The Art of the Facebook Ad

When posting an advertisement on Facebook it’s important to know who your target audience is, the ad should have attention grabbing pictures or phrases, and it should direct the Facebookers to your website.  Part of this ad development process is deciding what kind of ad to post on Facebook.  All Facebook ads fit into 2 basic categories: the “Right Hand Column” ad, and the “News Feed” ad.  Here are some examples and why they are helpful!

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What makes a website mobile friendly?

Whether we like it or not, Google has changed its algorithm to favor websites that are mobile friendly in the Google search engine.  Overnight, a website that wasn’t mobile friendly lost 22% of its traffic.  This is why it’s so important to make sure your website is up-to-date for the new search engine algorithm!  Here are some criteria from Google’s Webmaster Central Blog that qualify a website to be mobile friendly or not:

  • Avoids software that is not common on mobile devices, like Flash
  • Uses text that is readable without zooming
  • Sizes content to the screen so users don’t have to scroll horizontally or zoom
  • Places links far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped

 

(http://www.cnbc.com/id/102669423)

 

OMG!   .ORG or .NGO?  

The .ORG (or top-level domain)is typically what nonprofit organizations identify with for their websites.  However, this month the history of the philanthropic use of domains for websites, email communications, and online branding took an incredible leap forward that will impact the nonprofit sector for decades – the Public Interest Registry launched the new .NGO and .ONG domains. NGO stands for “Non-governmental Organization”.  ONG (Non-governmental organization) is for countries who use romance languages.

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Coping with Some of the Frustrations of SEO

When it comes to SEO, you of course want to always rank as high as you can.  With this, you may  also endure some frustrations.  In this blog, we will discuss how to cope with 5 of some of the most infuriating problems with SEO as described by Rand Fishkin on www.moz.com/blogs.

Frustrations:

  1. Following “best practices” lists and advice often does nothing for new and emerging sites
  2. Competition is ranking on manipulative or spammy links
  3. No understanding of why the rankings are going up and down
  4. Lack of control/predictability of SEO
  5. Hard to compete against big brands- Google favors

How to Deal:

  1. “Best practices” are created to support a website and keep problems from happening, unfortunately these do not increase rankings.
  2. Spammy and manipulative links and pop-ups are very annoying (as we all know) and can actually create loss.  Are you willing to spam people and potentially lose customers/website viewers?
  3. You, Google, competitors and searchers are constantly changing!  Be aware of this and be aware of your target audience.
  4. Understand that things happen that we can’t control and we can only be prepared.  Know your audience and anticipate multiple scenarios.
  5. (This is my favorite)  Choose to compete where other companies can’t and won’t.  Build on these things to grow as an organization.  Serve the market or customer that larger companies won’t and become your own brand!

 

(https://moz.com/blog/combat-5-infuriating-seo-problems-whiteboard-friday)