Recently, a client in the whole health and beauty business who provides Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture added massage therapy to her services. She wants to write a new page for her website to introduce this service. There are two options I recommend. 1. Write a blog post introducing the new service and categorize it as “news” and/or “new services.” Any blog category or post can be added to the menu like a page. Or, 2. If you want it to be a page then do both. Use the content from the blog post and insert it into the page. You can link the post and page to each other. Finding new information in more than one place on a website is a good thing!

I can’t emphasize enough how important blog posts are and should be a regular practice. Here are the reasons why:

1. Posts immediately get sent to anyone subscribed to your blog and encourage people to sign up
2. Posting enlivens your website and makes it more attractive to people seeking information
3. Posts get sent out over the internet apart from your website, pulling in new prospects
4. Posting enhances your search engine optimization and should be a part of any SEO plan
5. Posts can be added to your social networking and newsletter as part of your overall marketing strategy

So, When you think about new activity on your website, don’t forget the blog is waiting to work for you more than just a web page can. Need some training? Give me a shout!

TEXT
You may already have text from a previous website that you want to update or you may have none at all. Brochures, reports and other publications may offer you a good start. The designer or content developer will take this to edit into something usable for the new website, keeping in mind what key words need to be added for search engine optimization. This is a start and you will have to involved in the editing to make it work for you.

GRAPHICS AND PHOTOGRAPHY
If you have a logo, that is a good place to start for color exploration. Not having a good logo may provide an opportunity to include that design in your agreement. Photographs you may already have should enhance your color palette and brand. If you do have good photography, the designer will suggest or select the ones that will be placed on the home page. Another option is to purchase high quality photographs from a stock agency. Designers will look for photographs with the right colors and style for your site.

CONTENT DEVELOPMENT
Mapping out the layout is key to good user experience. Your visitors will need a clear understanding of what you do and how you will help them. Your designer will create a design that provides a satisfying pathway for a visitor who follows through with a call of email to find out more.

SUCCESSFUL LAUNCH
When all the functionality is set and the layout is finished, your designer will launch the site and make sure everything is working correctly. Flow, typos, links and software kinks need to be worked out. Your site should have a security certificate and your new site should be added to search engines and social networks. Incoming marketing efforts can begin to provide traffic to your site which can then be tracked.

Your involvement as website owner is necessary to achieve good results from your website from the very beginning to the end!

Why is this a good idea? Not only does it introduce you to their customers who may visit their website, but the Search Engine benefits are real. That post goes out on the internet with your name in bright lights. And here I am posting about it and their name and link will be available at the bottom of this article. It’s a WIN WIN, as they say. For their page go to: http://cpaadvisors.biz/wordpress/perugi-design/. By the way, Tony is an affable guy who happens to be a really great accountant. Check out CPA Advisors!

This week on Local Business Spotlight, we are joined by local web designer Deb Perugi from Perugi Design.

Perugi Design helps many local businesses create and maintain beautiful and elegant websites that are unique to each company and easy to navigate (for both front-end visitors and her back-end clients).  All the sites are mobile and tablet friendly – which is a necessity nowadays if you want your business to succeed. We love Deb’s work, so today we asked her how she got her start.

What do you like best about designing?
I like combining my graphic design and photography skills and figuring out the layout and editing content in a way that will suit my client’s goals. I think it involves both sides of the brain as I have to think creatively but also logically. It fully engages me, especially when there is problem-solving to do!

How did you get started in website design?
I was working at the Boston Globe at the time. Early on, the Globe brought in desk Apple desktop computers and we were producing information graphics for the daily and Sunday papers on deadline. I went to a one-day workshop in Cambridge to find out about the internet. We wrote a sample web page in HTML. It blew my mind that what you saw on the screen was what others would see. It eliminated the inevitable printing errors that would occur.
Of course, that was before I learned that different browsers had an effect on web pages.

Why did you pick the Framingham area to serve?
We were living in Newton where we moved in 1992 when our twins were a year old. It was always the plan that when they went off to college we would sell the condo and find less expensive property further from Boston. We looked at many towns and settled on the Natick/Framingham area. Not only is it less expensive to live here, we really like the area.

What are 3 local businesses in Framingham would you like to see spotlighted and why?
I have a lot of clients in this area so I’ll pick a few of them.
Crossfit Synergistics in Ashland. Talk to Elizabeth. This is a recent client. Elizabeth is a good manager and great to work with. She is energetic and enthusiastic about CrossFit.
Red Rover Clothing in Framingham. Talk to Cindy. Cindy works really hard to create unique polar fleece outer wear. She not only designs and makes the clothes, she sells at many major craft shows in the US.
PSW Youth Employment in Marlborough. Talk to Kelley or Jan. This group does so much for disadvantaged youth in the Southeastern Metro region. They help kids connect with corporations in the area via internships, mentorships, and other ways.

When you’re not working, what do you do for fun?
I was trained as a visual artist, so I like to take painting classes and I have a small studio at home. I also love the outdoor activities and organic farming practices. So I visit farms and buy eggs locally. We also like to travel to Europe, so when we can afford a trip, we go.
If you are looking for a great web designer for your business or start-up, you can contact Deb at:

Office: 508-879-7347
Cell: 617-365-3418
Website’s Contact Form: https://perugi.com/contact
Facebook: Perugi Design
LinkedIn: Deb Perugi

Article at: http://cpaadvisors.biz/

Not noticeable but important

An HTTPS connection guarantees three things

• Confidentiality. The visitor’s connection is encrypted, obscuring URLs, cookies, and other sensitive metadata.
• Authenticity. The visitor is talking to the “real” website, and not to an impersonator or through a “man-in-the-middle”.
• Integrity. The data sent between the visitor and the website has not been tampered with or modified.

Here are those points explained by Kayce Basques, technical writer at Google.

1. HTTPS helps prevent intentionally malicious attackers snd legitimate but intrusive companies from inserting their ads into your websites or onto your users’ browsers. They also like to trick your users into giving up sensitive information or installing malware that will negatively affect user experiences and create security vulnerabilities.
2. HTTPS is not only for those that handle sensitive communications. Every unprotected HTTP request can potentially reveal information about the behaviors and identities of your users.
3. HTTPS doesn’t just block misuse of your website. It’s also a requirement for many cutting-edge features and an enabling technology for app-like capabilities.

HTTP will soon be considered non-secure
And it’s also important to know that Chrome and Firefox security teams are working on gradually marking plain HTTP as non-secure. Ultimately, the goal of the internet community is to establish encryption as the norm, and to phase out unencrypted connections. This means that not have https, will negatively affect your seo and that having it improves a website’s own SEO and analytics.

Can an HTTPS connection be attacked?
There are only three ways for attackers to get through the https security wall and they are very difficult and require significant expense. In addition, they would all have to be targeted attacks, and not feasible to execute against any user connecting to any website. By contrast, plain HTTP connections can be easily intercepted and modified by anyone involved in the network connection, and so attacks can be carried out at large scale and at low cost.

I was surprised that getting an https on your website is fairly easy and inexpensive to do. Ask your service provider to set it up for you. You can set it up yourself on the control panel at your hosting company. Be sure the https shows up in the url of your browser. If it doesn’t, call your hosting company and ask them to help you out. There might be some settings they need to set on their end. and then rest assured, your visitors will have a better experience.

These lists update constantly and sometimes incorrectly. That’s a problem for your potential customers and for you. An incorrect listing (showing the wrong address, map, or phone number) or inconsistent information across multiple listings is not well received by the public. I have a client in the medical field who moved about a year ago to a nearby location. People trying to find them on the internet, potential patients and current, were led astray by the incorrect address and map on the listings. This leads to loss of revenue and frustration.

Check out these statistics:

• 73% of consumers lose trust in a company if their info is outdated and wrong.
• Up to 40% of location information is wrong.
• 2 out of 3 business listings contain wrong information.

So, having them right all the time would be a worthwhile endeavor… and time consuming to do it yourself. But help is available with a product that is now being offered at an affordable rate. For $600 per year, you can get your business listed locally in 68 lists and get them monitored and updated with new information during that entire year. It’s called Yext and it’s worth the price. The medical office took their offer and now appointments and office visits are running smoothly.

Perhaps you made a major marketing effort the previous month and want to see how that affected your website’s SEO. You can see here that visits were doubled in the period from October 11 to October 22. I made some home page edits and wrote a few blog posts. I was surprised to see the change. The chart on the right side lists my top competitors in the area.

This tool also allows you to track specific key words

Let me give you an example. The keywords I wanted to track are “web design” and the also towns where I do the most business, such as Framingham, Natick and Boston. One of the ten keywords I chose is “Framingham Web Design” and another “Boston Web Design”.

How did I do?

I am on the first page of Google for the keywords “boston divi theme”, “framingham website design”, “natick web maintenance” and wellesley web maintenance.” Perugi Design is number 12 for “natick website design” and number 14 for “boston wordpress websites”. I think that’s quite good considering the number 12 spot is located on  the second page of the orgainic area on Google.

Part of the work is figuring out the best keywords for the audience you are trying to attract. There are other tools we use for that too.

The softeare creates a pdf booklet that itemizes everything that is updated on a weekly basis. such as number and dates of backups saved, plugins that have been updated, security checks, spam comments that have been removed and if and when and how long your website was offline.

Only clients on the monthly web maintenance plan gets these reports, either monthly or quarterly. (It cannot be accessed via the dashboard.) The pdf report is great for presentation purposes, too. If you are an existing or new client thinking about taking advantage of this service, message me. I’d be happy to talk to you about it!

See the article from Inman Daily by Erica Trafavoti that explains it here:

“The focus of this update is to provide a better search experience for mobile users. To accomplish this, Google will be “expanding [its] use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal.” So what does that mean in plain English? If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, your search engine rankings and ultimately your Web traffic could take a hit.

This algorithm change has likely been in the works for a long time, as Google has made several announcements related to mobile devices in the past year, such as mobile usability tools, a mobile-friendly label in search results and even a mobile-friendliness test to give your site a pass/fail grade.

If you’ve been hanging on to your old-school website design for the past decade, Google has officially given you a reason to upgrade in the next two weeks. If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, don’t panic, and definitely don’t pay someone from a spammy-looking “Your website is in danger” email to fix your site.

Here are some steps to take to ensure you’re prepared for this algorithm change:

1. Run your website through Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. 

If you get a green “Awesome! This page is mobile-friendly,” then you’re all clear. Skip to step 6. If you get a red “Not mobile-friendly,” then we have some work to do. If you manage your own website and were surprised to find out it wasn’t mobile-friendly, read on to the next step to see how to look for specific issues to fix. If you’re not the webmaster for your page or use a website provider, skip to step 3.

2. Check your mobile usability stats using Google webmasters tools.

If you thought your site was mobile-friendly, and it wasn’t, you can use these tools to identify any problems. This dashboard is designed to show you specific issues that are hurting your mobile-friendliness. If you haven’t set up your site with Google’s tools, here’s how. Below is an example of what a site with a few issues will look like in your dashboard:

You can click these usability errors and go directly to the page with the issue, and see what needs to be done to fix the page, whether it’s as simple as a change in font size or as complex as viewport issues that are preventing the page from adapting to smaller screens. Run through these errors and correct the necessary issues. Skip to step 5.

3. Check with your webmaster or website provider to see the status of your site. 

If your site is managed by another person or company and you’re getting a red notification from Google, it’s time to give them a call and see what you can do to get your site upgraded to a mobile-responsive theme. If your provider isn’t able to build mobile-responsive websites, move on to step 4. If you’re able to get upgraded, do it. In this case, change is good. After your site has been updated, skip to step 5.

4. Find a new website provider. 

Breaking up can be hard to do. If you have a long-standing relationship with your website provider, it can be difficult to leave and find a new one, but your business deserves better. When searching for a new provider, here are some things to look for:

• Live sample sites demonstrating previous work. It’s a good idea to plug these sites into Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test as well, to check and make sure their designs are as functional as they are visually appealing. No examples to check out? Steer clear. A quality website designer or provider should be proud of their work.
• Responsive design, not separate sites for mobile devices. Google has stated in the past that it prefers responsive design over other solutions.
• Experience transitioning desktop websites to mobile-responsive design. Transitioning to an entirely new website design is a lot more complicated than simply changing layouts and images. Redesigning a website can hurt existing search engine rankings if not done carefully. Any links with long-standing high rankings can disappear if a URL structure is incorrectly changed. Inbound links, an important ranking factor, can also be impacted in a redesign. Previous experience transitioning sites is important to retain any existing search authority.

Once you’ve found a new website provider or designer who can build your perfect mobile-responsive site, move on to the next step.

5. Test, test, then test again.

Once you’ve gone through a site redesign, or any time you make tweaks to your site, it’s important to run through every page of your site and make sure links are working and pages are loading properly. Run through it on a smartphone or tablet if you can, too. 

Since you’re a real estate professional and not a website designer, it can be tempting to trust that your site is always up and running smoothly, and go days, weeks or even months without actually checking on your site. However, your website is your online representation to potential clients, and it’s important to know it’s up and running and collecting leads. If you check Facebook every day to see what’s going on with your high school sweetheart, why wouldn’t you want to see what’s going on with your business? When you’ve checked through your website and everything is good to go, you can move on to the final and most exciting step.

6. Celebrate

Your site is now mobile-friendly and you can avoid all punishment from Google on April 21. Now, you can focus on adding relevant, local content to your website to climb the search engine rankings even further.

What do you think about Google’s algorithm update coming this month? Is your website prepared? Please continue the conversation in the comments section below.

Erica Tafavoti is an inbound marketing expert at PipelineROI, real estate’s first complete inbound marketing platform. You can follow her on Twitter at@PipelineROI and on pipelineroi.com/blog.”

They are offering a free trial of CoSchedule, a social media editorial calendar built exclusively for WordPress. It will help save time managing your blog and social media content by putting everything on the same drag and drop editorial calendar.

Click here to see what it does. (and get a free 14 day trial).

Here is something they published that will be useful as you write your next blog posts: 180 Power Words for Writing Emotional headlines, collected by copywriter Karl Stepp. Catchy headlines are one of the best way to up your seo.

Avinash Kaushik from Google

A few months back I talked about how to know when to update your website. The general rule is to update after three years. A lot can change in that time, and you may not be aware of what you can do to keep up. Two important ways are: 1. Running a Responsive theme and 2. Using Google Analytics.

Is your site responsive?
Does it have a simpler more vertical design for the phone and tablet? Nearly 60% of your viewers will see your site for the first time on their phone. If it is not legible, then you can bet they will immediately go elsewhere for the service or product they need. (See Bounce rate below)

Did you know that many WordPress themes, but not all, are built with responsive styling? Basically, this means that the design adapts to different browser sizes — so that instead of needing a separate mobile site or mobile plugin, the content will be resized and rearranged to fit smaller screens.

My favorite responsive theme is Divi by Elegant Themes. Not only is it responsive, but it comes packed with a module based design layout. You can drag and drop elements or blocks of information around your pages.

For instance: You find out that the Call to Action block is recommended to be at the top of the page. Or, you want to call attention to a sale or special event. You can go right into that block and change the color, text or photo without any other change and then move it into a different position. Likewise, any slide in the slider module can be moved to a different order, or you can remove one slide or add a new one.

Bounce rate may be more critical than seo
Many of my clients are concerned about search engine optimization. They want it, and they assume new customers will be calling immediately. But, what if the customer is browsing when they find your website? They won’t necessarily respond to your Call to Action or Contact Us page. Many visitors will stay less than 1 minute and not go beyond the home page or page of entry.

But what bounce rate is good? According to Rocket Fuel Team at gorocketfuel.com: “As a rule of thumb, a bounce rate in the range of 26 to 40 percent is excellent. 41 to 55 percent is roughly average. 56 to 70 percent is higher than average, but may not be cause for alarm depending on the website. Anything over 70 percent is disappointing for everything outside of blogs, news, events, etc.” To find out more about bounce rate, how its determined and how to improve it, go to this Google page.

Check out the video above from Google’s You Tube page: “If you could only choose one metric to look at, Bounce Rate might be your best choice. Learn why in this entertaining and informative segment from Avinash Kaushik.”

You can set up and see your bounce rate with Google Analytics. If you don’t already have Analytics up on your web site, do ask your webmaster to help.