by Aurelien Parment | Apr 29, 2015 | Tips
Welcome to WordPress Wednesdays, a weekly series where we will be focusing on a specific aspect of WordPress that we think administrators should be aware of. Today, we address the proliferation of social media and answer the age old question: How do I get my website to be shared out there?
In the old days, business owners often said that “if you build it, they will come”. With the proliferation of social media and websites now numbering in the billions, simply building it is no longer enough. If you want to drive traffic to your website, you not only have to create valuable content, but also foster an interesting and engaging experience while keeping your visitors coming back for more.
One of the ways you keep people coming back for more is to empower them to share content that keeps them interested. When content is shared, it not only brings eyeballs back to your website but also gives you greater credibility. In this blog post, we’ll look at WordPress plugins that will give you a more robust website and rock you up the Alexa Rankings so you can look like the celebrity you’ve always wanted to be or reach those sales figures you’ve always imagined.
(more…)
by Aurelien Parment | Apr 14, 2015 | Small Business, Tips
With nearly 1 billion websites online and a limited human attention span, getting anyone to look at your website can be a formidable task. Over the past decade and a half, search engines have helped solve some of the problem, but the challenge of being discovered by customers or a random web surfer is still fairly difficult. You can certainly pay for an ad to be placed at the top of a search result, or use social media to get your name out there, but both can also be very tedious. One of the suggestions that many marketing professionals make is to employ search engine optimization (SEO) tactics to get noticed by search engines.
Getting your site SEO-ready involves a great deal of work but is very doable. In today’s blog post, we’ll showcase five different ways you can employ SEO on your website to help improve your search result ranking.
1. Publish Relevant Content
Quality content is the top driver for search engine discovery. When writing for your website it’s always important to write to the reader, not to the search engine that will discover you. When writing, identify a keyword for your content and repeat this phrase strategically throughout the piece of content. Additionally, use bold, italics, heading tags, and other forms of emphasis to highlight keyword phrases, but don’t overdo it; search engines will punish you. Best practice for keyword density is 3%.
(more…)
by Aurelien Parment | Apr 13, 2015 | Small Business, Tips
For many of us the season of spring means renewal and change. The transition of the calendar from a chilly winter to a warm spring means that it’s finally time to get up and get active, alongside the flora and fauna. Many of us will do our sweeping, vacuuming, cleaning, and purging of dust and files so that we can have a more stress-free year ahead.
Spring cleaning now also applies to our technology. Over the winter it is highly likely that our website and web hosting have become cluttered with files and media, thereby causing slowdown in website load times and bandwidth. Even though we know we ought to do it, we don’t because the tasks are daunting and will involve arduous tasks like file backup, deletion, archiving, and more.
With today’s blog post however, we’ve got you covered. In this post, we’ll cover 5 ways you can clean your website this spring, so you can spend the rest of the year doing what you do best – managing it.
(more…)
by Aurelien Parment | Apr 9, 2015 | Small Business, Tips
Building an online presence is now easier than ever with all the technologies available. With the right content management system and domain name, anyone can build a website to attract employment opportunities, build influence, or network with other Internet users.
This is called “personal branding”, which is the practice of individuals marketing themselves and their careers as if they were a brand, with the intention of self-packaging to attract opportunity. The idea was coined by motivational speaker and entrepreneur Napoleon Hill in his book Think and Grow Rich in 1937.
Creating a personal brand can be a great experience and net wonderful rewards and, with today’s technologies, can be done without much knowledge of coding, too. Check out some of our tips for building a personal brand that helps you stand out:
(more…)
by Aurelien Parment | Mar 31, 2015 | Small Business, Tips
Web development and the Internet have come an extremely long way. 20 years ago, a domain name went for 50 dollars a year. Since then, prices have fallen substantially – and in many cases, a domain name can be had for cents or for free.
While having a domain name is now easily obtainable, creating the website to go along with it is still a challenge. Features are more important than ever to create an all-encompassing website experience that will keep an audience coming back for more. Here’s what we think are the top 10 features of a successful modern website:
(more…)
by Aurelien Parment | Mar 26, 2015 | Small Business, Tips
If you run a website, then you’ve likely heard the news that, starting on April 21, Google will start using mobile effectiveness as a ranking signal. For Internet users who search for content using their smartphones, this means that websites optimized for mobile will rise to the top. If you have been running a website that does not have a mobile equivalent, then now is the time to look into adding a version that conforms to Google’s new algorithms. Otherwise, your site may be penalized with a lower ranking on SERPs.
Why Does Mobile Matter?
The story of mobile is one that keeps getting told over and over again, and each time it only becomes more amazing. Since the introduction of the Blackberry and iPhone which ushered us into the modern era of mobile phones, usage has been skyrocketing. In fact, global users of mobile devices, such as tablets, surpassed smartphones in 2014, which means the further into the future we go, the higher odds that someone visiting your website is on a mobile device.
(more…)
