News and Blog

Mistakes to avoid making when building a site or app

Here are a few mistakes that can have the greatest impact on a project and yet can be easily avoided.
1. Asking the wrong questions during the RFP process
The goal of the RFP (Request for Proposal) process is to meet the agency, see how they work and what makes them special. It’s a two-sided process: not only do you (as a client) pick the agency, but the agency picks you as well. Be realistic with the proposal deadlines if you want them to do their homework, research your business, and come up with a detailed proposal. Don’t ask for it by tomorrow EOD just because you have other agencies in the pipeline.

There are a few types of questions we are always asked, and it’s not something that will make or break the project.

LinkedIn Wants to Be Google for Professionals

With its recent announcement that every piece of content (status updates, posts, etc.) published on the platform is now easily searchable and sortable via its mobile app, LinkedIn just pulled up a chair next to Google and Bing as a legitimately powerful search engine for professionals.
The most underutilized and misunderstood part of LinkedIn’s entire platform is its powerful internal search engine.

For example, you can use LinkedIn’s advanced search features to find hyper-targeted, hyper-specific lists of the exact clients, customers or investors you want to connect with.
You can refine your search results by job title, industry type, zip code and a bevy of other filters. You can even filter searches by where people went to college and play the alumni card!

Google to start penalizing sites that use pop-ups

Google is about to deal a small blow to some of the most annoying ads on mobile: pop-ups and interstitials. It’s not a stretch to argue that readers don’t like these ads. So Google is making a call that websites that use pop-ups and interstitials are worse search results and may rank them lower because of it.Google’s intention is to not just direct people to more informative results, but to results that work better for them — e.g., don’t annoy them with a pop-up — too. This is something Google has increasingly been doing with its search algorithm. Last year it began boosting the rank of "mobile friendly" websites, and in 2014, it began boosting the rank of sites with encryption as well.

Have you outgrown your Web Hosting?

Thinking that web hosting is a commodity like electricity or gas is a big mistake. The simple fact is that web hosting has a lot of moving parts, and they all need to work in harmony to deliver a high quality, uninterrupted service. Choosing a low cost host might seem like a rational choice but in fact it could be a false economy due to the harm that it can cause your business.

What are your website load times?
Load speed is important for a number of reasons. Primarily, because faster loading websites offer a better user experience than slow ones. Put simply, people hate waiting for a page to load.
Google understands this, and that's why it specifically state that site speed is one of the variables that it measures as part of its overall search algorithm.
Speeding up your website can get expensive and takes time. But one area where you can get fast results is the type of web hosting you choose.

7 Improvements to boost your E Commerce site

Improving conversion rates on an e-commerce site is not rocket science, but it is indeed a science! Here are 7 tips to improve your conversion rate and boost your E Commerce site.

Back Linking on a Budget

It’s no secret: If you want to rank high on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs), you need to make backlinking a priority.

The more backlinks you receive from authoritative websites, the more trust you’ll have in the eyes of Google, the more traffic it will send you and the more more high-quality leads you’ll generate for your business.
Here are six backlinking strategies for when you have a shoestring budget.

1. Become a columnist on an authority site.
While some experts will want you to believe guest blogging is dead, the truth is guest blogging is still a viable link building strategy, if it’s done correctly and consistently.

2. Collaborate with influencers in your field.
It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, what you’re selling or where you want to go with your online business, connecting and collaborating with influencers helps you go further, faster.

Essential elements for modern website design

Modern website design is a moving target, as designers and marketers constantly push to find better ways to display information and attract the attention of vistors.

Modern website users are impatient, they want to know if what they are looking for is on a site as fast as possible. Minimalistic design is a user-centric design that emphasizes giving the user only what they need without a lot of clutter.

Effective use of white space is a critical element of modern website deign. Space is an important tool in design because you can use it to control the flow of information to the viewer.

It has become standard to use large, high resolution images to help tell the story of your brand. Making sure the images are responsive is very important. The right image will catch the user's attention and draw them into the website.

Google outlines getting E commerce started with AMP

Google laid several tips on how AMP can help E commerce. Google stated. "AMP is a natural fit for e-commerce because AMP makes web pages fast, and fast pages help with purchase conversions."

Through out their "journey" Google highlights ready-to-use and proposed features of AMP that can be used to build a fast, beautiful shopping experience. AMP has a large selection of pre-built and easy-to-use components to enable interactive experiences.

Google provided examples of how to build out your e-commerce site using AMP. That means from the home page all the way down to the purchase phase, which technically will take the user off AMP and onto HTML or Progressive Web App (PWA), which would offer a better user experience for the user.

4 habits of the most successful SEOs

Few things change more than SEO. It seems as though every week, we read about a new algorithm update or a change that Google is testing.

That’s why it’s important that you keep up with the latest news in SEO. Otherwise, you’re going to miss important tidbits of information that will help you rank your clients’ sites.

Fortunately, there are plenty of channels online where you can get the info you need to keep up with all that’s happening in search engine optimization.

Good SEO professionals make it a habit to review the sites at the top of the search engines and figure out what got them there. They then take their hypotheses, test them and implement the winning techniques for clients.

Successful SEOs aren’t given to analysis paralysis. Instead, they find out what they need to do and put a plan in action that moves their clients’ websites up in the SERPs.

Google Expanding Test "Write Directly to Search" Feature

Google has confirmed that they are expanding the test of a “write directly to the search” results product first seen in January for presidential candidates and in the March time frame seen for small businesses. According to Google the test is expanding from “10’s of small businesses to thousands”.

The yet-to-be-named feature gives small businesses the ability to create cards with short messages in search results that are presented in a similar way to how Google presents AMP carousels. When the business’s name is searched for, the most recent messages from that business will appear on the front page of search results.

The messages/cards — which can feature text, links, pictures, and videos — will live on a Google server but can be shared or linked to by others. Apparently the posting of content is facilitated by a dedicated app that only select businesses have access to at this time.

logo_inverse

is loading the page...