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I’ve worked on a number of projects in the past year where I had to clean up after someone else’s redesign. I had actually done the SEO on the sites but wasn’t involved in the redesign project. These were websites that had really good traffic prior to the redesign, but then took a major nosedive when the site relaunched. The business owners took a big hit in revenue due to a big loss of website traffic. But the owners didn't have to take this loss!

Imagine this… you’re away from your computer and pull out your smartphone to find some critical information (like what’s the address of that new restaurant?), but you end up on a website that definitely isn’t mobile-friendly. You are trying to view a website, but you can hardly read it. You are pinching and squeezing and zooming and scrolling just to read the page. Then you try to click a link, but hit the wrong one and have to wait forever for the new page to load so you can try again. Finally, you give up and go back to Google to find a different website.

I was recently engaged by a client to write a couple of payment plugins for the VirtueMart e-commerce system. VirtueMart is a Joomla-based shopping cart that is pretty popular. I love writing code, but to be honest, this was a really difficult experience for me. Not because the code itself was so hard, but because of what I found once I got started.

Do you want increased traffic to your site? No! All traffic with no conversion is just an expense with no benefit to you. What you want is traffic that converts. Google Analytics Goals is just the tool to help you achieve those greater conversions.

Last week, we discussed what Google Analytics Goals are, the 4 different goal types, and how they can benefit your online business strategy. This week we’ll cover the basics of how to actually set them up.

If you are not using Goals in Google Analytics, you are really missing the power of your analytics and knowing how well your website is working. While it is important to increase your site traffic, that is only part of the picture. High traffic is great, but all traffic and no action is not exactly what you had in mind and it isn’t going to help your business. There is a solution.

Today, we’re going to give a basic introduction to Google Analytics Goals to help you learn what they are and how they can help you in growing your business through your website.

The entire reason that you are backing up (and storing your backup offline, of course) is in case your website gets hacked, or the server crashes, or one of the million reasons you might need that backup. But your backup is only valuable if it works. There’s nothing worse than needing the backup, thinking you’ve got one, and then seeing it fail when you need to restore it. Been there, done that, no fun!

Here are 9 tips for choosing the right domain name, how to find out if it is available, and how to register and renew your domain.

Choosing the right domain name for your website is a critical component to your website success. It is the first thing people will experience with your site, so you want to make a good impression that is easy to remember and makes sense to your visitor.

Have you ever tried driving with your eyes closed? Well, I wouldn’t recommend it. You most likely will end up in a place that you don’t want to go, such as into a ditch or another car. But the funny thing is, that is how most website owners drive their website… with their eyes closed.

Of course, as website owners, we can’t look over every visitor’s shoulder to watch what they are doing on the computer screen. But we do have tools at our disposal to help us see our direction, speed, and some other vital information to make your website really work for your business.

Today, we’re going to look at 3 Top Google Analytics reports that will help you see where you are going and allow you to make the right course corrections to reach your targets.

We’ve all experienced it. You know what I’m talking about. Slow loading pages! It can be so frustrating. I like to think I’m a patient person, but not when it comes to viewing web pages. If a page takes more than a few seconds to load, I’m outta there... on to greener pastures. Apparently, I’m not alone. According to a 2012 infographic from the Online Graduates Programs, around 25% of people say they would abandon a webpage that takes more than four seconds to load. Are you losing visitors due to slow loading pages?

This week’s post isn’t one of those “earth shattering, mind-blowing, if you don’t do it all is lost” kind of posts. Really, it is one of those basic, good-to-do type of posts that can help you keep your site in tip-top shape and make sure your site visitors have a great experience. What are we talking about? Cross-browser testing. Cross-browser what? What is that? Well, let’s take a look.

Meta descriptions are a hidden - yet important - jewel in your webpage. While the search engines don’t use them in ranking your page, the search engines will often display them as a part of the search results page. Think of them as a mini-advertisement that can greatly improve or harm user click-throughs to your site. In today’s post, we’ll talk about what meta descriptions are, what they look like, and some important considerations in how to optimize them.

As any SEO expert will tell you, your title tag is one of the most important on-page SEO elements for your webpage. Why? The title tag tells the search engines what your page is about and can be a big factor in a web searcher clicking on your site instead of someone else’s. In today’s post, we’ll talk about what title tags are, what they look like, and some important considerations in how to optimize them.