We frequently recommend that our clients include a blog as part of their websites and that they publish posts regularly on a set schedule.

But we rarely get into the nitty-gritty of blogging.

Why Blog?

Blogging is important for several reasons. The most crucial from our perspective is that it’s good for SEO and content marketing.

Freshness continues to play a role in search engine algorithms – the search engines generally reward sites that are regularly updated. A blog is an easy way to provide fresh content.

Internal links also are a factor in search engine algorithms. A blog post can – and should – provide the opportunity to link to a couple of your most important pages.

Of course, there are added benefits to blogging. A regularly maintained blog can:

• Develop and strengthen relationships with new and existing customers
• Increase your brand awareness
• Position your company as an industry leader

Taken together, all of these reasons make blogging a good idea.

On a fairly frequent basis, we’re contacted by folks who would like to find out “what’s wrong with their site,” which had been performing well on Google until a few years ago.

The simple SEO tricks that previously generated Page 1 rankings on Google aren’t working anymore. The assumption is that someone, a web developer or rogue employee, did something wrong and there’s a simple fix that we can provide to bump the site back to its prior Google rankings.  Or, they understand that Google has made updates to its algorithm, so they want to get the new SEO tricks that will improve their site’s performance.

Unfortunately, in most cases, we find ourselves to be the bearers of bad news.

In recent years, Google has expanded its search algorithm to include technical factors that measure site performance and usability, and it continues to increase those standards. Site speed has become important enough to Google that it now provides a tool where you can see how well your site performs and obtain recommendations from the search giant on improving its performance. 

Improving site speed helps your company in two important ways:  1) It can boost your search engine rankings, and 2) it gives your site visitors a better overall experience, which may lower bounce rate and encourage visitors to spend more time clicking through your site.

Running a Google PageSpeed Insights evaluation on your website will most likely reveal some commonly known problems. Here is a list of those usual suspects and some recommendations and tools to help you boost your score.

When most people think of the Americans with Disability Act, they think of physical barriers, like buildings without ramps or elevators.

But the ADA applies to websites as well, and companies are being sued for having inaccessible websites.

Common Problems

You may want to say, “I don’t get any disabled website visitors,” but you have no way of knowing that, and disabilities are far more common than most people realize. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 56.7 million U.S. residents (18.7% of the population) have some sort of disability, and 38.3 million residents (12.6%) have a severe disability.

As the economy reopens across the country – and around the world – many companies are adjusting to a new reality. Doing business remotely is the norm now, and manufacturers need to learn to adapt.

With an emphasis on video conferencing and virtual meetings, it’s easy to overlook the basics. But your corporate website is an asset that deserves special attention. Now more than ever, a company’s website offers a vital first impression to people looking for your products and services online.

Google has announced that it’s preparing to add a new algorithm to its arsenal, this time based specifically on people’s experience with web pages.

The good news is that the algorithm won’t take effect until some point in 2021, so you have plenty of time to get ready.

The new algorithm is called the Google Page Experience update. It incorporates several ranking factors Google previously announced, with some new considerations thrown into the mix.

COVID-19 and its effect on everything from health to industry have everyone’s attention these days. It’s an undeniable fact of our times.

As a result, B2B content marketing strategies need to take this preoccupation into account – not to capitalize on it but to acknowledge customers’ very real and very immediate concerns.

Pushing ahead with your planned content marketing program without that acknowledgement can seem tone deaf if not downright insensitive. You need to adapt your strategies to today’s necessities. Businesses that can pivot to take their customers’ concerns into account will be the ones to succeed.

No doubt you’ve seen this on Google: A website on the first page of results that looks terrible, doesn’t seem to have much useful info and, yet, performs really well on the search engine. You might be even more frustrated because you’ve already spent a considerable amount of time optimizing your own site for SEO and wonder whether those efforts are wasted.

It’s easy to get caught up in all the details that go into optimizing one’s website. There are many content-related factors and technical SEO considerations. But, that’s not the end of it. One-half of Google’s algorithm, about 100 different factors, relate to what we call Off-Page SEO – the number and quality of backlinks to your site from third-party links.