Spirit Week 2015 Team Superlatives

IMG_8259Below is the list of all the awards and superlatives that were awarded within our team. As with each year’s Spirit Week, we take time to turn the focus on our awesome team makes and capitalize on the moment by highlighting their strengths and characteristics, and to just have an all around good time with each other.

All of the awards were presented by our Party Planning Committee of Georgieanna, Gesenia, Trevor, Tony, Jessica, and Denika. During the ceremony, we all enjoyed taking park in an ice cream social. We had many different types of ice creams and ice cream sandwiches.

Best Dressed – Andrew Keel

Most Improved – Tony Ray

Most Helpful – James Estebanez

Most humorous – Emily Crane

The Ninja Award – Zenadia Martin     IMG_8267

The Creative Diction Award – Piero Rojas

Most Caffeinated – Trey Dunn

The Silent Skyper – Bryant Taylor

The Smugness Award – Jake Smith

Most Useless / Useful Trivia – Tracy Adams

Best Attention to Detail – Bianca Blue

Most Likely to Spend an entire month’s salary on Worbla – Samantha

Most Likely to be Caught Jamming – Juan Sánchez

Most Likely to be Consecutively Tardy – Georgieanna Gross    IMG_8273

Most Likely to have a Secret Identity – Max Lutz

Most Likely to Save a Kitten – Jessica Stewart

Most Likely to Drink Your Tears – Phil Geist

Most Likely to Stay Up Late and Play Video Games – Trevor Deal

Most Likely to Start a Nerf War – Eric Fraze

The Work / Life Balance Award –  James Gillentine

CREATIVE TEAM’S RUFIO –  James Gillentine

Most likely to stay late at the office and sleep in the next day   – Vincenzo Marconi

Most likely to overexplain what you need  – David ParsonsIMG_8278

Most likely to work for Stark Industries – Marc Garcia

Most likely to dress up better than you –  Gesenia Antomattey

Most likely to break out in hives – Mackenzie Rodgers

Most likely to jack your poncho – Valentina Salazar

Most likely to hate the thing you love – Denika Robbins

Peer Nominated Awards:

Innovator Award – Sam and David Someone who takes initiative in developing / brainstorming new procedures, technologies, or resources for us to continue progressing in our client communications, skills, or internal workflow.

Best-in-Show Award – James E A member of our team who is our not-so-secret weapon on the tradeshow floor. A joyous traveling companion who always has a great attitude with clients on a face-to-face basis.

Bubbly Award – Amie This one goes out to a team member who has the most positive attitude and friendly disposition. The happiest telephone voice, the best laugh, or the one who brings sunshine into the room each day with them.

IMG_8277Best New Resource – Slack Self-Explanatory, but this isn’t for an individual. This is a procedure, internal development project, or shared knowledge that has helped us grow as a team this past year. Click to learn more about Slack.

The Real MVP Award – Ken Granger

A Busy Week of Clients Getting Fresh with their New Responsive Refreshes

As all with any week here at BrandCo, we are hard at work fulfilling the goals and dreams of our clients. Whether they were past clients who upgraded their standard refresh or new clients going in head first with a responsive design from our team…eAgentC provided by Keller Williams is looking amazing!

Responsive Refresh for Keller Williams eAgentC website made by BrandCoNicole Wilbur

Nicole’s website designed by Tony definitely had its mobile users in mind. While using the KW colors, there are definitely some flairs used in there that are nothing but Nicole. Im  a big fan of the lower area of links that help her clients find what they’re looking for with ease.

Responsive Refresh for Keller Williams eAgentC website made by BrandCoThe Kellie Olson Team

Keller Williams red is abundant in this responsive redesign Denika made for Kellie Olson. The calls to action on this website are very apparent and available to visitors right away. I especially love the incorporation of the heart design throughout.

 

Responsive Refresh for Keller Williams eAgentC website made by BrandCo

Sold By Myers

David Myers trusted Piero with the refresh of his Keller Williams eAgentC website. Using those warm Arizona tones, he was able to create a very traditional look for this real estate agent.

 

Responsive Refresh for Keller Williams eAgentC website made by BrandCoAllison Ziefert

As Allison has been an avid user of her Piggyback Blog since 2013, a responsive refresh by Samantha is going to greatly benefit her in search engines. The design has her two focused communities front and center for her valued clients to browse. Modern and Fresh!

Responsive Refresh for Keller Williams eAgentC website made by BrandCoAnthony Bolling

We do not commonly refresh commercial websites, but it is always nice mixing things up when we do. Anthony teamed up with Denika to create a very city focused design. The website itself is full of helpful information including videos and direct links to community searches.

Responsive Refresh for Keller Williams eAgentC website made by BrandCoJanice Fancher

This Luxury design for Janice includes striking photography and patterns. From her website, users can easily get linked up with websites on featured neighborhoods so they can stay up to date. Having the Google Translate button in the top area of her website is going to be a benefit to any client that would require a primary language over English, too!

Responsive Refresh for Keller Williams eAgentC website made by BrandCoJames Lisowski

James’ Keller Williams centric website was brought to realization by Denika. It’s a very clean and straightforward design that focuses on both buyers and sellers. The featured image of green landscapes with a snow capped mountain in the background is striking.

 

Responsive Refresh for Keller Williams eAgentC website made by BrandCoBonanza Team

This website for Craig and Cynthia in Arizona is bursting with the color blue thanks to Bianca. My personal favorite thing included on this website for clients is the use of the communities area of the menu to make searching for homes really easy for those looking. They made great use of their Wolfnet WordPress plugin and Piggyback Blog to help benefit their clients.

Responsive Refresh for Keller Williams eAgentC website made by BrandCoJared Associates

Short and sweet is an excellent way to describe the newly designed website for Jared Associates that Tony made. Everything is straight to the point and easy to navigate for users. It’s quite obvious that searching for homes is the big call to action for this eAgentC site.

 

Responsive Refresh for Keller Williams eAgentC website made by BrandCoTamara Bourne Team

Gesenia delivered a Keller Williams red focused design for Tamara Bourne and her team. Eric developed some really fun hover effects for when your mouse touches the larger red buttons near the bottom of the page. They’ll have a real estate dictionary at a later date that will help her clients when navigating the world of realty.

Our designers and developers here at BrandCo loving getting to make these custom changes to the eAgentC website to deliver an amazing looking and functional website for our Keller Williams realtors. We’re happy to become partners with our clients, to become involved in their business to help guide them to success!

Slack isn’t for Slackers: The Switch from Skype

We’re leaving Skype behind….

Recently our team made the switch from utilizing Skype for our inter-office communications. Skype has been a staple for BrandCo since the beginning. It was an amazingly reliable chat provider, but there comes a time when you need to start getting creative with what your team has at it’s fingertips.

However, over the past month or so, we have been testing out the use of a chat program called Slack Screen Shot 2015-06-24 at 2.51.57 PMwithin the development team. Slack is a messaging app for teams: everything in one place, instantly searchable. When needing to inform multiple members, or the whole office about certain things, we are able to notify an entire channel rather than having to make a new chat with everyone in it over and over. You are able to search your channels, pin important information. Not to mention, the team is loving the integration of a fun plugin called Giphy, providing endless amusement with randomized gifs inserted into our conversations.

Screen Shot 2015-06-24 at 2.50.57 PMThere are so many added benefits to the messaging system such a Slack that we’re just barely even scratching the surface with our every day usage. While we have had fun implementing the Giphy attachment, we have also included the ability for Slack to keep us up to date on our Trello boards, as well. Trello is a collaboration tool that organized your projects into boards. We use this tool with many of our major processes here at BrandCo. But, the buck doesn’t stop there! Slack has over 80 integrations that you can implement into their system.

Always in motion, our members stay in contact outside of work, as well. Especially when trade show time is in action! The mobile application for Slack is sleek and easy to use. Unlike Skype, it isn’t power hungry and difficult to shut down (at least on my Android). The application for Slack is also available for download to desktop, as well as can be run web-based.

SlackforAndroid

Last but not least, it’s SAFE! All the data that passes through our regular communications is secured by encryption (256-bit AES and TLS 1.2). Now, if you don’t know what that means, it simply means that if our Slack network was hacked, all of our information would look like a bunch of gobbledy-gook to the hackers and all our information remains OUR information.

All in all, it was rather bitter sweet to delete Skype from my phone and from the my Mac’s doc, but Slack is just another necessary innovation to add to our growing team. Another amazing new piece of technology to leverage our team work and growth off of.

 

Site Traffic and Ways to Keep an Eye on It!

What good is a website if no one sees it? Traffic is something that every website owner desires. But, how do you know if you’re actually getting those hits and views? There are multiple companies and resources on the internet that are there to help with this. One of the most commonly known and robust would be Google Analytics, but there are many other options such as plugins like Jetpack and new companies like Clicky.

So, how do you choose?

Honestly, all of them will give you information, but the truth of the matter is, how MUCH do you really want to know? If you’re like myself and just want to know which blog posts or pages are getting views at a quick glance, JetPack is a great choice. However, there are those that want to know live stats on demand, too, and Clicky does that with ease. Others want “the sky is the limit” kind of data and Google loves to provide it. It really depends on how much you want to learn and watch. Below, I’ll discuss these three different options and how to put them into action for yourself.

Clicky: Web Time Web Analytics

The homepage of Clicky’s website definitely goes into detail about all of the special features that they offer. Everything on this analytic provider is real time. Meaning, if it is really important for you to know what is happening on your at-that-present-moment, Click is your service! If you’re running a specific promotion, or challenging your followers on social media to click to a specific page, you can see how many are on your page at that moment and have been there…just having to wait for a refresh time to come by before your analytics data will update to give you more accurate readings.

Another thing that I enjoy about Clicky (while there are many) is their ability to view Heatmaps. Essentially, this will show you where cursors land the most often on your website. Not only that, but you can set a specific goal that you want to track Heatmaps for and they are all capture in real time and can be viewed as individual visits.

I urge you to look into Clicky and seeing what all they have to offer. Also, put it on your website and give it a test run for yourself. Most of these analytics are free or will offer full versions as trials. Hooking up Clicky is actually very simple. If you have a custom WordPress website, you can simply install the Click plugin and put in your ID and you’re good to go. If you are wanting to use Clicky to track your Keller Williams eAgentC website, it’s as easy as adding the HTML code that Clicky gives you to your 1.5 area under the Source area of the Disclaimer. Need help with this? Let us know and we can assist however we can!

Jetpack: Stats

Jetpack is a multifaceted plugin that is offered by WordPress.com for all installations of WordPress, including Piggyback Blogs. While, Jetpack includes MANY different features, we’re only going to discuss the ability to view site stats. Jetpack from WordPress.com makes the most popular stats very easy to understand with a straight forward interface.

Jetpack Site Stats analytics screenshotWhen you download/activate the Jetpack Plugin and connect it with WordPress.com (which usually requires a different set of logins than what you use to log into your website) the ability to view your post and page views is automatically enabled. Another thing to make note of with this plugin, however, that is only available for custom sites that run off of the WordPress platform.

If you are wanting to track stats on your eAgentC website, this unfortunately will not be the option for you. Jetpack will only track visits of pages and posts within WordPress. However, if you have Piggyback Jetpack Site Stats analytics screenshot site traffic by page or postBlogs, you know that what you do on your blog is what will impact your Search Engine Optimization. To most, the visits on your Piggyback Blog will matter more than your visits on your eAgentC website.

For custom WordPress site users, this plugin is a given. I personally use it with all of my own websites, along with the mobile WordPress application and love that I will also get notifications when my website is “booming” and, frankly, that’s exciting! It’s a great option to utilize and even if you pair it with the other two options, then go for it…there’s no such thing as too much data!

Google Analytics

The King of the Hill, Google, of course has a solution for gathering and viewing all the information from your website. As with everything from Google, it can be massive and will have a bit of a learning curve in Google Analytics screenshot site trafficorder to understand how to navigate something so robust. I have left this to the end of this post mostly because I even feel overwhelmed by it, but that is 100% because I haven’t really invested the time to explore.

Through Google Analytics, you can discover if you have more viewers visiting your site from Internet Explorer versus Chrome, or if you have mostly Mobile visits versus desktop. Also, You can gather what search terms your visitors are finding you by or from where they are coming from. You are able to set up specific alarms to let you know when you hit certain metrics. Another added value to Google Analytics is that they also offer a mobile application in order to view your stats on-the-go.

Google Analytics can be added in very easily to a custom website by plugin, HTML, or meta tags that are given to you through the set up process. Essentially, everything is tracked through a UA code that you are provided. That same code can be used on an eAgentC website within section 2.4. There’s an input area that asks for that UA. Then, you would simply have to pull the code over to your Piggyback Blog by refreshing your “look”.

Let’s wrap it up

To conclude, even these three analytics providers are just the tip of the ice burg when it comes to learning from the traffic that visit your website and how you can make your site better over time. If you implement one or all of the resources listed below, you will have more power in your hands to give your readers a better experience in the long run. Knowledge is power, as they say.

 

eAgentC Sites Responsive with BrandCo Refreshes

It’s that time again. We’ve been busy, but then again…when are we not? Our team of designers, developers, and launch specialist have been delivering some amazing work to our clients. Check out what’s new!

 

Wil Richard responsive refresh Wil Richards

Trevor’s design for Colorado based Wil Richards is mimimal with a black and white base and splashes of red. I’m especially fond of the vectorized red mountains behind the city scape. It’s a very bold design that is sure to wow Wil’s clients.

 

Heidi Sanches responsive refreshHeidi Sanchez

Tony had the pleasure of working on this beach themed website for Heidi. She serves the West Palm Beach area, where special pieces of her site cater. Not every website we build includes a dog-friendly section for Heidi to fill in within her Piggyback Blog.

Adam Fernandez responsive refreshAdam Fernandez

Adam owes his awesome refresh to a collaboration with designer, Piero. This city focused design is on point at promoting Adam and his business. A fabulous thing to notice on this design is the addition of the Google Translater at the top, this allows every page of Adam’s website to be translated to any language that his client needs.

Cathy Binkerd responsive refreshCathy Binkerd

Cathy’s new responsive refresh takes a different direction that others that we have done. Tony makes the site feel wild with nature and he utilized rustic undertones throughout. The large photo of the woman with out-stretched arms makes you really want to Experience Utah! Not to mention, Eric worked out some really awesome hover effects on the homepage buttons during development!

Howard Serena responsive refreshHoward Serena

Another minimal design is brought to life for Howard with focus on all the great things to do and see in Bradenton, Florida. You can check out within the Menu that we have specific golf courses, neighborhoods, and beaches are easily accessible for his clients.

Holly Couture responsive refreshHolly Couture

Holly’s website opens with a view of a beautiful conservative living room scene. The use of colors by Piero really make this design pop to users upon arriving to the website. The group’s tagline ” a future with style” is definitely alive and well in the design and color usage.

Doug Curtis responsive refreshDoug Curtis

San Antonio is definitely the focus of Doug’s new responsive refresh by Piero. This city-centric design encourages clients to set up time to grab coffee with team members Doug and Michelle. They are also utilizing their Piggyback Blog, making their site more and more accessible to people s

Deb Haussmann responsive refreshDeb Haussmann

Denika provided a very conservative design for Deb that focuses on the area of Eastern Iowa. Buyers are easily able to search for homes within specific cities that this Dream Team serves by just a single click. This website also houses a page where they are adding helpful videos for their clients.

Mark Grifo responsive refreshMark Grifo

Mark’s website, also designed by Denika, has a traditional style that focuses on potential empty-nesters. This focus group is often Downsizing or Relocating and Mark wants to be the guy to serve them.

 

This week was full of beautiful minimal and conservative designs, also those that focus on the cities that the Realtors serve. All of these websites are custom to the needs of our clients and what will fit their needs of their business, whether they perfect to buy or to sell or if they focus on a specific niche. There are so many ways that a responsive refresh can turn and it’s exciting to see each new one that we roll out to our clients.

Another Week Full of Fantastic Responsive Refreshes!

Another week is down here at BrandCo and another amazing batch of Responsive Refreshes have been cooked up and delivered by our team! These awesome designs take the Keller Williams eAgentC to the next level with mobile responsiveness and full-width layouts.

responsive refreshStanoch Team

This beachy design by Bianca is a perfect fit for Mark Stanoch and his team. The Stanoch Team is making great use of their Piggyback Blog, as you can see, by the many communities highlighted from the site’s navigation, an excellent example of how to earn SEO with the Wolfnet WordPress Plugin.

responsive refreshSarah Gilliantte Curry

Bianca’s design for Sarah works very well within feminine colors. The softness lends its way into homeyness which most people would seek out in their future real estate professional. I’m especially fond of the pattern used in the area including Sarah’s  information and photo.

responsive refreshRice Team Realty Group

Angel came to us for a design that would have a traditional feel and Denika was happy to deliver for her. This team has plans of adding in a VIP Buyer Access program on their site, which will be a big win for their client and visitors to their website.

responsive refreshIntegrity Homeselling Team

Time to mix it up! This refresh features a vertical quick search that allows the Seattle skyline to shine! Our developer Gesenia was happy to delivery this city focused design for our clients at Integrity. When visiting the website, be sure to give their well-put-together interior pages a look…very nice work.

responsive refreshSusan Salazar Real Estate Services

Piero designed a beautifully simplistic website utilizing those bold Keller Williams colors for Susan. There are some very key neighborhoods that are being called out upon the menu. She has also began making great use of her Piggyback Blog! Can’t wait to see what she has to share!

responsive refreshLouis & Linda Erice

With Louis and Linda coming from Miami, it was obvious for their design from Piero to display a beach-centric look. Smartly, they are using their Piggyback Blog to show off their featured properties by address. Such a great idea! Their long time use of the blog is very impressive.

responsive refreshDeb Ritter

Deb’s website has a beautiful and conservative look to it now thanks to Tony and his design prowess. The large photos used for multiple calls to action translate very well into mobile versions for those viewing the site on iPads and cell phones.

 

responsive refreshDavid Bradshear

Designer, Denika, had a great time creating this responsive refresh for Arizona based, Brashear Team. This city focused design utilizes some really fantastic textures and colors to show up what Scottsdale really has to offer.

 

responsive refreshGreat Florida Homes Team

Tara Carter’s new website, designed by Angela encompasses everything that’s amazing about living near a great Florida beach. Coming from Coral Springs, you expect to see fun, water, sand, and incredible homes. This website gives you all that and more!

With another week down of great websites being delivered to our clients by our amazing team of designers and developers, we can all agree that these responsive refreshes are a cut above the rest. More cutting edge designs coming soon!

Go the extra mile to earn SEO with your photos!

Images are becoming a very key feature when it comes to blogging and well, anything involving the internet and communications. To be honest, they always have been, but are you doing enough to your photos to make them earn SEO for you?

seo yoast screen shotIf you use any kind of SEO specific plugin for your WordPress website (or Piggyback Blog), then you know that deep within those plugins, you’re being graded on how well your post or page is going to be for search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Specifically with WordPress SEO by Yoast, when you visit the Page Analysis section, you can get flagged for at least two things involving images. One of being that your post/page doesn’t include an image at all and secondly that you do not have alt text on the image that includes your “keyword.” Now, I’ll touch on keywords in a later blog post, but let’s discuss what “alt text” is first.

For every image you upload to WordPress, you’re able to set specific information. This information includes the following:

  • Image name – This is what your image was named when you uploaded it.Wp image upload screen shot to earn seo
  • Title – How you want your image to be titled when someone clicks to “view” it
  • Caption – This is the text that will show up either on or below the image for your readers.
  • Alt Text – Text that will not necessarily be shown until the image can not be shown, but will be seen by search engines and other computers.
  • Description -A description of your photo that will allow you to find it more easily through media library searching.

So, why’s ALT text so important for SEO?

Search engines can’t see images on websites. Even if an image has text embedded within it, search engines are unable to crawl (read and understand) that text. So by not creating alt attributes for each and every image on your site, you lose a huge opportunity to be as visible as possible online.

Other things to consider when creating your alt text:

CheckList

  • Keep it simple
  • Be descriptive
  • Be true to your image (don’t try to trick the search engines)
  • Use your keywords

Did this help you out? Let us know! Comment below

Check out these new Responsive Refresh designs!

In the past few weeks, we’ve rolled out some amazing new responsive refreshes for our Keller Williams clients. We’re so proud of these designs, we wanted to start showcasing them!

Missy Ruby Real EstateMissy Ruby Real Estate responsive refresh by BrandCo

Put your home in the hands of Missy Ruby. This beautiful responsive refresh by Piero shows off that Keller Williams red throughout. Featuring a quick search utilizing Wolfnet’s IDX on the homepage, clients are sure to find their dream home with ease.

 

Adam BordersAdam Borders responsive refresh by BrandCo

Need new borders? I’m sure you can find them with Adam’s help and his modern responsive refresh designed by Gesenia. Offering tips for first time homebuyers and resources for buyers, this website is full of information. Be sure to check out all of the featured communities within the Neighborhoods tab, as well!

 

AmbroseTeamInc responsive refresh by BrandCoAmbrose Team Inc

Katherine and her team in Witchita, Kansas took their new, city-focused, design by Bianca live this week. You can check out their new site that features calls to action such as “Flipping Wichita” and “Learn About – Inspire Witchita” at www.ambroseteam.com. Katherine is an avid poster to her Piggyback Blog, you can check out her information by clicking Blog up in the navigation of the website.

Booritch Real EstateBooritch Real Estate responsive refresh by BrandCo

Keller Williams colors are used as an excellent accent throughout Jim Booritch’s design by Bianca. Jim features ten communities on his website that link up to searches within his Wolfnet IDX, this helps his clients find homes in those areas more easily.

 

Claire Autrey Real EstateClaire Autry Real Estate responsive refresh by BrandCo

Claire Autrey & Associates’ website got a very modern redesign by Gesenia. This responsive refresh spotlights both neighborhoods and listings on its homepage. Claire will be putting her Piggyback Blog to good use by writing about neighborhoods and gaining that search engine optimization.
KW Sarasota responsive refresh by BrandCo

Pegasus Property Group

Trevor made good use of that iconic Keller Williams red throughout the design he did for Matt Bohanon. Attention is called to the quick search link on the homepage as an “Easy, Anytime MLS Search.” This website has great potential and we’re excited to have helped the Pegasus Property Group get started.

 

Texas-Dream HomesTexas Dream Homes responsive refresh by BrandCo

Cyndi Alvarez’s new website shows a traditional side of Texas thanks to Angela. The use of photos to highlight locations within her area such as San Marcos, Austin, and San Antonio really makes the site pop. The site will become home to Cyndi’s videos that I am sure are to become a great way for clients to get their information.

 

No Place Like Home GeorgialinaNo Place Like Home Georgialina responsive refresh by BrandCo

Cathy’s new responsive refresh brings a new play to a traditional look with the additional of some Wizard of Oz flair by Angela. The design brings attention to both Georgia and South Carolina buyers and sellers in a very attractive way. Looks like Dorothy isn’t in Kansas any longer, she’s moved to Georgialina.

Matt Cislo responsive refresh by BrandCoMatt Cislo

This responsive refresh has a very sleep look, thanks to Angela. Matt’s new site is very minimal and easy on the eyes. He has already started utilizing his Piggyback Blog with a great article on Red Day.

Google’s New Mobile-Friendly Algorithm

OK, Okay- that may have been a cheap way to call attention to this post, but now that you’re here let’s talk about what changes are happening with Google tomorrow and what they really mean to you.

What is Google doing?

Google is favoring mobile-friendly websites in the search results pages on mobile devices, and penalizing websites that it deems to not be friendly to mobile devices.  *** this only impacts searches on google on mobile devices, desktop searches are not going to be impacted by this change.

Why is Google doing this?

More and more website visits and searches are being done on mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets and many websites have a completely frustrating if not unusable mobile experience.

What does this mean for my website?

That really depends on how your website is ranking now.

If were completely honest with ourselves, most of our websites are not highly-ranking, so you’re really not losing anything going from page 100 to page 200 in the SERPs (search engine results pages).  I mean have you ever clicked to page 2 or 3 when you’re Googling on your mobile device?   You’d be much better served creating more content than losing sleep over this change to the algorithm.

If you do have a highly-ranking website  and your site wasn’t mobile friendly, you were likely annoying your website visitors anyway.  When they got to your website they had to pinch and zoom, and likely had a frustrating experience.  So, you may see a drop in traffic but I don’t think you’ll see a dramatic decrease in leads with this change.

In either case you should evaluate where you stand in the rankings, watch your analytics to see how your site is impacted.  If it is in your budget – upgrade your website to be responsive.

How can I check if my website is mobile-friendly?

Just visit the Google Mobile Friendliness test here.

What happens if my website is not mobile-friendly?

Give us a call or fill out the quick contact form to the right or the one in the footer- and we will help you find the best strategy to make sure you’re getting the most from your website on mobile devices.

In conclusion, there has been a lot of sensationalist hype over this change to Google’s rankings.  My advice follows the same pattern it usually does— evaluate your specific situation, don’t react without perspective, and take your time to make a rational decision for the best interest of your business.

6 Tips to Make Sure Your Website is Mobile Friendly

 

It’s true.  Google is going to be changing the way the rank search results on April 21st.  They will be ranking mobile friendly sites higher in the results than sites that are not mobile friendly.

Curious how you can have an competitive advantage in the mobile search ranking wars?

The answer is as simple as providing your users a great mobile website experience.

OK, but what exactly does a “great mobile website experience” mean?  Here are a few things you should consider:

  1. Don’t require your visitors to “pinch and zoom” to navigate through the website
  2. Have a mobile friendly navigation – ever see those three lines that look like a hamburger?  That’s it, hide your navigation until your mobile visitor requests it.
  3. Have large enough tap zones- Google recommends buttons no less than 48 pixels… and leave some room between buttons- Google suggests 32 pixels.
  4. Compress images, css, js and html so that it downloads as quickly as possible over 3G and LTE connections.
  5. Separate your text from images.  It’s tempting to add text onto an image, but when that image is resized the text may become unreadable.  Plus Google cannot read text that is put in an image.
  6. Don’t use tables.  Tables just don’t translate well from computer screen to smart phone screen.

When you think you’ve given your visitors a great mobile experience head on over to Googles Mobile Friendly tool and see what grade you get:  https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

What you’re looking for is a result like this:

Screen Shot 2015-03-12 at 10.33.54 AM

It’s okay if you don’t get a green badge of Awesome-Sauce the first time.  Google will tell you the steps you need to take to get a good grade.

If you would like some help interpreting your results contact us and we’ll be glad to help.  If you’re more of a do-it-yourself kinda guy or gal- check out Google’s Webmaster Mobile Guide.