Glyna: This could be fun!

Sarah: This is going to be fun! Okay. Well, good morning, everybody! Welcome to Marketing Mix. All right. Got a question for you. How long has it been since you made any changes to your website? If you have to really think about that, then you need to watch this show. Let's get started.

Glyna: Good morning!

Sarah: Good morning! We're getting it together, aren't we?

Glyna: I think maybe we should start filming 10 minutes before. No, probably not.

Sarah: It would really be a comedy show.

Glyna: All right, well, welcome to Marketing Mix. We are here again. We're ready to talk about a really cool topic today and a lot of times people don't even think about this. They put their website up and they never look at it again.

Sarah: Yeah and they don't think about why that matters and why that can really hurt them from getting found online. So first, before we get started, let's remind where you can find us. Okay. So we always know we go live on Facebook and YouTube and Twitter, and don't forget about our awesome podcast Marketing And A Mic and I want to remind you all not to forget to subscribe to us on our YouTube channel. We are constantly posting updated videos.

Glyna: Yes. There's so much great information out there. I was looking at our channel the other day. It's becoming quite impressive.

Sarah: Yeah, a lot of good stuff.

Glyna: Lot of great stuff. So, all right. I'm kind of taking your spot here, aren't I? Today, what are we talking about today Sarah?

Sarah: We're going to talk about reasons why you to update your website. Now there's a lot of reasons, but we're going to just touch on kind of what we feel is the top six. This is why it's so important. So, if it's been more than three years, it's time. It's time to make some updates.

Glyna: Yeah.

Sarah: We're going to get into it. We've got six reasons and we're going to launch right into all the reasons why.

Glyna: LaVon says, "Inspire me, girls." We're trying Lavonne. We're trying really hard this morning. All right. Are we ready? Number one, visual appeal.

Sarah: Yes.

Glyna: That seems simple. But people have to think about that your website is a direct reflection on you. The direct reflection on you, on your business and if it looks old and outdated, people may take it as a serious thing about you. In other words, if it looks old and outdated and poorly structured, they may assume that you are too in your business. You could hear, you've heard that before. First impressions are everything and that means online too, including your website, for sure. New designs. It's really hard to even keep up with all the new design trends. They change all the time, but it's also kind of a cool thing to be able to update your website and get a different look as often as you want. So, it doesn't take long to be outdated. So you got to be real careful and watch that.

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. Number two. These are all biggies, but this one really. Security. Let's talk about security. It's more important than ever to have a secure website. It can cause you to be blacklisted and blacklisted is essentially the search engines way of putting you on the naughty list. Really and truly. It could slow your website speed down. When you are blacklisted, have you ever seen when you pull up a website and it says not secure and you're thinking, "Oh, well, that's not a good thing." So, you really don't want to have that next to you, not secure. That's basically telling the customer to stay away and you can be hacked. You could be hacked on the backend and it's where hackers can get in there. Like I said, they can slow your speed. Search engines are looking for that. So when they find those things that are not secure, that they need that are required, then you do. You get blacklisted and it prevents you from being found online. So, keep your website software and programs up to date. That is so important. Use a reputable hosting service that provides an SSL certificate. We have talked about using a reputable hosting service in the past before. Touch a little bit more on the SSL certificate because that's very important.

Glyna: Yes, basically that makes sure that your website is secure from a hosting level and a website level. So, somebody coming in and visiting you doesn't have any chance of catching a virus or something bad from your website. So you definitely want to have that. That's a big deal right now. I see a lot of websites that up in the very left-hand corner say "not secure". That's somebody we definitely need to talk to if you guys run into anything like that, because it's very important to have that certificate. Most of the time it's free. So, it's not that big of a deal. Your hosting company, again, if it's a reputable hosting company, they should offer that to you for free. Then the other thing that people don't think about, especially with platforms like WordPress is that there are constantly updates that still need to be done on the backend of that website. Once you create it, it's ready to go, but WordPress is always coming through making stuff better, improving on the platform. So, you have to go in there and make sure those things are up to date. Because if you don't, again, that's another thing that the search engines look at and say, "Well, they don't have their stuff together. So, we're not going to give them a leg up in the search engines."

Sarah: I was thinking about that this morning. I thought, "Okay, well all of us have those update notifications on our phone." We're right on it. Oh, I got to update. I got to update. I got to stay on top of it. So why wouldn't we apply that to our website? I mean, it's just as important to update it.

Glyna: Yeah. It is. It's the hub of your business. So you definitely need to be paying attention to these things. Obviously, or if you don't have time, pick a good company that you know will take care of you. That's something that we include in our hosting service. We do updates monthly. So there is no problem with the websites being secure.

Sarah: So, really our customers, they don't even have to think about it. We're handling it all for them.

Glyna: Nope they don't.

Sarah: That's beautiful. That's beautiful. What's number three?

Glyna: All right. I want to say good morning to the one and only Harry Slagle first.

Sarah: Harry! Good morning!

Glyna: Number three is content. All right content. Oh my gosh. I need to pull my hair out sometimes when we're working with content. We can build these websites and always the sticking point or the breaks come slamming on when it's ready for content. It's hard. I get it. It's hard to write good content and you not only need to have content on your website, you need to have the appropriate amount. Each page needs to have at least 300 to 600 words to make the search engines happy again. That's always our end goal. We can make your website as beautiful as you want, but we're playing by the search engine rules at the same time. So want to make sure that you have enough content so visitors can figure out what you do.

Sarah: Right.

Glyna: Otherwise, why have a website? I don't know. Also, use engaging pictures. Stock pictures aren't that bad, depending on what industry you are. But most of the time, if you have a product or service that you can show, you want to try to take pictures of your actual products and video. We preach video, video, video. It also pertains to your website. You want to make sure you have those kinds of things because not everybody's going to read the words. Some people are more visual and you want to make it attractive to people that are coming to your site. People learn different ways and you can refer back to our Biz Talk. Can't remember, it was two weeks ago, I think with Kristie LaRochelle. She is a great photographer and she had some great ideas about photography and she'd be able to help you out. Then really important stuff. Outdated information. If somebody comes to your website and they're like, "Oh good, they do that. I'm going to call them," and they call you and you have no clue what they're talking about.

Sarah: Yeah. Right.

Glyna: That might be a big problem.

Sarah: We haven't done that for two years! Oh, well, it's still on your website!

Glyna: How would that make you feel? That would be like, "Oh, well, if they're outdated," again, it's all about first impressions. So I can't preach content enough. You need to keep it fresh!

Sarah: Yes. Content is another biggie. Another really important one, and I'm telling you if there is anything we talk about more, it is SEO because it is so important. So, your platform has to be search engine friendly, which is why, if your SEO is nonexistent, then your website is nonexistent. You have to have your SEO. Your website has to have the capability to keep up with demanding algorithms. We talk about this. When we talk about all these reasons, we as a company and as a reputable agency stay up-to-date on every requirement that's out there. So it's our job to make sure that we stay on top of it, which we do. So, when we say all these things that have to happen it's just because this is coming from the search engines and they are the ones that hold the key.

Glyna: They mean business.

Sarah: Yeah. They mean business. They don't play because they don't have to play. You ain't going to play by the rules, we'll just pick the next one that is. So, your website has to be able to have that capability to keep up with the demanding algorithms. If you have old technologies like Flash, it's going to kill your SEO potential. We all know, have touched on it before, your search engine. The search engine rules are constantly changing, but it's one thing to have this beautiful and well-written content, but you have to have your SEO settings correctly so that people can find you. The right keywords. Again, that takes some time and you really want to have a company that knows how to do that, to optimize your website.

Glyna: That's exactly right. A lot of platforms, there are a lot of different types of websites out there. Again, we talk about WordPress all the time. We are WordPress fans because it gives us the best chance for the best search engine representation. It allows us to optimize the website again on the back end with keywords and different things that we need to do. It already comes ready for us to be able to apply those things. Not every website does that. So that's so huge. You'd be surprised. GoDaddy doesn't even. They don't even have search engine capability like they should. So you just have to be real careful when you're doing that. You know me, I could preach SEO all day.

Sarah: You could. Preach it.

Glyna: All right. Number five. Usability. I don't know about you, but I'm trying to find my phone. Anyway. Have you ever had your phone and looked up something and looked at a website and you've got to squeeze it and move it around and you can't read it and you can't find a phone number, oh my gosh.

Sarah: You're turning it. You're turning it to try to get a better view.

Glyna: All the words are on one side. It's just a mess. So the biggest thing about usability these days is to make sure that it is mobile-friendly. Everybody has their phone. They do everything on their phone, including looking up websites. If they cannot find information, if your website is just all screwed up on the mobile version, then that's going to just be a bad thing for you. If I run across a website like that, you know what I want to do is just go to the next one.

Sarah: It's a hassle. I mean, it's just a hassle.

Glyna: Exactly. So make sure that it is user friendly and easy to navigate. That means the desktop and the mobile, really. I mean, there are some messes of websites out there that you go to and see they're overwhelming was so much crap all over it that you can't figure out where to go. So, that's a bad thing too. Now, Google is giving more weight again, here we're back to SEO. They're giving more weight to good mobile versions of websites than they are the desktop in their latest algorithms. So they're looking. Always looking. Always there.

Sarah: They are. They really are. They'll find you! Okay. Let's talk about performance issues and when we talk about performance issues, this is regarding websites. Okay.

Glyna: I don't know where you were going.

Sarah: Nowhere! Oh gosh. So what do we mean when we talk about performance issues, as it relates to websites? That is important. It is fixing errors that are happening on your website. What would be those errors? How about a really slow, load time? We are so impatient. Let's say we try to put up a YouTube video and we've got that five-second ad. All we're doing is trying to click away from it because we don't want to spend a lot of time on things. It's like, well, we want it. We want it to come in seconds. If it is taking a long time, we're going to get impatient and we're going to go. So it's important to have a great load time. You'll lose visitors. Your old website has to be kept up to date with current technology. It's going to affect you in every single way. And performance issues can be a huge factor if you're trying to get your PPC costs to come down. Now, tell us a little bit more about what that means.

Glyna: Yeah for pay-per-click people wanting to do Google pay-per-click, again, the algorithms, Google looks at several different things to make sure before they judge how much they're going to charge you when you do pay-per-click. So for instance, if we're doing pay-per-click and somebody is looking up SEO, every time someone clicks on our ad, it costs us something. So, there are ways to get that cost lower. Instead of paying $25 a click every time someone clicks on it, I'd much rather pay $10 a click. So you want to make sure that you're playing by the rules and if you play by the rules, then they reward you. So, one of the biggest things they look at is is your website or your landing page that you're using performing well? That's part of the score. So they give you a higher score, which makes your costs lower for pay-per-click. I know that's kind of confusing.

Sarah: No, so essentially Google will put you in a higher search result if your website loads faster than those of your competitors and that's why it's so important to make sure that your load times are good. Again, it all falls down to the rules and we're just trying to give you these rules so that your website has a chance out there.

Glyna: Yes, because it's a busy world out there. There's a lot of competition.

Sarah: A lot of competition. So we've got those six important issues. We'll touch on it again. Real quick, your visual appeal. Make sure it looks good, appealing to the customers. Security. This should be an obvious one. Make sure it's secure. Make sure you keep everything up to date. Content. Again, not only should your content be meaty and easy to read, easy to follow, it should be up to date. Get rid of anything that you don't offer or that doesn't even apply to your company. SEO. This is how you are found. It is so important that you have the right keywords and that your website is optimized. Usability. Make sure it's mobile-friendly. It's got a good user experience. And the last is performance issues. Your load time, all those things that will get in the way of the customer's experience. If you don't play by the rules, you are going to be in trouble.

Glyna: You're going to be on the naughty list.

Sarah: Yeah! You'll be blacklisted. That's a real term, people.

Glyna: Let me tell you what. Once you get blacklisted, we've had customers that happened to them before and it is very hard to get back on the good side of Google, for sure. Want to say good morning to Steve Johnson before we closeout. We really appreciate you guys tuning in. I think that's about it. Sarah, that's a wrap. As always, if you need help talking about your website and getting it up-to-date and need different ideas, we would sure love to help. So message us and we would love to give you a free consultation. So don't forget to tune in this Friday for Biz Talk. We're going to have a really cool guest. It's Melissa Keck. She does drone work and 3D imaging. So it's going to be a lot of fun. Yep. So thanks for tuning in and we will see you next time!

Sarah: All right, bye!