Once upon a time, sales seemed simple. You called, visited or mailed your prospects and clients directly. As technology progressed, you might have faxed them. If someone wanted to find you, they could visit your booth at a trade show or look up your phone number and address in a physical directory.

Then the Internet came along, and things got interesting. Now a lot more people could find you much more easily – and you could collect leads more easily, too, because your website had a nifty neato contact form for site visitors to submit.

Then hackers ruined everything by finding ways to automatically fill in and submit the contact forms on websites. Some of these submissions were cold calls, some were mere nuisances and some were actual hazards containing malicious code.

Are you Giving Your Top Salesperson the Tools She Needs?

If you own your business or manage the sales organization, you’re likely in tune with the specific things your sales team needs to be effective for your company:

• Access to leads or contact list, a phone, email, maybe a car, and a good CRM to track results;
• Appropriate supporting sales literature and training on how your products and services benefit your customers;
• A marketing strategy and organizational support for the quoting and sales process;
• Incentivizing compensation;
• An environment that encourages productive independence, with accountability to the company to meet organizational goals;
• Personal benefits, like sick pay, vacation time and a 401K, that help your employees feel valued and empowered to be the best at what they do.

But, what if, in providing all these things to your sales organization, you were ignoring the vital needs of someone who could be your top producer?

On March 12, Google announced what it called a “broad core algorithm update,” the sixth major change to the search engine’s algorithm in the last year. Unfortunately for everyone, that’s about as specific Google got in describing the impact of “Update Florida 2,” as it has been named.

As with prior changes, Google’s advice in managing this new update is to continue with standard, accepted SEO practices.  But, for sites that have noticed their traffic on the downhill lately or in the last couple of years, a better explanation is in order.

How SEO Started

In the early days of Google, earning Page 1 rankings on the search engine was as easy as incorporating the right keywords into your meta tags and content. Companies that jumped on the SEO bandwagon early got tremendous advantage, dominating rankings within their business segments.

Over time, Google modified the algorithm to make capturing the prized top rankings more difficult, adding backlinks and myriad other ranking signals.

Today, we know that the Google algorithm incorporates more than 200 ranking factors, about half of which are related to on-page SEO and the other half to backlinking and content marketing.

Google+, the tech giant’s foray into social media, is officially dead and no longer plays a role in content marketing. As of early February, people could no longer join Google+, and, as of April 2, the company will begin to shut down accounts and delete information.

The Birth of Google+

When it launched in June 2011, Google+ was like any typical social media platform: it allowed users to post and store images, provide status updates and share links to interesting stories on the web. Google+ offered “circles,” which allowed a user to slot what other social media sites called “friends” or “followers” into different groups with whom that user could share posts and updates.

Minimalist website design is nothing new and is something that probably will never go out of style. It’s a “less is more” approach to displaying content, images and navigation.  It’s a style that is high on impact and low on bells and whistles.

So, what exactly is the purpose of minimalist design?  

A minimalist design is a very clean and simple approach to creating a layout, but the goal is to do so in such a way that the layout is still interesting and meaningful. Although a minimalist design is one of very few elements, each of these elements should be carefully chosen, sized and strategically placed with a purpose in mind—to draw immediate attention to a product or service without being hindered by unnecessary distractions.

Achieving the right composition can be tricky because you want to include as few elements as possible to convey the message, but enough substance to create a good user experience while taking SEO results into account.