Can you ever cut corners on SEO?

So you sort of get the value of SEO but as time and budget constraints creep in, you might be considering going it alone or prioritizing some parts over others. You could cut some corners but with something that provides such measurable results, a step back and a more holistic view is usually called for...

How to Read the Minds of your Target Audience with User Personas

A website shouldn't aspire to be something that designers would love to click through—it’s to resonate with customers and address their needs. User Personas help tell you what your customers want and give a solid direction to keep your team on track.

How a Content Calendar can help you reduce stress and add years back to your life

You’ve decided that this is the year that you’re going to be active on social media. (Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.) A blog post every week - no, two blog posts! And then a month later, reality strikes backs.

Dancing with the Stars: How to gain an edge on Google with awesome customer reviews

If someone ain’t happy with your business, they aren’t going to wait for your permission to tell the world about it. Read on to get a better look at how online customer reviews can have a significant and tangible benefit for your business.

Nobody actaully notices typos, right?

Like it or not, we aren’t all spelling bee champions. And whether it’s the crush of hitting the deadline or simple carelessness, typos do happen.

The ins and outs of website maintenance

Just like the delicate inner mechanisms of a fine watch, there are a lot of different moving parts in a website. Tweak this one thing over here and that thing over there suddenly spits out an error.

4 Insanely Useful Features in Google Search Console for SEO

Repeat after me: “Data is my friend.” It helps me make decisions. The good kind of decisions, fuelled by goals and metrics.

“Hey Google, what’s the deal with voice search?”

The future is here in the form of voice search–it’s easy, it’s accessible and it’s completely overhauling the way we interact with search engines.

Why the hell do you cost so much?

It isn’t particularly hard to build a large, clunky and beautiful-but-in-a-chaotic-sort-of-way website. But that will only satisfy your goals if your only goal is to build a website.

How to tell if your website content sucks

A piece of writing needs to communicate purpose and intent to the target reader. It has something meaningful to say to its audience and demands to be read.

Are you just gambling with Google Adwords?

It’s easy to think of Google Adwords like it’s a big ‘ole slot machine. You write your ads, start a campaign and then keep putting money in, hoping that one day you’ll hit the jackpot - with success coming as a combination of persistence and a healthy dose of luck. Fortunately, there’s a lot more to digital marketing than crossing your fingers and pulling out your credit card.

What does it take to build a website that looks great and works?

How long can you expect it to take before your professional, custom-built website is ready to launch? Like, are we talking weeks? Months? …. Years?

Why Google might hate your SEO efforts (and what that means for ranking #1)

Google has learned a lot since its early days as a young and naive search engine. But since then it has grown up, learned from the mistakes and assumptions it made in the early days, and gained valuable life experience and wisdom.

How to write website content that is worth reading

Why is it often such a struggle to get content ready when building a website? Well, simply put, it’s hard. Content done right is the culmination of hours of business discovery, target audience research and brainstorming. It is written to tease and invoke the senses. It sparkles, shines and dances in its playfulness. It resolves smoothly and provokes action. If you fail to give proper attention to both content development and design, your message falls apart.

RC Design wins Community Award from Applied Arts!

We are proud to announce that our design has won in its category in the Applied Arts Community Awards!

2017 is the year of HTTPS

The web is constantly changing and improving. Last year we saw a huge trend for mobile and responsive websites. This year, the biggest trend will be securing the web.

What’s the point of Keyword Research?

Every proper search engine optimization campaign begins with keyword research. Like macaroni and cheese, they simply belong together. But what is the point of keyword research? Is there really a purpose or is it all a bunch of superfluous mumbo jumbo? This blog post endeavours to explain the ins and outs of this task.

I’ll take the #1, please! SEO Expectations vs SEO Realities

We hear the phrase “I want to be first on Google” quite often around here. And it’s certainly a good goal to have - first place in the organic search results often translates into extra traffic, extra leads and extra customers. But what different factors influence a successful SEO campaign?

Do you know how your website is performing? 4 ways to measure traffic and conversions

Quick: How many visits did your website get last month? How many of those visitors were new and how many were returning? Understanding how visitors are interacting with your website is a crucial step to improving your online performance. You can change colours, update your content and promote discounts all you want, but without this data, everything is just guesswork.

WordCamp Toronto 2016 in review

The RC Design team spent last weekend at WordCamp Toronto, a two-day event that featured presentations from innovative thinkers on everything from development to design. WordCamp also teaches about more than just code and pixels; plenty of courses also give insight into how to run an effective team and to solve your clients’ solutions.