The landscape of online marketing is broadening and deepening rapidly. What constituted a superb web team using best practices to maximize your lead counts or sales just a year or two ago differs greatly from what makes a superb online marketing, SEO, or other technology team as we approach 2018. Below you’ll find 3 quick and easy questions to ask your web team to ensure you are poised for a great year or to help you realize it may be time for a change.
Question 1: Is my website secure?
This is a pretty easy one as it’s a simple yes-or-no question. You can even figure this out yourself by simply navigating to your website within your browser. If your URL begins with “http” (hypertext transfer protocol) and not “https”, then your website is not secure and is susceptible to different hacks and attacks. Secure sites are less likely to cause grief for the visitor down the road as any information submitted is encrypted, protecting visitors from malicious software, viruses, and other headaches like identity theft. It’s because of this that search engines hold secure sites in higher regard than unsecure sites, so much so that towards the end of this year Google will be adding a brand new “NOT SECURE” warning to visitors who attempt to travel to unsecured websites. If your website is not secure and moved to https status for some reason, it does not mean your web team is doing a poor job, but it does signal a warning in our view that the team may be spread thin and keeping your plate spinning.
Question 2: Can you tell me about Project Owl and how it might affect my PPC campaign(s)?
Google, in just the last few weeks, rolled out an under-the-radar mini-update called Project Owl in an effort to combat fake news and reduce the likelihood of offensive auto-completed phrases. A side effect of this update is that definitive statements like “We’ve never had an unhappy customer” or “Your results are guaranteed to make you smile” on landing pages associated with PPC campaigns caused those campaigns to be suspended indefinitely until the statements were altered to Google’s satisfaction. We saw two client sites experience this in the last 2 weeks, completely shutting down their PPC campaigns, and taking nearly a week to correct even with SEOversite speeding up the process and catching the issue extremely rapidly.
This is only affecting PPC campaigns right now, but deductive reasoning suggests that this will begin to shake up the SEO world from an organic, not just paid advertising, perspective soon enough. Even if your web team is aware of this update, take this question a step further and find out if they are a Google Partner, or ideally, a Google Premier Partner – those teams that are can usually handle these issues much faster than those that are not.
Question 3: I’m thinking of adding live chat to my website – what do you think?
This may seem harmless, but the way your team answers this question carries weight. Almost 60% of internet surfers see live chat in a positive light and like at least having the option to discuss questions with a live person without having to submit a low-information contact form. Live chat can also add between .5-1.5% to your overall conversion rate (the percentage of visitors to your website that contact you), so why wouldn’t your web team be on board? The answer is simple – the good teams that are out there, like the ones on our Preferred Vendors list, look at live chat as an additional funnel for revenue and therefore better for most business overall. Your happiness equals their happiness. The not-so-good teams will typically take offense to the suggestion of adding live chat as they worry that it will cannibalize the conversions that they bring in and therefore cause you to look upon them unfavorably. If your team is the latter, please reach out to us – we can help you find a new team in short order for not only SEO, but live chat as well.
Whether your team answers all of these questions perfectly or scores a zero, it can still be tough to know if it’s a good idea to switch or not. After all, changing teams takes time – something that many business owners already don’t have enough of. Then there’s the question of their results – are they excellent, or could they be better? The only way to know for sure is to get an independent analysis and discuss with a professional, which is exactly why we exist – if you are seeking a team to OVERsee your WebSITE and SEO, you have SEOversite as a solution. For an honest, unbiased opinion on how things are going for you online, contact SEOversite today. Not only are we a transparent source, but our matchmaking services are completely free.