Can I Find Your Business Online?
How Easy is it to Find Your Business Online?
If you are not out on the internet, you are missing out on the 97% of people searching for your local business online!!! And if you are online…how well are you optimizing your website AND social media to make it easier to be found?
The top 4 social media tools used to enhance business online are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Blogs. This gives credibility to the importance of building your content for search engine optimization as well as using social media to interact and attract with potential customers.
Take a look at the Infographics below to better understand the Online Behavior of Small Businesses and their client market. The numbers will encourage you to take another look at your online efforts, especially understanding that 90% of online searches result in brick and mortar purchases…you may be missing out on that next sale!
Allographics & Design based in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, specializes in web, graphic and social media design and consulting. If you would like to learn how we can strengthen your online branding and marketing or to book a workshop to better understand the major social media tools available for your business, contact us for more information.
Google’s NEW Exact Match Domain Penalty
Are You At Risk: Exact Match Domain Penalty?
Actually the question is whether the exact match domain penalty (EMD) is really a penalty or
some type of filter that gives more relevance to content and if your Brand is at risk if you concentrated on a keyword brand or phrase in your domain name.
Google is always making updates and changes to their algorithms, something very difficult for marketers to try and keep up with, yet it should be noted…this is how technology works and a topic that has been on the lips of many online specialists for years. Should you put so much effort into those keywords or build a quality brand and content instead?
Nothing is ever permanent and changes can be good, especially if it helps to weed out those spammy low quality websites in your searches. The issue of using keywords and keywords with hyphens in one’s domain in hopes of boosting SEO has been an issue for quite some time.
According to Google’s own information, an update or change to it’s algorithms as they work to better search engine optimization techniques, makes the searching world better with more relevant results. Over the years we have seen many of these changes, particularly to keywords, keyword spamming and keyword cramming in which less effort is put on a site’s actual content. There is nothing like doing a search and getting pages of crud sites when you are looking for quality information. So regular updates are necessary for better search results.
If you consider Google’s own Webmaster Guidlines, a penalty is issued when a website is violating the guidelines and are enacted swiftly. The latest exact match domain “penalty” seems to be a bit confusing since it may have targeted a specific set of practices (hyphenating domain/sub-domain urls) used by many affiliate marketers which looks like a penalty, yet left other types of sites untouched. This likely is still only an update, but comes across as a penalty when many similar sites are experiencing a reduction in traffic and their page ranking.
Recovery? How can you recover from the EMD “penalty”?
The key is to concentrate on your content and your brand, not keywords. Another recent update from Google has been over optimizing your site and content with keywords. Change your strategy and concentrate on quality content instead. Some guidelines on how to boost your site are listed below.
- Remove duplicate pages of content
- Rethink your BRAND…stay away from Keywords as your Brand
- Update your website/blog with fresh content regularly
- Build your brand off-line
- Consolidate your numerous tight niche sites onto one strong content relevant site
- Increase your social media optimisation and social content linked to your site
- Build quality backlinks
- Create a user friendly website easy to navigate with minimal clicks
- Strong content and headers should be above the fold. Push ads and lesser quality content below the fold
- Conduct a 301 redirect for pages you believe have been affected by the recent changes
Allographics & Design based in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, specializes in web, graphic and social media design and consulting. If you would like to learn how we can strengthen your online branding and marketing or to book a workshop to better understand the major social media tools available for your business, contact us for more information.
A Little Coding Won’t Hurt You!
Whether you are a designer, tech geek, blogger, entrepreneur or gadget freak…learning some basic coding philosophy may be in your future and it just may land you a new career or advancement!
Coding is becoming so much a part of our culture as technology advances and becomes part of everyone’s daily routine that schools are starting to incorporate it into their curriculum as young as the elementary years.
Can you think of ways coding has entered your life or business? If you are interested, with the help of today’s instant information, there are many tutorials out on the internet that can help you learn anywhere from the basics to more advance tools.
OnlineCollege.org shares with us some insights on how coding is becoming the norm of our society and you just may be surprised on some of the statistical outcomes!
Allographics & Design based in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, specializes in web, graphic and social media design and consulting. If you would like to learn how we can strengthen your online branding and marketing or to book a workshop to better understand the major social media tools available for your business, contact us for more information.
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