“Guaranteed Top Search Positioning for your Business”

Consumers beware of this kind of claim!

Many of the companies that ‘specialize’ in search engine optimization would have you believe that their methods of improving your site’s ranking are highly technical and can really only be done by them—and you need to pay dearly for their expertise. Smoke and mirrors, mostly.

SEO begins simply. With some exceptions (large corporations who have spent lots of time and money on a comprehensive market and competition analysis), the first steps involve implementing focused, ‘organic’ methods (applied to the code within your site). Organic areas of focus are META content (the ‘hidden’ programming code), visible content such as headers, paragraph text, image tags, page descriptions, and site maps.

Next comes what may be the most important consideration for your ranking—inbound links. Often called ‘link popularity,’ this refers to the number of times your domain name is linked to from another domain. Remember, the search engines are smart and made smarter all the time and they can recognize if a link has relevancy to your site. So be careful about setting up your inbound links.

The necessity to strengthen your SEO with costly external approaches should only be determined after all organic SEO has been completed and evaluated using a reliable visitor tracking tool, such as Google Analytics. Depending on your type of business and competition, thorough organic optimization can often result in a first-page search rank before moving toward any external cost-based options.

If and when it is determined that extra SEO measures need to be considered, they typically involve sponsored ads, PPC (pay-per-click) advertising, banner ad placement, landing pages, and usually some cross-linking strategy.

If you are considering hiring someone to improve your search ranking, it’s important to have a basic understanding of the technologies. A reputable company will give you honest answers to some simple questions. If they are trying to sell you on an ‘external’ approach too soon, customer beware!

How do the web crawlers really see your site? What they see is exactly what determines how your site is indexed and directly relates to the ranking your site will get for a given criteria.

Here’s a great visual tool for you to see through the eyes of a spider: http://tagcrowd.com/

What’s Your USP? If you’ve studied marketing at all, you’ll recognize that acronym as Unique Selling Proposition—the one, unique feature that distinguishes your business from others.

Your USP is a clearly defined, easy to remember statement that describes how you are different (read ‘better’) than anyone else out there. It is repeated throughout all promotional efforts and key people in your organization can recite it in their sleep. The focus of your USP is outward, not inward—there should be a clear benefit to your customers. Here’s a big tip: using words like ‘quality,’ and ‘excellence’ mean nothing to a customer. Those superfluous terms are not distinguishing. Your USP speaks to a need or problem that you promise to solve.

Take a fresh look at all your promotional efforts. The one common question that all of your potential customers will have is “Why should I use them?” If you aren’t giving them an answer, they won’t.

You’ve heard the saying ‘You only have one chance to make a first impression.’

Well, have you considered how your business is making first impressions? They happen wherever you attempting to reach out to your customers or other group of interest. Website, brochure, stationery, signage. We all have experience making decisions about who to use/buy from. What influences our decision process? Say you are looking to buy a widgit. You do your research and visit 5 sites selling the widgit you want. Pricing, you find, is relatively similar among the sites. So, what factor influences your decision most? You might look for user reviews or recommendations, but how can you really trust those? Your answer most likely is the appearance of the business and the impression is gives. You pick the business that represents itself in the most professional, trustworthy manner.

Now take that personal customer-side experience and apply it to your website (or printed materials). What’s the reaction? Do you come across the way you want to? How about compared to your competition? Do you stand apart? Is your USP (more on that in a later post) evident?

Finessing your image should be a constant effort and there’s always room to improve if your goal is to make that first impression which closes the deal at the end.

Here is a good article about Google’s dominance of the search game:

How Google’s Algorithm Rules the Web

Even in a down-turned economy, people and businesses still have needs and wants. That means that some of those needs and wants likely fall into your category of business. Translation: You still have potential new customers out there!

During this time of economic strain, most businesses have budgets which are dictated by number-crunchers. Sometimes, especially for small businesses, the number-cruncher is merely another part the brain of a multi-tasking entrepreneur. The mindset is one of protection which often results in decisions that are detrimental to business growth. As budget cuts are made, advertising and marketing are right at the top.

The truth is that most businesses (this includes your competitors) are not in front of those potential new customers because of slashed budgets. So now is the time to take advantage of this opportunity. You can be the one, visible solution to your customer’s needs and wants. Get in front of them now while the time is right. Eventually, as the economy turns up (and it will), you won’t be fighting to be seen from within a dense crowd of competition. They’ll already know you!

Now is the time. Take advantage of it!

Years ago, I used to go bass fishing with a friend of mine. It was always both enjoyable and frustrating. He was a very good fisherman. He would always catch fish—and big ones! So I tried to learn from him. I would use the same bait, cast to the same areas, and come up with—usually nothing! After some time I found out what the big difference was. Presentation! He knew how to maneuver his rubber worm, crankbait, or spinner so that the fish were not only attracted, but they actively pursued it. So I watched and learned.

Graphic Design, like fishing, can achieve great results, or come up with nothing. It’s all about presentation. Not every fish, at any point in a day or season, will be tempted by a particular bait.  A good fisherman needs to know what to use at any given time, accounting for weather, time of day, time of year, condition and depth of water, and many other factors. I’ve seen a lot of incredibly visually pleasing designs by very talented and creative designers that miss the mark completely. They won’t catch any fish!

Good design must appeal to the right ‘fish.’ There is always a target audience to whom we want to appeal. They will be attracted to a particular kind of look and, as importantly, message. When done right, they will ‘bite’ ( a little Cochoranesque, I know). When done wrong, no matter how pretty or colorful your bait is, they will treat it like just another piece of something in the flow of information and then promptly forget about it.

If your message is not hooking any new customers, contact us for some help.

On behalf of graphic designers across the United States, I would like to request a portion of the Multi-Billion dollar investment that the government is forcing the tax-paying citizens to cover.

This economy, the worst since the Great Depression (in case you hadn’t heard), is affecting not only industries of mediocre importance, like financing and autos, but an industry that is critical to the backbone of our economy—Graphic Design! If there is a collapse in the Graphic Design sector of our economy, the impact will be felt deeply within every corporation that understands the power of design. Recovery will take many years, after which time many well-known brands will be distant memories.

One can only imagine the fall-out as right-brain replacements offer up their feeble concepts for communicating the most important messages to target audiences—brand identities all represented by raster-format, oval logos encircled with Arial or Times; collateral materials as 8.5×11 tri-folds with off-center content, at least 5 font families, and clip-art images—all with drop shadows and an emboss effect; web site re-designs created with Front Page (enough said!); animated gif banner-ads everywhere; generic packaging that offers an equality to all brands; and a pervasive use of existing Power Point templates. This cruel assault on the visual senses of the American public can not be allowed, not to mention the devastation it would cause on the value of each business.

It must be recognized that the trickle-down effect of a collapse in the Graphic Design market would be catastrophic. Foreign powers would strengthen while the United States is crippled! This can not be allowed and the United States government must intervene to prevent the devastation. Sufficient funds are to be funneled directly to working designers everywhere, and now is not soon enough!

Mr. Politician, hear the cries of your people! Act now!

Design Before Code or Horse Before The Cart

I’m always amazed when I meet a website owner who tells me that the first time they saw any version of a new site design was when it was shown to them as a web page. How can this process be helpful to anyone? There will, undoubtedly, be changes to be made—probably extensive and time consuming changes. The programming environment is very inflexible when it comes to big changes in the look and feel of a site.

Software developers have made it very easy to create the layout of a site prior to any actual web programming. Changes are easily and intuitively made. As long as certain guidelines are followed (pertaining to the limitations current browser capabilities), a complete and approved design can be created and then used for making the necessary parts that will become a website. Adobe Systems is the clear industry leader for such software. I use their complete Master Collection of applications. But there are other suitable applications, including many in the ever-growing open source market.

My process always involves client contribution. I show my client design concepts (usually more than one) with the invitation to offer changes and/or suggestions. Then there are other ‘checkpoints’ along the way at which I will show the progress. Ultimately, the collaborative effort can then be converted to web-ready graphics and there will be no surprises upon completion.

I would be happy to apply this process to your website. Contact me for a free consultation.

Standards, Compliance, and Accessibility

If you are the owner of a website, and you care how your site is seen, I encourage you to go through the following steps.

1. On a Windows PC, view your site using Internet Explorer version 7 (26.6% usage), version 6 (20% usage) (you will need to find a computer with IE6 because Microsoft does not allow both versions to co-exist), and Firefox (44.2% usage).
   • does everything look right?
   • turn off javascript and view again (see below)
   • if you have any Flash on your site, disable it and view again
2. On a Macintosh, view your site in Safari, Firefox, and Opera.
   • repeat the steps above

Current browser usage statistics
Current operating system usage statistics
Disable Flash in Internet Explorer 7
Disable Flash in Internet Explorer 6 (USER BE WARNED!)
Disable Javascript

The reason I encourage these steps is because any web developer is responsible for doing these things and much more. Unfortunately, there are many problems which can occur due to browser inconsistencies and user level options. Most site owners are unaware that their site may be broken when viewed within other conditions.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has assembled standards that should be followed for any website to provide a visitor with the best user experience. This includes standards that will allow the hearing and sight impaired to benefit from your content.

If you would like a no-cost evaluation of your site, contact me.