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 Estate

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 Borders

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!

Ambrose 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 Estate

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 Estate

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.

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 Homes

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 Georgialina

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

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.

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.

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:

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.

One of the most important ways to draw more visitors to your webpage is by providing killer website content. Many sites provide poor content because they are more concerned with SEO and think that by increasing their search ranking, they’ll attract more visitors to their site. While this is true, poor content won’t keep visitors there for long. High quality content is what convinces readers to return. If you need WordPress help because you are unsure of what kind of content to write, then be sure to use the following 4 tips to help write killer content for your website:

Make it interesting – This may be easier said than done. Your content needs to be interesting to read. The best way to figure out whether a piece of writing will be interesting to your readers is whether or not you find it interesting. Don’t think the subject is very interesting? Then don’t write about it – because neither will your readers.

Make it helpful – One of the best ways to attract more readers is by providing content that will benefit them, whether it’s a how to guide or a piece of content that will help them make a more informed decision about a product or service. If the reader will benefit from the content, then he or she will most likely return to your site for more advice in the future.

Make it relevant – Your content is not going to be helpful or interesting if it has nothing to do with the subject matter of your webpage. If you have a site about dogs, then there’s no point in writing a piece of content about the stock market. Not only do the readers on your site not care, those who find your content through a search aren’t going to be very interested in the rest of your site.

Make it easy to read – Many sites make the mistake of not making their content easy to read. There should be plenty of white space throughout your content, with lots of paragraph breaks, headers and bullet lists. You want your content to be easily scanned over – people browsing the net often don’t have the attention span to read a giant wall of text.

By following these 4 steps you’ll be well on your way to writing killer content on your new WordPress website.

Do you want to know how to write a perfect blog post? This post will help you generate the readership that you’re all working for!

Give Your Blog Title Zing!

The title of your blog post is extremely important, it is the first thing that your reader will see and it will set the tone in what they will, if we’re do our part, continue to read. You want it to be something that will bring your reader in. Make it really interesting! Aim for titles that are brief, direct, and promise to deliver.

Be Thought-Provoking

That first paragraph after your reader gets past the title is crucial! One easy strategy is to pose a question to your reader. Get them thinking about what you could be going through later in the article. Motivate them to keep reading.

Stay Brief and On-Topic

Keep your post brief enough to where it’s worth reading but won’t require a long period of time to get through. Most people are busy and our goal is to have them spend their time wisely when reading what you’ve written. Also, your reader stayed for a reason, to learn more about what you had to say…stay on topic, make it worth their while.

The Closing is Important, Too

Use this moment to present the big picture. You can also approach another point that is also worth considering along with everything that you have already covered. Just make sure that it’s relevant. Also, short and sweet.

Be Graphic

Readers like illustration, something to draw their attention. Be thoughtful in your selection of images, however. I always say that way too many images can make a blog post look extremely cheesy. Also, readers appreciate high quality photos. Remember, always give credit where credit is due regarding where the image came from or who took it.

It is really just that simple to create an interesting, savvy blog post! I always find that it’s easy to write what is on my mind and just keep going. I like for my own voice to be extremely prevalent in my postings. You should, also. Let us know how this helps you out, apply these key steps to your post. Happy Blogging!