If you promote, endorse, sponsor, place affiliate links or testimonials on your Website, Blog or to Social Media - the FTC is becoming Real about cracking down on offenders to the Disclosure of Promoted Content issue.

It was in 2009 when the FTC initially released their Guideline relevant to the use of Online Endorsements and Testimonials. The intention was for Consumers to know when a Blogger, Affiliate or Celebrity was receiving any form of compensation from recommending a product to their audience.

Using the Disavow Tool in Google and Bing

It’s recommended that website owners periodically perform a backlink audit of their site, because there are Good Backlinks and Bad Backlinks … if you don’t know who’s linking “to” your website – then you may be setting up your website for low search results. If you’re inexperienced with a deep, manual link audit, then it’s best to have a professional perform one every six months, or at the least – annually.

Since Google announced they’ll be indexing mobile friendly sites first in their search results, here are a few tips of how to move your Blog or website nearer the top results. 

LinkedIn was launched in 2003, has over 500 million members in 200 countries as of April, 2017, and is touted as “the place” for B2B online connections, and uniquely allows you to present yourself as a Brand. 

Predominantly revolving around careers, LinkedIn allows users to share content and network with peers and professionals on all levels. Businesses small and large have found LinkedIn to be an essential piece of their marketing strategy, with case studies showing on average that LinkedIn drives the most customers to B2B companies.

Where B2B companies acquired customers:

LinkedIn at 65%
Their Own Company Blog at 55%
Facebook at 43%
Twitter at 40%

Learn more about Best Practices for Setting Up and Using LinkedIn

Here are a few online tools to assist with content promotion that you may or may not be familiar with, and can be used in conjunction with your Social Media promotion efforts.

Conversion rates can be measured in a number of different ways on a website. Conversion rate goals differ from site to site, as it depends on what your website specific focus is.

Your conversion rate goal may be for:

• signups to your newsletter
• product sales
• member registrations
• ebook downloads
• service inquiries

Any activity beyond simple page browsing is considered a conversion rate.

Using complimentary images along with your text can bring a webpage to life, and appeal to the perceived personalities of your shoppers. We’ve all heard “a picture is worth a thousand words” – and it is.

It’s interesting how Color is a factor in successful Branding, Recognition and Customer Sales.

What do the colors on your website tell visitors about You, and your products/services? Have you ever placed a Poll on your site and asked people if they like and enjoy your website colors? Have you ever encouraged your site visitors to send you their Comments and Opinions of your website color scheme?

Probably Not. Even though you may really like the colors on your website – maybe others don’t. Maybe they don’t stick around long enough to know what your site really offers, because the colors are a big turn-off to them.

Did you know that the first event to plant the seed for global communication was in 1957.

Who knew?

Read our timeline of amazing facts on the evolution of what we know as the Internet, as well as interesting year landmarks in Web Design protocol.

As website owners, we need to alter our mindset from being “mobile compatible” to being mobile optimized”.

The process of Mobile Optimizing is making sure visitors accessing a site from their mobile devices and mobile platforms, experience both a visual and technical positive experience.

By all accounts, with Google being the kingfish of Search - as they historically hold the largest search-share market - we have to spend more time on making sure we “get it right” according to Google-specific criteria. Once that groundwork is seeded, the other search engine results will fall in place.

In 2013 Google announced it would be adjusting search rankings appearing on Smartphones and Mobile platforms based on how well a site managed the user experience.

In 2015 Google officially confirmed more Google searches took place on Mobile devices than on desktop computers and tablets in ten countries including the USA and Japan.

Negative SEO is defined as a person or entity can easily unleash a slew of below-the-belt tactics with the intent to decrease a website’s ranking in search engine results, and/or to ruin their online reputation. Learn more about the types of negative SEO that may affect your online presence and learn how to fix any issues that affect you.