The Time to Optimize Your SEO Is Now. Here’s How…

Naturally, creating themes that would fulfill every criteria of SEO optimization for our users was one of our driving priorities. More than just the aesthetics and versatility of Jupiter and The Ken, we wanted to ensure that the speed, functionality and compatibility with SEO-optimizing tools would guarantee increased exposure, web traffic and conversions for our users. So, how did we do? We sat down with Adam Binder, founder of Creative Click Media, an award-winning New Jersey-based digital marketing agency, to not only learn more about his experience with Jupiter, but to glean advice for our users on how to increase SEO rankings with Jupiter.

First, Though, What Exactly Is SEO?

Christine: So let’s start from square one so we all start on the same page—what exactly is SEO?

Adam: Sure, well SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s the process of getting traffic from free organic, editorial or natural search results on the major search engines or really any search engines.

Why is SEO So Important for Your Marketing Campaign and ROI?

Christine: Why is it so important for companies on the web to cultivate their SEO? I’m asking because we often see and hear feedback from businesses who have heard of SEO but aren’t quite clear on the impact it can have on their marketing campaign and don’t even know where to start…

Adam: SEO is really powerful and basically it has the ability to drive visitors to your site that are looking for exactly what you offer. I like to call them “high purchase-intent” visitors and they’re on the web right now looking for exactly what you offer and you can either choose to ignore it or try to put yourself in the middle of that traffic.

It’s different from any other type of advertising in the fact that with traditional advertising like radio or print, television and off-line displays, basically you’re just trying to get your message in front of a wide audience to hope that a handful of those people are interested. With SEO it’s very very targeted and I think really it helps to level the playing fields between the big companies and the little companies that are just starting and struggling to make it. You can position yourself in a place where you can actually do very well just starting your business.

Checklist to Increase SEO Rankings with Jupiter:

• Make Sure Your Website’s Running at High Speed and Works on any Device

Christine: I just want to note to our users watching—you and your team have racked up quite a few awards for your work in helping businesses get more presence, exposure and, as you said, helping them to put themselves in the middle of that web traffic—so with that expertise, could you give us some insight into what any business can do to jumpstart their SEO?

Adam: You definitely want to make sure that your website runs fast—you want to remove any barriers to your website loading quickly. Page load times are really important for SEO as Google continues to make the web, really, a great place. Google wants to make it easy for people on mobile or any devices to access a website and they’ve gone through great lengths to make sure that websites that load fast are rewarded and that those which are running slowly are being penalized.

Now the Jupiter Theme is fantastic out the box as far as speed. With the upgrade to Version 5 it got even better and it also does some really cool things. For example, I’ve never seen another theme where you could disable custom post-types. Jupiter has so many great features but we don’t need to use them all on every website so what’s great about Jupiter is that you can pick the ones you want to use and disable the rest. You know, on some sites we may just use three of those features, on others maybe ten, but I don’t think I’ve ever used them all and so it’s really nice to be able to turn off the ones we’re not using—oh and let me not forget that it lets you minify the CSS in Javascript.

• Include YouTube videos and Google Maps

Christine: Yes, all great points in terms of increasing your page speed. And that’s definitely something we’ve taken into consideration because we know how meticulously Google ranks websites based on their speed and we know that if someone visits your website and it’s taking too long to load, they’re more likely to leave. What exact features in the Jupiter can, in your opinion, help companies increase their SEO in a quick and easy way?

Adam: Yes, well the fact that it has the Google Maps embedded—that’s useful not just for your users but for your search engines to know where you’re located. You know one of the things that Google does is it makes a profile of your business—it checks all of your citations across the web to make sure your information is accurate and the Jupiter Theme makes it really easy to create beautiful maps. I know now with the Jupiter Version 5 you can have multiple pins which then allows you to then customize the pins and customize the colors. So not only is the Jupiter V5 good from a technical standpoint—it’s gorgeous too! Our customers love it, we love it—it’s a winner!

Also the ability to embed YouTube videos very easily is great. We’ve always used YouTube videos and with Jupiter, it’s seamless—you just pop in the URL and it appears. It’s just easy to place it with the Page Builder. And a lot of people don’t know this but YouTube is actually owned by Google–it’s the second largest search engine—YouTube is actually bigger than Bing and Yahoo! and so by putting those videos on your website, you’re making your website more visible and in some cases, you’ll actually get your videos to rank as well!

since we launched the latest version of our website using the Jupiter we’ve been able to increase our conversions, they’re now at 4% whereas before we were under 1%.

• Interactive Buttons & Menus to Help Guide Your Visitors

Christine: What we noticed when we reviewed many of the websites you and your team had created is that the navigation on each site is really easy. There’s very good use of buttons, calls to action, informational content—-and it’s all placed in a very balanced and polished way. So if have any pointers for how to create a website that’s eye-catching and intuitive for the user, we’d love to get your input.

Adam: Yeah one of the other things we do a lot here at Creative Click Media is conversion rate optimization and actually since we launched the latest version of our website using the Jupiter we’ve been able to increase our conversions—they’re now at 4% whereas before we were under 1% so we keep refining it–we’re using heat maps and other visualization tools but you’re absolutely right. We add a lot of buttons, we like to make the sites interactive.

Too many sites are purely informational and one of the things you want to do to help your SEO is get your bounce rate down and you can do that by getting people to click inside the website so we give people a lot of opportunities to do that—you should never make your visitors have to work to get what they want—it should be very easy.

Jupiter has a lovely mega menu which is great for websites that have a lot of information. We use it on our site—we actually just recently updated it. It’s got some nice images in there now which is another great feature along with the ability to use images as backgrounds or images as links which is also really nice and has been resulting in a lot more clicks.

We started this initiative called Creative 360—it’s a new marketing program and since we’ve put it in the Mega Menu it’s been getting a lot more clicks. So we’re always testing and always looking to improve not only our SEO optimization but our conversion rate because once you spend the money to build your site and then spend more money to drive traffic to it, you want to make sure those visitors are taking the desired actions—whether that’s a sale, a lead, or download.

• Start Blogging

Christine: In terms of getting those conversion rates, one of the blogs you wrote for the Creative Click Media blog talked about writing blogs early on and how with SEO optimization you can’t really procrastinate—you kind of have to hit the ground running at the onset of your marketing campaign to progressively grow your web content and then customize and tweak your content as you see how your visitors are responding on your site.

Adam: Yes, absolutely and we love to create good content. We have a staff here that loves what they do and they love to share that knowledge and basically my advice would be to anyone starting out or anybody that hasn’t blogged yet is, simply put, to start. Think about what your customer’s paying points are, think about their most frequently asked questions, and you’ll find that in answering those questions it’s also a great way to optimize for long-tail keywords.

You’ll want to think about how can you be of help and if you can answer people’s questions, you’re going to show up in the search results. People go to Google like it’s their best friend, like it’s their doctor, like it’s their lawyer–and with the rise of voice-search now the queries are becoming much more complex. And if you can answer those specific questions, you’re going to have a much better chance of showing up at the top of those search results.

There’s a Right Way and a Wrong Way to Increase SEO

Christine: Right and just also to explain—because there is a big difference between organic SEO and manipulated SEO optimization (also known as ‘Black Hat SEO’) and often we find that many businesses in trying to improve their SEO will try to take a lot of shortcuts and this can infact end up backfiring—so could you explain those differences to us?

Adam: Yeah you know, a good rule of thumb is to try not to cheat—do everything by the book. Google has a lot of rules and I’d encourage anyone trying to increase their SEO to study them—though most of them are pretty common sense. You just want to produce good content and structure it in a way that makes sense—which actually brings me to another point I wanted to make about Jupiter. The Fancy Titles—I love the Fancy Titles and how you can manipulate the headings and H-tags to look however you want.

So basically I know a lot of amateur web masters or business owners who manipulate the H-tags and think it’s purely a cosmetic thing, but you can make them look however you want using the Jupiter theme and still get the SEO benefit by wrapping your main key phrases in an H1 or an H2 tag. And you want to make sure to use H1 only one time, ideally on your page title or the main idea of your page and you’re going to use those other headings as subtopics; it should follow some logical order—both humans and robots I think like to have some type of structure.

SEO Optimization Results with Jupiter WordPress Theme:

Christine: And so for the customers you’ve worked with to increase their SEO optimization, have they seen a difference in their conversion rates or website traffic after having used the Jupiter?

Adam: Absolutely and you know I actually have some case studies and metrics to share with you. Some of the results have been outstanding! Our website has been one of the major successes; basically in just the year since we switched to the Jupiter Theme, our SEO has skyrocketed. Part of that is definitely due to the help we’ve gotten from the Theme and with the things I previously discussed with the features of the Theme—and it just looks great and I think people like it a lot.

We’ve seen a lot of success with clients from all different industries—one of our big successes was a moving company, Meelheim’s Moving. In about four months we took them from basically nowhere to be found on the web to now where they’re ranking #1 for dozens of terms—they’ve been on Google Maps for 8 terms in the first position and it’s really transformed their business and we’re getting those results for lots of our clients who have used the Jupiter theme so it’s been a really great boost to our business!

whether you want to build a website for a lawyer that’s serious and stern or you want to build a website for a kindergarten that’s cute and fun, Jupiter can do it, and it can help you rank!

It’s just a great theme—it’s a lot of fun to work with and I feel like with other themes I end up running into a brick wall—like there’s only so much you can do without spending hours on CSS. With Jupiter, there are just so many options—you never run out of new things to try and do and with the addition of the slants—you know the slant dividers—oh man, that’s just a whole other world of opportunities—and it’s not just slants. You’ve got all the other visual elements and it’s so much fun!

It’s more than just a website, it’s a business tool, it’s a marketing tool and it’s just so versatile and helped so many people, me with my business and helping others with theirs.

So whether you want to build a website for a lawyer that’s serious and stern or you want to build a website for a kindergarten that’s cute and fun, Jupiter can do it—and it can help you rank! And also it integrates well with the major plugins we like to use—you know I’ve had Yost not work well with other themes and this has never been an issue with Jupiter. Everything works seamlessly—Analytics, Twitter API Integration, WooCommerce—even the Custom Javascript box—everything has been thought of! For other themes you need a plugin for that and with Jupiter you just flip a switch.

It’s more than just a website—it’s a business tool, it’s a marketing tool and it’s just so versatile and helped so many people, me with my business and helping others with theirs.

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