News and Blog for Website Design, Photography and Video Production in Cambridge, Kitchener, Waterloo and Guelph

Video Channel Envy

2012-05-07T20:00:00-04:00

Video Marketing - the Channel that Keeps on Giving Year After Year!

We have a client that receives an average of a 100 video views on their YouTube channel with 1% clicking through to their website ... now 1% doesn't seem that much but when you consider that those visitors stay almost five minutes on the site and about 20% of those choose to buy a product with an average ticket of over a thousand dollars, the numbers add up and continue to do so year after year!

Pictures are worth a Thousand Pages

2012-05-06T20:00:00-04:00

Engagement Statistics show Pictures are of Highest Importance!

Taking a page from Facebook engagement studies we see that if a post has a Picture in it there will be seven times the interest than a post with simply Text. Videos rank in between as having 4 times more engagement than text only.

Website Content in Cambridge, Kitchener, Waterloo & Guelph

2012-05-05T20:00:00-04:00

Your Site Needs to Speak the Language of Your Audience!

Ask WHO is your audience and HOW do they speak?

Our site as an example, is in my voice. If you’ve ever met me, you might recognize the style. My audience are potential clients - small & medium sized business owners and people who just want to know more about “this web stuff”. Unfortunately, writing for a website is often an afterthought – it’s easy to get caught up in the design, but remember that it's the words that search engines are interested in and what will keep your customers coming initially and coming back. Therefore, if writing is not your strength, hiring a good web writer can make all the difference.

There's a QR Code in your Fridge

2012-08-24T17:42:52-04:00

LG Life's Good QR Code Campaign

In an attempt to provide timely up to date information for customers interested in purchasing big ticket items such as refrigerators, LG has taken the bull by the horns and placed QR Codes in strategic locations in their appliances with the intention of having the potential customer scan the code and be provided with the information required to make the purchase right there and then.

Stars Men's Shop Entices $25 Saving With QR Code Scan

2012-06-19T22:25:37-04:00

Local Ontario men's retailer, Stars Men's Shop recently revealed its QR Code campaign offering its customers a $25 value coupon for scanning the QR Code in their store window ... but is this enough of an incentive to make you scan. It would be for me if that was all I had to do, but as usual, it isn't as simple as it seems.

Tim Horton's Recruitment QR Code Campaign Fails

2012-06-15T23:20:57-04:00

In a recent attempt to cater to the smartphone user and its employable demographic, Tim Horton's has developed an in-store QR Code campaign in hopes of recruiting staff for its locations. 4AV4N3KJQRWS

Today's New Marketing Trend of +30% of Smartphone Users Respond to In Store Ads

2012-06-01T08:30:59-04:00

And this number is growing according to Google! The increasing number of smartphones being sold, especially when compared to dwindling PC sales, is having a pronounced effect and shift in consumer behaviour. That the smartphone can be used to search the web and access web content while on the move is not lost on consumers, especially when there is a specific call to action instore to check out a mobile website or QR Code to obtain more information or a promotion.

What's Wrong with those Black & White squares - QR Codes

2012-05-23T19:06:48-04:00

The Canadian Tire QR Code and Mobile Website Experience

These black & white squares or QR "Quick Response" code seem to be popping up everywhere, and just when you go to use them what happens? Unfortunately more often than not what happens is something that gets in the way of what these little guys were designed for - getting information easily and quickly to smartphone users!

Google Search Results to include images next? Were video results the tip of the iceberg!

2012-06-09T22:20:07-04:00

The latest search results display algorithm from Google has been showing videos as part of search results for a while now, but what's happened recently is that Google's Alerts have started to show images next to the content description. From personal experience these images have been part of the content, usually found at or near the top, and been labeled as to image content in both the image file name as well as the alt tag.

What's the Big Deal with Links?

2012-05-05T12:50:19-04:00

or Why & Did Google's Penguin Bite my Website!

Links or linking in the digital space refers to having an actual link to or from your website to other websites or web content … Why is this important? Two reasons: links to your site can bring you additional visitors, and secondly that Search Engines seriously take into account the number and quality of links pointing to your site, internal links within your site and the links within the site that point to outside content, as factors in determining how your site will rank in their search rankings.

Has your website ranking suffered since Google's "Penguin" update?

2012-05-02T12:46:38-04:00

The Penguin update hit thousands of Websites Hard!

The past few weeks have been painful for thousands of website owners following the Google Penguin Update - being a change to Google's ranking algorithm as to how your website is shown in search results - businesses have folded and lives have been changed irrevocably, all because of the immense power Google's algorithm wields.

Social Proof in Cambridge, Kitchener, Waterloo & Guelph

2012-05-08T20:00:00-04:00

Using the Power of Conformity on Your Website to Increase Sales!

The challenge of the battle for consumer attention isn't new but certain techniques are ... and one of the most usable is harnessing Social Proof. This is a cost effective way to attract valuable users, based in showing popularity on your website, and a relatively untapped gold mine in the age of the social web.

Mobile Websites in Cambridge, Kitchener, Waterloo & Guelph

2012-10-18T17:56:27-04:00

Research Shows Trends Towards Mobile Friendly Requirements

Current research was reviewed to see if it makes a difference whether a Brand has a mobile friendly website or not. The results were anything but unclear and indicated a clear direction for today’s Brands in engaging consumers.

The New Code - HTML5 and Css3

2012-05-10T20:00:00-04:00

Website Foundations You Shouldn't Ignore!

Why should you care what the new code conventions are? Simply, because these are the languages that your website and digital properties should be in or compatible in order that the investment you make in digital properties continues to have a long and reasonable ROI.

More Pages = More Vistors to Your Website

2012-05-03T16:48:36-04:00

Structuring Your Website and Content for Maximum Effect!

It's a simple equation that the more pages you have in your website, the greater chance you will have more visitors! Why? The answer lies in changes that occurred in Search Engines like Google & Bing, that changed their focus a while back on making the subpages of a website a higher priory in search rankings than the main landing page … the thought is that if these subpages are more relevant to what a visitor is searching for, then why have them land on the main page?

What is your Mobile Traffic?

2012-04-30T20:00:00-04:00

Smartphones are set to be a Marketing Channel You Can't Ignore!

New 2012 Google study on smartphone usage shares new data from a survey of 1,000 participants in six countries on mobile search and consumer behavior. Among the highlights:

82 percent of smartphone users use a search engine at least one time per week.
88 percent of smartphone users notice ads on a smartphone - made up of 41 percent on search engines; 46 percent in an app; 25 percent on a retailer website; 20 percent on a video website; 27 percent while watching a video; and 47 percent while on a website.
75 percent of smartphone users watch video and 26 percent watch at least one time per day.
79 percent of smartphone users visit social networks, while 54 percent visit at least one time per day.

Website Linking Strategies in Cambridge, Kitchener, Waterloo & Guelph

2012-01-27T00:00:10-05:00

Importance of Linking to Website Traffic

One of the most fundamental ways of improving your ranking in search engine results and as a result your potential traffic is to increase the importance of your site, relative to your competition. How do you go about doing that? Simply through an ongoing process of building links, inbound, internally and outbound as well.

The Importance of Inbound, Internal & External Links

Inbound link building is arguably the most important of the three linking strategies and involves encouraging other websites to link to your own website, and not just any sites, but those that are theme relevant to your site's content. If such other websites are linking to your website, at the first instance you will expectedly receive an incease in referral traffic, but depending upon the Page Rank (basically Google's aggregate estimate of the importantce or authority of a website and its respective pages) your link popularity will increase. Although there is controversy related to whether a high Page Rank will increase search engine result position for your website's keywords, it is commonly accepted that this is one aspect, and an important one, that is taken into account in Google's ranking algoritm.

Internal Linking is the process of leading the visitor to other related content within your site and is looked at by search engines as a positive aspect of user experience. Cae should similarly be taken that the content linked to is theme relevant, else there could be penalization if the linked to content is determined to be something like and ad farm.

External Linking is the practice of having links to websites or content which are outside of your site. While at first glance this linking strategy would appear to be counterintuitive to developing traffic, you have to look at the practice from the viewpoint of the search engines algorithms that look differently upon this practice where if it enhances the visitor's experience by linking to relevant content such is regarded as a positive indicator, and hence worthy of moving the site/page up in the search engine result rankings. Also, External Linking will not cessarily move visitors away from your site as for instance, embedding videos is actually an External Linking practice, although one that will not by istelf take the visitor outside the site as the content is consumed within.

Taking Care of What Links and Linking Strategy You Adopt

Link building is time consuming and must be done strategically, else you could run the risk of search engine's deeming your site a member of or benefiting from a link farm or paid links. If your site goes offside what search engines believe is organic link development, your website could be "sand boxed' or panalized with little search engine rankings and traffic for a perdiod of time.

Search engines are not simply looking for the quantiy of links to a website or page. Rather the most important metric is obtaining quality links which are links from website that are thematically related and themselves are regarded as authority sites by way of a high Page Rank. Google's Page Rank is on a continuum from 0 to 10, where the higher the number the greater the authority. As well Page Rank is related not only to a website as a whole, but its component pages, where a link from a website to yours will pass a portion of not the linking website's total Page Rank, but instead the Page Rankl of the particular website page that contains the link.

Linking Tactics - What Works and What Doesn't

We've built oragnic links in the hundred's of thousands within months for our client's websites, so we know what works and what doesn't. What works though is dependant upon a number of factors including type of website, the industry, what the competition has done, and the nature of the website's content. Tactics include directory submissions, community submissions, blog posting, article writing, reciprocal linking, embeded linking text, and many more - if done properly with targeted keywords.

CLOSEUP Agency has done its Linking Successfully and Organically to Increase Traffic and Page Rank, and Can Do The Same for You!