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Marketing trends, challenges, and opportunities are every bit as unpredictable as snow patterns. To stay ahead of the competition, businesses may need to adapt their website and digital marketing in response to changing circumstances

Google is prioritizing content that is “written by people, for people.” Why does the search engine giant feel compelled to make that clarification? Because a lot of businesses try to game the SEO system with content written by people (or AI) for search engine bots.

It’s not enough to have a marketing plan or marketing ideas. It’s not enough to be a member of the Chamber of Commerce or to have a business website. You’ve got to apply the plan, experiment with the ideas, attend the socials, update the business website – and you’ve got to do it consistently and with dedicated effort if you want to achieve your business health goals.

Posting to your blog every month won’t just make Google happy; it’ll make your site visitors happy. You have professional expertise that people are looking for.

Recently, a client confided in me concerning what I’m going to call advertising anxiety. "Advertising is addictive.", he said, with the haunted look of someone who has experienced first-hand the rollercoaster thrills of Facebook Ad-driven traffic stats.

Your sales team works hard but your salespeople don’t have to do it alone. Let’s take a look at how your small business website can function as one of the most valuable members of your sales team.

Clients frequently ask me to clarify the difference between Google Analytics and search engine optimization (SEO). It’s no wonder there’s confusion. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, search algorithms, and all these other digital marketing terms can all start to blur together. Let’s look at each of these separately to get a clear picture of how they’re different and how they work together.

A well-designed website provides instant credibility. Nearly 8 in 10 people surveyed by Stanford reported that web design influences their judgment of a business. More than 9 in 10 people in the same survey said that poor web design leads them to mistrust a business. Since 94% of website first impressions are design-related, it’s easy to see how your business website can impact your credibility as a business leader.

Once upon a time, linking to a PDF file was necessary to make web content printable, and you’re still likely to see PDFs on municipal websites, economic development organizations, and other enterprises known for large documentation libraries. PDFs come in handy for large user manuals that would be unmanageable on a website or for printable documents that can’t be handled digitally for one reason or another. However, too many business websites have become PDF wildernesses that make it difficult or impossible for site visitors to find the information they need.

Back in the old days, if you stuffed enough competitive keywords into any web page, you could win the SERP game. However, that resulted in a lot of low quality content, which in turn resulted in a lot of unhappy web surfers.

Mom and Ron went to a new restaurant they were dying to try, but they couldn’t get their hands on a printed menu. They asked the waitress, but not a single good old fashioned menu could be produced. All the poor waitress had to offer was a block of weird black and white squiggles and the promise of an even better menu on their phone.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a strategy for improving your website reach. In a nutshell, SEO makes it easier for your ideal market to find you when they’re searching online for related products or services. It really never ends, does it?

It really never ends, does it? You’ve got a website, but now you’ve got to do something with it. It’s not enough to “set it and forget it” when it comes to your business’s online presence.