G Squared Studios Blog
What is Black Hat SEO & Why You Should Avoid Bad SEO Completely
Have you ever been playing a video game where the game is so hard that it isn’t fun anymore? Maybe you’ve played a game and beaten it, and you want to go back and play with cheat codes where you never run out of health or ammo. Black hat SEO is a little like that, except it is entrenched in your business and your livelihood. If you’re wondering what types of bad SEO to avoid, look no further. I’ll share with you the ins and outs of trying to one-up Google, and why you really shouldn’t do that at all. What is Black Hat SEO? Whenever you try to game the system and beat Google, Yahoo or Bing, it’s considered to be black hat. It’s the dark side of SEO, which is kind of like the analogy above. You’re basically trying to cheat or jump ahead of other businesses to take a higher spot than you deserve. Black Hat Techniques There are all types of sneaky and tricky things you can do to beat the system. I’ll name a few, and it is important to remember that you should not do any of these techniques. There’s no way to outsmart […]
The Importance of An Ongoing Social Media Strategy
If you really want to success in bringing in new business, you need to do 3 things well. You need to conquer online search, social media, and the traditional method of word of mouth. Those 3 things will help your business to grow and spread the word. The main focus in this post will be building a solid social media strategy. You’ll learn why this is so important, and how you can start today. You can see from the infographic below, social media marketing can expose you to a huge audience. Social media marketing is a self multiplier What I mean by that is that you can create something great on social media, such as an interesting slide show, or a quick video. If people find it interesting enough, they will share it over and over again, marketing your business for you. Sure, businesses have the dream of going viral, which means it gets tens, even hundreds of thousands of shares. However, your focus should just be on getting a few hundred. If it gets more, that’s great, but it isn’t as likely. This is different from an online search because no one shares your search results. You don’t get […]
Essential Logo Buying Tips for Building a Strong Brand
Logo Buying Tips Every business needs a high quality logo. This is true whether you’re just starting out as a small business, or you’ve been in business for years. The hardest part about hiring a graphic designer to design a logo for your business is where to start. A quality logo is one of the essential building blocks of developing a successful brand. Let’s take a look at few logo buying tips that will help to make your logo design project more successful. Know your likes and dislikes It is important to get an idea of the types of logos that you like. It’s good to look around at different logo examples in your industry. If you notice that a lot of your competitors have similar logos, you’ll want to focus on something that helps you stand out. Also, if you already have an idea of what you’re looking for, you can communicate that idea much better to your designer. Be ready to give your input Logo designers need feedback. It’s important to get your input during the design process. This will make it easier for the designer to give you what you want. You’ll be much happier with the […]
Modern Web Design Elements To Use in a Great Business Website
What Are Modern Web Design Elements? With web design trends constantly changing, it seems tough to keep up with the latest things to integrate into your website. My focus in on modern web design elements that never get old. These elements focus on clarity and user experience, over flashy features. Let’s explore this in more detail. You’ll learn what features to use in your website for the most longevity possible. Simple Navigation It’s a bad idea to have a complicated navigation menu for your website. You shouldn’t bury important pages in hidden menus. At the same time, you have to make sure not to include every single page in your top-level navigation. It is a good idea to break things down into secondary and even tertiary information. Tap To Call Feature For Mobile Devices There’s nothing worse than doing a mobile search for something, and having to jump through hoops just to be able to call them on the phone. If I am out walking around, or I am in transit, I don’t want to have to click and click to find where your number is. I shouldn’t have to remember it or copy and paste it. I should be […]
Understrap: Bootstrap 4 Meets Underscores WordPress Theme
Website Builder Woes: Why They Don’t Hurt My Business
A Free Website Builder? When someone says you can make your own website, it sounds like a great deal. This is especially if you have a low budget, or you’re just starting out. As a web designer, I am often asked “I bet you hate those free website builders don’t you?” What’s funny is that most people are surprised by my reply. On the contrary, I love every free website builder. They make being one of the best knoxville web designers even easier. To understand my answer, let’s explore some of the top website creators, and why they actually help bring me business. You Can Definitely Build Your Own Website It’s true, you can! The trick here is that I never said it would be good, or that it would be the best route to go. Let me explain. The actual act of building websites isn’t rocket science, from a structure standpoint. You can choose any website creator out there and throw up a website in a few days, depending on the size. There is web site builder software out there that will even design the whole site for you, using artificial intelligence. The problem is that it will only […]
Why Online Reviews Are Important to Local Business Success
Inbound Marketing & Why Your Business Needs a Blog
When most people think of a blog, they think of a work-from-home entrepreneur who is writing opinion posts in their pajamas. While that does happen a lot, that isn’t the end all be all when it comes to blogging. Having a blog on your business website can help you in a number of ways. Let’s take a look at why your business needs a blog and why it is a vital part of your inbound marketing strategy. Website blogging benefits Having a blog that you keep regularly updated provides several benefits to your business website in addition to generating interest on social media. Most of these benefits come in terms of search engine optimization and inbound marketing. Let’s take a second and break those two parts down so that you can understand how a blog helps with both of these. Search engine optimization Search engines like Google love it when you keep your blog regularly updated. When you are constantly adding new stuff to your website, like news and events, Google will purposely crawl your website more often. Also, when you naturally write about industry events or news about new products or services that you’re offering, it is a great […]
Can Local Business Listings Truly Help Bring in More Business?
One of the toughest things about running your own business is getting found by the right people who are actually looking for your services. You can spend money on Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Billboards, and everything else under the sun, but what actually works? These are great for driving traffic, new business and sales to your doorstep, but if you don’t know what you’re doing, you could end up spending a lot of money and end up with little or no results. How will people find you when they are looking for the products and services you provide? The answer, local business listings, may surprise you. Be sure to check out the bonus download at the bottom of this post! The Elephant in The Room The first thing everyone says is Google. Get to the top of Google and you have it made. Search engine optimization is a great strategy, but what people fail to tell you is that it’s a long-term investment. You’ll spend thousands to get there, and that depends on many outlying factors, like the quality of your website, and if the person you hired actually knows what they are doing. Also, it can take 6-12 months […]
9 Instant Design Boosters for Any Website
What if I told you that you could do a few simple things to your website to greatly improve its effectiveness? Don’t scoff, you know it’s true deep down, but I’m guessing you’re not sure where to start. Do you know what design boosters will bring you the most impact? The main focus you should have for your website is results. Whatever you’re doing, it should all drive results towards the end goal. It doesn’t matter if your goal is to gain more subscribers to your newsletter, or to sell more physical products. Maybe your goal is to drive more traffic to your website in general. Whatever the case may be, here are 9 things you can do to effectively boost your website’s design effectiveness. Instant Website Design Boosters Create a Color Palette You shouldn’t be using every color of the rainbow on your website. Instead, why not select a color palette that reflects your brand? This will make everything much more consistent and pleasing to the eye. Think of your website like a plate of food. If it looks like slop, your mind is going to think that it doesn’t taste as good as it does. If it looks […]
How Web Design Packages Work
Web Design Packages What if I told you that you could save a lot of money on your website’s overall costs with web design packages? I know that it sounds strange. I am a web designer, telling you how to save money when building a website. The truth is, I’d rather you buy an entire web design and development package from me, rather than having me to create a single part of it. Why would I care? The truth of the matter is, there are several reasons why I would want you to choose from my website design packages, instead of ordering things separately. But here’s the thing… It has nothing to do with me making more money off of individual services. In reality, I make more money handling everything myself, and offering you a good deal at the same time. Here are a few reasons why: I don’t have to go behind someone else and try to fix their work. I have complete control over the entire project from start to finish. I don’t end up being the middle man between other parties and my client. I can work faster and more efficiently. It Comes From Experience The factors […]
Web Page Essentials for a Fast Loading Site
Your Web Page Needs to Load Fast Now, more than ever, it is essential for your website to be super quick. Before, it was just a matter of people’s preference and their impatience. Now, if your web page loads slowly, you can be penalized in Google Search for it, and no one wants that. That’s quite a slap on the hand for not keeping things neat and tidy. Fear not, because I have a few tips to help you optimize your website so it loads lickety split. Compress those images! This is so much easier to do than ever before. Even if you create a lightweight image in Photoshop or some other graphics editor, you can use a handful of different online tools to optimize them even further. I use Compress Jpeg for all of my images. Don’t let the name fool you. Not only can you compress jpeg images, but you can even compress PNG files and PDFs, too. You can upload multiple files at once and download them all in a pack. Just make sure you upload images of all the same kind. In other words, keep your PNGs together and your Jpegs together. Use Caching For those […]