Category: Global Business

With two-thirds of Americans worrying about job security and more than half looking for new careers, web designers and developers still have great gigs. This data comes from survey results we released in February 2021, polling 500 web designers and developers.

Americans love the lifestyle afforded by a career in web design and development. It’s exciting to consider the future of the industry, as emerging web professionals find their places in the community.

We found 66% of Americans needed help from a Maker of the Web to launch their ideas, and 45% of designers and developers believe their industry is growing. Our data shows the opportunities are out there. We might be looking at a fresh take on traditional web professional roles.

What makes web design and development a good gig?

Our survey shows 95% of designers and developers believe their careers are lucrative and secure. They noted the best … Read the rest

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With the upcoming Google Page Experience update, search engines will favor websites with excellent user experience and performance. If you’re starting to get frantic messages from clients, you need not fret! I’m here to share learnings from my agency and run through the latest SEO techniques that will keep your clients visible

Why do you need to improve clients’ SEO?

SEO is a crucial element in 2021. Whether you believe it or not, your clients will not succeed if you don’t optimize their SEO strategy. Here’s why:

• 75 percent of internet users don’t go beyond the first page of search results
• Google takes about 94 percent of the world’s organic traffic
• Over 81 percent of consumers search for a product or services online before making a purchase
• Over 6.5 billion searches are conducted every day

With such statistics at hand, it’s generally unwise to ignore SEO for a website.

Top

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Today we’re speaking with Maya Penn, a fashion entrepreneur and environmental activist. Her company, Maya’s Ideas, is focused on sustainability in order to combat the damaging impact of fast fashion on the environment.

Maya is a keynote speaker, sustainability consultant, three-time TED speaker, artist, global activist, animator, filmmaker, social entrepreneur, coder and author. She has also received a commendation from President Barack Obama for outstanding achievement in environmental stewardship. Maya was awarded the 2016 Coretta Scott King A.N.G.E.L. Award, as well as honored at the SCLC Drum Major for Justice Awards (honorees include Rosa Parks, Maya Angelou, John Lewis and more). 

She was hand-picked by Oprah Winfrey as her youngest Supersoul 100 entrepreneur, change-maker and thought leader. 

She has been one of the youngest leaders in sustainability and environmental justice for 12 years, starting at the age of just eight years old.



This interview has been gently edited for … Read the rest

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Remember that one time that you thought of that perfect domain name for your new venture, and when you went to register it, it was already taken?

Seeing that message can be really discouraging. And it, unfortunately, happens fairly often. The next time you see that message pop up that says “Sorry, this domain is taken,” don’t give up. Instead, here is exactly what you should do.

Step one: Call/email your Premier Services account manager at GoDaddy with the domain you’d like, along with your budget for that domain.

I know what you’re thinking. “Why would I call my account manager when I can just use the Domain Buy Service and start the process?”

The answer is, you can do that, but your Premier Services account manager is your partner in domain investing.

We know domain … Read the rest

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This article was originally published on Sept. 24, 2018 and updated on April 16, 2021.

Learning how to use personalization in your marketing can be the difference between you creating ineffective messages that fly right past your target audience or you building high-performing sales campaigns your ideal prospects couldn’t ignore if they wanted to.

The rest of this post will look at how to use personalization to make your sales messages more targeted, effective and powerful.

What is personalization?

Before we look at how to use personalization, let’s clarify what personalization is. Many marketers and brands confuse the concepts of personalization with customization.

Customization is done by the customer. The customer actively makes choices that change their branded experience.

Personalization is done by the brand. The brand considers the customer’s habits, actions and interests and then, changes the branded experience based on those factors. The customer is passive and does … Read the rest

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This article was original published on Nov. 21, 2017, and updated on April 16, 2021.

Websites have become even more important to businesses and freelancers following the global lockdown from COVID-19. People are now choosing to frequent a website instead of the brick-and-mortar alternative.

More than ever, you need to choose the perfect domain name for your business, personal blog, or portfolio website. But, before you do, there are a few important things to consider.

• Find a domain that’s easy for people to read and remember. Avoid misspellings, numbers, or hyphens. Choose “CoolDomainForYou.com” instead of “KewlDomain4U.com”
• Search for domain names that reflect your brand, whether that means including your name, slogan or keywords associated with your targeted niche.
• Select the right domain extension — aka top-level domain (TLD). This decision may depend on your business, industry, and availability.

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Integral components in the language of web designers and developers, it’s easy to gain a topical understanding of hex codes and RGB colors, and then move on. However, even if you know how color codes work, it’s worth looking closer at the science and history behind them.

How color codes work

Color codes communicate the precise levels of red, green and blue that pixels display in order to produce any given color.

RGB color codes use three numerals of up to three digits. The hexadecimal or hex value uses three pairs of characters preceded by a hash. In markup, you’ll see RGB color codes written like this:

{color:rgb(255,0,0);}

And hex values like this:

{color: #FF0000;}

When we see a color digitally, it’s a combination of red, green and blue light transmitted from pixels on the screen. With displays today capable of higher and higher resolutions, a truly staggering range of … Read the rest

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This post was originally published on Aug. 2, 2019, and was updated on April 14, 2021.

If you want to generate interest in your products and attract more customers, there is something your brand needs to learn how to do: generate reviews.

Reviews are essential for driving shoppers to your products and helping customers through the buyer’s journey.

But, getting reviews from customers isn’t always easy.

How to generate more product reviews

This guide is aimed at helping you successfully go through the process of generating reviews. We’ll cover:

• Benefits of generating reviews.
• Highlighting current product reviews.
• Making it easy for customers to leave online reviews.
• Asking customers to leave product reviews.
• Follow up with customers for reviews.
• Offering incentives and rewards to customers who leave reviews.
• Responding to bad reviews.
• Engaging with good reviews.
• Asking bloggers to review products.

Use this guide to learn the top tips for increasing … Read the rest

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Kevin Abrams operates Digital Renegades, a web design agency based in Orlando, FL. Catch up with him on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

The who:

Given a business name is so central to a brand, we tend to put a lot of importance on it. How did you arrive at a name, and how do you feel about it now that you’ve been in business a while?

I had a lot of trouble coming up with a name. I really wanted something that showed we were different. I thought the newer .digital domains were unique and wanted to come up with a name that I could leverage that domain with.

It had been a few months that I was trying to come up with the complete name when one day I was listening to music, looking out the window, and the song “Renegades” by X Ambassadors came on. I

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This article was originally published on Oct. 15, 2018, and updated on April 8, 2021.

An above-average blog security setup for WordPress can be handled with a couple of plugins — it’s good enough to stop most of hacking attempts, but it’s not an iron-clad approach. Someone who’s really determined might still find their way in.

Better blog security involves taking several steps using things like plugins, complex passwords and a few best practices.

I’ve been called in to clean up a couple blogs, but we were able to undo the damage that had been done — mostly spam links that had been injected into several blog posts for a black-hat SEO attack — but they wouldn’t have happened if the owner had practiced strong blog security to begin with. We could clean out the links by hand, which would have taken hours. Instead, we had to restore the blog … Read the rest

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