Proliferation

Apr 07
0

Is Pinterest the New Dark Horse of SEO?

By | Mobile marketing, Social Media, Utah, Utah SEO | No Comments

When considering major search engines moguls, such as Google and Yahoo immediately come to mind. However, another major search engine that’s overlooked is Pinterest — yes, that social media platform. With recent updates to the site, including a new Smart Feed algorithm that displays relevant content first, Pinterest is providing a large opportunity for businesses to gain a competitive advantage — whether they’re targeting SEO in Utah or on the East Coast. There are a couple of ways that you can use Pinterest to effectively optimize your SEO efforts. Here’s the breakdown.

Verify Your Site for Optimization

To get the most out of your SEO efforts on Pinterest, verify your website. Doing this directly affects the placement of your site in search engine results pages. Additionally, Pinterest views this favorably in terms of credibility, giving you a competitive edge in overall rankings. It doesn’t matter if your site is based on services rendered in Utah or across the country; verifying your site gives you an additional boost to rank higher in search results.

How to Optimize Your Username and Account Name

After you’ve verified your site, optimize your Pinterest username and account name. You can do this via your account settings, beneath the Profile section. Pinterest automatically creates a URL for your page based off of your account name; from here, you should edit your page’s URL to be more SEO-friendly. Separate words with dashes and carefully select a URL that correctly reflects the content of your page. In doing so, you’ll make your Pinterest page more visible to Google, and thus, more likely to appear on a search engine results page.

Next, optimize your username. Pinterest allows a max of 15 characters per username — so choose carefully. Ideally, you should use your company name or industry-related keywords. Yet in addition to this, you should strive to make your username as memorable as possible. If your company provides services or information specific to Utah, include this geo-qualifier in your username (if possible). The more straightforward and unique your username is, the better.

Apr 07
0

The Alpha and Omega of Web Development

By | Utah, web development, website design | No Comments

Although almost every Website is different (or should be), the basics of the Web development process stays relatively similar. From the beginning phases of planning and gathering information through the end steps of development, testing and delivery, the Web design process involves several integral processes.

Research and Information Precedes Design

An appropriate amount of research must be done before the design process can begin; inadequate background information could result in a haphazard end product. As perhaps the most important aspect of the Web development process, research involves several different tangents. Before design and development can begin, the purpose and goals of the project must be completely designated. Is the purpose of the site to provide information? To sell a project? What are the goals of the site? After these items have been finished, you can identity your target audience and specify the type of content you want on the site.

Create a Design for Your Target Audience

After the initial planning and research phase is complete, it’s time to move onto the design portion of the Web development process. Perhaps the most important aspect of this step involves creating a design for your target audience. A retail site developed for younger audiences will have a much different design approach than a site targeting a financial planning audience. Whatever your target audience may be, your web design process should adequately reflect who you’re targeting.

Develop and Test for Different Browsers

Development immediately follows the design phase. Typically, the home page is designed first, immediately followed by an outline for interior/subpages. This template harbors the main navigational structure for your site — including the site map, page navigation and CTAs. After the development phase is complete, it’s time to move on to the testing and delivery phase. Before a site goes live, your Web designer will test the functionality of the site to ensure that all forms and scrips are functioning correctly, and will also test compatibility issues. This critical testing phase is done to ensure that the site can be viewed properly across a large range of different browsers.

Apr 05
0

The Psychology of Color in Web Design

By | web development, website design | No Comments

The color scheme on your website has the power to either adversely or positively affect visitors. With such a large color palette to choose from, how can you ensure that you select the correct color scheme for your target audience? Whether you’re a web development firm in Salt Lake City, Utah or on the East Coast, the rules of color psychology apply everywhere. Here are the basics that you need to know about color psychology and your target audience.

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Apr 04
0

Put Your Ego Aside and Give the Client What They Want

By | web development, website design | No Comments

It can be hard as a web designer, and web developer, to put what you know aside and give the client what they want. You may feel that your idea would be more beneficial and look good too, but your client may want something different. Your client may not know best, but they know what they want their website to look like.

When to Give In

Web development and web design is your art, and as that artist, you were hired to do what your client wants. An easy fix may be to tell the client your idea and see how their idea and yours can come together. As the web developer, they may find your idea better, because you know what you’re doing as a web developer. However, if your client doesn’t agree with you, agree to disagree and give the client the web design that they’re looking for.

Don’t Lose Your Job

As the web designer, you are getting paid to make the website they want, and second-guessing a client can cause a good relationship to go south. This website may be your baby — but to the client, it’s a company and a business. The client may want a website that suits their needs; perhaps something that’s easy to use or straightforward and practical.

Relationship with Your Client

You may find yourself second guessing yourself when presenting to a client, wondering: Why did I become a web developer or a web designer? Sometimes the problem is the client, and you may have to cut ties and go your own ways. If a client isn’t giving you the respect you deserve and degrading your hard work, then this isn’t a website problem, it’s a problem they have with you. Just like any other job, you may not be the right fit.

Don’t lose your head over a web design, just listen to your client and do your best to meet that image in their head. You can still add flare to it, but make sure it isn’t all your own doing.

Apr 04
0

Make Facebook Live Streaming Work for You

By | digital marketing | No Comments

If you’re unsure of what Facebook live streaming is, it’s the new way of entertainment and news to share information. Many digital marketing companies have used this to show behind the scenes footage, that is live, and viewers will stop what they’re doing on Facebook and see the latest of what’s happening in Utah.

How to Use It

Facebook live streaming creates a real time video for viewers to watch, much like a live show, but the live streaming can be done from someone’s phone or lap top. It’s free to set up but there are some steps that need to be taken to use it, so you can have more than 50 viewers at a time. This is really done to limit piracy. Digital marketing companies have used this to stream live announcements, and behind the scenes at their companies, allowing their followers to feel more connected.

In Utah, many news stations used the live streaming to show speeches from the presidential candidates and of course have used it to show the behind the scenes on their sets. Celebrities have used Livestream to create an interaction between them and their fans. And if a person misses the video, they can play it back even though it’s not live.

Periscope and Meerkat Related

But don’t Preiscope and Meerkat do the same thing? Yes they do, but Facebook has more of a public outreach and that is where most of your followers are going to be. Using the streaming service on Facebook will allow you to reach out to more of your followers from Utah, and around the world. 

More Uses

With Facebook Livestream, you can tag yourself in your video and your followers can too. This can help your digital marketing without having to do much work, except come up with a live video people will want to watch. 

Apr 04
0

Three Ways to Make Mobile Marketing Work for You

By | Mobile marketing, SEO, Utah SEO, web development, website design | No Comments

It can be frustrating to open up a search engine and click on a link on your phone, only to have it freeze, crash — or worse — not be mobile friendly. People now search on their mobile device more than their computers, so making your SEO more search friendly and mobile friendly, is something that you can do and is something that search engine companies are working on.

Google AMP

Yes, Google is the source of all information these days, and Google’s new program called AMP can really boost viewership and help your SEO on mobile. AMP allows your website to run faster, boosts your SEO on a mobile device, and load quicker. Many people will quickly go back from your page and go to the next link hoping it’s going to be faster. So Google literally AMP’s your website up with this new program.

App SEO

Get an app and boost your SEO. According to a story by Criteo, people were more likely to use a mobile app to search for retail and places within the travel industry, rather than use a mobile website. Create an app that is user friendly, and easy to find. Join the new SEO, and get an app to build your business in Utah.

Google is also helping your SEO by making app searching more organic. This allows those searching for an app likes yours to appear on the list of useful apps.

Machine Learning

Machine learning is something you probably should learn about if you really want your SEO to improve for your company. Machine learning can actually help your advertising by analyzing algorithms and statistics. This will help you reach out to different people not only in Utah, but around the world so you can figure out what demographic your users belong too. This will better help you market and find out who you now need to market to so you can grow your business.

Apr 04
0

Why You Should Update Your Cell Phone For the Sake of Mobile Developers

By | Mobile marketing, web development | No Comments

The worst thing that seems to happen when not updating or updating your phones iOS or OS is having an app crash on you, or have an app that isn’t supported by your current iOS or OS. Web development companies are on top of their apps, and will usually release them with the latest phone updates.

What Happens When You Update or Don’t

When updates do come to phones, Web designers and Web development firms are on top of getting their websites updated so that they will work with the latest version of Apple or Android. If you don’t update your phone, you may not be able to use apps you could before. Get the new app if it has been updated and load it up, as certain apps are updated for certain phones. And if your app decides not to work, go and check the app store and make sure there hasn’t been a recent update. If there has, that’s the app you want.

Updates on Your Apps

Apple has a place in their App Stores that allows mobile Web development firms to fix bugs and securities in their apps. Most updates are for this case, so if your app isn’t working properly on your phone, then you probably want to update your phone to the newest OS or iOS. The mobile developers create these updates to keep your apps up to date and working properly. Usually your apps will update by themselves, but make sure that the iOS and OS is going to be compatible.

Most mobile Web development firms don’t release the new versions of their app until the next phone update. Some will release their app for free for a short time, while they’re upgrading the usable app. This is usually to help with sales.

In the end the way to make yourself happy and the mobile developers happy is to update your phone when it needs to be.

Mar 26
0

Millennials & Content Marketing Go Hand-in-Hand

By | content marketing, Millennials | No Comments

As the baby boomer generation ages, getting on into their social security years, Millennials are quickly taking over as the largest single adult age group in the United States. And yet, as the millennial generation grows in purchasing power, marketing companies from the East Coast to Utah are wringing their hands in worry.

Why, you ask? Well, millennials simply aren’t going for the old marketing tactics — such as billboards along the I-15 in Utah — that worked for previous generations. Instead, millennials are looking for something more authentic. Content marketing was made for millennials. Content marketing is about storytelling and bringing consumers to your brand of their own accord — concepts the millennial generation holds near and dear.

In 2016, the results are clear: To successfully reach the lucrative millennial generation, content marketing is the way to go.

What makes content marketing so enticing for millennials? For one thing, content marketing doesn’t interrupt people. By skipping the invasive pop-up ads and flashing neon widgets, content marketing doesn’t keep people from doing what they’re doing. Instead, good content marketing listens to the demands of the target audience, providing content that is both relevant and useful. In this way, content marketing brings the target audience to you — not the other way around.

Millennials love a good visual as much as the next generation, but they also love technology. Content marketing is extremely flexible in its application, with content in mediums such as video, text, graphics, mobile, social media and many more. And it doesn’t take a huge firm in the Big Apple to do it; even small businesses in Utah can take advantage of content marketing’s multi-media approach — all you really need a smartphone.

Finally, content marketing breeds engagement. Good content marketing gives millennials the opportunity and the incentive to contribute their own user-generated content — which is then repurposed in order to add authenticity to the brand and bring in more user-generated content in a glorious, self-fulfilling cycle.

With a plethora of original, relatable content, even the newest start-up business in Utah can take advantage of content marketing to reach out to the millennial market. So what are you waiting for? Stop interrupting millennials, and start listening to them instead.

Mar 25
0

The World of Content Marketing Is Oversaturated — What to Do to Stand Out

By | content marketing | No Comments

By this point in 2016, pretty much everyone and his mother is using content marketing. Eighty-eight percent of business-to-business marketers currently utilize content marketing; that number is expected to eclipse 90 percent in the near future.

At this point, content marketing isn’t anything new. Amid the onslaught of articles, lists and stories that abound on the Internet, how can a small content marketer in Utah garner the short-lived attention of his chosen audience? Let’s think about this closely.

Most of today’s content marketers in Utah and elsewhere know that content with images garners more engagement and more shares. Visual content is more than 40 times more likely to be shared on social media, and Facebook posts with images experience 2.3 times more engagement than posts without images.

But that featured image at the top of the article isn’t enough — did you know articles than feature an image every 75–100 words are shared twice as often as articles with fewer words? Consumers can’t get enough of images; so go Shutterstock shopping and build up that relevant image library.

Speaking of social shares, did you know that long-form content is actually significantly more likely to be shared than short-form content? On social media, content with 3,000–10,000 words is almost twice as likely to be shared as content with 0–1,000 words.

Considering most people in the content marketing business focus on pumping out a large quantity of short-form pieces, long-form content represents a serious area of opportunity for online marketers in Utah and elsewhere.

In terms of written content, additional length and image usage can go a long way. But that’s not all — research shows viewers don’t interact with all parts of a written piece equally. Across numerous sites analyzed by Web analytics company Chartbeat, 65.7 percent of viewer engagement on written pieces occurred below the fold, and most of that engagement is with the beginning of a piece.

What does that mean for content marketing professionals? Don’t save the most interesting part of the article for last — no one will ever read it. Instead, make sure the first couple of paragraphs are composed of rock-solid, share-able material. Your business partners in Utah will thank you later.

Mar 25
0

How Google App Indexing Can Help You

By | SEO | No Comments

Google announced a new way to get more users to apps on your cell phone, it’s a new thing called App indexing, similar to website indexing. So when a user is on their phone and they want to search for something, Google will link the phone apps to their Google search results. From there, Google lets the user use their apps to find what they’re searching for, if the app has the information. This new program is helping increase SEO by allowing customers to use their purchased apps from companies.

Along with the web search, Google users will also get results from their phone within an app. This new program will help SEO with knowing what the user wants to find with things they already have. For instance, let’s say you have an app for ESPN and you want to find the score of a game, Google search will use your app as a source to find the information.

Using mobile apps from Utah and around the globe will help the consumer use their apps more and in return, will help the business that created the app. This is a new phase in the SEO evolution, and now we wonder, what’s going to be the next step?

Becoming Mobile

Becoming mobile is a new way of marketing, and with the many people who are on their phones, the app or company can be on a person’s hip all the time. In a study done by Pew Research, the U.S. alone, cell phone ownership has increased from 65 percent – 91 percent between the years of 2004 and 2013. Cell phone usage in Utah isn’t known, but you could probably guess it’s a large number.

App indexing is a new way that SEO is growing, and definitely a phase in the evolution. SEO is expanding and reaching out to new technologies that are helping people in Utah find what they need faster.