The results that can be achieved through Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) are hard to dispute. From recent efforts, I have seen a client’s Google ranking move from page 30 to page one for a targeted search phrase. In the early days of SEO – utilising the correct keywords in your metatags, key search phrases in your copy and more recently creating reciprocal links with suppliers, partners and relevant industry groups were ways to boost your search rankings in an attempt to increase the number and quality of web traffic via search engines to your site. As search engines are becoming more sophisticated in the way that they deliver search results, many of the tried and tested tricks of the SEO trade are going out the window but I see this as an opportunity for the industry.
Explore our historical blog articles for nuggets of wisdom (and random musings) from our crew.
Many of you may only just be getting settled into using IE7 or Internet Explorer 7. As web designers it’s an ever increasing issue as to what standard to match when designing a site. Previous versions of the IE have not always met the latest standards set in the industry but many consumers have yet to make the leap. Now we have a new challenge….IE8!
Marketing, like any industry, goes through trends and phases. Over the past few years the ‘in-thing’ has been Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Independent dedicated SEO companies have popped up everywhere, and the majority of businesses have now finally caught onto the trend. For a while there, it seemed to be the magical remedy for failing websites. Cheap, easy, effective. But now – after the majority of business has caught on and people are starting to abuse it – is it still working?
Earlier this week I was discussing the advantages and disadvantages of actively and passively sending out email campaigns to customers/clients. Perhaps I need to go back a few steps to explain…
In email marketing, there are two golden rules which help to keep the industry in check, and to stop it from descending into the realm of SPAM marketing. The two governing rules are –
1. All recipients of email campaigns must give their permission to the sender to receive campaigns
2. All email campaigns are required to have an unsubscribe function…that works!
With these rules in place, there is a clear distinction between what is considered SPAM and what we would call Permission Based Marketing.
Deciding whether to use a .com or a .com.au domain suffix is one of the questions we have to field from clients who are making their first foray into the World Wide Web.
Most client are savvy enough to know that .com suffixes are predominantly found on the end of global URLs as well as sites from USA, while the .com.au is strictly reserved for Australian websites.
In 2007 Andy Berndt resigned from Ogilvy & Mather, New York to head up Google’s new ‘Creative Lab’. The new unit is described as a lab focusing on ‘innovation’ and dedicated to finding ways advertisers, agencies and entertainment companies can intersect.
“For some years I have been afflicted with the belief that flight is possible to man. My disease has increased in severity and I feel that it will soon cost me an increased amount of money if not my life,”
so wrote Wilbur Wright in the year 1900. Some three years later, 17th December 1903, on the wind swept sandy beaches of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Wilbur and his brother Orvill flew the world’s first powered aeroplane. It lasted a scant twelve seconds and covered just one hundred and twenty feet. The Wright brothers had arrived and so had the age of flight, despite their detractors, the unbelieving, the doubters, the abominable ‘no’ men.