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Perhaps you’ve thought about digital marketing and wondered whether this would be beneficial to your company. The Internet has definitely changed the way the world does business and it’s an exciting force of nature. Is Digital Marketing Really Worth the Expense? Did you know that there are thousands of people online looking for your products and/or services each week? But how to reach those folks with your message…that’s the big question. You want every dollar you spend on marketing to count! You want to make sure those dollars are being spent effectively, right? Below, Javier Loya CEO of OTC Global Holdings explains more thoroughly. How Does Digital Marketing Work? Digital marketing is now using smartphones quite a bit more. In the U.S. alone, 230 million people own a smartphone. A large percentage of those users find products and services on their phones. A new survey shows that 79 percent of those users will make a purchase using their phone. This has become an exciting new area for digital marketing experts. Sell Around the World Business owners can now sell their products and services to just about anyone around the globe. Let’s say for instance that your company sells printing and a man in Hong Kong will need some brochures printed in English for his upcoming convention. Utilizing Digital marketing, you can easily reach this potential customer. He sees your ad online and clicks on a hyperlink and within moments he is searching through your products and price list. Your entire transaction can be handled via email with very little phone calling. This offers you an opportunity to not only make a sale but also develop business relationships outside the United States. An Untapped Resource Javier Loya recently commented, saying, “Digital Marketing is an untapped resource for many business owners. It might be one of the best investments you can make. It can turn your small or medium sized company into an international production. It can give your sales that extra boost they’ve so desperately...
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Article by Rack Alley As you’re looking for a web host who can handle your website, a common promise you might hear is a guarantee of 99% uptime or higher. That word may seem like meaningless jargon at first, but uptime is actually a very simple and important concept. Uptime is simply the amount of time your website is “up” or accessible to other users. When your site is inaccessible because of errors, hosting issues, or similar problems, it is in “downtime.” And downtime can be costly for several reasons. For a website that sells products, downtime can mean a loss of customers and revenue, because all of your potential new customers can’t buy anything if they can’t access your site. In 2018, Amazon’s website was down for one hour, and it was estimated that they lost up to $100 million in sales. No business is too big or too small to be affected by the costs of downtime. Furthermore, if your business practices and employee communication are tied to a website, your company’s ability to get things done will take a hit as well. Also, your search engine rankings might drop and your ad revenue might be suspended if your website is down for an extended period of time. This is why it’s so important to find a trustworthy and dependable web hosting service to host your site. Web hosting services with high-quality hardware, backup power and data, and dedicated technical support will improve your site’s uptime, making sure you aren’t losing those profits. ______________________________________________________________ Rack Alley is a Los Angeles web hosting company. They provide colocation services, dedicated servers, cloud hosting, and shared...
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Article submitted by Herb Kimble An executive coach helps you realize your best self. They don’t teach tricks, and they don’t teach manipulation. They help you understand the value you bring to the organization. Yet some myths persist and executive coaching sometimes gets a bad reputation. If you’re on the fence, then dispelling these common myths might help push you to one side or the other. Coaching only Adds Value to the Less Confident Coaching brings value to anyone who has ever felt anxiety over the choices they’ve made. It’s an action that improves our experience, and guides us toward finding the answers we need to success. A coach isn’t someone who has all the answers. They’re an objective third-party that can help you find the path you need to achieve success in your life. Coaching is Just Motivating Every coach is also a motivator, but that’s not all they do. A coach isn’t a simple self-help book in human form. They help their clients adopt a self-reflective mindset that acknowledges both success and failure. They make your success feel like the victory it is, and they help turn failure into another stepping stone toward success. Coaches Teach Tricks Those who dismiss coaching as useless tend to think coaching is about teaching tricks to clients. They think a good coach teaches you how to manipulate others into doing what you want. That mindset isn’t about building or learning, it’s about control. A good coach will be the first to tell you the path to success is controlling yourself. They don’t use cliched thinking, they offer personalized solutions to the challenges you face. Bio: Herb Kimble is both an entrepreneur and a film and television producer. His roots as an accomplished actor gave him a passion for the arts. Today, Herb Kimble is co-founder of CineFocus Productions and launching Urban Flix, an inclusive streaming company based in Los...
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A lot of works goes into user interface design and whenever you see a great user interface, or one that is intuitive, chances are that a lot of work went into making something that looks simple on the surface. The basic crux behind user interface design is to create an interface that is easy for the user to understand and use, anticipating the many things the user might want to do. There are some absolutely basics that all UI design should follow. Here are a few from Rack Alley: KISS The famous adage: Keep It Simple Stupid applies here. Simplify the interface as much as possible without compromising on usability. Mark labels clearly and remove any unnecessary elements. You will also keep the load down on your LA web hosting without the extra clutter. Consistency Most user interfaces will have multiple screens or pages. It is important to maintain consistency between all those pages/screens while keeping the content unique. The key lesson here is that once the user understands how your interface works, that same lesion should apply across the entire property. Colors Use colors and texture to your advantage instead of simply for branding or design. For example, using a red button when you need the user to act greatly increases the chances of getting a click and drawing attention to the button. Defaults Use common defaults that are native to the medium you use. For example, on some interfaces, a menu on top of the page is common, while on iPhones, navigation at the bottom of the app is common. Use these defaults and avoid forcing your users to learn a new...
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Google combined the naming structure for the rich snippets, rich cards, and enriched results and will now call all such results “Rich Results.” Here is a short primer on everything an SEO should know about these Rich Snippets: How does Google obtain rich results? If you want the data from your site in the rich results, you will need to enable some form of structured data to the search engine spiders. There is no guarantee that the data from your site will show as a rich result, although doing so increases the likelihood. WordPress users only need to install a plugin to enable schema.org structures for their site data. What is the preferred format? The reason sites like Google insist on using structured data for displaying these results is because they allow a site to provide structure to spiders while keeping the display of the data the same for users. Google supports JSON-LD, Microdata, and RDFa, but prefers JSON-LD. Will I rank better? The markup or even appearing in the rich results will not change your ranking for other terms or even the term that appears on the page. Google shows relevant rich results for the search from any of the top 10 results on the page. How do I know if it will work? Any webmaster can use the testing tool by Google to check if the structured markup is correct. Here is an excerpt from the Google Webmaster blog: “The new tool provides a more accurate reflection of the page’s appearance on Search and includes improved handling for Structured Data found on dynamically loaded content. The tests for Recipes, Jobs, Movies, and Courses are currently supported — but this is just a first step, we plan on expanding over...
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Personal assistant search optimization is the phrase coined to the new art of optimizing and marketing for the new crop of voice activated digital personal assistants. Most analysts firmly believe that this is the future of SEO. This is not too surprising, if you think about where assistants like Goole Home and Siri get their information. SEO will eventually morph into optimization for voice based personal assistants. Here is what you need to know about PASO: Portability Although these personal assistants still need a lot of work, their primary draw is portability. The assistants exist on smartphones, tablets, and other computing device you carry around. Once the platform matures, typing in queries will seem like an antiquated notion. Personal Another reason that personal assistants are the future of SEO is the tailoring of results to the user. The portability provides context to the queries. Add some AI and machine learning and you have contextual responses tailored to the individual. For example a query for “where to have lunch” would return a list of restaurants in the area, ordered by price and rating with your favourite cuisine first. Results The results returned from a personal assistant are limited. Unlike the million or so results you get from Google, a typical assistant returns one to four at maximum. This has resulted in much higher click through rates than normal search. As a result, being one of the top four results is more important than...
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We have all known for some time now that links, the anchor text of those links and the number of links always played a key part in determining ranking on Google. These are part of a 200 signal ranking recipe that places varying levels of importance on each signal. We have never known how important one signal is over the other, let alone what the most important one is, until now. When a Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google (Andrey Lipattsev) was asked what the top two ranking factors were, he answered: “I can tell you what they are. It is content. And it’s links pointing to your site.”. We now know that the content on your site is the most important factor followed by the links to you site. In addition to the above we also got more information on whether click through rates affect ranking: Google engineer Paul Haahr revealed some of these new signals. Specifically, Paul revealed that: 1. Google runs A/B tests with the SERPs. So if you drop or go up 1-2 spots, it may have nothing to do with links, on-page SEO, etc. It could be a test. 2. Google definitely uses click-through-rate (CTR) data as a ranking signal. This lays to rest a long held belief that Google does consider end user behavior when ranking. With this news, there will be even more focus on bounce rate, as any visitor that clicks through to your page and then clicks back could be detrimental to your ranking. It is quite possible that with these ranking signal confirmations, Google is clearly telling webmasters that better content will result in better...
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