Posted on July 19, 2018 by admin

Benefits of Managed IT Services Explained

Regardless of the size of your company, you will need an IT, Information Technology, infrastructure if you are to function within the 21^st century. Qualified IT personnel are essential as the services they provide can save small, mid-sized, and large sized owners. Many times, small and mid-sized companies attempt to perform many IT tasks, roles, and functions in-house. This however can result in poor performance, systems failure, downtime, and even in some cases business failure. Below is a non-exhaustive list of services that a typical managed IT company performs for clients. These skills require

In order to save money many small to mid-sized business owner attempt to perform many IT tasks, roles and functions in-house. The result is poor performance, systems failure, downtime and even bankruptcy. Below is a non-exhaustive list of services required by a typical business and which require highly-skilled staff to complete.

Increasing the longevity and uptime of equipment
Monitoring staff productivity
Software upgrades, licensing, and installation
Spam filtering
Securing systems and data
Patch management and updates
Monitoring and ensuring server reliability
Routine disaster recovery drills and tests
Hardware procurements, monitoring, testing, and repair
Network management
Email server setup and management
Spyware detection and removal
Creating secure systems and complete system backups
Server builds, maintenance, upgrades, and installation

Each of the above tasks require highly-trained IT personnel and technical equipment in order to execute. When business owners skirt around this issue, attempting to do all these tasks in-house, will quickly find themselves facing the results that come from incompetent IT repairs.

Outsourced Managed IT Services

The solution to all most company’s IT problems is to hire the services of a managed IT company. Out sourcing professional IT consultants often saves companies time and money. It is important to have once company that is in charge of all of your IT needs. This ensures that accurate records are kept, your goals and objectives are known, and you have 24/7 access to professional IT service consultants.

Companies looking for the best IT solution will hire an outsource IT services company. Not only will it save your company money it decreases downtime and increases the longevity of your technology as maintenance and upkeep is done on a schedule unique to your needs.

Learn more about Creative Programs and Systems, CPS, and the IT solutions they provide including IT consulting, computer consulting, network consulting, networking, server installation, IT disaster recovery, computer repair, virus removal, malware removal, computer tune ups, data backup systems, computer troubleshooting, structured cabling, low voltage wiring, website design, graphic design, logo design, website hosting, search engine placement, iphone app programming, android app programming, and custom programming at www.cpsmi.com. To contact one of our IT experts, call 810.224.5252 today or via email at info@cpsmi.com.

Posted on July 11, 2018 by admin

Optimizing Your Blog Posts for SEO Purposes

Blogging is one of the most effective ways of interacting with one’s audience. Regardless of niche, your fan base, prospects, or existing customers and clients need a continuous flow of refresher information about you, your products and services. Research shows businesses and organizations that are constantly engaged with their base do a better job of not only keeping those customers but of staying competitive.

When it comes to interactivity, blogging serves as one of the most effective strategies. This shows in the sheer number of blogs that go are launched every day. But with so much content and competition, how does your blog actually stand out? The answer is SEO (search engine optimization). According to information database Wikipedia, SEO “is the process of affecting the online visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine’s unpaid results is often referred to as organic results.

There are many wonderful blogs out there. An even greater number stay “undiscovered” and only get a trickle of visitors. This is because their blog posts are not optimized for SEO purposes. In other words, the blogger did a great job of writing but forgot to prep the post for their target audience and the search engines. In this article, we’ll discuss actual steps a blogger can take to optimize their blog post for SEO purposes:

Content uniqueness

This cannot be over-emphasized. Search engines reward content that is unique. Copying content from other sites or engaging in plagiarism can not only have legal repercussions, it can result in the search engines ignoring that particular post.

Keyword research

A lot of bloggers write around the topics they’re either passionate or knowledgeable about. While this is great, they forget that the search engines are scientific tools which rely on complex algorithms to locate relevant content based on targeted keywords. A great strategy would be to first conduct keyword research to determine the most trafficked keywords in that niche then preparing content around those keywords. One of the best free keyword research tools includes the Google keyword planner tool. Others such as Spyfu avail more data for a fee.

Entering correct Metadata

Once the blog post has been posted, the next step would be to ensure the search engines can find it. This step involves inputting the proper metadata to the post. Blogging platforms such as WordPress come with add-ons or plugins that allow the blogger to attach keywords to the page title, description and post itself. Additionally, bloggers can tag their posts with the relevant keywords.

Linking structure

In order to determine how well to rank a post, search engines check for inbound and outbound links. Outbound links point to other similar authority sites. Search engines also check for the internal linking structure within the site itself. This means checking whether the post links to other relevant posts within the same site. Many bloggers overlook this. Inbound links are also important. They are used by the search engines to determine the page authority of that post and thus how well it will rank.

Images and videos

According to the search engines, a good blog post will have relevant images and preferably a video. It is recommended that the blogger embed an image or video within the content. Blogging platforms such as WordPress make this relatively easy. The image should also be tagged with the relevant “alt” text. Embedding a popular video from YouTube can help give the post more authority and thus better rankings.

Social media

Search engines have also been known to check for social signals. Because of the importance they attach to social media, they check whether there are any mentions or links to the post in the popular social media and social bookmarking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn, and Mix.

Posted on July 5, 2018 by admin

Common Problems with The Latest Windows 10 Update

Computer consulting is a term used by someone who offers a wide range of computer services to individuals and businesses. Computer repair is one of the more common of all of the services that consultants perform. Computer repairs can be as simple as replacing or installing new hardware, but it can also include more in-depth repairs like software or OS issues.

A computer consultant may do work for both commercial businesses and also residential computer repair depending on the way they set up their business. The operating system of a computer frequently causes a number of issues that people have with their computers and Windows 10 is the most current version of Microsoft Windows that comes preloaded.

Unfortunately, like most of the Microsoft Windows operating systems over the years, Windows 10 has had its own share of problems that people have complained about. These common problems probably make up a large portion of the computer repair requests. We came up with a list of the top ten common problems with the latest Windows 10 update

Website Mobile Friendly

Every website should also look amazing on all types of platforms, which means that the custom web design that a person chooses should work well on both mobile and desktop platforms. After all, in this day and age, more and more people are browsing the internet on their mobile devices or smaller tablets. If a website is not easy to use on those platforms, a person is not going to want to stay on the site for too long. Not being mobile friendly can affect the search engine rankings of any website even more than a website that isn’t user friendly on a desktop platform.

The Correct Amount Of Information On Home Page

A custom web design is also necessary to ensure that a person has the proper amount of content on their first page, so that it ranks accordingly for search engine placement. A website that has a photograph and a few words is going to rank a lot lower than a custom designed website that has enough pertinent information available to get it higher in the search engine rankings.

Custom Website For SEO Benefits

The bottom line is that search engine rankings incorporate a lot of the smaller details and it is easier to place all those small details on a custom web design than on a website that is ready for a person to fill in the blanks with their own information.

Posted on June 21, 2018 by admin

Website Trends For 2018

Search engine optimization was, still is, and will continue to unequivocally be one of the most effective ways that a business can use to ensure that their online marketing initiative and presence remains relevant. Search engine marketing is a growing practice that gives organic channels the proper attention that all businesses can’t afford to ignore as far as using Google or other search engines to push quality over quantity for users.

With an emphasis on a more experience-centric web, businesses are more aware of user behavior trends, which has forced them to create novel experiences through various product and content innovation. Therefore, for your website to do what you intended it for and for it to be functional, but most importantly, convert visitors, the following are website design trends that may help you accomplish this goal:

Mobile-Friendly Website Design

Mobile browsing has become more popular than desktop, therefore, minimizing the menu to fit mobile screens as well as using responsive designs, as well as including a viewport meta tag and condensing your font and button sizes will make your website more mobile-friendly.

Using Animated or Particle Backgrounds

Using eye-catching animation or movement as part of your background as opposed to the traditional photos or videos is huge this year, particle animation being the most popular choices in website design. It livens up your dull site and often static background to give it a 3D feel that provides users with an exciting experience while on your website.

Bold Typography

Your typography of choice can be an effective tool to use that will both garner attention and pull visitors in. The oversized, interactive, and visible text is the first thing that users see, and it is a simple website design that will not only provide a clear message, but also an easy navigation that leads your visitors exactly where you want them to be and see.

Bold Color Schemes

Bold colors are known to communicate with a region of the brain known as the hypothalamus, which has a direct influence on our mood, emotion, behavior, and user interaction. Utilizing brighter tones in web design is more likely to entice users to interact with content and respond to calls to action (CTA).

Grid-Based Web Design

Utilizing a grid-based website design allows for a clean, well-organized design and user-friendly navigation, which basically portrays balance and symmetrical layout that users are likely to interact longer with.

Posted on June 13, 2018 by admin

The Many Benefits of Outsourcing Your Company’s IT

Outsourcing is becoming more common nowadays, especially with employees choosing to branch out on their own and work for more than one company at a time. This trend is quite popular in corporate IT, where technology changes in the blink of an eye, so if you are looking to outsource anything, that is the place to start.

Here are some of the many benefits of outsourcing your company’s IT:

Save Money

You, like many other business owners, like to save money when you can, as it allows you to increase profits and put extra money back into growing your business. When you outsource your managed IT services, you will not need to worry about paying for the training that your employees would continuously need to keep current with technology. You will also see savings from not needing to pay additional employee benefits, which can include medical and paid time off.

Efficiency is Increased

Professional IT workers have much more knowledge than any employee that you can hire, unless you are willing to pay at least two times the amount of money as you would for an outsourced employee and decide to hire for in-house services. This additional knowledge and experience that an outsourced IT employee has will allow them to complete the work faster than any of your regular employees.

Availability

When a large corporate IT job needs to be done, it is always better to have it completed when you are closed for business. Not too many regular employees are going to want to give up their non-working hours to complete a project, but an outsourced IT employee will not think twice about it. The work can get finished when your business is closed, and you will be up and running and ready to continue making money by the start of business the next day.

Flexibility in Amount of Employees

You have control over when you outsource your corporate IT projects, which means that you can have one contractor working on IT issues when they arise or four people working on replacing your entire operating system. This flexibility will allow you to save money when possible, instead of paying for employees that you do not need every day of the year.

Use Your Employees Wisely

Since everyone is not a technological wizard, it will obviously take them longer to solve IT issues that arise. By outsourcing this type of work, you can utilize the skills your employees already have and allow them to perfect them even further. If you didn’t outsource the IT work, your employees’ other roles may suffer, because they are focusing on work that they do not excel in.

Everyone needs managed IT services, but that doesn’t mean that you need to have a dedicated employee in house. Instead, you can choose to outsource your corporate IT services, and reap the many benefits that comes with that option.

Posted on June 6, 2018 by admin

Custom App Programming Vs. Platform App Development

Anyone that tells you that they aren’t dependent on technology to fulfill virtually every purpose in their daily life is probably lying. It is quite evident that software development technology is rapidly growing and it’s not pausing for a breather anytime soon because the demand for it is on the increase. In fact, almost every electronic device, machine, or equipment that we use is a by-product of some software development.

Each app development company: custom or platform follows a series of steps known as the software development life cycle. This includes planning, analysis, design, development & implementation, testing & deployment and maintenance. Each of these steps is vital for the success of app development. Once the software pass through all the stages without any hiccups, then the apps can be placed in the market place for our daily use.

Custom app programing entails designing software applications for a specific user or group to address their needs. For example, customized software development can be tailored to a single or specific entity such as iPhone app development, to be used by that company for which it was designed, in this case iPhone. Companies that require custom app programming work done for them are in control of how the app is configured, which can be anything from the look, feel, functionality, dashboards, etc. to match their businesses’ unique needs and operations.

When it comes to platform app development, there are businesses that need a space where they can not only manage multiple projects within the organization in one central place, they need a platform where they can also monitor their team. A platform app can also have features where a business can upload vital documents within the organization. Such an app can also allow them to keep track of their customers, including tracking the performance of the team and the time they spend on their tasks. A platform app is designed to be an app that can be used across multiple platforms.

Designing a custom application with an organization’s needs in mind can increase levels of productivity because it provides features that an off-the-shelf software probably wouldn’t. Also, some of mobile apps we use every day have changed the way we conduct business and enabled us to engage in more interesting and innovative ways than ever before. Additionally, the Android app development platform is open source, dynamic and collectively enriching, which simplifies the job of the users and can be used by multiple people in ways that are dynamic to their needs.

Posted on May 31, 2018May 31, 2018 by admin

Growing Your Business with Custom App Development

When it comes to helping your company grow it is very important that you give your employees the best tools in order to do their job in the most effective way. To accomplish this, you have only two real options buy cookie cutter off the shelf software or custom-made software that is developed specifically for your business.

While both have good points, it is truly the custom option that provides your business with the absolute best opportunity to get the most bang for your buck. Custom made programs offer a lot of benefits and we have included five for this article.

Top 5 benefits of using customs programs for your business

Custom programs are designed to work then you need them to work:

Unlike off the shelf software, all custom-made programs are made to work exactly like you need to.

Reduced number of problems:

When you have the custom software, you are less likely to have issues with it running properly, as your requirements are going to usually be addressed when the software is being developed.

Cost is normally lower:

When you compare the cost of off the shelf software and custom-made software you might be surprised to know that sometimes custom software is cheaper because it will not often contain extra features that would add extra cost when developing it.

Ability to keep business processes safe:

The fact that your software is custom made, no one else is able to gain access to the software and possible steal your company secrets.

Unequaled technical support:

Generally, when you have your business software custom made you will have full access to the team of software developers that actually created your software. This isn’t always the case with off the shelf software.

Why should you have iPhone Apps for your business?

When it comes to having mobile phone apps for your business you must always look into iPhone app programming and only hire a developer that is able to create apps for your business that is able to run on Apple’s iOS operating system. With so many people using Apple iPhones these days it is highly recommended that you always have any mobile apps that you are wanting to be made for iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch’s.

If you do not have business apps developed for your business that is compatible with iPhones, you would be seriously restricting the ability of your employees to carry out some of the tasks that they are responsible for doing on a daily basis.

Why should you have Android Apps for your business?

The Google Android operating system is used by more of the smartphone handset makers and tablet makers in the world. So, if the smartphones that the majority of your employees use to run on the Google Android OS and you fail to have any of your business apps designed to run on Android OS you would be severely limiting what your employees would be able to. So, when it comes to business software, you want to be sure that Android App development is always taken into consideration.

Posted on May 23, 2018 by admin

7 Reasons Why Your Company’s Website Needs Professional Search Engine Optimization

In order to get your website coming up in the first few pages in Google when someone searches for services or products your company provides, you’ll need to have it optimized. These are certain keywords that will get your company’s website to the top of Google’s searches so that customers find you faster. Here are reasons why your company’s website needs professional SEO services:

Increased Reach online customers

Online shopping is huge right now and in order to get potential customers to your website, you’ll need the right keywords on your site so that when they enter one into a search engine, your website will be one of the first to come up.

Increased Organic Traffic

By optimizing your website, you will be able to increase your sites organic traffic, which is the number of visitors that come to your page without having to spend money on advertising. To do this, you’ll need to know what keywords to use for best search engine optimization.

Increased Return on Investment

By hiring SEO professionals, you’ll be able to get more eyes on your website, which will mean more ROI.

Increased Advantage Over Competition

To have an advantage over your competitors, a professional SEO company will make sure your website is SEO optimized so that you rank before your competitors.

Increased Online Presence

With the help of an SEO specialist, you’ll have a stronger online presence and become a preferred brand when users are looking for services or products that you offer. The right SEO help will put you front and center in the eyes of consumers and helps your brand become more credible.

Professional Results

Even though you might attempt to do your site’s SEO yourself, you might not know how to properly do it which is why you’re not getting the results you want. It’s best to have a professional SEO company do it since they know the ins and outs of all things SEO related.

Dedicated Online Marketing

The right search engine placement is important for your business and having a professional do all your SEO needs is like having your company’s very own dedicated SEO person on staff.

Posted on April 25, 2018 by admin

The Importance of a User-Friendly Website Design

Your website is one of your company’s biggest asset. It’s the one place where anyone from across the globe can come across and see what your company has to offer. A website is essential for business these days and the importance of that website rests upon its design. The average person has a short attention span and with so much competition on the Web, your site needs to have an eye-catching design and be user friendly to really grab someone’s attention enough to make customers navigate to other pages.

This means it’s practically essential that a company’s website provides an easy-to-use and positive experience for customers. A user-friendly website will convince potential customers to navigate into the site away from the initial landing page. If your website doesn’t feature a user-friendly design, your web-sites bounce rate will be high, meaning clients will be looking elsewhere.

What does a user-friendly website consist of?

It’s a combination of things like easy-to-use navigation tools, readability, load time, and mobile-optimization. These are all aimed at allowing users to efficiently and quickly navigate a website and locate what they want or need to find without any challenges or delays.

Readability

A site’s readability refers to it’s easy scan, meaning they can easily and quickly look for a keyword to see an answer to a question they have about your brand, site, offerings, etc. To achieve this, it’s best to use spacing, bullets, short paragraphs and subheadings, as well as play close attention as to what fonts you use.

Navigation

Navigation is how easy it is to move around in your site, providing organized content that and menus so that they can find what they need. Organized menus help users go through your site to see what it’s, how to purchase or contact you for more information.

Mobile-Optimization

And since many users are using their mobile phones it is important your site is mobile friendly and optimized for use on a smart device. Mobile-optimization refers to where your website ranks within mobile search engines. Much of where your site will land on a mobile search engine has to do with how is easy your website is to see while on a tablet or smartphone. If your company’s site takes too long to load it is not considered user friendly. A websites mobile upload should take no more than five seconds. Anything over this and your site needs to be updated.