When business owners and marketing executives turn to us it isn’t because they want an “average” or “great” web design – they want the very best. But what exactly does that mean?
We hear versions of this question almost each and every day. So, we want to help our readers and clients by shedding a little light on what the perfect business web design looks like.
When social media marketing started taking off, some business owners sought it as a way to replace search engine optimization (SEO). With a few tweets and posts, they imagined they might be able to break away from the competitive and sometimes-grueling cycle of generating and promoting content.
Lately, we have seen the opposite happening: that some small and medium-sized companies are ignoring their social profiles to get back to the more proven strategy of turning search visitors into customers.
We think that’s a mistake. While SEO might be a more direct route to growing your bottom line, social media marketing still has its place. In fact, we don’t think you should invest time and money in search without also paying attention to your social accounts. Let’s look at why.
Continue reading “Why You Shouldn’t Do SEO Without Social (or Vice Versa)”
Are you one of the millions of business owners who know they need a new website or at least improvements to an existing web presence, but put it off month after month? If so, the good news is you aren’t alone. Many of your peers are procrastinating as well. The bad news is that some of your competitors are taking action and might be well on the way to leaving you behind.
It’s human nature to put off projects that don’t seem urgent, but delaying improvements to your website is a losing strategy. For one thing, your online presence can be your most important sales and marketing tool. It’s nearly impossible to grow your bottom line these days with an underwhelming digital strategy. And for another thing, your excuses for putting things off probably aren’t as strong as you might think.
If you want a little bit of proof, let’s look at five exceptionally bad reasons business owners tend to put off web design projects…
Continue reading “5 Bad Reasons Business Owners Put Off Web Design”
Business owners tend to think about search engine optimization (SEO) in terms of it either “working” or “not working.” That is, they believe you either dominate on Google or can’t be found anywhere in the first twenty pages of the search listings.
It’s understandable that someone looking at SEO from the outside might take this view, especially if you aren’t used to getting traffic from search engines. However, the reality is most marketers move through a progression of SEO effectiveness until they either stop trying or run into a competitor who was working harder than they are.
To give you a sense of what that progression looks like, let’s look at the five typical stages of a profitable SEO campaign…
Have you ever gone to a website and realized it’s taking ages to come online? Don’t you hate that?
As it turns out, your visitors hate that too. Even worse, their definition of “ages” might be significantly shorter than yours. Surveys and user behavior studies suggest that you have around three seconds to interest someone in your website before they click away or visit another search result. If your website takes longer than that to simply load, your chance of winning a customer could be gone before it ever materialized.
You might be wondering, then, why some business websites are so slow in the first place. Let’s look at a few of the most common reasons…
Amongst business owners and marketing executives, search engine optimization (or SEO) is like a professional sport. Although most decision-makers haven’t done much content writing or technical HTML work, they stay up-to-date on the latest trends and ranking on Google algorithm shifts. They become armchair quarterbacks of search marketing.
That’s generally a good thing. Anyone who has a vested interest in helping their business grow should know what SEO and ranking on Google are all about. However, there is a downside to the intense interest they have and search. Namely that new clients come to companies like ours looking for complicated answers to simple problems.
The details of the search engine optimization campaign are important. However, they only come into play once you cover the basics. To help illustrate what we mean, let’s look at a few Google ranking factors…
Continue reading “Why you Probably Aren’t Ranking on Google”
Amazing as it might seem, we sometimes meet with business owners and marketing managers who tell us they don’t have the time or patience for social media marketing. They are either overwhelmed with other tasks, or don’t see a clear benefit to engaging customers and prospects through Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
We can understand this line of thinking. For one thing, most of the people we work with don’t have a lot of free time. And for another, it is harder to use social media to create instant leads than it is to generate business from search engine optimization or pay-per-click ads.
However, that doesn’t mean social media marketing has to be overwhelming, or that it won’t pay off. To help you understand why let’s look at four simple and effective ways you can use your business social media profiles every week…
Continue reading “4 Incredibly Easy Ways to Use Your Company’s Social Media Accounts”
You’ve seen the ads on TV and online that promise that you can create a brand-new website in under an hour for one amazingly low monthly fee. Sounds like a great way to upgrade your business web presence, doesn’t it? Sign up to make your own DIY templated website and visitors will instantly come to your website. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that.
Unfortunately, the bargain probably isn’t all it’s promised up to be.
Don’t get us wrong: DIY website templates certainly have their place. If you are a solo-preneur or the owner of a startup with no budget, then crafting your DIY website is better than not having one. However, if you have an established company, or want to build one, then these services aren’t going to be a good solution.
To help you understand why their low fees for web design and hosting don’t translate into real value, let’s look at five reasons you shouldn’t move your website to a DIY template…
Continue reading “5 Reasons Not to Move Your Website to a DIY Template”