Then Yahoo Changed the World

In 2000, Yahoo introduced Google to the world, and Google unveiled its algorithm for deciding how to rank websites. It boiled down to “if they are talking about you, you are important.” Links were one component of their algorithm, so people suddenly added all the backlinks they could point to their site—even if it meant paying for them.

You can learn more about the fascinating history of SEO in The Search Engine Journal. The important thing to take from this is that even though the black hat tactics of keyword stuffing and paid backlinks are rooted in the internet of the early 2000s, you will still see people attempting to use them.

Keyword Stuffing

Have you ever read an article on the internet that kept repeating the same keywords throughout the content to the point that it felt like overkill? They may use different variations of the keywords, but something about it does not seem natural. That is because it isn’t. It’s keyword stuffing in an attempt to rank higher on the search page for that particular word or phrase.

Google has gotten wise to this black hat tactic and will kick those pages down in the ranks when detected. As a website owner or a content writer, it is essential to keep your content useful and relevant for the readers you are trying to reach. By doing this, you will naturally grow your audience and move up in the ranks.

Paid Backlinks

Receiving a backlink from another site on the web is a high compliment. It means they trust the content you are putting out enough for them to share it with their audience. Because of that, Google counts that as a factor in how you should rank on the search engine results page. It’s like carrying extra clout.

Unfortunately, some people would instead take the quick and easy route rather than the honest way. They pay for links that others work hard to get. Google and other search engines have taken a tough stance on this, banning the buying and selling of links as a way of manipulating page ranking. If they do detect this, they will penalize both the seller and buyer of the links.

What if I Have Paid for Links in the Past?

If you have paid for backlinks in the past, not realizing it was wrong, and you want to straighten things out, there is a way to do that. Google has a Link Disavowal Tool.

How Can I Rank Well?

The best way to rank well with search engines like Google is with high-quality content that follows search engine optimization rules. At Iceberg Web Design, we specialize in website-based business solutions, including premium content and SEO services. Contact us today to see how we can help take your business to the next level.

The post Black Hat SEO: Keyword Stuffing & Paid Backlinks appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

American’s with Disabilities Act (ADA)

In the United States, plaintiffs have filed numerous lawsuits challenging websites and mobile apps, based on the Americans with Disabilities Act. A blind user filed one such lawsuit against Domino’s Pizza after being unable to use Domino’s mobile app. The federal district court ruled in favor of Domino’s since the Justice Department hadn’t yet established the guidelines for web accessibility. After an appeal, the Ninth Circuit overruled the district court, saying that Domino’s is a brick-and-mortar store and must meet the ADA. Since the mobile app was an extension of their services, it must also be compliant with the ADA.

Backed by many other restaurants and retail chains, Domino’s petitioned to the Supreme Court, arguing that customers with impairments have other, more accessible means to order. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case, which effectively upheld the decision of the 9th Circuit Court and required the case to be heard as it stands.

Website accessibility is good business

Regardless of what side the courts favor, it’s essential to pay attention to accessibility issues while designing your website, if for no other reason than it being good business. Your potential customers will come from a variety of backgrounds, have different impairments and needs. You should create your website so that all customers can fully utilize it. What are some of the things that you should pay attention to?

Visual impairments

Visual impairments include blindness, various common types of low vision and poor eyesight, and color blindness. Just because they don’t see the same way someone with 20/20 vision does, doesn’t mean that the 45 million blind people around the world don’t want to use the internet.[1] But, for that to happen, some adjustments need to be made at the design level of each website.

• Text and images should be large or enlargeable, so users with poor sight can more easily read and understand the content.
• Underline links to differentiate them from other text. Underlining the links ensures that color blind users will be able to notice them.

Hearing Impairments

Deafness or hearing impairment affects five percent of the population, 466 million people worldwide.[2] This number includes people born deaf and those who have lost auditory function due to age and damage to their hearing. Hearing loss can be very isolating, and hearing aids are often not effective. To allow all people to use your website, do one of the following:

• Include closed captioning for videos.
• Have a sign language version is available.

Seizure Disorders

1.2 percent of American adults—about 3.4 million—have epilepsy, a brain disorder that causes seizures.[3] Visual strobe or flashing effects can trigger photo epileptic seizures. While not all people with epilepsy are sensitive to flashing lights, about one in four thousand people are.[4]

• Avoid using flashing effects or at least make them optional.
• If you use flashing lights on your site, include a warning to prevent risk to users with photosensitive.

Cognitive and Intellectual Impairments

Cognitive and intellectual impairments include developmental disabilities, cognitive disabilities which affect memory, attention, problem-solving, and logic skills, and learning difficulties such as dyslexia and dyscalculia, etc.

• Write content in plain language.
• Include illustrations, instructional diagrams, and animations.
• Add a video that explains the content to offer one more way for users to learn.

Motor or Mobility Impairment

Motor or mobility impairment difficulty or inability to use the hands, tremors, muscle slowness, loss of fine motor control, etc. These impairments are often a result of stroke, Parkinson’s disease, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, etc.;

• Create large, clickable links to help people who cannot control a computer mouse with precision.
• Code pages to allow navigation by using a keyboard or a single switch access device alone so that users do not need to use a mouse or a standard keyboard.

Situational Disabilities

Accessibility issues extend to anyone who is experiencing a situational disability. Situational disability refers to someone who is having trouble using a website to its maximum functionality due to their current situation. For example, a person may be situationally one-handed if they are carrying a baby. While developing your website, be mindful of the wide variety of barriers users encounter.

Websites can be audited for accessibility using a range of methods. The expert developers at Iceberg Web Design can build a website from the ground up that is accessible for all your potential customers. We can also ensure that your current site is correctly built and maintained to accommodate all users. Contact us today to find out how we can help you.

[1] Babu, Rakesh, et al. “Understanding Blind Users’ Web Accessibility and Usability Problems.” AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction, vol. 2, no. 3, 2010, pp. 73–94., doi:10.17705/1thci.00015.

[2] “Deafness and Hearing Loss.” World Health Organization, World Health Organization, 1 Mar. 2020, www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/deafness-and-hearing-loss.

[3] “Epilepsy Fast Facts.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 31 July 2018, www.cdc.gov/epilepsy/about/fast-facts.htm?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fepilepsy%2Fbasics%2Ffast-facts.htm.

[4] “Information about Photosensitive Seizure Disorders.” Dr. Graham Harding, Information about Photosensitive Seizure Disorders | Trace Research & Development Center, Trace Research and Development Center, 2016, trace.umd.edu/peat/photosensitivity.

The post Website Accessibility by Design appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

In our fast-paced, technology-driven world, we anticipate 2018 will see some exciting new website design trends. Here are a few design features that we expect to see become more popular in modern 2018 website design:

1. Animated Logos

(Move your mouse over the logo above to re-animate)

One of the largest up and coming trends for websites in 2018 is the use of animation – particularly animated logos. Businesses can accentuate their brand, or add a bit of fun to their website, through the use of some simple animation.

2. Animated Website Elements

As flash website elements are nearly extinct, new technology is allowing for animations that are compatible with every web browser and mobile device. Animations are a great way to keep users engaged in your website, and they will likely click around more, navigating to other pages to see what else they can find. They may even increase the number of social media shares your website receives!

We expect to see businesses creating SVG and jQuery animations on their websites to draw attention to specific services or special offers. Eventually, animations will be common place on nearly every business website.

3. Better Photography

Pictures can be the only difference between a mediocre website and a great website. With so many options for free stock photography (Unsplash and Pixabay are just a few), and lower cost stock photography subscription services like Envato Elements, web designers have more access to great photos than ever before.

Companies are also investing more in their own brand image, working more and more with professional business photographers to create custom images for their website. In 2018, we will continue to see large photos dominating the web space, and we predict to also see full website color schemes revolving around the photographs used.

4. Improved Mobile Friendliness

As we approach 2018 it is no secret that website mobile friendliness is an important factor to any business that relies on generating business online.  On April 21st, 2015 Google rolled out changes to its algorithms that expanded its use of a websites responsiveness and user friendliness on mobile devices as a ranking factor.  According to Statista, 43.03% of online traffic Q3 of 2017 was from mobile phones.  While that number can vary depending on industry it is obvious that to succeed mobile friendliness can’t be ignored.

How do we maximize mobile conversions?

1. Think with your fingers.  Make sure the user doesn’t have to zoom in our out to find information.
2. Be Responsive.  Keep all devices and sizes in mind.  In this day and age there are a plethora of screen sizes visitors will be viewing your website.
3. Make it fast.  Your customers don’t have a long attention span.
4. Make it easy to find your location, name, phone number and contact form.
5. Keep the design simple on mobile.  Its ok to have a big beautiful website display on large desktop monitors, but make it easy for your mobile visitors.
6. Take advantage of geolocation.  Geolocation can be used to give directions, check in-store availability, offer targeted promotions, and connect to social platforms among other features.
7. Test, Test, Test!  (and then test again).  Check on all devices regularly.

Take advantage of your mobile presence by optimizing your website to make it easy for your visitors to use.

5. Big, Bold Typography

Aside from your physics professor, no one wants to read a term paper when landing on your website. In 2018, we will see more websites using large, bold text as design elements.

Catch your website visitor’s attention with your tagline, a good question or a creative snippet that is easy to read and delivered in a unique way.  Pick a font that makes your brand stand out and drives the message home.  The human attention span is not one that affords us the time to have a long message to absorb.  Make your message big, bold and creative and it will be easily digestible by the average web visitor.

6. High-End Graphic Design Elements

More and more, companies are engaging graphic designers to be part of their website development project. We predict that high-end graphic design will be used on websites, engaging users and creating more interest.

7. Increasing Use of Video

Since the inception of the TV era, video has become an integral part of our everyday lives as the medium to convey information.  This is no different as it relates to your website.  Video is an easy way for your visitors to engage in your message. Using a video is a great way to showcase your brand’s personality in a way that sticks with potential customers.

Search Engine Optimization is another benefactor of well thought out video content.  The longer your visitors stay on your website the better Google rankings will be achieved.  Hold your customers’ attention and the search engines will see that your website has good content relating to specific search terms.

Use video to tell your company’s story, display powerful testimonials or demonstrate a product use.  The more often you provide content that captures your potential customers attention, the better results your website will produce.

8. Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing

While not technically a website design trend, we believe that business owners will become more aware of how customers are finding them online, and will pay more attention to their search presence. Increased investment in SEO and online marketing services has been a trend for the last few years, and will most definitely continue into 2018.

Many business owners will hire in-house Marketing Managers to work on their SEO and social media. Others will work more closely with their website development or SEO company to help bring their website higher up the search ranks. We predict that the average amount a business owner spends on social media advertising will peak this year as well, and social media websites will again adjust their algorithms for business pages to keep up with the influx of paid ads.

Will You Take Advantage of New Web Design Trends?

Graphic design elements and animation can add a lot to an otherwise static website, but they can be costly to implement. Will your company invest more in their website design this winter, to stay on top of the up and coming website design trends for 2018?

To learn more, reach out to our skilled website development team. We are constantly learning new tricks of the trade, and look forward to the challenges that 2018 brings to our design team!

The post Our Predictions for 2018: Up and Coming Website Design Trends appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

I am always telling anyone who will listen, that there are now shortcuts with search engine optimization that will boost your search position in Google or improve your organic website traffic.

One thing I’ve learned working with websites over the last 10 years is that there are always little quick and simple ways to increase your organic traffic and Google rankings.

Although, cutting corners is never a good idea, there are a few simple fixes to boost your rankings in Google with Search Engine Optimization. They will increase your organic traffic to your website.

I know this post may seem a little contradictory but bear with me and I promise there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.

Compared to traditional PPC and internet advertising, well-thought out SEO can give you a 5-10x better ROI than PPC.

Lately, I’ve learned several important, but tedious things you can do to your website to have huge effects, potentially within only a few hours!

Before we go full-throttle, it’s crucial to understand what influences a website’s ranking and how we get sites ranked.

I know you’re excited to learn about what you should do to increase your rankings, but before we begin, it’s important that you understand the gist of how a site’s rankings are influenced and how we have been able to rank our websites and our clients.

Your website and every website out there has what’s called an optimal ranking and adjusted ranking

The most simple way to explain an optimal ranking is what position a website should be ranking. Factors that affect optimal rankings include quality and authority of its back links. Read more about backlinks from MOZ, a website considered to be an authority when it comes to SEO.

Your adjusted ranking is your actual rank found in Google’s search results, also known as SERPS. Page speed, high quality (or low quality) content, clean code, and the freshness of your website (how often you update it), are all variables that affect your adjusted rankings.

In other words, Google hears about your site (It finds links – trust factors – pointing to you) and goes and takes a look. As Google (spiders and bots) crawl your site, it evaluates the sign posts (links) along the way.

To put simply, Google finds your website, looks at your backlinks, figures out your optimal ranking and then based on your adjusted ranking factors, it will adjust your rank to what it feels your deserved ranking is.

So, for example, let’s say your “backlink score” is a 70% out of 100%. When Google looks at your website, it then starts taking away points based on adjusted rank.

For example -15 points for a high bounce rate (user leaving website right away). -1 point for keyword stuffing.

Now, while it’s true that it does take time to establish your optimal ranking, you can literally increase your rankings within hours by taking care of what you can control on your website. Such as the adjusted ranking factors like page load speed, keyword stuffing, etc.

Some of these results can happen in real time.

Now that you understand why adjusted rankings are the exception to long-term SEO results, let’s talk about what to do to get improved rankings overnight.

Use these 3 tips to get new traffic and increased rankings.

1. Thin Content: Improve, Remove or De-Index

What exactly is thin content? To put it simply, it’s text that is not unique information on your website. Should I remove it, just de-index it, or go for the gold and improve it?

Thin Content Includes:

• Scraped product descriptions from other sites or feeds
• Category pages
• Image galleries with little or no descriptions
• Duplicate pages
• E-commerce listings with bare minimum or no descriptions
• Product descriptions scraped from other websites
• Using photo galleries without using descriptions, captions, etc.

All thin content, like mentioned above, is DEFINITELY causing you lost traffic. Just one page of thin content can have dramatic impacts on your entire websites rankings.

Remember that page you created that lists all your category’s and tags but completely forgot about until now? Those pages that no one ever uses could be costing you 50% of your organic traffic.

Do yourself a huge favor, delete and de-index any thin content ASAP! It will make a world of difference with your rankings, I promise.

In short, you need to either de-index thin content by using Google Webmaster Tools and modifying your robots.txt using the no index command. Or you can simply remove the page that has thin content.

As stated by Google itself “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

2. Contextual Links: Create Outbound Authority Links

Make sure to add outbound links to your current content by just adding a link to your text that points your reader to a well-respected authority site in your industry. For example, when it comes to digital marketing, an awesome website to link out to a blog post on digitalmarketer.com

While writing new copy, or modifying additional copy on your websites key pages and articles, you need to add some in-text (contextual) links out to authority websites. Make sure your new contextual links are specific, and internal URL’s on well-established sites…and not just at the end, make sure they are in the middle of the rest of the article.

Do your best to not use Wikipedia, as these links are not considering authority links to Google. If you do need to use them, make sure they are no follow links.

Use links that a visitor to your website would consider relevant and an authority in the niche you are writing about. Remember, always focus on quality over quantity.

You may think that linking out to other websites will have a negative effect by taking users off your site. That is definitely a possibility but, that doesn’t make it bad. By linking to important resources, you have the opportunity to help your user find the information they are looking for which can, in turn, increase the trust levels between you and your visitors. In the end, this leads to more visits per user to your website, a higher number of referrals, recommendations and ultimately, more traffic and closed business.

Make sure to have a good reason for linking out using contextual backlinks. Google does actually check the content that the link is placed on for relevance. For more info what to do and not to do when linking out to other sites, check out this article by Niche Hacks.

Remember, the main point is to become a trusted source to your website visitors and Google. Once you’ve built up a lot of trust, eventually you will become an authority in Google’s eyes, which in turn means you will be reaping all the rewards of top position Google rankings.

If you’re looking to make significant increases in rankings in a matter of days, then take the time to create some new, high-quality contextual backlinks. It only takes but a minute or two for each one you add, and the more you do it, the faster you will get at it.

3. Title and Description Tags: Increase Click Through Rates

One of the fastest and easiest ways to increase your organic traffic Click Through Rates (CTR) is to make sure your title and description tags are compelling. They need to actually make people want to click on your link once you show up in Googles organic rankings.

How does this affect your rankings? Simply put, if visitors are not enticed enough to click on your links and stay on your page, your rankings will drop.

Bounce rate, page load speed, time-on-site, as well as other user experience factors, will definitely affect your rankings. However, none of them are as important as click-through-rate.

So what the heck is CTR? To put it simply, CTR is what percentage of people actually click on your websites link in Google’s search results, ad’s or anywhere else your website link is shown.

Naturally, this is important to Google because if real people are clicking on your link in the search results, that means more traffic on your website and in return higher rankings. This can have IMMEDIATE effects on your organic rankings.

So in reality, the more, real people who click on your organic rankings listings, the more traffic you will get and the higher you will be able to rank. Which means, nearly overnight Google will increase your rankings (or decrease if done poorly).

It’s normal for us to see CTR improvements anywhere from position 1-20+ right away after making these changes.

How can I increase my Click Through Ratio?

One of the most overlooked, and number one ways to increase your CTR is through the use of compelling Title Tags and Meta Descriptions.

These are the content of Google’s Search Engine results and they are all your prospect sees when they search.

When you create a new ad, you want to make sure you have an awesome compelling headline that draws in your target market, just like an ad, your organic search results need attention getting headlines as well.

Not only will you get a better click-through rate that will help your rankings, but you will also get an increase in your traffic instantly! People are actually clicking on Google search results, to your website!

This isn’t exactly revolutionary information, but it’s amazing how tunnel focused we can get when we’re too involved in our own business or marketing campaigns.

Struggling to come up with a headline because you don’t have a P.H.D. in journalism? Follow the link below to use a tool I use on a daily basis.

Blog Post Headline Analyzer

Now that you have the tools and knowledge you need, go out and take action to start increasing your rankings today!

If you need help implementing a new SEO strategy or have any questions, please comment below or get in contact with me today!

The post How To Improve SEO Rankings Today appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

Driving new business is a must for any company that is serious about their online presence. Consistently getting qualified leads, phone calls and walk-ins is a great indicator of the health of your website, but it is important to dig deeper. The industry standard to analyzing your company’s website is Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a free web analytics service that provides statistics and basic analytical tools for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and marketing purposes. The service is available for anyone with a Google account. It’s a tool that can guide you to finding the weakness and strength of your company’s website.

With Google Analytics you can see your most important analytics data first, like bounce rate or new visitors. Other information you can easily access:

Find out which online traffic campaigns bring the most traffic and conversions.

• Determine where your best visitors are located and what platform they are using.
• Learn what people are searching for on your site and what pages they spend the most time on.
• Visualize what visitors click on the most.
• See what content your visitors are the most interested in.
• Identify weakness such as poor performing pages.
• Determine at what point people abandon online purchases/shopping cart or when they leave filling out a contact form.
• Analyze your performance in online searches and navigation.
• Plus many more features that dive into your website while allow you to optimizing the performance of your online presence.

Whether you decide to outsource the use of Google Analytics or dedicate somebody internally, it is important to know the basic uses of the platform. Each time you log in you will see a basic overview of your audience. There are many different types of reports that you can pull to see what the strengths and weakness are of your website. Reports like the number of visitors from each country, state and city. From there, what time visitors are searching, what browser they are searching on and what page is landed on the most. For instance, Iceberg Web Design can see how many visitors search and click on our home page in relation to how many times they land on our services page. By digging deeper we can try different layouts to engage people who are seriously interested in our services.

Some of the different reports include:

Audience reports

These reports focus on everything you need to know about your visitors.   You can find details about demographics, location, behavior, technology and mobile use.

Acquisition reports

These reports tell you everything about what drove your visitors to your website. This includes what channels they came from and specific sources.

Behavior reports

These reports focus on the effectiveness of your content. You can see top pages on your website and the top entry pages. This will give you an idea of what content is giving the most effective piece of information. It also lets you know where visitors are exiting the website.

Conversions

As mentioned early you can set up goals within Google Analytics to track the conversions your website has received. By measuring conversions you can get a great understanding of the overall performance while analyzing and fixing weakness.

Using Google Analytics is a key component to getting the most of your online presence and marketing as a whole. Without diving into the numbers you are working mostly with opinion and it is impossible to develop a calculated approach. The numbers don’t lie and neither should you about the realistic performance of your website. Digging into what is and is not working on your web marketing and website will allow your business to be the most efficient in where to spend its marketing dollars.

The post Google Analytics appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

Pay per click (ppc) is easy enough to understand: Every time a user clicks on your website you pay the website engine a small fee for that visitor. It is a basic concept and when done right can really generate a great return on investment for the advertiser. PPC is also good for the search engines by enabling them focus ads directly to the searchers and giving advertisers the exposure they want to generate new business. Searchers benefit from greater quality provided by the search engines that have created a formula to make sure the correct ads get to where they are the most helpful.

Google Ad Words

Google AdWords is by far the most popular pay-per-click platform over its top two competitors, Bing and Yahoo. Google holds a much higher market share and is widely known to give consistent quality information to its searchers.   Business’ bid on search terms to have their ads placed at the top or bottom of the page. They recently eliminated the ads on the right side opting to increase the placement at the top and bottom and decrease the saturation of ads overall on the page. Bidding on search terms can provide a great source of revenue if it is done right, being able to pay for each click, instead of just relying on the organic placement within Google’s search. For example if Iceberg Web Design bids on “Website Development” our ad may appear at the top of the search results. However, there is still a calculated formula besides simply bidding to the top of the search.   Simply put it is the: max bid of the cost per click (CPC) x quality score = ad rank or position. The Quality Score can be thought of like the credit score of a website relating to search quality. When a searcher searches for a relevant website term what is the click through rate, relevance, and landing page quality, among other factors.  While out bidding for the top spot is important, Google is still focused on giving the best user experience for the searchers. Having a slow to load or confusing website is going to hurt your quality score and ability to generate business online. Before diving into Google AdWord’s it is important to make sure your website is in top form.

Choosing Pay Per Click

Once establishing your sales funnel and feeling confident in your websites performance, PPC is a great way to build your customer base. If the right keyword research is done, PPC can generate qualified leads at a reasonable price.   Things to take into account when investing, is the lifetime value of a new client and your business ‘ability to convert. It has been proven that PPC can work for just about any business out there. From e-commerce, to a service based business and even brick in mortar operations that are looking to generate walk-ins and phone calls. The key is to have the right execution process. Take your time and do the necessary research or hire a professional to put together a plan to generate and convert traffic.   The efficiency of using someone who works daily on PPC campaigns can save lots of marketing investment on trial and error mistakes. As you progress it is important to stay current with the continuing changes in Google and your industry as a whole.   Gone are the days of placing adds in your local phonebook as a way to generate a consistent stream of business. Now that stream is online and PPC is a great way to generate new customers!

The post The Basics of Pay Per Click Advertising appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

…or are they?

Business Owners Have Been Slow To Adapt To Mobile-Friendliness

In this world where information is consumed primarily on mobile devices, one would think that the average business owner would be on top of important changing trends in SEO (Search Engine Optimization). However, just earlier this year it was estimated that nearly half of small businesses do not yet have a website – and moreover, of those that do have websites, nearly one-third do not perform well on mobile devices.

Many business owners saw significant traffic changes from the algorithm update, though many companies noticed little difference in their traffic, even after refusing to go mobile-friendly. But this is all about to change.

Google Isn’t Taking No For An Answer Any More. 

If you are in the group of business owners who decided not to update your website, or if you were sold an inexpensive “separate mobile-friendly option”, things are about to change for your Google rankings. And this time, it’s for real.

Google will now check your mobile website’s content before your desktop website’s content when ranking.

What, exactly, does this mean? In a nutshell, it means that if you are delivering two websites to your customers (separate Desktop vs. Mobile websites), the mobile version is what Google will use to determine where to place you among your competition. When a business has two separate websites (mobile and desktop), more often than not the mobile site is a simplified version designed only to lead visitors to contact the business and not to rank on search engines. These small mobile-only websites lack the content that is needed to rank on search engines – and this is going to affect the placement of the full (Desktop) version.

The days of Desktop vs. Mobile are gone – today Google recommends a responsive website, where the exact same website and set of content are delivered to desktop and mobile visitors alike. 

Buying a responsive template won’t cut it.

Yes, a cheap responsive theme may do the trick and make your website mobile-friendly. It might make Google happy for a while. But if your website is not built as a sales funnel, to convert traffic to leads, it’s not going to do you any good. Take a look at some of the low-cost templates on a smartphone before you buy, and take a look at your competition on mobile. Do the headlines flow on mobile? Can you vision your current set of content and pictures displaying on a smartphone? Do you know what it takes to convert traffic to leads on a mobile device?

A lot more than just the quick-and-dirty responsive design markup goes into creating a professional business website that will close leads. Our Minneapolis website developers have been hand-coding websites since 1993; we have more than 60 years of combined experience, and we have all been working in this field since the dawn of the smartphone technology. Our online marketing experts know what needs to be done to make your website go from just mobile-friendly to a mobile lead generating machine. Call 763-350-8762 to talk with an online marketing expert today.

The post It’s Official: Google Won’t Let You Get Away With A Non-Responsive Website Any More appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

But, as a lawyer, you have spent your whole education and career writing. You figure you can write your own legal website content. Right? Wrong. Here are three simple reasons why you should hire a professional copywriter to craft compelling content for your website.

Reason #1: Web-Based Writing Is Not the Same as Legal Writing.

Writing content for the Internet is not the same as writing a legal brief or demand letter. They are similar, however, in that they each have technical aspects that you must follow to get it right. But you did not go to school to write for search engines. Nor did you likely take many marketing courses, if any, as you prepared for legal practice.

Hiring a professional website writer can help bridge the gap between you and your audience that exist on the Web. Such a writer understands search engine optimization (SEO), so writing for search bots comes naturally. That same writer also knows how to break through legal jargon to communicate your services clearly to a prospective client.

Reason #2: Your Content Will Be Done On-Time.

If you are like most attorneys, your law firm marketing efforts often fall last on your to-do list. You may have the best of intentions, promising your web developer that you will deliver content for your site by a certain date so you can hit that “go live” date you are so anxious for. And then your due date comes and goes. And you get wrapped up in casework and trial dates. And all of a sudden, your “go live” date gets pushed out further and further, and you find yourself paying for hosting services for a site that is still under development.

By hiring a writer, you avoid the stress that comes with having the task hanging over your head. Your full website project stays on track, as your writer will deliver copy to you on time and help keep you on task for delivering edits and approving copy. From there, your writer can work with your developer to make the content development process move as smoothly as possible. That way, your site goes live when you want it to, and you get the most bang for your hosting services buck.

Reason #3: You Have Better Things to Do With Your Time.

Tied directly in with reason two is the fact that your time is precious. What you do with it matters. You need to focus on tasks that help your clients and bring you fulfillment, not to mention earning income to support you and your family.

Writing content for your website takes time if you do it right. The average website marketing writer spends at least one hour per page of copy, and that is coming from someone who does this on a daily basis. A basic five-page website could take you 10-12 hours to write. Just think of what you can accomplish, work, personal or otherwise, with that time.

What Are You Waiting For?

Whether you just starting out on a new website project or you are in the middle of one that you thought you could or should handle on your own, there is no better time than now to hire a professional writer to help. Let the professional writer focus on what she does best so you can focus on what you do best: providing legal services to those who need them.

The post It’s Time to Hire a Professional to Write Your Law Firm Website Content appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

Small businesses have several options in addition to engaging website development to promote products and services. You have paid options such as Google Adwords that provide a quick and profitable return on investment. Organic search engine optimization marketing strategies like blogging build the level of customer trust that prompts action.

Then, we have the most effective online marketing option: Social media marketing.

How to Use Social Media to Promote Your Small Business

Entrepreneur estimates that more than 950 million people access Facebook every day. The popular online entrepreneurial blog has presented statistics that demonstrate small businesses comprise a rapidly growing percentage of the daily Facebook users. What does that mean for your small business? Well, social media has become more than just selfies and friend requests. It’s how we shop, how we communicate, how we stay on top of current events. Moreover, social media is the online version of where we leave reviews for the businesses we trust.

Our Minneapolis web design firm knows how to make social media the phase two of your Internet marketing program.

Start Conversations by Asking Questions

Everyone has an opinion and Facebook posts represent the ideal online place for customers to present their opinions. Ask Facebook fans of your small business to provide insight on topics that pertain to your small business. For example, a local independent restaurant asks customers to vote for their favorite restaurant menu items to win one-on-one cooking lessons with the chef.

Share What You Know

The most effective way to build customer trust involves sharing what you know. Upload Facebook posts that help customers solve problems. The pithy posts can simply be recipes for enhancing health or suggestions on the tools to use for working on home improvement projects. Videos represent the best way to create “How to…” content for the social media phase of your online marketing program.

Customers Want Value

Social media content must provide your customers with value, from sharing white papers to offering limited discount specials. Consumers want to learn how your products and services benefit them. Short text/video content uploads on sites such as Facebook and Instagram do the best job of creating customer value.

Sell Your Brand Visually

Although your small business website should comprise a content-focused approach to gaining customer trust, the phase two of your digital marketing program should include more attention grabbing visuals. Pinterest makes the perfect phase two platform for presenting visuals that customers immediately identify with your small business brand.

The Phase Two Golden Rule

American Express recently presented a blog post emphasizing most of your social media posts should share information that helps customers solve problems. The one in seven rule states that only one in every seven of your social media should promote your business. The other six posts should provide value for customers. This rule applies on Facebook, as much as it applies on Twitter.

One Post, One Social Media Platform

Several tools allow you to write one post and then upload the post to multiple social media platforms. Customers that see duplicate posts on different social media platforms typically look elsewhere for products and services. Avoid presenting duplicate content to build the level of credibility customers need to conduct business with you.

Small businesses that operate in the Twin Cities need a Minneapolis social media consultant that knows how to implement effective phase two online marketing strategies. Iceberg Web Design can help you increase your online reach, attract new customers, and engage your current clients. Now through February 29th, receive a FREE SEO Keyword Research report with your in-person social media consultation.

The post Social Media: Your Website’s Phase Two appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

We’re in the last quarter of 2015, and it’s time to start thinking about the upcoming year. So much has changed in terms of web technology. Have you heard of “Mobilegeddon?” Besides technology, design standards are rapidly changing. People’s opinion of what looks good is evolving. So what’s changing in website trends for 2016? Let’s take a look:

Flat Design

Continuing on a trend that was started in 2014, we’ll see some evolving trends with Flat design. Flat design focuses on the simplicity of a user’s experience. You may have seen some websites with elements that “pop” – giving the websites a three-dimensional look. Flat design is the opposite of that, with a focus on minimalism. Now that business owners have had a chance to experiment with all the interesting features and design elements made possible through modern technologies and coding, people have become somewhat disillusioned with flash. At the end of the day, it’s important to make it easy for your customers to find the information they need, and over-designing can get in the way of that.

Typography: Designing with Text

Nobody is going to take your website serious with a font like Comic Sans or Papyrus… unless your website is aimed at a VERY specific audience. Websites like Comic Sans Criminal and Papyrus Watch may help you to see why many people simply despise it. Sans-serif typefaces are fonts without small projecting features at the end of each stroke that bulk them up. As a rule, sans-serif typefaces are the easiest to read for long instances of text. Popular fonts you can find on your computer that fit this description include Arial and Helvetica. For testing out different possibilities, take a look at Google’s Web Fonts tool, which allows you to type words or sentences to see how they look in Google’s library of free web-safe fonts. Open Sans is a popular choice for many website projects.

Professional Content Development

In the past, website owners would take advantage of “keyword stuffing” to rank high on search engines. Now search engines frown on this, and more website owners are looking to professional content writers. Iceberg Web Design offers a keyword research service to get you on the right track. In other instances, Iceberg Web Design connects with professional content writers who write full SEO copy for your website.

The Decline of the Slideshow

That ever-popular, high-demand home page slideshow. Everybody wants it, nobody actually likes it. It’s distracting, doesn’t usually scale down well for smartphones, and never includes any useful information. Up and coming website trends for 2016 will not include the slideshow. Instead, businesses will redistribute their information on their websites in a format that makes more sense than the slideshow.

Is your website ready for the New Year ahead? Get in touch with Iceberg Web Design for a second opinion and to talk about possible website redesigns including the up and coming website trends for 2016!

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