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As a business owner, are you contemplating partnering with an agency to increase your company’s marketing effort to boost your brand recognition and to generate new leads? 

Where do you start: contact an agency, hire a new associate to focus on just that, or take a go at it yourself? 

Either way, you need to start with evaluating your most important asset and the center of your marketing efforts – your website! A website was originally created in the early 2000’s as a place holder and extension of the Yellow Pages for customers to look you up.  Now, websites have morphed into a tool, and yours should be the hardest working sales tool that you have. It works 24/7 without complaining or charging overtime!

Here are a few tips and tricks that we consider to be website auditing 101 or 'the basics' to determine if your website meets today’s tough standards. 

Social media is great for your business or organization. It can help to illustrate your company values, display your company culture, and promote your service or product. It is important though to set up a profile for each of the different social handles with some sort of standardization by following best practices. All of the social site will be different, but almost all will have the ability to create a user/personal profile. This information will be shared with the community of users who also use that particular platform. Let's talk about creating an effective online profile.

There is a lot of talk out there about SEO, and the conversation is valid, because search engine optimization is very important. There are a few steps and points that are very crucial to deciding how to make your website and articles more optimized.

The first step in search engine optimization is deciding which keywords to optimize your site for. Keywords are what people type in to a search engine to look up something they are searching for, or a question that they want to ask. There are three criteria that go into choosing the optimal keywords for website optimization; how relevant they are, the volume in which they exist, and a difficulty score.

I was at the movies last week and recetly saw a preview for the new movie that just came out called "blackhat".  It happened to trigger some thoughts and questions about a subject that is important and controversial when trying to make a website more searchable.

Black-hat vs. white-hat is usually referred to when speaking about hackers – but it is also used when talking about "good" vs. "bad" SEO practices. While it's important to stock your posts with strong and relevant keywords, stay away from things like "keyword stuffing" in order to protect yourself from getting banned from a Google search. There are a few things you SHOULD NOT do when trying to optimize your site for Google, including keyword stuffing.

The number of smartphones in use is rising every day, and more consumers are using these phones to shop than ever before. In fact, according to Search Engine Journal, spending generated by the mobile market will increase by 35 percent between 2012 and 2015. With so many consumers using their phones to access the internet, creating a solid mobile marketing strategy is essential to your company's continued success

In the past, anyone who wanted to make a website had to use complex codes to create every image or block of text. Today, however, a content management system or CMS allows you to develop your company's website with ease. If you are new to CMS utilization, review the basic information below to get started on the right foot.

In today's technologically-dependent society, the success of your marketing campaigns depends on your ability to use internet-based mediums, such as emails, blogs and websites. However, with so much competition online, simply distributing content through these channels isn't enough to draw visitors in and convert them to consumers. To get the most out of your marketing campaigns, you must optimize the content you distribute, both visually and textually.