SEO secrets?
Posted by admin - 30/10/08 at 08:10:06 pm
People often ask “How can my website be #1 in Google?”. The truth is if your website isn’t the number one resource for that keyword it likely isn’t going to be #1 in Google. It’s no shock that people naturally look for the easy way out and in the process waste a lot of time, money and bandwidth looking for SEO secrets.
When it comes down to it there are only 3 things you need to do to improve your search engine rankings, and they aren’t secrets at all…
1. Good Design.
At MODassic Marketing you’ll notice that we file our SEO services under DESIGN. This is because the only “tips and tricks” that really matter for SEO are all basics of good web design and not really tricks at all. Some basic design elements such as how your pages are laid out, where and how images and text are used and how your pages interlink play a very important role in how both users and search engines view your site. Good design is all about communication… properly communicating and directing your visitors (and robots) to the information they are looking for.
2. Develop content.
Face it, Google is smarter than you. If you are looking to trick people into clicking on your website by tricking Google into thinking your site is important, you will lose. Instead of wasting your time looking for SEO tricks and secrets simply develop interesting and relevant content on your website so that your site offers something for people searching for your keywords. Content and information is what people are Googling for.
3. Linking.
Ask anyone who the best company in their industry is. They will say they are. Then ask them who the #2 company in their industry is. The company who shows up as #2 on most peoples list is the best company. That is exactly why linking plays such a large part in determining search engine rankings. If you say your site is important it doesn’t matter, but if a lot of people say your site is important than it probably is. There’s no “trick” to link building so steer clear from link buying campaigns. Simple online networking with complementary businesses, consumers, and blogs will greatly increase your number of links. If you have content of interest, like we mentioned in step 2, people will link to it.
So how do I do that?
With these 3 things in mind we strongly advise against wasting your money hiring “most” SEO companies. This isn’t because we don’t believe in SEO, in fact we provide SEO services for most of our clients. It’s that SEO is simpler than most SEO companies make it out to be and they generally are ripping off their clients while providing no real value to the client’s site.
We understand that small business owners are busy running their business and don’t always have the time or direction for developing content, online networking and don’t know if their site’s design is helping or hurting. That is why we provide simple SEO in the form of content development, design and PR. At MODassic Marketing we help you develop and publish content and get your content out there through social networking and PR and make sure your site’s design is properly communicating with both users and robots.
Research vs. Creative
Posted by admin - 21/10/08 at 01:10:56 pmWhat if the STOP sign was designed by the modern marketing department?
(found this on Peter Shankman’s blog awhile back).
http://view.break.com/542649 – Watch more free videos
Pretty entertaining video… and really shows (and exaggerates) the importance of a balanced marketing plan. All research and no creativity will fail and vis versa. This is why at MODassic we stress the importance of balance and provide both the analytics of a marketing department and the creative muscle of an ad agency all from once source!
10 YEARS OF GOOGLE
Posted by admin - 17/10/08 at 03:10:09 pm
In honor of Google’s 10th birthday they have brought back their oldest available index, from January of 2001. It’s just like hopping into a time machine, heading back to 2001 and then wasting your afternoon on Google.
Since we provide web design and search engine optimization services for our clients, it has been interesting to look back and check the rankings for certain keywords and view the old archive versions of web sites. Web 1.0 in its finest.
How did you rank for your keywords back in 2001?
For only 7 years it’s surprising how many products and web sites didn’t exist yet.
In 2001 an iPOD was just a futuristic, video game system where users would climb inside a pod, put on their 3D glasses and head phones and battle their friends. And like all the great sci-fi movies they somehow managed to make the future look really old.
In addition Google has also provided an interactive timeline that details the evolution of Google as well as year-end lists of the most frequent queries for each year.
Some interesting things to take note of:
Number one, on a branding tip, take note of Google’s consistency. Consistency is one of the most important characteristics a brand can have. Your image is your most important asset so you should define and protect it. Too many small businesses use different fonts on everything they produce, abuse their logo and use different shades of their company colors. Blue is blue right? Wrong. At MODassic we can’t stress this enough to our clients and is why we develop brand guidelines for all our branding clients, for FREE!
Number two, Britney Spears is always at the top of year end search results.
IS EMAIL DEAD?
Posted by admin - 11/10/08 at 05:10:01 pm
I was recently helping a 14-year-old member of my family and a couple of their friends upload a video they shot to YouTube. They filmed a pretty funny parody of a MTV show and asked me to help them edit the video. As we were creating their YouTube account it came time to enter their email address to which they replied, “I don’t know”.
Now, this wasn’t my technologically challenged grandmother who had battled throughout the 90’s with a VCR that “didn’t work” and has since been battling computers and printers that just don’t seem work for her. No, this was a 14 year old. Who owns a blackberry. Who is constantly sending text messages and instant messaging their friends. They didn’t know their email addresses???? It wasn’t that they couldn’t remember their email password, they couldn’t remember their email address. I was shocked.
In today’s business world we can’t imagine a world before email. I have no idea how anybody ever got a single thing accomplished prior to the internet and email. I know technology is changing so fast, but are we actually moving on from the email?
The way people use the internet is definitely being reinvented and maybe email will eventually go the way of the pager. Everything is becoming faster and more mobile. Software is now becoming a service that you simply subscribe to and log in to rather than download. Information is now stored in “clouds” rather than locally.
I guess it makes sense. Today’s youth is much more ingrained in this technology than we are. They grew up with computers and the internet. Why would they send an email and wait for someone to login and check their email when they can just IM them or send a text message or send out a tweet on twitter?
Email certainly still plays a major role in today’s world and I don’t see it going away completely, but perhaps the speed of communication is evolving so fast that eventually email will be viewed as slow and archaic.
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