SB1 DESIGN - Profile

That Moz article is full of really helpful information.

Two simple key issues that anyone with a Wordpress site should remember however:

1. Ensure that you have a comprehensive enough password. Never have the Username "Admin"

2. Always keep your plugins up to date. Wordpress plugins are particularly vulnerable to attack. If you are not using a plugin, deactivate it or better still, delete it.

As you will hear everywhere, great content should be at the core of your online strategy. Over time you should see results through people sharing your content and linking back to it.

In a way I am going to demonstrate this in action right now.

Jon Cooper over at Point Blank SEO has created the definitive guide to link building strategies - it is an excellent article covering all you need to know about link building.

You can find it here

In his blog he states that he has never created a link to this article. He just set out to build the best resource on the subject of link building. This has now been shared and linked to many times, placing it no 1 in Google if you search link building strategies.

So follow that example maybe - build the best resource you can on an area related to your business. And if you do want to build links to it, check out the resource above.

I have to agree that anyone opting to use a hotmail or gmail address for a business site is making a mistake. It just lacks professionalism.

And on the subject of scrimping on web site design, business owners really do not need to spend much money these days to have a sophisticated looking website that projects their company image in the right way.

A Wordpress website with a decent theme and some thought behind the content and any business can have a professional site with little outlay.

With the options available, there is no real excuse for a business having a sub standard online presence.

I agree with this completely. The beauty of a CMS such as Wordpress is that once the site has been built, with very little help a client can go off and quickly learn how to update the site themselves, add images and experiment with plugins and widgets.

Ultimately, most owners of a small business website want to be able to do this, they do not want to have to contact and pay a webmaster every time they need to update the site. A CMS gives them a lot more control.

Hi Steve,

As a web designer myself I have been creating responsive websites for a while now. I do not charge any extra for this.

As Wordpress is my main platform, I would be selling my clients short if I didn't create a site that looked good and worked well on mobile devices.

Your stats in the original post say it all. More and more people are using their phones or tablets to go online. If your business website doesn't work on such devices, then you are losing a large amount of potential customers/clients. No business in the world can afford to do that.

Thanks Steve for the update.

Like most of the social platforms, engagement seems to be the key and of course this takes an investment of time.

If Facebook is working so well, it makes sense that you prioritise that.

I have used Pinterest successfully on a couple of website marketing campaigns. Most notably for a client that had a site advertising holiday rentals.

I think Pinterest lends itself to something like that. People want to repin and follow images of holiday locations, beautiful island apartments etc. A good amount of traffic ends up flowing through to the site as a result.

It's important to have more than just your own product/service on there however, people see right through that.

I would be interested to know how others have used Pinterest as part of their business profile...

Hi Steve,

I was just wondering if you had an update on how Pinterest was performing for you after moving to the business offering? It has been a while since you first created this post. Have you seen positive results?

I am with you on the Windows 8 thing. My wife has that running on her PC and any time I have to use it's like I am picking up a computer for the first time, menu screens shifting all over the place. Very frustrating. I am happy to stick to OS X.

I only use Chrome to check cross browser compatibility of the websites I make.

For me it is always IE that creates problems in the design process, meaning you have to go in and correct the css code just to make things work ok for that one damn browser. I personally would like to see that back of it altogether.

Firefox is my work horse. With all the great addons you can get for Firefox it is a web designer's choice browser.

I've been using Macs for several years now. My latest Macbook Pro with retina display would be very difficult to give up and replace with a PC.

Yes they are over-priced and I am not one of these people that worships the brand - however, the attention to detail Apple give their products is a step above. I enjoy using my Mac, yet when I think back to my PC days there always seemed to be an issue with it.