Weekend Reading: 2013 Year in Review

by Jason Unger, Founder

Insights / Website Design / Weekend Reading: 2013 Year in Review

It’s true: 2013 has been a very exciting year in the world of digital media, marketing and design. From the growing impact social media has on our lives to big changes with how Google treats content online to the continued development and growth of WordPress, we’ve certainly had a good time keeping up with the trends.

For this week’s Weekend Reading, we wanted to show you some of the highlights of the year. While this clearly isn’t every big story that happened this year, it’s some of the most important to the industry. Stay tuned for next week when we will fill you in on some predictions for 2014.

What Google ‘Hummingbird’ Means to Your SEO Strategy

One of the mistakes that some webmasters have made already is to hit the panic button and attack their existing content. There is really no need to go through your entire site making changes to content or anchor text to reflect a “How To…” overhaul in order to attract Hummingbird’s attention. The only thing that this can lead to is disaster.

Quick Take: The good news with Google Hummingbird is that almost everything we have been doing to optimize our websites should continue to work. The biggest thing to pay attention to are “long tailed keywords,” which will be more effective in Google’s Hummingbird model.

5 Businesses That Rock Content Marketing

Now, businesses need to actively capture their audiences’ (increasingly short) attention spans and — here’s the tricky part — actually engage consumers. As many business owners will attest, this is easier said than done.

Quick Take: It’s easy to throw a bunch of words on your webpage and call it a day, but is this actually helping you (and your customers) achieve your goals? The key to great content is to focus on the needs of your customers and find what works for them. Try telling a story about your product or connecting through social media with hashtags.

A Look Back at WordPress in 2013

Every year is eventful with WordPress and 2013 was no different. There are two major updates every year that add new features to the WordPress core. This improves the default version of WordPress and gives plugin and theme developers the opportunity to extend WordPress even further.

Quick Take: It’s no secret we love WordPress, and this year brought some very exciting updates. A few of our favorites include the new dashboard design, post-locking, and revision comparison.