Helpful Hints, Websites
As part of finding budget friendly solutions for small business customers. I am always in search of themes that easy to manipulate without a lot of coding. This flexibility allows me to build websites that look custom without the price of a full custom coded site. One of my favorite themes, Divi, comes from Elegant Themes.
I was honored this summer to be accepted as a guest blogger on the Elegant Marketplace Forum. The folks over at Elegant Marketplace offer some great child themes and plugins that are compatible with with Divi Theme.
My first post talked about how to determine the colors, where images come from, as well as plugins that websites designers use.
Here’s a little excerpt:
How do you determine the theme and special plugins a website is using?
The easiest way to determine the theme or plugins is using a website like WPThemeDetector or WhatWPThemeIsThat
How can you determine the color or make a color palette from a website?
I use the Chrome extension Colorzilla (which is also available for Firefox), to grab the colors from the site. This handy tool gives you both the RGB and Hex of the colors you select.
How to determine where images on the website came from?
An easy way to determine where website images originate from is using a image search tool like Google Reverse Image Search or TinEye, if it’s stock imagery you’ll be able to find which stock website it was purchased from, so you can purchase it.
You can read the full post on Elegant Marketplace.
Helpful Hints, Services, Social Media
Earlier this year Facebook launched a call to action button for business pages. This nifty feature allows you to add a button on your header image that allows you to direct visitors to a specific page on your website.
The seven options are:
Book Now
Contact Us
Use App
Play Game
Shop Now
Sign Up
Watch Video
This handy feature allows your customers to easily take action from your Facebook page. Most of the links aren’t needed for a small business, but think about a hair salon that relies heavily on appointments, wouldn’t a book now page be wonderful? Or maybe you just launched an ecommerce section on your website, wouldn’t it be cool if customers could find it directly from facebook?
Here’s how to set up in four easy steps.
Step 1 – Visit your Facebook business page and click create call to action
Step 2 – Select your CTA button
Step 3 – Type in (or copy and paste) the URL of the website you want visitors to be redirected to
Step 4 – Click ‘create’
If you’re struggling with your Facebook business page. Feel free to reach out. We would love to talk to you about ideas to get more engagement!
Helpful Hints
You didn’t read the title wrong. In days not so long past, a copywriting tactic used to increase rankings in Google and other search engines was to fill your copy with keywords wherever you could. This tactic no longer works and will actually penalize your site in search engines.
Do any of your pages look like this?
Thank you for visiting our website. We are a (type of) company located in (city & state), we service the greater (city & state) area for all types of (type of) needs. Please reach out to us for your (type of) needs, we would be happy to travel to you anywhere in the (city & state) area.
Since the release of the Google’s Hummingbird algorithm in late 2013 content marketing is more important than it has ever been before. A couple of things to keep in mind when coming up with SEO friendly copy for your site:
How wordy are you?
Minimum word count is increasing. There should be a minimum of 300 words on each page. The average is around 500-600 but if you can achieve 1000 words Google will reward you for it.
How often do you repeat yourself?
Content should be unique. Don’t copy your paragraphs from one area to other sections of your site, instead link back to the pages where they are listed.
Not enough content?
Look to see where you can combine the content on other pages where it makes sense, or try tossing a FAQ into the copy to get word count up. Phrase it like your ideal client would ask it.
Headings!
Add some <h1> <h2> tags. This will help search engines give your site a quick look. If you put it in a heading tag, they know it’s important.
Mix it Up
No matter what your keyword is, people are searching for other terms as well. Use the Google Keyword Planner or a plain ole Thesaurus to add more variations of your keyword in your copy.
Did you use the keyword filler tactic in the past? If so, you’ll want to re-write these pages.
Helpful Hints, Services, Websites
I have to admit I started this post in January and it’s now almost April, and I still haven’t posted it! We always set the best intentions, but we get busy helping clients and doing things like… WORK! that get in the way of maintaining our own websites. This goes for ALL companies, including those of us that work online for a living. We get busy, we have customers coming in, so who cares if your site isn’t completely up to date, right? hmmmm. I cringe every time I don’t practice what I preach. I’m really great at updating others websites, my own… forget it. But, my question to you is… how many customers have you lost because of outdated information?
I’ve compiled a quick to do list for you to look at below.
Review your content:
Have content that is outdated? Get rid of it.
Time Sensitive? Get rid of it.
Holiday Message? Get rid of it.
Blog posts that mention specific events? Add a disclaimer or call to action like: “Want to hear about when we offer this again in 2015? Sign up for our newsletter” (and don’t forget to add a link to your newsletter sign-up!)
Team Page? Remove old team members, review bios for XX years of experience and update to reflect current experience.
Are your .pdfs current? Do you still have your summer shopping guide linked?
Update the nuts and bolts:
Update your copyright notice. (don’t know what this is??? Look down at the bottom of your site do you see @2014 or earlier? If so, you will want to update it to 2015. Although some visitors will never notice this date, by having an outdated copyright date it will look like your site hasn’t been updated in a while. In order to be trustworthy to your visitors you want to make sure it looks like you pay attention to the small details.)
Post a blog!
Check for links that no longer work. Other people may have taken down their pages you had linked to and now your links go nowhere.
Check your physical address, email address and phone/fax numbers. Are the all the same? (do you actually still have a fax??)
Test your forms and make sure they’re still working. What’s the point of having a contact form that doesn’t actually work?
I think that’ll be a good start for now. If you need help or want a second set of eyes to look over your site. Contact Us we would love to help you out.
