Tag: News

Posted on

Amazon Echo – I Love You Alexa

Gotta Love the Amazon Echo
Gotta Love that Amazon Echo

I got an Amazon Echo a week ago and I want to say that I love you Alexa!

Not only am I a huge fan of Amazon and an Amazon Prime Member, but I love technology and the Amazon Echo embraces all of these items very nicely. Plus it has made my life easier.

Here’s what I like best about Amazon Echo

Shopping Lists
No one in my family has an excuse any more for not putting something on our shopping list. Just say “Alexa, add provolone cheese to the shopping list.” The item appear instantly in my smartphone Alexa app and I can tick off items as I buy them. Even things added at home by my kids appear while I am at the grocery store. This solves the problem of my kids forgetting to put milk or toilet paper on the list!

Music and Sounds
I have a stressful day and so I love to start my day out with bird sounds. I don’t need to think about getting a bird anymore, just apply the skill for Ambient Noise Bird Sounds and then say “Alexa, play bird sounds.” My kids even tell me that they like waking up to the sounds in the morning.

Prime Music
Not sure you want to buy a track or CD? Just play free Prime Music through Alexa and you can be jamming out! Love the track, buy it right then with Alexa.

I have to say, that getting the Amazon Echo was one of the coolest things that I have done recently that has improved my life. Got to Love Technology! Thanks Amazon.

P.S. I was not paid by Amazon for this blog post. I bought the Echo and loved it and wanted to share why with you.

Posted on

Introducing Our Summer Intern, William McCord

William McCord, Our Summer Intern
William McCord, Our Summer Intern

William McCord, my 20 year old son, has joined the firm for the summer in a Computer Science internship.

William is a rising Junior in Computer Science with an interest in programming, GIS, and cyber security at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

With a passion for computer programming, he is already helping to implement and tweak complex scripts for AdWords account management as well as fine-tuning his HTML and CSS skills for website design.

This summer, he will be focusing on WordPress management, site design customization, website security, mobile-friendly e-newsletters, and AdWords script programming.

He is a incredibly fast learner, innovative, and a hard worker. We are excited to welcome him into our office.

Posted on

Google Starts Testing on Mobile First Search Index – Explained

Googlespeak can be confusing for those not in the industry, so this post will help business owners understand what Google means when it states the following:

“To make our results more useful, we’ve begun experiments to make our index mobile-first.”  Doantam Phan, Google product manager

Google Partner Badge
McCord Web Services is a Google Partner.

This is the bottom-line. Google is testing and will most likely rollout a huge change to its indexing algorithm that is used to rack and stack websites in the organic or unpaid results of search pages.

The algorithm will now review and base the ranking index across all devices based on what the Googlebot spider reads in the content of a mobile version website. This is incredibly big news and the ramifications are huge.

Here’s why:

  1. If you have a responsive website, you do not need to worry. You are totally covered for this update.

2. If you have a mobile adaptive website, you need to start making changes. A mobile adaptive site means that the content for your mobile site is different and sometimes lacks the content that you have in your desktop and tablet version site. You may have dropped content, streamlined content on pages, or not developed content for some pages. In other words the mobile site is different by design and desire from your desktop site.

3. If you do not have a mobile site it is time to get busy and move to a responsive website design. Although Google says that it will still spider your site with its mobile searchbot, I would expect in the future to see tags in the index stating your site is not mobile friendly and possible demotions.

Google means business on mobile as attested by the following quote.

“Although our search index will continue to be a single index of websites and apps, our algorithms will eventually primarily use the mobile version of a site’s content to rank pages from that site, to understand structured data, and to show snippets from those pages in our results.” Doantam Phan, Google product manager

 If you need help with a responsive website, now’s the time to check in with the McCord Web Services team. Our focus is to implement affordable, SEO-focused responsive websites that bring you customers.