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It’s 2018. People are sick of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. People are tired of “the algorithm” and yearn for the old days of seeing their posts in order from their friends. If you’ve spent any time on Instagram this weekend, you may have noticed that a new social media app has gone viral, and with good reason.

I just went through an interesting couple of hours. On top of being a web developer, social media manager, and general many-hatted SEO adventurer, I’m also a freelance illustrator. Anyone who is an illustrator, photographer, or visual artist knows that image quality is really, really important — especially when displaying portfolios and the like. It’s with this in mind when I’m developing for visually creative clients that I keep quality in my thoughts always (as well as compression optimization keeping the page load speed in mind). I ran into something very curious, though. I noticed on my own portfolio website,…

Some of our clients–as well as ourselves!–have received complimentary Google Beacon devices mailed to their business address lately. If you have a Google My Business account, you may receive this device in your mail. If you have received a Google Beacon device and want to activate it, click here to skip to the instructions. What is Google Beacon and What Does it Do? Google Beacon is a new way for customers to find something that they may not normally see. It’s a small device that is either standalone or utilizes another device to work (there are different types of beacons,…

One thing we get asked a lot is how to take better photos of things, whether they are items being sold or just people. Even if you aren’t a professional photographer and you have no idea about layout or composition, you can make sure you’re utilizing the features of your high-powered cell phone camera to take some amazing photos. 1. Ditch the flash Using the flash can often wash out anything you’re doing. If you’re taking a picture of a person, it’s going to flatten their skin tone and give them a shiny, oily looking face. It will probably also…

You may or may not have heard of Waze. Waze is a map program that allows users to do a variety of things that your GPS may not currently do. For example, users can report roadblocks, police, and more. In theory it sounds pretty neat, but because it has limited usage and availability, it can be hard to find places on Waze, and some people who use it may have trouble finding your business. If you’re interested in listing your business on Waze, you will need to do a few things. Download the free Waze app on your Apple or…

The more I work with clients online the more I realize that not a single business is immune from bad reviews online. Getting a bad review can certainly feel like the end of the world, especially if you’re a reputable business trying to keep up a good reputation online and you don’t have a whole lot of reviews to begin with. The good news is it’s not the end of the world — and often times not the end of your business, either — and handling a bad review in the right way can be super important. Step 1: Don’t…

This blog post has been a long time in the making. There are a variety of Contact Form 7 “fixes” to get submissions to show on Google Analytics, but seemingly none of them work. It used to be as simple as dropping a bit of code into the “additional settings” in the contact form, but no longer. It’s taken some time to figure out exactly how this can be done — and actually work — so I’d like to share the various solutions for fixing this. This blog post is dated July 20th, 2017; changes may occur in the future…

I’m sure you’ve heard about a million and one different ways you should be protecting yourself online. As a worker in the SEO department, it is incredible the amount of data that is collected from browsers, search engines, and more that we utilize to “target” you as a customer. The ideal for this is that we want to present the correct items to the correct people. In a perfect world, that is all collected and mined data would be used for. The internet was once a place where that is exactly what would happen. You would cast a broad net…

What is LinkedIn? LinkedIN is a professional social media networking platform designed for industry professionals to post and build a “resume” type profile to be accessed by others on the same platform. What is a LinkedIn Company Page? A LinkedIN company page is a lot like a Facebook page. It operates a place that you can post as your business and promote inside of your business. People can follow that business and stay up to date with your posts. However, unlike Facebook, you can put in LinkedIN company pages:– Career and employment opportunities– Detailed company information– The ability to link…

The internet is a wonderful place. Not only does it put the wealth of human knowledge at our fingertips, it means we can access all kinds of once previously not as readily available information. With a quick Google search, you can pull up everything about a business – right down to when they are open, contact information, location, and sometimes even most popular times. Social media helps that. It’s a great way to substantiate your business page and engage with customers and potential customers, share ideas, as well as gather comments and criticisms that can help your business grow. So…