Category: Web Visibility

Posted on

Why Page Speed is Important

Image of Clocked Page Speed
Image of Clocked Page Speed

How fast your website page loads in a smartphone or browser is really important.  Not be paying attention to your website load time is a huge error in the world of Google today.

This is why knowing and working to improve your page speed and site load time is crucial.

Google has a new tool called “Google Test My Site”. This online tool will test your URL, compare your site to others, give you a rating, and even give you a free report and recommendations to follow to improve your speed.

Google says that your site will lose one-half of all your visitors while the page is loading. Know that 70% of visitors globally are surfing the web on 3G or slower speeds until 2020. Want more business? Speed up your website!

Test your own site out today now at Google Test My Site. Then touch base with us about purchasing a new fast responsive PHP website. Our own website at www.mccordweb.com clocks at a 3 second load, received and excellent rating, and has low visitor loss.

Posted on

How to Rebut a Negative Review

Do You Worry About What to Do About a Negative Review?
Do You Worry About What to Do About a Negative Review?

This is the struggle for businesses and it is real – get a bad online review and how do you deal with it and move beyond it.

First, you should not ignore a bad online review. That does not mean that you have to respond to each and every one, but you definitely want to think about your strategy and what to do if and when you get one.

Consider the following…

1. Review the legitimacy. Should you change something you are doing?

2. Decide if you should respond. Not every comment about your business deserves and needs a response.

3. If you do respond, don’t respond in anger. Craft your response and sit on it for several days, read and re-read your response. Make sure you are not venting.

4. If you know who left the review, try to fix the problem and then ask for an update to the review they have posted.

Negative reviews can be very damaging to your business but sometimes your own response can make it even worse. You should be regularly monitoring your business reputation online and looking at what others are saying about you. Especially as Google and Bing are now highlighting reviews that they find around the web and meshing them with location specific results in the Knowledge Graph side bar on their search pages in the four pack of location specific businesses.

For help on what to do with a negative review, ask for a short paid consultation.

Posted on

Why Reviews Matter

Yes I love to take pics of my food for reviews.
Yes, I love to take pics of my food for reviews.

As a Google Local Guide, I review every place I visit and every place I eat. With over 300 reviews and photos uploaded to Google, I am just one of many who are helping Google index local businesses, build reviews and improve the accuracy of Google Maps.

Google does not pay me for these services, but I do receive special Google branded products and other perks for being a Google Local Guide.

Here’s what I’ve found out as I travel my local area.

  1. Reviews really do matter.
  2. People actually look at the photos I post for about a business.
  3. Negative reviews mean I probably won’t visit.
  4. I am constantly evaluating my store or restaurant experience.
  5. If I receive poor service, I will write about it.
  6. Even for lower end restaurants food presentation is important.
  7. People actually read what I post about a business.
  8. I do not tell business owners I am reviewing them.
  9. I myself select who I trade with based on online reviews.
  10. Reviews are more important than a nice website.

The bottom-line is that you are on display and being rated with every phone call, every visit, every plate that is served. You may have the best website, but if your visitors do not receive the royal treatment when they call or visit, you’ll set yourself up for a negative review. Get several and they can damage your business and sales!

To get savvy help in writing rebuttals to negative reviews, contact us today.

Posted on

An Update on the EU’s GDPR for Privacy

Nancy McCord is a Google and Bing Partner
Nancy McCord is a Google and Bing Partner

Since I last wrote about the privacy updates that are mandated by the EU to cover website traffic on American websites by EU nationals, much has happened.

First, clients who thought that they did not want to update their privacy policy or implement cookie approval for website statistic tracking have changed there minds.

Our team has been very busy updating websites to beef up the transparency of the privacy policy, reveal clearly what is being tracked on websites, offering ways to opt out of tracking, and installing cookie approval scripts on websites.

Several clients have shared their thoughts with us on why the sudden change. Some are listed below.

“I do feel lucky about not getting caught, but also want to be safe.”

“I’ve just had a lawyer call me and I feel like I need immediate action on the privacy updates as I don’t want to end up in court on a new matter.”

“I think it is stupid to do, but I am getting inundated with privacy policy updates from everyone that I do business with, that maybe I do need to do something to my website.”

As for me, my perspective is that it is not expensive or hard to do the implementation to be in compliance with the GDPR. I am risk adverse and feel that eventually the US will institute some controls so we will be ahead of the game by changing our own websites now.