We were extremely honored to be mentioned by Expertise.com along some other great digital marketing agencies in Charlotte as 15 Best Digital Marketing Agencies in Charlotte.   Thanks to our clients, especially those ones who took a chance on us when we were just getting started 4 years ago and learning the ropes.   

The goal of Expertise is to connect people with the best local experts. They scored digital marketing agencies on more than 25 variables across five categories, and analyzed the results to come up with hand-picked list of the best digital marketing agencies in Charlotte, NC.

Check out the full list of top Charlotte digital marketing agencies here. 
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So you are creating a website and you have heard the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is an important part of make sure your website is visible in the search engine rankings.    Most people know that SEO has do with keywords on your page and throughout the content of your website.    But SEO is a whole lot more than keywords.  

Here are few simple tricks to help even the novice improve their website's SEO which when implemented properly over time will push you up the search rankings to be more visible to your customers!

Don't forget Image Alt Tags

Spoiler alert.  The image rich website that looks amazing isn't Google friendly.  Did you know that Google can't ready images?   So that awesome picture you spent hundreds of dollars on with slide in text and graphic design can't even be viewed by the search engines?    Here's the thing. You can help the search engines by "telling" them what the image says.   This is where an Alt tag comes and it looks something like this in HTML 

​Two elements to remember with alt tags:

1.  Name the image you upload to help search engines determine what the picture is.  IMG-3930 means nothing to a search engine.  But calling an image "spring flower garden" sure does.  

2. The alt information:  Search engines about the photo from the text, so make sure it includes the proper keywords for the page its on.  

This applies to all imagery, photos, logos, art elements that you use on your website.  If its not text the search engines will see it as blank or confusing to how they want to rank your website

An Extra Serving of Metadata

This might sound confusing to novice SEO's but Metadata is about gathering more data.  When you write a metadata description its another way the search engines will view your website.   Think of walking into an ice cream shop.  You know you are in an ice cream shop because you can see the ice cream.  But then you walk up the counter and look into the freezer bin and you see there are a lot of flavors of ice cream.  Imagine if there were no labels on each ice cream flavor?   This is one of the most common issues facing small business websites.  Blank metadata descriptions.   But just because an ice cream looks pink doesn't mean its strawberry.  It could be cherry, raspberry, grapefruit, bubble gum or even peppermint.  Think of metadata descriptions as being ice cream labels on each ice cream bin.  It tells the search engines which web page is which, and which images are strawberry and which ones are cherry.    So take time to write solid metadata descriptions and follow your Google's or Moz recommendation of 150-160 characters for each.  

Need assistance SEO for your small business?   Do you like ice cream too? Contact us at Banyan Creative.

About the Author:  Sam Casey is the Managing Partner at Banyan Creative, specializing in helping small business grow on the web.