Time: the one thing there never seems to be enough of, even though it’s one thing that never changes. We all have the same number of minutes and hours in a day, and we all “make” time for what’s most important to us.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that technology devices have become one of the largest consumers of our precious time. According to a 2016 article on CNN.com, Americans devote more than 10 hours per day to a screen of some sort, including computers, smartphones, and TV.1 Ten hours! That’s nearly half the day.

Evidently, people are relying more and more on screens to answer their questions and meet their everyday needs. This means that your business’s web content needs to stand out if you are to compete with the plethora of information and services out there.

Given only 15 minutes to consume content, 66% of people reported that they’d rather peruse content that is beautifully designed versus something that is simple and plain.2 But be careful: Web content needs to be attractive, but it also has to be practical. If your content takes too long to load, 39% of people will disengage completely!

A professional designer can help you balance beautiful and functional to ensure your web content catches and retains your viewers’ attention! Whether it’s sprucing up your current site or starting from scratch, we can help you every step of the way.

Sources:
• http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/30/health/americans-screen-time-nielsen/index.html
• http://wwwimages.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/max/2015/pdfs/state-of-content-oct.pdf

There’s no doubt we’re becoming increasingly visually-driven as a society. Take movies, for example. Have you ever noticed how quickly the screen image shifts from one actor to the other, and from scene to scene? Compared to movies from decades ago where the camera lingers on a character for what seems like forever. Or just scroll through your Instagram or Facebook feed and notice the barrage of video footage—between ads and live selfie videos, we can’t escape the constant motion.What this means for business, then, is this: If you don’t have video content on your website, you’re likely missing out on some serious client acquisition. Landing pages with video can improve on-page conversion rates by 80%!

Why? Well, roughly 60% of executives reported that they would rather watch video than read text. Essentially what we’re saying is that people love to be “fed” information. Video obviously stimulates the visual (and often auditory) part of the brain, which is much more powerful than simply reading text. If you can get your message across by sharing it on camera, you’ll be more likely to capture and keep the attention of your audience.

Shooting video for your social media page is a great place to start; check out this post on how to shoot quality footage.

If you’d like some professional help, the guys at Malt Maker Media are phenomenal at helping business owners get their story on camera! Check them out here.

Link building is a major facet of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and a crucial element for any website.

Simply put, link building is the act of obtaining links to your URL. Many webmasters feel that writing quality content will assist in getting links, but it’s not always that simple. Unless specific effort is put forth, getting links may be a long and difficult process.

Years ago, link building was an entirely different and easier process. Automating tools were easily created to submit article directories to generate backlinks. Quality of these articles and links didn’t matter so much.

But in April 2014, Google launched the infamous Penguin Algorithm, which has changed SEO and everything about link building. Today, it’s not just a task, but a skill to be mastered.

To go a little deeper, link building is the act of getting links from highly authoritative, quality, relevant sites. In addition, diversity also plays a sound role in higher search engine ranking.

Benefits of Link Building

Link building is, of course, an important factor of your SEO, and below, I’m going to outline some of the major benefits of link building for your site.

Generally, the popularity of a site or blog is reliant on the number of inbound links. The quantity of inbound links that form quality websites is also a huge factor in determining your PR (Google Page Rank).

When you create a blog or Website, you should spend the first month on link building so that when your site is scrubbed, you will have that much more exposure on search engines.

Incoming links from authoritative websites are given priority in search results. Effective link building doesn’t mean building as many as possible, but getting genuine links from reliable sites.

Some benefits of quality link building:

• Visibility in search results.
• Referral traffic from sites linked to you.
• Your site will be seen as a valuable resource.
• Speeds up indexing.

Link building can be performed with many strategies:

• Writing quality content (content that is linked to naturally).
• Guest bloggers.
• Visual infographics.
• Quality videos.
• Directory submissions.
• Do-follow blog submissions.
• Do-follow social bookmarking.

Any number of these strategies are useful and should be included in your plan for link building.

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