PSPINC Official Company Blog

Google’s New Core Update: What It Means for Website Owners

Mar

19

On March 5, Google announced the details of their new core update, which looks to tackle lessening the number of spammy, low-quality content on Google Search. Every few months, Google releases a new core update, but this newest core update implemented changes to “multiple core systems”, which is “more complex” and will have a larger impact on website owners, according to Chris Nelson from the Search Quality team at Google. This time, the update aims to target the excess of spam that even we here at PSPINC have encountered.

Aside from just affecting Google Search results, this update will also affect Google’s email service, Gmail. To combat the spam excess, we recommend our customers to be vigilant of fraudulent emails, but Google is working toward reducing the number of low-quality, unoriginal search results. To do that, Google is actively updating its spam-fighting systems and spam policies to better address evolving cybercrimes, and their efforts are already starting to appear on the search engine result page (SERP).

How This Affects Website Owners

pspinc google search result with spam update shown

For every website owner, it’s ideal to rank higher up in the SERP by optimizing their website for search engines. But this update may affect how you optimize your site for search engine optimization (SEO), how your site ranks in the SERP, and how to rank higher on the result page. This update also includes trying to reduce “unoriginal content” and to focus on content “where it was clear that automation was involved”, which could include content created using AI tools, especially mass-content generation using AI. As a better indicator of how significant of an impact this update could make, Google has predicted that it will “reduce low-quality, unoriginal content in search results by 40%”, which could lead to a big shift in what users see in their SERP.

If your website isn’t ranking as well as you’d like, Nelson recommends reading Google’s SEO fundamentals page about creating helpful, reliable, people-first content. The important thing to take away from this update, however, is that if you already have original content made for users rather than search engines, you shouldn’t worry too much about how this update will change your ranking.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#business #businesstips #businesstools #digitalmarketing #google #googlesearch #googleupdate #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #searchengineoptimization #searchengineresultspage #seo #serp #smallbusiness #tech #technology #update #web #websites

What Every Successful Website Needs

Feb

6

Every website is different in what it looks like, what it offers, and its overall purpose, but a good website has several key qualities that will distinguish it from a poor site. For a business, a good website is vital to its success as it helps establish credibility, build trust, increase brand awareness, improve its customer experience, and keep the company competitive online.

A good website will attract more qualified visitors, keep people on your site for longer, give off a better impression on potential customers, and drive conversions like an increase in signups, readership, and sales. To do well online, a website needs to be secure and possess certain characteristics that every website needs to thrive online. While there are many types of websites (i.e. blogs, portfolio sites, business websites, etc.) available, they will all still need some of the same features needed to succeed.

Essential Features of a Good Website

Having a secure website is vital to attracting users to your website, not just to protect users while browsing, but also to prevent them from encountering error messages. The easiest way to do that is to have an SSL certificate for your site, which will guarantee users’ data is safe when they’re online. Without one, they’ll run into a page that informs them the connection is not secure and not private, and it will recommend users go “back to safety”.

While having a secure site is a start, other essential features include:

Mobile friendliness: how well a website looks on a mobile device. An easy way to make sure your website works and looks great on all devices (including mobile devices) is by using responsive design practices.
Search engine optimization: elements that affect how search engines rank your website in its search results.
- Page titles: the title of a web page.
- Meta tags: an HTML code snippet with information about a website.
- Alt tags on images: read-aloud text for users that conveys the “why” of images that search engines index to determine your site’s search ranking.
- Header tags: HTML tags that separate headings and subheadings on a webpage.
- Title tag: an HTML tag that defines a web page’s title.
- Sitemap: a file that lists all of a website’s pages and how they relate to each other.
- Page load time: how long it takes for a page to load. The longer it takes, the lower search engines will rank your site.
- Backlinks: a link on your website that links to another website.
- No broken links: If a link on your website doesn’t properly link to another web page, search engines will rank your site lower in the search results.
Clear calls-to-action (CTAs): a direct instruction on what you want users to do on your website. Without CTAs, website visitors won’t do anything on your site, which is a missed opportunity to convert them into customers.
Easy and helpful navigation: a menu of buttons and links that let users explore your website. Making it easy will lessen the possibility of users getting frustrated.
Fresh, high-quality content: new or updated content on your website will result in a more favorable search ranking, and exceptional content will encourage users to not just come and stay on your site, but it will also encourage them to come back.
Strong brand identity: A website is just another opportunity to create a cohesive brand identity with your company logo, color scheme, types of graphics, tone of voice, and brand messaging.

If you’re not sure how well your website fares or if it needs an update, check out our new free website evaluation tool that will help you assess your website at a basic level in just minutes. Just check out our Web Design page to try it out for yourself!

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #branding #business #businesstips #ecommerce #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #mobile #responsivedesign #searchengineoptimization #seo #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webdesign #webdevelopment #website #websites

The 5 Biggest Marketing Trends to Look Out For in 2024

Dec

26

As this year comes to a close, we’re reflecting on how marketing has evolved over the past year and how we can improve for next year, not only for our company but for our customers as well. When looking back, one thing’s for certain: advancements in technology are driving the trends that will only become even more popular next year. Here are five of the biggest marketing trends to look out for in 2024.

1. AI Marketing Automation

Artificial intelligence, or AI, has become an increasing trend over the past few years in multiple industries, but many marketers have also jumped on the bandwagon. Marketers have started using AI to create content and to take advantage of how AI integration analyzes data, personalizes customers’ experiences, and optimizes campaigns. Integrating AI into marketing strategies also helps hyper-personalize content, which has gained popularity over the past year.

But as helpful as AI technology has been to the marketing industry, it’s important not to employ a “set it and forget it” type of strategy. It’s still a largely developing technology, so there are still times when it’ll get things wrong, so it’s better to use AI integration in a more collaborative approach.

2. Video Marketing

person recording a video with their phone

As we’ve mentioned before, video marketing, especially short-form video marketing, has become more popular over the past few years. The rise of TikTok, Facebook/Instagram Stories, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts made this clear. Other video marketing tactics that have also shown great success include live streaming and interactive video content. For more tips, check out our blog post all about how to start marketing with short-form videos.

3. User-Generated Content (UGC)

a person presenting user-generated content results to a marketing team

One of the best ways to build credibility, increase user engagement, and foster a sense of community online is through user-generated content (UGC), which just refers to content your customers share about you online. This usually involves encouraging customers to share their experiences with your brand on social media through a specific hashtag or throwing contests where the best entry wins. But there are other ways to garner content from your customers.

Customer reviews, either on Google, Facebook, Yelp, or any other platform, also count as user-generated content. It just takes a little more work to share it on social media since it isn’t already on the same platform. You can either take a screenshot and resize it for social media, or you can add it into a template of sorts from a site like Canva to share with your social media followers.

4. Social Shopping

Over the past year especially, selling and shopping directly on social media has only become more accessible with Facebook Marketplace, Instagram’s buy button, and TikTok Shop. It’s pushed social shopping more toward social media, being an e-commerce ecosystem all on its own. With social shopping already gaining popularity, marketers expect this will significantly impact the online shopping landscape.

5. Privacy and Data Protection

One of the largest growing concerns among customers today consists of protecting their data, thanks to the uptick in cybercrimes over the past few years. Because of this, customers are much more informed and vigilant about how others handle their data and how they share their data. On the business side, it’s important to implement secure data collection and storage practices to protect your employees’ accounts, which is easy to do with a password manager like Pass Wizard. On the consumer-facing side, businesses should be very transparent about their data collection and storage practices and obtain explicit consent when collecting user data.

With how fast technology evolves today, there are bound to be many more marketing trends coming next year that we haven’t anticipated. However, our team here at PSPINC has the experience and expertise to help you grow your business by strengthening your marketing efforts. Whether it’s social media marketing, paid ads on Google, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, or even blogging, we’ve got you covered. Get started today.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#ai #b2b #blog #branding #business #businesstips #data #digitalmarketing #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingonline #marketingtips #passwordmanager #sales #smallbusiness #socialmedia #tech #ugc #usergeneratedcontent #videomarketing #web #website

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 196 “Benefits of Custom Web Development”

Nov

30

While it’s more costly, custom web development is well worth it in the end because of how beneficial it is for your brand. Custom web development benefits businesses, especially small businesses by:

1. Increasing security: Businesses can implement robust security measures to keep their data safe from cyber-attacks with the help of custom web development.

2. Giving businesses the ability to scale over time with their website: A successful business doesn’t stay the same forever, so their website shouldn’t either. Custom web development makes it easier to adapt to how your business and website change over time.

3. Tailoring to your brand: While there are multiple popular website builders and templates out there, custom web development allows for more branding opportunities and gives the website a personalized touch that templates just can’t offer.

4. Creating custom features: Every business is unique in what it offers, the customers they have, and what they need to succeed. Custom web development makes it possible for features that aren’t readily available on popular web builders.

5. Increasing search engine optimization (SEO): With more control over the website, developers can create the site with SEO in mind, which makes it easier for your site to rank higher organically in search engine results.

At PSPINC, we’ve worked with small businesses for decades to custom-develop websites to help them succeed. To request custom development from us, head over to our Web and App Development page.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#b2b #blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #digitalmarketing #google #marketing #marketingdigital #pspinc #seo #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webdevelopment #webdexpress #websitebuilder #webtools #wordpress

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 193 “New Marketing Packages”

Nov

9

We are thrilled to announce that we now have new marketing packages available to fit your specific business needs. From small businesses just looking to spread awareness to those who want to completely transform their digital marketing strategy, we have the right plan for you.

pspinc marketing plans

Our plans are billed monthly, without any minimum contract. However, we recommend you run your ad campaign for at least three months for the best results. Our team has the experience and expertise to help you grow your business by strengthening your marketing efforts. Whether it’s social media marketing, paid ads on Google, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, or even blogging, we’ve got you covered. Get started today.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#advertising #b2b #blog #branding #business #businesstips #businesstools #digitalmarketing #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #newsletter #pspinc #searchengineoptimization #smallbusiness #socialmedia #tech #technology #webtools

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 177 “Marketing Your Website”

Jul

20

Creating a beautifully designed website can be great for business, but marketing your business shouldn’t stop there. You also need to make sure people know it exists. To do that, you can market your site by updating your site content and sharing the link to social media. Just because you have a great site, it doesn’t mean it always will be. There are plenty of obviously outdated websites still up online because the site owner never updated their site.

Other than updating antiquated website designs, the site’s content also needs to be updated. Not just to display relevant and correct information, but also to help with search engine optimization (SEO). In addition to that, marketing your site with social media can be a great way to spread the word. But promoting your business and site effectively is not always an easy feat. For more help with marketing your business, reach out to our expert marketing team.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#advertising #blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #digitalmarketing #google #marketing #newsletter #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #sales #searchengineoptimization #seo #smallbusiness #socialmedia #tech #technology #web #webdesign #websites #webtools

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 172 “The Importance of Positive Google Reviews”

Jun

15

When you want to look for a new restaurant to go to or get your car serviced, the first place you’ll look is Google. The same can be said when you’re looking for any kind of service from a business. After entering your query into Google, the first thing that’ll pop up is a list of businesses in your local area. And right below those business names, you’ll find their overall rating. The last thing people want to do is choose to work with a business with a bad rating.

Positive Google reviews act as social proof, making your business look more trustworthy. And they influence potential customers to purchase from you, which can make a major impact on sales. On the technical side, it also helps with optimizing your business website for search engines. Google’s algorithm favors new and original content, and customer reviews feed into that. Having good search engine optimization (SEO) helps your site’s overall visibility. If you’re looking for some extra help on better optimizing your site for search engines, reach out to us at PSPINC. We have experts ready to help!

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #digitalmarketing #google #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #sales #searchengineoptimization #seo #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webdevelopment #website

What Goes into an Effective Marketing Plan?

May

9

There can be a lot that goes into marketing for a business. And it can be overwhelming. But having an overarching marketing plan to do so makes it much easier. It’ll outline what needs to be done and what the intended results will be, not just to your marketing team, but to the entire sales team. You might have some initial ideas of what you want to do to market your product, service, and overall brand. But they might not be the best idea. Or it might be a good idea that could use some improvements that a plan could provide.

A marketing plan, for the rest of the sales team, presents an overhead look at your ideas professionally. For the marketing team, it serves as an organized outline for people to fill in throughout the process. But while every brand and plan will undoubtedly be different, there are still fundamental parts of every marketing plan: research, objectives, a strategy statement, a buyer persona, a customer journey, tactics, and mockups. And having them in your marketing plan will help marketers ensure they’re prepared.

Initial Steps

Every marketing plan starts with research. Regardless of your business's industry, it’s constantly changing and evolving. And you’re expected to change with it. More than that, research also helps you as a marketer get a better idea of the company’s overall identity and what you can highlight in a marketing campaign. And it’s important to point out that you may not have discovered this information without doing research to find it.

That research can also include creating a customer persona and journey, which will give you a better understanding of who your customers are and how they interact with your brand. And it’ll make it easier to create your objectives and strategy statement. As we’ve discussed before on this blog, your marketing objectives are essentially like your goals. And remember to use the SMART acronym when you create them. And a strategy statement encompasses those goals into a single statement, one that will guide your overall marketing efforts for your campaign moving forward.

Tactics & Mockups

three people crowded around a long desk with one woman sitting and showing something on a tablet to everyone else

Once you’ve completed the initial steps, it’ll be easier to determine how to achieve the goals you’ve set for your marketing team for your overall campaign. In marketing, tactics are strategic actions that directly correspond to your objectives. And your strategy statement will help guide you in the right direction when it comes to your content. Depending on what you want to achieve during your marketing campaign, tactics can range from search engine optimization, social media marketing, and email marketing, among other things. And to make it easier, creating mockups, or visual representations of what your final product will look like, will help you later when it’s time to prepare assets.

Overall, there are multiple steps in constructing an effective marketing plan. For marketers, having one in place helps immensely in better organizing your marketing ideas for your campaign. For everyone else at the company, it gives them a good idea of what you plan to accomplish and how. And that can be very powerful because often, your marketing team isn’t in charge of how much the company can spend on marketing efforts. The more people know about what you plan to do with the money they give you, the more likely they’ll be open to an increased budget. So, a marketing plan isn’t just a way to organize your thoughts as a marketer, it also serves as a proof of concept for the rest of your team. If you're looking for more marketing help for your small business, contact our marketing professionals at PSPINC. We'd be happy to help!

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#advertising #blog #branding #business #businesstips #goals #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingideas #marketingplan #marketingstrategy #marketingtips #mockup #objectives #sales #smallbusiness #smartobjectives #socialmedia #strategy #tactics

Marketing Objectives and a Strategy Statement

May

2

The elements of a good marketing plan include two things: marketing objectives and a marketing strategy. Many people mistake an objective and a strategy as being the same thing, when, in fact, they are not. An objective is a more specific path to take to achieve your business goals. Examples include increasing brand awareness or increasing a certain perception about your product or overall company. A strategy, however, should encompass your objectives and steer your overall plan in the right direction. And constructing a strong strategy statement helps you do that.

For example, if you own a small business, you’ll likely want to increase its overall brand awareness. But your marketing plan still needs a focus. The best way to figure out what to focus on for your marketing plan is to research. What is it about your company that makes it different from others on the market? What part of your product or overall company do you want more people to know about? That’s where you should start.

SMART Objectives

When creating your marketing objects, a helpful acronym you can use is SMART. It stands for specific, measurable, attainable, reliable, and timely. Every business has goals in mind, but when you create SMART objectives, it narrows down your focus and guides you toward those goals. Without them, you’ll have goals without any clear direction or tasks going forward. And it’s hard to accomplish a goal if you don’t know where to start or how to achieve that goal. Creating a SMART objective means determining a more specific goal in mind, one that will focus on growing your brand on a single platform, like Instagram or your website. It means using specified but practical numbers and setting a definitive deadline for yourself.

For example, maybe you want to increase your brand awareness by increasing your overall website traffic. To determine a realistic number to grow by, look at the average amount of traffic on your website and base your objective on that. When looking at how to achieve that goal, marketing tactics could include improving your site’s search engine optimization (SEO), growing your social profiles, increasing email subscribers, or other avenues. For example, if you average around 120 users a day and determine that your site has poor overall SEO, you can strive to increase your average daily user count by 10% by making technical SEO fixes, which would also increase your site's organic search engine results page (SERP) ranking. If you're looking for tips on how to grow your social media pages, check out our new YouTube video.

A Marketing Strategy

Being equipped with those objectives makes forming a strategy that much easier. While your marketing objectives give you a clear set of steps for you to take to achieve your overall goal, your strategy statement will help inform them. It’s easy to say you want to grow your business online, even with specific goals in mind. But it still requires a sense of direction. How will you encourage users to subscribe to your email newsletter or follow you on Instagram? That’s where your strategy statement can help you. To construct one, it’s best to think about what makes your business unique or what you want potential customers to know more about. The question you really need to answer is: why should a customer choose your company over another? And what benefit can you leverage as a smaller company?

Whatever it is, use that to construct your strategy statement. For example, if you’re a smaller airline company looking to promote your family plans and overall safety, your strategy statement could be: “Fly with us, North America’s safest choice for family-friendly travel”. So, while people may use marketing objectives and a strategy statement interchangeably sometimes, they are different. They each help to inform the other and work together to help give marketers a clear direction in their overall marketing campaigns. And it’ll help you market your business moving forward. If you need any marketing help for your small business, reach out to our marketing experts here at PSPINC.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#advertising #blog #branding #business #businesstips #digitalmarketing #email #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingobjectives #marketingstrategy #marketingtips #sales #smallbusiness #smartobjectives #strategy #strategystatement #tech #technology

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 147 “Search Engine Optimization”

Dec

22

One of the best ways to get potential customers to see your business website is through search engines like Google. With so many websites out there, it can be hard to rank higher in search results. But that’s why it’s important to optimize your site for search engines. The way search engines work is they’ll scour the web for content and rank them based on relevancy according to their algorithm. The more relevant the algorithm deems your site, the higher it’ll appear in the search engine results.

If you’re unsure if your site’s well-optimized, there are plenty of free search engine optimization (SEO) tools available online. And most of them will even give you tips on how to improve your overall SEO score, as it’s usually called. If your score is low, it may have to do with your website’s content or how long it takes site pages to load. But fixing these problems will not only help you rank your site higher in search engine results pages, but also more website traffic, and hopefully revenue. PSPINC also provides support for SEO. Please feel free to contact us.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.