What kind of first impression does your homepage make? It should be a place that promotes your business well, attracts customers, and generates leads. Since the homepage is the gateway to the rest of your website—and your business—homepage optimization should be a key part of your marketing strategy. Here are some best practices for making your homepage the optimal entrance point for potential customers: Make your message clear. Studies show that the average visitor only spends 10 seconds on your home page before leaving if they don’t connect with your marketing messages. Craft a marketing message that’s compelling and direct, and make sure visitors to your site can grasp it

Are you ready for April 21, 2015? That’s the date when Google has said it will update its search algorithm in order to improve the quality of its search results. Google updates its algorithm periodically, to keep up with search trends, device usage, and innovations in webpage designs. This Google algorithm update is specifically designed to improve the quality of mobile search by making sure mobile-optimized pages show up first in results. Why is this important for you and your company? Simply put, if your site is not optimized for mobile, the Google algorithm update will downgrade its rank. Other sites that are more mobile-friendly will show up ahead of your site in

Infographed by popular demand! Our clients and blog readers are always looking for information about building smarter, results-driven digital content. Based on an earlier blog article, we're providing a quick-read infographic on B2B website best practices. We'd love to hear if you found it useful.

Is your digital brand being informed by B2B website best practices? It’s time to assess your online presence – and redress weaknesses that may inhibit your website’s performance. Anyone who has ever been through a website build or redesign knows it isn’t easy. Depending on the size of the site, the sheer complexity of design and development steps often requires a formal project management process to see a website build-out through to successful completion. When it comes to graphical execution, what works “on paper” can often be difficult to emulate in a digital environment, particularly when working with templates or pre-determined brand standards. Consideration of customers’ data needs – especially in

Now that you know how to get found online and create effective calls-to-action (CTAs) for your website, you need to convert prospects into sales leads. Most website visitors are not ready to buy the first time they visit your website, so it is critical to get them to provide their contact information during their initial visit to your website. If a prospect leaves your website without providing at least their email address, you lose the opportunity to nurture them until they are ready to buy. That’s why every CTA on your website should direct visitors to a landing page. Landing pages are the best way for you to capture leads on your website

In last week’s blog post, we discussed 5 B2B website best practices that you can use to help get your company found online. Now that you are generating more website traffic for your company, you need to focus on getting that traffic to stay on your website. It depends on the industry, but most websites have a 30-60% bounce rate on average. This means that a majority of the traffic that enters your corporate website leaves without navigating to any other pages. And they may never come back! To engage visitors, you need to pay close attention to the design and usability of your company’s website. Here are some tips you can

Most B2B marketers today realize that their company’s website is an essential piece of their online marketing strategy. Every B2B company needs an online presence to reach buyers in the Internet age. But, a great website isn’t so great if no one visits it. That’s why your website needs to not just exist, it needs to become an inbound marketing machine that attracts visitors, educates them and convinces them to buy. To make the most of your website, you need to know how to help your company get found online. This process begins with search engine optimization (SEO), an absolute must-have for any website, but it takes hard work to reach page

Every now and then, your website needs a refresh. There are many good reasons for a website redesign, whether it’s a rebranding, moving onto a new Content Management System, the site is getting lackluster results or it looks like it was built in 1999 (eek). Eventually, there comes a time when you’ve made all of the revisions and quick-fixes possible to your current site. That’s when you need a bigger change. A radical redesign is a great way to transform your tired old website into a beautiful new butterfly. A b-to-b website redesign can be a huge success – or fail terribly. After all, it’s a long and tedious process. That’s why

As the leading search engine, and with no indication of relinquishing this position anytime soon, Google has always driven how marketers conduct SEO and search engine marketing (SEM), with its algorithm being the holy grail of how to get found online. B-to-B Internet marketing practitioners have tipped their hats to Google’s methods by optimizing off-page meta data and on-page content, nurturing “link love” with inbound links from external sources and otherwise trying to game the highly competitive ranking system for that coveted Page 1 appearance. With its Penguin 2.0 update, Google continues to level the playing field for websites that provide real value to users. In a nutshell, Google is rewarding sites