Website Marketing Tips

What’s the point of creating valuable content for your business? It’s a simple question, but tough to answer because there are so many reasons: To generate leads, to win more business, to engage people, to raise awareness of your brand, to help your customers.  All of these are true, but there’s a step before all those goals which is far easier to focus on, and measure – and if you keep it in mind, will make content creation feel more manageable too. Better content, better conversations The point of content is to start good conversations. That’s it, in a nutshell. Business …

Google Warned Us and they are on a Roll: Back in 2016 Google warned us and we warned you, that your website needed to be mobile friendly or your rankings would suffer.  Google warned us that they would be switching from a desktop focussed index to a mobile-first index and it’s happening now. Below is an excerpt of the confirmation that Google is sending to our Webmaster tools for all accounts. Mobile-first indexing enabled for https://cmswebsolutions.com This means that you may see more traffic in your logs from Googlebot Smartphone. You may also see that snippets in Google Search results are now generated from the …

There is a saying: “before climbing a ladder, make sure the ground is solid and that you’re climbing the right wall.”  It seems straightforward, but many companies start climbing without asking the right question. They end up going down a path that is more complex than required. They also waste time and money. And worst of all, they will create an ineffective website.  So what’s the wrong question? Asking, “What do I need in a website?”  Tell the truth. Isn’t that the question you asked yourself? You let that question generate a list of “requirements” that you took to your web developer.  Most developers worth …

I sat across from my accountant, who is also a web client, and asked her “Do you think your website is important to your business?” She answered “Oh yes. I even got a nice client yesterday who picked us over the competition because of our website.” Next I asked, “So what percentage of your business do you believe you get because of your website?” She thought for a moment and then gave me the number – a good portion I might add. So then I said, “Multiply that number by your revenue.” “Got it” she said. I then asked the big question, “If your website is responsible …

Starting in April 2015 Google wanted your website to be more mobile friendly and if it wasn’t they started penalizing non-mobile friendly websites, on their search engine, when visitors searched from a mobile device. (Google article here) “The search engine already promotes sites that work well on mobile devices over ones that don’t, a change introduced in April 2015”. In typical Google fashion, they are signalling that they will be taking mobile search even further…very soon. Google will be switching from a desktop focussed index to a mobile-first index. “Google is fully splitting its search index into two distinct versions: a rapidly updated …

What I’m about to tell you, you already know at a certain level, but as a business owner you sometimes forget how important they are. I am talking about doing the basics that keep visitors from leaving your website. Businesses are so focused on having a cool website, that they forget to execute the basic first steps. Step 1: Make sure your website loads quickly. (added bonus – Google rewards faster loading sites) Imagine you are looking for something specific on the Internet. You put a search string into Google which provides a large list of relevant search results. You see a local …

Do you have Google’s Webmaster Tools installed on your website? If you do and if your current website isn’t mobile friendly, Google is starting to send out notices with the words Fix mobile usability issues found on… suggesting you fix the issues. The notice will go something like this: “Google systems have tested 57 pages from your site and found that 100% of them have critical mobile usability errors. The errors on these 57 pages severely affect how mobile users are able to experience your website. These pages will not be seen as mobile-friendly by Google Search, and will therefore …

When someone visits a website, the goal is not to show a work of art, it’s to answer the visitor’s needs. It’s to keep the visitor engaged in the website providing them what they came for. In this context and with the reality of a constantly changing Internet, why not build a garden rather than a building? Web designers and their clients can get caught up in the building of the website structure. How it looks and the cool shiny features seems to drive the process. Like a building it stands firm and tall as visitors enter and exit. The …

The single largest delay in getting new websites launched for our clients is getting the content from them. They know their business and should be able to provide the messaging, right? The fact is content/copy writing for the web seems to be a big challenge for clients. Sometimes they are just too close to their business and struggle. If you are unable to employ the services of a copy writer then here is a crash course with some things to keep in mind. Get straight to the point: users on the web skim rather than read full paragraphs. So emphasize …

The calls are starting to come in from clients asking us “should I buy Yellow Pages advertising?” My answer is the same. “Let’s look at your websites visitor data and see how many visitors are coming directly from yellowpages.ca. Then you can see if the number justifies the amount you are considering spending with them.” So what does our collective client data indicate this year? Not one client has been happy with their Yellow Pages numbers. The data also reveals that people are mostly searching through Google, not going through the Yellow Pages directory. Where do you search? So before …