People love a good story, and especially a good origin story. It’s a form that has persisted in many cultures for centuries, from the Book of Genesis right up to the latest film to reboot a superhero franchise. The popularity of this form is something you—and your business—can harness in several ways to help both you and your clients.

Why You Should Tell Your Story

Every company has one: a spark, a handshake, a moment when the idea became a reality. Some, like the building of the first Apple computer in Steve Wozniak’s garage, or Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg hacking the Harvard network, are well documented, even in feature films. Others—like these 10 outlined by Forbes—might be stranger than you think. The appeal of the origin story has even prompted some companies to fabricate an interesting anecdote as a PR strategy. We don’t recommend this course, obviously, but it just goes to show the power of a well-told narrative.

Your company origin story:

Highlights some if your company’s unique traits
Lends a personal touch to your webpage and other content
Conveys your company values and how they’ve evolved from your history
Is a key part of your brand guideline, as we’ve written about in this post
Helps you stand out from competitors
Entertains as well as informs
Provides a break from other, the more sales-focused content, AND
Gives the readers, your potential clients, a chance to get to know your business and insert themselves into your story

How to Tell Your Story

We’ve established that telling your origin story is vital for your company, but telling it well is just as important. A poorly told story could confuse readers or convey the wrong messages about your business, both things you want to avoid when attracting customers! These tips will give you some guidelines when adding this vital aspect to your brand.

Keep it Simple

As Lewis Carroll wrote, “Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” Nobody wants to read a complex tale that involves extraneous details, overlong explanations or lots of jumping around. Only include the aspects relevant to your business. If you run an Italian restaurant based on the cooking your great-grandparents brought to America, some background on them is great, but a whole family tree might be unnecessary. If you founded a tech startup, your early days tinkering in the garage can be interesting, but a full list of your science fair projects is too much.

Make it Stand Out

Something you may not have considered is keeping your origin story in its own special place on your website. This can mean a subsection of your “About” page, or front and center if the page is all-in-one. You’ll notice that at Infinite Reach, we keep our “About Us” separate from our “Services” page, in order to highlight the difference. Readers want to know what you do, but they also want to know who you are. Keeping your origin story distinct from the description of your business ensures this invaluable part of your company identity isn’t lost on potential clients.

Cover the Basics

In this article, tech.co outlines a few questions to ask yourself when considering your story and how to tell it. They include: Who are you? Why did you start this business? And, How do you do [what you do] differently than others? These questions form a helpful guide that will ensure readers of your story will get the full picture of your company’s background and unique traits.

Speaking of Pictures, Use Them!

More and more, integrating visual aspects to any marketing strategy is becoming essential, and the origin story is no different. The images are a great way to show the human face of your business, especially its humble beginnings. Share a photo of the ribbon-cutting at your first location, the prototype of your first product, or the employee’s dog that became your unofficial mascot. The personal aspect and values of your company will come across in these images.

Better yet, try video! A short clip of your company’s founders discussing how their passion grew into the current business is a dynamic way to get the story across. In this article, Steve Jurveston (the venture capitalist behind Hotmail and Tesla Motors, among others) says he always films early meetings with company founders when considering investments, knowing the value of someone’s vision as told in their own words.

Keep it Going

Your story is never finished—it’s constantly evolving. Update the page with any progress you’ve made, use recent images to show how you’ve grown from the beginning, and emphasize a look toward the future. Your story is a great way to invite potential clients and customers to join you in the next chapter.

Building a website is a lot more detailed than meets the eye. What a visitor sees on the screen only scratches the surface of what is really involved in building a successful site. The ultimate goal of a website is to be easily found on the internet and an SEO company specializes in making sure you do just that. A professional SEO company has experts who pay attention to every detail of your Website design from what colors you use to what keywords are most likely to achieve the search results you are looking for.

What is SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Simply put, SEO is a science which is used to achieve a high-ranking position in search results without having to pay for sponsored ads. SEO companies have a variety of ways in which to create a site that is recognized as an authority in their field and ranks highly in search results. SEO professionals utilize a myriad of resources to optimize everything from colors to content.

When you build a website you want people to find you, and with good SEO rankings, they will. Having high ranking results is essential, studies have shown that users will not scroll through several pages of search results but will make up their mind on the first few pages. Hiring a professional SEO firm to build your website from scratch will ensure that, from conception, your site will achieve high ranking results by managing both on-page and off-page optimization.

On-page Optimization Factors

Website optimization is divided into two main categories: On-page and Off-page. On page optimization includes things that the publisher or creator of the site has full control over. The first thing an SEO company will do is tailor all of your content to ensure you are using terms that truly represent you and your brand. All of the information on your site needs to be personalized for your brand. Some on-page areas of interest to your SEO company are continuity of branding, load-speed, the research and proper usage of keywords, and the freshness of content.

Continuity of your branding is paramount – I cannot stress enough that without continuity your users will not be able to easily identify you as their favorite brand. The more consistent you are with your branding, the more likely consumers are to recognize and develop a loyalty to your business. The length of time it takes your website to load is extremely important to your SEO rankings.

Users do not have the time to wait for a site to load – If they do not get instant satisfaction, they will leave, or “bounce” quickly. SEO professionals will optimize picture sizes and video links to make sure your site loads quickly even on mobile devices. Katelyn Flores’ article Is Your Website Mobile Ready? outlines the steps a designer takes in order to make sure a website will support mobile.

Keywords are another major area of concentration for SEO companies. Keyword research is essential in optimizing your website. Your SEO company will make sure you are using relevant keywords in your URL’s, web pages, meta descriptions and headers. Making sure your pages include the proper keywords will ensure that anyone looking for information on that topic will be able to easily find your content and will know that it is relevant.

One of the last things to focus on when designing for on-page optimization is your content. Is your content relevant to your brand or business, is it high quality content or is it fluff or filler? These are a few of the things your SEO company will keep in mind. Using well-written, fresh content will make you an authority in your field and search engines will recognize you as such.

Off-Page Optimization Factors

Unlike on-page, off-page optimization factors include things that the publisher or creator of the site does not have control over. Off page SEO is very different from on-page. On-page factors require a real hands-on approach to achieve the desired results.

Off-page factors are more in the hands of the user and other people than in you or your SEO firm. Off-page optimization includes areas such as the authority of external links, average visit length, social media reach, number and frequency of returning visitors and the inclusion of internal links.

The quality and respectability of your external links (links to other sites) is important to your SEO because the links create a connection between you and the other sites leading search engines to assume you are similar. Poorly chosen or verified links can also negate any credibility you have built with your own users if they discover you are linking to irrelevant, out of date, or unverifiable sources.

This can also affect your bounce rate, or the amount of time a visitor stays on your site before leaving, or “bouncing” to another site. If you do not establish yourself as a credible and trusted resource, your visitors will look elsewhere for their needs.

Not only are external links important to your SEO score, so are your internal links (links to other pages on your site). SEO scores consider such things as if you include any internal links and if you do, do they work properly and add to the user experience, or are they clumsily included and forced on the content instead of naturally occurring. If the inclusions are not natural, they will seem like an advertisement and not like the useful, needed information you are trying to create.

Your site visits and social media reach are other factors that affect your SEO score. The number of visits your website receives and the frequency of return visitors have a lot to do with your rankings. The more return users you have, the more credible and authoritative you will look to search engine bots which in turn will increase your rankings.

Your social media reach, or the number of times your content is linked to or shared on social media platforms is also important to your rankings. If your content is linked to or shared by known, credible, and authoritative sites on a regular basis it will benefit your SEO simply by association.

Anyone can create a website today with software like Dreamweaver. But if you don’t consider all the factors that go into SEO rankings, your site may not be as successful as you hope it will. SEO companies today offer full service website creation and optimization. Hiring a professional SEO firm to design your website will ensure you are starting with the best possible product. If you have questions about SEO, our team can help. Contact us today!