If You’re Not Mobile Ready – You’re Unprepared

The prediction has been in the air for years. But now the stats show that people are searching on the their phones and growing speeds, with no sign of slowing down.  While 71% of businesses see the mobile value 78% of businesses are not mobile ready.  It’s a great advantage to  go mobile right now and stay ahead of your competition.  While many business owners cite cost as an issue most businesses have seen a decline in advertising expenses with the demise of yellow page phone books.  Recognizing a website is now the cornerstone of any and all advertising the shift is beginning.  While pay-per-click is still scary to most business owners investing in your organic website structure is building on solid ground.

Google News for Local Businesses

Recent changes make your Google+ page more helpful to your business.  Google used to display about 7 local businesses in its “maps” section on search results. That number will now be cut to 3 as Google gives more preference to its Google+ pages.  Google set guidelines to optimize the business pages.  Take advantage of it – give Google what it wants, don’t be the business that ignores helpful suggestions from Google.  Too busy to handle this yourself?  Inquire about my Webmaster Services.

Freshen Your Website

If your business is service related make the most of your images.  If your site is more than a few years old at that time keeping images small was the best strategy for user friendly load time on each page.  Now there are many ways to showcase your work with much larger sized images – still optimizing for download speed. There are many options to make your photos interactive (click to enlarge).  Read more.

It’s your website – your business online – grow it, make it shine – freshen it – make it work for you.

How to Get More Organic Traffic to Your Website

Looking for More Organic Traffic?

There has been so much about social media for years.  You don’t need it all — be selective in the platforms you devote time and resources toward.  Most of the major players are image oriented.  Facebook favors image and video posts/shares. Instagram, Pinterest, etc. are all about photos.  Google+ absorbed Google Maps a few years back.  When your Google Map appears next to your website in a search result get your photos in front of potential clients.

Local directories often appear at the top of a search result.  Make sure your listings are filled out and the information is accurate.  It doesn’t matter how people find your website – directories are a great connection to your site.

Ready for a video?  Use YouTube – it has become its own search engine.  Vimeo and others are great, but if you’re stretched for time YouTube is “the one”.  Your YouTube channel has lots of opportunities for SEO – make use of it – get out ahead of your competitors.How To Get More Organic Traffic

Guest blogging, forum commenting and press releases are great opportunities, but not simple activities.  These require the most time.
http://weblogs.about.com/od/bloggingfaqs/f/GuestBlogFAQ.htm

Get reviews.  Online reviews help drive your website.  When people are talking about your business search engines are taking note.

Email marketing is on the rise effectively.  If you haven’t already – build a mailing list.  Keep your business in front of your existing clients and engage with them via a newsletter, or a coupon/discount periodic email.  People are opening more of their emails on their phones and tablets.

Promote your website offline at networking events, on print materials, and giving presentations is a good way to increase branded searches.

About links – it doesn’t matter how much this has been spammed year after year – links to your website, from your website and within your website remain a solid organic strategy which plays into your organic website strength.

Add to your website – keep it fresh looking, adding new content and updating photos.  Avoid bounce rates – which means someone landed on your site and quickly left–this is one more thing“Google is watching” when determining which site to deliver in a search.

https://www.brendasimon.com/blog/why-should-i-redesign-my-website-2/

Why Should I Redesign My Website?

There comes a time when your website needs to be redesigned.  This usually involves multiple factors.  Code has changed substantially in the past 3 years which provides more options for your website, and  certainly better performance within browsers.  Leaner code means a faster download which is something Google favors in page ranking.  Websites benefit from a fresh view.  Look it over and discuss with your designer what elements can be improved upon, enhanced, things which are obsolete and how to optimize the space to lead the visitor through the website, while keeping navigation ease a priority.  A mobile presence is critical: whether a free-standing, side by side site or a responsive website (requiring a makeover of your old site) you can’t ignore mobile users.

website in need of a redesign

This site served well for its time, when monitors were smaller, dial-up connections were still around, images needed to be as small as possible, beveled buttons and gradients were trendy and 800 pixels was the maximum width the W3 consortium recommended.  Enter the fun.  Now browsers and monitors span much wider screens, large optimized images are easily handled by browsers and bandwidth. And the most fun of all, design has changed using a much broader palette of colors: beautiful bold, flat colors which let the design breathe and make the web page less cluttered while still offering the same key points, call to actions and copy.  Visual matters in marketing.   A website redesign will keep your website ahead of your competition whose sites may be tired and sagging.  A fresh looking website represents your business well to visitors.  It’s your first impression to potential clients – make the best of it.

Auto Shop Website Redesigned

 

Why Update Your Website?

Your website is the cornerstone of your marketing.  Keep presenting the fresh face of your business by updating photos. List new products or services; add new staff members photos and bios. Consider adding information pages or a “What’s New” page to show off your latest projects or products. If you’re ready to move beyond your cell phone camera or point and shoot camera give us a call for professional photography.  Time for a major website overhaul?  Redesign your website.

Email continues to shine as a marketing tool.  97% of cell phone users read email on their phone.  Let your website help you collect email addresses, if you’re using an email client (MailChimp, iContact, etc.) add their website widget to your desktop website, mobile site and blog.  Otherwise collect email addresses as you invoice, or have a signup sheet available.  When you’re ready to announce a special you’ll be ready.  I manage email newsletter campaigns as a service.

Social media is the choice many potential clients use to engage with businesses.  Every business needs a Facebook page and Google+ page. Photographers and artists make use of Pinterest, Flickr; home construction or remodeling try Houzz and Pinterest; auto lovers frequent Instagram.

When you’re ready move into video and make use of YouTube, Vimeo and more.  For help read about my Webmaster Services.

97% of cell phone users go online with their phones.  The single biggest impact for your internet presence is a mobile website.  Make it easy for mobile users to receive your message. Reach people on the platform they choose.

Read more  http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/mobile-technology-fact-sheet/

photo-editing-services

Building a Stronger Online Presence

Your website is the cornerstone of your marketing.  Keep presenting the fresh face of your business by updating photos. List new products or services; add new staff members photos and bios. Consider adding information pages or a “What’s New” page to show off your latest projects or products. If you’re ready to move beyond your cell phone camera or point and shoot camera give us a call for professional photography.  Time for a major website overhaul?  Redesign your website.

Email continues to shine as a marketing tool.  97% of cell phone users read email on their phone.  Let your website help you collect email addresses, if you’re using an email client (MailChimp, iContact, etc.) add their website widget to your desktop website, mobile site and blog.  Otherwise collect email addresses as you invoice, or have a signup sheet available.  When you’re ready to announce a special you’ll be ready.  I manage email newsletter campaigns as a service.

Social media is the choice many potential clients use to engage with businesses.  Every business needs a Facebook page and Google Business  page. Photographers and artists make use of Pinterest, Flickr; home construction or remodeling try Houzz and Pinterest; auto lovers frequent Instagram.   When you’re ready move into video and make use of YouTube, Vimeo and more.  For help read about my Webmaster Services.

97% of cell phone users go online with their phones.  The single biggest impact for your internet presence is a mobile website.  Make it easy for mobile users to receive your message.

Reach people on the platform they choose.

Read more    http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/mobile-technology-fact-sheet/

Embedded YouTube Video on iPad is Low Quality

You’ve just created your marketing video.  Uploading to YouTube is the best solution for adding to your website.  (You will embed your YouTube video.  YouTube provides the tools for doing this.)

YouTube displays on all platforms saving you the time and aggravation of converting your video to multiple formats, then coding your website to handle all the configurations.  It’s a simple solution.  Beyond that YouTube is owned by Google which strengthens your positioning for…search engines.  Add to that you can configure your YouTube account for keywords and general SEO.  All these advantages are significant.

You test your video, on Macs, PCs, cells and then..the iPad.  On every other device you get the typical YouTube box around your video, allowing the user to view from your website, or go to YouTube; change the quality settings up to the maximum resolution you chose when saving your video file.  Everything works as expected and seamlessly.  Every platform except the iPad.   While a box appears around it with what seem to be links, (just as you see on your PC) these are disabled.  You can make the video full screen to the disappointment of seeing it displayed as the lowest resolution.  Given the expectation of iPad’s video display this is shocking when you first discover it.  But there is no way around it.  Even if you code the embedded link with “video quality” to display 720 it will not improve the quality on the iPad.  Speculation is the Apple hates Google…Google hates Apple battle, but no way of confirming this.  Apple never wavered on allowing Flash, it’s doubtful this scenario will change, either.

The workaround?  Provide a direct link to your YouTube video below your video specifically for iPad users.  The issue is delivering your video with options of quality for the user.  I’ve since migrated to Vimeo. The screen capture below explains YouTube needs.

web disgner video

Getty Images Available

A couple of my clients received sobering letters from Getty images to pay for the right to use a photo on their website. One bill was $700.00, the other was $11,000.00. Each client was unaware of the ownership of the photos, which had both been using the images for about 10 years. Getty had calculated this into their “bill”– that’s how intuitive their information is. They have been aggressively pursuing anyone using their images.

The news today Getty is offering 35 million images for use is a stunning surprise. Read more. For those searching for archival photos this will be a big help. As a website owner: read the fine print. Be sure the image is allowed on a commercial website. While Getty is allowing images to be used on blogs and social media, don’t interpret this to mean “any and all uses”. Also be aware Getty can change their mind at any time, and once you are using their image, with their required code intact, they can easily track the image.

Lastly: Getty is not allowing “resizing” of the image, your layout will need to be adjusted to accommodate the image.

This might be the answer for that 1950’s farm tractor photo you’ve been trying to find!

Why should I redesign my website?

Thinking about making a change to your website? Your website is your best marketing tool. Its success relies on the amount of attention you put into it.  Search engines look at how often you update your website.

Websites need to evolve continually. The days of create-it-and-leave-it have passed.  Websites which are stagnant year after year fall behind.  With so many businesses actively attending their websites you don’t want to make the mistake of ignoring yours.

So much has changed in the past 2 years online.  As you surf the net you’ve seen wider websites, interactive slide shows and design changes. Consider a fresh redesign and updating your content.  If you like your current design it can be reworked using newer visual layouts and code.  The client below liked his color theme and banner-it now looks fresh.

Add a slide show, add a blog and write short articles, or update the photos on your website. Now we can use much bigger images.  Don’t ignore the value of your FAQs page-update the questions. Offer the information people need to know when they are ready to hire you. The current thinking is to make changes to your website at least every 2 months.

The internet is so visual don’t take a chance on your website looking out of date and losing business to a competitor. Keeping your website fresh and current sends the message your business is thriving.

Original design.

Original design.

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Website Slide Show, Gallery

Deciding how to show your products is part of creating your website. Trying to decide the difference and choosing can make your head spin.

A photographer needs his work to be prominent – with the page layout framing his work.  Keeping in mind your website’s performance is critical if you’re looking for organic search engine results. To that end page loading time is a factor. If the slide show or gallery is bloated the website’s performance suffers, and equally important – the user is annoyed.  Here we used a quick loading JavaScript show which allowed more images on the Home page.
JavaScript Slide Show
DouglasSimon.com

The Staging category needed the full breadth of the image. While this meant larger files, we reduced the number of images in the slide show to compensate.
staging photographyDouglasSimon.com

Portrait portrait (versus landscape), thus the difference.  Keep in mind the best display for your product.Executive PortraitsDouglasSimon.com

Presentation can be a fabulous supporting framework for your product.  In this case the whimsical art is beautifully showcased using a book which pages turn.
Book Slide Show, Turn Page
a-lil-whimsy.com

So many choices. When you find something you like send your web designer the link. Enjoy exploring!