For most businesses, this is not easy. Creating and maintaining a website requires time, effort, and resources. But that does not mean that it requires a huge budget. If done properly, your website will help you stay top of mind and tops in your respective industry.

1. Where to Start?

Before you start building your website, you should have a very clear idea of what you want to build and how you want to build it. You also need to think about the specific goals that your website should achieve. A business website can generate traffic, leads, and sales. If the goals of your website align with your business goals, your website can greatly contribute to the growth of your business.

2. Look Trustworthy

Your website should reflect you as a legitimate business. It can only happen when you provide emotional or credible connections needed to earn trust. If the users know who they are doing business with, they are more confident to buy from you. Put pictures, videos, success stories as well as your philosophy. All these details make you look more human and more trustworthy.

3. Be Unique

The internet is a big place. There are hundreds of businesses that are competing for user attention through their websites. If your website has generic or boring content, they are not going to stay on your website for long.

If you tell your unique story and stand out through factors like price, customer service, and your contributions, your website will stand out.

4. Focus on Usability and User Experience

Design your website according to the needs of your users. If you are a home décor business, land your users on the page where they can see images of your work. If you sell a product or a service, make sure that your users get to their required page with the least effort.

Make sure that your website is mobile-friendly. These days, everyone is searching for online businesses on smartphones. If your website is non-responsive, it won’t even show up in the search results.

5. Don’t Forget SEO

SEO offers greater searchability and visibility of your business website. If you optimize your website through good on-page and off-page SEO techniques, your website will rank higher in search results. An organic search is very important for introducing your business and engaging your customers. People make a buying decision after reading online reviews and comparing a business with another. SEO impacts the buying cycle in a very positive way. When done right, it means more trust from the visitors and more sales.

7. Use Analytics

You must regularly analyze your website statistics through applications like Google Analytics. These applications enable you to measure user engagement and improve your website. For example, if you find a blog post popular with the website users, you can understand that your target customers want to know more about this topic. You can create subsequent posts to drive engagement.

Key Takeaway

Good business websites provide better user experience and prove to be an important tool in branding. It is also important to understand and use analytics and user feedback to optimize and improve your website over time.

Blue Shift Web Services is a dedicated website design company located in Central Florida. We build beautiful websites that are optimized to convert visitors to sales. Contact us to learn more.

The post How to Create a Successful Business Website appeared first on Blue Shift Web Services Blog.

A Pro- Digital Marketer!

An expert digital marketer enhances brand awareness within the digital space as well as drives website traffic. She can interact and engage your customers online at the time they are responsive, about the topics that interest them. Small business owners often try to do digital marketing themselves to cut down the costs. But the truth is that hiring a pro digital marketer not only increases the effectiveness of your online marketing but also saves you time, money and energy to focus on running your own business.

The following are some of the reasons for hiring a Pro-Digital Marketer.

1. Focus on Your Business

Digital marketing is a full-time gig. You must not take it because you already have one i.e. running your own business. If you hire an expert digital marketer, you can expect more leads, better conversion, and better visibility. Modern marketing is complex and requires a variety of skills that can take years to acquire. You can’t let your business suffer due to incompetent online marketing.

2. Affordability

Most of the business owners do not want to hire a professional digital marketer because of the cost. However, they actually waste their money on DIY marketing efforts with a little or no return. Hiring a professional digital marketer is more affordable. Even if you hire a professional freelance digital marketer, it brings out better results. Furthermore, a professional digital marketer will be well –equipped and trained to ensure the best outcome for your marketing dollars.

3. Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is an integral aspect of all your marketing campaigns. It engages and entertains your prospects on social media as well as tell stories which can convert people. However, it is complicated and competitive. It requires a command in a variety of skills, e.g. SEO, graphic designing, content writing, and much more. Trying to DIY all these tasks is risky, to say the least. Instead, if you work with experts, you can focus on your business and they can take care of your social media marketing needs.

4. Increased Revenues

If you hire a professional digital marketer, you get a better online presence. In fact, no one will buy from you if they don’t know that you exist. Marketing experts can get your company noticed and can jump right in to implement the new strategies. Their expertise can ensure that your website traffic increases and your revenues multiply.

5. Get New Insights

Hiring a pro digital marketer means adding a marketing expert to your team. You can gain new skills and talents as well as new insights into how you should do things. This way you will learn from a qualified marketer and get a fresh perspective.

Are you ready to hire the Pros?

Blue Shift Web Services is a dedicated digital marketing agency which ensures a better online presence for your business. Our vetted experts will understand your business goals and meet your unique marketing needs. We offer consistent and unbiased monitoring to assure optimal results. Our prices are affordable. Contact us to learn more.

The post Why Hire A Pro Digital Marketer appeared first on Blue Shift Web Services Blog.

First, you should check off what you’ve already got in terms of your online presence.

• Social Media Campaign
• Pay Per Click Campaign
• Email Campaign
• Content Marketing Campaign
• Website and SEO Campaign

This is one way to keep track of your various strategies. You want to make sure that all of your marketing strategies are cohesive and working together. If you are doing it right, a customer would be able to recognize that an ad or post was put out by you almost immediately. This can be done by ensuring that your branding is front and center in each of your marketing materials.

Now you should make a checklist for your current strATegy so you can make sure you’ve looked into everything. This will tell you where you’re lacking as well. We’ve mentioned previously in other blog posts what to do when it comes to the marketing strategy for the holiday season,, and while some of that is good, it’s time for the 2020 update.

Holiday Marketing Quarantine Style

Since online shopping is the new norm, having your website, social media, and ads ready for the holiday rush. The content for your strategy is going to be what makes your sales. Images get better conversion rates, so I suggest putting the highest quality, original images on each of your posts. You can hire a pro to handle your marketing during the holiday season, as it would have the most ROI at this moment. You’re going to want to be incredibly active on your different outlets: website, social medias, etc. This means posting frequently and engaging with comments, messages, and all of that.

One example of what you can do during this season is run specials to encourage people to buy under a time crunch (making a time-pressure buy). You can also release free information/content or loss leaders to get people into being  paid clients. Loss leaders are products or services that might not make you a big profit but encourage a relationship with the client wherfe you can sell more profitable services and products in the future.

The next series on our blog is going to be Marketing Strategy 101 and we are going to be sharing tons of useful information to help your business get online and thrive online! Sign up for our email list to get deals and tips straight to your inbox. If you’re ready to hire a pro to get your marketing going for the 4th quarter, reach out today.

The post Marketing Strategy 101: New Year, New Start, New Strategy appeared first on Blue Shift Web Services Blog.

Benefits of Blogging for your Business

Google loves to see your website being updated frequently and consistently. Blogging is one of the best ways to do this. Blogging allows you to target keywords that you want to rank for. For example, I want to rank for SEO (search engine optimization) in Brevard County, Florida. So you’ll see that I’m using that phrase throughout this blog post while doing other SEO strategies such as backlinking to a dedicated page about Brevard County SEO.  Targeting specific keywords gives you the power to hopefully outrank your competitors and gather more traffic from it. Other benefits to blogging is to create more for google to index, letting google know that you are knowledgeable about your industry, have more content to index, which generates more traffic for them. You can also utilize blogging as a content generator for your social media, as you should always share your post on your social media profiles to create a thickened and stronger web for your online presence. It also gives your customers and visitors a reason to return to your site, sign up for your email list, and potentially buy from you.

Hindrances of Blogging

Just like anything in digital marketing, there are cons to blogging. For example, blogging can be time intensive. Since it’s vital to be consistent and frequent on your blog, you’ll spend a lot of time doing the research, writing, editing, and posting of each post. You also cannot plagiarise anything, Google will know and it will hurt you bad in the rankings.

How To Blog for SEO

The main things to know when you’re blogging for SEO are that you needs to be frequent, consistent, reliable, informative, well-written, and focused. The first thing you should do is to determine your posting schedule.For example we post on Tuesday every week. This once-a-week frequency is perfect for us in both management and results. The next step is to determine your topic and your keyword or keyword phrase. Then you’re going to research your topic and keyword. This will allow you to find statistics in order to strengthen the reliability and trustworthiness of your piece. Once you’ve finished the research, and have written the blof you then must edit it. It’s important to make sure there are no typos or grammatical errors. You can use something like Grammarly to do this step. When posting your blog, you’ll want to ensure that all the technical SEO aspects such as the title, meta description, and links are completely and correctly filled out. After posting at your designated time, you should then share it on all of your social media platforms: facebook, instagram, twitter, linkedin, etc. Remember to use relevant hashtags to boost the visibility of your post.

If you’re looking for professional help with SEO feel free to learn more about our SEO services here. If you’re not sure what to do next when it comes to marketing your business online, feel free to call for a free digital marketing consultation!

The post Blogging – Why Your Business NEEDS An Active Blog on Your Website. appeared first on Blue Shift Web Services Blog.

The first thing about security today is passwords. Well we all know that we shouldn’t use the same password on different platforms however many of us do or we do something even worse where we leave the default password. 

There are many stories of scary instances where people have had their business websites hacked, where they’ve had their webcams hacked, and there are even stories of people’s baby monitors being hacked. This can all be prevented with proper security measures. The first task that they can do is to make sure that they don’t leave the default password on the device and that they make sure that their password is both strong and unique. There are multiple different things that you can do when creating unique passwords. You can do variations of one password and then keep track of what the variations are or you can have a software that saves all of your passwords to it. Google Chrome has a new password suggestion software when signing up for websites they gave you a super-secure password that looks like gibberish with numbers, characters, and letters.

 When it comes to website security, you can install a secure socket layer on your website. This is the SSL certificate. The next thing that you can do is to ensure that all of your forms are secure in the way that you prevent Bots or scams from coming through. You can do this by using plugins that add honey pots which are security features that only bots end up using that indicate that the form should not be submitted. You can also make sure that you take the proper precautions to prevent your contact information from being spammed. For example, don’t put your email address on the website. Instead hide it behind a contact form.

The next thing you want to do is make sure to monitor your website for any suspicious activity. If you are tech-savvy, you can look into the files and make sure that there are no new files that you don’t recognize and that there are no updates to files that you did not make. The first things you need to do if you do see something that you don’t recognize on your server or website, are to isolate it, research it, and then remove it completely. There are many softwares and companies that can help you to fix a hacking attempt or to prevent people from hacking your website.

With such valuable data being on your website you need to ensure that you do not lose it. You need to make sure you have secure unique strong passwords, security and SSL on your website, and efficient monitoring software. We offer a maintenance package where we do this for you! Our maintenance package includes website hosting, security, backups for both the website and the databases associated with your website, content updates, and platform updates. 

If you’d like to learn more about web safety be sure to follow us on social media platforms like Facebook and sign up for our email list below.

The post Internet Security | Prevent Crushing Hacks appeared first on Blue Shift Web Services Blog.

The platform you choose for your website is super important. Web design is more than how colors, fonts, and elements are placed on a web page. It defines how visitors will interact with and perceive your brand. Good web design gives a positive image of your brand and boosts your business. It also results in a better user experience and brings more traffic to your website. Poor web design does exactly the opposite; it drives your potential customers away.

For designing your website, you can choose one of the many website builders. Choose a website builder that provides you better control over web design as well as convenient to manage. But that’s not all. You may also need low maintenance, minimal code, good website speed, and a super low budget.

Most of the website builder reviews boil down to 3 major platforms i.e. WordPress, Wix, and SquareSpace. We will review each of these platforms to highlight their pros and cons. To do a fair comparison, we will focus on the following aspects of the web design of each of the platforms.

1. Ease of use
2. Design
3. Features and Versatility
4. Marketing and Search Engine Optimization
5. Customer support
6. Website management
7. Cost

By reading this article, you will be able to make a fast track decision on which builder is the best for you and your business.

WordPress Web Design

WordPress is the most convenient and flexible platform for building a website. More than 35% of the web is powered by WordPress. From simple blogs to custom websites, to complex portals and enterprise websites, everything can be built with WordPress.

It is a popular choice because it provides complete access to the platform and has enabled designers and developers to create tools specifically for this platform. There are two types of wordpress websites i.e. wordpress.com and wordpress.org. WordPress.com is a free blogging platform and website builder that we strongly advise AGAINST using whereas for using wordpress.org, you need to buy a web hosting service but is far superior in every aspect of the website.

Features and Benefits of Using WordPress

The following section highlights the features of WordPress web design.

1. Easy to Customize with Themes

WordPress is different from other website builders because it provides tremendous control over your website design. There are hundreds of themes available for every type of website. Whether you want to start a blog, a business website, or an e-commerce store, you are covered. Each theme comes with its options for changing the color, background, or creating sliders. If your budget doesn’t allow you to hire a website developer, you can easily use a free or a premium theme to develop your website.

2. E-Commerce Functionality

WordPress has a variety of e-commerce plugins that allow you to sell on your website. We recommend WooCommerce.

3. Plugins

Plugins allow you to add plenty of features to your WordPress website. Ranging from free to premium, there are hundreds of plugins available for WordPress website. Some of the good WordPress plug-ins allow you to add custom functionality through features like Analytics, Contact forms, and Membership Area, with perfect ease.

4. SEO Friendly

WordPress is written using high-quality code and produces semantic markup. By design, it is quite SEO friendly. You can add H2 and H3 tags in your content with perfect ease. Want to use your keywords in URLs? Or want to install plug-ins like SEO Ultimate or All in One SEO Pack? You are covered.

Furthermore, you can easily create XML sitemaps which makes it easy for the Google bots to crawl your website. These and many more features can turn a WordPress website into a marketing powerhouse.

If you’re looking for someone to handle all of the SEO for you, we have many SEO services that we provide. We even do a la carte, so that you only pay for what you need.

5. Regular Updates

WordPress comes with a built-in updates management system. It stays up-to-date with the latest technology. It means that CMS stays relevant, and new features keep adding up to your website. This is included in our website maintenance package.

6. Safe and Secure

WordPress is considered a very secure platform to build and run a website. You can choose from a range of security plug-ins to protect your WordPress website. Plugins like Sucuri can protect your website against threats like brute force attacks and malware.

7. Handles Different Types of Media

Besides writing text, WordPress comes with a built-in media uploader to add images, audio, and video files. You can easily embed YouTube videos, SoundCloud audios, Instagram posts, or Tweets.

8. Open Source Software

Another great advantage of WordPress website is that it is open-source software. It means that you can tweak with the code or modify it to create a unique web presence.

Why You SHOULD NOT Use WordPress

If you’re determined to do it yourself, WordPress might not be the best tool for you as building is more difficult than with drag-and-drop builders. We offer affordable rates on our WordPress web design packages in order to make it a viable option for even the smallest businesses.

Wix Web Design

Wix is often promoted as a free, one-page website builder. For a starter, it is a good option. However, it lacks the comprehensive features of WordPress or Squarespace.

Features and Benefits of Using Wix

The following are some of the features and benefits of a Wix web design.

1. Drag and Drop Editor

Wix is an ideal choice for non-tech savvy people. Drag and drop your elements on to the website with perfect ease. Wix promises a great user experience. You can change any element with a click.

2. Themes

Wix platform offers over 500 themes that you can choose from. Using plenty of presets, you can make any type of website from scratch in minutes.

3. Galleries

Retouch your photos in Wix before adding them to one of the templates.

4. Reliable Hosting

Wix allows you to create a beautiful website as well as choose the domain names for free. Their reliable hosting service lets you create a search engine optimized website quite conveniently. If you are looking to have some one take care of the hosting and maitenance of your website for you, we offer a great package for that.

5. Wix ADI

The Wix platform offers an easy way to get started. Using the Wix ADI or the artificial intelligence system of the website asks you numerous questions before presenting to you your website. If you prefer, you can switch to the manual editor instead of ADI and create your dream website.

6. E-Commerce Store

You can set up an e-commerce store by purchasing a paid plan. The paid plan is quite inexpensive and starts at $23.

7. Podcast Player

Wix offers a podcast player but it doesn’t syndicate podcasts. If you want to submit your podcasts to Apple or Spotify, you need an advanced website builder like Squarespace.

8. Search Engine Optimized Content

Wix website allows you to post Search Engine Optimized content which makes you more visible to the Search Engines. You can also purchase the Search Engine Functionality widget for better control over the features.

9. Customer Support

Wix provides excellent customer support. Their efficient team readily answers any questions or queries.

Why You SHOULD NOT Use Wix

1. Non Responsive Websites

Some of the Wix templates are not fully responsive. This means that you need to tweak them to make them mobile-friendly. Wix websites, only if built correctly, are mobile-friendly and responsive. Mobile readiness is vital to SEO (search engine optimization) and overall user experience.

2. Unchangeable Template

Once you hit live, you cannot change the template of your Wix website. You can change the color and fonts but beyond that, you are pretty much locked in.

3. Poor Performance

It is very difficult to improve the performance (and ranking) of a Wix site due to the heavy bloat of unnecessary files that come along with the drag and drop builder.

Again, as with many website builders (drag and drop), there is a lot of unnecessary files and scripts involved which causes poor performance (a major factor in SEO). Also, when building your drag and drop site, it’s very likely that the structure of the site (the code in the back-end) isn’t written properly. This is yet another hinderance to your SEO, as it’s a major factor in determining where Google ranks you.

SquareSpace Web Design

Like Wix, SquareSpace is another good option for building a website. It is an ideal choice to make an e-commerce website, a business website, or a design and art portfolio. However, it requires a little bit of more technical knowledge than Wix. SquareSpace enables you to create good designs with perfect ease. They also have a very reliable support team.

Features and Benefits of Using SquareSpace

1. Hosting

Squarespace hosts all of their websites themselves. You do not have to buy separate hosting. The website is designed and run by its in-house team. Even analytics are integrated by their team. If something goes wrong, their team can restore and have back up of all your data.

2. Drag and Drop Editor

Squarespace has a drag and drops editor which does not require you to have any prior knowledge of CSS or HTML. The visual editor reflects how your website would look like in the end.

3. Themes

Squarespace has around 40 templates that are simple, clean, and modern. Each of the designs is customizable and can change drastically once you insert your media. Fonts and colors are easily adjustable too.

4. Mobile Ready

Each theme is optimized for mobiles too. Use the editor to customize it if necessary and make your website look the way you want.

5. Pictures

Squarespace’s templates are minimalist with a minimum text to give maximum exposure to pictures and videos. If you do not have a plan for large resolution images, you might need to switch to another platform. The in-platform image editor allows you to make small adjustments easy.

6. Blogging

Squarespace integrates with third-party apps to make blogging fun and easy. Some of the most common apps that are compatible with the Squarespace interface are Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, Google Calendar, and Gmail.

7. Advanced Theme Editor

If you have advanced knowledge of CSS, you can customize the theme of your website. This gives you more freedom to experiment with the visual aspect of your site.

8. E-Commerce

E-commerce is fully integrated and allows you to add unlimited products. When you choose a shop template, you can zoom in to see product details and Quick View to see product specifications. Like Wix, Squarespace has integrated several e-commerce features. However, some of the Squarespace features are unique and do not exist in the Wix platform. These are gift cards, back in stock notifications, and low stock notifications.

9. Marketing

The Marketing features of Squarespace are very basic. The platform allows some basic SEO. There is an availability of social share buttons and integration with MailChimp. Unlike WordPress, you cannot add a lot of marketing plug-ins.Digital marketing is an important part of your overall marketing campaign. While the different platforms offer their versions of marketing integration, it’s usually a “one size fits all” approach. This might not be good for your business, and often hiring a professional digital marketing agency is your best bet.

Why You Should NOT Use Squarespace

Again, as with many website builders (drag and drop), there is a lot of unnecessary files and scripts involved which causes poor performance (a major factor in SEO). Also, when building your drag and drop site, it’s very likely that the structure of the site (the code in the back-end) isn’t written properly. This is yet another hindrance to your SEO, as it’s a major factor in determining where Google ranks you.

The Verdict

So which of the three platforms, is a winner? Let’s see:

Wix stands out because of its ease of use, website management, and cost. If you are dead set on doing it yourself, Wix is a good choice. With a little effort, you can learn the basic content management system of the Wix website.

Squarespace wins because of its design, customer support, and website management system. If you expect little traffic and your budget is slim too, then Square space allows you to have a beautiful website on a low budget.Like with Wix, if you’re determined to build your own site, Squarespace is a good option.

WordPress wins in terms of customization, features, marketing, scalability, professionalism, reliability, and safety. If you are building a business that allows you to make a difference, WordPress can go a long way to help you to do that. You can add or remove plug-ins and customize your website according to your needs. WordPress is used by a majority of businesses for a reason.

Do you need a WordPress Website?

Let’s use an analogy to answer this question.

If you want to bake a Pizza, you have two options. You can either buy dough from the bakers or you can get all the ingredients, make your dough, choose your favorite toppings, and finally bake a pizza. It is, of course, convenient to get ready made dough but it limits your freedom to experiment and execute your special recipe.

Building your website with Wix or Squarespace is just like buying ready made dough. If you want to unlock your full potential then choose WordPress for building your website.

WordPress gives you the perfect freedom to establish your online presence. You can set all the rules and decide what’s good and what’s not, for your website.

There is a huge community of WordPress users. Almost one-third of all websites are powered by WordPress. If there is a problem or an issue, you can find a solution through the communities of hundreds of WordPress users. With its advanced technology and huge market share, WordPress is going to be here tomorrow as well.

WordPress is quite inexpensive. You only have to pay for hosting (which is built in to Wix/Squarespace/Etc’s packages). Self hosting allows you to own your own files, and you aren’t locked in to any one hosting provider. We have a maintenance package that allows you to run your business while we take care of your site.

Professionalism is associated with WordPress too. When you run your website on WordPress, you decide that your online presence is going to be credible and professional.

Lastly, it allows you to scale your website. If your business grows after a year and you need to add some additional features to your website, you are covered. In short, WordPress is the best website builder available in the market.

Ready to get started?

We build on all platforms, even from scratch coding. Learn more about our web design here. We will go further in depth on each platform in the coming weeks. Be sure to subscribe to get notified when they post!

The post Which Website Platform Should You Use? appeared first on Blue Shift Web Services Blog.

To get into our post for the day, we’re going to cover tracking your stats for your online presence. We suggest using Google Analytics to track website stats, and the built in analytics for each of the social media platforms. Each platform has “vanity” stats as well stats you should actually be tracking. Vanity stats are the ones that people tend to think are everything, such as followers or likes. They are the things that make you look good to others without helping your business. However, the stats you should be tracking are interactions. These will tell you what’s working with your visitors and potential buyers.

As a rule of thumb, you should be tracking engagement on social platforms and behavior on the website. We’ll dive a bit deeper into how to track metrics over time. This will allow you to expand and succeed with your marketing campaign, both on social media and on search engines.

Engagement

For the different social media platforms, you should be tracking how many people are interacting with your posts rather than how many liked your page. Having active followers is the most important thing on social media. You can encourage this by asking open ended questions for your followers to answer in the comment sections.

For blogs and website content, you can encourage them to share to social media platforms, like the posts, and leave comments. For products, encouraging shares and reviews are good ways to boost engagement.

Vanity Stats

Vanity statistics are those that at first glance that you might think are the most important. This includes things like followers and likes, registered users, downloads, and raw pageviews. This metrics are often meaningless and easily manipulated. You can buy followers (which is a very bad thing, and can get you in trouble with many platforms) to artificially enhance your vanity stats.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is an extremely powerful tool to help you track different metrics on your website including acquisition, behavior, and audience. We’ll dive a bit deeper into each of these sections shortly. But first, to install Google Analytics, you’ll need to copy and paste a specific code into your website. Depending on how your website was made, there are different ways of installing it. For example, for websites built on HTML/PHP you’ll simply copy and paste the code provided in between the <head> and </head> tags. For WordPress, there’s a slew of plugins to help you install the tracking code.

Audience

The Audience tab has a lot of great information about who exactly is visiting your site. We suggest that you pay attention to the demographics of the age and gender so you can target your content better.

Behavior 

The behavior tab is probably the most informative when it comes to how people are interacting with your site. You can track where visitors come in and out of your site, how long they stay, and what pages they viewed while visiting.

Acquisition 

This tab is also important because it tells you where your visitors are finding you. Knowing this information allows you to expand your marketing campaign where it’s already working.

Hopefully this quick overview gives you some important insight on how to accurately track if your marketing campaign is working. Need a great marketing agency?  Be sure to comment and share!

The post Analytics: Is Your Marketing Campaign Working? appeared first on Blue Shift Web Services Blog.

Here’s some stats to show the importance of local SEO:

• 72% of consumers who perform a local search visit a store within 5 miles of their current location.
• 88% of consumers who do a local search on their smartphone visit or call a store within a day
• 46% of all Google searches are seeking local information. 
• 75% of people never scroll past the first page of search engines.
• 50% of search queries are four words or longer.

As part of your SEO strategy, having a Google My Business is a great free way to show up above the organic search results. It is often the first thing a potential client will see when they find you by Google Search. It also provides your potential client vital information such as your website, phone number, and address. Having a Google My Business listing also places your business on Google Maps.  You’ll want to make sure that this information is correct at all times, and that your listing is completely filled out. The reviews will encourage them to actually become a client, so be sure to get your happy clients to rate and review! There is a ranking system within the Google My Business Listings where the more ratings with higher average rating will tend to show higher in the GMB listing results. You can add pictures, posts, and reply to reviews!

To create a Google My Business listing, follow the steps below.

1. Login to the Google Account that you want associated with your business. I tend to suggest to use your professional email that is linked with GSuite. 
2. Go to google.com/business.
3. Click “Start Now” in the upper corner on the right hand side.
4. Enter your business name. Ensure that the name is spelled properly
5. Choose your business category. This is important to get correctly, as you can only choose one. Be sure to read EACH category and then decide which will best fit you. The category you choose tells Google which customers you think should see your listing.
6. Google will then ask if you want to add a location like a store or office. 
   1. If you want to show up on Maps and Search, click yes!
   2. Otherwise, click no.
7. Enter your business address. This is the most important thing to get right as Google will be sending you a verification postcard in the mail.
8. If you go to your client’s location (delivery), choose “Yes, I also serve them outside my location”. Otherwise, choose “No, I don’t.”
9. If you chose yes, add the areas you serve.  Type in neighborhoods, cities, counties, states, regions, or countries and then select your desired location from the dropdown.
10. Enter your contact details. This is how viewers can get in touch. Fill in your phone number and your websites url. 
    1. If you don’t have a website at the moment, google can generate you a free one based on the info you gave. I’d only use this temporarily if you absolutely can’t afford a professionally designed website
11. Press finish to finish and managing the listing.
12.  Choose a way to verify. 
    1. Postcard by mail.
       1. This will take up to 5 days
    2. Verify later.
       1. If you choose this, you won’t be able to fully manage the listing.

After you’ve selected your verification, you’ll be redirected to the dashboard. Here you’ll see several cards with notifications and suggestions. You should see “Pending verification in the top left of the dashboard with the expected arrival date. Below that you’ll see “Complete your listing”, this is where you’ll be going next.

1. Add Hours
   1. Be sure to add accurate hours of operation for each day of the week. This will also give you an advantage if you happen to have later or earlier or longer hours than your competitors. For example, we’re open from 9-7 each week day, 10-6 on Saturday, and closed on Sunday. Most of our competitors are 9-5 on weekdays only.
2. Add a description. 
   1. Take care with this, and make sure to follow the SEO content tips like including keywords, using as much of the allotted characters as you can, and using enticing words to attract visitors.
3. Logo
   1. Add your logo to give your listing more branding.

You can also easily start up an advertising campaign if you want from the dashboard. 

On the left you will see the navigation menu for your Google My Business account. 

• Posts
  • You can share posts to your listing just like you can on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms.
• Info
  • This is where you manage the information about your business. There’s much more listed here than in the initial set up.
    • Business Name
    • Category
    • Address
    • SErvice Areas
    • Hours
    • Phone
    • Website
    • Appointment links 
      • Like if you use Calendly, Google Calendar, etc.
    • Products
      • You can list major products here with their own descriptions and prices.
    • Services
      • Similarly to products, you can add descriptions and prices to your services.
    • Highlights
    • Description
    • Opening Date
      • This could help entice visitors by showing how long you’ve been in business.
    • Photos
  • Advanced information that users won’t see but can help you keep organized.
    • Store Code
    • Labels
    • Google Ads location extensions phone.
  • From this tab you can also close or remove your listing.
• Insights (Only available after verified)
  • You can track stats like clicks, calls, and visits.
• Reviews
  • Probably the most powerful part of Google My Business. 
  • You can read and reply to reviews from this tab. Be sure to take time to answer all reviews, but especially the negative ones. It’s better to address them rather than ignore them.
• Messaging
  • People are able to message you through the listing if you choose. Here’s where you can handle them.
• Photos
  • Just like social media, you can share photos that represent your business here.
• Products
  • Like above you can add products to your listing and include images!
• Services
  • Like above you can add services to showcase on your listing
• Website
  • As we mentioned before, the Google generated website can be maintained and edited on this tab.
• Users
  • If you have other people you’d like to have access to the listing, this is where you’d add them.
• Create an Ad
  • As mentioned earlier, you can start Google Ads from your listing dashboard.
• Get custom Gmail
  • A professional custom email address is a great way to boost your professionalism when it comes to business, G Suite is a great way to do just that.
• Add new location
  • If you expand your business to more locations, this tab makes it easy to connect the different listing.
• Manage locations
  • Here’s where you can manage different locations that you’ve set up.
• Verify Location
• Linked Accounts
  • Linked accounts are other google products like Google Ads or Merchant Center.
• Settings
  • Under settings is where you can manage your email notifications.
• Support
  • Google’s support is usually phenomenal. If you’re having issues, you can reach out to support on this tab.

We also suggest that you download both the messages app and the GMB app. These apps allow you great advantages such as having visitors message you straight through your listing, alerts when you receive reviews and more!

So go ahead and get started on making sure your Google My Business is set up and accurate! If you have any questions or comments, be sure to leave them down below! If this post helped you out, also remember to like and share!

The post Google My Business for Local SEO appeared first on Blue Shift Web Services Blog.

Today, we are going to create a social media strategy for YOUR business. While we do offer this service to our clients, it’s helpful to know the process to avoid problems and optimize in the future.

We’ve touched on the basics of marketing strategy in our previous posts, such as identifying target audience and content creation. In this post, we will dive a little deeper choosing the platforms and provide several examples.

First, you need to figure out where to invest your time and energy. There are six primary platforms when referring to social media for business: Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube. However, there are other social platforms that are more niche to specific industries. It’s important to determine if your time is well spent on platforms including the niche ones.

Grab a piece of paper and a pen, and let’s get started.

Not to be self promoting, but to show as an example, I’ll answer these questions for Blue Shift Web Services. You should answer these questions honestly and thoroughly. Think of it as an interview!

Social Media for Business: Strategy Interview

What is your business about? 

My business is dedicated to online presence. This means websites, SEO, social media, the whole gambit. We help businesses of all sizes get online and have the best foot forward.

How did you get started?

We started Blue Shift Web Services after working in the industry for years. As we interacted with bosses, owners, clients, and coworkers. We realized we could do it better all around. Better processes, better client relationships, better work environment. So, we saved up and took the leap. 

Why did you get started? 

See above.

Tell me what makes you different from the others in your industry? 

Well, we have lower prices without sacrificing quality. As owners, you meet with both Ryder and I and are in communication with us as well. We dedicate ourselves to helping you market your business online. When it comes to websites, we teach you how to run it (even if you get our maintenance package). We understand that business is the most important thing, and that we are there to take care of your online presence while you’re running the rest of yours. Moreover, we understand that business comes first and work at your pace. If you’re not able to focus on a project (that isn’t time sensitive like sales), we do not hound you. We also answer emails, phone calls, and text messages quickly and continuously. This is probably the number on thing that people have thanked us and chosen us for. We often hear “You’re the only one who answered.” or “My current developer never emails back or does the updates in a timely manner (usually refers to weeks without hearing from them).” We pride ourselves on communication, dedication, and excellence.

Now, what problems do you solve? 

We solve the problems of online presence for businesses. Online presence is super broad and nuanced at the same time. It’s like a spider web: many layers, many connections, all leading to one center to catch all the traffic. We provide services to help each business find what they need and do it.

What products or services do you sell? 

We sell services such as: web design, search engine optimization, social media management, PPC advertising, social media marketing, graphic design, copywriting, maintenance, email marketing, professional appearance (email addresses, business cards, brochures, etc). We also offer consulting, public speaking and training.

How do you solve this problem better than competitors? 

I touched on this earlier, we communicate better and quicker than most competitors. We are more affordable without sacrificing quality. We do not sell just to sell, we pride ourselves on only selling you what you need, and guiding you to understand whether or not your business needs a service.

Who uses your products/services? 

Businesses. Whether large or small, startups or established. All businesses need an online presence, and we’re here to service them.

Okay, now you should know who you are as a business. Let’s get into more content based questions.

Do your products/services photograph well?

For us, we have several services that we can use as graphics for social media posts. We can use portfolio pieces like websites, logos, graphic design elements, and pictures from networking events.

(Some great ideas for other industries: Before and After photos, Smiling Clients + testimonials, product images, products being used!)

Do you feel comfortable creating visual content myself (graphic design)?

I do feel comfortable photographing and creating visual content for social media. 

If not, would you rather learn it yourself or outsource it to an expert? 

In the case I wasn’t comfortable, I’d probably rather outsource it since my time is better spent doing things for the business/clients. (If you want us to manage your social media, check out our social media packages!)

What about written content? 

I am comfortable writing content for blogs, web copy, and social media. If I wasn’t, I’d outsource it.

Do your services/products need an explanation before purchase or after purchase? 

It doesn’t necessarily need an explanation, but I do have written directions before and after the service is provided. I could make this graphical or into a video as well.

Alright, all done with the interview section!

Social Media for Business: Choosing Platforms

So now, we’ll review your answers to the above questions to determine which platforms to post on. While you may not post to every platform, you should register and completely fill out an account on each of them.

Facebook

Facebook posting is good for any business. Recommendations are also a great way to show your reputation to those finding you. You can also benefit from sharing, posting, and interacting in Facebook Groups.

However paid advertising on Facebook depends on your products/services. The best things to pay for advertising for are impulse buy type items: makeup, knick knacks, etc.

Instagram

Instagram is another platform that is pretty widely useful across industries. It requires images to post though, so keep that in mind.

Pinterest

Pinterest is the fastest growing social media of all time. Faster than Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. This platform is useful for industry but those who thrive are: home remodeling/building, restaurants, fashion, skin care, and the like.

LinkedIn

Of course, if you’re targeting businesses LinkedIn is a great way to connect and garner attention for your business. It also gives your business a sense of legitimacy.

YouTube

YouTube is a fantastic way to share videos with your clients, followers, etc. You can create informational videos and promotional videos and upload to YouTube and then embed those videos to your website with minimum effect to load time of your page!

Twitter

I don’t suggest to put effort into Twitter for small to medium size businesses.

Social Media for Business: Content

Creating content for social media is a large topic in and of itself. We’ve dedicated a post to content writing before, check it out here: Content Writing Essentials: How to Write Content for Online Presence

Check out our other guides to social media here:

Social Media Management: A Beginner’s Guide

Social Media Strategy : Create One that Works

BENEFITS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING FOR YOUR BUSINESS

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The post Social Media for Business: How to Choose Your Platforms appeared first on Blue Shift Web Services Blog.

1. Buy A Domain
2. Logo
3. Website
4. Audience Profile
5. Marketing Strategy
6. Content Creation
7. Tracking Efforts

Buy A Domain

A domain is the address that a client would type in to find your business’ website and more information about you.

Your domain should be connected to the actual name of your business, as in your domain should say your company name. We suggest using Google Domains in order to purchase your domain. This way as you navigate which hosting platform works best for you, you don’t need to pay 12 dollars each time you move.
Buying a domain early on in your business will help you with SEO (search engine optimization) in the long run. Currently, domain age is a determining factor in where you rank in search results!

Logo

You should get a logo, it’s very important to visually recognizing your business. It should be used across ALL promotional materials, both digital and physical.

Website

Websites are the central hubs of online presence. Every avenue of marketing should circle back to your website. You need to pay for hosting for your website. Think of your domain as the address to your store, and the hosting as the building at the address.

• • We have a whole dedicated post to what you need on your website.

Social Media

Almost everyone uses some form of social media. Whether it’s to learn, work, network, or connect with loved ones, they are online. You can use these platforms in order to get your product, services, solutions, and the like in front of potential customers.

• Reserve your desired username on ALL platforms. Even if you’re not planning on using them. The main six platforms are:
  • • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Pinterest
    • YouTube
    • Twitter
    • LinkedIn
• Make sure the profiles are all filled out and are linking back to your website.
• Make sure that they are all using your logo.

Audience Profile

Finding your audience profile is important so that you have an idea of how to format your marketing strategy in order for it to be effective.

Find your audience profile by answering these questions:

1. 1. What problem does your service/product solve?
   2. Who has that problem?
   3. Where are they? (Physically and Digitally)
      • This will determine where you put your marketing efforts.
   4. How do I talk to them? (Professionally, Casually)
      • This will determine the language used throughout your marketing efforts.

Marketing Strategy

Marketing strategy is loosely defined as all avenues of promoting your business.There are several different marketing strategies: content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, search engine marketing, pay-per-click marketing, and offline marketing to name a few.

While determining your marketing strategy, you’ll use your audience profile to determine which avenue will be the best to put your effort into.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is one of the most widely used strategies, as it can be used on any platform. It’s a long term strategy focused on providing quality, valuable content instead of selling.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is a great way to target potential (and existing!) clients that are already interested in your business’s products or services. For this, you should gather emails from your website through a subscription box or from customers when they purchase.

Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Social media marketing is probably the most well-known digital marketing strategy. Whether you’re doing paid advertising or just simply posting on your social media accounts, it’s social media marketing. When done correctly, this is a powerful strategy that can really make you money.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Search Engine Marketing is one of the most profitable options, if done correctly. SEM includes both paid advertising on search engines and organic results (search engine optimization). We have dedicated blog posts about these as well!

Pay Per Click

Pay per click is another well known digital marketing strategy. This is the most important to get right, as you don’t want to be wasting money on campaigns. To learn more about Google Ads and making it profitable click here!

Content Creation

This is probably the most time consuming part of a marketing strategy. All of your research on keyword and topics, as well as actual copy and graphic creation are part of this step.  You should determine how often you want to post and the type of content you want to post (video, image, text). Want to learn more about content creation?

Tracking Efforts

When it comes to tracking the effects of your marketing strategy, it’s important to know what and where to track it. By default, you should see an increase in overall website visitors of course. An increase in sales is also likely.

Some more nuanced things you should be tracking include:

• Keywords
  • keeping track of what keywords have the best conversion rate,
  • keeping track of what people are searching to find you,
  • optimizing regularly to ensure poor words are removed and replaced with better words.
• Engagement
  • Engagements are the most important metric to check, most people forget about these as they are most focused on vanity metrics. While it’s important to put effort into vanity metrics like followers and page likes, engagements are used in social media algorithms in order to show posts in home feeds. Facebook in particular puts a large emphasis on posts with high numbers of interactions.

You can use analytics software to track these metrics. For websites, Google Analytics will be the best tool. You should pay attention Insights, Demographics, and User Behavior. As for social media, each platform has their own analytics built in for you to track your metrics on their platform.

We will be posting a more in depth post about tracking marketing strategies in the future so be sure to subscribe!

Optimizing Strategy

Optimizing your strategy is the final step in your online presence. You’ll continuously optimize as you gather more data about your customers and visitors by doing more of what works and less of what doesn’t.

So there you go, a step by step guide on getting online. Stay up to date with our latest tips and tricks by subscribing to our weekly newsletter!

The post Get Your Business Seen: Online Presence Guide appeared first on Blue Shift Web Services Blog.