Internet Marketing Trends Affecting Small Businesses

Five to ten years ago, the approach taken toward internet marketing was fairly straightforward. It mostly consisted of paid ads and a little bit of search engine optimization (SEO). Website traffic would pour in and your business would have new customers. Things have changed since then. Today, there are a variety of different aspects of internet marketing. SEO has changed. Social media is constantly evolving. It is hard to keep up with what is actually important and what you should pass up. However, there are a few key areas where you can feel confident investing your time and resources. Four Important Trends for Internet Success

  • Content-Specific SEO—Search engines are getting better at distinguishing the most relevant results for keywords people are searching. If you want to keep your site-traffic healthy, it is a good idea to implement a solid content-specific SEO strategy.
  • Smartphones—Smartphones are changing the way people access, browse, and find information. There is a high demand for smartphone-friendly internet-page access. Internet marketing that is smart phone friendly can result in a big business boom.
  • Usability and Design—Whether consumers are accessing your webpage via laptop, tablet, or smartphone, your website needs to offer easy navigation and a clean design. Internet marketing strategies have shown that websites who follow high design and usability standards perform better.
  • Social Media—Today, social media plays such a huge role in internet marketing strategy that it makes it impossible to ignore. Establishing yourself on websites such as Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, and Pinterest has become essential to reaching new consumers and marketing your products.

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How to Improve Your Web Design

web designHow your website is designed, everything from fonts, colors, images, and layout, can quickly mean the difference between having a successful online presence and an attempt that crashes and burns. Use the following website design tips to ensure your website draws consumers in rather than turns them away.

Website Design Tips

  • Design a polished and professional logo—Your logo is essential to your brand and your internet marketing strategy. It is a good rule of thumb to use a high-resolution image positioned in the upper-left corner of every page on your website, all of which should link back to your homepage.
  • Declutter—You do not want to visually overload your visitors. In proper website design, you want to keep your paragraphs short as well as your images and links to a minimum.
  • Strategically use color—Learning to strategically use color is a crucial part of website design so you must pay close attention to it. When choosing colors for your website design you need to choose a color palette that goes great with your logo and is consistent with all of your other marketing materials. For example, a neutral color palette projects a clean, modern, and elegant image. Small dashes of bright colors in places like headlines or in graphics add a fun edge to your website design.
  • Choose fonts wisely—You want to choose fonts that are easy to read no matter where the consumer is accessing your website from (computer, smartphone, etc.). Universal fonts like Times New Roman, Ariel, or Helvetica are usually a good choice.

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