The pop culture quote “If you build it, they will come” doesn’t apply to the internet. Just because you have a website published doesn’t mean people will be able to find you. It takes the right approach, the right platform, and a strategy for SEO.

That’s why businesses that are serious about growing take advantage of a WordPress Specialist. These gurus know how to build an aesthetic website that is easy to find, easy to navigate, and generates qualified leads for your business.

How do they do it? And is it really worth the investment? We certainly think so! But you should decide for yourself after reading these 5 highlights of hiring a web designer trained in WordPress:

The Advantages of Hiring a WordPress Specialist

Did you know WordPress is the #1 content management system (or “CMS”) in the world?  This massive platform makes up nearly 27% of the websites online today.

That’s why there are so many WordPress Specialists available. They know the in’s and out’s of this advantageous platform, and how to help your business make the most of it.

WordPress has and will continue to take over the web design world. Working with a WordPress specialist can turn website from a liability to a sales-driving asset.

Here are 5 ways a WordPress specialist will bring your website to life:

1. WordPress Serves as a Powerful Engine for Your Website

If your website isn’t built on WordPress, you could be missing out.

Google is a big fan of WordPress sites. They rank well in search engine results because of well-structured content and the tendency to have a steady stream of updates.

In fact, Google endorses the use of WordPress for site design. The advantages of WordPress allow you to build a custom website that serves as a lead-generation machine for your business.

After all, your site is more than just a digital billboard. It serves as the hub for most digital marketing strategies. Used correctly, it should turn your web traffic into conversions that grow your business.

Whether your business sells products via an e-commerce platform or you’re building a website designed to showcase your services, WordPress gives you the tools and options to create what you need without constraints.

But keep in mind that not everything about WordPress should be “DIY”. While anyone can create a website on the platform and select a theme, it takes an expert to know how to optimize it and integrate various features.

From mobile responsiveness to plugins to SEO optimization, there’s a lot that goes into building a professional and useful website design, which is why hiring a specialist comes in handy.

2. Having an Expert Build Your Website Saves a Lot of Time

When you’re running a business, time is precious. You don’t want to waste weeks–or even months–trying to overcome a learning curve in order to build a website. Not only are you wasting time better spent on running your business, but you also run a high risk of missing important web design steps or elements.

By hiring a WordPress specialist, you guarantee quality results while opening up your own time or the time of your employees to be better spent on their job responsibilities.

Plus, the task gets done quicker. The average timeline for a custom web design is often 6 to 8 weeks. In that span, a good developer mocks up, stagings, and launches your website for you.

As he or she goes about this process, they will use expertise picked up through formal education and/or training to ensure that your site is built correctly from the front-end to the back.

They can also train you on how to post blogs, make updates, or manage your website properly, or you can hire them to do this for you.

The latter of these two options is a worthy investment. One that saves you time while ensuring the job is done right.

3. The Ways a WordPress Specialist Makes Maintenance & Management Easier

Because websites require monthly updates after they’re published to maintain optimal functionality and SEO, it’s good to have an expert available who can handle it.

Typical website security and maintenance services include:

• Updating Plugins & Themes
• Monitoring Website Security
• Responding to and Preventing Downtime
• Initiating Website Backups

But what about the other stuff, like uploading new photos, creating new pages, or formatting and posting your company blogs?

Enter Website Management: a service most businesses choose in order to save money, improve efficiency, and gain peace of mind.

When you put your website’s management into the hands of a WordPress Specialist, you save on the cost of having to hire a website developer in-house in order to use your site to your advantage.

These individuals are no stranger to coding. From HTML and CSS to PHP and Javascript, they know how to create, maintain, fix, and update this foreign “web language” so your website maintains a professional look as well as its structural integrity.

They can also include this coding on any site updates you create. This is important when you’re making changes to your website. Even blogs have a unique set of coding that is essential to its formatting and SEO performance.

Not knowing how to update your website properly can lead to poor display, broken elements, and other “emergencies” you don’t want your web traffic stumbling upon.

4. A WordPress Specialist Can Help with Your SEO Strategy

Okay, so we’ve covered your website’s design and maintenance, but what about SEO? There’s no point in having a website nobody can find.

No matter how good your website design is, you aren’t going to pop up on the first page of Google overnight. It takes strategy to move up in search engine rankings, and the competition can be thick.

Currently, there are over 18 BILLION websites on the internet today–and counting. Carving your place on the world wide web requires you to prove to search engines your content and services are the best solutions to certain keywords researched by its users.

To do that, businesses develop or hire someone to develop an SEO strategy. This strategic marketing approach researches the most relevant keywords in your business, then uses both internal and external content to help you rank for them.

SEO is a full-time job for most businesses. It requires not only implementation but also maintenance. Your ranking changes in real-time based on new websites entering the pool and updates on existing websites trying to rank for the same keywords as you.

That means getting to the first page of search engines is only half the battle. The other half requires constant, daily monitoring and maintenance if you want to achieve optimal performance.

WordPress Specialists trained in SEO can do that by:

• Producing Relevant On-Page Content
• Producing Relevant Off-Page Content
• Building Quality Backlinks to Your Site
• Auditing Poor Backlinks to Your Site
• Improving Your Site Speed
• Improving Your Mobile Responsiveness
• And More…

All of these things are ongoing strategies, not singular tasks. They have to be implemented continuously in order to build and maintain your SEO performance.

But what if you need to rank fast? There is a strategy for that, too. It’s called Search Engine Marketing, or SEM. Many WordPress Specialists trained in SEO are also familiar with SEM strategies, including AdWords, Google’s popular platform for digital marketing.

The difference between SEO and SEM is that SEM is paid advertising. You’ve seen it before. From the banners on various websites to the top 3 listings on each of your Google search results, SEM puts you in front of your customers’ eyes.

For a price, of course.

If you’re interested in pairing an SEM strategy with your SEO, be sure to ask a website specialist about digital marketing opportunities.

5. A WordPress Specialist Can Improve Your Digital Marketing Campaigns

While we’re on the topic of marketing, another advantage to hiring a WordPress Specialist is he or she can help you get the most out of your digital campaigns.

From newsletters to landing pages to setting up call-to-actions, a good WordPress Specialist can adapt your website to whatever digital campaign you have going.

Have a sale on a product? Advertise it on your website via blogs, a landing page for SEM, or a slider image on your homepage.

Do you produce a monthly newsletter? Add a newsletter signup pop-up to your website to build your audience.

Perhaps you’re big on social media. Great! Add widgets or icons to your website in order to help new visitors stay connected.

When it comes to campaigns, there are numerous ways your website can both support and expand its reach. However, you won’t know how or when to use them without insight from an expert.

By hiring a WordPress specialist, you receive this expertise through a third party vendor, saving you the cost of hiring an in-house employee while making you money through advanced website development and maintenance.

Pretty cool, right?

Let Us Help You Optimize Your Website

Ready to have your website built and managed the right way? We can help your business grow with your website design, branding, SEO, and copywriting needs. We’ll set you up with a WordPress Specialist who can design and optimize a website tailored to your business.

Contact us to get started!

The post 5 Ways A WordPress Specialist Can Bring Your Website To Life appeared first on Midas Marketing.

Your website is one of the first impressions your business will make on a potential customer. So it better be a good one!

With 73% of Americans going online daily and 21% saying they’re online “almost constantly,” periodic reviews of your website effectiveness are essential.

So let’s make sure your website is doing its job by looking at what makes a website effective overall.

Clear Communication

First and foremost, your website communication needs to be clear and optimized for your target audience. That means using simple language to convey the following:

• What your company does: Try to explain your services in a brief, Twitter-friendly description of 140 characters or less. It’s not a hard and fast rule, but it’s a great exercise to keep your communication clear and succinct.
• The purpose of the website: Is it to provide menu details for your restaurant or tech support for a product? Make your objective clear from the get-go.
• A simple call-to-action: Whether you want people to subscribe to your newsletter or call for custom pricing options, make sure they know what to do after viewing your site.

It’s tough to strike the perfect balance between including too much information and too little on your website. But your best bet is to focus on using concise language with quick, catchy descriptions that get your main points across.

Also be sure to check for silly spelling and grammatical errors that can undermine your website’s trustworthiness. Every detail counts when it comes to keeping users engaged.

User-Friendliness & Functionality

The modern attention span is shorter than that of a goldfish. That means your website needs to be quick and easy to use, or your customers may just swim away.

Check that all important sections are clearly labeled and easy to navigate to. Ideally, nothing should be more than three clicks away from your homepage. Also, spend time clicking through your links to make sure they all actually work.

That includes ensuring that your web design functions as well on mobile as it does on desktop. Keep in mind that if a page takes longer than three seconds to load, you could lose up to 40% of your visitors!

So make sure your pages are responsive and your web experience is fluid by trying it out yourself.

Smooth Transactions & Analytics

The best way to measure your website effectiveness is analytics. Page view data, where your visitors navigated from, and where they spent the most time can offer clues about what’s working and what’s not.

If a certain page has far more bounces–people visiting and quickly clicking away–than other pages, that’s a flag that something’s not quite right about the page.

Likewise, e-commerce vendors should focus on keeping their shopping experience as seamless as possible. Visitors should be able to edit their carts, apply promotional codes, and make secure purchases all without having to contact support.

Website Effectiveness Made Simple

If you make your website more effective, you’ll boost your web traffic, up your mobile views, and increase the amount of time spent on your page. All things that factor into that all-important SEO ranking!

But ensuring your website effectiveness is an ongoing process. If you have any questions on how to increase your site views, give us a shout or request a free quote today.

The post How to Check Your Website Effectiveness appeared first on Midas Marketing.

One of the daunting aspects of getting your business officially of the ground is building the best website possible. How much does WordPress cost? What about web design services?

How do you even know what you need?

As you’re developing your website, it can be difficult to develop an appropriate budget. You may not even know where to start.

We’re here to help you navigate the Internet jungle and answer your questions. When it comes to websites, is the most expensive option the better one?

How much does a WordPress site cost?

When you’re wondering how much budget to allot for your WordPress site, you may start by researching exactly how much a website should cost.

However, if you’re looking for a specific figure, you might be disappointed.

There are a ton of variables to your website that make a ballpark figure all but impossible.

Different websites have different needs, so your website budget isn’t going to match another business.

Therefore, regardless of what system you’re using to build your site, there are some questions you need to ask yourself to get accurate answers.

What do you need for your website?

The first step to developing your business’ website is to figure out exactly what it is your website needs.

Presuming you’re using design services to take your website as far as it can go, you need to figure out what pages you need, the costs for writing them, as well as links to your social media.

• 7 pages, Home, Contact, FAQ, About Us, Shipping, TOS, and Privacy Policy.
• Social media links: Facebook, Twitter, Google+
• Social media widgets for the above

Keep in mind that this is a very bare-bones web page. It doesn’t include anything for you to interact with, and it only includes links to the most effective advertising schemes.

This could cost you about $3000 to $4000.

Also, if this is a new project, the cost will differ somewhat from a website redesign.

To get an idea of a solid budget, you need to know how many pages you need for your website. If you sell products, you need to take count of those, as well as any options (color, size, etc.) for those products and whether or not they vary in price.

The price will also change if you need help creating content or you’ll do it on your own. Additionally, pictures and graphics can change the cost.

Where to draw the line?

The figures and process above can be eye-opening. When we’re talking about a $10,000 WordPress site compared against a $4000 bare bones site, it’s easy to see how your costs can soar.

That said, a $10,000 WordPress site could absolutely be worth it, provided everything is optimized correctly and your content is effective.

A good portion of this is going to fall on your shoulders, not your designer’s. A website is only as good as what you do with it, so you’ll have to put in the legwork to make sure that website pays off.

For $10,000, it should be completely decked out, meaning that it’s mostly plug-and-play to take it to its full potential.

Conclusion

As a business owner, you best know your website’s needs and strengths. Find design services that capitalize on those.

Designing a great website can take a big chunk of your budget, and looking at that number’s never a great experience if it’s flying away from you.

However, an expensive website can help polish your name and develop a good reputation for your business. It’s up to you to determine whether or not you need fully loaded options.

Any questions or comments regarding web design or building the perfect website? We’ve got you covered.

The post How Much Does a WordPress Site Cost? Is a $10,000 Site Worth it? appeared first on Midas Marketing.

When it comes to content management systems, WordPress is often touted as the gold standard. Founded as a blogging platform in 2003, this open source CMS currently powers a full 26% of the web. Every day, hundreds of new WordPress sites are created, and the platform hosts some of the biggest players in the publishing world. The New York Times, People Magazine, Forbes, and National Geographic all have websites powered by WordPress.

If you go into a forum or a subreddit and ask about how to go about creating a website for your business, a lot of people will strongly recommend WordPress. It does have a learning curve, but it’s something that even non-technical users can learn. Plus, it’s so popular that there’s a wealth of information available for it. There are plugins for almost any function you can imagine, along with a menagerie of visually appealing themes. Plus, many web development shops specialize in it. If you don’t have the time or the inclination to take a DIY approach, it’s not hard at all to find someone to do it for you at a reasonable price.

But for all its strengths and advantages, is WordPress really the best choice for every situation? WordPress is far from the only option. You can also hire web developers to create a custom-made, bespoke website. In some cases, you might even be able to get away with a static site that’s little more than HTML and CSS.

In this post, we’re going to take a look at a few of the reasons you might want to consider something other than a WordPress site.

You’re nontechnical, you’re on a bootstrap budget, and you just need something basic.

There’s a lot of content out there on the web that highlights WordPress’s advantages over competitors like Squarespace and Wix. Squarespace and similar platforms use a “(WYSIWYG) what you see is what you get” interface that makes it easy for even a complete novice to customize their web design. Similar capabilities are available for WordPress in the form of plugins, but part of the appeal of Squarespace and Wix is that most of the technical stuff is already taken care of for you. All you have to do is choose colors and fonts, add content, and set up pages.

Most people who work with websites, whether they’re SEO specialists or developers, will recommend WordPress over these alternatives. But there are certainly some use cases where a Squarespace site will work just fine. If you want a website for your brick and mortar business, but you don’t aspire or expect to bring in customers primarily through your site or through SEO, Squarespace can work very well. If you’re a freelance writer who brings in clients mostly through word of mouth, but you want a nice portfolio site you can link people to, the same applies. Squarespace and Wix aren’t as customizable as WordPress when it comes to technical SEO, but it’s certainly possible to setup a great looking site when SEO isn’t a major concern for you.

Photographers and other creatives often earn business on the merit of their work. This means that a simple DIY web editor can be an excellent choice, as long as it is able to properly showcase a portfolio of work.

You Need Something Static & Simple

WordPress is capable of building dynamic websites, which have interactive elements like contact forms or comment sections. But what if you don’t need those things? If you need a small three to five page website that’s essentially just a “brochure” for your business, a static website might be the easiest and most cost-effective option for you.

A web developer can build a customized static site for you using HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Once it’s live, it won’t need regular maintenance or updates, which WordPress does require. Static sites can also run on cheaper servers, as they don’t require MyPHP or SQL.

The disadvantage to static sites is that if you decide you want to add something, like an online store or a blog, things get pretty complicated, and you might just find yourself moving over to WordPress after all.

You’re Selling Stuff in an Online Store

Ecommerce is certainly compatible with WordPress, but many people also opt to go with Shopify instead. Shopify is a “one stop shop” for building an online store, whether it’s very small or very large. The platform takes care of ecommerce-specific technical tasks and concerns for you, leaving you to focus on your products.

WordPress Isn’t The Only Option

WordPress is the gold standard for many reasons, and for a wide variety of use cases, it’s the best choice. It’s highly customizable and SEO-friendly, and you can choose from a massive selection of themes and plugins. But in a handful of cases, WordPress might not be the platform that’s best suited for building your website. It’s worth looking into alternatives as well — after all, the internet doesn’t begin and end with WordPress, and there are other options out there for creating your site.

To know more about your options and decide which option suits you best, get in touch with us

The post Benefits of Using WordPress: Is It Right For You? appeared first on Midas Marketing.

How To Design and Build High Converting B2B Websites

If creating a high converting website is tough, creating one for the B2B ecosystem is tougher. Unlike the average website, your target audience is smaller in the case of B2B websites, meaning the competition is intense. B2B transactions are also often higher in revenue and a more considered process, so A+ strategy is a must. A good digital marketing company would design and optimize a website to establish maximum traction with your potential clients, but often the B2B nuances are ignored and the website is put through the agency’s typical funnel for web builds. Going against the grain, here is a comprehensive guide towards creating high converting B2B websites.

• Focus on The Design – The look and feel of your website conveys a lot about who you are. Your visitors will immediately make an impression about your brand browsing through the business. The design should be contemporary and mobile friendly to attract maximum attention. Images, graphics, ease of navigation, good color scheme and call-to-actions are some of the important elements of the website that you should focus on. Even if the website isn’t selling directly, a bad first impression might end up losing a $50,000 potential account. A good website design shows you are serious about excellence in all facets of your company.

• Highlight Your USP – Why should your client do business with you? What is it that separates you from your competitors? Highlighting your USP is one of the best ways of increasing conversions in a B2B website. Whether it is though infographics or appealing content (such as a good blogging strategy), you should strategically educate your clients of the value you would add to their business.

• Be Discoverable – It is important to be found when your potential customers are looking for you. SEO becomes a very important part of your digital marketing campaign. The challenge magnifies as you won’t gain from traffic itself, unless it is targeted and qualified. A seasoned campaigner would then focus on generating the right leads that have higher conversion value. If you have good relationships with key clients, discuss the key ideas or problems that led them to your business, then apply that to your on-site SEO plan.

If someone is looking for you, make sure they don’t come up empty!

• Keep Clients Updated – In the B2B world, someone is always looking to grab a part of your market share, so you should constantly keep your existing clients updated with your latest product and service offerings. Sending them newsletters or employing print marketing techniques is rewarding as this helps in keeping your relationship warm, not yielding space to rivals.

• Leave No Room for Confusion – Every bit of information mentioned on the website right from your Contact Us page to your Products and Services should be specific. Leave no room for confusion and ambiguity as these often portray you in front of your clients in poor light and lead to loss of business opportunity. All high converting B2B websites make the offering clear in order to attract high quality leads.

• Analyze Your Website – It is important for every business to aware of the KPIs (key performance indicators). There are number of freely available analytics tool such as Google Analytics and KISS Metrics that offer you deep insights into your website and resort to informed measures that help rise up on the value chain. If you know your average customer value, and your conversion rates, you can set up reports that show how well your website is performing based on leads generated. If you track where visitors are coming from, you can know exactly where to invest your marketing dollars!

These are some of the winning formulas that have yielded great results for high converting B2B websites, and if applied will pay rich dividends to your business as well.

The post High Converting B2B Websites: 6 Key Strategies appeared first on Midas Marketing.