January 2nd, 2009 posted by Xander Becket 12:08PM | View Full Story
Whenever a client asks us why we do the things we do (especially when it comes to ranking their website on search engines), most of the time it’s unreasonably difficult to explain. Link building is especially frustrating.
To understand the importance of building links, you have to understand how Google works, and to understand how Google works you have to understand how the internet works, and to understand how the internet work…
You get the idea.
It turns out the best way to demonstrate how Google ranks pages has been staring me in the face for 6 months.
Projected U.S. Search Marketing Spending Growth (5 Year)
June 26th, 2008 posted by William Craig 12:08PM | View Full Story
Forrester Predicts Substantial Growth for Search Marketing Industry. If you’re not currently utilizing search marketing, you’re competition is probably beating you to the punch.
June 9th, 2008 posted by Shawn Farner 12:08PM | View Full Story
I thought I’d share something with a little bit of humor today. This is a rap about search engine optimization by The Poetic Prophet (also known as The SEO Rapper). The video is called, “Design Coding” and the lyrics are below the video. Enjoy! Thanks to iJustine for finding this gem and GottaQuirk for the lyrics.
Your site design, the first thing people see. It should be reflective of you and the industry. Easy to look at, with a nice navigation When they can’t find what they want it causes frustration A click costs an action. To increase the temptation Use appealing graphics that create motivation You have animation please use in moderation ‘Cos search engines can’t index the information
Display the logo of all associations Highlight your content; therefore that’s an obligation. Create clean design; you can use some decoration But try to prevent any client hesitation Every page that they click should provide an explanation Should be easy to understand like having a conversation Create a site style you can use your imagination But make sure you use correct colour combinations Do some investigation, looks at other organisations But don’t duplicate or you might face a litigation You done? Congratulations start construction
Move into production, please follow these instructions: Your photoshop functions, slice that design Do you layout with divs make sure there is a line Please don’t use tables even though they work fine When it come to indexing they give searchers a hard time Make it easy for spiders to crawl what you provide Removed font type, font colour and font size No background colours, keep your coding real neat And tag your look n feel on a separate style sheet Better results with XMl and CSS, Now you making progress, a ‘lil closer to success Describe you doc type so the browser can relate Make sure you do it great or it won’t validate
Check in all browsers, I do it directly Gotta make sure that it renders correctly Some use IE some others use flock Some use AOL, I use Firefox Title everything including links and images Don’t use italics, use emphasis Don’t use bold please use strong Cos if u use bold that’s old and wrong
You use CSS your page should load quicker Your client’s satisfied like they eating on a Snickers They stuck on ur page like you made it with a stickers And then they convert now that the real kicker
Make u a lil richer, your site a lil slicker Design and code right man I hope you get the picture What I’m telling you is true man it should be a scripture If it’s built right you’ll be the pick of the litter Everyone will wanna follow you like twitter
Competition will get bitter You will shine like glitter If you tryna grow; your company will get bigger Design and code right man can you get with it?
You have to be pretty knowledgeable about your topic, write really well, and make your blog posts look great too. On top of that, you’ve got to read, comment, and converse daily with your online peers to get into your niche.
Rough life right?
To give you some relief, here’s the stuff that’s made my blogging addiction a little more manageable. Enjoy!
Demand for your product has plummeted and revenues are falling fast.
You’re leaning on an unlikely side product to stay afloat: plastic tubes for telescopes. Turns out gun cases and telescopes are made from the same materials.
You need a way to jumpstart your telescope business. Most of your gun cases are sold through your website, but getting viable leads for telescopes would be virtually impossible at qualityfirearmcases.com.
So what should you do?
My advice: Build a whole new site for your telescope goods.
The internet isn’t like real life. In real life you have one store with one sign, and therefore usually have only one thing to sell.
People tend to think of the internet as an extension of the real world: “I have a physical business, and I need a website that reflects what my business is.”
But online it’s different. You can build a virtual store around every single one of your core competencies.
It doesn’t make sense to try to sell telescope tubes to people looking for firearm cases (or even to have the two groups of customers come to the same site), but both of your products deserve an equal shot at being sold.
If your business handles two completely different services, the best way to give each a chance at thriving is to build sites around each service.
A potential client will be confused with a site that tries to sell him gun cases and telescopes at the same time, but be delighted with one completely devoted to what he’s looking for.
May 29th, 2008 posted by Shawn Farner 12:08PM | View Full Story
Are you taking advantage of holidays?
This past Memorial Day got me thinking about how one could do a better job at bringing in holiday search traffic. For instance, tailoring content on your site for Halloween, Christmas, Valentines Day, Easter and so on could increase search engine traffic during those times.
To do so, one should take notes from blogger Darren Rowse. In this post, he talks about anticipating the influx of readers during different holidays. He suggests that, while you should write to please the search engines, you should also make your content valuable to those who loyally read your writing. I couldn’t agree more.
Memorial Day might not be a highly searched term online, but we do have another major holiday coming up soon - Independence Day. Writing content for Fourth of July search traffic may take a little imagination, but it can definitely be done. For instance, if I were writing a piece on this blog, I could perhaps write it about the top ten most patriotic web site designs. All I would have to do is slip a few keywords in, such as “Independence Day” or “Fourth of July” or “4th of July” and write around them. As an added bonus, the sites I link to might link back, and backlinks to your web site are never a bad thing.
Here’s some homework for you - try writing a small sample piece about a holiday of your choice. If you’re a big turkey fan, do it about Thanksgiving. If I were to write an example, I’d write it about how designing a web site is a lot like preparing a Thanksgiving turkey. The approaches you can take are only limited by your imagination.
