Web Marketing Blog

Links are the top metric by which search engines determine where you are ranked.   The more sites that link to your website – the better off you are. But its not only the quantity of backlinks that are important – its also the quality.   Backlinks from sites that are more prominent, or have a high page-rank than others are considered better than having a backlink from a site that doesn’t generate a lot of traffic.   For example, …

1)   SEO Doctor for FireFox
This impressive little tool calculates your SEO score on a scale of 1-100, lets you know problems in your site, and then tells you how you can easily fix them.  This tool tells you everything from poorly defined (and missing) META tags, to poor page loading speed, and many other factors that may lead to your page not being found on the major search engines.
We ourselves found a problem using this tool with a …

Usability testing is one of the most resourceful things that you and your company can do to protect your website investment. Poor web usability leads to lost sales, frustrated customers, and a bad reputation that can take years to shake off. Fact is, there is far too many competing websites out there today and if your site is unusable, or frustrating to the user, they will simply go elsewhere (to your competition).
So where to begin?
If you’re already doing …

Jenn’s Photo is a recent re-design of website that we did for a talented baby and child photographer in Dudley, Massachusetts.   Earlier in June, Jenn contacted us and was looking to revamp her existing site that just wasn’t giving her the results that she wanted.  The site ranked poorly in search engines, was difficult to update, and was not attracting customers.
After we ran our free SEO and Web Analytics reports, we saw that her site was not hitting its …

With social media marketing becoming more and more of an essential activity for today’s businesses, marketers want to know – Twitter or Facebook?
According to a study by the event planning/registration site EventBrite,  Facebook seems to generate a higher return on investment ($1.30 in ticket sales per Like) compared to Twitter ($0.80 in ticket sales per tweet).  But is that the end of the discussion? Not really. Eventbrite was focusing the study on their business model. Every business is going …

What makes a “good” website?
It’s a question, even in my years of experience in the corporate world, isn’t asked or answered enough. Far too often sites are designed and implemented purely on visual appeal rather than on the ‘goals of the business.’ The decision makers who commission the website tend to focus on the bells and whistles of the design, rather than if the site will serve their business needs or goals.
Typically, if the site looks pretty – …

The world of marketing is changing – faster than it ever has before. The “Mad Men” world of advertising in print, radio and even TV is fading fast. In today’s market, if you are marketing professional you either need to embrace Social Media or be crushed by it.
The facts speak for themselves:

86% of people skip TV ads, either by fast forwarding through them (TIVO/DVR) or by just not paying attention to them.
44% of Direct Mail is …

The following question was asked on Focus.com – “Will social media sites replace websites, or will websites become less important in the …

Apps are very cool and are all the rage right now, but does an App for your business really make sense?
According to multiple studies,  you can reach nearly five times as many people per dollar invested with a mobile website rather than a native mobile app and the costs in developing a mobile website (or converting your current website over to be “mobile friendly”) is cheaper and offers a better return-on-investment (ROI) than just …

I attended a great webinar on the Science of Timing for Blogs/Social Media and E-Mail marketing campaigns put together by HubSpot.
It was a great seminar, it was free, and I got a bunch of new connections from it as well (via twitter.)  The info that was presented was based on studies of data collected from billions of messages, tweets, blogs, and other marketing campaigns.
Here are a few of the main takeaways:

Targeting marketing campaigns for Weekends …