I had the great pleasure to speak with Roberto Popolizio from Website Planet, discussing all things website design, SEO, Google and the effects AI may have on our digital services. This blog post covers this interview along with some background information on Website Planet.
About Website Planet
Whether you are an established business looking to expand your digital footprint, or a new entrepreneur looking to make your mark, Website Planet is the online resource for you. Website Planet is here to provide you with the tools to navigate the world of digital marketing, avoid the common mistakes people make, and build your company towards a successful future online. We are a dedicated group of people who have been there and done it. Now we want to help you do the same. We have been helping companies like yours to build their business with the best tools and resources for years, and are going to keep doing so for years to come.
The Interview
After looking at our story and services, Roberto asked Aaron to give his thoughts about the recent trends in the SEO industry, and his expert advice on how to tackle online marketing in 2023.
What Services Do You Offer, And What Makes Full Circle Design Stand Out?
Full Circle Design is a digital design agency based in Ireland. We pride ourselves in customer experience and our goal is to help B2B businesses reach their ideal customers.
Our main service solutions include website design, website management, SEO (search engine optimization) and social media management.
We like to let our results speak for themselves and on average increase our client website engagement by over 220%.
What is Your Story And Mission?
Full Circle Design was started amidst the pandemic in 2020. Over two years in, we have worked with some great businesses in all industries including start-ups, SME’s and global enterprises.
As the world seemed to come to a halt during the pandemic a lot of businesses found the need to have an online presence. We helped a lot of businesses during this time to offer their products and services online, and more importantly, continue to bring in revenue for their business.
Our mission is to provide value for our clients. We design for your customers because at the end of the day, it's the customers that pay the bills. Doing this allows us to design amazing websites that perform and provide a great return on investment.
Who Are Your Clients, And What Are The Pain Points You Solve For Them?
Our clients are primarily B2B but we also have some B2C clients. The problems our client's face are effectively promoting to their ideal customers. In traditional marketing and sales, our clients understand who their customer is and where they are but this can differ online.
We help them to identify their online market and access new areas for growth. Overall, we provide the experience needed to design and develop your business online to increase awareness, customer retention and sales.
What Are The Most Common Mistakes You See Them Doing?
Consistency! The lack of consistency for businesses (especially in Ireland) is an apparent one. Their social media looks great but then you head to their website and it 1. Looks completely different and 2. Doesn’t match their social branding.
One tip we would give any business is to be consistent across all channels. From your business cards and logo to your social media and website even to how you speak to your customers. Keeping your business branding consistent offers trust, legitimacy and professionalism to your customers.
What Does Your Web Design Process Look Like?
Our web design process can be broken down into 10 main steps which I won’t go into in full today but is featured on our website blog if you want to check it out.
To be completely transparent, our process sometimes changes depending on the website but we do our best to stick to the process as it makes it easier and faster for us to develop our websites. We always start off with our research phase. Before we take on any project we make sure we can offer the right solution for our clients. Then we will craft an initial design to share with our clients, this can come as a wireframe design or a more hashed-out design depending on the timeframe, budget etc.
We always like to keep our clients involved in our process and will regularly share updates on our process. This helps to keep everyone on the same page and working in the right direction.
Once we have a final design that everyone is happy with we jump into developing the website.
For our development stage, we use Editor X or Webflow. These are great tools as they allow us to build whatever site we want and to provide a responsive and immersive website for our client's customers.
Before we launch a site we run rigorous testing to make sure everything works as it should and there are no errors or silly spelling mistakes … it has happened in the past but we’ve learned from our mistakes.
Once the website is launched we don’t just jump ship, we stick around to test and analyse how the site is performing. If we see something that isn’t performing as intended we look to revise this to get the most out of every website page.
One of the best things about working with us is there is very little work to do after your site is launched. We won’t charge crazy management fees or unnecessary add-ons. Our websites are developed without the need for constant updates or maintenance.
How Do You Think AI Will Change SEO, And How Do You Plan To Take Advantage Of It?
I think it will, but I don’t think AI will replace or kill SEO. AI tools such as ChatGPT and others are great for analysing content and generating ideas and have huge potential when used correctly. What I believe will happen is the SEO’s that use these AI tools will become far more valuable than those that stick to traditional practices.
Implementing these AI tools as part of your SEO strategy will help to gather new areas to create content and help you grow as an SEO.
Google Has Also Released Some Big Changes And Countless Updates This Year. How Has This Impacted Your SEO Strategies?
To answer this question I’d like to continue from the last one. As Google and other search engines continue to advance, they will figure out how to detect AI writers and AI-created content. Take Google’s ‘Helpful Content’ update last year. They outlined the benefits of writing for humans first and to provide helpful articles that inform and educate your users.
Using AI tools to write articles is great but it creates a disconnect from your audience. They are used to form ideas and topics but keeping it human will keep the Google bots happy.
At Full Circle Design, we have always developed SEO content to be readable and informative and tried to stay away from areas or trends like keyword spamming. We research industry topics, trending articles and develop content that people are actually interested in and searching for. If you’re new to SEO or looking to grow your blog, doing this will yield the best results starting off.
Now, saying this, we have to continue to change and move with the times and our SEO strategies are no different. One thing we have focused on over this past year that has yielded some great results for our clients is user experience. I believe every SEO should have UX included in their strategic arsenal.
As the Google bots continue to get smarter and more advanced, they will have the ability to review such tools as heatmaps and user clicks and a strong user experience will not only turn over more customers for your business but also help your website grow on the rankings.
More from Website Planet
Website Planet regularly shares amazing articles, resources and interviews with thought leaders in the digital world. To keep up to date on all things within Website Planet, make sure to head over to their website and check out their recently published work.
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