Other than attracting more visitors and increasing website traffic, here are some other SEO advantages for implementing Google authorship:

• Google prioritizes authored content to help users find more relevant content
• Allows authors to ‘claim’ their work and solidifies their authority within their industry
• Increases engagement between authors and readers

There are a few different ways to implement Google authorship.
This blog posted by Google explains in simple terms how to set it up.  Using WordPress does complicate this a bit, but there are several plugins that will make the process pretty painless.  I used Allow Rel and HTML in authors bios successfully.
To test, go to the Google Webmaster rich snippets testing tool.  Enter your url, preview and if all goes well you will get a message saying “Verified: Authorship markup is correct for this page” along with your profile picture.

Be patient, as the results can take a few weeks to appear in the search results.

1. Write a Blog

Blogging is one of the easiest, fastest ways to increase your business’s online presence. You don’t have to be a Pulitzer prize winner to write a blog, you are simply writing about your business, sharing information about relevant happenings that your customers will be interested in. By demonstrating your expertise, you will automatically build trust and get noticed.

Blogging is also a great way to increase your search engine rank by writing fresh relevant keyword rich content. Your business is much more likely to show up in search results if you have written about the products and services you offer. And the more content you have, the greater chance you will show up.

2. Send an Email Newsletter

Email marketing is one of the best ways to drive targeted traffic to your website. By keeping in touch with your customers and leads, you can communicate to them about ongoing or future promotions, events or new products, driving them to your website for more information.

3. Advertise Online with Google or Facebook

The beauty of PPC or Price Per Click ads is that you only pay when someone actually clicks on the link. By designing your ads using specific keywords and keyword phrases you can reach the right audience at the right time, when they are already searching for the products or services that you offer.

Growing your business takes time and there is no magic bullet.  Contact us today and let us know how we can help you execute cost-effective marketing solutions that will bring you the most return on your internet buck.

Six compelling reasons why your business could use a WordPress website:

1. The ability to add, edit and delete content. You will be able to create pages, insert images and edit content through an intuitive administration area.
2. SEO – Your site’s code will be optimized for search engines so your customers can find you easily with a google search.
3. Get the right URLs. Your site’s URLs will always include real words separated by hyphens (for example: http://www.your-site.com/contact-us/). This is important for search engines to rank your page higher and your customers to find you more easily.
4. Speed – Your site will be created with the smallest and fewest number of files as well as caching devices to ensure minimum loading times so your customers can quickly and easily find the information they are looking for.
5. Visitor statistics – You will have the ability to monitor your site’s visitors, how they reached the site, how many pages they viewed, etc. so you can better understand what your vistors are looking for.
6. Contact page – A page with a contact us form which when filled out, will be sent directly to your email so your customers can get in touch with you easily with inquiries.

But is this really true? I think we can all agree that website owners need to be scrupulous on limiting the amount of clicks a customer has to perform common tasks on a website. Your customers don’t have the time or the patience to spend endlessly look for answers. If there is something so unique on your site that your customers are willing to dig for it, you may gain some traffic but still lose any repeat visits.

How many clicks is too many you ask? Unfortunately, there is no formula we can use to determine how many is too many. Put yourself in your customers shoes and go through your site. Is it easy to find information? Is your navigation clear and easy to understand? Or do you have to click through several pages to find what you are looking for? Make a list of the most important information your customers are searching for and make sure that information is easy to find, by having a clear, easily understandable navigation scheme and clean graphics pointing them in the right direction. Be sure to put the most common needs front and center, dead simple for a new user to find. Then test that layout on some users who have never seen your site before.

So the question really is ‘who are my customers and what questions do they have?’ If you can answer this, you are one step closer to achieving a more user-friendly website and business.

Prototypes: Test your idea quickly and cheaply.

 
A recent project here at SparkPop involved building a prototype for FitDivs, Inc. FitDivs is a start-up business whose mission is to reward and incentivize healthy living. SparkPop Studio developed a prototype for FitDivs to provide a testing environment for potential customers and affiliates.

Application prototypes help entrepreneurs get high fidelity simulations in front of users and investors quickly and easily. SparkPop meets with product owners to work out requirements and design, but instead of building the app in expensive code, SparkPop created a simulation that provides users a close simulation of the real app. Should user feedback require changes, the prototypes are simple and cheap to edit without racking up developer costs. Prototypes are a great way to test a concept before making a large financial commitment.

Visit our Prototype for FitDivs.

If you build it, they won’t come.

 
Not breaking news: if you have something for sale, be it products or services, you need to have a website. Yellow pages, direct mail, word of mouth, newspaper, radio, TV: they all have a contribution. But Googling for a business, especially locally, is now the primary means for finding what you are selling.
But to get someone at the point where they want what you have, the web is the only way to be everywhere. Mobile phones allow out of towners to find you on the fly. Careful research for expensive products and services will invariably involve a healthy web search for options.
But being there – online – does nothing. No one will find you. Build your site and you are not done. In fact you have only raised your hand and said “I am in this market.”  You haven’t gotten anyone’s attention or sold anything.  Go Live Day for your new or remodeled website doesn’t mean anything to your customers.

What means something to your customers is what your website can do for them. Does it inform? Does it promote? Does it schedule? Does it organize? Does it communicate?

If your website doesn’t do anything more than exist, without active, relative information and calls to action, then it will fail to produce. It is the same as assuming that you are done being a parent when your child is born. In fact it is just the beginning. And you need to plan accordingly. Planning means steady updates, useful information, valuable tools. Be ready to help the customer, because your website is about you, but not for you.