Marketing

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?