Posts by Joy Olivia Miller

Joy Olivia Miller

About the author | Joy Olivia Miller

Joy is the creative director at TBH Creative and uses her expertise to help clients use their online communications to build, design, and manage their brands. She likes to blog about content marketing in all its forms, the latest trends in digital marketing, and share tools with readers.

6 signs fixing a website can’t wait (plus 4 things you can do to get the best results from a redesign)

6 symptoms of a failing website: Learn the warning signs you might have a site stuck in the digital dark ages

I’ve seen A Knight’s Tale probably three dozen times since it came out. I just love the part when the heroes say, “You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you absolutely have been found wanting” to the villain after he lost the joust. I can’t help but think back to those words whenever I visit a site that’s been left to rot. That’s because—by refusing to invest in fixing a website that clearly needs help—it’s clear that business has “absolutely been found wanting.”

Allowing an outdated, broken website to exist is basically saying to everyone in the online world that you don’t care about your users. And, that’s a real shame for a lot of reasons, but the biggest of which is that a truly great website can “change your stars.” When your site’s essentially broken, your customers are going to struggle to use it. And, here’s more bad news: A wonky website also hurts other digital marketing efforts. But more on that in a little bit.

After a couple of decades working in web design, I find it easy to spot an underperforming website because it’s my job. But if this isn’t your world, it can be easy to miss subtle signs that your website is on its way to becoming a digital graveyard. That’s why, with this article, I’m covering what you can do to review to “weigh and measure” your site like a pro to figure out if it’s time to prioritize budgeting money for a strategic redesign project. And, if you read all the way to the end, I’ll share specific things you can do when working with a web design agency to make sure you build the best possible redesigned site.

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QR codes and marketing: What you need to know before using quick-response codes in advertising

Example in McDonalds window of a qr code for marketing

Have you ever used a loupe? That handy magnifier was my secret weapon for spotting the best photo on contact sheets frequently at the start of my career. Then, about 20 years ago, freelancers I worked with started to submit photos digitally from photoshoot assignments, and I retired my loupe, using Photoshop’s zoom feature for snap selection instead. That’s how things usually go, with new technologies replacing outdated ones—except, of course, when it comes to QR codes and marketing. That story goes a little differently.

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10 tricks and tools for developing blog content ideas

Illustration of business man sitting in lightbulb coming up with blog content ideas

Blogs have been around for 30 years. Originally an online diary, the blog is now a professional tool for building brand awareness, converting leads, engaging customers, and increasing SEO results. Nine out of 10 content marketers rely on blogs, and more than two million blog entries are posted every day. Where do all of those […]

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7 link building for SEO mistakes (and what to do instead)

link building mistakes for SEO illustration

What zoo animal does SEO love the most? An inbound lynx. That punny joke might be a groaner, but inbound links are no laughing matter, especially when it comes to search engine optimization success. And—now that the volume of web content is growing astronomically on a daily basis as content creators leverage AI tools to expand resources online faster than ever—backlink acquisition is top of mind for many website managers. So, how can you avoid link building mistakes for SEO when working to acquire high-quality backlinks?

It might feel quite impossible if you’ve just dipped your toes into link building for your website, even if you’ve got a strong grasp of SEO basics. But investing time and energy into getting links from reputable sites is worth it for this main reason:

Content with a significant number of links from authoritative sites tends to get rewarded with higher placement in search engine result pages (SERPs)

Take Google’s famous PageRank Algorithm. For over twenty years, it has used links back to a webpage as a quality signal for rankin

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