A few common questions we get asked about websites and marketing.

Your website is often the first impression people get of your business. Consider the following to put your best foot forward.

• Update or redesign your website. Sites that are outdated or have poor design can cause visitors to leave your site.
• Add informative copy throughout. Lack of a clear understanding about your product or services can cause high abandonment rates.
• Tell your story. Be sure your content is conveying your expertise and showing what makes your business stand out from your competitors.
• Simplify the site’s navigation. Overly complex website navigation and lack of search filters can make it difficult for users to find what they want.
• Improve your site’s speed. If a page takes too long to load it’s likely people will leave your website, especially for mobile visitors with slower connections.
• Install an SSL certificate. A lack of website security can scare away visitors, especially on eCommerce websites.
• Review and edit business information on social media. Inconsistent contact information on social media profiles and business listings can erode customer trust and make it difficult for your customers to contact you.
• Fix broken links. Broken links make navigation difficult and cause your customers to leave your site.
• Talk to an experienced SEO expert who can help optimize your website. This can include adding relevant keywords, A/B testing,  and a variety of other techniques.
• Make your site responsive and mobile-friendly. More than half of search engine queries are on mobile devices. Your site needs to be easy to use for mobile visitors.

Your website needs to be well-designed so that people stay and spend time on your site, and also needs to include specific keywords that tell Google what you’re all about. Organic SEO is a long game, so be sure to have a good strategy in place.

• Ensure you’ve performed on-page text and image optimization.
  Include strong calls to action (CTA) throughout the site (such as “Buy Now”, “Contact Us” or “Learn More” buttons).
• Include buttons and links to your social media profiles throughout your site. Headers and footers are ideal.
• Manage and track conversions. You may need the help of a search engine optimization (SEO) specialist.
• Use SEO best practices to properly index a website for search engines to find you.

Keeping your website up to date is crucial for attracting visitors. You’re taking the right step by checking in with your website regularly. Check the following tips, and give us a call if you need to dig further into an audit of your website’s current status.

• Many of Google’s ranking factors are related to site performance, such as page load speed & mobile responsiveness. Speak to an experienced developer to make sure these features are in place.
  SEO best practices change frequently and methods that worked in years prior may only harm your website now. If you’re updating your website it’s crucial that an experienced SEO specialist works with you to increase your search engine visibility.
• Ensure content is relevant and timely. If your content is past its expiration date it will make your website come off as dated and irrelevant.
• If you’re giving your website a facelift the best place to start is with your site navigation. Try to make your content easy for users to find.
• Remove broken links. One common issue with older websites is that content may have been removed or deleted. If you have a website full of 404 errors this can impact your search engine rankings.

If you’re running a local business showing up for local search results is likely your top priority. It’s advisable to work with an SEO team that has a background with local listings. This team can check and clean up your local listings across multiple websites, such as Yelp & Yellow Pages.

• Make sure you have created or claimed a Google My Business listing. This listing should be up to date and include business hours, contact info, etc. Your business listing is the first thing most of your potential customers will see.
• Scrutinize your Yelp, Google My Business, and social media listings for NAPW (Name, Address, Phone, Website) consistency across your web presence. NAPW consistency is an important ranking factor for local search. Making sure that all of your listings are accurate and up to date will also make it easier for potential customers to contact you.
• Your content should mention where you do business. If you operate only in the Asheville area, or in all of the Southeastern states, then include that on your website.
• Encourage customers to leave reviews. Positive reviews from customers will encourage other search engine users to visit your website.

Making updates to your website can seem daunting, and finding help can become overwhelming. There are hundreds of videos, articles, and guides all around the internet. Finding the information you need can quickly prove to be a challenge!

The short answer is that it depends on how your website was built and on what you want to change.

For content changes to text and photos, we build our sites so that it’s easy to change the information you need to keep your content up to date. After your site is built, you’ll get specific instruction on how to make changes to your site.

Making design and functionality changes can get a bit more technical. The best place to start is by reaching out to an experienced developer! We can talk with you about the changes you’d like to make and discuss the best way to implement them.

Even if we didn’t build your website, our team of developers, copywriters, and SEO specialists can help dive in and get the job done, or set up time to go through your site with you and give you instruction on how to make changes.

When your website gets hacked, it can leave a bad impression to your customers and potentially cost you business.

If you suspect your website has been hacked, give us a call right away. Generally a malicious attack is not something that can be cleaned up without diving into the code. We can identify the security risks and clean up any vulnerabilities to get your site back up and running.

When your website is hacked, it can be very detrimental to your business. Generally websites that are built with “bad code” or that are not kept up to date are vulnerable to hackers.

We recommend the following to keep your site safe:

• Use a strong password for your site login, and never use the same password for multiple logins.
• Make sure your website is secured with an SSL certificate. Your site’s URL should start with https:// (rather than http://).
• Have your developer vet any plugins you want to use to be sure they are free of known issues with injection attacks and other vulnerabilities.
• Only allow experienced WordPress developers to work on your site.
• Make sure your website is periodically backed up at regular intervals. Integritive’s servers are backed up daily.
• Monitor security issues and promptly respond to site security updates. Our developers monitor our hosting environments constantly to be aware of any issues. We perform security updates on a regular basis as preventative maintenance.

The biggest consideration for hiring a web developer is money. What kind of budget do you have? How large is the website you want? A simple website might only take an experienced developer a few days to put together. A larger website could demand higher budgetary and time commitments. If the developer you’re looking to hire doesn’t have experience with a robust project, then it might be better to look at hiring someone else.

Consider the following:

• Can the developer you’re in contact with provide examples of previous work? This should be something any trustworthy developer can provide.
• What experience do they have with SEO? If you’re putting together a website it’s important that the pages show up for relevant search terms. A developer who isn’t up to date with these best practices could do more harm than good for your SEO.
• Who’s going to provide content and copywriting? If you’re hiring a developer it’s important to know if they can work with you to create content and articles. As mentioned, if they don’t know some SEO best practices you might not get the best bang for your buck.

The moral of the story: If you’re hiring a developer, go with an experienced team that knows how the many facets of a website all work together.

Keeping your website’s code clean and up to date is a preventative measure to take against website hackers. Have an experienced developer check the following to make sure your site doesn’t get taken down in a cyber attack that can be costly to clean up.

• Fix vital safety issues on webpages with the help of an experienced web development team.
• Some common fixes to make your website more secure include:
  • Utilizing a captcha on your page to prevent spam
  • Listing your physical address and contact info will convey that you’re running a legitimate business to your users
  • Adding a privacy statement. Users want to know what you’re doing with their information.
• Routinely scan your webpage for malware. Spammers will attempt to leave malware links in comments sections, via contact forms, and anywhere else they can submit such content.

• DDoS attacks – A Distributed Denial of Service attack will attempt to overwhelm a server or network with traffic.
• Phishing attacks – An attacker will attempt to mimic a webpage to steal information from users.
• Injection attacks – This can include attacks such as cross site scripting where attackers will attempt to harvest sensitive user information. This also includes SQL injections wherein an attacker will attempt to steal login credentials.
• Malware attacks – Attackers will attempt to use ransomware & other malicious software to steal user information.

If you think your website has been hacked, contact us right away so that we can clean up the hack and get your site up and running again.