Since Apex Digital Media began doing business back in 2015 we never specifically marketed ourselves as a website design and SEO company. While our marketing collateral has typically had an element of SEO, our company branding is more broad. It has typically leaned more towards overall digital advertising strategy, best practices, social media management, content marketing, etc.
That being said, we have always offered responsive web design services. We have consistently touted the importance of your website as your foundational digital marketing tool. At the core of any digital brand is a website or app. So while we are not marketing ourselves outright as a website design and SEO company, we have always stressed the importance of these two aspects of your digital brand.
Responsive Web Design and Mobile Sites Become the Standard
In our early stages of existence as a company, clients would come to us for help with their ad budget. In most cases a Google AdWords spend. They would be astonished that they were spending tons of money on clicks, driving traffic to their website and receiving a below average return on investment. 9 times out of 10 we would look at the client website and see that it was not mobile optimized. A user would click on their ad and not be able to navigate the website or landing page. This was around 8 – 10 years ago, so the idea of responsive and mobile websites was just becoming the standard. Smartphones were not quite as advanced as they are now. A lot of people were just starting to realize the importance of a mobile optimized website. So early on as a business, we were forced to acknowledge the importance of our client’s website design strategy. Most of the time this focus would improve the performance of their ad campaign.
The SEO Aspect
Once you have a professionally designed website that looks great on all devices it needs to be found. Making it visible in Google is the 2nd most important aspect of your digital brand. Several recent studies show that users know the difference between paid and organic search. The average person trusts organic search results more than any type of digital advertising. According to a 2019 study by BrightEdge, 53% of all web traffic on average comes from organic search. With that in mind SEO or search engine optimization is an extremely important aspect of any brand’s digital presence.
Over the years the world of SEO has evolved and simplified. There used to be tricks of the trade and all sorts of clever things a “webmaster” (remember that term?) could implement to get their site to rank. The efficacy of tricks like hidden spider links or keyword spamming has largely been eliminated by the evolution of Google’s algorithm. These days good SEO is about providing the best possible information to users. Factors like having pages that load quickly, writing copy and content that sounds like a human and other things that make for a good user experience. The old “black hat” tricks that were used in the past will now more than likely hurt your search rankings.
Apex Digital Media has spent years helping our clients create and grow their digital brands. In just about every instance we have worked as a website design and SEO company for these clients. We don’t specifically bill ourselves as this type of business since we are overall digital marketing specialists. Web design and SEO are the foundation of what we do, but not all that we do.
Hopefully this article provides some perspective on the intrinsic value of these two aspects of your digital brand. If you need the experience and expertise of an agency like Apex Digital Media contact us today.