Social Media Today!

by | Sep 14, 2015 | Digital Marketing, Social Media, Strategy, Websites

Oh, boy social media!  I could talk about this all day.  Social media is evolving and it’s evolving fast.  74% of the United States is using some sort of social media, and 89% of those users are men and women between the ages of 18-29, and a majority of those people are in college or college graduates.  As of September 2014:

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What makes a website mobile friendly?

by | Jun 22, 2015 | Content, Mobile, Strategy, Websites

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?  

by | Jun 15, 2015 | Content, Non-Profit Strategy, Strategy, Websites

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

by | Jun 9, 2015 | Digital Marketing, Mobile, Strategy, Websites

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)

 

Get Back on Top of Search Results: Go Mobile!

by | May 14, 2015 | Digital Marketing, Mobile, Strategy, Websites

Google has officially announced that people are doing more searching on their phones and mobile devices than desktops.  With this information Google is now evaluating websites by a new algorithm that boosts ranking to web pages that are mobile friendly for search results.  These mobile friendly pages are evaluated based on three basic criteria:

1. Text size-Font size should be large and easy to read from a mobile device.

2. Spacing between links-Adequate space provides easier access to links.

3. Mobile Viewport– How the website is displayed on the mobile device in terms of width and scaling.

Check to see if your website is mobile friendly with the Google Mobile-Friendly Test!  Click on the link below, enter your domain name and click Analyze.

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly