Ideation Technologies
We’ve listed a few of the major technologies we use for ideating our client projects. Keep in mind that we are continually evaluating and comparing the technologies we’re currently using against new technologies or even those companies that have made significant upgrades to their technology.
Technologies chosen by us for the benefit of our clients and ourselves are extensively researched before being incorporated into our company’s ideation process. Upon being selected, we further invest vast amounts of time mastering the technology so that we are best maximizing its power. Ultimately, we incorporate technologies that allow us to be as efficient as possible with our time while providing information that helps us best know where to focus our time and our client’s financial resources.
Note: Many of these tools are included in the Client Care Program.
Site Ground
We’ve been using Site Ground to host our site and for that of our clients since mid-2019. With a TON of hosting options out there, we picked Site Ground after extensive research. We felt they provided the fastest hosting speeds for the WordPress platform, which we exclusively focus on for website SEO. They also offer an excellent client website management dashboard and allow us to easily spin a client off on their own hosting plan if they choose.
Ultimately, we felt strongly that Site Ground offered the best all-around performance and service offerings for our client needs.
WordPress
WordPress is the most popular content management system used by over 40% of the top 10 million websites. It’s also a familiar system for many clients while providing a host of features that can be integrated into websites that we ideate for our clients.
Until mid-2020, we were custom designing and hand-coding all of the websites we were ideating, which meant all of our client websites were very learn and extremely high performing. Ultimately, it was a slower process to stand up a new website, with the real issue being that we couldn’t easily make adjustments identified for better Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Preferred Starter Theme – Astra ($523/yearly)
A WordPress theme that provides a structural foundation that is lightning-fast for our focus on SEO and allows us to build out for the custom needs of each client.
Page Builder – Elementor ($999/yearly)
They’re the #1 WordPress Website Builder (powering over 5 million websites) and provide a vast array of addons (Ex: Automatic pulling of a client’s latest Google Reviews) that makes anything possible, very quickly.
Form Builder – WPForms ($599/yearly)
A priceless drag & drop form builder plugin that captures a vast array of form fields that are emailed or caught in the backend, ensuring nothing is ever lost. They empower over 4 million WP professionals while providing addons from user journey tracking to moving leads to Salesforce.
Search Engine Optimization Plugin – Rank Math ($429/yearly)
This is a relatively new company that exploded on the scene a few years ago with a tremendous all-around technology to identify SEO best practices quickly, implement changes in WordPress, and visualize opportunities.
Semrush
Certainly wasn’t an easy pick, but after testing a couple of the other major players, we chose the Semrush platform for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), content marketing, competitor and industry research, pay-per-click (PPC), and social media management.
This was a significant financial investment (over $500/monthly!!) that has and continues to take a vast amount of time to master. Still, without it, we’re shooting in the dark with our projections and makes it much harder to create reports showcasing to clients what their financial investment in us is getting them. The Semrush platform has been and continues to be a game-changer at Ci, though sometimes our nerdiness finds us spending countless more hours than a client is paying us. But we love the power and opportunity it gives us to assure success for our client’s investment in us.
BrightLocal
This technology overlaps Semrush a little, but ultimately this technology is focused exclusively on local search traffic. Initially, we used the local listing capabilities within Semrush. But after hearing some marketing chatter, we launched into in-depth research of BrightLocal and quickly saw the insane benefits that it would offer our clientele and made the switch.
The BrightLocal platform allows us to see how clients perform in specific areas of Metro Atlanta for particular keyword phrases (sweet heatmap view too!), identify duplicate listings, and even submit the client’s office address to hundreds of sites. This tool allows us to see precisely how the brand ranks on Google Maps, Google Mobile Search, Bing Map, etc… Like any powerful tool, it’s required many hours to learn, but the ultimate benefits to our client’s local marketing make it worthwhile.