My First Squidoo Lens – Paula Scher

I made a Squidoo lens today about a designer that a like. Check it out and let me know what you think. Have you used Squidoo yet? Sign up and make a lens yourself and get
$5 from Squidoo
for me and you. You have to use this link or we both get nothing.

Read the lens about Designer Paula Scher here.

This is a great way to share info that your are interested in that may not belong on your website. Or if you don’t have a website but have some knowledge about something that other folks may be interested in.

Also they have a cool way of sharing the revenue generated by your page. So if you want to make some money online this may be a good way to do it.

Nashville Mortgage , Home Loan website SEO

I just recently did some lite SEO work on a Nashville Mortgage website for Jim McVey who recently did a refi for me. Check out the site and also check back for the stats of his improvement. Currently for the 3 main keyword phrases he is focused on there is no listing on the first 20 pages of google.

Hopefully with some work and future tweaking we can get him on the first page.

Websites Fight. How will your site do?

Have you ever wondered if websites could fight who would win. Well I found this nifty tool today that I thought you might like. It lets you compare two sites and see which one has what it takes in the world of Search Engine Optimization. Try comparing your site with you competitors site. If your site isn’t holding its own than maybe we should talk.

Be sure to let me know how the fight goes in the comments. And if you like it please Retweet.

click here SEO challenge

SEO Experiment Finished

As you may remember on Nov.22 I decided to conduct an SEO experiment of sorts. The goal was to motivate my self to blog, network online, and increase my Search Engine Results. The Experiment has gone very well and I have enjoyed the process. I will continue to blog and network because I have seen such great results. I hope that the results will encourage you to do the same. So with out further delay here are the results in comparison to the starting stats.

Beginning Stats – Current Stats as of today.

Google Rank

graphic design Nashville – p 13 – p 3

logo design Nashville – p 5 p2 new blog www.logodesignnashville.com p 1 second spot

print design Nashville – p 9 p4 with no additional optimization for that Keyword phrase

branding design Nashville – p 2 p1 first spot WOW!

brand design Nashville – p 9 p2 new blog www.logodesignnashville p1 forth spot

Rush Design Group traffic last month 166 – 242 since Nov.22nd

Rush Design Blog Last month 84 – 769 since Nov.22nd

Also during this experiment www.rushdesigngroup.com/blog received a 1 page rank.

Thank you for reading I hope that you have found this SEO work interesting. Please continue to read. There will be few post between now and the new year but I will throw out a tweet is something goes up.

What is a Keyword? Why You should care.

Today’s post is brought to us by Jeff Howard. Jeff works independently out of Catch Search Marketing. His client base includes local small business, B2B and large B2C consumer driven websites. Jeff can be reached best via e-mail. He also blogs about search marketing. I asked Jeff to answer a few questions on keyword research. His answers are below and I’d also like to point out if you are totally new to SEO, or just keyword research he has recorded a 4 part video series on search marketing.

Q: What role does keyword research play in SEO?
A: I think of keyword research as similar to choosing a storefront sign. For instance, if your a printing company owned by a guy named Dean then usually you choose something like “Dean’s Printing.” That is straight forward stuff and in the real world you only have one store front sign. This isn’t true on the web, on the web you have many pages and because search engines can rank each page ultimately you can choose a number of keywords to represent your business online.

Q: How many keywords should I focus on? and do phrases count as keywords?
A: A keyword usually is described as one word, while a phrase is a group of keywords. For example, a keyword phrase would be “Search Marketing Services.” Clearly, this phrase is made up of many keywords. The number of phrases you choose is based on a number of factors.
1) The size of your website
2) The amount of time you can devote to SEO
3) How well your website’s structure is built for SEO.

Q: How do I decide what keywords are best for my business?
A: Keywords should be chosen on a number of factors, and this is where it gets tricky. Probably the up most rule is to choose keywords based on relevance to the content on your website. If your Michael Bluth and run a banana stand, typically your keywords need to reflect exactly what it is you do. For example “Frozen Bananas in Santa Monica.” Its also important to avoid choosing keywords that are too broad. For example, the Bluth’s would not want to optimize a site for just “bananas.” There will be way to much competition for this keyword and they will be buried in the SERP’s forever. There are just so many factors that go into this step of SEO, its difficult to answer. I’ve found this PDF from polepositionmarketing.com that explains keyword research very well

Q: How do I know if my keywords are working
A: The best way to know if your keywords are working is to track your search engine referrals using most any analytics packages. Google Analytics is free, used by a lot of folks and will make it easy for you to find out what keywords people are using to find your website.

Q: Do keywords effect my Pagerank with Google
A: What keywords you target will not afftect your Pagerank. Pagerank is a metric that is suppose to show the value of the links pointing to your site. I personally believe Pagerank is a near meaningless metric, unfortunately it has popular appeal. PageRank is helpful to get an idea as the age and backlink profile of a website. Here is why I see PageRank as meaningless. Lets say your website gets 100 search engine referrals from 10 different keywords a month. You also know 5% of these visitors contact you for business, and 2% actually buy something. Do you care what your pagerank is? Its cool and fun to have a high pagerank, but thats the extent. I’d rather have a website working for my business with no PageRank than one not working with a PageRank of 10.

I hope these answers help provide a starting point for keyword research, its certainly one element of SEO that takes time to learn, perfect and manage. I’d like to point out, Google provides a very good keyword research tool for free. Finally, if your looking for a short primer about how to begin keyword research check out the video my website by clicking play below.

Reasons SEO guy and LOGO guy should work together

Why should SEO guy be in on the creative brief?

I am a logo designer. Who recently has decided to educate myself as much as possible about SEO. After diving into the world of SEO I have found that it is much more complicated than I would have imagined. Granted there are some basic things that everyone can do to help their situation. The vision in my head of an SEO guy was much like the PC guy in the mac commercials. I, of course, use a mac, so by default I get to be the mac guy. This is probably not an accurate stereo type but lets just go with it. You can tell me how off base I am in the comments. But I digress. That has nothing to do with the point.

Common Ground between SEO guy and Logo guy.

The point is that I see some common ground between the logo designer and the seo guy. ( not quite sure what to call them yet). Anyway as a logo designer I focus on the client. Who they are, who they want to be, what there goals are, how they plan to get there. Many times not even worrying about the website yet because who knows if I will get that job anyway. We are just trying to get a logo done. We are just trying to get the positioning and the branding in place. But why wouldn’t I be thinking about how this logo, or brand, or position is going to play out on the web? Does it not make sense that I would bring an SEO expert in to the creative brief? Could an SEO expert not research the competition and tell me exactly what their goals are based on their links and keywords? With an SEO expert on the job we could forecast a plan to position the client for keywords or products that show the most opportunity for the client. If there is a gap in the competition why wouldn’t we position the client from the start to fill that gap. Why not start with the logo and make sure it is appropriate for the keywords we want to rank for. Further more clients in the logo process are open, more than any other time, to the idea of changing there name. Surely an SEO expert could make suggestions as to what domains would best fit the clients needs.

As for an SEO expert. I would imaging their main target is web design firms or web designers. I have never met an SEO expert that worked for a design studio other than a web design studio. Surely everyone can benefit from this knowledge. While there are plenty of Web design studios out there, there are many logo designers that transition the client from logo to print to web and need the help of an SEO expert. The help of an SEO expert would certainly bring value to the logo process.

In conclusion I think the future relationship between the logo designer and the SEO expert is promising. What do you think?

Seo Experiment Day 18 of 30 Graphic Design

It is day 18 of the 30 day seo experiment.

The goal of the experiment is to:

1. Blog every work day
2. Sign up for as many social networks as possible
3. Read everyday about SEO ( Search Engine Optimization) Basically how to show up on Google.
4. Network with other bloggers and leave real comments

So far so good. I have noticed an increase in traffic as well as a better rank in search results. Throughout this experiment I have received some questions from clients and friends. Here are a few with some answers.

1. What is a blog? Surprisingly not everyone is familiar with blogs or how they work. Most blogs are focused on a specific topic and consist of one persons opinions on that topic. The blogger or blog owner writes on a regular basis about the topic that they want to be the expert on. The writing is generally casual and asks the readers to comment and share their opinions. The blogger can choose to approve those comments or delete them.
2. What is SEO? SEO stands for ( Search Engine Optimization). SEO is a lot of things and every post that is part of this experiment touches on different parts. But basically SEO is Optimizing your website to rank well on search engines for specific keywords.
3. What are Keywords? Keywords are the words that get typed into the search field on Google. You as the website owner decide what words you want to show up for. For example, Rush Design Group wants to show up for 3 basic Keywords or Key Phrases: logo design Nashville, graphic design Nashville, branding Nashville. So I make sure those words are on my site as much as possible.
4. Why do you keep spamming me? Sorry, I have been trying to promote my blog to everyone I know. Unfortunately not all of my clients, friends, and family like to hear from me everyday. What I have learned is that Facebook, Twitter ,and other social networks offer a passive form of contact I can say what I am doing with out demanding anyone read it. Emailing often may not be a good way to go if you want to promote your site. Although a Newsletter once a month has shown to be very productive.

I can’t believe how productive this experiment has been only 18 days in. I look forward to updating everyone on the final results. Leave a comment if you enjoy the post and if you are tired of hearing about it.

Twitter beginner ? and the Twitter Wheel

As part of the SEO experiment I have been spending way more time on the internet. I am getting started about 2hrs earlier in the morning now to do a little research, and then put up a post hopefully before you guys get to work and start looking on the internet for some non constructive activities. (This blog is educational and will grow your business. Just in case someone asks.)

While wandering the internet I have seen a lot about Twitter. Twitter is a site that lets you keep up with people by sending out short answers or questions. You can see an example of my “tweets” as they are called in the right column. As you can see they are short. The basic idea is that you get to see tweets from people that you want to follow, and the same is for people that follow you. On Twitter, a tweet is like your myspace or facebook status. It basically answers the question, “what are you doing?”

The useful thing about Twitter is that you can receive and make tweets with your cell phone or computer. While you are not required to use a cell it can be very convenient. As long as you have unlimited texting. Or if you have unlimited web you can log in to Twitters mobile site.

So why should you use it? Because SHAQ does. Do you need another reason? I know, I don’t care what SHAQ is up to but that is what is great. You can see what people are doing with out being all personal with them. If I send a request to be your friend on facebook ,and you only know me through a blog comment, that would be weird and stalker like. With Twitter I want you to follow me. I don’t care who you are. Really, follow me. Because if I break down on I65 I can send out a tweet and everyone I know will get it ,and merge left so they don’t hit me as they pass. Twitter is a combination of texting and instant messaging that lets you communicate through the phone and computer to everyone all at once.

Companies could use twitter to send out notices to out of office staff. Instead of texting everyone or using the old, slow, email. Or let customers know that you have a limited supply of that thing they want and you just put it on sale. Seriously though the CEO has hinted that tweet will become a money maker for corporations.  Whoever you are you could find a reason to set it up and try it out.If for no other reason sign up and save your companies name so that when you do get on the ban wagon it will still be available. So sign up and follow me on twitter.

Once you have signed up try this cool twitter wheel. It shows you how everyone is connected. Mine is pretty sad looking. But once you sign up to follow me, I will show you the updated wheel and hopefully it will be bigger. When you create your wheel it gives you a url. that is like this http://www.tweetwheel.com/rushdesign . Make yours and leave the address in the comments below so we can all see.

Other interesting notes about Twitter is that they were offered $500 million from facebook and said no. All this while Twitter has brought in little to no revenue. Although the CEO has said that that will change first quarter 2009.

Link Building / Give and Hopefully Receive

Link building is an important part of getting traffic to your site. Many sites recommend different ways of getting links. Some you can pay for some you can ask for and if you just have an all around awesome site people will just link to you because.
One tip is to contact a site directly. Kind of like the people that come to your house and ask to clean one room of your carpet. “Hey thanks for coming by and all but I don’t know you and I’m not sure I want to let you in my house. And who told you I had dirty carpet?” The same is true on the web. Contacting a person directly is a little weird if they have never heard of you. So I will take a different approach. If I send a random person a gift with my return address they may send a thank you back. Let the Giving begin! Oh and let me say that this is not only an effort to build links but these are posts that I believe would be good for my clients to read. So check them out. Really. Just click on the link.

The first blog I have read today was about the value of the newsletter. We offer newsletters at Rush Design Group and this guy says they work. Post Title: How 24 Hours of Work Will Send Millions of Readers to My Blog

Secondly, and I found this blog useful. The post is Monitoring your online brand. This is worth the time to read. The part that I tried immediately was to search for links to my site from other sites using Google. Type in google link:www.yoururl.com. Just put your actual website name in though.

Youtube Monetization: More to come This post talks about the success businesses have using youtube. Every business should have at least one video on youtube regardless of how boring. Because if you ever upset the wrong person you may find an angry customer video slandering your good name with nothing up to say otherwise. It has happened to clients of mine.

Ok this is a good one. Why Hank Hill and I agree on Social Media Basically why businesses should have a myspace page. You don’t have to put pictures of the boss from the Christmas party but you should have something up.

I have used Google’s Pay Per Click program in the past and Managing ads on the Google Content Network gives some tips on how to maximize the results.

Ok so twitter is something not so new but becoming very popular. I will try it today and let you know how it goes. I found this post, Brand Yourself With a Twitter Background , He also has a post of why you should follow him I think these are also great reasons why you should have a twitter. I think this could also serve a practical use for businesses.

Last but not least if you need a head shot or are getting married this is The Best Photographer in Nashville. And all around good people.

I am updating this post as I read blogs this morning so check back often. I will let you know what results I get from this process. This is part of the SEO experiment. To read all the associated posts click on seo experiment in the categories section.

First Video Post / SEO Experiment Graphic Design

So this is the first video post. This is part of the SEO experiment. I hope you enjoy it. I didn’t spend a lot of time making it look great I just wanted to test it out and get it on the blog. Please let me know what you think.