Branding in SEO – The Big Shift in Online Marketing

Not only is it important to use SEO strategies to drive customers to your website, it is also important to use SEO strategies to promote a company's brand.  Many current branding strategies are useful, including the volume of search queries for brand, brand mentions on other websites or social networks, and the amount of branded-anchor text links directing users to a site.  The advent of top-level domains (TLDs) will also be an effective strategy to create a strong brand presence.  Additionally, establishing quality customer service  is always a great branding tool.

Resources:  http://technorati.com/business/article/branding-in-seo-the-big-shift/page-3/

DIGITAL CAMPAIGN: Happy Inside - IKEA cats advert

Again IKEA knows how to reach their customer by using domestic "cats" in their commercial called Happy Inside. With simplicity, IKEA uses 100 cats to promote their products. IKEA also uses the brilliant idea to invite people on Facebook to share their ideas and pictures of their lovely pets http://facebook.com/ikeacats. I really enjoy this commercial, and the idea of using beautiful cute cats wins my heart for sure. IKEA did a fantastic job with this marketing campaign.

Building Brands Using SEO

The article "Building Brands Using SEO", written by Golden Ashby, and posted as a blog entry at www.sfama.org, has some very useful advice on how to use SEO strategies to drive your website to the top of search results.  The author stresses the importance of site speed, engaging content, kewords, website optimization, domain structuring, real-time search reputation management, link building, and brand awareness as effective measures that will ensure your website's success.

Resources: http://sfama.org/?p=1490

DIGITAL CAMPAIGN: IKEA BIG Sleepover

A great company advertising campaign! IKEA did a fantastic jog again to reach people and raise awareness of their bedding products. IKEA also used social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, to reach there target audience. One hundred lucky customers were treated to a sleepover at an IKEA store, complete with professional storytellers, manicurists, and sleep experts on hand to answer any questions the customers had.  The overall experience must have been fun, and even more importantly focused the customer on the product that IKEA was trying to market, which was their bedding products.

What's New In SEO?

Improving your SEO plays an integral part in having a successful website.  A useful set of SEO tricks and tips can be found at www.seoandso.com.  Your website's ability to be listed at the top of users' search requests usually  has a direct correlation to the website's success.  There are many parameters that dictate how your website will be interpreted when a user searches using words that reflect the true nature of your business.  It is the goal of www.seoandso.com to assist you and provide creative solutions to bring your website to the top of search resuts.

Resources: http://www.seoandso.com/NewInSEO.asp

Digital Campaign: At IKEA every day is different

IKEA use an outstanding approche. From their product design to their sustainable business initiatives, they are innovative and strategic. A great concept by Lemz is pretty much ‘what you see is what you get’ though. The medium (usage) is the message; 365 different commercials in one year does give the impression that IKEA is a dynamic store with endless amounts of different products. 

10 Awesome all-time wordpress SEO plug-ins

Web developers using Wordpress have increased substantially.  If you want your blog to rank highly, it is important to employ effective search engine optimization (SEO) strategies.  There are some very effective SEO plugins which can increase traffic to your blog, and some of these are defined here.

The All in One SEO Pack is a tool that automatically optimizes the Wordpress blog for search engines.  It automatically optimizes titles and Meta tags, and avoids duplicate content found on wordpress blogs.  Google XML Sitemaps generates an XML site map, which enables search engines to see the complete structure of the site and retrieve it more effectively.  The tool known as the Platinum SEO Pack is similar to the All in One SEP Pack, in that it optimizes post and page for search engines and generates all SEO relevant Meta Tags automatically.

Wassup is a tool which tracks your visitor statistics and behavior.  It can track visitors in real time, and is quite customizable.  WordPress SEO by Yoast is a very comprehensive plugin.  It includes Taxonomy title and Meta description support, Google search result snippet previews and breadcrumbs support.  WP Minify is a very useful plugin that helps improve page load times.  SEO Friendly Images optimizes images for SEO purposes.

SEO Smart Links brings automatic SEO benefits to your site.  The plug-in can automatically link keywords and phrases in posts and comment with corresponding posts, pages, categories and tags on the blog.  SEO Ultimate gives you complete control over title tags, no index, meta tags, slugs, autolinks, 404 errors, etc.  And lastly, HeadSpace2 SEO is a complete Meta data manager that allows fine-tuning of an SEO site.


Resources:  http://smashingshare.com/2010/12/13/10-awesome-all-time-wordpress-seo-plug-ins/

Highly Rewarding SEO Tips

There are several strategies for Search engine optimization.  Five of these strategies are outlined here:

1) Keyword Targeting.  Keyword and keyword-phrase placement play a important role in SEO optimizations.  Keywords should appear approximately 3-5% within the content of a web page.  Prominent searchj engines such as Google and Bing route traffic seamlessly to your website if you employ these keyword strategies.

2) Directory Submission.  It is beneficial to use highly ranked and traffic-generating articles or information hubs to submit to a website on-the-go.

3) Related Backlinks.  Backlinks to your website can increase your page rank substantially.  Posting backlinks in blogs can increase the popularity of your website.

4) Social Marketing.  It is ideal to leverage social media marketing to enhance your websites visibility.  Facebook, Twitter, MySpace are examples of social media websites that when used effectively can enhance your SEO for your website.

5) Page Rank Checker.  It is important to monitor the rank of your web pages with a page rank checker.  Keeping a close eye on the page rank will allow you to see if the strategies you are using are working or not.  If your web pages are poorly ranked you can evaluate why and make the necessary changes to hopefully increase traffic to your website.

Resources: http://smashingshare.com/2010/11/04/highly-rewarding-seo-tips/

Importance of Keywords in SEO

A word used in a search engine to search for relevant Web pages is called a keyword.  Logical placement of keywords is extremely important in web page design.  Research has shown that the ideal length for content on a web page is between 300 and 600 words.  Research has also shown that keywords should take up about 1% to 5% of the content of the web page.  The ultimate goal of the website designer is to identify the ideal keywords and keyword phrases, then utilize these within the website.  It is extremely critical that these keywords appear in the first sentence of the web page, because the search engines deem the first words of the first paragraph to be what the web page is about.  Breaking down the keyword strategies further, web page designers have identified three levels of keywords.  The most important keywords are known as the primary keywords.  Primary keywords should be in the title and in the first sentence of the first paragraph as well.  Also important are secondary keywords.  These keywords or keyword phrases should immediately follow the primary keywords.  Lastly, tertiary keywords are inserted after the secondary keywords in a page's description, and throughout the web page's content as well.  Effective use of keywords is what will drive your web page to the top of keyword searches. Be sure and carefully design your web page to include primary, secondary, and tertiary keywords, and this will ensure that your web page will generate the optimal traffic to itself.


Resources:  http://www.seomaterial.com/seo_articles/keyword_density.html

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) 

Search Engine Otimization (SEO) is a very powerful tool used to market websites so that they it can be viewed by as many potential customers as possible.  But inherent in the power of SEO is the fact that businesses can market their SEO capaabilities in an unfair manner.  Unknowing clients of SEO companies can be easily mislead to think that the SEO companies' strategies are working, yet behind the scenes the SEO's may be using deceptive practices.  Google has defined very clearly what it takes to use SEO techniques to increase traffic to websites.  But unscrupulous vendors can easily make promises that their SEO system is "better", only to find out that they give the illusion that they are driving traffic to your website.  Examples of unsrupulous behavior include unsolicited emails, guaranteed rankings, SEO companies simply being unclear about their strategies, blurring the line between actual search results and advertising sections, owning shadow domains, operating with multiple aliases, and getting traffic from fake search engines or spyware.  The bottom line is that the consumer needs to be really careful when hiring an SEO company to make sure that they are not using deceptive SEO practices.

Resources:  http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291