SEO Logo - What Should It Tell Your Customer?

You might have already noticed (after my color branding, SEO Slogans and branding outside SEO) that I’m particularly interested in overall SEO niche marketing and branding recently - well, that’s all because I am just starting promoting my brand and service and so the topic seems new and exciting to me. Today I am going to share my thoughts and observations on SEO logos and banners.

Now what is the purpose of a company logo?

• It gives visual representation of a company service/product (and thus accounts for its positive associations);
• It establishes a brand identity (making it unique and memorable).

Most important logo features are:

• trustworthy (<= professional);
• catchy/memorable (<= unique);
• associative/symbolic (=> conveying feelings, and sending a message…);
• matching the overall design;
• clean and functional.

How Can SEO Be Graphically Described?

Read on: SEO Logo - What Should It Tell Your Customer?

Website Design, Branding | 18 Comments » | 2008-04-18

I Am So Sorry, My Dear Readers

That won’t be a long post. I just need to apologize to my beloved readers for keeping silence for about two weeks. I hate to say this, but I got too sick to work or even think (can you imagine this? I’ve been desperately waiting for spring to come and as soon as it does, I am getting so ill, that I am unable to enjoy it). Grrr… I must say, I hate being ill (well, not surprisingly, huh?) and I usually don’t allow myself to but once I am, that’s most often something terrible.

So please bear with me. I promise to get some great posts ready for you within this week.

Blogging | 11 Comments » | 2008-04-15

FireFox Plugins To Make Your Life Easier

While at SEJ I posted a list of my favorite SEO plugins, here I decided to follow-up with the list of extensions that save time and let you work more effectively:

Tools	Most useful feature	How useful I consider the tool
Foxmarks	Bookmarks synchronizer
Wizz RSS	RSS and Atom news reader for FF
Co.mments	Track any blog conversation
Read later	Quickly save a page for further reference
Morning Coffee	Schedule any site(s) to open on a set day
Page Saver	Easily capture a page
Google notebook	save and share notes
InFormEnter	help in form filling

Read on: FireFox Plugins To Make Your Life Easier

SEO Tools | 11 Comments » | 2008-03-27

Search in Search: Raising Panic and What Else Google Has to Say

This post is [again] courtesy of my fellow Mozzer - Rishil

A couple of weeks ago – we published Search Within a Search – How This Could Mean Bad News for Your Site. It seems that brands and marketers have realized how teleportation can harm a business brand, not just in organic, but paid search too. The idea has been picked up in popular press – the NY times managed to get some interesting quotes from various brand owners and specialists.

Pinny Gniwisch, vice president for marketing of Ice.com, would protest the use of the site in site search bar if it appeared for the sites he is representing “This is essentially giving the customer a way to leave a search for your site”. It seems that Amazon.com has already protested and Google has honored their wish to get rid of the SiS box under their brand results.

But what the interesting point that we picked up from the article was Google’s hint that not only is the process not directly manageable by a brand, but if it de-activates the feature – there are slim chances of getting it functioning again:

According to a Google spokeswoman, the company has honored such requests from “a couple” of unnamed businesses. These companies, however, may not be able to reverse their decisions.

“So we ask them to try it out and see if they want it removed,” the spokeswoman said. “We think it could be a really useful feature.” (quote from the NY article, emphasis ours). Read on: Search in Search: Raising Panic and What Else Google Has to Say

Search Engines | 13 Comments » | 2008-03-24

Learning Web Design From Movie Posters

A movie poster usually determines whether or not I am going to watch the trailer or even go to the cinema. A website design is usually a crucial factor in making the decision whether a visitor is going to look through headlines and stay for some time to read the article or review the products or services. A movie poster is usually meant to:

• call to action - i.e. encourage to watch a movie;
• set expectations = find its targeted audience (e.g. people who prefer comedies to horror movies);
• establish the brand - i.e. make a movie name recognizable;
• start the buzz (e.g. “Have you seen that movie poster?“);

All in all, just the same what we want a website design to do. By studying the techniques behind creating a movie poster, we can learn some essential web design principles:

1. Don’t underestimate the power of colors. Dark neutral hues usually mean that’s a horror movie or thriller while bright colors always set expectations of an amusing comedy (same goes about a website design - color choice may determine what a visitor will first think about, his feelings and actions):

Read on: Learning Web Design From Movie Posters

Website Design, Branding | 10 Comments » |

Organizing Your Keyword Modifiers (SEJ)

I just posted an article on SEJ describing different ways to organize your keyword list to make the most of your thematic search modifiers. Throughout the post I’ve been describing the necessity of exploring your keyword modifiers to:

• to get more organic search traffic;
• to wisely optimize your internal site structure;
• to know how to interlink;
• to get full control of your long tail strategy;
• to better understand your visitor’s behaviour;
• to get more ideas what to write about.

Here is the short post outline for you: Read on: Organizing Your Keyword Modifiers (SEJ)

On-Page SEO, SEO Copywriting | 7 Comments » | 2008-03-17

How To Optimize Images For Search Engines, Social Media and People

Optimize your images for search engines:

• Keywords in alt text, text around the image, image name, page title;
• Preferred image formatting - jpg;
• Separate SE accessible image folder;
• Image freshness. (SEW suggests re-uploading your images to keep them fresh);
• Enabled image search option at Google webmaster tool.
• Reasonable image file size (see the discussion at WW)
• Limited number of images per page;
• Popular and reliable photo sharing hosting (e.g. Flickr is reported to help in Yahoo! image optimization).

Optimize your images for social media:

• (obvious) use really great images to give your readers another reason to spread the word;
• (to get Digg thumbnailed submission) stick to jpg format and make sure the images can be resized to (or already are) 160×120 or 160×160 pixels (Unless you have an image that can be resized that way Digg will not offer the submitter a thumbnail to go with the post).

Read on: How To Optimize Images For Search Engines, Social Media and People

Usability, Social Media Marketing, On-Page SEO | 21 Comments » | 2008-03-15