Write Avenue Website Launch
Check out the website and logo of one of our newest clients, Write Avenue! Started by former Senior Producer of CNN and experienced journalist, Jill Cordova, Write Avenue brings some distinguished possibilities to clients in the areas of writing, resume writing, book proposals and professional copyright! Take a look at their new site here: http://writeavenue.com.
5 Keys to an Effective Website Atlanta Website Design
1. Visibility
2. Credibility
3. Usability
4. Conversion
5. Aesthetics
Now we all know that there are a lot of elements that go into an effective website. We are going to go over a few quick tips to help you better design your own website, or select a web designer that can adequately fulfill your needs to make your site a formidable business tool instead of a stagnant business card.
1. Visibility – Your website needs to be easily found by search engines and potential customers. This means your domain selection is vital. Make it something easy to remember and communicate to other people when giving them your web address. Do your keyword research before beginning and think about possibly using those keywords in your site address. Make sure that you apply keywords in your meta descriptions, h1 and h2 tags, as well as your actual url names in order to effectively appear in search engines. There are many tricks that a professional can show you to best optimize these pieces for top Google rankings.
2. Credibility – More importantly than getting new traffic to your website, is what they are going to see when they get there. You need to make sure that your site has authentic and correct information, a professional and clean design, and certainly, NO TYPOS! That is the quickest way for a customer to see that you don’t pay attention to detail.
3. Usability – Many people don’t think about this aspect when they get wrapped up in creating some beautiful website design but you must remember; there is a compromise between photo size and loading time. Be sure that when you are oohing and ahhing your audience that you are also taking into consideration how long it takes them to get there. People are less patient than ever and if your page is taking more than 5 seconds to load then you best believe they are getting their virtual fill at another internet pump.
4. Conversion – One of the most overlooked aspects of a website. If you don’t already know what “above the fold” is then you can just about bet this paragraph is pointed at you. “Above the fold” is the term for the section of website real estate that people land on without scrolling or clicking anywhere. That means it is the first viewed section of your landing page without any movement. Type in your URL and don’t touch anything. That is what we are talking about and you better make sure that you see a strong call to action, a reason to use you, and an easy way to contact you all right there in that space or you can certainly bank on failure. The exceptions to this are specific strategies where you are attempting to get people to view a particular page, or an instance such as a photographer where design and aesthetics are your selling points and therefore trump the typical call to action on the front page.
5. Aesthetics – Last but certainly not least, don’t forget about the aesthetics of your website. Some people say don’t judge a book by its cover but webpages are most certainly the largest exception. Your ability to properly place yourself in the mind of a consumer is often almost totally dependent upon what they see when they get to your site. Make sure that any photographs are professionally taken and be sure to “clean around the edges” of any graphics or images. Remember, a potential customer will pass judgment on you within the first 15 seconds so whether you think it’s fair or not… you better make it look good.
So whether you are tackling your own website design and search engine optimization or selecting a professional web designer to do it for you, make sure you ask yourself and them these questions before diving in. Remember, when you aren’t talking to potential customers, your website is… what is yours saying?
10 Steps to Increase your Internet Marketing for Free
The internet. Dun dun dun!!! Its been considered the most influential entity of our time. The internet has become the modern day equivalent of the wheel. Over 77% of Americans use it. You mean more people use the internet than have cars? Yes. It is the reason you are reading this blog and the reason we have unimaginable access to products and services across the country and world. What is the internet doing for your business? You mean to tell me that you only have limited exposure on the most influential system in the modern world? Well, have no fear. We have some easy tips that will get people running to you in no time and best of all… the advice and tips are free!
1. Content – add content and writing to your site that is in TEXT format. Do NOT add it in picture format. Google and the other major search engines don’t pick up writing that is formatted as a picture. Use keywords that relate to your products, business and services but do so in a natural way. Search engine spiders get smarter and smarter by the minute so don’t just spam the same phrase over and over again. Just provide good strong descriptions of what you do and more importantly, who you do it for.
2. Descriptions – the first thing search engines jump on is your header and description tags so make absolutely sure that these contain relevant information to what you are trying to promote. Even better, focus particular pages to certain words you are trying to have search engines pick up. The descriptions should NEVER be the same across multiple pages and remember, this will be the first thing searchers see so make it good!
3. Domain name – one of the biggest mistakes many people make is coming up with a site name that is hard to spell, understand, remember or type. The age old technique of Keeping It Simple Silly is key to domain name selection. If what you want is not available, then try to find something creative yet simple that makes it easy for people to remember, understand and reproduce in their browser bar. Keep in mind that you will be repeating this website name to people about a million times so if its hard for you to explain once, then you should consider a change.
4. Directory Listings – One of the most overlooked opportunities for small businesses is free directory listings, there are tons of them out there but the first ones you should hit are the Google directory, Yahoo! Local listing and the yellow pages. Just by hitting these three your business will jump up in internet searches exponentially
5. Site map – creating a site map can make your website much easier to navigate and it looks mighty tasty to search engine spiders. Create a site map for your website and make sure to submit it to Google, Yahoo and Bing. Check out http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ for help on making one.
6. Social Media – a must have for every small business. Your business at the very least should be listed with content on at least the four major networks of Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Digg. MySpace is a dead zone so if you thought you were clever and had that one covered… well I’m just gonna have to burst your bubble. Also, getting friends and family to interact consistently with your pages helps exposure out a LOT!
7. Web Publications – this is a great way to send traffic to your website. Write a few posts about what your company does, your products, or just some helpful information that would assist people in or looking into your industry. Submit these articles to anybody you can find that displays news or information in your area, or in your field. Make sure you include links to useful sources and of course, don’t forget your own website.
8. Blogging – to some this seems like a forbidden area full of scary time consuming writing and unknown alien technology. Its not that scary or time consuming. Every couple of weeks just write up a few paragraphs about interesting content or even other articles you’ve read. Post it up and Bam! You are ready to rock.
9. Stamping – stamping is our term for branding your own branding. You should stamp your website url and relative social media sites on everything you can possibly think of. Your email, business cards, brochures, banners, flyers, advertisements and everything in between should have your internet sites on every single one of them. Your website is where people will sniff you out the most, while in the comfort of their own homes, so make sure they know how to find you.
10. YouTube – This mammoth of the internet jungle now receives more than two billion hits a day. That’s a lot of viewers and there is no reason why your business can’t cash in on this popular site right now. You can literally just take video of yourself or your personnel giving advice in your particular field and post it up only to watch the views come rolling in. Just make sure you know what you’re talking about and this will become one of your favorite and most profitable expansions of your internet marketing.
As you can see, Internet Marketing really isn’t all that hard to start. Granted we could go on for hours about how to fine tune many of these elements but chances are this should give you a very strong start into making your business more visible on the internet.
Sources:
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats2.htm
http://www.inc.com/news/articles/2010/05/youtube-celebrates-fifth-birthday.html
www.x8marketing.com
