Posted On March 23rd, 2009 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under External Articles, Marketing, 0
Another great post by SEO Moz - Facebook Advertising - An Opportunity for Deep Targeting at Very Low Cost
Let’s face it - social media is the big buzz word right now. But even so, I highly endorse the view that using social media to promote a business can work as long as there is a real plan in place, not simply an “everyones doing it, so should I” approach.
In the post from SEO Moz, there is some interesting notes made about advertising on Facebook, worth checking out. Note a few excerpts:
“Facebook advertising differs from traditional paid search advertising in that instead of bidding for certain keywords that people are searching for, you are bidding on the demographics of the user. The demographic filtering technology is still in its infant stages, but even so allows you to target your ads to a specific age, sex, and even things like what school they attend or their sexual orientation. The strategies for advertising in this direction are still being developed, and the competition is still far less than you will encounter in the paid search area.
Why is this powerful?
- The demographics are far more accurate than most data (age, sex, gender preference, relationship, etc.)
- The deep data - being able to choose to market to employees of specific companies - should be an amazing tool for the right advertiser
- The keyword associations that people have with their Facebook accounts are correlated quite highly with true interests
- The “approximate reach” number gives you great insight into your target market size (even if you never place an ad)
Posted On March 19th, 2009 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under External Articles, Marketing, 7
This post is heavily based off of the vlog from SEO Moz; Whiteboard Friday - How to Get Awesome Links
At one time, SEO for most businesses meant stuffing a few keywords inside meta tags. Things have certainly changed. Among many other techniques to boost ranking, the biggest being useful, keyword rich content, link building stands as the most effective way to drive traffic to your site. The basic concept is this; your site is being linked to by another site (AKA an inbound link) - not only does this help your site because user’s are directly visiting your site from this inbound link, but Google will increase your actual search ranking depending on the quality of the link. Which leads us to…
What makes a good link?
Three main factors make a good link, in order of importance.
1) Motivation - sometimes, the best things in life are free. In this case, that cliche certainly applies. When a site links to yours because they genuinely like your content and want to promote it, this makes for a better link than one that is simply exchanged or paid for.
2) Source metrics - The higher the linking site ranks, the better it is for you. For instance, if apple.com links to you, this is more valuable than a link from your grandmother’s blog (Like any grandmother has a blog).
3) Anchor text and URL - The words that is linked actually matter. If the linking site includes keywords in their link, this will boost your ranking for said keyword. For example, if someone links to Headspace, I would probably want awesome web design company as a link instead of click here.
How do I get awesome links
Good, natural content. This is the simplest way to do it, yet the hardest to pull off. If your site has great content, the inbound links will follow.
Content Licensing If your content or application has a creative commons license, then others have to link to you when they use your content on their sites. Example, a photo from a photo blog or a widget from a development company is used in a blog, it’s only right that the blogger links to the source - you. Kind of like how I’m linking to SEO Moz for using their content in this post.
Link bait and Viral content Similar to #1 - if your website or post is so interesting, funny, amazing, or controversial—the links will follow. Viral content gets quickly spread across sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, Stumble Upon etc. The challenge is making fascinating content.
Partnerships - This is obvious. If you have a sister company, another branch, or a strategic partner, exchanging links is both good and valuable.
Social Media and Good Directories - Although most social media profiles (Linked In, Facebook etc.) have little link juice, they are still worth posting. Also, good directories like Yellow Pages, Kijiji, or another qualitative list is good (not link farms).
There are more points in the SEO Moz post, but These were the points I found most valuable. Does anyone else have other methods of obtaining awesome links?
Posted On March 17th, 2009 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under External Articles, Development, 0
This is a bit of a techie article, but still worth checking out.
Here at Headspace, we’ve been specifically commissioned by one of our clients to test and ensure a site we’re developing works well in a mobile browsing (hint, the site we’re doing has a huge Japanese audience).
Like many in the web industry, I see designing interfaces for mobile devices as a clear direction we are headed, with the proliferation of mobile usage, especially among teens. Me? I have an iPhone and I still hate browing on the web, maybe I’m an overly “mature” 25 year old. But nonetheless, many have seemed to not only tolerate, but actually enjoy tweeting, emailing and browsing with their tiny little blackberry key pads.
What do you think? Will designing apps or web pages for mobile devices become as common for businesses as having a website?
Posted On February 18th, 2009 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under External Articles, Usability, 0
View the excellent post from Smashing Magazine showing 9 Common Usability Mistakes In Web Design.
Some of my favorite mentions in there are “Pagination used for the wrong purpose”. I hate it when articles are split up between multiple pages - it is just another barrier to reading the post. The point was made in the article that the only reason people still do it is when they want extra page views to count towards their impressions—a pretty selfish motive if you ask me.
“No way to get in touch” is another pet peeve of mine, especially for banking and government websites. Contact is one of the primary purposes of the average website, so making it difficult for users to find the information they need, be it an email form or phone number is inexcusable.
Two things I learned about are using google search forms on a website (I usually use one that is based on custom scripting) and using 301 redirects to point old links to current pages. Very useful stuff!