Adding Relevancy to Your Online Presence

The chances are pretty good that you have had your website for a while now. Many business people don’t realize that it isn’t enough to simply build (or have built) your website. The content will just sit there and become stale and stagnant if you don’t take measures to refresh and make it relevant on a regular basis.

Ensuring that your website is relevant
By now, you probably have a brand that is well-developed and quite sophisticated. One thing that you need to understand clearly is that your brand, which you have made such an effort to develop, must be relevant at all times. If that doesn’t happen, you won’t get anywhere in business.

If your online presence content isn’t relevant, there are many other businesses who have relevant content and other people will choose to connect with those businesses instead of with yours.

Interestingly (and, perhaps, sadly) relevance seems like a vague, unobtainable concept to many people. However, one thing that is certain is that it is critical to your business’s success.

Relevance is not something that you are either born with or not. It is something that you can work to build and achieve. There are certain specific steps that you can follow to achieve relevance for your business if your brand and offerings are not relevant at this point.

Another extremely important side effect of relevance is how you will hopefully rank in the search engine pages. For all of those reasons, you should give some serious thought to making your business as relevant as you possibly can.

Develop a client persona
The fact of the matter is that not all of your content will be relevant to every person who reads what you are posting. That is exactly why you need to choose your target audience extremely carefully. If you do that, you will have the best chance of your content being relevant to the people who are reading what you are posting.

One of the mystical qualities of relevance is the fact that relevance never stays the same over time. It is constantly evolving (or, at least, it should be). So, your business can be relevant one minute and then it can be irrelevant the next. That puts a great deal of pressure on you as the business owner but it is certainly not an exercise in futility. It is an exercise that will certainly pay off in spades for your business.

The fact is that relevance is not nearly as elusive and ethereal as you might perceive it to be. It is an extremely important and dynamic part of your business. It is one of the building blocks of your business’ foundation. It is important for you to include it when you are designing your marketing strategy because it will be very instrumental in your success. It is essential for the business owner and for the target audience member.

When it comes to your website, the design is extremely important but the relevance has a much deeper significance than the design has. You can always switch up the design if you want to. However, relevance must always be there and although your website content must always be relevant, how you continue to allow it to evolve is up to you.

In short, you try what you think will work and if it does, great. On the other hand, if it doesn’t work, you will have to try something else. Your client persona is very important for your business. You must cater to the people who will help you to grow your business. Having a persona in mind and developing it in a detailed manner is really what you need to do.

Give your target audience members what they want and need
It is very important that you have a clear understanding of what your target audience members want and need. That is exactly why your content needs to be relevant. It needs to be relevant to them. Otherwise, exactly where are you going to go with that.

Of course, you need several different elements that work together in order for your business to be a success. However, being able to wrap your mind around your clients’ needs is at the top of your priority list. A part of this is choosing the appropriate and most effective keywords and key phrases. That is how other people will search and find you and your business. You need to make sure that they are extremely relevant and effective.

Conclusion
Your content must always be relevant to you and, more importantly, to your target audience members. If you don’t have relevant content, your business will be finished before it has a chance to start. Your goal is to make sure that your content is read, understood, and embraced thoroughly. Content is the tool that you use to connect with people but relevance is the underlying theme for your business.

Carolyn T. Cohn is the Chief Editor of CompuKol Communications. Mrs. Cohn has a wealth of experience in managing people and projects. She has run several editorial departments for various companies. Mrs. Cohn has 25 years of editorial experience and her expertise covers a wide range of media, such as online editing, editing books, journal articles, abstracts, and promotional and educational materials. Throughout her career, Mrs. Cohn has established and maintained strong relationships with professionals from a wide range of companies. The principle that governs her work is that all words need to be edited.

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Traffic Building – Oh the Insustainability of it All

Traffic building is a primary goal of virtually every business website on the World Wide Web. The problem many businesses encounter is the practices they insist on using do not connect well with long-term traffic building objectives.

For example, some businesses will insist on purchasing email lists and using these lists to conduct one shot email marketing campaigns. Sure, there will be a certain percentage of recipients who will visit their website and there will be a lesser percentage who actually make a purchase, but the end result is a boost in traffic.

Various advertising techniques such as Pay Per Click (PPC) are used to bolster traffic-building objectives, but the end result may be a smaller Return on Investment (ROI) than the site owner may be willing to accept as fair and equitable.

There is a term used in energy and natural resources that makes sense in the world of traffic building. That term is sustainability. When a site owner is seeking long-term strategies for traffic building they need to look at what strategies are sustainable.

What strategies can perpetually bring traffic to a site without requiring constant care and financial resources?

Organic Ezines – The use of information and personally culled email addressed make for a combination that allows you to connect with the largest number of motivated consumers. These consumers often look forward to your latest issue and are happy to gain insight and information on subjects they are interested in.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – SEO strategies are particularly well suited to bringing sustainable traffic to your website. If you optimize your site well you should expect the potential for perpetual traffic.

Directories – Taking the time to submit your site information to a variety of directories makes it possible to see further sustainability in cyber traffic.

The primary rule for many of these strategies is they cost more in time than they do money. Conversely strategies that require less time always seem to cost more money.

The shoot-from-the-hip approach to traffic building is an approach that requires constant attention and creative thinking. In fact, you shouldn’t be surprised if these approaches yield fewer results than you hope for. When that happens many site owners are tempted to push the envelope and develop strategies that many consider spamming.

When you take time at the start of your online business to develop traffic building strategies the end results are not only likely to be dramatically better they are also more likely to be sustainable.

With the growth of your traffic you will also find a parallel with increased sales.

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Profitable Traffic Building – 7 Ways to Advance in Traffic Building

Profitable traffic building is the key to success in Internet business. If you want to increase your profits, you have to increase your traffic. Through this article you are presented with 7 ways to advance in traffic building.

1. One of the most fundamental ways to advance towards profitable traffic building is to learn the ins and outs of creating content for a website that has been search engine optimized.

2. Additionally, when it comes to profitable traffic building, you must also learn techniques pertaining to meta-tags and meta-tag creation and placement.

3. Moreover, an important aspect of profitable traffic building in this day and age is learning how to create appropriate domain names that will draw traffic to a site.

4. Profitable traffic building also depends upon an ability to create and implement a quality link building program. Again, the key here is quality – any link building efforts need to be quality in nature.

5. Profitable traffic building efforts need to be part of a comprehensive website promotion plan or program. You cannot work on building traffic to a site in a vacuum.

6. You need to be open minded and willing to consider new options when it comes to working towards profitable traffic building and drawing people to your website venue.

7. Finally, if you have questions about what you are considering doing, understand that there are people available who can give you useful and professional advice, guidance and assistance.

Seven simple ways which you will now need to put into action.

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10 Effective Web Design Principles

As Steve Jobs once said, “Design is not just what it looks like feels like. The design is how it works. “functionality and the serviceability, not the visual design, determine the success or failure of a website. The visitor of the page is the only person who is looking for information regarding a product or a service.

With a click of a mouse the visitor decides, the user-centric design is the necessity for success and profit-oriented web design.

We will focus on main elements of web design, lateral thinking and result oriented approaches for effective web design which can lead to more sophisticated decisions, as a result, simplifying the process of comprehending the presented information.

Before seeing the guidelines for effective web design, it is important to know, what users think when they interact with a website.

The behaviour of the user, when he or she interacts with a website, is similar to a customer interacting with a store. Visitors glance at each page, text and images. They narrow down to clickable links which catch their interests.

Most users when they visit a web page they are looking for a specific information, product or service.

  • Users Like Quality: If a web page provides quality content, then it is compromised with advertisements and design of the web page. One should remember that a mix of good design and quality content, is needed to drive relevant traffic on the webpage.
  • Most Users Scan The Webpage: When a user visits a web page they scan the webpage for the information which fulfils their needs.
  • Web Users are Impatient and They What Instant Gratification: If the content on the webpage is not properly structured and if the visitor is not able to get the required information within the first three seconds. Then the chances of users exiting the webpage increases.
  • Users Don’t Make The Best Choices: Web page visitors don’t go page by page to search for the required information, rather they scan the web page and the link, which satisfies their requirement and they jump to it.
  • Web Users Follow Their Individual Intuitive Feeling: Most users scan the web page instead of reading line by line. According to the information architect Steve Krug, it is mainly because the users don’t care. “If we find something that works, we stick to it. It doesn’t matter to us if we understand how things work, as long as we can use them. If your audience is going to act like you’re designing a complex design, then create a great design which makes users think.”

Now, having seen the users behaviour, next we are going to checklist the web designing principles

  1. Don’t Make Users Think too Much: According to Krug’s first law of usability, the web page should be self-explanatory, it should contain answers to most of the questions which users can get after going through the web page. If the navigation and website architecture isn’t designed properly, the user will find it difficult to comprehend how the system works. A well thought and structured design along with clear and concise quality content direct the user towards availing the services or making a purchase. Thus, well-planned structure reduces the mental load. Once this is achieved, it will be easy for the user to navigate through the website.
  2. Use Minimum Fill in Forms: In every project which is designed to cater to the specific needs of the user, try to keep users requirements minimal. First-time visitors will like if they don’t have to fill in long forms to try out your service. Basically, remove all barriers, a user registration using a long fill in the form is enough to cut down on the incoming traffic.
  3. Divert users attention towards your USP: A website contains both static and dynamic content, some aspects of the user interface are more attractive than others. Attractive content, images and videos should be used to attract customers towards your USP (Unique Selling Proposition).
  4. Strive for Attractive Content-Rich Interface: Modern web designers focus more on the visually appealing interface, and they neglect architecture of the web page and content. A good mix of design, layout and content will drive more quality traffic to the webpage.
  5. Strive for Simplicity and Effective Writing: The content on the web page should be clear, concise and properly structured. As it helps the user to find the required information easily.
  6. Innovate But Not Distract: An impressive web design uses innovation and creativity. Use white spaces or negative spaces as per the requirement. A white space is the area of the page that is empty, mainly used between the images and videos.
  7. Aesthetically Appealing – Target As Per The Niche: Every industry or segment caters to specifically targeted customers based on factors like age, geography and gender. The design of the web page should be explicitly designed to target selected niche.
  8. Build Online Credibility and Trust: Nowadays everybody is present on social platforms, users and business enterprises both. Use your web page to build trust and credibility on social platforms. A testimonial from the existing clients is a great way to do this.
  9. Optimized Web Page: Web page should be optimized to load faster without compromising on quality factor.
  10. Responsive Web Design: Due to increase in handheld devices and data penetration. Mobile devices are the main source of traffic on the website. Web pages should be responsive to load in any device irrespective of the screen size.

Thus, a web page should be designed keeping in mind, the user and business needs. Use these web design principles to get an aesthetically appealing and result oriented web page.

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Why Your Business Needs a “Responsive Web Design”

Today, the web is not only limited to desktop. According to Statista, there won’t be less than 2.9 billion smartphone users by the end of 2019. With the “ever increasing” number of smartphone users daily, more and more people are browsing internet solely via smartphones. Yes, more than 60% of searches online now come from a mobile device.

Can you remember the last time you visited any website on your smartphone and shut that website simply because it was not looking good on the screen of your smartphone? It was likely not a pleasant experience. What if that was your website? You would be feeling nauseous about it.

Responsive web design isn’t a fashion anymore, rather it’s a must. Today, if your website isn’t efficient enough to serve screen of multiple devices, it’s going to incur you lose in ways you might haven’t imagined. Hence, it is very essential for you to have a “responsive web design” for your blazing idea.

When it all started…

It was the year of 2010, when a web designer named, Ethan Marcotte first coined the term, “responsive web design.” In those days, web developers used to build different sites to accommodate all the tribes of devices out there in the market.

With the increasing number of “tribes” of devices, this way didn’t seem much efficient to create websites. That is when the trend of responsive web design came to life.

“Responsive web design offers us a way forward, finally allowing us to design for the ebb and flow of things.“

-Ethan Marcotte

After all What’s the Definition of Responsive Web Design?

According to Ethan, a responsive design is composed of three distinct parts:

1. A flexible grid.

2. Flexible images. Or more specifically, media that works in a flexible context (whether fluid themselves, or perhaps controlled via overflow).

3. Media queries. The final layer of a responsive design, media queries optimize the design for different viewing contexts, and spot-fix bugs that occur at different resolution ranges.

“A responsive design simply means a website that feels great on any device of your choice.”

Here’s Why You Should Consider the Thought of Having a Responsive Website:

Because it looks amazing! The first compelling reason you should consider the thought of having a responsive website is because responsiveness can make your site look simply amazing!

Having a responsive website, can also help to engage your users, thereby leaving them with a good impression about your brand as a whole.

1. Deliver Excellent UX:

With a responsive website, you can deliver the most luxurious user experience to your end users. No one likes to sit in front of an “ever loading” broken or a shrunken website. With a responsive design, you can deliver the most amazing UX that will make your users fall in love with your brand. Today, most of the web design companies offer responsive website design to better serve their clients.

2. Reach the Farthest End of the Corner:

With a responsive website design, you can reach people who don’t have the luxury to surf internet via a personal computer. Responsive web design will help you address all the users out there searching for you. This can help to increase traffic on your website. Not only that, it will also help you to boost your ranking in Google.

3. Reduce Maintenance Cost:

Initially, if you were to hire a website design company they would create two separate versions for any website – one for mobile and the other for desktop devices. What this did was it increased the overall effort and maintenance cost for keeping both the versions updated. However, if you have a responsive web design, you will be able to manage your website much efficiently and easily, with least resources.

Final words, now you know how crucial it is to have a responsive web design for your website. If you want your business to grow in leaps and bounds, you must consider the thought of having a responsive website. If you want help in making your website responsive, there are many companies out there who offer responsive web design services to help you make your website look exceptional.

Companies that offer responsive web design services can also help you in building a separate mobile app for your website that can help you grow your business up to no limits.

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Use Geofencing in Your Next SEO Campaign

Imagine you just launched your business. Your heart is pounding with excitement, ready for the customers to pour in. After all, your products are the best in the community, and everyone knows it. Your website is simply amazing. It is sure to send everyone to your store. Sounds great doesn’t it?

Now, in order to really boost your chance for success, you hired an internet marketing firm to get your website on the first page of all the major search engines. Perfect! Your chance for success is in the bag. Sure enough, your site is on the first page of every search engine imaginable. You sit back counting the seconds until the first customer comes through the door.

The seconds, turn into minutes, and then to months. “Where is all the traffic?” you ask. As you check your website visitor details you find that most of your visitors are from across the world. There is no way they will ever come to your store. They are all thousands of miles away. Soon you dismiss SEO as ineffective in a world full of websites just like yours.

What if that same company (the one who brought visitors to your website from the four corners of the earth) targeted customers in your area? What if they could not only target the customers in your area, but they could also grab the attention of those in your area who are actually interested in your products? That is a better use of your resources.

That is what localized or geofenced SEO is all about. Being on the first page of a search engine is worthless if no one will visit your business. By using a geofencing strategy in your SEO marketing plan, you are more likely to reach the customers who matter most. After all, what good is a billboard sign in Asia if you are selling in the USA? You would never advertise at the bottom of a lake hoping to attract a buyer for your home. This is essentially what millions of small business owners do every day with ineffective SEO campaigns. They spend thousands of dollars every month to get on the first page of Google hoping to draw the customers in. Geofencing is your answer to ineffective SEO.

Remember, you are speaking to those customers who will visit your business. Unless you are targeting the world, you need to use geofencing as part of your SEO strategy.

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The Kinds of Businesses You Can Start Online

The Internet is no longer just a source of information. It is also a platform for communication and business. Amazon, eBay, Facebook, and Google are just some of the big names that were able to cash in on their online ventures.

If you are interested in starting a business, there’s plenty of opportunities online. In order to succeed, you must first know what sort of online industry you can get into. Here are some of the top industries in the Internet:

Social Media Consultant
Are you active on social media? Do you have lots of followers? If so, you can be useful. Put your skills to use with helping startup businesses build their social media presence, and managing or supervising their accounts. Show them the ropes so that they can establish a solid relationship online with their own clients.

Business Coaching
Do you have the Midas touch when it comes starting businesses? Perhaps you can lend a helping hand to other entrepreneurs by serving as their consultant. Whatever phase their business is going through, why not advise them what to do next.

If this seems too time consuming, there are other ways you could pass on knowledge, such as creating lessons or holding classes and stream them online.

Web Design
Do you know your CSS from your PHP and have all the skills to develop a website? If that is the case, you can definitely help other entrepreneurs building their site. Convince potential customers with a carefully crafted and comprehensive portfolio.

You’ll also have to study some SEO techniques so that your designs are friendly to search engines and users.

SEO Analyst
The SEO landscape is constantly evolving, this is because search engines are doing their best to provide the best results for their users.

Google is the most advanced so far, which is why most analysts devote more time studying its updates. You should do the same.

As an SEO analyst, you can help website owners land on the first page of search results.

Virtual Assistant
If you don’t mind doing secretarial or administrative work, you can set up shop as a virtual assistant. Some of the tasks you can shoulder include email management, booking appointments, database building, hotel and flight booking, transcribing video or audio files, and crafting reports. You can charge either per task or per hour.

Once you have decided the kind of business you want to run, ask yourself the important question: what is the domain name for your site? Ideally, it should capture the nature of your online venture.

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Why You Need Somebody To Help You Make Money

Micheal Jordan had one. Alex Rodriguez had one. Puff Daddy had one. Oprah had one. All of these highly successful people and more have one thing in common. They all at some point in their life have had a life coach. They had somebody in their life who was there to give them support and advice. This person can be a family member, a friend, a teacher or even a sports coach, just somebody around you who can guide you in the way that you want to go. Concerning money, you want to go for somebody who already has money or who has made big money in the past so you can borrow their experience.

In my life I’ve had many mentors as I am always looking to people with more experience than me for advice on how I can become better in any area. This is the only way to truly gain loads of money in the quickest way possible, because when you borrow from the experience of somebody else, you cut out the time you lose from trial and error.

I can remember as a teen how I looked up to an older friend of mine who was strong and had big muscles. . At the time, it appeared as though he had the biggest muscles in the world outside of Hulk Hogan which led me to want some too. So I ended up asking him how to workout and he showed me which started me off on the beautiful body I have now.

Then there was my uncle who used to tell me the same story every week about a man who he knew who owned 18 apartment buildings. My uncle always used to say how easy it was to obtain and how you could gain so much money by doing this. I was so inspired by this story and others that by 24 years old, I had my first building. (It also helped a little that my uncle and my mother had already bought two houses of their own as well).

Then there was an older man I had befriended when I was looking for some direction in life. I didn’t really know how to talk to women and I didn’t really have much confidence in myself as a man. This man taught me how to be a man, how to stand up for myself and how to be when it comes to women. Without out him, I would probably still be buying random women drinks at the club hoping for a dance instead of fanning women off of me because I am married.

Well I hope you have received my point. If you are reading this then you obviously haven’t been able to make large amounts of money by yourself. Realize that you have to work with someone or some people who know how to make money and I can guarantee you that your income will shoot to the places you have never imagined. You can get that dream car or house, whatever you want, just as long as somebody is showing you what to do.

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The World’s 3 Most Impenetrable Banks

As banking moves online and people worry about using cyber-secure passwords to protect their savings accounts, it’s easy to forget that all banks are physically secure. Some financial institutions are ridiculously secure, making the prospect of organizing a bank heist very daunting indeed. Of all the treasuries in the world, these three have gone to great lengths to ensure that their contents remain safe and sound.

1) Fort Knox – The United States

A US Army post located in Kentucky, Fort Knox is a fortified vault used to store the United States’ gold reserves. Thieves hoping to steal American gold bullion must scale four surrounding fences-two of which are electric-sneak past several armed patrols, and avoid video cameras to make it to the vault’s exterior wall. Once inside, the safe itself proves to be the largest obstacle. No one on the planet knows the entire combination to the Fort Knox safe. The only way in is to gather several staff members that know portions of the combination. Even after breaking in and gathering loot, 30,000 American soldiers will be waiting to meet thieves on their way out.

2) Svalbard Golden Seed Vault – Norway

Located 430 feet below sea level, the Svalbard Golden Seed vault is built to survive Armageddon. This facility houses 500,000 plant species in a temperature-controlled environment, which acts as a safety net in the event that the Earth loses vital plant species. Its location deep underground protects it from natural disaster, and its remoteness prevents any potential human saboteurs from reaching the facility, let alone breaking into it. Its concrete structure and four steel doors can even protect the facility from a direct nuclear strike. In addition to the armed patrols, air locks, and video cameras, the area around Svalbard is occupied by 3,000 polar bears-a natural defense against any intruders.

3) Bahnhof Underground Center – Sweden

Who knew that an Internet provider could construct and monitor one of the most impenetrable facilities in the world? Swedish Internet provider Bahnhof converted an old nuclear bomb shelter into a data bunker that now houses the servers for WikiLeaks and other important information. It’s located 100 feet below a mountain in Stockholm, and it boasts a 1.5-foot thick steel door to keep out any unwanted visitors. In the event of a power outage, the facility is equipped with enough backup generators to keep the bunker running for weeks.

It is unlikely that any local banks can boast the same security measures, but customers can rest assured that every financial institution is equipped with enhanced security.

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How to Choose Between Banks

When you open an account at one of the banks in your area, or any bank for that matter, you are forming a long-term relationship. It is not often that people change their minds about their financial institution once they open an account. As long as you are receiving the services that you desire, you are prone to stick with that financial institution. If you choose to do business with a certain bank, make sure that you are happy with the customer service. Ask about fees associated with various accounts. Depending on your needs, you may need a checking account, savings account, or both. Find out how lost credit cards, overdrafts, and debit card purchases are handled.

Create a List

Create a list of things that you want from one of the reputable banks in your area. Then you can decide on a financial institution based on your banking needs.

Services Offered

Most banks offer a wide range of services. Services can include retirement savings, investment options, and online bill payment.

Other services offered generally include:

- Online Banking
- Mobile Banking
- Text/Web/Apps
- External Funds Transfer
- ATM/Debit Cards
- Telephone
- Wire Transfers
- Electronic Statements
- Cash Management
- Merchant Credit Card

These days, you will usually have access to funds at your local branch, online, and through ATM withdrawals. Most banks also offer loan services for mortgages and secured credit.

Doing Business Online

Online banking has made it possible for customers to check their balances and receive monthly statements. Most banks offer free online services, and you can feel secure doing business over the Internet. You can access your funds 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You will have access to your existing E-statements. You can transfer money between each of your accounts, make your loan payments, and see an overview of your transactions.

Mobile Capabilities

When you are traveling, what better way to complete transactions at your financial institution than by mobile banking. As long as you have a smart phone or other mobile device, you can conduct business transactions. You can even receive your account balances via text messaging. It is a quick way to check on your account without a physical visit to the bank.

Mobile connection allows you to receive current and available balances, review previous transactions, and see existing balances on all of your accounts. All you have to do is text a brief command from your mobile phone, and the information will be quickly delivered to your device.

Cash Management

Business owners can manage their money through cash management services offered by many banks. As a business owner, you will have control over your daily finances, be allowed to create multiple account users, and also have the ability to initiate ACH deposits.

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