Posted On June 23rd, 2012 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under Business, Marketing, 2
It used to be that the average person thought of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as a series of tricks that a professional expert used to trick Google into ranking their site above a competitors'.
And for the most part, that was true. There's the old definition of a SEO being either black hat, someone employing cheap nasty tricks that got huge results for the short term, and white hat, someone focusing on quality content and link building which takes longer but gets long-term results.
In 2011 Google made black hats pretty well redundant for good, and even some strategies that the quality SEO's utilized has become less relevant. Google has updated their search algorithms with something called "Panda" which takes into account ratings from real human beings visiting a website. More than ever, this means that Google's criteria for ranking a website is based off of the following:
-
How trustworthy does the site feel?
-
How easy is it to use and navigate?
-
How engaging is the content?
What has become much less important are things like meta tags, headings and other technical tricks that were meant to assist Google's bots in indexing and caching the website.
The other big thing that affects SEO is social media. In the past, the amount of links to a website from a social network like Twitter or Facebook was not counted vary highly. However now social engagement is one of the most effective ways of showing Google that real humans care about a website.
So instead of a SEO strategy consisting of planning what keywords appear in title and meta tags, headings and anchor tags, it has become more imperative that the plan focuses on compelling, unique content, a well-designed interface and letting people know about it through a variety of social channels.
This is a change for the better, and will hopefully result in a better internet, where the #1 result for a keyword will be based off of the things we humans care about.
Posted On April 17th, 2012 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under Business, 2
Email is 70% useless.
As someone unfortunately known in our office for writing 'Rackigrams', that is, pointed emails that are specifically designed to let someone know they're an a-hole, I have learned something:
Email should never be used to express anger when you want to preserve a relationship. It causes hurt feelings and needless drama, particularly because to the reader, you sound about 10 times angrier over email than in person (unless you're Steve Jobs apparently).
In an email, writing "I'm disappointed in your services" sounds to the reader like "I'M DISAPPOINTED IN YOUR FACE, YOU S.O.B". Talking in person however, we use inflection in our voice and soften our language with things like "Sort of", "a little bit", "pretty bad". If you aren't worrying about severing the relationship, then great. Go to town.
Now in a lot of cases, email can be great. Particularly when you want to send a message that has multiple components, broken out in headings, in a numbered list, and you want to offer up this soliloquy with no interruptions, no counter-arguments, questions or even expressions of agreement that get in the way of communicated your multi-facteted point, and keeping a handy record of the exchange. Just be sure that you are overly polite to compensate for the lack of inflection.
If you need to tell someone they're an idiot, do it over the phone or in person. Yes, it may require working up some nerve. A bit of uncomfortableness. But it's worth it.
Two incidents over the past month involved someone sending a nasty email and me responding in a nasty manner. In a way the results were achieved, but at the expense of good relationships.
On the other hand, two other occasions involved me being upset or annoyed at someone and waiting until I could speak with them. One was a client who implied in an email that something was our fault when it had nothing to do with us. I wanted to blast him, but instead I waited, called him, and kindly explained it to him. Some words were exchanged, but overall the tone was friendly and professional. Our relationship is good and we both understand each others points.
The other occasion was just in the last week. A trusted colleague sent an email to me and some other team members that sounded apathetic, flippant and irresponsible. Everyone who read it was understandably pissed. I felt my fingers reaching for the keyboard, ready to carefully craft a world-famous Rackigram, but then I relented.
We had a meeting booked in a couple of days anyways so I waited until after the meeting to discuss the email. As it turns out, our colleague had written it quickly and used incorrect language to explain his position. When he explained in person it all made sense and was much more inline with his character. Crises averted, problem solved, everyone was happy.
I hate to think of how it would of turned out if I had emailed him.
Posted On January 23rd, 2012 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under Headspace News, Design, Business, Marketing, 0
Yesterday I attended Podcamp Halifax, which is a great annual, free event full of presentations about the web and social media. It's a great place to connect with people face-to-face that you know from Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, and learn new things that can help you with your business.
Much kudo's to the folks who put it on including Craig Moore from Spider Video. To those who came, it was great meeting you and I hope to you next year (or sooner)
I was privileged to put on a presentation based on Aarron Walter's book, Designing For Emotion. It attracted a good sized crowd and seemed to resonate with the people in attendance. Here were some mentions on Twitter:
HarmonicDev Harmonic Internet
GREAT talks yesterday by @brightwhite @kyleracki @SpiderVideo and keynote speaker @julien #podcamphfx and big kudos to the event organizers!
HStu Hannah
Designing for Emotion session with @kyleracki is packed and has tons of great ideas about creating human websites. #PodCampHalifax
22 Jan
TheRedSparrow Carly Murray
Design for emotion is a full room, very exciting! #podcamphfx
22 Jan
RegisDudley Regis Dudley
Add an element of pleasure for people using the website. Make boring tasks fun. Via @kyleracki #PodCampHFX
22 Jan
mattrogers222 Matt Rogers
Love the analogy usable=edible. Need to make web experiences not only usable but pleasurable #designforemotion #podcamphfx
22 Jan
I've also included my presentation in a PDF form for those who attended if they'd like it for reference.
Posted On November 3rd, 2011 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under Business, Marketing, 0
I was looking at a website today and noticed a link to an online application for payroll. Great, I thought. An alternative to ADP. I reviewed their site and found the sign up form to learn about a special offer.
I took the time to fill out the form, which included fields asking how many employees I have, and what I currently use for payroll, and within 30 seconds I received a call from the sales agent. Everything okay so far. But he made several mistakes that lost him the sale in the end:
Uncomfortable Silence
The sales agent seemed like he wanted me to start the conversation when he was the one who called me. After some ums, ahs, and stutters, he asked me what I wanted. He should have already known what I wanted since I filled out a form to learn about a special offer!
Making me repeat myself
The rep then asked how many employees I had and what I currently use for payroll. It wasn’t hard for me to repeat what I already typed in the form, but the point is that I already told them and he should have had that info in front of him already. It just made me start to lose confidence.
He then asked how I found the site and I told him it was through an affiliate site - which he already should have known since the URL and banner on the site showed the online affiliate!
Put me on hold
Finally, he asked me to hold and I waited on the line for about 1 minute hearing shuffling and muffled talking, before hearing music kick in. At that point I hung up. He called about a minute later but by that point I was busy and didn’t care any more.
You would think that these days any company would think of this stuff as common sense what-not-to-do, but amazingly this company is probably wondering why they are having trouble closing deals when the answer is right in front of them - an inefficient sales process and inexperienced sales agents.
I’m sure there are lessons here we all can learn from when it comes to selling for our own companies.
Next Page