The importance of “Hashtag”
Most young people will understand the meaning of the term “hashtag,” but if you are busy running your professional practice or small business, you may not understand the importance of these devices. Get a grip on this important social media subject by reading “What Is a Hashtag?”
Please visit our home page to find out how Axiom Administrative Services can fill your digital marketing needs. Axiom understands the needs of small businesses, professional practices and nonprofits. Please visit Axiom’s small business services page or call Axiom at 800-888-6348.
Webmaster Help from Google
Did you know that you can get webmaster help directly from ‘The Man’ (that is Google). There was a time when Google was very obscure about its criteria for ranking a webpage; the Google employees and the contractors who were involved in this activity were required to sign nondisclosure agreements and the ‘secrets’ were supposed to be kept hidden.
This was a counterproductive policy because it left webmasters and content creators in the dark about how to meet the needs of consumers and to rank highly in Google’s search engine results. Over the years, this policy was eased and then changed totally. Today you can read all about it from “The Boss” himself or herself at Google Webmaster Guidelines.
In the spirit of complying, here is Axiom’s original, not scraped or copied, philosophy about getting to the top of search rankings, generating web traffic and producing results in the form of new customers or clients:
- Google’s intention is to provide the best answer to the query a user enters. The highest ranked webpage should be the one that is most useful to the viewer, providing the best answer to a specific question.
- To be useful, a website must provide content that is of some value to the user. Content that is ‘syndicated,’ that is scraped or copied from another site, does not meet this requirement. Even if the copied material is relevant to the question at hand, it does not add value because it was already available elsewhere.
- There is nothing wrong with a site that is intended to influence buying decisions (that is to sell you stuff); HOWEVER to rank high in search results, the website must provide useful content to the viewer, not merely direct them to a local provider or an Amazon affiliate.
The bottom line is this – produce content that is original and useful to the viewer and adds some value to the experience. If you are a plumber, your website should provide information about the relative merits of fixtures, pipes or maintenance procedures, not just pretty pictures of showers or links to Amazon sites. An attorney’s site should contain information that helps potential clients make important decisions, not just photos of well-dressed people holding law books.
If you are capable of producing this material yourself, then by all means do so. If you have neither the time or the inclination to do this, turn the task over to an internet marketing agency like Axiom Administrative Services. Axiom has the professional skill and small business SEO skills needed to get your web presence the ranking it deserves. Please visit Axiom’s small business services or call Axiom at 800-888-6348.
Our Year-End Checklist
It is the start of a new year and Axiom is looking forward to helping you with all of your online needs. In 2019, we will continue to develop the branding strategies, the SEO strategies and the digital marketing solutions of all kinds that you need to succeed. Axiom is more than an internet marketing agency providing technical advice or SEO techniques. We will continue to provide those services, but we will also offer help with non-technical areas like niche marketing, especially marketing to seniors.
Seniors and senior marketing is a natural for Axiom because of its location in the state of Florida. This is the center of the “boomer consumer” generation and we know it well! If you are struggling to find digital marketing solutions that work and branding strategies that make your business stand out, turn to Axiom Administrative Services. We can help you reach those senior markets today! Your business deserves more than a cheap web design, and Axiom is more than an internet marketing agency. Axiom Administrative Services has the professional skill and small business SEO skills needed to get your web presence the ranking it deserves.
If you are still trying to maintain your own web presence, we urge you to contact us to review your situation and see what we can do to help. In the meantime, here are some housekeeping suggestions for all webmasters.
Yearly Checklist
- Backup! This is so basic that we hope it does not need to be mentioned. If you have signed on to a provider like GoDaddy or iPage, they will have a service that automatically backs up your site. However, you will probably be charged for this and you can do it perfectly well yourself. Use one of the tools like “BackupBuddy” (a free WordPress plugin) or a similar offering.
Make sure that at least one copy of the backup files is stored somewhere off your computer. For most people, their Google Drive will have plenty of space for this function. In any case, backup is an absolutely mandatory maintenance activity. If you are not doing it now, start immediately and store one copy in an offsite, safe place.
If you are using a tool like WordPress (about one third of all websites do), update the WordPress core program, your plugins, and themes. This will ensure that everything works together as planned.
- Speed Check. One side effect of the digital revolution and high-speed internet connections is that attention spans have shortened dramatically. Several studies suggest the typical viewer will wait no more than a few seconds for a site to load. If it is not there, they move on to the next suggestion in their search results. If you have not done so recently, load your own site and see how long it takes.
- Mobile Speed and Compatibility Check. In a big way, the computer age in marketing has ended. Today, most search queries are performed on smartphones and mobile devices, and the results are viewed on those small screens. Have you checked to see how your site looks on a smartphone? How fast does it load on mobile devices? The speed check suggested above is even more important for smart phones.
- More than a few seconds of loading time is too long! If this is an issue, look for the common causes, like graphic elements that are too large. A rule of thumb is to make all images no larger than 12 kilobytes and total page no more than 100 kilobytes. Images take up most of the download time for a web page. There are many ways to optimize a web page, but the one that will improve your speed the most is to make graphics as small as possible.
Doing this may require you to learn to use a program like Photoshop Express, a free online image editor. This skill should not take long to master, and it will enable you to reduce an image’s pixel count to the minimum. Most people are surprised to see that when viewed on the internet, the low-density image looks as good as a much larger file.
- Security Check. Perform security fixes as needed. Most people who are not full-time webmasters or at least dedicated amateurs, will not know how to do this. Their best alternative is a plugin like Wordfence Security or Sucuri Security.
This list is the minimum you should be doing. To find out more, please contact us at Axiom Administrative Services or call 800-888-6348.
