeo has much more flexible embed options that work much better but hosting the video files yourself and displaying them with the HTML5

If using the

Autoplay Woes

Depending on the device and browser, automatically playing the video at all may be a challenge. By default, most modern browsers will at least prohibit audio playback on an auto playing video. If the visitor is using a browser with stricter settings or has intentionally disabled automatic playback, then the video may simply not play at all unless the visitor manually initiates playback. In these cases, making sure the video’s poster image works well as a banner image may be the only way forward.

By Reality Concepts 9-5-2023

All About the Launch of the Manteca Trails Website

All About the Launch of the Manteca Trails Website

Our Reality Concepts teams just launched another brand-new website! Through collaboration with our client, we were able to create a site that captured their vision, and we want to share some of the ways we did that with you here today.

The Road to Launching Manteca Trails

Raymus Homes is a home builder that contributes to the Manteca, California area and they have been a long-time client of ours. Through working together through the years, we have learned their needs and style on a deep level. Because of this, they wanted us to help them promote their latest endeavor, a new home community in Manteca: The Trails.

Raymus Homes’ newest community is in a prime spot with lots of amenities that cater to a wide variety of families and individuals. Which is why they wanted their site to be inviting and approachable to whoever browses it. We helped sell this feeling by making the site very clean and simple. While the site contains ample information about the community, browsers are not overwhelmed with clutter or busyness since the information is parsed in an appealing manner. Information is satisfyingly organized and yet easy to find. This makes it easy for the users to navigate the site organically.

Additionally, all the images on the site are focused on being colorful and vibrant. This aims to grab the attention of users and encourage them to explore more of the site as they picture themselves in the scenes speckled on the pages. The longer browsers stay on the site, the higher the likelihood is that they will turn into customers for our client. Which, of course, is the ultimate goal of the site in the first place.

Another key feature of the site is related to their interest list. When you trust us to build your site, our aim is to make your life easier. Which is why it is worth noting that any information that is entered into the interest list on The Trails site is directly sent to our client’s CRM. This helps streamline points of contact so that they can follow up on leads without anyone falling through the cracks since customer management is made easy.

We also made sure to prioritize scalability for their site. This way, future extensions can be made with ease. Any new information or updates can be made swiftly.

And of course, launching the site is only the beginning. We offer ongoing maintenance and support for all things relating to the SEO and marketing of the site. If you want to see The Trails site and all its features for yourself, take a look at it here!

By Reality Concepts 7-18-2023

Does Having Your Site Custom Built Make a Difference?

Does Having Your Site Custom Built Make a Difference?

Our Reality Concepts team has seen many changes in the web development industry over the years. More and more, people realize that having a presence on the internet is key to the success of your business in our modern era. To meet this demand, there is no shortage of service sites that offer you templates and pre-made designs to quickly get your website up and running. Is there an advantage to building your site off of a template as opposed to having one custom made? Does one or the other make a bigger impact? Allow us to speak to what we know and tell you why having your site custom built can make all the difference in the world.

Unique Design

First and foremost, a custom-designed website allows you to have a unique design that is tailored to your brand and your specific needs. With a template website builder, your website will look similar to other websites that use the same template, which can make it difficult to stand out from the competition.

Scalability

A custom-designed website can be designed to scale with your business as it grows and evolves. This means that as your business expands, your website can be adapted to meet new requirements, such as new products or services, without having to start over from scratch.

Custom Functionality

A custom-designed website can include custom functionality that is specific to your business needs. This can include features such as customized forms, interactive elements, and unique user experiences.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

A custom-designed website can be optimized for search engines from the ground up, ensuring that your website is easily discoverable by your target audience. While many website builders offer basic SEO features, a custom-designed website allows for more advanced optimization strategies.

Brand Consistency

A custom-designed website can be designed to reflect your brand identity and ensure consistency across all marketing materials. This helps to establish trust with your audience and creates a cohesive brand experience.

Better Performance

A custom-designed website can be optimized for performance, resulting in faster load times, better user experience, and improved search engine rankings. This can translate to higher conversion rates and more revenue for your business.

Overall, while a template website builder may be a good option for some businesses, a custom-designed website offers a range of benefits that can help your business stand out and succeed in the long run. If you want a team at your side that will make sure that your website is true to you and successful, look no further than Reality Concepts.

By Reality Concepts 4-24-2023

How Blogging Can Boost Your SEO

How Blogging Can Boost Your SEO

Blogging is a powerful tool that can help boost your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. By creating quality content regularly, you can drive traffic to your website, establish yourself as an authority in your niche, and improve your website's search engine ranking. Here are some specific ways that blogging can help your SEO.

Fresh Content

Search engines love fresh, relevant content. By publishing new blog posts regularly, you provide search engines with new content to index, increasing your website's visibility in search results.

Keywords

Keywords are an essential part of SEO. By incorporating relevant keywords into your blog posts, you can improve your website's ranking for those terms. However, it's important to use keywords naturally, without overusing them, as search engines penalize websites that engage in keyword stuffing.

Internal Linking

When you create blog posts, you have the opportunity to link to other pages on your website. This helps search engines understand the structure of your website and can improve your website's ranking for those pages.

Backlinks

Backlinks, or links from other websites to your website, are a crucial part of SEO. By creating quality blog content that other websites want to link to, you can attract backlinks to your website, which can improve your website's authority and ranking.

Social Sharing

When you publish blog posts, you can share them on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. This can drive traffic to your website and increase your website's visibility in search results.

Long-Tail Keywords

Blogging gives you the opportunity to target long-tail keywords, or highly specific search terms that are less competitive than broad keywords. By targeting long-tail keywords in your blog posts, you can attract highly targeted traffic to your website.

Answering Questions

By creating blog content that answers common questions in your industry, you can attract traffic from people searching for answers to those questions. This can increase your website's visibility in search results and establish you as an authority in your niche.

To sum it all up, blogging is a powerful tool for improving your website's search engine optimization. By creating quality content regularly, incorporating keywords, linking to other pages on your website, attracting backlinks, sharing on social media, targeting long-tail keywords, answering questions, and building your brand, you can improve your website's visibility in search results and attract highly targeted traffic to your website. Which is exactly why our Reality Concepts team uses blogging as a part of our multipronged SEO approach to help your site grow and your brand succeed.

By Reality Concepts 3-28-2023

What Is Brand Strategy and Do You Need One?

What Is Brand Strategy and Do You Need One?

Our team at Reality Concepts has worked with a wide range of companies. And we take the time to get to know each one to set out and build the best website for them with the right marketing strategy to target their client base. One thing that helps us get to know a company better is when a client has a clear brand strategy. Having a clear brand strategy influences web traffic, company reputation, brand loyalty, and website conversion rate. But what exactly is a brand strategy and how can you create one for your company?

Brand Strategy - What Is It?

First thing first, brand identity and brand strategy are two separate concepts. And while you need both to run a successful business, each pertains to different things. Brand identity is the foundation of your company. Knowing what your brand identity is will help you to make creative decisions and influence marketing efforts. Your brand identity should help you determine what colors will represent your company on your website and what type of content you will put out.

Your brand identity is a part of your brand strategy. Your brand strategy is the bigger picture. It describes what your business is, why it exists, what needs you fill, and how you wish to be perceived.

How to Create a Solid Brand Strategy

A good brand strategy should be able to tell people who you are and what your goals are in a concise manner. You don’t need volumes of pages of material outlining your strategy. Simple is best. To determine what your brand strategy should be, you’ll need to do three things.

Research

First you should go about researching the market you will be competing in. Assess Google Analytics, track keywords relating to your business, see what kind of questions people are asking regarding your industry.

Strategize

Once you have gathered a bit of information together, schedule a strategy session with your partners. Share insights with one another, brainstorm, ask questions. All of these things can help you to refine your brand identity. After the session you should know your purpose, values, personality, and audience.

Guidelines

Finally, you want to create brand identity guidelines. This will help you know how to perform and operate as you begin doing business. And when a question about how to handle something comes up, you can reference your guidelines to get guidance on how best to proceed. Include legal guidelines, copy guidelines, and design guidelines. Of course, this is not a complete guide on creating a brand strategy, it’s just a brief overview. But hopefully, it is clear to see that having a brand strategy is important to the success of your business. And when you are ready to include your internet presence as a part of that strategy, our Reality Concepts team would love to help you with that.

By Reality Concepts 12-27-2022

Site of the Month: Hampton & Pigott

Site of the Month: Hampton & Pigott

Hampton & Pigott is a Denver based law firm. Their team of partners and associates cover a wide range of legal fields from family law all the way to criminal defense. They needed a site that had a clean and professional look that reflected their services.

Crisp lines and sharp edges paired with bold, powerful colors helped achieve a striking, no- nonsense site. Dark gray gradients provided the perfect background for the red theme to stand out, and the clean white accents perfectly framed the elements of the site. Red is a color theme that you can see carried through the entire site as it conveys the powerful, winning expertise this team of lawyers brings to the table.

Their site also uses diagonal angles to communicate visual interest that is not too busy. These hard diagonal angles were a fun challenge to translate into pure CSS.

At the request of the client, we incorporated multiple forms of animation into the site. As the user scrolls, different elements smoothly fade and slide into place. This effect was achieved with a combination of scripts to detect the user’s scroll position and dynamic CSS properties to get the elements to move into position. It also includes fallback for older browsers that are not capable of displaying the animations. Contact info that sweeps into view gives the feeling that the Hampton & Pigott team can sweep in to assist you, and images that fall into place as you scroll the length of the pages lend to a satisfying viewing experience. Logos that spin when scrolled into view keep the browser engaged and intrigued.

As was mentioned, Hampton & Pigott’s team of attorneys handle a wide range of legal fields. With each practice area page housing many more specific practice area pages, this site takes full advantage of our database system in order to create a miniature encyclopedia of legal terms. This makes navigating the site easy and intuitive for browsers and potential clients.

By Reality Concepts 9-27-2022

Site of the Month: Harden Communications

Site of the Month: Harden Communications

Near the end of 2021, Reality Concepts started work on a brand-new website for Harden Communications, a Colorado business specializing in Structured Cabling, Hikvision CCTV Security Cameras, and Avaya IP Office services. Harden Communications has been doing business for over 30 years. At our Reality Concepts offices, we have really learned the value of good structured cabling through the years. Keeping your equipment’s wires organized and out of the way always makes maintenance and upgrades to our setups go much smoother. And Harden Communications is able to provide that on an even larger scale.

Additionally, they provide multiple scales of both corporate and residential security solutions through the sales and installation of Hikvision CCTV Security Cameras. Reality Concepts uses Hikvision cameras at their office for security. They have proved to be very effective and efficient.

For businesses in need of phone and communication systems for their offices, Harden Communications is also able to provide that. They partner with Avaya IP Office in order to provide the highest level of quality and support to their client base.

From the beginning, we designed the site to be clean, fast, and responsive. The design flourishes on the site were intended to match the redesigned logo, with dynamic animations that make everything smoothly slide into place as the user scrolls through the pages. Getting the angled elements throughout the site to lay out and animate smoothly without overflowing or clashing was a fun challenge for the coder.

The site also makes use of SB-Core’s (our proprietary CMS) modular database system, which allows us to quickly generate many customizable pages for their services in a short time and link them up easily using a thumbnail template.

Some of the pages, such as this info page for Hikvision Security Cameras, featured a lot of text that had to be presented in a way that was not too messy or overwhelming. In the end, we decided to break up the content into collapsible chunks with accompanying images that were easy to parse at a glance. Each section collapses into a neat little stack when the page is viewed on smaller-sized screens. As always, we work to create a site that is fully responsive on all devices. The site can be used fully on both small touchscreen devices and large desktop screens.

Once we had finished designing and coding the site, we launched it early 2022. While we continue to host the site, we also provide ongoing SEO and social media support for Harden Communications.

By Reality Concepts 8-16-2022

CATEGORIES: Site of the Month

How Do Businesses Benefit from Beautiful Websites

How Do Businesses Benefit from Beautiful Websites

When modern consumers are searching for products and services, odds are they are starting their search for them on Google. If you want to grow and have a successful business, it is imperative that you have an online presence. More than that, you need an attractive site that stands out from the rest.

What kind of difference can a beautiful site make for a business, you ask? For starters, a well- designed site can lend credibility to your brand. An outdated, clunky site can be off-putting to a visitor. Much like a business front that is not well kept, a poorly designed website can signal that you do not take pride in the goods or services that you are offering. A beautifully designed website, on the other hand, can draw visitors in. It conveys that you are a trustworthy brand, and it can make them curious to know more.

Speaking of drawing people in, the longer visitors linger on your site and the more they engage with it, the better. The truth is that you have a very brief opportunity to capture people’s attention before they move on. You want your site to be interesting enough to grab people’s attention, but simple enough for users to be able to navigate it. Some hallmarks that make for easy navigation include a modest number of pages and a concise navigation bar.

Business cards and word of mouth are all well and good but being able to be found online can expand your audience. With an attractive site you can introduce who you are to more people more often. And with the right site you can make it easy and convenient for visitors to find and contact you in real life.

At Reality Concepts, we are experts at the art of capture and conversion. This means that we understand how to find your target audience and turn them into customers, not just casual onlookers. We have countless hours of experience building dynamic sites from the ground up, as well as transforming old, tired sites into captivating ones. If you have not yet taken advantage of all that a beautiful website can do for you, what are you waiting for? We are only one call away.

By Reality Concepts 6-16-2021

Does SEO Really Make a Difference

Does SEO Really Make a Difference

You might be wondering with everything that is going on how you can really boost your business when it comes to sales and acquiring customers. The first step is that you want to get yourself out there in letting people know about your business and that you’re open. There are a number of things that you can do to accomplish that. One way to do that is through your website. Most everyone has a website to draw in their customers or to take advantage of offering their goods online. So how can you boost your sales? Reality Concepts has been doing SEO for over 20 years. We have helped many to increase their business and make it thrive. We will go through what you can do to boost your sales through SEO.

Anyone can put their website on the web but not everyone will be found. There are certain things that need to be done on the back end of a website that will make it so that it is actually searchable. The goal is to always get it to come up on the first page of Google. One of the ways that you do that is through SEO or Search Engine Optimization. That means your title tags, H1 tags, meta descriptions not just inputted but done so correctly.

When you do your SEO, Google is crawling your site for information. Through those tags you give Google the information that it needs. When people search for something it uses that information to pull websites up that match what the person has typed. That means you’re going to need to do some research on what and how people are searching for what your business does. When it picks your website based on this information, we call it an organic search.

You can do more than just get your website found organically. You can also do paid searches through Google AdWords. This allows you to pay for your website to show up when something is specifically searched, and you can make it so that your website doesn’t come up when other words are searched. How it works is that you have to pay a certain amount every time someone clicks on your website ad. You are able to set a specific dollar amount that you want to spend each month on it.

Reality Concepts can provide you with the perfect SEO solution for your website. Brad, the boss of the business, is a Google certified partner trained to track campaigns and Google AdWords. He meticulously tracks the progress of your website, looking for trends and how to better improve the performance of your website. If this is something that you’re interested in, then give us a call today! We would be happy to help with whatever needs you may have.

By RealityCo 6-23-2020

What Should You Podcast About

What Should You Podcast About

Reality Concepts understand that podcasting can help boost your business among other things when it comes to web marketing. When it comes to podcasting the only way to get followers is to talk about topics people are interested in. This can pose a challenge because there are so many different topics. So how can you know what people are going to want to listen to? The good thing is that there are a number of different topics that people like to talk about and they all have their own likes and dislikes. When it comes to the times that we are living in you will want to choose carefully what topic you’re deciding to do your podcast on. Nowadays podcasting is taking a drop in listeners since the whole pandemic started. So, what can you do?

You have two types of people, people who want to hear what the news is saying and people who want something to help them escape the reality we are living in. You’ll need to decide which way you’re wanting to go yourself. Regardless of which way you choose you want it to be something that you are passionate about. Your passion is what you will help draw people to your podcast because oftentimes they are passionate about the same thing.

Some people are going the opposite direction of talking about what is going on in the world. This can be anything else that you’re excited and passionate about. It will help you and others to escape the world and the events going on. When it comes to what you choose as the escape make sure that you do your research. You want to know what you’re talking about. Don’t underestimate how much people love humor too.

If you decide to go the route of talking about what is going on in the world, always make sure that you check your facts. People don’t want to listen to information that isn’t true. It can be hard to know what is true and what is false when it comes to the news which is why you have to be very careful about what you decide to say and talk about. You want to be seen as someone who is trustworthy.

These are just a few of the things that you will want to consider when choosing a topic for your podcast. When you think about your podcast, you want to make sure that you’re talking about what you’re passionate about. This is important for your sanity while you’re having to work at home. Reality Concepts understands that podcasts and other forms of social media can help to improve your business. Our company has been helping businesses to thrive with essential SEO, social media posts, and of course a responsive website. If your business needs help in boosting traffic, then give us a call today!

By Reality Concepts 5-20-2020

Web Marketing During the Coronavirus

Web Marketing During the Coronavirus

Due to the Coronavirus pandemic there are many people who have had to close their business and look for work elsewhere. There are also many businesses that are essential and are still open. If your business is still open, you are probably wondering how you can get more business coming your way. This is on the minds of a lot of business owners. The good news is that Reality Concepts can help you out when it comes to situations like this. Here is how we can help you out.

The world runs on the web. If there is anything that you need, you probably look it up on your smartphone to figure it out. With this being the case, the web is everything when it comes to your business. That means in order to keep it afloat during this pandemic you are going to need some good marketing for your business on the web.

Web marketing gets your website on the first page of google. There are a number of different ways this is achieved. It usually takes a combination of organic traffic, google adwords, and social media. When you combine all of these, over the course of time you will start to see your business increase in the amount of traffic you get to the website, which in turn gets you more business.

The trick to this though is that you can not just have anyone monitoring your organic traffic, adwords, and SEO. For you to get results you need someone who is skilled, qualified, and certified to do this for there to be results. Your money is probably tight right now, so you want to make sure that you're spending it in a way that is actually helping you make more of it.

Reality Concepts understands that right now the economy is not doing well, and it is predicted that it will take a while to come back from it. However, the web is not going anywhere, anytime soon. This means that it can be a valuable tool for you to use in making sure that you are still getting work to support your family. Give us a call today or fill out an online request form to get more information on how we can help your business survive this pandemic.

By Reality Concepts 4-23-2020

10 Must Have WordPress Plugins on Your Site

Both professional and amateur webmasters can optimize their WordPress experience by using plugins. Even WordPress readers will benefit. With thousands of plugins available, it can be difficult to choose the best ones. We have saved you the time and effort by finding 10 must-have WordPress Plugins!

1. W3 Total Cache

This plugin is easy to setup. It increases the functionality of your site by decreasing the timespent waiting for a page to load. What it does is it stores static versions of pages without reloading them from their database. This means less work for your processor as well.

2. Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator

When it comes to search engine optimization, this WordPress plugin will get the job done. After installing it, you can set it up so that it will automatically create a new xml sitemap. The new sitemap is created after you post or make changes to your WordPress site. The changes can be submitted to specific search engines, in addition to Google.

3. Akismet

This WordPress plugin is included in the installation package for WordPress and you should definitely activate it. Getting spam comments on your site is a real issue and it can be difficult to manage. Akismet plays a vital role in spam protection. This protection is important, because spam comments left on your site can be time consuming to correct and may cause other problems.

4. All in One SEO Pack

AIO SEO pack improves the SEO elements of your site. It even works without intensive setup. Titles and meta tags are automatically generated in a unique form, which helps to prevent duplicates and to better promote your site. This WordPress plugin can be used by itself or in combination with other similar tools.

5. Related Posts

Users are likely to be interested in related information about previous subjects they have read about. Giving readers suggestions is appealing. The Related Post WordPress plugin finds related posts from your site and creates links to them. This makes related posts accessible to any reader, which helps to generate more page views.

6. Digg Digg

You must “dig” this WordPress widget because it makes sharing possible on all social media outlets! If you already have widgets for Twitter and Facebook, you can safely install Digg Digg (and you will not lose your counts).

7. Global Translator

Why let language barriers get in the way of your site recognition and utility? Installing the plugin gives the users option to translate it into their own language. Global Translator supports 48 languages.

8. Theme Tester

Your site design plays an important role in its popularity with users. However, changing a theme, usually means your site will be unavailable for a period of time. However, with Theme Tester, you can customize your site from scratch (while maintaining your settings) and simply replace the old theme with the new one when ready.

9. WP PageNavi

This WordPress widget allows users to jump directly to a specific page on your site. Instead of choosing the next page or the previous page, users can go straight to a specific one. It also has great looking navigation buttons.

10. WP-DBManager

Losing all your work can be a nightmare. Avoid loss by backing up your work. WP-DBManager makes backing up your files easy. You can even get a copy for your e-mail.

By Brad Bombardiere 9-29-2016

A Closer Look into the New Facebook Privacy Update

Facebook, in light of recent criticism involving it privacy policies, has made several drastic measures to guarantee the security of its website and the privacy of its users. Facebook is a prime target for identity theft and other such crimes. Hackers and other people who would attempt to breach Facebook’s security setup would be rewarded handsomely; emails, phone numbers, addresses, and other private information is prominently displayed and valuable. This information is in high demand, and many could easily profit off such material.

Private Security
Facebook, however, is already one step ahead of the game. Facebook’s chief of security, Joe Sullivan, has recently deployed a new tactic to target such attacks on private security. The program, dubbed the “Bounty Bug Program,” involves employing independent researchers (known to many as hackers) to seek possible bugs and security risks in Facebook’s current security setup.

User-Friendly System
Privacy, however, is not limited solely to hackers and others with malicious intent. A Facebook user may not want coworkers and family members to view photos and posts meant exclusively for friends. Facebook has addressed this concern by creating a user-friendly system for controlling which aspects of a user’s profile is available for viewing by preselected groups of people. Such a system allows users to control who is allowed to see which wall post, photo, etc.

New Features
Facebook has also recently announced a slew of features designed to improve personal privacy. The user interface has been drastically improved to facilitate privacy among its user base. A brand new system of approving tagged photos has been added; users now have the option of approving or rejecting tagged pictures before they are displayed on their wall. Under this new system, spam and other such problems will be swiftly removed as a new option to block someone will remove all photos, wall posts, and notes a Facebook user has been tagged in.

Group Feature
Facebook’s group feature has also been vastly improved. While the ability to create groups to monitor which Facebook friends see which part of a Facebook profile has always been available, a recent set of developments improves drastically on this system. In a particular, the option to specify who may see each post, status, video, or picture is an innovative and welcome development. In addition, a new feature has been added to allow a user to view his profile from the perspective of others. This allows a Facebook user to see the profile from the perspective of a best friend, mother, or boss to make sure all content is appropriate and well-placed.

This new slew of recently announced privacy features brings Facebook to a new level of privacy protection. These significant changes to Facebook will ensure its users a stress free environment and a more custom privacy policy. Facebook users can consider their private data secure; they can also consider their private posts and pictures safe from the prying eyes of their employer.

By Brad Bombardiere 9-29-2016

Social Media And SEO A Winning Connection

Search Engine Optimization is essential for all ecommerce sites to figure in organic search results seen by the surfing public. Using various marketing strategies to get a higher search ranking, means incorporating social media marketing as well, and make the two work in tandem. This is because leading search engines like Google give significant weightage to social media and also use it to access the freshness of content and its quality. So e-tailers need to give importance to social media and ensure that it is linked to their SEO efforts.

SEO necessitates the use of good, informative and appealing content that is relevant to the products in question. The content has to be easy to understand, increase knowledge and clear doubts. Once published, the content needs to be popularized through social media and various marketing channels have to be used to popularize this content across a large group of target clientele. Similarly new content, with a unique perspective, new ideas and original thoughts, can be successfully popularized through social media like Twitter and Facebook. This spreads a small piece, virally and goes beyond the core group into the ocean beyond. People increasingly use their social profiles to spread such piece to their networks.

The best outcomes for an ecommerce site are to see their products, content and reviews, getting hundereds of “like” hits, figure in tweets and get emailed to networks. This leads to a chain reaction that converts into huge business opportunities. The key to success is in the extended reach of the content, reach that gets extended even further through social media.

How to use social media campaigns for SEO success

Social campaigns are beneficial for SEO as well. Each time any information, content or article is shared, a page with a distinctive URL is automatically created, and this has a back link to the article being shared. The number of people getting access to the content then multiplies manifold, since they further share good content with their network. A ‘like’ or ‘share’ is like a positive vote and signifies quality and useful information, and serve as social signals with SEO benefits.

The extent of knowledge and information sharing on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter can be gauged from the numbers disclosed. Facebook alone shares 4 billion bits of information everyday and Twitter posts 140 million tweets daily. Over 3 billion keywords are searched every day. This opens a world of opportunity to ecommerce owners who can use social media to sell, generate incomes and gain access to a global clientele. The secret lies in being able to catch the attention of those present n the social media, by publishing superior content and encourage people to share it with their networks. The effort put in brings instant results, and this helps to improve, learn from past failures to provide exactly what the audience wants.

By Brad Bombardiere 9-29-2016

CATEGORIES: SEO, Social Media

Generating Content Post Panda

Generating Content post Panda – Quality over Quantity

Google’s Panda update has had a dramatic effect on many websites and caused stirrings among the Internet and SEO community that is still rumbling to this day. Sites that used to rank on the first page of certain keyword searches, found themselves buried several pages in, resulting in a dramatic loss of traffic, reduction of revenue and leaving the website owners with worthless Internet strategies. In fact, the notorious Panda update, aimed at reducing content farms and poor quality content, was not one but a serious of algorithm changes that is still not over. We can expect further tweaks as Google continues to reduce the amount of worthless content that search results can generate.

Some high profile sites were hit hard by Panda, such as Ezine.com, the article-marketing website beloved by many SEO andInternet marketingcompanies as a way of building back links and driving traffic through long tail searches. While many have decried Google’s Panda update as being ruthless and having a dramatic affect on their incomes, we need to look at it from Google’s point of view. While by far the most popular search engine out there, it does have competition looming over its shoulder. Microsoft’s Bing, which recently joined forces with Yahoo in attempt to drive more traffic away from Google, is becoming increasingly popular, and engines such as Blekko have made it easier for users to eliminate worthless content from its search results. And this is the point. When Google users make a keyword search and the results page consists of poorly written, uninformative or spun content, Google is not giving those users a quality service.

Post Panda Strategy

So what can websites that once relied on article sites, spun articles and other methods to drive traffic to their website, do? The answer is simple, listen to Google. Rehashing, spinning, duplicating, scraping or paying some offshore article writer a few dollars to churn out tons of content is not going to work anymore. Sure, for some really obscure long tailed keyword searches, this type of content may still rank fairly high, but that doesn’t mean you should continue churning it out. Think quality, not quantity.

Look atWikipedia, a website that ranks at the top of page one for almost every conceivable search term. Wikipedia doesn’t have an SEO team, it doesn’t have a link building strategy – its success is down to just providing quality and informative content that has relevance to a searchers request. Of course, websites reselling goods or providing Internet services are not going to be able to create encyclopedic content of this nature, but they can ensure what they do put out is relevant, informative and of good quality.

Blogging

Perhaps the best method of delivering content is to use a blog. Rather than churn out dozens of poorly phrased, uninformative articles and splashing them around various article sites, put one or two quality articles up on the blog each week. Make them keyword relevant, but don’t overdo the density -Panda will punish those that do- and if the content is relevant to the website and offers good quality information, it will not only eventually rank higher than anything posted on a content farm, but will also build links as people start to trust the content. It may take time to generate this trust, but eventually Google will start to look at the website as a place of quality, informative and relevant information.

It’s also important to make sure there is no duplicate or relevant content lingering about. Just rehashing the same articles over and over again is not going to work. Think of new angles, think of the information people want to see. Be informative. Be helpful. And if you are paying someone to generate content, pay somebody to write something decent. This may mean the cost of an article is going to rise dramatically, but you’ll get much more bang for your buck. One decent, well-written, relevant and informative article is going to be worth more than hundreds of poorly constructed ones.

The same goes for links too. Try to build relationships with others in the industry. Swap links with quality blogs and similar sites. Guest blogging is a great way of generating links and driving traffic. Sacrificing something that could go on your own blog and giving it to somebody else, will not only get you a link, but will also get you a share of the traffic built up by that blogger.

By Brad Bombardiere 9-29-2016

CATEGORIES: Google, SEO, Social Media

Internet Design for the Future

2009-2010 was no doubt the year of social media for internet marketing. Reality Concepts has been placing Home Builders and New Home Community content on various social media sites all the way back in 2005. In 2008 everyone asked face who? In 2009 everyone knew this was going to be the next big thing. No one knew how big though. Facebook grew faster than any form of mass media ever in history. Currently Facebook commands the internet and has surpassed well over over 500 million users. U.S. traffic now has equaled or exceeded Google.com’s traffic in the United States. Everyone in the home building industry knows you have to at least get on Facebook, that is the minimum. Now it is not a choice it just plain part of your online marketing strategy. It is 2010 and social media has matured to a degree. Facebook, Google and others saw a 4% decline in traffic in the month of March. Does that mean that the crazy growth has slowed, I feel it has and so do my colleagues in the internet marketing industry. Does that mean we should ignore Facebook and other forms of social media? Absolutely not, social media is a critical part of a mandatory formula for success on the internet. So what will be the next big thing out there? The mobile phone wars gives us some insight.

Currently Apple / ATT is selling 8.7 million phones per quarter. Google / Verizon sales have been around 5 million phones per quarter. Who will win the war between the Apple / ATT team or the Google / Motorola / Verizon team we don’t know or care. From on line research, my testing and talking to owners of each of the phones they are all great. What we do care about is that these are around 5 million new fully browser capable phones a month being sold around the world. Keep in mind this also includes the new I-Pad as well, which is really a smart phone without the phone part. Is this important to us? You bet, that means this is growth similar to what we saw with Facebook. It also means that we need to build web-sites that are smart phone compatible. This ensures our information is getting out there on these devices and are viewable on these phones. Frankly we are not talking about your old flip phone or even older Black Berry phones. There are just too many limitations to make your web site work with these phones. Also these phones are being turned in and traded for smart phones with Apple’s I-Phone being the leader. No point in putting new wine in old wine skins (*bible quote). So how do we take advantage of this in the future?

Making a smart phone capable site means few things. There are a few guidelines we would want to follow. We don’t want customers to have to think about which version of the site we are getting. We don’t want swiss cheese sites. This is the new term for content that cannot be viewed on a smart phone; it leaves a blank spot or hole on a web page. We do want it to be fast and easy to navigate. We may want our mobile website version to be a slimmed down version of our current site.

Have you gone to a site and it asked you if you want the fast version or the slow version? I hate that I feel like I might miss something. A customer should come to our website, and the website should be smart enough to detect if this is a regular computer browser or a smart phone browser. The website should at that time direct you to the proper content. Does this mean building two completely different websites? It may mean that, depending on the complexity of your website. If it is relatively straight forward it will only mean adjusting what you currently have on the site and simplifying the content. Those adjustments may mean allowing alternate content for items that cannot be viewed on a smart phone. It may also mean adjusting the layout to be easier to read and navigate.

Swiss cheese has holes and so do website with flash animation (website animation software from the Adobe Corporation) on smart phones. Video and loads of flash have all been the rage in the past 5 years. This content is blocked by Apple unfortunately. This policy will not change soon enough for us. The mobile version of the site needs to be a strict version of K.I.S.S. keep it simple. Text and images are great, heavy animation is a no no. You can still get a great looking version of the website. Straight forward navigation with easy to read big buttons is the best way to go. Gone are the days “telling a story” with mystery meat navigation. Having your site designed to look and function like a modern video game will just not work anymore. Your mobile site should be easy to work with and easy to navigate. Does this sound like what we should do on the regular website? Sound effects and music, that should be out but these will not work on a smart phone , so it is a waste of money and time. Any animations or slide shows done with flash technology will leave a blank spot on a web site so again clean and simple.

Fast is the name of the game for a smart phone site. There are two reasons to be concerned about load time of your website. First Google is starting to penalize you in the search ranking if your website is a little piggy on load time. Second smart phones are faster than the old dial up modems but not as fast as the broad band internet at the office. If you your site is a little piggy then consider putting your piggy on a diet. The answer may be smaller images lower quality. Complex security or programming at times can be a problem and will need testing. Some web technology is still not available for smart phones. If you have had your computer lock up from a web site you know how annoying that can be. If you have a phone lock up that can be a disaster. Not as easy to reset a phone and you may miss an important phone call.

Budgets are strict these days so what if you have a site that needs this technology but don’t have the deep pockets. Consider building a very simple version of your web site that has locations of where you build and contact information or even contact forms. This could mean a one page website with a link to Google maps.

If this sounds like a throwback to the “old school days” of websites it is. This is new technology and is a little like the wild wild west right now. Like the wild west though the first to stake their claim could strike gold and get a solid leg up on the competition. Early adopters are rewarded in the internet marketing business. If you have more questions or would like recommendations for your website, Reality Concepts can evaluate each and every page of your website to help decide which pages may need changes. Contact us if you have any questions or are interested in building a smart phone capable website.

By Brad Bombardiere 9-29-2016

CATEGORIES: Web Design