Search Engine Optimization with JBS

Why SEO?

Modern search engine optimization (SEO) practices are a core business practice for any modern business. Yet the concept of what it is, and its purpose can often be hard to understand or pin down. There are a lot of reasons to invest into SEO, but there are also strong boundaries of diminishing returns. How much should we invest in SEO? What kind of returns can we actually expect? Some of the potential benefits include:

• Higher website traffic and visitors
• Increase in sales and revenue
• Broader brand recognition and awareness
• Generating more leads
• Higher quality visitors on your website

At face value, these things seem like something every business would want, but that is not always the case. If our business represents a brick-and-mortar store in a local town, an increase in traffic from outside your area will be of little use. Any business will see improvement from an increase in SEO, but the first step is to outline the goals for the business. How do we hope to benefit? This is important because SEO results can often be very difficult to measure, and the results can vary drastically. SEO should be done with a plan in mind and measured to track success.

The Basics vs The Experts

There are a number or articles on basic best SEO practices, and many of them do not require the help of a company like JBS. There are a lot of tools out there that give a decent baseline, but we can help raise a website to the next level. There are tools like Google’s Lighthouse application that can measure the health and score metrics used to generate SEO. This goes a lot deeper than most blog articles and random opinions on the Internet. We can actually look at website metrics together using Lighthouse, identifying signs of weakness, and propose improvements.

When calculating things like SEO Google will use all of these categories to determine a websites ranking. Categories like Performance, may not seem as relevant as the self-titled SEO category (which focuses mostly on word choice and placement), but it is. Page load times are widely acknowledged to be one of the largest factors in SEO. There is a limit to what can be done through a CMS or editor, but at JBS we have the ability to custom write code to cut that time down significantly. Recently I worked on a project where we optimized a website hosted GitHub. With a subject matter expert we can meet together with whatever the business currently uses. Things like lazy loading images, stylesheets, and JavaScript can get complicated, but we have people who have lived and breathed these things for a living.

The World is Mobile

The first time studies began to show mobile website traffic overtaking classic desktop traffic was in November of 2016. That was over six years ago now, and that trend has not slowed down. Some quick searching on the web showed some more recent estimates at over 65%. Creating a website that looks stunning on both desktop and mobile can be difficult, but it has become necessary to stay current with the market. If you want to an interactive website that attracts client involvement it can be daunting, but we need both. The modern web is mobile.

This is where a partnership with JBS really begins to make sense. We boast top-notch designers and developers that specialize in coming alongside our clients and joining their vision. We can ensure that your desktop and mobile version of your website are cohesive and customized to your exact goals. Even SEO on desktop is now heavily influenced by the state and architecture of your website on mobile. It is not something that can be ignored any more. Yet many businesses are still woefully behind on mobile best practices. This creates an opportunity to not only meet mobile standards but exceed them and set ourselves apart.

Advanced SEO

For a basic website, there are a lot of off the shelf products that can work extremely well, but for a custom website that is leveraging technology already it gets more complicated. When you are displaying images, videos, and other interactive elements it really begins to ramp up. Some of the more advanced issues that can rear their head are:

• First Contentful Paint
• Time to Interactive
• Cumulative Layout Shift

These are issues that can be more difficult to handle without a strong technical presence that can research and pinpoint the actual issue. The First Contentful Paint measure when content first begins to be visible on the page, while the Time to Interactive measures how long until the end user can begin using the web page. The Cumulate Layout Shift measure how much the text, images, and other content move around during the load process. Google has different time goals that it wants a website to complete each step by. By leveraging the skill of a web developer and different tools we can tackle these goals one by one and make sure that you are hitting all of the check points that Google and other search engines are looking for.

Summary

There are a lot of advantages to SEO, but it can be difficult to create a strategy for it that fits your business and goals. That is where experts like JBS come in. With a breadth of experience and familiarity with different stacks of technology we can help leverage the most possible out of a website or web application. The ability to customize the code to fit the exact needs of the business unlocks us to tackle the exact problems a business is facing.

As with most things in life, it begins with a conversation. A meeting to discuss the business goals and how we can help. What are the possibilities for growth? The opportunities that are untapped? We have architects and analysts with years of experience who can help figure that out. We can create a plan to improve your business and then measure whether that plan makes sense and has the return on investment that are worthwhile. The Internet is only getting more and more competitive each day. Reach out if you are curious, and let us see if we can help take your business and SEO to the next level.