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The requirements for a functional website design evolve with technology. For instance, a couple of years ago mobile access meant designing an alternate version of your site, either as a forward, clickable option or dot-mobi domain with wireless-friendly coding. Smartphones and fast wireless networks changed the game, giving mobile users rich content access, but it’s still in your best interest to use a layout that won’t get “crushed” by a small Blackberry or iPhone display.
Single pages with focused, streamlined content are more popular than ever. In many cases, these are really examples of landing pages and have a common agenda: to drive visitors to a specific desired action such as submitting their information. Where a conventional landing page may be an information-dense, single page exploration of a topic, a streamlined page gets right to the most desired action. From a functional web design perspective it’s a fine-tuned, specialized instrument, rather than the general purpose tool that is your main site.
Lots of companies try out Twitter but most of them don’t take full advantage of its social media marketing possibilities. The problems start when they don’t pay attention to the basics in everything from setup to posting. If you aren’t thorough from the start you’ll lose out on followers and general popularity. Start with the seven basics below and proceed from there:
After negotiating with federal officials over privacy concerns Google Street View has finally come to Canadian cities, starting with Toronto and other major cities. We’ve seen the Google truck pass by our Peterborough, Ontario office, however, so we know that’s just the beginning. This is as good a time as ever to remind Canadian companies that they should be making localized SEO part of their internet marketing plan.
Now that Bing has made a healthy bid for an enduring part of the search landscape SEO buzz has emphasized search behavior, because understanding it is what the Bing team hopes will make it a serious competitor for Google. Bing PR emphasizes that multiple searches and frequent use of the back button are still too common – people aren’t finding what they’re looking for.
Back in Part One of Our Twitter Strategy Piece we talked about what criteria we used to add people. This time around let’s talk about content. What goes on http://twitter.com/GILL_Media? (Did you know we also have a feed for our internet consultant business opportunity too? It’s http://twitter.com/gill_partner.) We usually post a couple of updates a day. Here’s what they tend to be:
Certified web business consultants receive full training,
People often look at keyword research as a simple numbers game, but nothing could be further from the truth. This is not to say that you should ignore raw search traffic – far from it – but that’s not going to give you the whole picture unless you take a close look at the search engine result pages (SERPs) that actually come up for those terms. Even then, it isn’t enough to just inspect the stats of the pages you see in the top ten. What kind of sites are they? Here are some examples of sites that affect SERPs with more than their sheer popularity:
One of the roots of a successful search engine optimization strategy is new content, filled with keywords that aren’t forced, links that fit keywords and most of all, original content that people are interested in reading. It may seem weird to say this after a bit of a hiatus (sorry – I’ve been very busy!) but consistency is the key. Nothing turns people off your site like a blog that hasn’t been updated in ages. People often start blogging with gusto but lose interest before they have a chance to build traffic. Given that Google has first hand experience with dead blogs in the form of thousands of moribund Blogspot accounts, you should bank on their algorithm being smart enough to penalize blogs that look abandoned.
