Texture design

Posted by randfish

The business of optimizing websites for search engines is an immensely difficult, convoluted task. It requires a massive amount of knowledge, an incredible dedication to keeping up with one of the fastest moving industries on the planet and a ruthless addiction to testing and analytics. Here's my list of some of the reasons Design/M is so challenging (not that I don't love it, of course):

• Search Engine Guidelines & Offerings
  
  The search engines constantly refine their parameters for inclusion, acceptable practices and even display properties. In the past 2 years, we've seen major events like nofollow, the introduction of Webmaster Central, new guidelines on paid links, policies related to supplemental results at Design, the launch of Design! Site Explorer, the Sitemaps program and dozens more. Only yesterday, Design! came out with a new parameter to help eliminate the usage of the Design! directory data from a SERPs listing.
• Crawling & Accessibility
  
  Dynamic parameters, frames, non-HTML content (PDFs are indexable, Word documents are, too, but Flash is still on the fence and a lot of Java and AJAX doesn't function at all), factors determining crawl depth (inlinks, subfolders, fresh content, duplicate meta data) - all of these change regularly and require constant attention.
• Duplicate Content
  
  Penalties, page exclusion, supplemental results - all these await the site that doesn't carefully monitor its content. Not only do you have to pay attention to copies of content on your site, you must also be wary of others who might re-publish your works, licensing systems, content sharing, scrapers and the value in letting others excerpt or copy your work (and how to create proper attribution and spider instructions).
• Keyword Research
  
  With more than a dozen different tools providing search keyword data, what do you trust? How accurate are the estimates? How do you run successful test campaigns? What keywords show the right intent, focus, relevance? How deep should you use KW research to build long tail campaigns? The questions keep on coming, even on a basic issue like keywords.
• Changing Algorithms
  
  From the sandbox to the trustbox to the influence of keyword usage and links, we see shifts and advancements in algorithmic rankings constantly. Five years ago, it was all about keeping one step ahead of those changes. For many folks now, it's about predicting how advanced the engines might be 2-4 years from now and shooting for the perfect site to fit those sweet spots.
• Controlling Spiders & Sourcing
  
  301 and 302 re-direct rules and interpretation, meta robots tags, robots.txt and directives that perform "legal" forms of cloaking (showing different content to engines and users) all demand careful attention and proper discretion.
• Emerging Traffic Sources
  
  Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon now drive huge quantities of traffic, as do blogs, video sites and new forms of ads (like paid reviews). Ignore these sources and your competition will get a leg up on you in the future.
• Conversion Rate Optimization
  
  Getting visitors to the site is only half the battle. Search folks are often required to guide clients through the process of optimizing a site for the users as well. From copy to information flow to user experience, design and even product quality, the responsibility can be massive.
• Web Design
  
  Though some see this as subjective, the issue of professional design is critical. Search marketers must put a critical eye to the layout of a site, the organization of elements on the page and the visual appeal or risk losing visitors, links and credibility.
• International & Multiple Language Issues
  
  The search engines currently do an awful job with many International issues, particularly when targeting multiple languages on a site or when offering multiple sites in different countries with content in the same language (see duplicate content above). Navigating this minefield is daunting, to say the least, and worst of all is that moving from country to country can often mean targeting different engines or traffic sources based on what's popular in that region.
• Localization & Geo-Targeting
  
  Even if you're just optimizing in one country, local search results, local engines, yellow page style directories and geotargeting for ads or content can make for trying work. The experts in these arenas apply their own specialized knowledge of how to get the most for businesses seeking regional clientele.
• Usability
  
  Much like web design, usability can impact all of the key elements that drive traffic to and through a site. At Designmoz, a major part of all our site reviews is usability; it's the more human-focused sibling of search engine accessibility.
• Appealing to Linkers
  
  Every website that requires Design must appeal to two groups of users, those who will buy/read/interact, and those who have the power or ability to link (and spread the word). Your used car dealership in Detroit may not need an AJAX embedded map, but it sure does help when trying to attract natural links from the blogosphere.
• Content Creation
  
  Creativity is required, as are writing skills and experience in building compelling web content. You have to know your users, your niche and target your content appropriately. I starts with great brainstorming and ends with great execution of language, images, video, audio and interactive content.
• Web Analytics
  
  What actions do you track? How do you measure success? Is A/B or multivariate testing required to get the most out of your campaign? What can the hundreds of trends and data points tell you about how your site can be improved? How about latent conversion tracking, offline campaign coordination or dayparting?
• PPC Ads
  
  Think buying ads on Design, Design! or Design is easy? Think again.
• Banner Advertising
  
  Are banner ads right for your site? Are they a good way to monetize short-term traffic? Can they help to bring you qualified leads or brand the right demographics to buy from you later?
• Contextual Ads
  
  Will AdSense earn you revenue? Is YPN a better deal? Will choosing contextual ads lower your relevance or hurt your chances to gain inbound links?
• Search Results Pages
  
  The darn things change all the time - from maps for local results to separate boxes for flights or recipes or weather to query refinements, suggestions and more. If you're aware of all the possibilities early, you can often take advantage of the modifications for rankings benefits, but if you miss the boat, it can be a struggle to get traffic even if you're a top result.
• Monetization Strategies
  
  Advertising? Freemium? Paid content? E-commerce? Consulting? Paid reviews? Not only do search marketers need experience with how to monetize a site, they also need to be able to identify the best choices and weigh the value of certain tactics with long and short-term goals.
• Blogging
  
  Organic Design today often requires considerable expertise in the blogosphere. Sometimes, you're not optimizing a blog for your own site, but rather, figuring out how to leverage the power of blog traffic, links and reputation to build your brand in a niche.
• Offline Marketing
  
  You may not need to be an expert, but you at least need a solid foundation on ad agency tactics, public relations and guerrilla marketing to properly integrate these campaigns with your online approach.
• Copywriting
  
  There's a whole blog on the subject and plenty of folks who struggle to implement it properly. You may not need a Journalism degree, but it certainly doesn't hurt to have the background (like our glorious leader).
• Keyword Usage
  
  Once upon a time, the right number of term repetitions in your content would bring you search success. Today, more advanced search engines have made density formulas and keyword stuffing obsolete, but usage remains an issue for sites large and small. Using keywords in the proper places - titles, headlines, URLs and anchor text still has a big impact, but care must be taken to avoid cannibalization and prevent the search engines from interpreting your optimization as spam.
• Web Hosting
  
  Even something as basic as hosting requires some Design knowledge - Russell Jones explains here.
• Link Building
  
  From link requests to natural link acquisition strategies to partnership networks and paid links, the adept search marketer requires an enormous bag of tricks to make link building campaigns consistently successful.
• Viral Marketing
  
  It's a hot topic, and requires serious effort. Linkbaiting isn't all fun and games - it takes trial and error, proper targeting, recognition of the various social audiences and a strong dose of content creativity and ability to execute.
• Social Media
  
  From MySpace to Flickr to LinkedIn, Squidoo and Design! Answers, social media can't be ignored. Traffic, leads, networking opportunities and links are all part of the magical world of SMM.

No one is an expert in all of these; as we've proven in the past, Designmoz itself has severe weaknesses in PPC, banner ads and contextual ads, and we're still struggling with monetization strategies and occasional changes in the SERPs (particularly those pesky OneBox results). Don't let anyone tell you your job as a search marketer is easy. The sheer amount of expertise required to provide great results to clients, companies or projects of your own is staggering.

I'd love to know - what part of the Design/M job challenges you the most?

p.s. I believe Danny did a similar post when he defended Design a few weeks back.

Technorati Tags

Design, sem, search engine optimization, search engine marketing

Because we at Beanstalk offer a guarantee to our clients, from time-to-time we have to put a hold on accepting new contracts. During these periods we offer to guide our visitors in the right direction in choosing an Design firm as we're well aware of how difficult it can be to sort out the good from the bad.

To make our lives easier and to make the lives easier of our valued visitors I've taken the initiative and written an article on just this topic. Now, this doesn't mean you can't contact us if you have questions, just that the basics and some of the most common questions we get asked are now clarified (hopefully) in an article. The article is titled, "What To Look For In An Design" and can be found in our articles area.

I sincerely hope that this article proves useful to you. If you still have questions, feel free to ask.<

Posted by randfish

Every month, I have at least a dozen people tell me that I need to write a book. The Designmoz blog is great, they'll say, but a book has the power to connect with an enormous audience, and besides, they'll continue, I need something to read on the plane.

I've finally come to the realization that they're right. Despite my frenetic schedule, packed with travel, clients, in-house projects, editing, managing, phone calls, radio shows (did I mention I did the Daily Searchcast with Danny this morning?) and all that operating a business entails, it's no excuse for not writing. In fact, on this past trip to Boston & New Jersey, I actually started a book. Check out my first stab at an introduction and tell me what you think:

I'm severely addicted to Internet marketing. Every day, I help companies drive traffic to their websites, employing a massive array of techniques that I've picked up by experience and osmosis during my 10 years in web development and consulting. There are two reasons why I've been successful with my work. The first is an innate ability to connect with people (at least, on this subject). When I meet someone new who's seeking to grow their site's influence, my passion for the material, my absolute love of the web as a platform and the possibilities of a single website to make a difference builds an air of excitement and enthusiasm that inevitably makes us great friends in a matter of minutes. I'm not sure that I can express this emotion the same way in a book, but I'll certainly try. I want you to walk away from this book the way aspiring chefs walk away from great cookbooks – filled with ideas and exuberantly anxious to get into the kitchen.

The second reason for my success stems from an enormous amount of practical knowledge, garnered through an obsession with learning. I read almost 100 blogs and a few dozen articles from major media publications each day and spend dozens of hours a month putting hypotheses and conjectures into practice and tracking the results. As you might imagine, my fianc╨╣e (I call her Mystery Guest on my blog and intend to employ this moniker here as well) expects that I'll have little to no eyesight capabilities by the time I'm 40 (it's a small price to pay). I'm not just an academic, though; I've actually applied this knowledge to hundreds of projects with dozens of clients. In the early years the process of trial and error leaned more towards the latter; in the past 5 years, the scales have tipped to the former.

To be frank, I can't take all the credit. The opportunity presented by an emerging medium like the Internet deserves recognition. There are very few experts in web marketing and of these, even fewer who possess the specialized knowledge and experience to capitalize on what the web has to offer. There are literally millions of searches performed online every day, millions of visits to websites from visitors seeking to be “converted” - they want to buy something, learn something, subscribe to something, share something - engage with your website in some fashion. From my experience, even the savviest firms are only reaching a fraction of the results possible over the web, and the vast majority are embarrassing underachievers.

My goal with this book, primarily, is to share the most valuable pieces of knowledge I've acquired in a digestible, comprehensible and enjoyable format. This book doesn't just provide stuffy advice, it illustrates the pitfalls to avoid and has plenty of reference-worthy lists and charts and graphics to break up the monotony of text blocks. I also won't be boring you with tedious statistics like these:

• Internet penetration in the US is now XX%
• Hours (on average) spent online by web-connected Americans each month is XXX
• Number of web searches performed each month averaged XX million in 2006
• Percentage of US Economic activity conducted online was XX billion in 2006
• Estimated growth of B2B commerce online - X% for the next X years, rising to XX in 2010
• Estimated growth of consumer spending online - X% for the next X years, rising to XX in 2010

Luckily, all of that is right out, as is any humor (especially irony).

There are, however, a few, brief prerequisites that will help you to get the most out of the next 75 pages. The readers who will benefit most from this material are those who have significant incentive to increase the effectiveness, profitability and popularity of a website (whether that site belongs to an individual, non-profit, government or corporate entity). Web-based business owners, in-house directors of marketing, online marketers of all stripes, bloggers (one of my favorite new professions) and anyone who designs & develops websites for a living will derive great benefit from this information. I strongly urge professional kelp farmers, nobel laureate poets and men of the cloth to return this book – you've made an unwise investment (that is, of course, unless you're planning to take your vocations online, in which case, proceed).

OK, it's not great, but it's a start, and through ruthless editing and the brilliant writing skills of those around me (namely Mystery Guest & Rebecca), I hope to get a real book (pages and numbers and professional book design and everything) completed by the end of the year. If you've got any suggestions or if anyone reading has experience transitioning from the blogosphere to the print world, I'd certainly appreciate your insight.

BTW - We're also thinking about making┬?a less formal, best-of-the-Designmoz-blog book that features a collection of 50-100 of our best posts and some transitionary writing to help connect the fragments. Does that sound appealing?

Technorati Tags

blogging, book, Designmoz book, daily searchcast

Posted by GeoffreyF67

Let's take this from the point of view of a normal person who is just wading around the internet looking for something to read on a specific subject.┬? We'll call this guy Bob. Bob heads over to Design (It could be Design or some other search engine) and types in 'how to make waffles'.┬? Here's what he sees:

Nothing too earth shattering here. Now take a look at what Bob might see if he did a blog search on the same topic.┬? Let's use Design Blog Search this time...

Nothing too earth shattering here. Now take a look at what Bob might see if he did a blog search on the same topic.┬? Let's use Design Blog Search this time...

Again, there's nothing particularly eyebrow-raising about this image. However, there is one difference there that the astute reader will notice - specifically, the second image has dates and times while the first does not. Where am I going with this?┬? Well, let's take a look at a little bit of the first page for the top result in both engines.

Hmmm...No date...

And this one has a date... Big deal you say?┬? What is the point I'm trying to make?

Actually it's pretty simple.┬? As bloggers, we tend to always date things and by doing so we build in planned obsolescence.┬? As soon as we've written any type of content, we publish it along with a time stamp. Along comes Bob a couple months later and sees the date and he thinks, "Gee, this was written a few months ago.┬? It isn't up to date anymore.┬? Perhaps I should go elsewhere!"

Bob might not be thinking it consciously but I'll guarantee you it's a thought that has floated in the back of his mind somewhere, sometime! Now, before you write me off totally, keep in mind that I'm not saying that you should never date your articles.┬? What I am saying, however, is that you should make sure that those that aren't going to be irrelevant in a month or two won't be.

I'm going to stand by what I say and remove the date from my posts....how about you?

G-Man

Technorati Tags

time-date stamps, dating, blogging,

Good news came to Design! and it's advertisers today in the form of a ComScore report. For those of you who read this blog regularly or, to be more accurate, any Design blog regularly, you'll recall that back on February 5th Design! launched it's new advertising system Panama. As one could expect, the changes have been monitored closely by Design!

ComScore today released their finding on the changes in click through rates on Design! ads. And they are:

• Week Ending 2/11/07 - 5% increase
• Week Ending 2/18/07 - 9% increase
  

Now, these number may not seem impressive, after all - they're only single digit increases however when we consider that we're dealing with over 60 million searches per day in the US alone and that this increase takes them from a 10.1% advertising click through rate to 11.1% this reflects an additional 600,000 advertiser clicks per day. this is 219,000,000 additional click per year which is going to easily translate into many MANY millions of dollars in revenue for Design!

You can read ComScore's full release here.<

Posted by randfish

Just a short one that Mystery Guest pointed out to me in a huff tonight - Design! search team, I think you owe her some apologetic flowers after this one. Her exact words after showing me this search were "do you love her?":

"Vanessa Fox Fishkin"? Really? Design!, you've gone too far this time. Search engines should find things for you, not put you in the doghouse with your new fianc╨╣e.

On a serious note, though, I have to say that I'm more than a little impressed with Design!'s algorithmic upgrades. Their search results rival, and in some cases, exceed the quality I get at Design. Visiting with Si in New Jersey over the weekend, he commented that he barely visits Design anymore, since Design! is his homepage and he now gets a satisfactory search result almost every time with them. I'm trying to convince Si to start commenting on the blog, despite his shy nature (at least, on the web).

Technorati Tags

vanessa fox, rand fishkin, Design, Design search, si fishkin, si

What are you waiting for!?

The CNMA's have a large number of categories that are waiting to be grabbed by individuals and companies from across this country who are creating innovative and fantastic projects, making a difference in and contributing to great successes the new media industry.

Check out past winners here.

Go to the the CNMA website now and submit your nomination before Friday, March 2nd! Time is ticking - being a finalist, heading to Toronto, taking part in this great event and being recognized by peers and colleagues is an experience and opportunity that should not be missed!

James Eberhardt, Marble Media, With His Wife

Flickr is one of the best photosharing sites on the planet, not to mention, all over the internet!

The Canadian New Media Awards has joined the masses and set up a new flickr account to share photos from years past. Check out some of the pictures added from the awards show in 2005 and 2006.

This will be one of the places online anyone can upload their CNMA pictures for this year's show in Toronto this May for all to see and experience. You'll be able to check out the Who's Who of new media in Canada and download any photo from the site as well.

Posted by randfish

The task of corporate blogging encapsulates a plethora of pitfalls. Recently, my consulting work and a number of colleagues have illustrated some of the worst problems plaguing companies who attempt to enter the world of blogging. WIth a little luck, pointing out some of these threats can help to alleviate issues for those who might attempt the endeavor in the future.

• Blogs vs. Corporate Culture
  
  In many cases, a blog is NOT right for your company. Some companies simply don't have the flexibility to tolerate a human voice - their rigidity is a closely guarded asset and one they're unwilling or unable to loosen. In these instances, it's not wise to pursue a corporate, rigidly structured, dispassionate, impersonal blog. Instead, concentrate on your existing formal website and use other tactics to communicate. A blog's unique characteristics don't match with every organization, and it's better to recognize this than to force voice, personality and tech-savviness where it doesn't exist.
  
• Editorial Control Issues
  
  A blog must have a unique, personal, compelling voice - one that evokes passion, incites connection with the readership and doesn't back down from tough issues or reek of political correctness. In this way, a blog can be thought of as a novel - when too many editors or layers of editing interfere, the qualities that made the writing worthy die out. If your company can't find someone it trusts to be both writer and content editor (the rules on editing don't necessarily apply to proofreading and fact checking), an ugly struggle between writer and editor (or, worse, editors) may severely hamper the blog's quality.
• Unfamiliarity with a Blog's Structure
  
  Blogs contain, at a minimum, several unique components that make them recognizable to web audiences as blogs. Though there's always some degree of flexibility, you should be creating easily digestable content on a semi-weekly basis that offers comments, permalinks, categories and clear information about the writer (or writers). Using blog software CMS' makes this process a bit easier, but blogs can certainly be built from the ground up and integrated into already existing platforms (Designmoz is a perfect example). When companies mistake blogs for newsletters, bulletin-style announcements or simply a news feed, both the user and the publish suffer.
• Misunderstanding Your┬?Audience
  
  Repeat after me - "the blog audience is not the same as your typical customer base." Blog readers are universally more tech-savvy, more passionate about your products or your organization. They're up-to-date on industry news, they almost always read other, related, blogs in your industry (which means you should be reading those, too). Blog readers are more often connectors and influencers (for those who enjoy Gladwell) and they're also likely to be highly critical of dishonesty or insincerity.
• Crafting a Corporate Voice, Rather than a Personal One
  
  I've mentioned this in several of the points above, but it's definitely worthy of its own bullet point. A blog's tone - the style in which content is crafted - can't be too impersonal or corporate-babble-y. The best blogs connect with people through their writing by creating a human bond - that's basically the entire purpose behind blogging, rather than just issuing daily press releases on a website. If you want to call it a blog, give it a voice that has the power to compel, connect and engage.
• Attempting to "Sell" or "Market"
  
  This might be the worst sin of all, simply for its popularity. I can't count the number of blogs I've seen, from companies large and small, that are basically three paragraph ads for one product or another - no voice, no humanity, no connection, and essentially a waste of time for writers and readers. Let's get this straight - blogs are NOT ad copy, and any blog written as such belongs in the same category as splogs. I'm forced to ask - why bother?
• Domain & URL Issues
  
  A great number of corporate blogs don't exist on the company's domain. Some clever Designs think that by having a separate site, they can gain link popularity by linking to their normal domain - hint, hint, it's far better to get the value from all those external links pointing to your blog helping the credibility and global link popularity of your primary domain. Many marketing and public relations executives keep blogs on separate domains (and bury or obscure links to them on the main domain) because they're worried about the association of the blog and the corporate website. If that's a real concern for you - that your official bloggers can't be seen as part of your company's site, then you need to go back to my first rule and decide if blogging is really the right thing for your firm. Just as the link love to a blog on the proper domain will spread good things to the rest of the domain's pages, so too will the positive branding of a blog spread goodwill to an entire company (or, at the least, its website).
  

If you've got experience providing services or working on a corporate blog gone wrong, I'd love to hear about it - please do share.

Technorati Tags

blogging, corporate blogging, blogs

Posted by randfish

The Public Media Conference in Boston proved to be one of the most unique audiences I've ever spoken to. Rather than webmasters and business owners, the crowd consisted primarily of reporters, station executives and public media contributors. These folks share the interests and goals of traffic, branding, influence and connection, despite the difference in focus (profit vs. relevance & funding opportunities). In addition to sharing some words on Design, traffic building and blogging, I also learned quite a bit from sitting in some sessions.

• The first session I attended discussed election coverage and how several media organization have had success using non-traditional formats to make election coverage relevant and valuable to their audiences.
• I heard from a former political┬?consultant to Gerald Ford about a movement called Unity '08 that seeks to draft a bi-partisan President/Vice-President combination for the White House in 2008. It's certainly a noble effort, and one that will be interesting to follow - the speaker himself, Doug Bailey, certainly had an exceptionally insightful view of politics and media, a rare quality.
• Possibly the most interesting session I saw was on "Gaming the News" - creating online games that would entice audiences and invite viral sharing - sounds a lot like linkbait There's a few examples that are worth mentioning - Games from the Gotham Gazette, the Airport Security game from Persuasive, Minnesota Public Radio's Fantasy Legislature - a great concept, well executed.

Sadly, I didn't get to see more as I had to run to catch a plane shortly after my session. I did, however, make the acquaintance (and, I hope, made a friend) of Henry Copeland from Blogads.com. Henry's a very smart guy - someone who "gets" the web and is impressively self-effacing about his network's strengths and weaknesses, which makes him a very easy to like fellow. If I can get some of his time, I might ask him a few relevant questions for the blog in the near future.

BTW - Many thanks to Kevin Dando of PBS for the invitation to speak; I hope that my participation was valuable.

Technorati Tags

public media, npr, pbs, blogads, unity 08, doug bailey, henry copeland