In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, achieving a high online ranking is crucial for businesses aiming to enhance visibility and drive traffic. Precision Global Marketing LLC specializes in optimizing your online presence to ensure you stand out in the competitive digital marketplace. Ranking online isn’t just about being seen—it’s about being noticed by the right audience at the right time.

Online rankings are primarily influenced by search engine optimization (SEO) practices. SEO is the art and science of aligning your website’s content, structure, and on-page elements with the criteria set by search engines like Google. This includes using the right keywords, creating high-quality content, and ensuring your website is technically sound and user-friendly. However, it’s not just about adhering to SEO best practices; it’s about creating a holistic strategy that reflects the core values and objectives of your brand.

Precision Global Marketing LLC prides itself on crafting bespoke SEO strategies that are tailored to the unique needs of each client. Whether you’re looking to dominate local search terms or compete on a global stage, our experts have the tools and knowledge to boost your search engine rankings effectively and ethically. We understand that each business has different goals, and we strive to deliver personalized solutions that drive real, measurable results.

 Advanced Strategies for Sustaining High Rankings (Ranking online)

Once a solid SEO foundation is established, sustaining and improving your rankings is the next crucial step. This involves a continuous process of optimization and adaptation to the changing algorithms of search engines and the evolving behaviors of consumers. Precision Global Marketing LLC employs advanced analytics and continuous monitoring to adapt strategies in real time, ensuring that your business remains ahead of the curve.

Content creation is at the heart of our advanced strategies. Engaging, original content not only helps in improving rankings but also establishes your business as a thought leader in your industry. From blog posts and articles to videos and infographics, diverse content types can captivate different segments of your target audience, encouraging longer site visits and higher interaction rates, which are favorable signals to search engines.

Link-building is another critical aspect of our strategy. By fostering relationships with reputable sites and getting high-quality backlinks, we can enhance your site’s authority and improve your search ranking. Additionally, we focus on enhancing the user experience (UX) of your website. Search engines prioritize sites that provide a seamless, intuitive user experience, from mobile responsiveness to fast loading times, all of which are areas of expertise for Precision Global Marketing LLC.

In conclusion, mastering online rankings requires more than just technical SEO skills—it demands a strategic, holistic approach that aligns with your business’s long-term goals. At Precision Global Marketing LLC, we are dedicated to helping our clients achieve and sustain top rankings through customized strategies and continuous optimization. By partnering with us, you ensure that your online presence is not only visible but also impactful, driving growth and success in the digital age. Transform your online rankings with Precision Global Marketing LLC and experience the power of professional SEO management to unlock your full online potential.

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Take, for instance, a small local bakery we worked with. Despite having the best pastries in town, they struggled to reach customers beyond their locality. Our team implemented a comprehensive online marketing strategy, including local SEO, content marketing, and social media promotion. The result? A three-fold increase in their customer base and a 200% rise in sales within six months.

Another example is a tech startup that struggled to differentiate themselves in a crowded market. Precision Global Marketing helped them define a unique brand voice, then leveraged content marketing, SEO, and social media to make that voice heard. The impact was significant, with a 250% increase in website traffic and a 150% increase in lead generation.

These are just a few examples of how online marketing can transform businesses. However, every business is unique, with its own set of challenges and goals. That’s why Precision Global Marketing offers personalized online marketing services. We don’t just implement cookie-cutter strategies; we take the time to understand your business and your audience, then craft a bespoke online marketing plan that aligns with your objectives.

Transforming your business with online marketing may seem daunting, but you don’t have to do it alone. Precision Global Marketing is here to guide you every step of the way. Contact us at (877) 651-2725 or fill out the form on our website for a free consultation. Let us help you write your own online marketing success story.

Five Online Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

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The first mistake many businesses make is ignoring the importance of search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is crucial for improving your website’s visibility in search engine results, making it easier for potential customers to find you. Ignoring SEO can lead to a decrease in website traffic and a lower conversion rate.

Another common mistake is neglecting the power of content. Content marketing is all about creating and sharing valuable, relevant content to attract and engage your audience. If your content doesn’t provide value or isn’t targeted to your audience, it won’t be effective in driving traffic and conversions.

The third mistake to avoid is failing to leverage social media. Social media platforms are a great way to connect with your audience on a personal level. Neglecting these platforms can lead to missed opportunities to engage your audience and build brand loyalty.

The fourth pitfall is ignoring mobile users. With the rise of smartphones, more and more consumers are using their mobile devices to browse the internet and make purchases. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you risk losing out on a significant portion of your potential audience.

The final mistake is not tracking or analyzing your results. Online marketing is not a set-and-forget strategy; it requires continuous monitoring and optimization. If you’re not tracking your results and adjusting your strategies based on these insights, you won’t be able to maximize your return on investment.

Avoiding these common online marketing mistakes is crucial for your business’s success. Precision Global Marketing can help you navigate these potential pitfalls and develop a robust, effective online marketing strategy. Contact us at (877) 651-2725 or fill out the form on our website for a free consultation.

Success Stories: Businesses Transformed by Online Marketing

The Basics of Online Marketing: A Guide for Business Owners

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Online marketing encompasses various strategies and techniques used to promote products and services on the internet. These include search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, among others.

Each of these components plays a unique role in your overall online marketing strategy. For example, SEO helps improve your website’s visibility on search engines, making it easier for potential customers to find you. Content marketing involves creating and sharing valuable content to attract and engage your audience. Social media marketing allows you to connect with your audience on a more personal level, while email marketing enables you to keep your audience updated with the latest news and offers.

At Precision Global Marketing, we recognize the importance of a well-rounded online marketing strategy. We believe that the most effective strategies are those that combine various elements of online marketing, tailored to the unique needs and goals of each business.

That’s why we offer a full suite of online marketing services. Our team of experts will work closely with you to develop a comprehensive online marketing strategy that aligns with your business objectives. Whether you’re looking to increase your online visibility, attract more customers, or boost sales, we have the skills and expertise to help you achieve your goals.

But we don’t stop at just creating your online marketing strategy. We also monitor and analyze your results to ensure that your strategy is working and to identify areas for improvement. This data-driven approach allows us to continuously optimize your online marketing strategy, maximizing your return on investment.

In today’s digital age, understanding the basics of online marketing is just the first step. The next step is to implement these strategies effectively—and that’s where Precision Global Marketing comes in. Contact us at (877) 651-2725 or fill out the form on our website for a free consultation. Let us help you navigate the world of online marketing and take your business to new heights.

Five Online Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

How Online Marketing Can Transform Your Business

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Precision targeting for a global impact:
Precision Global Marketing believes in the power of targeted marketing campaigns. They use the latest tools and techniques to ensure your marketing messages reach the right audience, helping you to extend your brand’s reach on a global scale. By focusing on creating meaningful connections with your target audience, Precision Global Marketing ensures your campaigns are effective and impactful.

Data-driven strategies for measurable results:
With a commitment to delivering tangible results, Precision Global Marketing utilizes data-driven strategies to optimize your marketing efforts. By analyzing key performance indicators and monitoring the success of each campaign, they can fine-tune their approach to maximize your ROI. This data-driven mindset ensures that every dollar spent on marketing is accounted for and generates a positive return for your business.

Cutting-edge creativity and unparalleled commitment:
At Precision Global Marketing, the team’s passion for creativity and innovation sets them apart. They stay ahead of industry trends and continually explore new ways to engage and captivate your target audience. From eye-catching visuals to compelling content, Precision Global Marketing’s creative execution ensures your brand stands out in a crowded marketplace.

Additionally, their unwavering commitment to client success means they’ll work tirelessly to achieve the desired results for your business. The team at Precision Global Marketing prides itself on building long-lasting relationships with their clients, becoming an extension of your team, and celebrating your successes together.
In the competitive world of marketing, businesses need a reliable partner to help them stand out and succeed. Precision Global Marketing offers an unparalleled combination of precision targeting, data-driven strategies, and cutting-edge creativity, making them the ideal choice for businesses seeking to propel themselves forward. Get in touch with Precision Global Marketing today to discuss how they can elevate your brand and drive your business to new heights.

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The demand for it is spiking; 86% of consumers surveyed said they wanted to see more video content from brands, and on social media video ranks among consumers’ favorite types of content.

Additionally, 91% of marketers surveyed said they were satisfied with the ROI of their video marketing on social media. It should come as no surprise, then, that social media marketers are relying on video content more than ever.

However, some brands aren’t optimizing their video strategy for social media.

Why Video Needs to Be Part of Your Social Media Strategy

As one of your most valuable media assets, video needs to be a central focus of your social media strategy. Explainers, promos, interviews; they should all be front and center when posting on social.

Short videos are ideal attention grabbers. A quick explanation or a catchy, bite-sized piece of useful information can sway users in your direction far better than a lengthy manifesto – there is room for that further down the sales funnel!

You can also use videos on social media to creatively broadcast your brand’s story and build an emotional connection with your followers. The video format offers endless opportunities for re-editing, repurposing, and revisiting your brand’s most memorable moments.

Ultimately, this gives you an impressive ROI for each individual piece of video content. Including videos in your social media content can increase views by 48%, according to research conducted by Adobe. Maximizing the visibility of each individual video results in a clear competitive advantage.

Level Up Your Video Content With Social Media Video Analytics

How Long Should Social Media Videos Be?

Before we get down to how you actually go about scheduling your videos on the various social media platforms, it’s important to address two important questions:

When is the best time to post on each site?

How long should each video be on each social media platform?

Let’s break it down per website:

How long can a video be on Facebook?

While Facebook videos can last up to four hours(!), the optimal runtime for a marketing video should be significantly shorter. According to Animoto, if your video is an ad, aim for it to be as short as possible. If that means it lasts just 15 seconds – great. If you hope to convey more complex messages – aim for the 3-minute mark.

Socialbakers data recommends posting on Facebook during the week from 8-10 a.m., which is right before the highest activity of each day.

No matter how long your video is, go in understanding that most people simply won’t watch all of it. According to Socialbakers data, the average watch time on Facebook videos is 4.57 seconds.

Average Facebook video watch time

Chart time range: Oct. 1-Dec. 31, 2019; Sample: 19,622 Facebook brand pages worldwide; Source: Socialbakers data

How long can Instagram videos be?

Standard videos on Instagram can run up to a minute, but experts recommend cutting it significantly shorter. Aim for 26 seconds; videos with that runtime average the highest level of engagement on IG.

While Instagram boasts a considerable level of engagement during Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m, the best time to post videos on Instagram is actually overnight.

How long can a Twitter video be?

Twitter videos were limited to 30 seconds. Since then, Twitter has extended videos’ permissible runtime to 2 minutes and 20 seconds. However, users became accustomed to the original runtime. It would therefore be best to keep Twitter videos to 30 seconds or less.

The best time to post on Twitter is at noon and 6 p.m., which is when you’ll generally see the highest click-through rates on your content.

How long can a LinkedIn video be?

According to HubSpot, you should try to keep your LinkedIn videos to 15 seconds or less.

Socialbakers says the best time to post on LinkedIn is Tuesday through Thursday, typically between 8-11 a.m.

How long are TikTok videos?

Similar to Twitter, TikTok launched with a more limiting minimal runtime for videos (15 seconds) before eventually allowing 60-second videos.

Keeping things nice and short is highly recommended on a platform that has surged because of its 15-second video pattern. Socialbakers data suggests that the best times to post on TikTok are 6-9 a.m. and 10-11 p.m.

Additionally, Iconosquare found that the days with the highest engagement were Tuesday morning, Thursday midday, and Friday early morning.

Make the Most of Your Video Content: Spread It Far and Wide

It’s evident that video has a lot to offer on social media. There is no reason to limit every video to a single social media platform. You have much more to gain by sharing your best-performing videos to your audiences along multiple channels.

But the greater the number of platforms you use, the more time it takes to maintain an active video presence. Social media management tools can help you to easily automate the process, but many native tools allow you to schedule your video posts, too. Here’s a look at how to do it:

How to post and schedule a video on Facebook

Facebook makes it easy to schedule posts. First, you’ll need to find the Publishing Tools section of your Page controls. 

Publish posts on Facebook

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Under the Posts section on the left-hand side, you’ll see a Scheduled Posts button:

Schedule posts on Facebook

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From here you can select the date and time you want your video to show up on your Facebook page.

How to post and schedule a video on Instagram

Unlike Facebook, Instagram doesn’t offer users a direct scheduling solution through the app itself. Instead, Instagram Business users can schedule posts up to six months in advance through Facebook’s integrated Creator Studio. 

You will have to link your Facebook and Instagram accounts on Facebook to do this. Simply enter the Creator Studio and click on the Instagram logo on the upper right corner of the screen. 

Creat a post in creator studio

Image source

Sign in to Instagram through the popup and your accounts will be linked.

One benefit of this approach is that you can schedule content on both platforms through a single dashboard. With the right social media management solution in place, you can deploy this kind of functionality on all platforms. Schedule Instagram stories with ease.

Create a post in creator studio

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How to post videos on Twitter

Twitter users with an advertiser account can schedule posts by opening up the Creatives tab: 

How to post videos on Twitter

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Select Only Scheduled Tweets from the following menu and then click on Compose a Scheduled Tweet.

How to schedule a post on Twitter

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This opens up an editor with additional date and time functions beneath it. Use these to schedule the promotion of blogs, images, and tweets at specific intervals.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn doesn’t allow users to schedule posts as a native functionality. Instead, you have to integrate a third-party LinkedIn scheduling tool to do so.

Integrating one of these tools to your LinkedIn account is simple. Once you sign up for a social media management solution, you authorize your LinkedIn account and grant the vendor permission to use the account in your name.

From there, you can create and schedule posts for all of your accounts from a single dashboard. This allows marketers to optimize the efficiency of their social media tasks and makes posting an efficient, scalable process.

TikTok

TikTok has exploded in popularity over the past few years, making it a valuable platform for your social media videos. TikTok does not allow users to schedule posts, though, so you’ll need to authorize a third-party social media management app like SocialPilot to do it for you.

This will let you optimize your video content strategy by publishing new videos when your users are the most active. This is especially useful for marketers managing brands with global reach, since you can post according to your users’ timezones and use analytics to accommodate their behaviors.

The Takeaway

Managing a single social media account is easy. Managing a dozen is not. The more your brand relies on social media, the more time you will spend on simple, low-value tasks like copying videos from one platform to another – and resizing or reformatting them to fit.

Smart marketers understand the need to streamline these tasks with automation-friendly toolkits. If you use a video hosting solution that supports social media, you can easily and quickly configure your video content for each platform.

As your work volume increases, social media management and video hosting solutions become an integral part of your workflow. They automate the most time-consuming parts of your job so you can focus on higher-impact tasks – like making more (and better) videos for your audience by following social media video best practices.

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For the last couple of years, for better or worse, my life has revolved more than a little around style sheets. I write software, tutorials, and guides for them; I’ve answered too many questions to count about them on newsgroups and via email; I’ve fought for their adoption with The Web Standards Project. And slowly I’ve come to understand web design entirely differently because of them, and to see a strong association between design and the Tao.

What I sense is a real tension between the web as we know it, and the web as it would be. It’s the tension between an existing medium, the printed page, and its child, the web. And it’s time to really understand the relationship between the parent and the child, and to let the child go its own way in the world.

Same old new medium?

Well established hierarchies are not easily uprooted;

Closely held beliefs are not easily released;

So ritual enthralls generation after generation. 

Tao Te Ching; 38 Ritual

If you’ve never watched early television programs, it’s instructive viewing. Television was at that time often referred to as “radio with pictures,” and that’s a pretty accurate description. Much of television followed the format of popular radio at that time. Indeed programs like the Tonight Show, with its variants found on virtually every channel in the world (featuring a band, the talk to the camera host, and seated guests), or the news, with the suited sober news reader, remain as traces of the medium television grew out of. A palimpsest of media past.

Think too of the first music videos (a few of us might be at least that old). Essentially the band miming themselves playing a song. Riveting.

When a new medium borrows from an existing one, some of what it borrows makes sense, but much of the borrowing is thoughtless, “ritual,” and often constrains the new medium. Over time, the new medium develops its own conventions, throwing off existing conventions that don’t make sense.

If you ever get the chance to watch early television drama you’ll find a strong example of this. Because radio required a voice-over to describe what listeners couldn’t see, early television drama often featured a voice over, describing what viewers could. It’s a simple but striking example of what happens when a new medium develops out of an existing one.

The web is a new medium, although it has emerged from the medium of printing, whose skills, design language and conventions strongly influence it. Yet it is often too shaped by that from which it sprang. “Killer Web Sites” are usually those which tame the wildness of the web, constraining pages as if they were made of paper – Desktop Publishing for the Web. This conservatism is natural, “closely held beliefs are not easily released,” but it is time to move on, to embrace the web as its own medium. It’s time to throw out the rituals of the printed page, and to engage the medium of the web and its own nature.

This is not for a moment to say we should abandon the wisdom of hundreds of years of printing and thousands of years of writing. But we need to understand which of these lessons are appropriate for the web, and which mere rituals.

Controlling web pages

[The Sage]

… accepts the ebb and flow of things,

Nurtures them, but does not own them

Tao Te Ching; 2 Abstraction

Spend some time on web design newgroups or mailing lists, and you’ll find some common words and ideas repeated time after time. Question after question, of course, is “how do I?”. But beneath questions like “how do I make my pages look the same on every platform” and “how can I make my fonts appear identical on the Macintosh and Windows” is an underlying question – “how do I control the user’s browser?” Indeed, the word control turns up with surprising frequency.

Underpinning all this is the belief that designers are controllers (think about the implications of the term “pixel mechanic”). Designers want to override the wishes of users, and the choices that they have made about their viewing experience (by “fixing” font size, for instance). Designers want to second guess platform differences, caused by different logical resolutions (for instance the Macintosh’s 72dpi, versus the standard Windows 96dpi). Designers are all-knowing, and will not tolerate anything less than a rendering on every browser that is pixel perfect with the rendering on their own machine.

Of course, this exaggerates the case, but not greatly. A very strong example of this is the often expressed disappointment of developers when they learn that style sheets are not “DTP for the web.” And if you are a Mac user, you will be acutely aware of just how many really major sites abuse style sheets to make their pages illegible. Chances are they are using points as a measure of font size. Underlying this choice is the “designer is controller” philosophy.

Where does this idea come from? I believe it flows from the medium of print. In print the designer is god. An enormous industry has emerged from WYSIWYG, and many of the web’s designers are grounded in the beliefs and practices, the ritual of that medium. As designers we need to rethink this role, to abandon control, and seek a new relationship with the page.

Why does it matter?

A newborn is soft and tender,

A crone, hard and stiff.

Plants and animals, in life, are supple and succulent;

In death, withered and dry.

So softness and tenderness are attributes of life,

And hardness and stiffness, attributes of death.

Tao Te Ching; 76 Flexibility

Perhaps the inability to “control” a page is a limitation, a bug of the web. When we come from the WYSIWYG world, our initial instinct is to think so. I admit that it was my first response, and a belief that was a long time in going. But I no longer feel that it is a limitation, I see it as a strength of a new medium.

Let’s look at this through the other end of the microscope. The fact we can control a paper page is really a limitation of that medium. You can think – we can fix the size of text – or you can think – the size of text is unalterable. You can think – the dimensions of a page can be controlled – or – the dimensions of a page can’t be altered. These are simply facts of the medium.

And they aren’t necessarily good facts, especially for the reader. If the reader’s eye sight isn’t that of a well sighted person, chances are the choice the designer made is too small to comfortably read without some kind of magnification. If the reader is in a confined space, a train to work, an airplane, the broadsheet newspaper is too large. And there is little the reader can do about this.

The control which designers know in the print medium, and often desire in the web medium, is simply a function of the limitation of the printed page. We should embrace the fact that the web doesn’t have the same constraints, and design for this flexibility. But first, we must “accept the ebb and flow of things.”

Adaptability is accessibility

The best of man is like water,

Which benefits all things, and does not contend with them,

Which flows in places that others disdain,

Where it is in harmony with the Way. 

Tao Te Ching; 8 Water

There are those who think that dao is fatalistic. A simplistic reading is that one should wander, without plan, allowing for things to happen and to respond to them. I think of it as saying we should not be fixed in our outlook, with goals far ahead, rather we should be adaptable, not fixed in our views or direction.

As observing detail is clarity,

So maintaining flexibility is strength;

Use the light but shed no light,

So that you do yourself no harm,

But embrace clarity.

Tao Te Ching; 52 Clarity

The flexibility I’ve talked about so far I think of as “adaptability.” Everything I’ve said so far could be summarized as: make pages which are adaptable. Make pages which are accessible, regardless of the browser, platform or screen that your reader chooses or must use to access your pages. This means pages which are legible regardless of screen resolution or size, or number of colors (and remember too that pages may be printed, or read aloud by reading software, or read using braille browsers). This means pages which adapt to the needs of a reader, whose eyesight is less than perfect, and who wishes to read pages with a very large font size.

Designing adaptable pages is designing accessible pages. And perhaps the great promise of the web, far from fulfilled as yet, is accessibility, regardless of difficulties, to information. It’s an important belief of the World Wide Web Consortium, and is becoming an imperative of web design, as web pages will be required by law to provide universal access, just as building codes around the world require access to buildings.

It sounds an impossibility, designing the universal page. Perhaps now it remains an aspiration, with browsers so broken, and many of the devices through which we will access the web in their infancy, or not yet born. But there is a lot we can do now which will set the foundations for pages which adapt to the users wishes and needs, and so will be accessible.

The Way

The Way is shaped by use,

But then the shape is lost.

Do not hold fast to shapes

But let sensation flow into the world

As a river courses down to the sea.

Tao Te Ching; 32 Shapes

So what can be done to design for adaptability, and so accessibility? Firstly, there are a couple of ways of thinking which might be helpful. Then I have some practical suggestions about steps you can take to avoid making your pages inaccessible.

Firstly, think about what your pages do, not what they look like. Let your design flow from the services which they will provide to your users, rather than from some overarching idea of what you want pages to look like. Let form follow function, rather than trying to take a particular design and make it “work.”

A cornerstone of this idea is to separate the content and its appearance. You’ve probably heard this a hundred times, but it is perhaps the most important step you can take. Let’s look at a simple example. On a page there is some text which is italicized. Why is it italicized? It might be for emphasis. It might be a citation. It might be a foreign word used in English. In traditional publishing, the form follows from function. The advantage of web publishing is we can make explicit what is implicit in the appearance on paper. If the reason for italics is emphasis, why mark up your page with the <i> element? Use the <em> element, and so browsers other than PC based web browsers can handle the element appropriately.

On the larger scale, don’t use HTML for presentation. No <font> or <b>, <i> and other presentational elements. Where HTML provides an appropriate element, use it. Where it doesn’t, use classes. And of course, use style sheets for your presentational information. It’s time to look to the future, not cling to the past.

If you use style sheets properly, to suggest the appearance of a page, not to control the appearance of a page, and you don’t rely on your style sheet to convey information, then your pages will “work” fine in any browser, past or future. Browsers which don’t support style sheets simply present pages that look a little on the plain side. Our biggest concern is browsers which have buggy style sheets support. Today this is an issue. Not too long from now, it won’t be much of an issue. For now, you can limit yourself to a subset of CSS which is well enough supported, and still have more presentational effect than using presentational HTML. I’ve written quite a bit about this elsewhere, so I won’t repeat myself here.

In practical terms, there are some things you should and some things you shouldn’t do when designing style sheets that will impact on the adaptability of your pages. Above all, don’t rely on any aspect of style sheets to work in order for a page to be accessible. Absolute units, like pixels and points are to be avoided (if that comes as a surprise, read on), and color needs to be used carefully, and never relied on.

FONTS

Typically, a Windows, Macintosh, or other system will have only a handful of fonts installed. There is little overlap between the default installed fonts on these various systems. Already with many browsers, and increasingly in the future, readers will be able to decide on the fonts they want to view web pages with. With CSS, you can suggest a number of fonts, and cover as many bases as possible. But don’t rely on a font being available regardless of how common it is.

More important still is font size. You may be aware that the same font, at the same point size on a Macintosh “looks smaller” than on most Windows machines. In a nutshell, this is because the “logical resolution” of a Macintosh is 72dpi, while the Windows default is 96dpi. The implications of this are significant. Firstly, it guarantees that it is essentially impossible to have text look identical on Macintoshes and Windows based systems. But if you embrace the adaptability philosophy it doesn’t matter.

What? If you are concerned about exactly how a web page appears this is a sign that you are still aren’t thinking about adaptive pages. One of the most significant accessibility issues is font size. Small fonts are more difficult to read. For those of us with good eyesight, it can come as a shock that a significant percentage of the population has trouble reading anything below 14 point Times on paper. Screens are less readable than paper, because of their lower resolution.

Does that mean the minimum point size we should use is 14 pts? That doesn’t help those whose sight is even less strong. So what is the minimum point size we should use? None. Don’t use points. This allows readers to choose the font size which suits them. The same goes even for pixels. Because of logical resolution differences, a pixel on one platform is not a pixel on another.

You can still suggest larger font sizes for headings and other elements. CSS provides several ways of suggesting the size of text in such a way as to aid adaptability. We’ll look at just one to get an idea.

With CSS you can specify font size as a percentage of the font size of a parent element. For example, headings are inside the BODY of the page. If you don’t set a size for the text in the BODY, then the text of the BODY will be the size that the reader has chosen as their default size. Already we are aiding adaptability of our page, simply by doing nothing!

You might say “but the text looks too big” if I just leave it like that. Make it smaller then. But in your browser. And your readers will then have the option to make it bigger or smaller in their browsers too, depending on their tastes, or their needs.

We can make headings and other elements stand out using font size by specifying that headings of level 1 should be say 30% larger than the body text, level 2 should be 25% larger, and so on. Now, regardless of the size that the user chooses for their main text, headings will be scaled to be proportionally bigger than the main text. Similarly text can be scaled to be smaller than the body text, however, this can give rise to situations where the text can be illegibly small, so use with caution.

We’ve done very little really, just avoided using absolute font sizes, and used proportional sizes for headings, and we’ve already made our pages much more adaptable and accessible.

LAYOUTS

Margins, page widths and indentation are all aspects of page design which can aid readability. The web presents difficulties for the designer with each of these. Browser windows can be resized, thereby changing the page size. Different web devices (web TV, high resolution monitors, PDAs) have different minimum and maximum window sizes. As with fixed font sizes, fixed page layout can lead to accessbility problems on the web.

As with fonts, layout aspects of a page can be designed using percentages to create adaptable pages. Margins can be specified as a percentage of the width of the element which contains them.

Using percentages (or other relative values) to specify page layout in CSS automatically creates adaptive pages. As browser windows widen and narrow, the layout of an element adapts to maintain the same proportions, and so the whole page layout adapts. Readers can choose the window size they find appropriate to their needs.

Margins, text indentation and other layout aspects can also be specified in relation to the size of the text they contain, using the <em> unit for specifying margins, text indentation and other layout aspects. If you specify

p  {margin-left: 1.5em}

you are saying that the left margin of paragraphs should be 1.5 times the height of the font of that paragraph. So, when a user adjusts their font size to make a page more legible, the margin increases proportionally, and if they adjust it to make it smaller, the margin adapts again.

COLORS

The web is by and large a more colorful medium than the printed page. Color is cheaper on the web. Color can be ornamental, can help to establish a visual identity, and can have practical value (red might draw attention to important information). But color poses difficulties to accessibility as well.

Did you know that in many countries (if not all) people with red green color blindness are unable to obtain an aircraft pilot’s license? That is, regardless of any other ability, because warning information is almost invariably conveyed using red for danger and green for safety. It’s a shame that warning lights aren’t simply adaptable.

Do your web pages exclude people in a similar way? It would be a shame, as in the near future most web browsers will provide simple ways for readers to adjust the color of elements on a web page, via user style sheets, which can override your style sheets. (You can do this now with IE5 Macintosh edition.)

How to avoid these problems? Use style sheets, rather than the HTML <em> element. And avoid relying on color combinations to alone convey meaning.

The Journey

Yet a tree broader than a man can embrace is born of a tiny shoot;

A dam greater than a river can overflow starts with a clod of earth;

A journey of a thousand miles begins at the spot under one’s feet.

Tao Te Ching; 64a. Care at the Beginning

Changing our ways of thinking and acting isn’t easy. “Closely held beliefs are not easily released.” But I’ve come slowly to realize that much of what I took for granted needed to be reassessed. Judging by what I see and read and the conversations I’ve had, the email I’ve read over the last couple of years, many hold these beliefs closely, and need to rethink them too.

Now is the time for the medium of the web to outgrow its origins in the printed page. Not to abandon so much wisdom and experience, but to also chart its own course, where appropriate.

The web’s greatest strength, I believe, is often seen as a limitation, as a defect. It is the nature of the web to be flexible, and it should be our role as designers and developers to embrace this flexibility, and produce pages which, by being flexible, are accessible to all.

The journey begins by letting go of control, and becoming flexible.

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Unfortunately, the response is rarely satisfying. Traditional techniques for building accessibility requirements into a website can be extremely time- and labor-intensive, potentially translating to thousands of dollars and weeks of coding. Retrofitting an existing site can be just as costly. Plus, maintaining compliance means manual updates every time new content is added to the site.

Without a cost-effective solution from their agencies, many website owners reluctantly sweep accessibility concerns under the rug, hoping the risk of a lawsuit is less than the cost of protecting their site and business.

A 400% increase in ADA Title III federal lawsuits from 2013-2019, however, suggests that’s a dangerous gamble.

Why Web Accessibility Must be a Priority for Every Business

“Times are changing and online businesses have a greater responsibility than ever to prioritize their website accessibility,” Forbes.com recently wrote. “When companies essentially deny equal access because their website is incompatible with a screen reader – or has other accessibility issues, the companies also become vulnerable to lawsuits,”.

That responsibility carries over to digital agencies and web development shops, whose expertise is crucial for helping businesses make informed decisions regarding their digital presence.

new ace banner inilne 900×220

Where Can Agencies Turn for a Viable Web Accessibility Solution?

Prior to now, agencies have been caught between a rock and hard place. They desperately want to assist their clients, but lack the tools and budget to provide a viable solution. While a handful of plug-ins exist to allow users to customize the frontend display of a website, the heavier lift of making sites accessible for screen readers and keyboard navigation has always been completely manual.

Until now.

A new technology is revolutionizing the way agencies can integrate complete accessibility into their clients’ websites.

accessiBe makes any website fully accessible with just a single line of JavaScript, through the power of artificial intelligence. And, yes, that includes compatibility with screen readers and keyboard navigation.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of accessiBe is the price. Websites up to 1,000 pages can be made completely accessible for just $490 per year, with larger websites ranging from $990 to $3,500 per year. Agencies are eligible for a 20% discount plus free accessiBe integration for their own website.

Peter Polgar, Founder and CEO of full-service digital agency Glenmont Consulting, says of accessiBe, “The technology and their unique approach to addressing compliance issues were very impressive. We were sold. It was clear accessiBe was the right way to go and we joined their partner program on the spot. accessiBe’s platform is now part of what we offer to all of our customers.”

There’s More at Stake than Just Lawsuits

And web accessibility is about more than just avoiding the threat of lawsuits. In this day and age, no one should be precluded from benefiting from the availability of goods and services. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates nearly 1-in-5 Americans has a disability. That’s more than 60 million people. The potential positive financial impact of making a company’s website more accessible to this huge swath of the population is game-changing for any business.

The future of web accessibility is here today. To learn more about how your agency can offer accessiBe’s all-in-one web accessibility solution to clients, visit our agency partners page today.

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Why school pay-per-click (PPC) audiences can be unpredictable
How to leverage generation segmentation
How the pandemic has affected PPC strategies for schools
Tips for your school’s PPC campaign
With more than 34,000 private and over 500 virtual schools in the United States serving almost millions of K-12 students, the competition can be fierce. And, perhaps now more than ever, online promotion is key to attracting your target audience and converting them quicker than your competitors.

Let’s take a closer look at important aspects of PPC marketing for elementary, middle, and high schools.

PPC for schools tips
For best results, PPC campaigns for schools should be aimed at top-of-the-funnel searchers who are still in the browsing stage. (Image via Unsplash)

Defining a tricky target audience
Defining clear segments of your target audience is one of the toughest parts of running a search engine marketing (SEM) campaign for schools.

That’s because you want to design ads for people who technically won’t be taking advantage of your services. Unlike PPC campaigns for higher education, PPC tactics for lower-level schools involve marketing to an audience of adult parents.

While the target audience for K-12 schools is mostly parents, rising or current high-schoolers may also be searching for options. These two target audience segments can be drastically different, which may involve creating separate campaigns to reach each one.

Additionally, you should consider parents who have a child in your school already and may be contemplating enrolling another one.

Once you decide to create different ads and landing pages for each target audience segment, it’s also wise to conduct A/B testing to see which elements resonate most with each one.

Pro tip: For best results, PPC campaigns for schools should be aimed at top-of-the-funnel searchers who are still in the browsing stage. As people progress down the funnel, they tend to visit websites directly.

PPC marketing for different generations
Another tricky part about your target audience is that it consists of parents who come from different generations. Paid marketing efforts for millennials and Gen X, for example, can differ substantially.

Catering to millennial parents
When it comes to PPC for schools, millennials are less susceptible to traditional marketing tactics and tend to do a lot of research across different channels.

When they need to learn something new, millennials often prefer YouTube videos to textual content. Additionally, they’re avid Instagram users. That’s why it’s worth experimenting with paid social marketing on Instagram and YouTube. You could even look into partnering with popular, high-quality accounts and channels where millennial parents can get information about your school.

Marketing to Gen X parents
Generation X spends less time on social media than millennials do. While they also appreciate video marketing, their key social media platform is Facebook.

Many of these parents turn to Facebook and Google to find information about schools. To target them, consider designing Google and Facebook Ads campaigns.

Taking the pandemic into account
It seems safe to say that any parent with school-aged children (not to mention teachers and staff members) has had their routine upended by the COVID-19 pandemic. Seeing their children’s educational experience in a closer, more direct manner has caused some parents to rethink what they look for in a school.

Some things parents may be looking for in their child’s school moving forward include questions like:

Do they offer remote learning options?
How are they supporting teachers and staff during this unprecedented time?
How are they ensuring children are still getting the best instruction possible?
Are they testing and vaccinating teachers?
Do they follow CDC recommendations?
All of this is fertile ground for PPC ad content. By highlighting how your school has dealt with the pandemic and its consequences, you may be able to boost your school above the competition.

Implementing remarketing
Depending on how soon they start researching, a parent’s buying journey can take months or even years. That’s why remarketing can be such a game-changer.

By taking advantage of remarketing options, you can stay top of mind and make sure not to lose prospects after they leave your website.

As we’ve laid out before, remarketing involves placing your ads in front of potential clients after they interact with your school online. These ads can follow prospects across platforms to keep reminding them about your school’s benefits.

Besides bringing back potential clients, remarketing ads work well for existing parents and students by increasing brand awareness.

school paid search
While PPC campaigns for schools have a high conversation potential, they require a multifaceted approach. (Image via Unsplash)

Tips for effective PPC for schools
Here are a few tips to keep in mind when designing your school’s PPC campaign.

Avoid bidding on branded terms
While bidding on branded terms works well for many businesses, it can be a budget-eater for schools. Many existing parents and students use Google to find and visit the school website to see everything from schedules and updates to your events calendar.

These people will be clicking your ads simply to get to the website. The result: A serious waste of your PPC budget.

Focus on the audience segment with the highest potential
Since your target audience is complex, it’s wise to pick your battles when it comes to designing PPC ads. If you have a tight marketing budget, catering to all segments can be tough to execute.

To achieve the highest marketing ROI, focus on the segment with the highest potential to convert. Not sure who that is? If you don’t have a ton of demographic info when it comes to your ideal client persona, now’s a great time to start gathering that data.

Don’t ignore negative keywords
Negative keywords allow you to save money on your PPC campaign by not showing your ad to those searching for certain disqualifying words or phrases.

For example, if your school doesn’t offer remote learning options, you can specify that keywords related to remote studies shouldn’t trigger your ads. Otherwise, you won’t just waste campaign money, but you could also increase your website’s bounce rate.

Be careful with geo-targeting
While proximity to home is an obvious factor for parents when choosing a school, many won’t object to traveling a few extra miles to give their child the best opportunities possible. Because of this, you don’t want to limit your paid search ads too narrowly when it comes to location.

Start by analyzing your previous enrollment data to identify your best-performing areas. From there, you can conduct A/B testing with different regions to see which one brings the most visitors.

Pro tip: Take advantage of negative location keywords to cut costs.

The takeaway
While PPC campaigns for schools have a high conversation potential, they require a multifaceted approach. A thoughtful marketing strategy is key to keeping your campaign budget low while achieving top-notch results with such a diverse audience.

By sorting out priorities, understanding your audience, and doing sufficient A/B testing, you can create a highly efficient PPC campaign and improve your school’s profitability.

The post Managing your pay-per-click (PPC) program shouldn’t feel like wandering through a haunted house. appeared first on Precision Global Marketing.

Surprisingly, organizations that invest considerable sums of money in SEO often pay little attention to CRO on their company websites. This is, of course, very frustrating to SEO agencies in situations where organic traffic increases substantially but conversions do not. Here are five CRO issues that we frequently address with clients. When improvements are made, it usually translates into lead generation growth and much improved ROI on the SEO campaign.

Poor offers and calls to action. If calls to action are nonexistent or weak (for example, “learn more”), site visitors just don’t get enough of a push to fill out an inquiry form or call. Sometimes an organization will have a truly valuable offer, but bury it so deep in the website few visitors see it.
User-unfriendly forms. Issues with forms include poor mobile-friendly design, too many required fields, unclear submit commands, poor or nonexistent automated response to alert the user that the inquiry has been received, and what to expect next.
Hard-to-find phone number. For a lead generation website, the phone number for inquiries should be visible everywhere on the website to the point it is unmissable. For mobile design, fixing the phone icon in the header nav with click-to-call function is essential.
Poor images. Superb pics of the staff, facilities, products, services and applications are worth 1,000 words, if not more. Although custom photography may have a hefty price tag, the result is worth its weight in gold for conversions. In particular, photos that showcase key features and benefits have a far greater impact on site visitors than plain text, no matter how well it is written.
Weak credibility statements. Unless an organization is a household name, most site visitors are naturally skeptical, having no doubt dealt with companies whose claims exceed their capabilities. Nevertheless, many organizations score a complete “fail” when it comes to showcasing their successes. Credibility statements that work for SEO include simple things such as award emblems, logos of recognizable clients, a solid BBB rating, or mentions of years in business or the number of clients. Adding this type of information on the home page, SEO landing page(s) and inquiry form almost always improve conversions.
Of course, CRO goes much deeper into web design. However, if any of these five elements are substandard, SEO results suffer — along with an organization’s overall ability to generate sales leads regardless of the source of the website visitor.

There’s a flip side to the problem of SEO without CRO — the organization that spends tons of money and time testing and tweaking every CRO variable under the sun and thus has an irresistible website … that never sees the light of day because the site is invisible in Google search.

Bottom line: SEO and CRO go hand in hand.

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