website design
Google Pulls the Plug on Sites Created through Their Business Profiles
If you created your company website with Google Business Profiles, it may be time to build a new website. Google has announced that, come March, these websites will be switched off. Until June 10, visitors to your site will automatically be redirected to your Business Profile, but beyond this date, all bets are off, and your customers and potential customers will come up against the dreaded page not found error. If this is where you’re at, it’s time to have The Web Guys rebuild your site using a fresher platform.
It May Be Time for a Website Redesign
Your website shoulders an immense responsibility for your business. Not only does it set the tone for your brand and serve as an invitation for searchers to learn more, but it also guides user experience, which is critical to conversions. You put a lot of thought, time, and effort into your website when it was originally created, but you may not have paid much attention to it since. Keeping your website fresh in terms of aesthetics and content as well as up-to-date in terms of technology can help you maximize your business’s growth potential, get the jump on your competitors, and offer all those potential customers a hassle-free online experience. While regularly tweaking your website can keep it in good working order for years, sometimes a redesign is the way to go.
The Interplay of Site Quality and SEO Chops is Real
Quality is an elusive concept, and the interplay of your site’s overall quality and SEO is no exception. Distinguishing between those sites included in your link outreach that are forwarding your ranking, that are just hanging around and not doing much, or that are actually getting you penalized is an important but challenging matter. The goal is creating quality while bolstering the impact of your link building and reducing your overall risk, so let’s get going.
A Deep Dive into On-Page SEO
The best way to grow your website is with organic traffic from the big search engines out there. The only way to garner the necessary clicks, however, is to rank high enough in the first place. Unfortunately, finding a balance between the two is where too many websites spin out of control. The surest search engine optimization (SEO) strategies incorporate both on-site and off-site planning. While the building blocks of your off-site efforts are all about honing your backlink portfolio, which you likely have a fairly solid handle on, your on-site or on-page plans involve SEO elements that are more content-driven, including meta tags and keywords. This is the stuff that speaks both to your target audience and to the search engines, and it deserves closer attention.
Not Just Customers But Brand Advocates
Customers are great, but brand advocates are even better. When your customers are all in, they can be more influential than any old marketing strategy – completely free of charge. We naturally tend to put more stock in recommendations that come directly from people we know or are connected to, and customers who advocate on your behalf can be invaluable. For every customer advocate you have, you can bank on his or her social media connections, which can easily run to an audience of hundreds (or more, much more).
Do I Need Outbound Links for Blog Posts? #FAQuesday
As a form of online content, links provide a great value for users. Without links, a blog post is simply a dead end and may not be very helpful if people need more information than what is offered in the article. SEO industry experts often mention the importance of getting backlinks to your website, but should outbound links be totally left in the dust? What Are Outbound Links? First off, outbound links, also known as external links, are defined as links on a web page that link to pages on other websites. Examples of outbound links include press releases, industry-relative blog posts, and government regulations. While overloading your blog post with a large quantity of outbound links is not an effective digital marketing strategy, linking to other articles with high quality content can help provide additional sources for your audience. A big part of incorporating outbound links is understanding which … Continued
Why Do Websites Cost So Much? #FAQuesday
It is now 2016. Every business needs a website. The size and scope of that site varies by company, of course, but a presence on the web is a must to help grow and spread its reach. Web design professionals are frequently asked why websites are so expensive to design, create, and manage. The answer is fairly simple: there are a lot of moving parts at play. Let’s take a look at some of the forces behind building and maintaining a website. The Design Everyone holds their brand near and dear to their heart, and they should. Your brand is a representation of you, your employees, and the work you do. This needs to be incorporated into your site. In order to accomplish this, you need to sit down with a designer and go over what is important to you. The important pieces of your business need to be highlighted … Continued
Why Does My Business Website Need Images? #FAQuesday
Think about the last time you were scrolling through your Twitter feed and found something appealing enough to “like” or re-tweet: Were you drawn by your neighbor’s 140-character description of his new car or the photo of him grinning like a kid from behind the wheel? And that White Castle breakfast casserole you whipped up for the last family gathering — did you find the recipe in a dust-covered cookbook or through a link your friend posted with Facebook pictures of the finished dish? When it comes to cutting through the volumes of information Americans are inundated with every day, The Web Guys understands that few things are as powerful as an attention-grabbing image. Indeed, industry research shows that tweets with images are shared 150 percent more often than those with pure text, and photo-focused posts drive 87 percent of a typical Facebook page’s engagement. The stakes are even higher … Continued
Can a Seasonal Business ‘Turn Off’ Digital Marketing? #FAQuesday
At The Web Guys, we serve many businesses that provide seasonal services: snowmobile rentals, lawn care, watersport rentals, and even construction. These firms tend to bring in the majority of their income during specific times of the year, offsetting the months when they are simply hoping to break even. Over the years, a number of our clients have asked if we can deliver our digital marketing efforts during the months they are “in-season” and pause them during down times, hoping to save money when things are tight. While it might seem like something that can be turned on or off like a light switch, that isn’t the case, and trying to do it can actually negatively affect your online visibility in the long-run. Google Doesn’t Stop When Your Business Slows Down Digital marketing is a year-round activity because although your business may slow down during certain times of the year, Google is constantly working to provide … Continued
Finding the Positive in Negative Ranking Factors
When working to improve a website’s ranking on Google, we are often quick to assess what more successful competitors are doing (and for good reason). It can also be helpful to review factors that are keeping lower-ranked websites off the first page of the search engine results pages, and make sure to avoid them ourselves. In August, Moz released results of its 2015 Ranking Factors Survey, a biennial assessment of the current and future state of Google’s search algorithm by the best and brightest minds in the SEO and search marketing space. The report covers a broad spectrum of ranking factors — including the negatives. That’s what I want to explore today. Negative Ranking Factors The report mentions 17 negative ranking factors and rates each on a scale from 1 (no direct impact) to 10 (strong impact). Today we are going to look at the top five. 1. Total number … Continued
