Building the Perfect Web Design PB&J WordPress Sandwich

Building the Perfect Web Design PB&J WordPress Sandwich

Building the Perfect Web Design PB&J WordPress Sandwich

 

Hello. Good morning and good afternoon Michael Winn, Chief Digital Officer of Digital Opps, a division of RB Oppenheim Associates. Thanks for joining in today, guys and gals to the digital marketing podcast and video series where we talk about digital marketing strategies to help  grow your business. Today I want to talk about building the perfect web design PB&J WordPress sandwich. I’m already hungry, it’s 12:30 Eastern Time and I had my little salad, but man I could sure go for a yummy PB&J WordPress sandwich. So it’s kind of funny, obviously I’m not going to talk JavaScript. The PB&J of the perfect WordPress sandwich I do think that when companies if you’re looking at your website and maybe if it’s been more than 24 months since you have updated your website, given it a refresh. These are some great things to think about really more from a functionality standpoint as well as being able to execute when it comes to specific digital and social media tactics. And how they are integrated with your website.

The P: Pixels

So let’s talk about pixels. What the heck are pixels? Pixels are like little digital cookies that you have on your website that are able to track website visitor data and interaction with content. Probably the most common used pixel would be the Google Analytics. Pixel or script that monitors and looks at the various pages that website visitors look at when they come to your website. Obviously, it monitors how long they were there, what search terms they typed in to find your website, where they came from before they came to your website, whether it was social media or was a newsletter. Whether it was a Facebook ad or YouTube whatever the original referring source was that information.

Number One:

So I mean obviously that’s got to be number one, making sure that your Google Analytics pixel and in script is set up and running on your website. I got to be honest. I mean having spent the last ten years building WordPress websites and probably launching a little over a hundred and fifty websites over the ten years, spending well over ten thousand hours with love and obsession when it comes to building websites, I can’t tell you how many times I’ll work with a new client who I get in their website and there’s no Google Analytics running. And it’s interesting to me that one of the most fundamental things in really understanding and finding some insight from your website is missing. So if you want to make the perfect PB&J WordPress website, make sure you have Google Analytics running. 

Number Two:

Number two is definitely what we’ve talked about this numerous times on the show, the underpriced attention on Facebook and Instagram. From an ad platform standpoint, when you can pay two, three cents per engagement or thirty, forty cents per click, it is so under priced. But one of the things that often is missing is setting up the Facebook pixel. So that Facebook has the ability to track and learn allow the platform to leverage its AI in order to observe the behavior of people who are interacting with your ad content, going to your website and then coming back to the platform. And that obviously includes Instagram users as well as Facebook users, because those platforms overlap with each other. It’ll be interesting in the future to see what they do with the messenger platform and how that integrates with the feed. And how that information is going to be impacted with the pixel that’s on your website. So obviously having that Facebook pixel data and script set up on your website is probably the second most important.

Number Three:

And the third very important pixel to have running on your site would be a retargeting pixel. Whether you’re using Google’s platform for retargeting or the Facebook retargeting capabilities, retargeting that’s critical. Guys, I grew up in Houston Texas and went to high school and college in Houston Texas. And I think about all the things that I did while I was there, how I want to go back and I was looking up flights over the weekend to maybe fly back for some time around Thanksgiving to see the Texans play the Colts. That would be a great game. Nevertheless, my intent and what I did when I was in Houston and wanting to go back is the same type of basic capabilities that retargeting allows you to do. So when a person comes and visits your website and what they do that information is recorded. Then when you leave and you go to eBay or CNN or wherever the top 1000 websites on the planet who have visual display ads running on their site, you’re able to serve ads relevant. Ads if done correctly, so that they’re not intrusive to the content that I’m trying to read because if you really do it right you can dial it in, make it personalized, make it localized to their experience, not some random ad for a pink purse. So those are the pixels.

The B: Blogs

Let’s talk about blogs. It’s funny, I was talking with someone the other day and we were talking about their brand and their plan for 2020. We were talking about how they can really commit to writing at least one blog post per month. And I’m like if that’s your plan for 2020, you might want to rethink that. One of the greatest search engine optimization signals really over the last 18 months since the most recent Google algorithm update, is really to have in-depth content on your website. Original website content in the form of a blog post is one of the strongest signals that you can have on your website in order for people to find you. Even though they don’t know what it is, what the name of your company is, but they may really need the product or service that you offer. 

Number One:

So having your blog posts written, I would recommend anywhere from thirteen hundred to eighteen hundred words as your sweet spot. Again, that’s a long form piece of written content where you want to go very granular on your subject matter. For instance, today’s episode, that we’re doing today the video will be transcribed into a written format which will then get posted as a blog post along with the recorded video and a link to the podcast for our website on our website on the blog post for today’s episode. And we do that every day, Monday through Friday, so we’re sending a signal to the search engines and we’re sending a signal to potential clients about here are the things that work that we’re working on, here are the things that we see are working in our industry when it comes to digital marketing, WordPress web design and how they all kind of work together as integrated digital components as part of an overall digital marketing plan.

Number Two:

So the other thing is within those pages, we’re also looking for opportunities. So when I say digital marketing, that word is then hyperlinked to our cornerstone page for the services of digital marketing and so that internal page linking again is another SEO practice that really makes a delicious PB&J WordPress sandwich for the Google search engines. Because they eat those backlinks up. They love that you’re saying “Hey, here’s an updated topic, an in-depth article that’s related to this cornerstone piece of static content,” and that really helps the page rank higher. And your overall site to rank higher, when you have not only a very focused keyword strategy but then a deep inbound link strategy. So blogs are critical to help that and then make sure that you have options too for them to learn more. 

Number Three:

One of the things that you want to avoid is having a high bounce rate. Meaning people come in, maybe they saw something on the web, on social, they came to your site and they found the one thing and then they left. They didn’t really take a second step. So having things on the end of your blog post like links to other reference pages or having similar articles that are based on that same topic down at the bottom. Again, WordPress allows you to kind of aggregate category based topics underneath that blog post really allows you to provide stickiness to that page and so when someone goes from that article to the next article you’ve kept them on the site and you’ve kind of brought them in even closer. And then obviously the ability to have social sharing for these blog post is really critical. Because if you actually have great content original content that provides value, there’s a very good chance that someone’s gonna click and share by email if you’re using the add to any plugin for WordPress not only can you select, I want to send this to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn but you also can print to a PDF or you could click and send as an email. All kinds of different ways to share this content, and again the search engines are observing this behavior when they see a signal literally a digital pain that goes “oh my gosh, this content from this Web site just got shared by a user on this social media”. Then this is humans saying this is good content and by my behavior of sharing it on my social media page I’m demonstrating that it is a value. So those are the kinds of things that are important. 

Number Four:

The other thing that we’ve talked about that blogs and blog content really focuses in on is, middle of the funnel content. You’re going to spend a lot of time, energy and money on the top layer of the funnel, which is that awareness and brand awareness. To let people know that you’re in the in the space of whatever industry you’re in, whether it’s event management or  event planning or maybe you’re into executive and luxury real estate property. So whatever it is, when you’re sort of out there, and paying for paid placement to bring in and create brand awareness, you need to have that middle of the funnel content. Which is that granular deep dive into the value add of what does your company do to bring extra value when it comes to this particular product or service and/or how can you prove that you are an expert in this particular field.

The J: JavaScript

So those are kind things of again, number one talking about pixels, number two talking about blogs and then number three JavaScript. Think about this, javascript is really the stickiness that really holds these things together. Now we’ve talked about those pixels are actually JavaScript. It’s actually the name of the code but also I think that it would be relevant here to mention a couple of other things and that would be the embed codes that you can grab from various other third party platforms and paste them into widget areas or on-page areas which really function like a Java Script in order to trigger an activity that you want. Or to trigger a function that you want to have happen.

 

So here would be a couple of other things to think about:

Number One:

Number one is a link, a pop-up, a pop under or slide out.  However you want to do it, for a newsletter signup. You absolutely need to practice building your own first party data when it comes to your website. Again if you’re going to spend money and drive people to your website through Facebook ads, Instagram stories or YouTube pre-roll, whatever your strategies are for underpriced attention, link in organic links. All these things you want to be able to have that opportunity to capture that newsletter. And again have something of value when you do email them. Don’t spam, send value. Provide a greater value to them in that part of the equation and it will really create a nice return on investment for you. 

Number Two:

Number two would be instant chat features. I think right now, instant chat, real-time chats and there’s several out there with in the WordPress ecosystem in the plugins that are out there. It has a dashboard, so it’s great when you’re sitting at your desk. It has an iPhone and an Android application, that you can use on the go. So that you can respond to when people come to your website and have a question. These are free tools that you can deploy on your website to handle visitor engagement so that you can help provide value to them when they come to your website.

Number Three:

I think number three when it comes to Java scripts and embed codes. I especially like to have on the blog page in the sidebar, a feed from your social channel whether it’s your YouTube channel, Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. You’re really strong social platform is a little window for them to view your social content in your website that can help connect for people who didn’t know what your social media handle was or what kind of content you have. Just having the icon at the top isn’t enough, if you can show them “hey here’s the kind of value you can find by following and liking our content on social’. That’s a great thing to have in the sidebar of your blog post and to have buttons to Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn and whatever other platforms you’re really active on but have that actual feed where they can actually see the content that’s being published there on a regular basis. 

The Perfect PB&J

So again recapping how to build the perfect web design PB&J WordPress sandwich. Today we’re talking about pixels, blogs, and JavaScript for yummy-yummy WordPress sandwiches. Number one, pixels absolutely essential for Google Analytics, Facebook pixel retargeting pixel. When it comes to blogs thirteen hundred to eighteen hundred words linked to your cornerstone pages, make sure you have options below for them to read more articles that are similar topic in nature and then social sharing buttons on those pages. Then thirdly is the JavaScript, make sure you’ve got an opportunity to build your first party data in capturing email addresses as well as having the ability to have instant chat on your website for instant engagement for visitors to your website and then the social feeds in your sidebar for your blog post. If you’re gonna have all these cookies and in Java scripts, you might as well go ahead and be compliant with the privacy issues. Have a privacy policy at the bottom, have a cookies acknowledgement, again Google or WordPress makes this very easy to do. You can simply install the privacy notice plug-in and put your own little comment in there link to your privacy policy, hit the OK button for them to acknowledge that they have cookies you’re just positioning yourself to be transparent about your practices on your website.

 

Guys, thanks so much for tuning in today. My name is Michael Winn and I am the Chief Digital Officer of Digital Opps a division of RB Oppenheim Associates. I hope you enjoyed our session. Tomorrow I’m gonna have a guest coming in from LinkedIn Learning and talk about some of the cool things that are happening in on that platform. So make sure to tune in tomorrow for that episode. Hope you guys have a great day, we’ll see you tomorrow.