SPARKS! and the Better Business Bureau of Greater Maryland will be teaming up on Thursday, April 20th at 8.30 AM to present “Search Engine Optimization: Simple Strategies to Improve Web Performance“. The event is part of BBB’s Trusted Advisor Series designed to provide business owners and their employees with current information about a variety of topics.
To register and learn more visit the BBB’s website.
What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) important? If a website launches on the internet and nobody sees it does it make a difference? [Tip of the cap, George Berkeley]
SEO is the process of optimizing a website to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). The goal of SEO is to improve the visibility of your web content to users when they are searching. It is a fluid journey, not a destination, that involves a lot of different factors technically, logistically, but more often, logically. Let’s look at the two main elements of SEO; on-page and off-page.
On-page SEO involves optimizing the content – text, images, and code – on a site to make it easier to be crawled and indexed by search engines. At a minimum, it is making sure the keywords and primary topics of a web page are properly formatted and in sync with the technical elements. These are things like meta tags, coding that the search engine sees that are invisible to the reader, structure, navigation, and page speed of the website..
Off-page SEO is a way of improving the site’s visibility by securing links (“backlinks”) to its content from external sources. These can include social media pages, online directories, and other authoritative websites like news and industry blogs. It can help validate a site, just like getting a referral from a high-profile customer.
We’ll share more in the coming months about the myriad other aspects of SEO. But the key takeaway is that SEO is an important tool in the digital marketing toolbox that can help your website perform and help you to grow your organization.
SPARKS! can help you learn how your website is performing in search and create ways to boost your visibility.
SPARKS! and the Better Business Bureau of Greater Maryland will be teaming up on Thursday, April 6th at 8.30 to present “Reaching Your Customers Online: A Digital Marketing Primer”. The event is part of BBB’s Trusted Advisor Series designed to provide business owners and their employees with current information about a variety of topics.
To register and learn more visit the BBB’s website.
So, to answer a question we often get at SPARKS! – “what exactly is digital marketing?” – here’s a quick-and-dirty summary of the key elements.Businesses and organizations must rely on some type of marketing in order to grow. Traditional tactics – advertising and trade shows, for example – are stalwarts and an important part of the overall recipe. But a key element that many small businesses overlook is to optimize what is perhaps the easiest gateway to their audience: their digital assets.
Digital marketing refers to the use of online (aka digital) channels, such as search engines, social media, email, mobile apps, and websites, to promote a product or service. It is a broad term that encompasses a wide range of techniques and strategies, all of which are designed to reach and engage with a target audience in a digital environment.
For most organizations, an informative, engaging, mobile/user-friendly website lives at the center of the digital universe. But what about the other spokes in the wheel? Digital marketing can be broken down into several different elements, including:
On April 2, users of the consumer version of the platform will lose access to their accounts and pages. Starting February 4, users will no longer be able to create new Google+ profiles, pages, communities, or events.
Users who wish to save their content will have to download it before that date arrives. Applications like Takeout and Google+ Exporter will come in handy for those who wish to go that route. Downloaders will be given additional data starting in early March 2019.
The complete shutdown timeline includes the Google+ feature for website comments being removed from all sites by March 7, with Google+ comments disappearing from view on April 2. Google+ sign-in buttons will stop working in the next few weeks, but many will be replaced by a Google sign-in button.
The news of a shutdown date comes in the aftermath of a report from The Wall Street Journal that detailed the company’s decision to stay silent despite data from 500,000 Google+ users getting exposed over a three year period. Then, Google made it public that a bug had exposed the personal information of more than 52 million Google+ users. This sped up the platform’s demise, moving the shutdown date up from August 2019 to April 2019.
When Google+ initially announced a tentative April shutdown last December, they recognized “challenges involved in maintaining a successful product” and “the platform’s low usage” as the primary reasons behind its dismantling.
This doesn’t signal the complete disappearance of Google+ from the technological space, however. It’s only the consumer version of the platform that’s being put to rest, not the business version. “While we bring consumer Google+ to a close, we are continuing our investment in Google+ for the enterprise,” wrote David Conway, a product manager at Google. “This means that for those of you who use Google+ as part of G Suite, your accounts will remain active.
The death of Google+ has been imminent for a while, but that doesn’t make it any less inconvenient for frequent users who relied heavily on the platform. Unfortunately, the only avenue that exists for them now is to download their data and take it someplace else.
With the introduction of WordPress 5.1, the word “publishing” will replace any mention of blogging throughout the platform. The language will be updated in wp-config-sample.php this year. So long, “happy blogging”. Hello, “happy publishing”!
Once upon a time, blogging was the central function of all WordPress sites, but the software’s capabilities have expanded dramatically, and the platform is more dynamic than ever. “WordPress is no longer a simple blogging platform,” wrote Gutenberg and WordPress core contributor Gary Pendergast. “It’s now a comprehensive publishing solution.”
WordPress is a popular and heavily relied upon open-source content management system due in part to its versatility and ability to serve multiple functions. Although it can still be used for something as simple as publishing blog content, it also allows users to perform functions like set up an affiliate shop, create real estate listings, and fundraise. Even better, these functions are accessible to people regardless of whether or not they know how to code because of the software’s user-friendly setup.
That’s not all that WordPress has in store for 2019, though. WordPress core contributor Matt Mullenweg laid out the platform’s priorities for the new year. Allowing users to opt-in to automatic plugin and theme updates, upgrading the widgets-editing areas, creating a block for navigation menus, and making it possible for themes to visually register content areas are all upgrades that WordPress expects to make within the next 12 months.
By changing the website’s language, WordPress is simply making clear what was already true a long time ago. There’s no shortage of functions that the platform can be used for, and its capabilities expand so far beyond simply blogging. Without WordPress, 32% of the web would cease to exist, and as its uses continue to grow and expand, so does the vernacular we use to talk about them.
Let’s start off with a quick vocab lesson for this blog…
+1 This button is often found where the social media platforms are showcased on a website. If you give a website a +1, Google will share your endorsement with friends and contacts when they search. It’s similar to the “Like” button on Facebook.
Now let’s begin! [Read more…]
What’s the buzz? Here’s what you need to know about Google Hummingbird.So you’re not tech-savvy person, but you keep hearing all about Google’s newest algorithm, Hummingbird, and how it is affecting the future of search engine optimization (SEO). If you’re like most people, you really don’t need to understand how it all works; but you do need to know about how it affects your website’s performance. Let’s try to break it down in simple terms: [Read more…]
Probably the
most important panda in the world right now is not Jack Black’s kung fu friend. It is, however, from a town a ways north of The San Diego Zoo called Mountain View (a.k.a. “Googleville”).
Rather than explain what we know – or don’t know for that matter – about Google Panda, we’d thought we’d share a little, er big, graphic from our friends at SearchEngineLand.com that offers some eye candy into our little friend. It’s suitable for framing; go on… you know you want to! [Read more…]
If a tree falls in the woods but nobody hears it, does it make a sound?
The real question should be: if a website has great content and important information, but nobody finds it, does it make a difference?
Most businesses realize the importance of timely, accurate, and interesting content for their website, but many don’t actually take the time to see how their site performs, and, subsequently, if their content is seeing the light of day …er… computer screens. There are easy ways to learn about two important “V’s” in web world: visitors and visibility.
Search Thyself
Want to know how you are viewed on the web? Then search thyself! Search your company, your competitors, even yourself. Where are you in the results? Are you on the first page or lost in the nether region? What about your reputation? Has someone posted a negative review of your business? Or, worse yet, has that picture from the office party made it onto someone’s social network account? Those results can help you develop an effective web strategy and get in the game!
Batter Up!
Prepare your site before stepping up to the ‘virtual plate’. Just like a baseball player needs quick reflexes, good eyes, speed, and muscle, you’ll need tools to make sure your site is ready to perform. Why? You both need hits to win! Good content and a site that is optimized are a must. This very deliberate process is called SEO, or search engine optimization. Web analytics are the way to keep score (and find out about your visitors). It won’t hurt to have a good third base coach (say a certain web, media, and marketing company!) to guide you along the way. And, unlike an athlete, you can “juice” your performance by adding some well planned internet marketing too!
The first question of the New Year should be: ‘Has your site been optimized to get the most hits possible’?
