Mar
9th
Search Engine Optimization, or “Organic Search” results as defined in Part 1 of this series, is all the things you can do to advance your website in the regular unpaid listings on Google, or other search engines.
There are many things that your site designer can do to help your site be as optimized as possible. But AT LEAST 50% of your search engine optimization is up to you, I think it’s more like 75%. Here are some of the basic things we do to make sure your site is optimized:
- build sites in DIVs with CSS
- include a keyword relevant, reasonable title for each page
- include text links to all main pages of the site
- include a site map
- place ALT tags on all images
You don’t have to understand what the heck we just said. There are many more that we do but won’t go into here. Those are just some of the basics.
Honestly, that paragraph is far less important than this one. Here are some of the things that YOU can do to improve your SEO that will outweigh the things mentioned above:
- UPDATE YOUR SITE FREQUENTLY
- Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, whatever Social Network you use – post updates there about your site and provide links
- UPDATE YOUR SITE FREQUENTLY
- Ask friends with sites, or companies that provide complimentary but not competing services to link to you
- UPDATE YOUR SITE FREQUENTLY
All of this stuff is explained further in the Blog Post – Committing to Your Website, take a look at it.
Tags: SEM, SEO, Your Website
Posted in Online Presence, Search Engine Optimization, Tips & Techniques |
Mar
3rd
Developing concepts and ideas for a website design, icon or logo, or any type of graphic development can seem like an overwhelming task at times. No matter how many websites you have created or logos you’ve developed, the creative process is always something that can take a lot out of you. True, there are days when this process seems to come as easily and naturally as walking or breathing, but those days come about less often then I would care to admit. This is where sketching, for me, enters the picture (no pun intended). Sketching out ideas and concepts helps me quickly sift throughout the ideas trapped inside my head. I must admit, I do spend a bit too much time in this phase of the project because of my love for it.
Layout sketches for Zoowee Music. Developed layout for container that would hold Artist profile, album list, songs, etc.
Thanks to an extremely talented artistic mother, I have been sketching obsessively since I was young. Thankfully web and graphic design gives me an outlet to put this obsession to use. Sketching out layouts for websites is essential to my process, but I really enjoy icon and graphic development. This is where the pen and pencil really helps me plan out how an objects or graphics will end up being rendered on the computer.
Zoowee Icon Development
Sketch for Zoowee Dashboard Graphics. Depicting the monitoring and managment of your Zoowee Bubbles.
Launch Icon Development
Rocky Horton helped me discover the graph paper moleskin (I know, I know its typical designer to carry this around but it fits so well into my bag and they are so easy to keep organized) which has really helped with sketches for websites and logos. Its a wonder I didn’t make this connection sooner (living in a pixel based world).
Layout sketch for Addicted to the Outdoors
I’ll post a follow-up to this with more of my sketches once I get my sketch books together. This just happens to be the sketchbook sitting in front of me at the time, but I will sift through the boxes I have at home and post some more detailed images and more on my process in my next post.
Tags: development, Process, Sketch
Posted in Design, Level 2 Design, Process |
Mar
2nd
Call me back. Good Shepherd.
There are a lot of lengthy Google Voice transcripts that I have gotten that are in fact funnier than this one, but I keep coming back to this one. It makes me laugh.
For more check out http://gvWTF.com
Tags: funny, Google Voice Transcript
Posted in Uncategorized |
Feb
22nd
Recently, I was given the opportunity by Peavine Baptist Church and Score International to be part of a relief trip to Haiti. We were given a window of about five hours to decide if we would be a part, and I really felt that I was to go and help out in anyway I could. I thought I was going to Haiti to help and change them, but I was the one who was changed.
I won’t go into detail about the trip, but will tell you some experiences. Most of the people there live in makeshift houses and have few to no amenities. Most of the individuals were without and in need before the earthquake. I did see houses that had collapsed and devastation, but what I will bring back from this trip is that the children there have nothing, but they are always happy.
When we would walk down the street, children would run out just to wave and smile at you. It was amazing. We were involved in several clean up efforts at an orphanage, school, church, clinic, and the house of the missionaries(Haiti Gospel Mission). We were able to hand out food to about a thousand people one morning, which was an awesome site to see. As I am standing there in the ninety degree heat trying to keep order in this massive line, I am totally overcome with chills. The day before, tickets were handed out in the villages surrounding the clinic, which would allow individuals to receive the food. Some didn’t have tickets, some tried to rush the line, and one even tried to create a fake ticket. It hit me right in the face. What is going to happen when we stand before the Almighty? Will we have tickets? Will someone say to you, “why didn’t you tell me where to get a ticket,” as some did. Do you think you have the right ticket, but in the end it is a false one? It was an incredible experience. I don’t know if I did anything to change the country, but being in Haiti sure changed me.
Tags: Haiti, Inspiration, On Mission, Volunteering
Posted in Level 2 Design |
Feb
20th
Search Engine Optimization vs Search Engine Marketing (SEO vs SEM)
Both are valuable and both are part of your web presence. In this series we will define what they are, how they can help, and how to utilize them.
Search Engine Optimization is defined as all the things you can do on your site, and for your site to make it more appealing and indexable by Search engines (google, yahoo, bing, etc.). For our purposes we will use Google in referencing search engines, since it is by far the most prominent and widely used (boasting over 2-3 billion searches a day)
Search Engine Marketing traffic that you pay for and control directly. This is essentially purchasing a link to your site, and then controlling exactly who sees it. You can specify your purchased ad to appear for people who search for something specific. For example, if you sell shelves, you can specify that your ad will appear on googles paid listing when people type in “cabinet shelves chattanooga” or “closet shelves tennessee”.
Below are graphics depicting paid listings and regular or “organic” listings.
Some people say that SEO encompasses SEM and some will argue the opposite. They are both valuable to your overall web presence though.
Tags: Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engines, SEM, SEO
Posted in Search Engine Optimization |
Jan
29th
Wednesday I attended a seminar put on by Grass Roots Marketing out of Knoxville, TN. The seminar was actually about search engines and social networks, but the thing that they stressed the most, and businesses should understand the most is this: If you know your audience, you can easily and effectively market your product.
What does it mean to “Know your audience”?
1. You know who they are: Males, ages 22-30.
2. You know what they like: Outdoors, sports, action movies.
3. You know where they are: nationwide in suburbs
4. You know their behaviors: they buy jerseys, electronics, and mt. dew
Grassroots discussed this in relation to their behavior online, and what users gravitate towards. You can either market to people’s tendencies using google ad words and specifying your audience, and you can follow statistics on your site to see what pages people are visiting the most, what they are clicking on, where they are coming from, and where they are going.
Knowing your audience doesn’t give you a good product, but knowing your audience allows a good product to reach the people it is made for.
Tags: Audience, Marketing
Posted in Tips & Techniques |
Dec
14th
I know this is old news, but we have to deal with IE and CSS issues all the time. I was using a technique that I called the “red-headed step child method,” which uses the CSS child selector, but it seems that IE has changed something that kept it from working. So I’ve figured it out again. Here is a sample:
.pricing {margin:9px auto;}
html>/**/body .pricing{margin-top:15px; margin-bottom:15px;}
With the above, IE will pick up the first statement. Whatever you need to change for the other browsers, you use the html>/**/body selector. IE will not pick up this statement with the /**/ included. Let me know what you think about this fix and what techniques you use.
Tags: CSS, IE CSS Hack
Posted in Uncategorized |
Dec
8th
So Google voice is fantastic. It takes voicemail to a new level sending you transcripts through text message of the voicemail. It definitely has its quirks though. Some text messages are very clear and accurate, while some are just down right hilarious. Here is Volume 1 of what will be a weekly series of hilarious google voice message transcripts:
Hey Nate, this is bill. Leslie dot filters there course East is asleep. We couldn’t figure out the sheets of paper sorts. So if y’all want to put that in that you can put together and bring it in there. I guess we’re fixing to go to bed but you’re welcome to business and also i got the garage kinda someone cleaned out, but the car and if you feel comfortable rather then that you can just be real careful or you can use like to the morning, but it’s knows a lot of course is beard, but if you go (*expletive) on the lease. I was on the back so I just love it doesn’t matter. We’ll try to do that breaks is since the school base cult. You know I will try to going to bed but donor site when you have a prize ready. If you want to bills goodness late, so just be a problem. So anyway, yeah, I’ll be careful and talk to you as well. Bye bye.
*Yes you read that right. Google Voice translated the vulgar to me, that was not vulgar at all when i listened to the message.
Tags: Google Voice
Posted in For Fun |
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