Archive for September, 2009

Search Engine Friendliness vs. Search Engine Optimization

Published September 28, 2009 Techy Stuff Leave a Comment

SEO-SEF

Often times clients come to us and say they want their website to be "search engine optimized". The site in question may have a lot of flash elements or image based text or bad markup. Which usually prompts me to give my long-winded spiel about how they might want to make their site "search engine friendly" first. This almost always raises the question, aren’t they the same thing? No, making a site SEF is not the same thing as optimizing a site for search engine performance.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. SEO is typically a long-term task that normally involves an ongoing commitment or contract carried out in the form of an "SEO Campaign".

A site is Search Engine Friendly (SEF) when its design, coding, menus/links, images, and other elements have been geared towards the express purpose of search engine exposure and/or indexing. Making a site SEF should be included in the cost of initially designing and building a site. For an existing site, it should be quoted as a one time project fee. As long as SEF guidelines are followed with regards to any subsequent general maintenance to a site, no other tasks or fees should be required.

Think of making a site SEF as the preparation before running a long race. Then the race itself would be the SEO campaign.

So despite being different they are obviously tied together. Many of the features which make a website SEF (using clean markup, using the proper tags for optimal indexing etc.) make a site more accessible to search engine bots which will then ultimately enhance any long term SEO undertaking.

At Strategic Insights we build all our sites to be SEF from inception and have no problem retrofitting older sites with more SEF technology. If your site is currently behaving unfriendly toward search engines… come see us and we’ll sort it out! Once it is SEF, then we’ll discuss SEO.

Why Johnny Can’t Read: not enough time in Food Lion.

Published September 22, 2009 Marketing Musings 1 Comment

toc_inv_4

When I think of all that time I wasted watching Sesame Street when I all I had to do was pay more attention as my mom wheeled me around the supermarket. Guess I was too focused on my Barnum’s Animal Crackers.

Along the lines of Andy Warhol, artist Heidi Cody has assembled an intriguing piece of pop art called American Alphabet. While I had fun trying to guess the letters associated with the brands, I came away with an unintended lesson. The logos the alphabet owes its letters to are at least 20 years old (correct me if I’m wrong, but Bubblicious is the new kid on the block, and that emerged in the late 70s, if memory–and dental work–serves).

Lesson? Pick a logo and stick with it. You don’t even need a great logo (that’s right, Uncle Ben, I’m talking to you), you just need to commit to it. As a manufacturer, you will get tired of it long before your customers ever will. Customers like familiarity, comfort, reassurance. Ever-changing logos do not provide this. The same goes for taglines, or spokespeople, or strategies in general.

For the record, I nailed an impressive (or depressing, depending on your view of American consumerism) 22 out of 26 without consulting the key.

Test your Logo Quotient (LQ) and see how you fare.

Bill Cokas
Creative Director
Strategic Insights

Can art solve…anything?

Published September 11, 2009 Marketing Musings Leave a Comment

100_0726“You’re not an artist. You solve problems.”

I didn’t say it. Don Draper did, to Peggy. He was just reminding her that advertising is a business, like any other. But unlike most others, words and pictures are the tools of our trade. Words and pictures! That’s so close to…literature and art! Some advertising does transcend its original purpose–eventually. Instant classics are rare in this gig. Still, that won’t stop me–or countless others before and after me–from trying to make a difference on another level. I’ll solve the client’s problem, all right, but I’m going to do it in the most compelling verbal and visual way I can. Sometimes that means touching an emotion. Kinda like art.

A few weeks ago, the manager of my kids’ elementary school cafeteria succeeded in obtaining permission to adorn its blank walls with positive character traits. Since my wife is a tireless volunteer at the school, and I’ve got a not-so-secret hobby of cartooning, one thing led to another and I was offered up for the job.

I was emailed a list of traits. No sketches, no suggestions–a blank slate. Hearkening back to the style of my youth (both artistically and that of the kids’ clothes) at Aspen Hill Elementary, I chose to show the traits wherever possible. Writing is always more effective when you can show vs. tell, and what parent doesn’t know the power of setting a positive example? And speaking of examples, one of my sons asked if he could contribute his own drawing to the mural. How could I refuse?

Over the course of two weekends, several other families and teachers pitched in to transfer the drawings to the walls, then completed them with an assortment of semi-gloss paint. Everyone’s been very happy with the results so far. More importantly, the kids were actually talking about it to their parents. Who knows if it will make a difference? Will just seeing an illustration of “Kindness” day after day make a kid kinder in the long run? By itself, no. But it certainly couldn’t hurt. And it’s sure more stimulating and inspiring than a big wall of nothing. It wasn’t my idea, but I’m glad I was a part of it.

Bottom line: the cafeteria is prettier now. I used art to solve a problem. Does that make me an artist?

Maybe the two aren’t mutually exclusive after all, Don.

Bill Cokas
Creative Director
Strategic Insights

Should I update to OS X 10.6? Definitely maybe.

Published September 10, 2009 Uncategorized Leave a Comment

OS X 10.6

After installing Snow Leopard last week, I started having the infamous dreamweaver CS4 crashes among others that many in the blogosphere and various industry related forums are ranting about. I even followed Leander Kahney’s advice from his article over at Cult of Mac — How-To: Upgrade To Snow Leopard — The Right Way. It’s a great piece and I followed it to a T except one very important part that lead to me nearly going insane over the holiday weekend. Leander’s article explicitly states not to import any old user account/configuration files from the old system… I unfortunately chose to ignore that. I figured I wouldn’t migrate apps but I also didn’t feel like bringing over work files and folders plus passwords, preferences, etc. all by hand right? Little did I know that migrating these items from my old user account/previous system would later cause me to burn endless hours in troubleshooting at Adobe and Apple. My clean install wasn’t so clean after all… it was tainted by my migrating account folders that contained Libraries full of old App Settings and Preferences that in hindsight had definitely been the culprits.

After exhausting all troubleshooting resources I could find and working through various “tricks” and/or cache resets, preference/settings rebuilds, I thought I would go back and “start from scratch again” but this time not import anything as those who were saying they were having no problems all seemed to have that as a common thread. As daunting as that sounded I figured it had been a while since I watched the Alien Quadrilogy, so I started the slog on Labor Day monday as it was raining in NC anyway. To get around having to re-setup absolutely everything after the Snow Leopard reinstall, I iSynced my email, bookmarks, address book, calendar and keychains beforehand so atleast those things would be there and I could press on with app installs and back ups as I rebuilt my house of cards waiting at every turn for Dreamweaver to start crashing again. Funnily enough somewhere during the end of Aliens (Alien 2), I had reinstalled Snow Leopard from scratch as well as CS4 and was putting Dreamweaver through the rigors and I couldn’t get it to crash at all…. whereas it was crashing by simply breathing on it before. I did incremental time machine backups from there on until I had everything installed that I needed and then brought over files / folders by hand which helped trim some hard drive fat as well. I will say the only way any of this starting over madness was even possible was because I carbon copy cloned my old leopard system to a firewire 800 drive as per Leander’s tips… really saved me. Thanks again mate.

OK Granted, this shouldn’t have to be. Apple, Adobe and other software developers should run through all the user install scenarios and make sure they work including migrating old user accounts. However, that said, now that I have my pristine snappy new setup that has a much smaller footprint, I feel it was totally worth it and actually quite cathartic to rid myself of loads of files and apps that I hadn’t used in ages. So hopefully for those of you who really want to use Snow Leopard with CS4 this solution will help you and save your sanity. For those who want the ease of use of migrating everything over auto-magically and having it all work and not worrying about it? I would wait until for the next round of updates. Hope that helps.

I would love to hear any experiences anyone else out there has had with Snow Leopard good or bad. Thanks and cheers!

Snow Leopard – update or wait?

Published September 8, 2009 Uncategorized 1 Comment

Snow LeopardLike most of my office mates here at Strategic Insights, I not only work on a Mac, but I am a huge Mac-o-phile (not to be confused with an Apple Fanboy).  For the past 6 months, I’ve been looking forward with baited breath to the release of the new Snow Leopard operating system.  Not because it had anything special to offer in terms of new features – in fact, this release wasn’t touted as having many new features at all, but more of an optimization of user experience.  Still, it was new and it was Apple, so I wanted it.  (OK, maybe there’s a little Apple Fanboy in me after all.) But as the hours ticked by and the clock wound down, I found myself thinking of holding back and letting others take the fall. Rumors had started popping up about software incompatibility and required upgrades.  Plus, I don’t have a spare machine to install it on and give it a test run before throwing caution to the wind and updating my work machine. Caution prevailed and I back burnered the decision.

So now a good solid week and change has gone by and I’m once again considering the upgrade.  An office mate took the plunge on day 1 and has had a mixed experience, which might result in a complete, start-from-scratch reinstall.  Plus, less than a week after its official release, an update to the operating system has been seeded to developers to address a number of bug fixes.  This action, while responsive on the part of apple developers, does not inspire confidence.  In fact, one of the other grumblings that has been circulating around the internet water cooler for some time is that Apple was rushing the not-ready-for-prime-time Snow Leopard out the door to beat Microsoft to the punch in releasing their own Operating System update – Windows 7.

So to those of you early adopters who upgraded with a devil may care attitude, what would you recommend?  Dive in headfirst now?  Wait for the upcoming 10.6.1 update?  Or adopt an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” state of mind and stay the course with good ol’ reliable 10.5.8?  Share your experience.

Chris Griffin
Assoc Creative Director
Strategic Insights

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