Must Design

Asking the right questions in the right way is key to online marketing success. How SMBs can compete with Amazon isn't as important as what is their why and how are they learning from Amazon's web marketing power.

Running into the web team from http://www.MoonandLola.com today after meeting them last week helped us realize we needed to add slides to our presentation. We HATE IT when that happens (lol).

Last week we spoke with about 40 Small to Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs) in a conference sponsored by FedEx and seeing the team at the Digital Summit today jogged our thinking. We forgot to discuss the importance of PLATFORM thinking.

We all know winning platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and my favorite Scoop.it. Platforms are winning because they play the "new SEO" game beautifully. We added Video Notes on YouTube to explain all of this (https://youtu.be/tSHeIxtrs4g ).

Find the Haiku Deck here: http://shar.es/1g7Kfb

The New SEO
Search Engine Optimization may be different, but it isn't dead. Until search engine spiders can understand context YOU have to provide it. Today team Curagami discovered 3 big things to NEVER do again while working with our great customer http://www.Moon-Audio.com :

* Original Copy Only
Never copy a manufacturer's product or brand copy. You MUST write original copy for every page or risk being put in the "dupe box". Duplicate content from THEM (manufacturers) is foolish for another reason - few manufacturers write great copy about their products, services or brands.

If you do copy manufacturer notes or specifications either 1. blockquote them out or 2. use inline rel no follows to tell the search spiders you know you've duped the content and aren't looking for kudos on it.

* Never Assume Branded Sites Know SEO
Working with Moon Audio team Curagami realized we could make a killing JUST helping major electronic brands such as Shure, Astell & Kern and Chord Hugo improve their SEO. The team at Moon assumed since the manufacturer's site was coming up high in the Search Engine Results Pages they had their SEO down.

NOPE, not even a little bit. The manufacturer benefits from all those links being driven into their pages by people who DO KNOW SEO. They don't so don't copy them.

* Do Use the SERPS
If you want to know who is doing well on your keys logout of Google (this won't kill all the filters but will help) and search for sites consistently showing up for keys you want. Next use Mike's free keyword tool to see how well the site you found ACTUALLY ranks for your keys.

You have to use a tool to see THROUGH the float. Used to be when you and I typed the same search at the same time we saw the same results. Not so much anymore thanks to Google's "floating" their index and making decisions about what you see based on a host of new things like what your friends see & like, what you've liked before (you in this instance is your computer's IP address) and other filters so secret no one really knows.

Watch Pariser's Filter Bubbles TED talk for more on why search is just showing you what you already know these days and NEVER steal copy or SEO advice from dumb and dumber manufacturers.

They win their brand name FOR FREE. If you want to know if they understand SEO type a phrase like "portable audio" and see who shows up (the usual suspects like Amazon, Wikipedia, Cnet Mashable, Techcrunch, HuffPost, etc...).

Web designers shouldn't be SEO experts since keeping up with DESIGN is a full-time job. Nothing has made that truth more apparent than my first week learning CSS, SCSS and the like at The Iron Yard Code Academy in Durham, NC this week.

But web designers are where SEO rubber meets the Google Road so understanding a handful of ideas is critical to the online success of any designers creations. This deck was created to share with The Iron Yard's Cohort 3 Front End Engineering class Friday January 16th.

Includes our favorite FREE SEO tools and how we use them. Good luck and let us know your SEO / Design experience and we will curate into an upcoming post on http://www.curagami.com.

Last week, Jeremy Osborn, Academic Director for Aquent Gymnasium, had the chance to attend the Artifact Conference. Here are his key takeaways.

Marty Note
This Artifact Conference looks interesting and worth checkout out (http://artifactconf.com/ ). I love this quote from the Responsive panel at the conference in Providence, RI:

"On the other hand, responsive design is forcing companies to prioritize site performance. The consensus is that slow-loading and bloated sites are just as much of a “design” flaw as confusing layout, clashing colors, and the rampant proliferation of typefaces on page. "

Most designers focus on how to accordion a website so it looks good on any device. The real challenge is deeper. How do we architect "less bloat"? How do we design information to be lean and responsive?

Couple of things I've noticed include:

* Building stories via visuals and rich snippets.
* Taking advantage of the swipe and spin options on mobile devices.
* Creating easier to understand backend functionality.
* Using a LEAN or MEAN filter forcing messaging to get to the point FAST.

The SEO and engagement benefits of the second half of responsive design - the information architecture half - are enormous. We know that as engagement goes up so do our site's heuristics and the "new Google" loves more time on site, lower bounce rates and other "engagement metrics".

The "Responsive Challenge" for designers is to realize more is involved than look and feel. The very core of our communication must be reviewed, reevaluated and changed to be leander and more responsive too or we design dissonance in. Confused customers do many things converting is never one of them.