A FEW TIPS ON SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
Okay, this post is probably overdue. We get asked all the time… “Does LOUD! Creative provide SEO (Search Engine Optimization for you newbies) services?” Our answer is always “no.”
Well… that’s not entirely true. While we don’t market or sell SEO services per se… we certainly understand it, and we offer our knowledge on an unpaid, value-add basis to our clients. We don’t sell SEO services… simply because the average US consumer wants to get an immediate gratification for their hard-earned dollars spent. There are SEO companies that ask for thousands of dollars up front, and thousands of dollars per month, and then the client has to wait around for 6 months to decide if they’re happy with the vendor’s performance.
The truth is… providing SEO services is a risky proposition, because it requires companies to educate their markets, and they risk losing their credibility of Joe-customer doesn’t beat the other 8 billion or so website listings for the front page of Google.
So… while we don’t sell SEO services… we don’t mind sharing with you a few tips on optimizing your website. We hope this is beneficial to you and your business development efforts. Happy SEO’ing.
1. THE CODE NEEDS TO BE AS BEAUTIFUL AS THE DESIGN
When building the front end of your site, make sure to use semantic code. By using descriptive tags to structure your pages, search engines will be able to read and have a better understanding of your content. This will also make the process of styling your site much easier and cleaner.
2. KEEP YOUR KEYWORDS UNDER SUBMISSION
Keywords are the words that describe your content. It’s important to have them appear in strategic places throughout your page, such as: URL, title tag, and main heading tags. It’s also important to have it appear often in the body of the content, but not too often, which might cause your content to be penalized for keyword stuffing.
3. KEEP YOUR PAGE TITLE UNIQUE
Each page on your web site should have a title attribute, and each title should be unique. If you use the same title for every page, search engines will think that every page on your site is about the same subject.
4. YOUR IMAGES ARE IMPORTANT TOO
Make use of the alt attribute of an image to properly describe it. As smart as search engines are, they can’t see what an image looks like. Failing to this can cost you substantial traffic from image searches.
5. DON’T USE IMAGES TO REPLACE TEXT
As designers, we always want to make things look as good as possible. This means sometimes replacing ugly browser rendered heading text with a nice smooth image. Try to avoid doing this. Again, search engines can’t see the contents of an image, and this is where you should be putting your keywords.
6. SUBMIT YOUR WEBSITE TO SEARCH ENGINES
To get your site indexed in search engines in a timely manner, try getting it linked to by a popular site in a related niche. Submitting it to Google also works, but sometimes it can take several days if not weeks.
7. BUILD INCOMING LINKS
The number and quality of incoming links plays a big role in the placement of your site in search results. Having quality and unique content is a good way to get people to link to your site. Another way is to be generous with your own links.
8. KEEP THE URL CONSISTENT
When you build a site, decide from the beginning if you want to use or drop the “www”. Once you decide, stick with it. Search engines, for example, see www.webdesignledger and webdesignledger.com as two different sites and as duplicate content, which they do not like.
TOP 6 REASONS FOR UTILIZING EMAIL MARKETING
Tags: email marketing, LOUD! Creative, Marketing, Technology
More and more… businesses of all sizes are harnessing the power of email marketing. In years past, email marketing was only utilized by Fortune 100, 500… and perhaps “some” of the larger Fortune 1000 companies. Today, even the smallest local businesses are realizing the power of this great marketing vehicle.
For those of you that might still be sitting on the fence… I thought I’d share with you the top 6 benefits of email marketing.
1.) VIRAL MARKETING: Unlike web and print marketing, email marketing allows your recipients to conveniently forward your event, product or service promotion to as many additional recipients as they’d like. The “Forward To Friend” feature allows your message to penetrate a much larger market than you may have originally anticipated. Additionally, these forwarded emails have even greater credibility and marketing power, because the email was forwarded from a familiar friend, as opposed to being sent from an unwelcomed stranger, vying for attention in their inbox.
2.) INCREASED WEB TRAFFIC: An effectively designed email marketing campaign will significantly increase traffic to your website, exposing your services and products to a greater audience, and increasing your potential for new business development.
3.) COST SAVINGS: Email marketing is considerably more cost efficient than direct mail and other any form of print advertising. Email marketing reduces the need for postage and print costs… creating an enormous savings for your you and your business.
4.) TIME SAVINGS: Email marketing allows your business to get your message out faster. No printing down-time or delays at the post office. Email marketing can be scheduled to go out and reach your recipient and the precise moment you’d like.
5.) INTELLIGENT RESPONSE: Unlike many other forms of advertising, email marketing allows you to guage the response of your audience. You can measure what promotions are successful and what are not. This allows you to adjust and improve the focus of your marketing efforts.
6.) COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT: Strong community development is always good for business and brand. Email marketing is a great vehicle for offering free tips and advice in the field of your experise, announcing the philanthropic activities of your company, and providing loyalty based promotions, like discounts and special offers for your specifically targeted audience.
GOOGLE’S HEALTHY DISREGARD FOR THE IMPOSSIBLE
Tags: Business, Google, Larry Page, Leadership, Sergey Brinn, Technology
Co-founding duo of Google; Larry Page and Sergey Brin, cruised onto the stage of an academically elite high school auditorium in Israel to speak to the student body. They were met with the kind of roars and excitement that teenagers usually reserve for rock stars. Larry and Sergey entered the auditorium through a rear door… leaving behind photographers, sunglasses, a pair of hired cars with drivers, and an attractive young woman that was travelling with Sergey.
Dressed casually and pleased at their welcome, they sat down and cracked smiles. They were to speak about what they had done, how they had done it, and what their dreams were for the future. “Do you guys know the story of Google… Do you want me to tell it?” Larry asked. “Yes,” the crowd shouted.
It all began while Sergey and I were Ph.D students, studying Computer Science at Stanford University. We didn’t know exactly what we wanted to do.
I got this crazy idea that I was going to download the entire web onto my computer. I told my advisor that it would only take about a week. After about a year or so… I had some, small portion of it. The students laughed.
So optimism is important, he went on. You have to be a little silly about the goals you’re going to set. You need to have a healthy disregard for the impossible, said Page. That’s a really good phrase. You should try to do things that most people would not!
AMAZON’S 13 SUCCESS SECRETS
HighScalability.com offers some secrets to Amazon’s amazing success based on interviews and writings of early employees. You might not be running an online ecommerce business, but many of these principles apply to virtually any business. Listed below are just 13 of their responses. I hope you find this post interesting and beneficial to your business.
1. Teams are small. They are assigned authority and empowered to solve a problem as a service in anyway they see fit.
2. They work from the customer backward. Focus on value you want to deliver to the customer.
3. Force developers to focus on value delivered to the customer instead of building technology first… and then figuring how to use it.
4. Start with a press release of what features the user will see and work backwards to check that you are building something valuable.
5. There’s bound to be problems with anything that produces hype before real implementation.
6. Getting rid of the influence of the HiPPO’s, the “Highest Paid People in the Office.” This is done with techniques like A/B testing and Web Analytics. If you have a question about what you should do… code it up, let people use it, and see which alternative gives you the results you want.
7. Create a frugal culture. Amazon used doors for desks.
8. People’s side projects, the one’s they follow because they are interested, are often ones where you get the most value and innovation. Never underestimate the power of wandering where you are most interested.
9. Have a way to rollback if an update doesn’t work. Write the tools if necessary.
10. Look for three things in interviews: enthusiasm, creativity, competence. The single biggest predictor of success at Amazon.com was enthusiasm.
11. Innovation can only come from the bottom. Those closest to the problem are in the best position to solve it. any organization that depends on innovation must embrace chaos. Loyalty and obedience are not your tools.
12. Everyone must be able to experiment, learn, and iterate. Position, obedience, and tradition should hold no power. For innovation to flourish, measurement must rule.
13. Embrace innovation. In front of the whole company, Jeff Bezos would give an old Nike shoe as a “Just do it” award to those who innovated.
Please feel free to share your comments. I’m always thrilled to know if I’ve helped you, your business or organization in any way. - Brian