Digital Strategy Guide (SEO & Social Media)

Transcription

1 Digital Strategy Guide (SEO & Social Media) David Howell, Justin Wylie, Craig Zdanowicz

2 Table of Contents Executive Summary Online Reputation Analysis...4 Usability/Page Speed Report Social Media Plan SEO Audit.. 13 Conclusion Josef s Pharmacy Digital Strategy 2

3 Executive Summary We have created a digital strategy guide for Josef s Pharmacy to help improve your web presence, search engine optimization (SEO), and social media strategy. We go into great detail for each aspect, but we thought an overall summary would be very helpful so that you can get an idea of what you need to work on first. If you want more information on each subject, please refer to the section title above each summary and then check with the table of contents to find where that topic lies. Usability Test To get familiar with the Josef s Pharmacy website, we conducted a usability test, which examined how well the site worked, how easy it was to navigate, and how the overall experience felt for a user. We conducted three tasks that a normal Josef s Pharmacy customer would do and the results were fairly positive. For more detail about the tests, visit the usability section of this guide. There were some issues that arose during this process and we have labeled them based on their importance. The essential changes need to be examined as soon as possible. One issue is that the site does not work well on mobile. The desktop site has a width that is fixed; the width of the page never changes based on screen size. So if a person visits the site on a mobile phone, the experience is not very good. For example, buttons are very small, the navigation requires a user to hover, and the site is zoomed out. Another issue that needs to be assessed as soon as possible is the social media bar at the top-right corner. Currently, it looks as if it should be several different images linking to all of your different social media pages. That is not the case; it is just one image and it doesn t link to anything. As soon as possible, we recommend getting a developer to create what is called a responsive site. This site would work well on mobile phones, but it would also improve the performance of your desktop site as well. We recommend not using your current developer again for further updates. Here is a blog post explaining the situation: Social Media Plan Overall, your social media strategy needs some fine-tuning. In order to get the best idea of what a store like yours should provide through social media, we recommend what is called social listening. Make a list of competitor companies, such as CVS or Walgreens, and look at their social media pages. See what kind of content they are posting, how often, and what social media platforms they use. Judge what type of content is working the best by looking at how many comments a post has, how many retweets or favorites a tweet has, or if their followers are sharing their own type of content that spreads awareness of the brand. Once you have examined other companies, we recommend taking a look at your current strategy. Ask yourself what content works the best for you? Keep using Facebook and Twitter, but incorporate Google+. Google+ may seem like a ghost town, but it significantly improves your search engine optimization. Keep posting there even if you don t receive feedback. With Josef s Pharmacy Digital Strategy 3

4 that said, we recommend rethinking what you are posting on social media. In our social listening exercise for your social media pages, we often found that Josef s Pharmacy provides a lot of unrelated content to the pharmacy, such as cute cat images or band lyrics. This type of content should never be posted under a company s social media page. We recommend posting content that promotes the brand of Josef s Pharmacy. Since you are striving to obtain more local customers, it is worth posting content that is relevant to the local area. Discuss local events, community involvement opportunities related to health, weather, college sports, or what you can offer to the community. However, try to keep it all related to health. In order to capture local audiences, using a hashtag such as #raleighhealth would help let users know because it tags your content as relevant to Raleigh and health. Finally, we recommend posting more often: 1-2 times a day for Facebook, but copy that content onto Twitter and Google+. If you want to post more often, we recommend Twitter because it is such a fastpaced platform. A more thorough social media strategy can be found under the tactics and specifics sections in the social media plan guide. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Audit We conducted an SEO audit, which looked at how well your site incorporates modern SEO standards. A good proportion of the content that is important for SEO is located within the code of the site, which your developer created. While we have made it clear that your developer was not very good, they did a decent job at making your site SEO friendly. In general, there is not a lot to fix, but there are a few problems that need to be addressed. Mentioned previously in our summary, aspects of the site navigation need work. For example, the logo at the top of the website doesn t link back to the homepage of the site. Having a logo at the top of the page is generally understood as a link to the homepage. Again, the social media bar at the top-right of the page need to be links. Currently, they are just one long image instead of multiple images. Because it doesn t link to anything, you are losing valuable SEO juice that links your website to your social media accounts. Your developer did a fairly good job describing your site through meta tags, but they need to be adjusted for each individual page. See the SEO audit for more detail about this subject. File naming, especially for pictures, needs to be changed as well. Currently, every image on the site has been given an arbitrary name and it doesn t make sense to a search engine. If you change the names of the files to something more descriptive, then your site has a better chance of showing up on image search engines. Finally, the alt tag descriptions need to be more descriptive. For more information on alt tags and everything above, check out the SEO audit section of this guide. Online Reputation Analysis We performed an online reputation analysis for JosefsPharmacy.com. This was done by searching for the website in Google through a neutral IP address (so that our individual search preferences would not be shown in the results). Below is a list of the top 30 search results that we found, who the page was from (1 st or 3 rd party), and what the influence was. Josef s Pharmacy Digital Strategy 4

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6 As you can see, none of the search results had a negative influence, which is good. Also, many of the results in some way linked back to JosefsPharmacy.com, which is also good. The one negative we found here is that at times, the actual Josef s Pharmacy website does not turn up in search. This is most likely because of our neutral IP search. We did a quick search from a local IP, (one in Burlington), and JosefsPharmacy.com was the first result. Therefore, it can be concluded that the local population will find the website when they search for it. Josef s Pharmacy Digital Strategy 6

7 Usability / Page Speed Report Our group performed a usability test of the current website for Josef s Pharmacy. We found several aspects of the site that work well, and some that could use improvement. The most relevant information is at the top of the page, which is good. All of the information found on the website is relevant to the pharmacy. The website s navigation is consistent throughout the site. Colors and other visual aspects are consistent as well. The site map is helpful for users who do not want to navigate through the series of dropdown menus. We have broken down the things that we feel need improvement into three categories: Essential, Important, and Desirable. Essential Changes o Site does not work well on mobile devices o Logo does not link home o Social media bar is a picture; needs to link out to appropriate channels Important Changes o Visited links need a different color to show the user that they have clicked on them Desirable Changes o Hovering effects not needed (makes everything not work on mobile) o Navigation should not depend on color o Images have alt tags o No search bar From Google s PageSpeed Insights, the Josef s Pharmacy website has rating of 71/100. Some of the things that they recommend for optimizing page speed are optimizing images and leveraging browser caching. The page recommends that the HTML and Javascript found on the page be minified, as well as enabling compression on the site for resources. The same test for mobile had a score of 60/100. The same fixes listed for the desktop version of the site will fix most of the issues found in the mobile version. However, we still recommend an optimized mobile site separate from the desktop version to fix the user experience score of a 58/100. We came up with three tasks that the average user may want to do when visiting the Josef s Pharmacy website. These tasks are getting the location of the pharmacy, finding information about filling or refilling their prescription, and finding information about the other services the pharmacy provides (like compounding). We performed each task on the list and logged our results. Finding refills was extremely quick and easy. Finding the location was quick and easy as well; the address, phone number, and map on the Contact Us page were very helpful. It was easy to find out more information about the additional services. However, the information did not go into detail: it only listed what was available, not what each service actually was. Josef s Pharmacy Digital Strategy 7

8 Social Media Plan A healthy social media presence can be a great advantage for small businesses. The ideas of social interaction and personal connections are what separate many small businesses apart from their corporate counterparts. Having a plan for what kind of content to post on social channels can elevate a business to a new level. By properly utilizing social media and this social media plan, it is our hope to drive more traffic to the Josef s Pharmacy store, increase customer engagement with the Josef s Pharmacy brand, and even reach a new customer base in the surrounding Raleigh area. Social Listening When determining what kind of content to post on your social channels, it is important to know what it is that your audience wants to see. Utilizing a process called social listening can help you find out which of your posts are the most successful, so you know what type of content to post in the future. Whom To Listen To: In addition to feedback from your social audience, you should also pay attention to the social channels of your competition. For example, check out the social media pages of CVS and Walgreens. It might also be worthwhile to explore the stores that have pharmacies within them like Wal-Mart or Harris Teeter. Look at which of their posts are the most successful, or how they attempt to reach their audience. You may be able to repurpose one of their ideas into something that you can use. How To Listen: As mentioned above, you should look at competitors and see how successful they are in connecting with their audience. You should place an emphasis on listening to and interacting with your social audience, especially as a small business. Make notes of what kind of content your audience likes, and post more of that content. For Twitter, pay attention to how often your competitors interact with customers, what topics they tweet about, or what content they tweet (text vs. images). For Facebook, examine how often they make updates, what content they post, or how they interact with their fans. When you are doing your own listening, pay attention to topics that are important to your area. As a neighborhood pharmacy, you have the advantage of being a part of the community. Listen to the community s voice and let your voice chime in as well. What Records To Keep: There are several different measurable sets of data that can be used to track the success of a social channel, but not every single one is right for every business. For Josef s Pharmacy, we recommend monitoring how many new followers are gained over a predetermined period of time, how much engagement different types of posts get (number of likes/comments/retweets of photo posts vs. text posts, etc.), and how many page views the website receives via redirects from social channels. The latter can be done by visiting bitly.com, entering the Josef s Pharmacy website address, and then Josef s Pharmacy Digital Strategy 8

9 Goals posting the generated link on social channels. Certain data, like page views, will be tracked automatically by Bitly if you have an account. We ve come up with a set of goals for your social media plan: Action: To create and effective social media voice with relevant content Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. Justification: One of the main purposes of your social content should be to educate followers about health and to create awareness and trust of business. If the audience sees helpful and accurate information being shared, they will trust Josef s Pharmacy to fill prescriptions and other health related business. Audience: The intended audience consists of anyone in the local community that has a prescription. However, the biggest group will be around 45+ in age. Desired Effects: We hope for Josef s Pharmacy to see more customers, more business, and more followers on social media. KPI s We have set some Key Performance Indicators (KPI s) to set some measurable results and know when they are successful. Process 1. Increase the number of new clients to Josef s Pharmacy 2. Gain more followers on social media, specifically Facebook and Twitter 3. Gain more shares/likes on social media to measure engagement 4. Increase page views from website To obtain the goals, we suggest a process, including principles and tactics, for generating social media materials that are in line with all other communications. Principles: To obtain the trust and ability to educate customers, you should post health related information. You should be experts in the content you communicate and share via social media. Josef s Pharmacy can post general health information, tips, health news, and seasonal concerns such as flu shots. Since the primary audience is the local community, you should also post relevant information about the community and try to be as involved Josef s Pharmacy Digital Strategy 9

10 as possible. We suggest using hashtags #RaleighHealth and #HealthyRaleigh with content on social media. The hashtags can be used on all relevant social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. Josef s Pharmacy will benefit by relating community events to health related content. The best process to encourage engagement via social media will be through call-to-action posts. You should invite their audience to share and comment on messages. This can be done by asking your audience directly. You can also do this by using open-ended questions, surveys, or contests. You should also make direct interaction with those who comment on their messages. Tactics: For social media platforms, Josef s Pharmacy should continue to use Twitter and Facebook while also adding content on Google+. It will be beneficial for you to also include a blog on your website. The primary focus of content should be on Facebook and Google+. Google+ is important since it helps with SEO and will show up in search results for the company. Since the audience is older, there may not be as large of an audience on Twitter as Facebook or Google+. However, these accounts can be linked and the same messages can be used on Twitter to keep a consistent brand across the social media space. An ongoing blog will be useful to maintain a trusted and helpful voice online. Blog posts would be at a minimum three paragraphs long with a primary focus on health education. The blog will need to be maintained regularly so it does not appear outdated. If you will not have time to post at least once a month, you may consider partnering with a local college to have a student create and post content on the blog. The most important thing with both the social media and blogging platforms is to not overdo it, but also not to post too infrequently either. We recommend posting on each social media outlet at least once a day. For Twitter, since the content is so short, you might want to post more than once a day. With that said, you do not want to post too much content. If you saturate somebody s newsfeed with a bunch of posts, they might feel less inclined to read it all. Additionally, if you begin to post less often through social media, then you might come off as somebody that is not involved with their online presence. It might also question if you are still an operating business. The same can be applied to the blog posts. How To Judge Success: If your followers are interacting with your social media accounts, then you are doing the right thing. This interaction includes things like comments on Facebook posts, retweets of your content on Twitter, or gaining more followers on your social media pages. If your followers are spreading their own content about your brand, then you are excelling. Judging success should be done at all times. If you find that a certain post works for you, then continue to create those types of posts. Josef s Pharmacy Digital Strategy 10

11 Measurement Plan For this social media plan, measurements will need to be done to monitor the success. Social numbers, analytics, and sentiment should all be investigated. Social Numbers: Examine how many followers/fans/likes you have on all three social media platforms. Take note of these numbers and track their progress over time. Numbers/Analytics: Analytics can be determined for specific content. Links to content shared via social media should use links from bitly.com. This way, page views, clicks, shares and other information can be gathered. You will be able to determine which social media platform was the most successful in sharing your message. Sentiment: Sentiment is how people feel about your brand, whether it s positive, negative, or neutral. This can be determined by using an online sentiment analysis tool or by reading through the tone of the websites that show up in a Google search of Josef s Pharmacy. Did anybody review your business? What remarks did they make? On social media, search to see if anybody has mentioned your business. If so, what did they discuss about your business? What is positive or negative? Evaluation Plan After collecting all of your measurements, it is time to evaluate your social data. You should use the numbers and data that you have collected during the measurement phase and compare it with the goals and KPI s you set for yourself during the social listening phase. Were your results in line with what you thought they would be? If not, how will you alter what content you post so that the next time your results can align with your expectations? It is crucial to identify what posts receive the most engagement with your social audience so that you can continue to provide relevant content and grow your follower numbers. Resources Needed Below is a list of items that have been mentioned above. You will need these items to execute your social media plan. 1. A computer with an Internet connection 2. Social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Google+) 3. A website (should link out to social channels and blog) 4. A blog (should link out to website and social channels) 5. Bitly.com links for tracking social page views And a human resource list: 1. A designated social media person Josef s Pharmacy Digital Strategy 11

12 2. 30 minutes a day for reading and examining the social media platforms. Examine comments and likes. Examine what your followers are discussing and retweeting. Explore local news minutes a day for creating content for social media 4. (Optional) A student to create blog posts Specifics We recommend the following timelines for social media content: Facebook/Google+: Post helpful, relevant content 1-2 times per day. Having too many posts in one day will cause a saturation in information and may be missed by the audience. Twitter: Post the same information connected with Facebook/Google+. Since Twitter s feed is so fast paced and extremely active, your content might not always be seen. Feel free to post additional helpful resources or quick information up to 2 times per day in addition to the shared Facebook and Google+ posts. Don t worry about over saturating Twitter as much, but remember to keep your content relevant. Blogs: Blog should be updated with original content at least once per month. At a minimum, these blog posts should be 3-5 paragraphs in length. It will be much more beneficial to have content updated at least once per week, however. If time does not permit, focus on trying to get a local college student to help with the content. Overall: For content, examine the notes you took during your social listening exercise and put them to use. Your number one goal is to embrace being a local neighborhood pharmacy. Discuss local events, community involvement opportunities, college sports, weather, and what you can offer to your community. However, try to keep it all health-related and linked to your business. For social media, a health fact post could be an excellent way to educate your audience. This could also be a reoccurring type of post and would be a part of a large series. You could create an offline database of health facts and pull from them when you need to make a post. Just be sure to not repeat information. If you want to have a friendly tone, a great way to create a post is to get creative with your hashtags. An example post could be: It looks like the temperatures will be low this week in #Raleigh - just like our prescription prices. Come on in and stay #HealthyRaleigh. Josef s Pharmacy Digital Strategy 12

13 This post utilizes two hashtags that keeps your content local and it also advertises an advantage over other pharmacies: your low prices. Another friendly post could be an image post. Images are a great way to capture the reader s eye because we are naturally attracted to images over text. Again, be sure to keep the images relevant to your business. Analysis and evaluation should be done weekly and also collectively at the end of the month to track what is successful and what methods need to be adjusted. If find that posting more often on a certain platform is more beneficial, then embrace what succeeds. If you happen to interact with a lot of people through Facebook, then provide more content according to the demand. We have provided a loose guideline for you to follow; it will be up to you to see what succeeds. Social Media Plan Conclusion Many consumers will not trust a brand unless they have a website and/or social media accounts. In today s digital age, a strong social presence is needed to stay relevant. It is our hope that by following this social media plan, Josef s Pharmacy will see an increase in not only the engagement they receive on their website, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, but also in the number of people that visit their retail location and in their sales numbers. SEO Audit We conducted a search engine optimization (SEO) audit on the Josef s Pharmacy website. We understand that the target audiences of Josef s Pharmacy are those who live in Raleigh, North Carolina, and its surrounding neighborhoods. We conducted this audit to ensure that the website included the current standards for search engine optimization. This way, those who search for local pharmacies in Raleigh will find Josef s Pharmacy. We examined several elements in our audit. We will go through each element and describe what it is, how your website did in optimizing that element for search engines, and what you should do to improve that element. Link Accessibility Link accessibility is basically the website s navigation. Can a user navigate from one page to another without getting trapped? This is not an issue with the Josef s Pharmacy site. The drop-down menus all users to navigate to and from whatever page they wish. The only negative aspect within this element is the social media bar, which is at the topright of every page of your website. The social bar is just one image, but it looks as if it should be five separate images with links going to different social media pages. Currently, the image links to nothing. Luckily, this issue is easy to fix. Your website developer should place three separate images here: one for Facebook and one for Twitter. For the last image, we recommend linking to the store s Google+ page. This issue should be a 10-minute fix at max. Josef s Pharmacy Digital Strategy 13

14 Number of Clicks - Depth of Architecture When a search engine examines your website to pull data, it will, among other things, navigate your website using the links provided on the first page of your website. If a search engine cannot find a page because of poor navigability, then you have lost your chance to provide information on those pages to search engines. For example, a website might have a really great page, but in order to get to that page, a user must click through several other pages to get to that content. This is not good. In short, you want every page of your website to be accessed within one or two clicks from the main page. In our audit, we found that all of your pages are easily found through the main navigation menu at the top of your website, which is very good. You do not have anything to fix for this element. Alt Text Used Wisely Alternative text, or alt text, is used in a website s code to describe elements in case they cannot be rendered or displayed. For example, an image might have some alt text that describes the image for users who are visually impaired or that can t be loaded for some reason. Providing alt text is beneficial to your website s SEO in several ways. First, providing alt text for your website s images will make it so search engines can relate your images to search results. If somebody searches for elderly care, a search engine might link to your website because you have an image with an elderly care description. Second, alt text provides even more information for search engines, which helps your overall SEO. Third, alt text helps those who are visually impaired or when an element fails to load. In general, alt text descriptions should be short and to the point. Avoid keyword stuffing, which is an outdated SEO strategy and is now penalized. In our audit, we found that your website uses alt text correctly. However, we believe that your alt tags could be more descriptive at times. For example, the alt text for the images underneath the long-term care, specialty care, and packaging section just repeats the section title. Another problem we found was that the slideshow images on the main page have alt text tags, but they are blank; the alt text is missing descriptions. Cleaning up the alt text descriptions for your website is another easy fix. Again, present your developer with the issue and he or she should be able to do it in fewer than 30 minutes. In order to help the developer, we recommend showing them this tool: It will examine all of the alt text on your website and it will give some hints on how to improve. For your website, the tool rates the alt text usage well, but it generally wants the alt text to be more descriptive. Constructive Navigation In general, websites should be easily navigable. If a website is too difficult to use, then it might cause a negative experience for the user. Creating a good user experience can be quite challenging, but there are some general tips to follow. First, a user should be able to navigate from page to page easily. The main navigation bar for the website should be very obvious to the user and it should be user friendly. This navigation bar should be on every page of the website so that a user does not get stuck on a page without an exit. Second, the website s navigation Josef s Pharmacy Digital Strategy 14

15 should be easy to use on both desktop and mobile. This means that a user should not have to hover over something to access navigation elements. Third, a user should be able to get back to the home page on every page of the website. In examining your website s navigation, we found that you are able to access every page from the main navigation menu. However, in order to use the navigation menu, a user must hover over the elements to get access to more options. On the desktop, we encountered a few usability problems with the menu; it was occasionally difficult to click on a link because of the hover effects. For people who look at your site from mobile devices like a smart phone or tablet, you want to avoid using hover effects completely. In 2014, the web is starting to take a mobilefirst approach when designing the web, so you definitely want to think about mobile users first. Another issue we came across was that the website s logo at the top-left corner of the page does not link to the home page. Most users expect that a website s logo links to the home page of the website, so this might cause some frustration. For your developer, to fix the logo and it linking to the home page should be an easy fix. This process should not take more than 5 minutes depending on the number of web pages. Redesigning the navigation menu is going to take a lot longer, so it is up to you to decide if it is worth the cost and effort. In the end, it will improve the website s overall usability. Appropriate URLs A website URL address can be thought of as a mailing address for the page on the website; it shows exactly where the page lives. That means if somebody typed in the URL for the packaging page of your website, that means they could access that page without having to go through the main page of your website. Correctly constructing a URL can be beneficial for both SEO and your developer. In general, you want to define a structure and follow it for every URL that you create. While your URL should describe the page, it should not be so long that gets out of hand. Like alt text descriptions, try to keep the URL length to a minimal length. Avoid keyword stuffing the addresses as well. In our audit, we found that your website has a great URL structure. Each URL address follows the same structure: it begins with a capital letter and each new word begins with a capital letter. The length of the URLs are really short, but they accurately describe the page. For this element, we have nothing to recommend that you fix. Useful Titles, Meta Tags, H1 Tags, and File Names When a search engine examines your website, some of the most important information that it will examine will be your website s title, meta, and h1 tags. These tags are bits of code that explain to the web what is your website is called, what it is about, and what some of the most important information is. The title tag is the text that is displayed at the top of a browser window when you are currently at a website s address. Meta tags provide descriptions for your website. For example, if you search for Josef s Pharmacy on a search engine, the descriptive text that lies below the site title was provided through meta tags. The H1 tag, which is the header text on the website, should be used only once per page. The tag can be changed for each page depending on the content. For example, your packaging page might have the h1 tag: Packaging. When files like pictures are saved, their names should be considered in the same way as URL construction. File names should be descriptive, they should follow a similar structure, and they Josef s Pharmacy Digital Strategy 15

16 should not be too long. For example, the file name for an image representing refills on prescriptions should be titled refill.jpg instead of pic10.jpg. In our audit, we found that your title tag is an accurate description of your website. The meta tags are also very descriptive, but they do not change across pages; each page has the same meta tag. A search engine might return a specific page of your website, so you are going to want the meta tag to describe each specific page. The H1 tags on the website are used correctly and do not need changing. The file naming system for your website is not very good. Almost all of the pictures on your website seem to have arbitrary and they would not make sense to a search engine, because they are not the kind of words that people would search for. Have your developer create some new meta tags for each major page of your website. Additionally, have them rename all of the images on your website to something more descriptive. Remember to keep the file names to a minimum length and keep a similar structure across them all. This process should not take more than an hour or two. Duplication of Content Duplicating content across pages on the web is harmful to a website s SEO. The problem with duplicating content is that a search engine does not know which page to index when examining a site. The search engine will either index one page and it will miss the content for the other page or it will penalize the site, which means it will not index the site and it will not show up on search engines. This is very bad. In our audit, we found that your site does not duplicate content, so you do not have to worry about this element. Audit Conclusion Overall, the Josef s Pharmacy website is very SEO friendly. However, there are a few issues with the site that have been addressed above. These issues could probably be resolved in just a couple of hours, and doing so would elevate the website s ranking even further. A strong presence on search engines can really bolster a company s consumer base, and Josef s Pharmacy is in a good place with that. Conclusion We hope that Josef s Pharmacy will utilize the techniques described in the above report to increase their digital presence. Additionally, we hope that the increased digital presence will lead to a larger customer base for Josef s Pharmacy. By using the techniques above, Josef s Pharmacy should be able to connect with their audience and turn new customers into returning customers for the foreseeable future. Josef s Pharmacy Digital Strategy 16