Beware of SEO companies that:

1) promise link back from thousands of websites- they might be using “link farms” – sites that exists solely for the purpose of providing backlinks for pay. This “technique” might get your site penalized by the search engines.

2) Promise to get your site on the first page of Google within a certain period of time. The truth is that Google uses a secret algorithm to determine search engine ranking and placement. This algorithm is changed/updated by Google on a regular basis. SEO companies don’t really know the algorithm. In realty, no reputable company can guarantee a first page, organic placement in Google.

How fast is your website and why should you care?

Why do you need to know how long it takes your website to load when a visitor is coming to your site?  Well there are two reasons:

1.  User Experience- if it takes your website too long to upload, there is a chance that people visiting your site will find it frustrating and annoying and some will simply leave the site even before it is fully uploaded.

2. Search Engine- Search Engines (and people) like fast loading websites. Some search engine algorithm look at how long it takes your site to upload and might penalize or give a lower ranking to slow websites. So insuring that your site is fast can also bring some SEO value.

How can you tell how fast your site is?
Here are my favorite free tools for checking website speed and performance, all you have to do is type in your web address and you get tons of info about the speed and performance of your website.  All these tools also give specific recommendations on how to improve your site’s speed.

1. Google Page Speed  https://developers.google.com/pagespeed/

2. Web Page Test  http://www.webpagetest.org/

3. GTmetrix- http://gtmetrix.com/

I’ve got my web page speed, now what?
Well, if your site’s grade in the above performance tools is high, congratulations! If you need to improve your site’s speed and performance talk with your favorite geek or just send us an email.

Web analytics is the process of collecting data and analyzing the behavior of visitors to your website.  Web analytics can give you in-depth insight into the behavior of your site’s visitors. For more information see our web analytics page.

Google+, ZDNet published a great article by Sam Diaz about Google+ Pages: The power of search. You can read  it at Google+

1. SEO- search engines love fresh content on your website. It gives the search engine text that it can index, every time you publish a post to your WordPress blog you are feeding the search engines. Make sure to include your keywords in your posts.

2. Easy - With WordPress it is easy to keep your site up to date. I often see websites with outdated company information, for example listing an old, inactive telephone number or mailing address. Well, with WordPress there is no excuse for that. Once your site is up and running, changing text info is as easy as writing an email or creating a Microsoft Word document.

3. WordPress Themes- WordPress themes are essentially graphic templates. With WordPress you can, with relative ease, change the look of your website. There are many free WordPress themes as well as premium ones. You can get free WordPress themes at: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/  although there are many benefits to using premium themes over the free ones.

4. WordPress is an Open Source Software- Free is good (at least some times), it doesn’t cost you anything to download and use WordPress. You can download WordPress by visiting http://www.wordpress.org

5. Plugins- Although WordPress is super powerful just by itself, you can add tons of functionality to it by using plugins. Just like themes there are lots of free plugins as well as premium ones. Here is a link to the WordPress Plugins page http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/

6. The WordPress community- This is a knowledgeable, helpful, responsive and generally awesome user community. You can post any WordPress question to any of the many online communities and get a response fairly quickly. Most WordPress folks like to share their knowledge.

THANKS- 500+ Linkedin connections. May we always share & grow.

Many thanks.

Webzly Studio- web design

Our top 2 social media networks for business are Linkedin and Twitter. While we are a very social company based on our personal experience we get more visitors and later clients from this 2 social platforms than any other social networking sites.

NO, just focus your efforts on Google, MSN/Bing (feeds Yahoo searches) and YouTube. It is a good idea for your company to create a YouTube channel as YouTube is the 3rd largest search engine. Putting video on YouTube is a great way for you to educate your potential clients about your services and to give them a feel for your corporate culture.

VIDEO- Gary Vaynerchuk: Context is king, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT7hAh5hxkk&feature=share

The Skinny on Measuring Social Media ROI http://www.business2community.com/social-media/the-skinny-on-measuring-social-media-roi-064204 via @B2Community