Igniting Business Blog

In June, we discussed how to effectively leverage Google Analytics for your website.  Due to the sheer volume and robustness of data provided by Google Analytics, small business owners can often get lost amongst the data and reports.  Today, we launch a three-part series that dives further into how to best use, read, and analyze your Google Analytics data.

Is your business cyclical? Does it spike on certain months of the year instead of maintaining steady growth or traffic? Most businesses see patterns in their traffic. Your business's activity depends on everything from the time of the year to upcoming holidays and breaks in school attendance to even events on local and national news.  A slight decrease in traffic doesn't necessarily mean bad news -- it just means a trend is developing. Identifying trends is vital to the success of your online marketing initiatives.  To clearly view your business's progress and how it's growing in more than a month-by-month analysis, Google Analytics can give you breakdowns of your website's activity over time, no matter how to want to measure it.

Do you need a website for your business? Are you thinking of using a website builder (i.e. Wix, GoDaddy Website Builder, Squarespace, etc.)? Do you know the disadvantages and limitations of most website builders?

Website builders can certainly help you build a website relatively affordably, but most still require some additional knowledge to get the website to perform well. Among other items, you will need to understand how monitor size matters, and how the website will look on a mobile phone, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) limitations, etc. Here are a few limitations you should consider before going with a website builder platform.

Google Analytics is a must-have tool for staying aware of the latest statistics and online trends on your site - from clicks, to page views, to traffic from specific devices. These solutions offer important insights into what people are doing on your website. Nearly anyone can experiment with the platform; however, using the platform effectively takes some skill.

After Google Analytics has been configured on your site, spend time sifting through the latest tools and capabilities. You'll be able to quickly conceptualize data, research opportunities, and learn about how people use your website. However, try to go beyond the surface level information. Take the time to analyze the features that might significantly benefit how users approach and interact with your website.

We continually try to keep our clients and readers updated on SEO ranking factors. Let’s be honest, a website is only helpful if your potential customers are actually reaching it. Below are some recent SEO topics we’ve discussed on our blog. We’re referencing these topics again because they’re, quite frankly, that important.

In the past you could get away with having a simple website that displayed properly, with no errors, across a small variety of screen resolutions. Now, with the wide use of mobile devices like smart phones and tablets, your site needs to render beautifully across many different types of screens, and user experience is not the only thing for you to consider.

Recently, a website visitor reached out to us with a very common issue. They are a small business with an e-commerce website, and their product pages included mostly duplicate content. This is not uncommon, as many manufacturers and suppliers will provide businesses with product descriptions and images. Inevitably, this means there are potentially hundreds of websites with the exact same content. The question is, "Will Google penalize my e-commerce website for having duplicate content?"

In short and simplifying a very complex answer, yes! Google, and other similar search engines, want to see truly unique content authored from your company’s perspective. When duplicate content is present, Google looks for the original content author and only gives credit to that outlet. According to Google’s search quality team, in cases where Google “perceives that duplicate content may be shown with intent to manipulate [Google’s] rankings and deceive [Google’s] users...the ranking of the site may suffer, or the site might be removed entirely from the Google index, in which case it will no longer appear in search results.”

Business owners are experts in doing what they do best, which is running their own industry-specific organization. Most recognize the evolution of the internet and online marketing has expanded their customer base and streamlined many business processes. Still, it can be difficult to know which online efforts are worth pursuing.

In this article, we discuss search engine optimization (SEO) and why business owners have nothing to fear when it comes to applying SEO concepts to help facilitate their organizational objectives. Listed below are 7 concerns we often hear from small business owners about SEO:

If it seems as if in recent months there has been a notable rise in website hacks, you are not alone in your analysis. In 2016 alone, there were data breaches in major organizations such as LinkedIn, Snapchat, UC Berkley, Wendy's and Dropbox. Even tech organizations such as Oracle and Cisco, along with federal government departments such as the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Dept. of Justice succumbed to attacks from hackers in 2016. Just this month, Google reported in its State of Website Security report that there was a 32% increase in the number of hacked sites in 2016.

Based off the companies reported in the news, many assume hackers prefer to prey on large organizations only. However, small to medium-sized organizations should ask themselves if they want to gamble with their own vital data. Further, many small businesses are better hack targets, as they commonly have less sophisticated security protocols, leaving them as “low hanging fruit” so-to-speak.

One of the latest trends seen in web design is being pushed by one of the major browser players today: Google. If your website design is still using Adobe Flash Player, then Google is about to make it a little more difficult for visitors to use your site. In December 2016, Google provided the roll-out plan for the gradual phase out of Adobe Flash Player with the goal of replacing it completely with HTML5 on the Chrome browser.

Starting in January, Google's Chrome browser began asking visitors if they want to use Flash Player when visiting a site that uses Flash. By Chrome 56 (released in February), Google plans to have this enabled for all users. Any user who still wants to use Flash at that point, will have to physically enable Flash in order to use it. Any organization that is still using Flash as part of their website needs to start making plans immediately to transition over to HTML5 for their audio and video web site components.

Internet Retailer predicts by 2018, U.S. customers alone will generate at least $400 billion in online spending. For small organizations, it is therefore vital to stay current with small business e-commerce website trends to meet the growing needs of customers.

So what are the options that small businesses might pursue in order to keep abreast of this trend?

Google continues to adapt its algorithm that determines how well your site pulls up in search results. As customers increasingly rely on mobile devices, it's more important than ever to find new ways to get a top Google ranking for your small business.

Here are a few pointers to get started.