Spice Up Your Blog With 7 jQuery Goodies

You invested a great deal of time and effort into getting your website ready for the world to view. While content is definitely the most important thing, a little eye candy never hurt either. Rather than gambling with proprietary plugins like Flash player, it is better to use tools that every browser on every device supports. Javascript is an excellent scripting choice, and jQuery is a remarkable javascript tool that makes it easy to add animations, effects, and superior functionality. [Read more]

The Benefits of Splitting Off Into Microsites

This is a guest blog by Modi Mann, an SEO expert who loves usable Web design. He works for a toy company that specializes in Christmas gifts

Are two blogs and/or websites better than one?

Many website owners, as their businesses expand, come to the dilemma of splitting their sites into a few microsites so they can rank better for their targeted terms. This is not really an easy topic and before you make such a radical move there is a lot to take into consideration.

Reasons to Split a Site Into Microsites

1. Your brand name is not doing very well and you would like a part of the business to be re-branded and market it separately.

2. Your businesses are expanding into a few different niches, thus the one site you have can’t really serve all those different businesses.

3. You think that by splitting your site into several smaller ones you will manage to engage the visitors interested in a particular service or product. Conversion may increase as users will think that they are at a specialist’s website rather than a generic one offering all sorts of services or products.

Risks and Dangers

There are certain risks you will be taking by making such a big change and you need to think carefully before you make any decision. [Read more]

Does Your Business Need a Blog?

There’s a growing segment of bloggers who fall into the “business” category, who blog for the purpose of promoting a business, and you might be or become one of them. Businesses are realizing the value of blogging, especially if they’re hoping to establish an online presence.

Does your business need a blog? The short answer is “maybe.” Not every business needs a blog, just like not every business needs a website. However, if you are building any sort of presence online, then a blog is a very good idea.

Why? A website on its own simply isn’t enough to establish an online presence, unless your domain is “aged,” has tons of high-ranking content (from a search engine perspective) that other high-ranking sites have linked back to, and has consistent new content. Many search engines favor sites with regular fresh content — which means the likelihood of more Web traffic.

While you CAN publish lots of regular content on a non-blog site, the tools for managing non-blog content — e.g., a CMS (Content Management System) — are often far too complex and expensive for the needs of smaller businesses. Blogging systems (a lesser form of CMS) may have their limitations, but as most of the best are free and have supportive communities, they can be a benefit when you’re on a tight budget. A few such as WordPress can even be used as a low-end CMS in incredibly versatile ways.

Simply put, your business website needs a blog because if it’s leveraged properly, your site benefits in terms of Web traffic. Readers also benefit, and if they become regular readers due to regular content, their trust grows and they’re more likely to convert to customers. It’s a win-win situation.

So how do you decide whether to have a business blog or not? Here are a few questions you can ask yourself.

1. Do you have a bricks and mortar ‘local’ business that would benefit from a broader market?
2. Do you already have a website that brings you customers or leads?
3. Do you want your customer base to be more knowledgeable about your product or industry?
4. Do you want to establish an online presence?
5. Do you want to sell your business’ products or services online?
6. Do you know about social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook and want to leverage them for your businesss?

There are other questions you can ask yourself, but this is a starting point. If you’ve answered yes to any of these, then having a blog might benefit your business. If this is something you’d like to explore further, search our article archives for other helpful content relating to writing, creativity, productivity and other aspects of blogging. If you have decided to build a business blog and need some help, feel free to contact Performancing Services.

5 Ways to Make Your Blog Timeless

Blogging is immediate, particularly for niches that rely on breaking news realtime. Thus it’s easy to forget that readers will visit your blog and read posts months, years, and even decades after they were written. Here are five ways to keep visitors engaged with your content, and prevent them from bouncing after they scratch their heads in confusion over your outdated blog posts. [Read more]

5 Ways to Remain Focused on Your Blog

Even bloggers who profess a quality-over-quantity focus stress the need for regular posting, if only to keep the blog visible within a niche. The question is, how can a blogger retain focus for what’s admittedly a repetitive task? Here are five ways that have proven useful for yours truly. [Read more]