Making a website is easier than ever. Not only are there a myriad of companies offering pre-built websites, but you can also use a number of drag-and-drop, WYSIWYG (“what you see is what you get”) website builders to create your own website with little-to-no web design training.
Any website you visit online is designed with a certain purpose in mind (whether or not it’s designed well, is a different story). As a managed service provider, your website needs to have just as much forethought and planning as any other - in fact, it should probably have more. Let’s discuss a few requirements that a good MSP website needs to represent.
About five years ago, your MSP’s website went through a huge redesign. The difference was HUGE! Your clients were happy that your website was finally easy for them to navigate, and prospects were converting after visiting your website at rates you hadn’t previously seen.
You want your website to best represent your MSP and the many services that you offer. As your central marketing hub, your website NEEDS to impress its visitors. To do so, it needs to be up-to-date and continuously maintained.
You may have heard this joke before: where should you hide something that you don’t want people to find? The punchline that goes with it: you hide them on the second page of Google.
The best way to avoid having your website blacklisted (or marked as untrustworthy) by a search engine is to use SEO tactics that are allowed - and often even encouraged - by search engines themselves. Part 3 of our blog series will cover what exactly those tactics are so that you can set up your company for long-term success.
There are quite a bit of shady SEO practices that should be avoided at all costs if you want to make sure that you are obeying search engine guidelines which are critical to your success as an MSP. Part 2 of our Black Hat vs. White Hat SEO blog series will go over the tactics you should be avoiding: Black Hat.
When it comes to marketing your MSP, there’s good SEO, and there’s bad SEO. Knowing the difference determines whether your search engine optimization strategy sets your company up for long-term ranking growth...or failure.
What made online marketing a boon for businesses was the capacity to provide nearly real-time, focused search engine optimization (SEO) results. SEO can provide a wealth of information about user engagement, which - combined with this ability to acquire and analyze data quickly - can turn marketing and promotion on its ear.
When was the last time that you Googled your company? What about the last time that you navigated from your company’s homepage to each of your service pages? Your company blog? Your About Us page? What do those pages look like? When were they last updated?
Forms are a must-have on any website, but especially for B2B companies. The added convenience that they provide allow you to collect more leads and move these leads more quickly through your sales funnel, while at the same time providing a positive user experience for the person who can fill it out versus having to use other methods to contact you.
Despite reports to the contrary, 404 errors do not directly hurt your SEO and marketing practices. They can, however, indirectly cause issues. We’re going to examine how, but rest assured Google doesn’t look at a 404 error and take points from your site as if it was a punishment.
After writing and designing your whitepaper, it’s time to get it added to your website and start promoting it. The third and final part of our Marketing with Whitepapers series will discuss best practices in regards to doing that, and further steps you need to take to make sure that your whitepapers stay relevant.
When managing hundreds of websites for managed service providers (MSP), security is paramount. An MSP can’t preach strong security practices to their clients while having problems with their website. These days, hackers are aggressive and relentless when it comes to using exploits to test your security. So much so that even when applying multiple layers of protection across a site, the server, and keeping everything patched, threats can sneak in. This is why it is critical to have a first line of defense; in this case, a CAPTCHA.
To get the most out of your digital marketing, it’s important to have a quality website. Part of that goes into having the best content management system (CMS) that gives you the ability to create a rich, intuitive website that creates a positive experience for visitors.
Smartphones have changed the way the world works. More specifically, they have changed consumer behavior. Consumers today are close to - or, may already be at - the point of “content shock” where they cannot consume more content than they already are. This means that, as a brand, you may only have a few seconds to capture the attention of a prospect.
In this six-part blog series, we’ll explore the key metrics you should be looking at when trying to determine how to improve the ROI of your marketing. Here, in Part 1, we’ll examine the top five metrics you should be looking at in regards to your company’s website.
Your clients want to learn as much as they can about you before they make the decision to do business with you. This means that they will be scouring your website in an attempt to learn as much about you as possible before they decide to actually reach out to you. One of the places they’re almost guaranteed to visit is your ‘About Us’ page. Are they going to like what they see?
The world is changing rapidly. Business decision makers can access information about your company like never before. It’s likely that not every decision maker is sitting at their desk at work, researching you from the comfort of their desktop computer. They may be at home, sitting on their couch, doing that research from their smartphone or tablet.
When business decision makers are attempting to look for an MSP in their local area, they are not picking up a phone book like they would have 30+ years ago. As you probably already know, they are using the internet instead. Specifically, more than 70% are starting the process through a simple Google search. Assuming you set up your SEO right, your website will probably be somewhere on the first page of results.
