Every Genesis web designer favors this point of view: “Everything should be as simple as possible, but never simpler,” said Albert Einstein!
In my day we called it “classic”. It always meant “timeless”. It always implied “simple and beautiful”. Great beauties like Katherine Hepburn and Audrey Hepburn come to mind. A string of white pearls on a sweater. No adjectives required.
That’s it, too. Fewer words were needed to sum up what are feelings, and cannot and need not be described. Because you just know. There is great power in just getting to the meat of the matter immediately. No waste.
Who has the time anyway?
Which brings me to the meat of this matter which is Minimalist Web Design and StudioPress Themes.
Big fans of minimalist design, StudioPress has recently launched various minimalist child themes, mobile responsive and upgraded for Genesis 2.0. Minimalism at its smartest, Modern Portfolio Theme and the Brunch Pro theme are just some of those themes with the perfect layout for displaying work online, building your brand, and ultimately converting visitors into customers.
We see minimalist design all around : a modern phone, looking at a slick brochure or other graphically-presented information, sitting in a simple living space on a sleek sofa, and so forth.
With its roots in the “Less is more” catch phrase of architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe … what is minimalist web design anyway?
It’s Where Every Detail Counts
In a minimalist design, every detail has significance. Details such as the mix of typography, a border around an image, subtle colored boxes, the color palette, the white space, every part becomes important to the overall look and feel of the website when the elements are few.
Where Color Is Critical
Color takes on added significance in a minimalist design. Choosing the right palette or accent colors is vital. Many designers opt for a simple black, white and/or gray palette, but minimalism has room for any color in the rainbow
And White Is For Emphasis
White space is critical to emphasizing certain elements over others. White space “makes” a design minimalist to a large extent.
Big typography is often used in place of images to add more graphic interest to a website.
The best part about minimalism in web design is that it comes in many styles, colors and sizes, but always with the same goal in mind – saying the most while saying the least.
Now that web design is changing print design as we speak, we may start to see minimalist design in newspapers and magazines. As a reader of The New York Times for the last 100 years, I can already see the impressive changes of the Times’ graphics and major imagery. Who knows what the next 100 will bring?
– By Marcia Coffey
Find Marcia on Google+
Call Marcia @ 561.906.3436.
Follow @jmgroupdesign
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Easy WordPress SEO. Yoast Complete Solution.
When it comes to SEO, most of us just don’t know where to start. We thought optimizing our WordPress sites was just too complicated. Actually it’s not complicated … once you discover the easy WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin.
Yes, it’s that simple. Yoast works perfectly for all levels of website owners and developers.
Yoast SEO is the most complete and easy WordPress SEO plugin that exists today for WordPress users. It incorporates everything from a snippet editor and real time page analysis functionality that helps you optimize your pages content, images titles, meta descriptions and more to XML sitemaps, and loads of optimization options in between.
The plugin also forces us into doing the right thing and this is important.
For example, in keeping with best practice, Yoast won’t allow you to enter more than one focused keyword. You have to clearly define one keyword phrase per page or post to allow the search engines to best know which piece of content it should deliver in search results.
This plugin is by far the most complete SEO solution that is available for WordPress with over a million downloads.
Unlike most other plugins, this one is way more than simple meta tag additions. Add custom post title, meta description, and meta keyword for posts, pages, and taxonomies (tag, category, etc). When writing the meta information, WordPress SEO plugin shows you a Google search result snippet preview, so you can see exactly how your content will look when someone searches for it in Google.
It helps you create XML sitemaps that support images. It notifies search engines automatically once your content is published.
It has social integration that shows you the correct title, description, and image for Facebook using the Open Graph meta data. It also lets you add twitter cards in WordPress.
The WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin has a ton of cool features which you can read about here:
Full Feature List.
J&M Group Announces New SEO Service
Marcia will now install, setup and configure the Yoast SEO Plugin on your WordPress site. The package will also include keyword research. Please call her at 561.906.3436 for all the details or send her an email.
What is content marketing?
Then the next question has to be HOW?
How do you penetrate the marketing jungle when every minute of every day 571 new websites are created, 100,000 tweets are shared and over 347 blog posts get published?
Small business owners with a marketing budget pegged to the vagaries of monthly income don’t share much enthusiasm for blogging. Why do I have to do that? Who will read my posts? How do I find the time? Who cares?
Is this just ignorance? It certainly can’t be bliss.
The mobile noise out there is deafening now reaching into your daily phone calls, even permeating your every private moment.
Let’s get honest here. Some “small business owners” in this century can bear little resemblance to those in the past one I know about. They are in business because the Internet has enabled them. Otherwise they would have to have “a budget” to pay rent, hire employees, keep the lights on, create a marketing plan. They wouldn’t have a first job. Running their business or store would be their only job.
But I digress. Here it is … Copyblogger defines content marketing as follows:
“Content Marketing means creating and sharing valuable free content to attract and convert prospects into customers, and customers into repeat buyers. The type of content you share is closely related to what you sell; in other words, you’re educating people so that they know, like, and trust you enough to do business with you.”
With their “solutions for smarter content marketing”, Copyblogger has all the links, information and teaching tools you will need to scale this particular marketing mountain.
Nutshell. More than just a buzzword, content marketing is a tried-and-true marketing tactic that small businesses can use to reach customers in an authentic way, without having to spend big bucks.
Below Keith Hernandez from Buzzfeed, one of the leaders in the content marketing space, discusses how small businesses can create and use custom content effectively in their marketing.
If you are interested in marketing your business, you can learn more about my inbound marketing services here. This is the most effective way to generate solid leads and build a loyal customer base.
It is not for the impatient business owner. If that matches your description, you will need a BIG budget to buy Google AdWords, hire an SEO firm, write & distribute sales collateral like brochures, showcase your wares at events and exhibition halls, generate cold calls to lists, place ads in local/regional/national publications, hire a sales team and distribute flyers to door knobs, to name a few.
Content Matters! is out! http://t.co/m9x9Afk7Qx Stories via @marciacoffey@AlenaCheina@EmployeeRxSaver
— Shamayim (@Shamayim2) June 13, 2015
– By Marcia Coffey
Find Marcia on Google+
Call Marcia at 561.906.3436.