Do your research: When designing for mobile, you have to know your audience and the type of devices they’re using. Look at your analytics to determine what platforms and browsers are most popular for your audience. Also, take a look at the geographical regions that your clients reside in; ensure that your design is appropriate to your audience. Get started: Take a look at caniuse.com. These websites have very useful information about the kinds of languages and scripts that are compatible with different mobile devices. Seriously consider using a framework: Using a framework is a good way to eliminate variability and improve consistency. The two most popular frameworks are Bootstrap and Foundation. Here at LAUNCH we prefer Bootstrap, but other…

Most potential clients that call us here at LAUNCH, know that ranking well on search engines like Google is important. The understand the concept of having higher online visibility and the idea of getting more leads from their website. However, most of them don’t necessarily know how to get their companies listed well on these search engines. Often, a lower price point seems more appealing than understanding the fundamental concepts that drive traffic and generate revenue. There are many players in the digital marketing industry here in Edmonton, however, only a select few fully understand the cornerstones of online success through search engine optimization (SEO). In some circles, SEO’s have gotten a bar rep for poor link building practices, spam…

The world of SEO is frontier country. Really, meaningful statistics on search rankings only go back about eight years. Think about that: the whole industry of search engine optimization—those sophisticated techniques that keep you and your client’s websites high in search results—is basically just in the second grade. That’s infancy. But that’s still enough time for some key ideas in SEO to become well known and widely accepted. Strong keyword use, healthy links and savvy social media campaigns are still the foundation of any relevant SEO strategy. This will likely hold true indefinitely unless Google does something unfathomable with their famously secret and storied algorithm. (Cracking the esoteric code is like SEO voodoo, with experts constantly debating what factors affect…

Google is the most powerful tool in history for gathering information. With just a couple of taps on the keyboard you can access a dizzying range of information on everything from theoretical physics to cats—especially cats. But Google doesn’t just curate information from the far-reaching corners of the World Wide Web; it also uses its complex algorithms to gather information on you. The search engine giant tracks what you search for and uses that information to help advertisers target you with specially-tailored marketing. Have you been browsing reviews of new cars? Expect to see some ads for Volkswagen and Chevrolet popping up during your travels through the Internet. When it works well, these targeted ads can help consumers stumble on…

Here’s the scenario: you’re sitting in your office and you get a random phone call from someone promising to improve your website’s SEO. This person—often a pre-recorded message or a copy-and-pasted email—will tell you that your website has not been “properly registered” with the major search engines. They might say that there are dozens, even hundreds, of search engines that you are not registered with. This call (or recording, or email) may even claim to be coming directly from someone who works with Google. Gosh, you might think, I’d better pay this company to register me with these hundreds of important search engines! But not so fast. These unsolicited calls/messages/emails are almost always the work of an SEO snake oil…

Do Twitter or Facebook affect Google ranking? The short answer? No, not directly. Those studying SEO often see that high-ranking pages have a lot of Facebook likes or Twitter followers. It’s not unthinkable to consider that Google gives some weight to this social media presence. These sites are popular on Facebook and Twitter and rate high in Google searches, so they must be connected right? However, it’s more likely that high-quality and popular content is causing more people to link to the page and bump it up the ranking—which gets people to notice it on social media. If you’ve got good content people are going to like it and link to it, moving it up the search results. Matt Cutts,…

Social media is a huge, sometimes intimidating, world. Every week it seems there is some hot new platform where people are sharing more and more at faster and faster paces. With so much competition for attention it can be a major challenge to have your company noticed in the free-for-all of social media. But don’t panic. With some strategy you can use social media to reach current and potential customers and create a loyal following in the process. The important thing is to plan. You need to think about: –        What you want to say –        The best way to say it –        How often you should say it Common sense? Sure. And it’s also the best way to cut…