As an online marketing specialist I rely a lot on the expertise of reputable names in the business. Among those I turn to often are the Neilson Norman Group and Hubspot. The Neilson Norman Group (aka NN/g) has been around since 1998, and have thoroughly established themselves as the website usability gurus. They have been…
Attention, all you SEO operatives out there! The Panda has risen! Although he appears to be sleeping most of the time, the ubiquitous Google Panda is always thinking. His Search Quality Team (which basically means, those who look for and deal with spam) launched the next generation Penguin webspam (or Spam) algorithm on May 22,…
Calgary is full of entrepreneurs who make it their business to stay on the cutting edge of their industry. Business people attend seminars and conventions, subscribe to magazines and newsletters and pay employees well to make sure no development comes as a surprise. In the world of website marketing, we watch the Google Panda. The…
In the first half of Emphasize Design’s exploration of effective content elements for websites, we went through several options for engaging items for the user that can also help sell your product and your company. Effective content elements can come in many shapes and sizes, and range from a short and powerful company manifesto to…
With the growth of social networking, the novelty of email has worn off, and many have come to see it as an old-fashioned form of communication. The more fashionable venues like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Tumblr, allow users more interaction, with the ability to share their thoughts, pictures and videos. In the current online marketplace…
Maybe you know about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), maybe not. But what you need to know is the importance of being ranked within the search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. The higher your ranking the better chance you have of a potential client finding you and viewing what you have to offer as a…
No one appreciates being “marketed to” anymore. We as consumers have learned to filter / dodge / side-step / ignore the millions of annoying marketing attempts vying for our attention. Despite knowing that outbound marketing pisses people off, businesses continue to throw money into the black hole and hoping that it brings them business. Mind-boggling,…
It is crucial to have some sort of tracking module in place which allows you to monitor and assess your websites conversion performance. Be sure that you have an analytics service that will allow you to do that. If you don’t have one, you will never know if what you are doing is working or…
Landing Pages are the building block behind generating leads on your website. If you’re not using landing pages you’re losing business…period! Too many businesses redirect their social media, search traffic, and email generated leads to their homepage or contact page. This is the equivalent of burning money. Without even knowing it, when a visitor is…
Inbound marketing is a process and a continual learning curve. It’s not a mountain to climb that once you’ve reached the top, you’re done. It doesn’t work that way, which makes it that much more intriguing and important in the way we conduct business today. Mike and I had an excellent meeting with a prospective…
Your Facebook page should strengthen existing relationships, and also forge new ones. To do this, you need to perfect the timing and composition of posting original content, and learn how to best cater to the needs of each market segment. You will need to closely monitor your Facebook page to understand what your fans want.…
Well if you’re a business owner that has decided to turn to the internet to generate leads I believe it’s probably in your best interest to educated yourself on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and find out how it can help your business. What is a search engine you ask? Google, Bing, Yahoo…etc. are just a…