Mad 4 Blog

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of obtaining natural search engine rankings to drive visitors to your website. There are several important factors that search engines such as Google and Yahoo take into consideration when deciding which websites to display at the top of search engine queries:
• Inbound Links are the single most important factor within search engine algorithms and the best kind of inbound links to have are one way inbound links from websites that have a Google page rank of 3 or higher.
• Website Architecture is another key factor in search engine optimization. It is critical that websites be built in cascading style sheets (CSS). The beauty of CSS is that it greatly reduces the code to text ratio by placing the code for the page design in a separate file which allows search engine robots to more quickly read your web pages and find the text and keywords.
• Content is King. Once you have a website with clean code with a lot of inbound links, you then want to have enough content to naturally infuse all of the keywords that you want your website to get ranked for.  Many people make the mistake of thinking that being ranked for 10-15 keywords is sufficient. In the world of Search Engine Optimization, every industry has thousands of keywords that people put into Google and Yahoo to find similar services and products. To find the keywords that people put into search engines to find your particular products or services visit http://www.google.com/insights/search/#.
These are just the basics of Search Engine Optimization, there are many other intricacies to the process that I will continue to expand upon in my next blog. In the meantime if you are looking to build a new website or want to drive visitors to your website via SEO contact me today at tiffany@mad4marketing.com for a free SEO website benchmarking and analysis.

The January 5th, 2009 cover of the New Yorker magazine humorously illustrates the dilemma of practicing positive and enlightened marketing during times of economic crisis, when the obvious temptation is to pander to the fears of clients and their customers. We’ve seen the “Recession Sale!” and the “Bailout Prices” and other exploitive triggers used by second-rate marketers and amateurs to try to gain consumer attention, and will indeed see much more of this negative message advertising in the near future. Experience, research and insight says this tactic does not work, and worse, it casts the client’s products, services and entire brand image in a negative light, and loses mind share to the blizzard of all-too-real crisis headlines found throughout the media today.

Soon, these crisis messages will switch to the promise of “Hope” and “Change” as promised by future leaders, but the crisis mentality of the consumer will continue for some years, and many worried advertising executives watching their marketing accounts cut in half by unenlightened business leaders and boards of directors will continue to try and gain market share by shouting, focusing on price points, discounts and last minute panic ads with a background colored in the black and white of a pending Depression. Once again, this won’t work.

During the Great Depression, while many advertisers focused on fantasy to feed the need to escape hardships, the New Deal gave others the idea to brand virtually every product as “New!” or “Improved!” – a practice that continues to this day. What did the most successful companies do to survive the last Depression, and what will today’s agencies do to ensure the success of their clients in the future?

The answers to both of these questions are truisms of our profession: positive, truthful communications that respect the needs and desires of customers. Great agencies have great clients, because belief in a client’s product produces the best ads, and clients who believe in the experience and professionalism of their agency understand that successful marketing is much more than exploiting buzzwords, or making just another screaming automobile commercial, just like their competitors.

The bottom line: the companies who not only survived the last depression, but emerged as timeless brands, invested the largest percentage of their budgets in advertising. Today, many shortsighted executives cut marketing budgets first to placate worried investors, or worse, to pay for their own inflated salaries. After all, the crisis mentality worries about today, not tomorrow, and certainly not about next year or the next decade.

Agencies that succeed in today’s shrinking advertising marketplace will shun easy exploitation, understand and believe in their client’s products, and creatively convince consumers to “buy for benefits,” a process that requires the difficult orchestration of numerous effective marketing tactics, both traditional and non-traditional, and therefore requires prudent investment. History has shown that when companies cut the marketing budget, they are cutting their own throats, even though it will take a while for them to realize they are disappearing.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

Many companies put entirely too much information on their homepage because they have heard that it is good for Search Engine Optimization. Unfortunately, it is not only a bad SEO practice, but it also scares away any visitors that reach their website.

People go to the web looking for easy access, speedy and to-the-point information.  The internet has become a time efficient alternative to visiting the library, pulling numerous books off the shelves and reading through pages and pages until a person finds that one paragraph they need. With this shift in culture and the ease of access to information, the attention span of the average person has decreased significantly and the design of your website should bear this in mind.

To retain a web visitor’s attention, keep them on the page, and make them want to take the next step by reaching out to you, you must keep it simple, stupid!  If you put too much information on your page, the visitor is going to get full and jump off your page. Remember – the back button is always just one click away. You really want to tease the web visitor with the highlights that your company can offer, which will encourage them to act now for more information.

It’s just like the beginning of any kind of relationship–you wouldn’t tell your whole life story on the first date now would you?  If you did, I guarantee your date would feel so overloaded with information, not remember anything you told them and probably never call you again.  You have to communicate your key messages and if you present it in the right way, they will keep coming back for more!  Closing the deal will be a piece of cake with the right tools.

So, please, please avoid information overload on the web and of course in your dating life as well .

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…