Panoptic Online Marketing

Should You Implement AMP for Your Website?

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Should you implement AMP for your websiteEveryone knows that having a solid mobile presence is now a must for every business that wants to be found online. With more and more people relying on their smartphones and tablets for information, having a mobile-friendly website can be a big advantage.  But for some users the experience can turn into a frustrating one — especially when a web page takes too long to load.  This can lead to discouragement with readers ultimately giving up and abandoning your site entirely.

In October 2015, a Google-backed project called Accelerated Mobile Page project (AMP) was launched to help improve the mobile website experience for users.  This open source initiative allows website owners to create ultra-lightweight versions of their website pages that load really fast on mobile devices. [Read more…]

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Mobile Usability Matters for Good SEO

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It’s been a little over a year since Mobilegeddon rolled out; the Google algorithm update gave mobile-friendly websites a boost in mobile search rankings while penalizing sites that don’t provide a good user experience on mobile devices.

Because Google Search is in the business of delivering accurate and relevant results to its users, the Mobilegeddon update was their way of nudging webmasters towards the inevitable transition to a fully mobile world. Google now gives priority to sites that provide high-quality content with text that is readable and immediately usable on tablets and smartphones – that is, you shouldn’t have to scroll horizontally, or “pinch-zoom” to enlarge the text or use navigation menus or tap on buttons, etc.

Why Mobile Usability Matters for

Mobile browsing has been overtaking desktop browsing at an unimaginable pace. According to Pew Research, two-thirds of Americans now own smartphones and use them to access the web. So this push by Google is a good thing, and their guidelines for what constitutes “mobile friendliness” are clear and make sense. [Read more…]

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Micro Moments are a Big Thing!

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Just as the way people shop (from in-store to online) has changed drastically over the last few years, the time people allocate for product/project/service research has also been altered by available technologies. These days, people dedicate less time to researching things ahead of time and rely more on “pop-up” knowledge they can access through their hand held devices.

micro moments [Read more…]

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Case Study: Rivertown Acupuncture Goes Mobile

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rivertown-storefrontOur friend and client, Randi Hoffmann, came to us seeking suggestions for how to grow her solo-practice acupuncture business. Randi has extensive training and expertise and exudes a warm personal style that wasn’t coming across on her website. Worse yet: her three year-old, custom WordPress theme was not mobile-responsive and as a result Rivertown Acupuncture was not ranking well in Google search results. [Read more…]

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Snapchat’s Growing Popularity Among Marketers

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snapchat2

In an earlier blog article we discussed the benefits of email marketing and how it has some clear advantages for marketers seeking to reach a specific, targeted audience. But the growing number of social media platforms are increasingly helpful when it comes to reaching certain demographic groups.

While the early days of social media marketing more or less consisted of Facebook and Twitter, these channels are becoming less popular with smaller businesses; Facebook in particular now caters to those companies with larger advertising budgets.

That might once have been bad news for a small business looking to boost traffic to your website via social networks, but the variety of new platforms popping up everywhere gives you a plethora of different social media outlets to promote your brand and services. The key is figuring out which one fits best with your marketing strategy to reach your potential customers.

[Read more…]

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While You Were Away

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While You Were Away | Twitter | Twitter Algorithm
Photograph courtesy of Twitter

Twitter is in the midst of implementing its while you were away feature which gives Twitter users a summary of Tweets since the last time they checked in. This feature works along the lines of Facebook’s algorithm, which summarizes the most popular posts in your news feed, and has drawn criticism from long-time Twitter users, who argue that the reason Twitter is so great is that it’s not like Facebook (embed tweet). Twitter users have complete control over their own timelines, which is one of the main reasons everyone loves the platform. [Read more…]

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With So Many Changes to SEO, Where Should You Focus Your Efforts?

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Changes to SEO cause confusion for business ownersWe’re into our fourth year of business as Panoptic Online Marketing, and we’ve been witnessing and adapting to the evolution of online marketing and changes to SEO as it unfolds around us. From the very beginning, we’ve always stressed to our clients the need to produce and provide valuable, interesting, informative and/or entertaining content on their business websites as their first priority.

Many prospective clients are confused when they first speak with us about their SEO needs. If they have any understanding about SEO at all, they generally think about the model that all SEO vendors have studied and routinely use. The process of “optimizing” a website involves conducting competitive keyword research, implementing target keywords in prominent locations such as the HTMLS headers and title tags, and adding well-placed anchor text links throughout the site. But this approach is what we call “SEO in a vacuum” – it’s detached from the content creation process and is no longer enough to get a website ranking for targeted search phrases. [Read more…]

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App vs. Mobile Website

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App vs. Mobile Website — one of the most frequently asked questions we receive from clients.  More than a few have asked us whether or not they should invest in building an app for their business. More often than not a mobile website is sufficient to fulfill a client’s needs, but that doesn’t mean that an app should never be considered, or can’t be useful. It all depends on what your business is about, and what you are trying to achieve.

Mobile apps have the advantage of allowing you to reach your customers at any given time. The best apps provide innovative and added value for users by tapping into their mobile devices’ functionalities.  Vivino Wine Scanner, for example, uses the camera on your mobile device to allow the user to take a picture of the label of any given wine bottle and get a review. [Read more…]

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Making Mobile Better: Just Being There is No Longer Enough

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The inevitable has finally happened.

As was expected, people are now using their mobile devices to access the internet more than they use their desktops. Predictions state that by 2017, 85% of the global population will have 3G coverage.  If you’re a business owner this only reinforces the fact that you must have a mobile presence. It’s no longer a question of whether or not you should have a responsive site: responsiveness is now the minimum requirements — you absolutely should have one.  A dedicated mobile site is even better.

Mobile PresenceMobile marketing is no longer an add-on enhancement or a separate channel, it’s now core technology that you need to invest in. Keep in mind that people aren’t just using their mobile devices because they’re “on the go.”  The vast majority of mobile searches are taking place when a desktop computer is nearby – maybe even on the desk in front of you! [Read more…]

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Case Study: Mobile Site for Service Contractor

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As part of our white-label service to other marketing agencies, we were asked to produce this WordPress website and a dedicated mobile version for Intelireach on behalf of their client, BCS Restoration. Intelireach worked with the client to develop the content for the site; Panoptic built the site around a pre-designed WordPress theme (we adapted the theme to use the client’s logo and colors).

Mobile Websites by Panoptic Online MarketingThe theme, which was not a “mobile responsive theme,” looked OK on mobile devices… but it required the reader to “pinch-zoom” to make the buttons large enough to click, and it required horizontal scrolling when viewed in portrait orientation. The client decided that they preferred to have a dedicated mobile site rather than a mobile responsive theme. There were a number of features built into the hosting platform that made it the more attractive option.

[Read more…]

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