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Traffic Tuesdays

 
Published by: Ladezign.com on 05-02-2014
In order to evaluate the account there are several reports that will be needed to gauge the account. To download these reports we’ve outlined each step below.
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Published by: Ladezign.com on 04-08-2014

When is a stock in freefall like a poorly planned website promotion strategy?

The last few weeks have seen a frightening reality in the stock market as the once high flying cloud-based talent management software company CSOD has seen its stock price plummet from over $61 to under $40 this week. And if you look at the news on the stock you simply see stock pundits and news agencies just reporting on the drop in the price after the fact but without any intelligence or guidance behind their words.

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Published by: Judy Cobb on 11-05-2013

For most businesses, websites have become an integral part of their marketing, branding and sales results. It is no longer enough simply to have a website. For most businesses, it must provide timely and compelling information about the business, the product(s) and other key aspects of the business.


The search algorithms that Google and other search engines use continually evolve. A website must keep pace and reflect those changes in the priorities of the search engines. Beyond that, websites quickly become stale and require ongoing attention to remain "fresh." Otherwise, visitors quickly move from your website to another. 

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Published by: Judy Cobb on 10-29-2013

Have you looked at your website lately? Do you look at it every day or just now and then? And when you look at it, what do you see?

 

Websites get to be a lot like old friends. After awhile, they are so familiar that we see what we expect to see. We assume that what was compelling when the website went live continues to have the same competitive advantage over weeks, months and years.

 

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Published by: Judy Cobb on 10-22-2013

Telling the story of your business on your website provides you with several advantages.

 
1.    Your story engages people who are looking for your product or service in ways a fact-based website cannot.

2.    A website that is built around your story appeals to people with the demographic characteristics of your customers.
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Published by: Judy Cobb on 10-08-2013
What is the difference between telling your business story on your website and other fact-based approaches to website content?
 
1.  It is much easier for people to relate to, understand and remember a story because all the facts fit together and have a context. People retain much more when they read information as part of a story.
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Published by: Judy Cobb on 10-01-2013

Writing for the internet requires that text be short and pithy. Website visitors are looking for specific information and want to be able to grasp essential information quickly, or they move on to another website.

 

As a result, many websites feature lots of quick facts, hoping that one or more of the facts is what a visitor is looking for. That content strategy makes sense on the surface, but often proves to be short sighted and limiting.

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Published by: Judy Cobb on 09-24-2013

Recent posts have talked about the role of requirements when you create, redesign or generally improve a website. This week, I saw an excellent example of what can happen when a business owner concentrates so hard on new website features that successful features from the old site get lost in the shuffle.

 

The business sells one-of-a-kind collectibles. Once a month, they have a showroom sale and frequently run high-end estate sales. Their old website was kind of a workhorse. It looked fine, but had no special graphics or design. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Judy Cobb on 09-17-2013

Earlier posts have talked about your website's business requirements and user requirements. Functional requirements are the third category of requirements necessary for your website.

 

Functional requirements define how you want your website to work. Like the other types of requirements, a functional requirement must be so specific that someone reviewing your website can identify specifically where and how that requirement is met.

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Published by: Judy Cobb on 09-10-2013

Last week's post talked about the business requirements for your website. Those requirements include a description of the "typical" customer (or customers) that you want to visit and to use your website.  

 

Before going too far in your website design and development, step back and list the requirements these customers (or users) will have when they land on your website. In general, your "users" have several key requirements.

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Published by: Judy Cobb on 09-03-2013

Once you have decided what you expect from your website-- general purpose, website business goals, visitors, sales, and results--you are ready to write specific business requirements. Your website developer and programmer will use these requirements to design your website and program its features and functions.


Later, you will define user requirements and the functional requirements for your website. Your business requirements drive the features and functions of your website. Begin with them.

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Published by: Judy Cobb on 08-27-2013

A requirement defines--in specific and measurable terms--what you expect your website to do. If the requirement is well written, someone can test the website and identify where and how the website meets that requirement. There is no guessing.

 

Any serious look at your current website or a website you are developing should begin with the definition of requirements. They provide you with a critical tool for spelling out your expectations for the website. 

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Published by: Judy Cobb on 08-20-2013

The Web is full of commercial websites. Many fail to deliver the results that business owner wants or expects. Often that is because the business owner or person directing web development failed to provide a clearly written and complete description of what they expected on their website.


They needed a set of requirements the communicated exactly what business goals the website was required to meet, who they wanted to draw to the website and what they wanted guests to do once they landed on the site.


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Published by: Judy Cobb on 08-13-2013
Requirements are a key factor in determining how well a website achieves your business objectives. Simply put, requirements describe how a website works and what content and features should appear there.
 
Requirements identify, in tangible terms, the specific content, functions and capabilities a website must have. In short, a requirement defines what your website looks like and how it works.
 
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Published by: Judy Cobb on 08-06-2013
Any business has a body of specialized or technical knowledge. A part of that industry-and product-specific information can be valuable to your customers or clients when they make a buying decision.
 
These days, many people buying a major product or service search widely on the Internet for information that will help them make a good decision. A website that offers this information appears in website searches, attracts potential customers and increases the chance that the person will buy from you.
 
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Published by: Jason Ciment on 08-02-2013

Here are the types of link errors that are characteristically listed in your Google Webmaster account (e.g. http://www.google.com/webmaster):

  1. Pages you formerly had on your site which no longer exist
  2. Pages you formerly had which have been renamed (but the old page names may exist on other sites)
  3. Links (from other sites) to pages on your site which never existed but the links are incorrect or have typos

Read on to see how to get rid of them.

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Published by: Judy Cobb on 07-30-2013
A business website should always be viewed as a work in progress. Retail businesses would not put up one display or window dressing and leave it for months or years. Your website is a similar situation. Search engines notice new content and factor that into the search engine optimization (SEO) for your website. Without fresh content, websites become stale quickly as new sites appear on the Web and your competitors update their sites.
 
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Published by: Judy Cobb on 07-23-2013
A business website should always provide visitors with information that documents your business successes. Without this information, how can potential customers know the value of the products and/or services your business provides? And, more important, how can they see the benefit of doing business with you instead of all your competitors on the Web?
 
This information about your successes can include testimonials, descriptions of various customer solutions and case studies.
 
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Published by: Judy Cobb on 07-16-2013
A testimonial briefly describes someone's successful experience with your product or service. Testimonials are valuable assets on your website or blog because most people shopping for a product or service want to know that others have had a good experience doing business with you.  
 
Here are some tips for writing testimonials that will get results.
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Published by: Judy Cobb on 07-09-2013
Blogs build credibility and a following over time. One useful or interesting blog post may draw people back a second time. It requires more than one effective post to build a following.
 
The key to a successful blog is maintaining a certain quality and consistency over time. If you regularly post to your blog, you will develop a style, voice and approach that make each post easier and faster to write. When you are getting started, however, each post may present you with unique challenges in identifying content and writing about your chosen topic.  
 
Here are some suggestions that can get you started with a useful and interesting post.
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Published by: Judy Cobb on 07-02-2013
Blogs are a powerful marketing tool if used well. Regular blogs can offer useful information, entertain or combine those two qualities. If done well, a blog can provide new content that draws people to your website and gets them to return.
 
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Published by: Judy Cobb on 06-25-2013
This week, a company that runs high-end estate sales started a raffle for an Andy Warhol print. You enter the raffle one of three ways: "Like" them on Facebook, write a review on Yelp or follow them on Twitter. Increase your chances of winning by doing all three.

What are the advantages of the three marketing choices this company has made? Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Judy Cobb on 06-18-2013
Marketing your product or service on the Internet is no longer a simple matter of having an effective website that is a top "hit" in web searches. If it ever was that simple!
 
The Internet and other electronic communication offer you a wide array of marketing tools via social networking websites and email. Each of these tools can build your presence online. If used effectively, they can drive visitors to your website, independent of a Web search.
 
In an ideal situation, you will have a strategy for using each of these tools to build your business's presence online.
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Published by: Judy Cobb on 06-11-2013
Last week's blog talked about how to incorporate your customer's viewpoint into your blogs via case studies, answers to questions, testimonials and guest blogs. This week's blog will suggest ways to blog about your industry, business, products and services with the customer's viewpoint in mind. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Judy Cobb on 06-04-2013
Regular blog postings demonstrate that your website reflects a real understanding of your customers and your business. Two recurring topics in your blog will go a long way toward building your credibility and your online business: 
 
1. Blogs that reflect the customers' questions, decisions and solutions.
2. Blogs that provide current and timely information about your industry, business and products.
 
This week's blog will chat about how to take a customer-oriented view in your blog.
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Published by: Judy Cobb on 05-14-2013
Your company's brand is the image and identity you create that distinguishes your business from your competitors in the minds of your customers. A powerful brand can be more valuable to a company than any other asset. A successful brand, targeted at the right customer base, can assure successful sales results for many years. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Judy Cobb on 05-07-2013
One of the most powerful features of the Internet is the immediacy and timeliness of information posted there. Visitors expect to find current information on their first visit to your website and to find something new or fresh when they revisit it.
 
Having a regular blog allows you to maintain the currency of your website while adding content that can improve the search engine optimization (SEO) and build a following of returning visitors. When beginning a blog or considering how to continue with an existing blog, here are ideas that will allow you to create a framework that will improve the success of your blog.
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Published by: Judy Cobb on 04-30-2013
A blog on your website can build your website's credibility and your business's relationships with visitors to your website. A carefully written blog can also improve your website's search engine optimization (SEO) by incorporating keywords currently being used in online searches and by creating opportunities for backlinks with other websites.
 
One strategy that can build blog followers is writing about relevant and timely issues. Writing about frequently asked questions in your business or industry is one important source of topics that will draw readers to your blog.
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Published by: Judy Cobb on 04-23-2013
Blogs allow you to keep the content of your website fresh and to continually improve your website's search engine optimization (SEO) by incorporating key words currently being used in online searches. Blogs also encourage people who are interested in what you are writing or looking for specific information to visit and stay on your website. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Judy Cobb on 04-16-2013
A blog is an informational website that features regular updates (posts) and comments. Many blogs not only include the topics written by the blog's owner but also have comments and questions from people who read the blog or from guests who have been invited to write one or more postings. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Judy Cobb on 04-09-2013
The Internet is full of blogs these days: humorous blogs, political blogs, personal blogs dog walking blogs, environmental blogs, silly blogs and blogs on almost anything you can think of. And, of course, many business websites feature blogs of various kinds. The presence of so many blogs raises the question of how your business website can benefit from having a blog. Blogs provide you with several key benefits. A good blog can... Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Judy Cobb on 03-26-2013
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) relies on two strategies for building traffic to a website. Most people are familiar with the first strategy: Web builders identify the terms known as keywords that are most frequently used when people look for a business or service and use those terms on a website to draw traffic. Traffic that arrives via those searches is said to come organically from search engines. The second SEO strategy involves backlinks. Backlinks are links that lead to your website from other websites. The major search engines not only rank websites using the number of visits to a website produced by organic searches. They also factor in the number of links to your website from other websites and visits to your website produced by people who navigate there by clicking a link from another site. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Judy Cobb on 03-12-2013
The content of your website and the way you choose to write that content anchors your website design and graphic elements. More importantly, it tells your "story" to your visitors and customers. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Judy Cobb on 03-05-2013
This week's New York Times included a short article about Marcus Sheridan, a man whose business (installing in-ground fiberglass pools) took a dive in the face of canceled contracts and declining business in the recent economic crisis. Faced with a failing business, Sheridan decided to take a novel approach to his website content: He began to answer his customers' questions, even the tough ones like cost and the names of his competitors. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Judy Cobb on 02-26-2013
How many times have you visited a website, only to give up after a few minutes because the text did not quickly give you the information you were looking for? Or perhaps you left before you even started reading because the text was so long and dense. As with every type of writing, text written for the web has its own style and requirements. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 02-05-2013
Traditionally, for a business to effectively sell a service or acquire leads using a professional website, it has to ensure that it clearly and easily allows you (the potential client) to get in contact with the business. This is usually done through a �contact� page that either contains contact information, such as an e-mail address and/or phone number, or an on-page contact form for you to fill out. vCita is a widget website addition that revolutionizes this concept in order to better serve the customer browsing your website, as well as more effectively and easily make them want to contact your business. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: David Nordella on 01-31-2013
�Your personal brand is a promise to your clients...a promise of quality, consistency, competency, and reliability." Jason Hartman, quoted on Kristie Rimmele�s: Branding on the Net. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Judy Cobb on 01-29-2013
It's the end of January, and the Chinese New Year is almost here. That means we are probably out of time for New Year's resolutions and new beginnings. Before letting the 2013 move further on, here's a resolution for your website: Avoid the BLOBS! Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Judy Cobb on 01-22-2013
The most critical New Year's review of your website focuses on the business results produced by your website. Businesses today require a website for simple business visibility and credibility. However, most business professionals expect their website to produce tangible business results through direct Internet purchases, inquiries or other contacts. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Judy Cobb on 01-15-2013
The New Year is a good time to assure that your website continues to provide you with the visibility and results that you need for your business. Trends move quickly on the Internet. Current events, new technologies, new websites and other factors can quickly change web search patterns; this can reduce the number of times web searches return the link to your site. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Judy Cobb on 01-08-2013
A successful website depends on a clear presentation of your product or service, an organization that makes it easy for visitors to find what they are looking for and associated information that establishes your business's credibility. The beginning of a new year is a good time to review your expectations for your website and decide whether it is achieving the results you expect, both in terms of the number of "hits" it receives and the business it generates. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Judy Cobb on 12-18-2012
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) increases the ranking of a website in a web search by incorporating the most commonly used search terms and images into the text and design of the website. Building a website that takes advantage of SEO can assure that you have a reliable stream of visitors to your site. But what happens over time, as news and interests evolve? Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Judy Cobb on 12-11-2012
Once you decide to have a blog on your business website, where do you begin? The first blog is likely to be easy: A short introduction to the blog and a description of what you intend to accomplish. But then what? It is a good idea to have a clear statement of the goal of the blog and a strategy for achieving it. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Judy Cobb on 12-04-2012
A blog is a type of website or web page that promotes discussion of a specific topic or information sharing. Many blogs found on the Internet are intended as personal journals or opportunities to promote a particular worldview or opinion. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Judy Cobb on 11-28-2012
Simply put, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) allows you to draw traffic to your website by using terms (known as keywords) on your website that are most frequently used in online searches for your industry, products or services. Used well, SEO causes your website to be among the first "hits" on search engine results pages (SERPs). Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Lisa Anderson on 11-27-2012
Maintaining your social networks is vital in keeping healthy business relationships and client satisfaction, which ultimately helps run a more efficient and successful business. There are countless ways to leverage social networks and social media to achieve these objectives. Lisa Anderson has 20 years of experience consulting businesses to improve their overall performance. She shares with us her top eight keys to success (from her ebook, Leveraging Social Networks to Drive Business Results): Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Judy Cobb on 11-21-2012
Photographs, used intuitively, can improve the look and appeal of your website by adding impact and power. They can also strengthen the immediate impression visitors have of your website and improve the chance that visitors remain there instead of quickly navigating away. Appropriate photographs can also increase the SEO results for your website. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Judy Cobb on 11-06-2012
Every business owner not only decides which products or services to sell but also identifies the target market for those products or services: the group of people expected to buy the product or service. Each decision you have made about the physical elements of your business--location, floor space, office areas, displays and furniture--have all been made to appeal to your target market. Likewise, your advertising and marketing decisions have reflected the viewing, reading, social media and communication habits of the target market your business aims at. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Judy Cobb on 10-30-2012
In today's online business environment, your customers often rely on your website rather than your local community and reputation when they decide to buy your product or service. Your website must, therefore, establish your credibility as a reliable business that offers quality products or services. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Judy Cobb on 10-23-2012
You know far more about your story and your business than anyone else, so it is hard to resist putting everything you know on your home page. Then you also have all the amazing options about what you can put on your web page to make it exciting, interesting and engaging: graphics, photos, videos, text, animation, flashing lights, sounds, and colors anywhere. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Judy Cobb on 10-16-2012
A visitor on your website will take about 10 seconds to decide whether to stay or to click away to another website. In that first few seconds, your visitors must quickly find the words or ideas that they are looking for or their web search will continue to other sites. One key to winning this go/stay decision is assuring that your site uses words and terminology that your visitors recognize and are looking for. Sounds simple, but does your website do that? Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Dave Berkus on 09-25-2012
Here's a guest post from a friend and colleague of LADezign's, Dave Berkus. Using old email lists for the first time is like eating really stale doughnuts. The taste is pretty bad, and the side effects could be disastrous. Email companies like Constant Contact, MailChimp and many others all have strict rules they follow to avoid being caught in spam hell, with their servers blacklisted and worse. Each has automated software watching over your uploads of new lists. And each will block the use of any list they detect may be suspicious. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 05-22-2012
Without a doubt, one of the greatest headaches for online retailers is shopping cart abandonment. Generating Traffic to your site can only go so far, and many retailers struggle to understand the cause of lost revenue when their customers fail to pull the trigger on a purchase. While it will always be an unpleasant part of running an online company, shopping cart abandonment can also be a helpful tool for understanding customer trends and creating new strategies for increased revenue. Here are 5 tips that will help you find and eradicate the causes of shopping cart abandonment. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 04-10-2012
What are some specific, technical factors that influence traffic and ultimately ranking and visibility of your company? That is certainly a question that most of my Los Angeles website design clients when we begin the first stages of their SEO campaigns. Although the Google algorithm is always changing, there are indeed a handful of terms it is important to know and understand in order to generate organic and lasting traffic and SERP rankings. For this Traffic Tuesday, we'll briefly go over nine of them: Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 04-03-2012
Do you have a quick and easy means of seeing who links to your company website or blog? While various social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others send alerts when you receive a mention, share, or retweet, it's the placement of those backlinks that really count when it comes to pushing traffic so why shouldn't you have a way to view them? With Open Site Explorer, you can view the basic, important data of sites that lead back to you. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 03-27-2012
Keyword research can help you gauge how users will respond to terms relevant to what you do and offer, but how do you anticipate their reaction to your landing page? The amount of time people spend on your home and inner pages is, after all, an important factor in the success of your SEO campaign. Long-term and legitimate rankings come from users' stopping to smell the roses rather than getting bored or frustrated and bouncing. While their individual preferences might seem time-consuming and impractical to try and predict, FiveSecondTest reveals it can happen a lot faster and quicker than you think. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 03-20-2012
How do you structure your online marketing campaign to effectively and specifically target your prospective clients? Gauging the frequency with which your first and second tier keywords are used is only one step. The next step in successful, organic search engine optimization is determining how and where users are discussing and seeking out your product or service. This element of keyword research can prove to be very time-consuming, but fortunately apps like Social Mention have come along to make the process a little speedier. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 03-13-2012
What steps have you taken to reduce the bounce rate of your company website? That is, when a user visits your home or any of your inner pages, are there any elements (or lack thereof) that might cause them to quickly lose interest, leave, and click through to one of your competitors? Well, if they are greeted with pages that are slow to load, or fail to load entirely, that will become a moot point as most users will leave rather than wait to even have a look around. Aside from reliable web hosting, you need an easy way to keep tabs on any problem pages, and Pingdom is a handy resource for doing just that. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 03-06-2012
So you've assembled some thoughtfully written original content, how do you protect it from plagiarism? Or how do make certain that your article writing services or bloggers are delivering content that has not been poached from somewhere else? My Los Angeles website design blog often discusses the importance of publishing authentic and eye-catching writing on your blog and website and why it is an important element of your search engine optimization campaign, yet we haven't really touched on the fact that once content hits the internet, a great deal of it only stays unique for five minutes. That is, web plagiarism is more of a problem than many blog writers and business owners realize and it is important to safeguard against its ruining your reputation with both SERP's and prospective clients. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 02-28-2012
So my images are tagged, categorized, and optimized, now what? While it's helpful to your search engine optimization campaign to label images with your keywords, there are some additional ways to connect them to your website and drive even more traffic back to you. You see, whenever your images come up in a Google Image search for related terms and gets clicked on (hence the importance of keywords in descriptions) it takes the user to your site. Also, images can not only give your SEO a nice boost, they catch user attention by putting a vibrant, tangible, face on your brand. Here's some additional tips to make your images SERP-friendly. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 02-14-2012
What are the best keywords you can be targeting in your SEO campaign? This is common question among my newer Los Angeles website design and as they quickly learn, that's like asking what is the best chess move? That is, the answer is relative to the circumstances and a number of other factors like the service or product you offer, your geographical location and how far your business will extend beyond it, and who your audience is. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 02-07-2012
So you've set up a Twitter account for your business, now what? You've probably noticed that most company websites you'll visit have their Twitter widgets on prominent display, but this alone is not enough to attract and retain followers and put this platform to productive use for your online visibility. The micro-blogging capabilities of Twitter have been available since 2005, and there are still many business entities and individuals (my Los Angeles website design clients included) that are only now discovering what it can do. Utilizing social media, especially that which is free like Twitter, can be a very effective traffic-boosting tool, but you have to be aware of some basic guidelines. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 01-31-2012
How often have you posted content that you knew was gold, but that garnered only a handful of Likes, comments, and shares? Oftentimes, this outcome has less to do with the relevance or value of the content itself than it does when you decided to put it out there. This is why it is important to spend some time determining on what times and days of the week are the maximum numbers of users from your targeted audience going to be online. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 01-24-2012
Aside from your existing SEO efforts, what are you doing to push traffic when you're offline? While there are a countless varieties of programs, applications, analytical tracking sites, and software, I think we can all agree that nothing will ever replace the experience of face-to-face meetups and exchanges. Even with the instantaneous, one-click access we have to one another in the Google world, I make a point of attending regular business networking meetings because I always come away with valuable new contacts, ideas to implement in my Los Angeles website design company, and lots of those ever desirable Likes, Adds, and Shares. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 01-17-2012
How resourceful are your methods of reaching out to new users? Employing interactive online marketing that engages prospective customers by showing not only what you do but why you're good often reveals that your targeted audience is even bigger than you think. We pointed out guest blogging and replying to comments as a way of communicating with your users and writing pillar posts as a means of demonstrating your brand's knowledge and value, and now we'll get into a means of bringing these benefits together: participating in Question and Answer sites. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 01-10-2012
Which guidelines do you use when composing your description meta tags? Meta tags are significant because they affect what users will instantly see when they view your listing on SERP's; this bit of text is known as a "snippet," and optimizing it through the information you include can not only boost your rankings but catch the attention of your prospective customers. Snippets can be especially helpful for improving rankings for specific keywords, which can work in your favor if your immediate competitors are highly noteworthy and established brands, and such small steps pave the way for big click-through and conversion rates. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 01-03-2012
What have you resolved to do in 2012 to push more traffic to your company�s website? As we have noted about search engine optimization, there is no single, magic wand maneuver that gets you to number one on the SERP�s overnight, but rather a multitude of smaller link-building tactics that when used patiently and strategically, can deliver relevant traffic and organic rankings that stick. However, just as the algorithm of Google and other search engines changes to filter results more accurately, the impact of these individual tactics can fluctuate, as a recent study by Pew Internet and American Life Foundation shows us. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 12-13-2011
What steps have you taken to maximize traffic from the mobile web? A lot of bloggers and WordPress-based small business owners don't necessarily give thought to how their website is going to look when viewed on a smartphone�until they see it for themselves and realize what a difficult browsing experience their mobile-based users will have to contend with. This can be an alarming revelation in terms of your quest to drive hits and build traffic because of the potentially large numbers of visitors who may have tried to reach you via iPhone and bounced from your site when it was unreadable. Yet, there's no reason this problem can't be fixed easily and for free with WP Touch. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 12-06-2011
Supplying your company blog with fresh and engaging content that drives traffic to your site doesn't always require putting lots of time and research into a lengthy post. In fact, this Traffic Tuesday's tip is not only quick, simple, and free, it can even serve to do a little research your users for you. I'm referring, of course, to blog polls, and specifically to Wordpress's handy plugin that lets you create and post them easily. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 11-29-2011
Feel like you�re running on empty for fresh ideas for your blog posts? Don�t panic when you can set aside a little extra time to research and write a quality pillar post. The effort can be worth it when you begin attracting new readers and prospects as well as bringing you lasting search engine traffic. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 11-15-2011
Wouldn't it be great if you could publish and share documents as easily as you can a video on your Youtube channel? Now, there is an increasingly popular, and SEOMoz-endorsed, social reading and publishing site called Scribd that allows you to do just this. Described as "the YouTube for documents," Scribd allows you to upload files in a variety of formats, optimize them for SEO just as you would a video, and share them directly or through embeddable links. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 11-08-2011
Are you utilizing the latest social media tool to connect to Google and your online audience? For a relatively new social media platform, Google Plus has expanded rapidly and gained momentum and popularity tantamount to Facebook and Twitter in just a few months. Much like these established social networking sites, Google Plus is now encouraging not only individual users but also businesses to join and create pages. Setting up a Google Plus page for your business is free, easy, and beneficial for building a community around your brand and driving traffic to your site. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 11-01-2011
Do You Know How Powerful Videos Can Be for Your Business Reputation and SEO Rankings Too? The key to building a steady, organic flow of traffic to your company website is knowing how to optimize different types of content whether it�s an image, a local listing, a Facebook page, or in the case of this Traffic Tuesday, a Youtube video. Perhaps you�ve dismissed the necessity of having a Youtube channel associated with your business because you are skeptical that that many users would have an interest in watching a video about what you do and offer. However, a thoughtfully planned and engaging video that has been optimized and published to drive traffic can have a very positive effect on your SEO campaign and your online visibility to users. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 10-25-2011
How accessible are you to your prospective customers through your company website blog? As I�ve mentioned before, having a great product or service behind your online presence is nothing if you don�t offer users the incentive to learn more about it and make the move to make a purchase or set a transaction in motion. Many a Traffic Tuesday has noted that generating successful and lasting web traffic does not just boil down to algorithms and formulae, but to using your site to reach out to individual people in the related community so they know you�re out there and active. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 10-11-2011
As we�ve pointed out in numerous previous Traffic Tuesdays, many of the tricks to driving more traffic to your company�s website won�t cost you a cent or take more than a few minutes of your time each week. A great example of such a technique, that will not only get you accurately indexed by search engines but will also appeal to your visitors, is internal linking. Internal linking, if you are not familiar with it, refers to when a link within your site is linked to another page of your site. While internal linking might sound redundant or lacking in productive purpose, it is a practice that I implement not only with my Los Angeles website design clients but even in the sites of my own various company sites and accompanying blogs to make sure that Google is aware of, and can thus index, all of the pages on a website. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: LA Dezign.com on 10-04-2011
Adding images to your company�s website doesn�t just offer up attention-catching eye candy for your existing visitors, it can help draw new ones to your website by helping you appear more prominently in SERP�s. Having been in the business of Los Angeles website design and SEO for over ten years, I make certain that the images incorporated into my clients� sites are not simply uploaded but optimized. A few of the tactics that I employ are quick and simple enough for you to put into practice in your own online marketing efforts next time you add images to your site. In terms of what Google notices, images are a great showcase for your keywords. Take care when labeling images. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 09-27-2011
Are Web Directories Dead Yet? In our quest to get our clients' websites indexed and prominently ranked on Google, Bing, and Yahoo, we tend to keep our efforts search engine-focused, while there exists a valuable and frequently overlooked tool that can drive the traffic your website needs: online directories. Web Directories are sites that classify web links by placing them in appropriate categories and subcategories. Listing your website in these directories offers cheap- or often free- and easy exposure and a few other benefits to boot. Submitting the clients of my Los Angeles web design and SEO company to online directories is a routine part of our campaign efforts. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 09-20-2011
Have You Yelped Lately? It�s a shame how many business owners, namely those behind smaller enterprises, discount the impact that a Yelp listing can actually have on their online search engine campaign as well as their visibility to local audiences. All too frequently, Yelp gets dismissed as a forum for people to post complaints about businesses. In reality, it has grown into much more of an online presence. Much like in my earlier post about how social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are the often overlooked �low hanging fruit� of the traffic quest, Yelp presents another free and easy opportunity to bring hits to your website. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: LA Dezign.com on 09-13-2011
How many blogs and websites do you typically keep up with? More importantly, how do you go about doing this? Given that there are new developments, announcements, and theories every day concerning website design and search engine optimization, I need to do my homework for my clients, so I follow a ton of SEO blogs and technology news sites. However, I certainly do not have time each morning to visit each individual site and check to see which ones have new stories and which do not. This is why I subscribe to RSS feeds, and why I submit my sites� feeds to directories and promote them to prospective clients. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 09-06-2011
How often do you send out emails? I can attest that as a business owner balancing a magazine subscription service and a web design and SEO company, I write and send out hundreds of emails each day. Electronic correspondence has become the primary method of communication in most companies, both for internal communication and client outreach. Given that you send an email even more frequently than you update your website, add a blog post, or share a new Facebook story or Tweet, wouldn�t it be productive if each outgoing message could contain a device to drive traffic back to you? Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 08-30-2011
Last Traffic Tuesday, we talked about blog commenting as a free and easy tactic to drive more traffic to your site that just takes only a small amount of regular time and effort to apply. This week, we�ll explore the similar strategy of social bookmarking and how to use it to foster a marked increase in the traffic to your website. Most likely, you have already used basic bookmarking on a particular webpage that interested you on your own computer, but social bookmarking sites allow you to not only save, organize, and manage pages, but to alert other users to content you deem to be worthwhile and interesting. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 08-23-2011
Want to learn how to expand your network and drive up rankings at the same time? Last Traffic Tuesday, we discussed how guest blogging can help you promote your business and even give you the ability to expose your practice to other professionals and potential clients in your field by making your brand and voice of expertise more visible in the highly trafficked world of search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. This week, we’ll discuss how blog commenting can serve similar purposes in addition to driving traffic to your site via direct links in your comments as well as the ensuing search engine optimization rankings benefits that arise. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 07-12-2011
How would you like to reach your target audience by social media engineering of your brand, reputation and online presence. For this Traffic Tuesday, we've got some pretty savvy social networking advice on what to do with Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter for starters. Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 07-05-2011
When composing, tagging, and linking your website�s text and copy, it is important to be selective and strategic if you want to drive serious traffic from search engines like Google and Bing or even the more selective search sites that are more industry specific. Search engines in general analyze all the text on your site encoded with HTML tags and they monitor whatever text is hyperlinked or tagged. Considering the priority placed on the "anchor text" of your links, don�t waste the opportunity to be noticed with superfluous text, like �click here� or �welcome to my site.� Read the rest of this blog post
Published by: Jason Ciment on 06-28-2011
Are you using videos on your website? Would you be surprised to learn how valueable videos can be for ecommerce driven websites? In this first posting on this Traffic Tuesday you should be encouraged to wake up and smell the video coffee percolating on your competition's websites. If you are among the 68% of online retailers that have still not made use mass-scaled, e-commerce video solutions, it�s time to take a look at the benefits you�re denying your enterprise. Read the rest of this blog post
 
 

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