Why Use Google Analytics

If your company does search engine optimization then you should be using Google Analytics. Now, this post is not a push or plug for Google but rather helpful advice for how you can understand if your SEO is working, how well, and what you can do to make it better.

When you use the analytics, you can see how many people visited your site for a specific period of time , how long they visited for, how many pages they viewed, how many got to your site through organic means or through directly putting your URL into their web browser. These are great tools to see how how well your SEO is working.

However, another great reason to actually analyze your efforts is to see how people are getting to your website. Are they getting to your site through the keywords that you have been using? If so, which ones? These are questions that get answered if you use Analytics.

Are people getting to your site via computer or are they looking at it through a mobile device like a smartphone or tablet? If they are using mobile devices more, then your site will have to be mobile-responsive so mobile users are able to view your site effectively; otherwise, they may scoot away from your site quickly, raising your bounce rate.

Are people in the area your targeting with your SEO looking at your site? You can find that out with a look at your analytics.

The bottom line is that if you are going to do search engine optimization, then it would be foolish to not monitor that and see how things are working out. Blindly hoping the efforts are paying off could be a waste of time and money.

The Importance of Website Audits

If you do search engine optimization, then you have a website. Since you have a website, you should look at how it is doing and how SEO is affecting your website. How do you do this? There are two programs that you should have (in addition to others but we will focus on two) that can tell you how

your website is doing.

Using these two tools below will help you truly analyze how your website is performing and how it can be made better or if you have done everything right. If you want your website to be successful and not get penalized by search engines, then you are going to have to do website audits on your site. Admittedly, doing one can be scary, especially if you haven't done them before, because you may find that you have a lot to fix. These are not only helpful and necessary if you do SEO but also if you do web design because you want to know what to do during your designing so your site or your client's site perform well; if they perform well because of a great design, you will look good, real good.

The first program that you should have if you do SEO, whether for your own site or someone else's, is Website Auditor in the SEO Powersuite package. What does Website Auditor do? This tool looks through an entire website and shows all the structural parts of the website which includes things like the pages, site errors, validation, and much more. You can see things like your Google Page Rank, Alexa rating, where links are from/where they're going, any site problems, warnings/red flags, anything you want and need to know about your website.

The second program you should utilize is Google Analytics. This will give you measurements of how many people are visiting your site, where they are from, how long they look at your site, how many pages, how they found your site, etc. Anything you need to know about who looks at your site, you can find out.



If you are looking for a search engine optimization company, hire Integraphix - a Chicago marketing company.

Valuable Internal Optimization Tips

As a Chicago Marketing Company we stress the value of Search Engine Optimization. If you want web traffic from search engines there are certain areas of your website that must be optimized.

Title Tags – Title tags are shown up as the title in search results and on browser windows. Our Chicago Marketing team has found that title tags are the most important place to insert your keywords on your website. A strong title tag should contain between 65-70 characters or less. It is important to choose keywords for your title tags that correspond with the content on the page.

H1 Tags – Search engines have been attracted to h1 tags for years. Our Chicago Marketing Company has found that some websites don’t even utilize H1 tags! Many search engine optimization experts have found that H1 tags are one of the most important factors of internal optimization. You are only hurting your website by not including H1 tags.

URL – The key to any web page is it’s URL. Within your website you will have different pages designated to separate web URL’s. Our web designers in Chicago always name particular page’s slug according to what the page and content is about. Example: http://www.integraphix.com/services/chicago_internet_marketing entails information regarding our Chicago Internet Marketing services.

Image Tags – Our creative agency has found that images are often ignored when it comes to search engine optimization. It is very important that all of your images on your website are saved according to your keywords to help increase web traffic. Make sure that all of your images on your website are given logical and readable names. An image saved as “logo.jpg”says nothing to search engines. Saving an image as “Chicago-web-design-company-logo.jpg” will help your website for search engine optimization purposes. Uploading images to your website saved as keywords will definitely help increase your rankings and ultimately increase your web traffic.

Content – When creating web content for your website, it is very important to include a variety of keywords. As a Chicago Marketing Company, we recommend you use at least 4-5 keywords on each of your pages. If your site is legitimate and you are targeting the right audience, your keywords should fall into the copy naturally. It is important to understand that the more content you put on your site, the better off you are in terms of search engine optimization.

Without a solid foundation of internal optimization on your website, you cannot grasp the full potential of search engine optimization. For a FREE Marketing Analysis of your website, contact Integraphix: 847-537-0067. Our Chicago Marketing Company consists of our creative team specialists that have the knowledge and experience on  how to increase interest with search engines.

Why Your Company Needs a Blog

Yes, we have decided that we are going to 'blog' about 'blogging' today.  If you constantly find yourself putting off starting up a blog for your company, you should get started as soon as possible.  There are about a million good reasons why a company should have a blog and as a Chicago SEO company, we cannot stress a blog's importance enough.  If you have been putting it off, here's why you should get started today:

1- A blog is essential to boost your SEO: As a Chicago SEO company, we constantly tell our customers how effective a blog is for boosting their website's SEO rankings.  Search engine crawlers love, love, love fresh, brand new content being added to a website on a constant basis.  Sticking a blog right on your website will give you the ability to add that fresh content every time you post something new.  Postings give you a chance to utilize keywords and show search engines that you are actively using and updating your website.  When we do web design for a client we typically create a built in blog right on the client's website.  We suggest having multiple blogs if you can keep up with it.  The more blogs your company has that link back to your company's website, the better off you are in the world of search engine optimization. A blog, whether your blog is through blogger or you are using a blog on your website, gives you a great place to add links back to your website, which is also a great way (if not the best way) to boost SEO rankings.

2- A blog is a great place to show that you are the expert in your industry: Refine your list of potential blog topics and stick to talking about topics related to your company's industry.  Say you own a coffee shop, then topics that you should blog about should all surround the industry you belong to.  Keeping it relevant will help search engine's crawlers identify who your business is and what you do and will give you a chance to become the expert in your industry.  Your blog gives you a special place to show what you know and impress potential customers.  

3- A blog is a great way to interact with potential and current customers: A blog is a great place to spearhead conversations with your potential and current customers.  Your blog will keep your customers informed and has the ability to help you reel in potential customers.  Just like your social media profiles, blogging is another great way to bring the social aspect to your business.

4- Your blog will help you build your brand: Blogging is a simple way of helping you establish your brand.  Blogging gives you the ability to make your brand more personal and drive more traffic to your company's website, which in turn helps you build your brand.  Perhaps lots of people begin reading your company blog, then great!  Put on your sales hat and lead those blog readers back to your company's website.  That gives your company all the more potential to get that brand exposure you have been craving.

5- Blogging will help keep yourself and your customers in the loop:  Since your company blog should take on topics related to your industry, it can serve as a learning tool not only for your readers and customers, but also for yourself.  A great way to stay current with the latest industry trends is to blog about it.  Your blog could also serve as a vehicle for communicating the latest company news almost like a company newsletter.

Looking for tips on creating a company blog?  We'd be happy to discuss blogging with you.  Feel free to comment below or contact us.

Social Media’s Role on SEO

The new year is vastly approaching and you want to drive more traffic to your website.  Makes perfect sense to us!  As a team of web designers and SEO specialists, we cannot stress the importance of SEO enough when it comes to getting more traffic to your website.  We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: social media greatly affects SEO rankings, but what is social media’s role in it all?  Here’s a few ways that social media can and will affect your SEO rankings:

Social media site content speaks to the search engines

Okay, well sort of!  Social media content, when updated regularly and when well written, lets search engines know that your business is an active online participant.  If and when social media engagement becomes a ranking factor for your website, you will surely benefit if you spend time on social media sites.  If you haven’t immersed yourself or your business in social media, now is the time to do it.  Don’t have the time?  Set up a consultation with a social media company or a marketing company well-versed in speaking social media. 

The more links back to your website the better

The more sites that link back to your website, the better your SEO rankings will be, so this means all those social media sites you have created and began using are great links back to your website.  Because social media sites point back to your website, it will help create better SEO rankings for your website.  As an SEO firm, we always tell clients to picture their website in the center of a spider’s web and that it’s their job to create extensions from that web that will bring people straight to their website.  That is exactly what creating and using social media sites will do for you.  Perhaps someone didn’t find your website yet, but they did find your social media page.  Great.  Now bring them to your website and sell them on your services and products.  That’s what it is all about!

Be an active participant

Don’t expect to receive any kind of rankings boost just because you finally set up that Twitter account last week.  You have to be an active participant and yes, the search engines know who is an active participant and who’s not.  This means that if set up your social media accounts a year ago, but have never used them, they will not do you any good.  Try to set aside time out of your day each day to post some relevant content for potential customers to read and for search engines to grab on to.  Being an active social media participant means that you are posting great, original content, reposting other people’s great content, and interacting with potential customers.  If you find that you just do not have the time consider speaking with a social media firm or a marketing company.

Social media sites provide an opportunity for optimization

Social media sites are a great place for optimization tactics to take place.  Utilize social media sites as a way to get friends, fans and followers back to your website.  Social media profiles can be optimized for search similar to internally optimizing a website, so tag your images, write a great about us or company bio and utilize those keywords. 

The ability of sharing content greatly affects rankings

Encourage friends, fans and followers to share your content.  Sharing content is a great way to give your search engine rankings a boost.  Use strong calls to action in all of your posts and encourage readers to share your content through social networks.

Comment or questions are always welcome, feel free to comment below or contact us.

What to Expect When You Begin the SEO Process

You’ve began the process of search engine optimization in hopes that it will boost your search engine rankings and get you and your website in front of a larger audience.  What is to be reasonably expected when you begin the SEO process?  Here are a few things to expect when beginning the SEO process:

Rankings won’t happen over night

Often times people will post a blog or two, insert a few links and expect immediate results, but unfortunately SEO doesn’t work like that.  SEO results take time to appear.  Most SEO resources will tell you don’t expect to see any results until the 3 to 6 month mark and for the most part, that is somewhat accurate. 

As a Chicago SEO Firm, our search engine optimization specialists say that there are a lot of variables that will cause a website to rank or not rank highly for chosen keywords.  One variable would be the chosen keyword’s competition association.  If the words you have chosen are highly competitive words (meaning lots of people are using the same keyword) it will be a lot harder for you to rank on it.  It doesn’t mean you should discard the keyword, it just means it may take awhile for you to begin ranking on it.  The other variable that could really affect your ranking results is your industry competition.  If you are in an industry where lots of people are optimizing, then you should expect your own ranking results to take a little more time. 

It’s a time consuming process

Search engine optimization can be a very time consuming process for people and as an SEO firm, we completely understand.  Backlinking, blogging, social media postings, directory and article submissions, and all the other little external optimizing your doing can take up some serious time.  That is why there are lots of SEO companies out there.  If you’re going to pursue doing search engine optimization or really just internet marketing yourself, make sure you put aside enough time out of your day to be able to do it.  Doing the bare minimum isn’t going to get you those results you’re looking for.  If you find yourself with no time to do it (like so many people out there) consider looking for an SEO firm to do the work for you.  Typically, an SEO firm will charge you a set fee per month to perform SEO work.  That set fee will usually include a whole bunch of services determined necessary by both the client and SEO firm.  Working with an SEO company is a great way to get a professional's view on how to get the most out of your website.  An SEO company will help you map out a strategy that will get you rankings.

Stay on top of frequent algorithm changes

Every so often you can expect algorithm changes. In fact, SEOmoz reports that “Google will change its search algorithm up to 500-600 times.”  While most updates made are rather minor, it can still greatly effect your results.  Stay on top of the latest algorithm changes and do your SEO research as frequently as possible.  Another benefit to work with an SEO company is that their search engine optimization specialists stay up to date on the changes knowing exactly when they need to tweak your SEO plans to make sure you are getting the most of your chosen SEO package. 

Have comment or questions regarding beginning the SEO process?  Feel free to comment or contact us.  

Things You Need to Know About SEO

As a Chicago SEO Company we know that starting the all-important process of Search Engine Optimization is no walk in the park.  While many people want to see results overnight, the truth is that it could take anywhere from three months to an entire year to begin seeing solid numbers.  When starting SEO there are some basics you need to take into account to help see your website begin ranking for your chosen keywords.  Here’s our list of the core basics:

1- NO duplicate content: Under no circumstances should you copy content from someone else’s website and paste it on your own and not because that is just plain stealing, but because you will be punished by the search engines for such conduct.  The search engines are looking for original content and in that process, they are apt to rank websites with original content much more highly and penalize anyone who has duplicated content.  Search engine's are all-knowing.  They know who put up the content first and who put it up second and will punish the website that has the bootlegged content accordingly.    

2- Backlinking: Backlinking, what most SEO companies deem as an external SEO service, is the process of providing links to places outside of your website that link directly back to your website.  When you create links from external sites they need to be carefully created to be valuable as links for search engine positioning.  Backlinks are a great external SEO tactic to help your website to improve in search engine rankings. 

3- Quality content: As we already addressed, not only can your website content not be duplicated from another source, but it also needs to be good quality content.  Keyword stuffing your content, which just means filling your content with as many keywords as possible, will only hurt your rankings and the search engines will see that you are doing that and penalize you and your website accordingly.  Instead create great, engaging content that utilizes your keywords properly and that will help you increase your SEOrankings.

4- NO hidden text:  Are you hiding text in your website in hopes that you can trick the search engines into ranking you?  Think again!  Search engines are extremely smart and know when text is being hidden and yes, they will penalize you and your website for it.  Just say NO to hidden text!  Stick to lots of visible, quality text.

5- Powerful title tags:  Title tags are undoubtedly one of the most important parts of searchengine optimization.  Your title tags should comply with the theme of the page.  Each page should have a different title tag since all of your pages are different.  Search engines look to title tags as a simple phrase that lets them know what the page is all about.  It helps greatly with rankings, so make sure you are creating great title tags for all the pages belonging to your website.

Check back with us next Thursday as we continue on with our SEO-themed Thursdays.  If you have any comments or question regarding SEO, feel free to leave us a comment below or contact us with questions.