Skybox Creative Blog

“You” as an Online Brand: Self-Promotion in Web Design

Self-promotion is an important – and intrinsic — component of web design. We all know that the look, feel, flash and style of your website immediately brands you – which is why you spend time carefully considering design choices. But other features on your site, and even your behavior away from your site, are also factors that brand you.

Control Your Story

The “About Us” page has always been the place where you get to tell your story. Just an easy bio, right? Not anymore. Just as the world of web design is constantly changing, so too is the world of how to spin yourself – how to self-promote through your own narrative.

New companies have emerged to help job-seekers and business owners tell their story a little better than a standard resume or “About Us” page might — about.me, curv.me and getstoried.com. The first two are sites where creative workers can learn to describe their vision, contextualize their work and discuss their credits and accolades in an organic way. Getstoried targets entrepreneurs looking to capture their narratives for prospective customers. You can use these sites to help you tell your story — not just what you do, but why you do it. Information like this can help customers connect with you on a personal level. It’ll help them “get” you.

For example, if Skybox Creative were writing its bio, it could say that its business is web design in San Diego. The story’s true, accurate and informational. But it doesn’t answer the why. How about, “founded by San Diegans, Skybox Creative loves working closely with local businesses to identify the companies’ goals and deliver dynamic websites that fit their aims.” A little more personality, right?

Google Thyself

The way you behave online can also brand you. This may sound scary — customers can be one Google search away from your Facebook photos or Twitpics on Twitter. But aside from being on top of your social network privacy settings, you can also use your recorded online activity to your advantage.

Leave an online path that shows your passion. Jump into online communities that focus on what you’re doing. Engage with your own visitors with a blog. Make a space on your website designed for customer interaction.

Just go ahead and Google yourself and see if you like what you see. And if you don’t, start proactively leaving a trail that promotes yourself and your business the way you’d like!

Get in touch with Skybox Creative today! Whether your looking for copywriting, web design, SEO or brand development, we’ve got you covered! Skybox Creative is a Brand Consultancy with an emphasis on Web Design and SEO. Get a free quote for your next project! info@skyboxcreative.com or call us at 619.381.3825

Search engine traffic, we all want it.

Google is at the forefront of every business owners mind, ranking high translates directly to business growth, there’s no denying that. So what are a few ways a website or blog can increase their search engine foot traffic? Here are 5 tips that can help get you started:

1. Title Tags on Your Website or Blog
This is one of those tried and true SEO tactics that has been around for a while and still makes a significant impact on your SEO today. One thing to keep in mind when writing your title tags is to think of the person searching on Google (or any other search engine for that matter), try to think of something that will make people want to click on your link. One way to do this is include the topic and a benefit, this easily allows for 2 keyword phrases to fit into the title.

A rule to remember: only 65 characters will display in the search results, anything after that will show up as … in the results.

Quick fact: 80% of top ranking pages include keywords in their title.

2. Blog Updates
We all know we should be blogging regularly, but who has the time right? People used to say once a week was good, but things are changing and fresh content is the key to search engine favorability. The new rule of thumb is to update your blog every 1-2 days (or more if you can manage that) to keep search engines indexing your pages regularly. Remember to use keywords in your title, URL string, body copy, categories and keyword tags. That’s the beauty of blogging, WordPress and other blogging tools make it easy to add keywords in a number of different places that really help you rank. Oh and don’t forget about linking…

3. Link to Other Blogs and Websites
As part of your SEO campaign, it’s a good idea to include outbound links. Google likes links to relevant and reputable websites.

4. Backlinking
This is one of the cornerstones of a good SEO campaign. The quality of your backlinks is very important though, the better the page rank and the higher the foot traffic, the better the backlink. Also what anchor text are you backlinking from? There are amazing free tools like BlueBacklinks.com that allow you to see how many backlinks you have and what anchor text is linking to you.

5. Internal Linking
If a blog post or page within your site has achieved a good page rank, use it to build in a few links to other pages within your site. Links will still hold search engine value even if they are coming from within the same site.

For an SEO website evaluation, contact us at info@skyboxcreative.com or call 619-381-3825

Skybox Creative, Inc. – Elevate your business with engaging brand + web design.

We are huge fans of Google! Not only do they provide the best in search results, but they offer a variety of free services that make our lives easier. Honestly, if you haven’t looked into all the products that Google has to offer, you really should. Each working day, every staff member at Skybox Creative has at least one Google app open in their web browser.

From the awesome Google Calendar that lets you share your schedule or embed on your website to Google Wave for collaborative projects, Google Feedburner to update followers of new blog posts right to their inbox, to Google Docs for file sharing and form tracking…Google has what you need to make your business run more smoothly!

This post is specifically about Google Docs and the ability to create surveys, or any other type of form for that matter, and track the results in a spreadsheet. You even have the option to “Show Summary of Responses” where the data is compiled into bar graphs and pie charts – so easy a child could understand. There are a variety of templates to choose from (although we hope they add more template design options or at least the ability to customize colors sooner than later, nonetheless, they get the job done). You can create a form with ease, specifying whether you want a checklist, multiple choice question, paragraph answer, etc. Once you have completed the form, you have the option to email it or embed it on a web page (see below).

The results are tracked anonymously in a spreadsheet. You also have the option to share the ‘Results’ spreadsheet through Google Docs sharing options (now available for individual docs and entire folders). We have embedded our Client Satisfaction Survey below so you can see what it looks like. We had to force the width and height of the iframe in order for it to fit in our blog – not perfect, but again, gets the job done. If you embed the form on your blog, make sure to click on the HTML tab first, then paste the code. You can easily adjust the dimensions, just make sure to calculate the proportions to make sure it displays optimally. It’s also good to know that (for whatever reason), if you tab back to Visual, it might erase the iframe code – for this reason, we recommend copy/pasting the code in a text editing application so you can grab it again if needed!

Clients ONLY: Feel free to fill out the form with your feedback! All others, if you are interested in speaking to us about the services we offer, please email us at info@skyboxcreative.com

Skybox Creative, an award-winning branding and web design firm, attended the San Diego SEO Meetup Group in Clairemont Mesa last night, and we wanted to share some of the quick and easy WordPress SEO tips we learned. (One of the most important themes of the evening being that WordPress is an EXCELLENT tool for SEO, so if you aren’t familiar with the open source blogging software/content management system, we suggest you get on the bandwagon!)

1. Use a question in your blog post titles. Why, you ask? Because when people are searching for information, they are often asking a question in their search.

2. There are thousands upon thousands of plug-ins for WordPress out there, but beware. Older plug-ins often don’t work with the most recent versions of WordPress (which is on 2.9, but getting close to launching 3.0). There are some great SEO plug-ins however, such as the SEO All-in-One and Ping Optimizer (Check out: WordPress Plugin Directory)

3. Utilize Blog Directories and Social Bookmarking Sites. They can be really great ways to drive traffic to your site, and the more niche the directory, the better!

Check out:

StumbleUpon
Mister Wong
Delicious

4. Don’t be a victim. Read up on WordPress Defender so that you can figure out the best methods to secure your blog from hackers. Always make sure you’re using the most recent version of WP and downloading all security updates are good starting points.

5. Blog at least once a week. An inactive blog doesn’t help anyone – especially you or your business. Blogs are meant to have fresh and changing content on a regular basis.

SIDE NOTE: Did you know that the word “Twit” comes from the English? (You Monty Python fans out there no what I am talking about).  Actual meaning is a drunken, upper-class Brit – happy tweeting!

Skybox Gets Even More Creative with New Account Manager

At Skybox Creative, we love providing the best in web design + branding without ever compromising client care and support. With that in mind, Skybox welcomes to the team Carly Bartkiewicz; account manager and latest addition to an already impressive pool of design field professionals. She’ll be hitting the ground running Рensuring your design, branding, eCommerce, search engine optimization, print and related needs are given their necessary attention to detail and some TLC, too.

Leadership, editing and project management fall directly under Carly’s wide-ranging and knowledgeable skill set. She comes to Skybox from Wheelhouse Media in North County, where she was the managing editor of Carlsbad Magazine, Encinitas Magazine and several contract-publishing projects. Outside of the office-world, Carly enjoys long walks on the beach and puppies. Seriously? Well, no, and although that may be partially true, you will more likely see her out on the soccer field or debating the latest March Madness upset. (She’s a Syracuse University journalism graduate, a central New York college known in part for both their basketball program and top-notch communications school).

Carly is here for our clients, community, friends and fans, so feel free to pick her brain or ask for some web design and branding solutions by emailing carly@skyboxcreative.com.

A few months back, in a haste to publish our shiny new web site, we created a less than lovely blog to move things along…

Now we have quite a few articles here and plan to keep the news coming, so it was time to upgrade our blog. We added an RSS feed for those of you who want to stay in the loop. It is very simple. Just click on the Subscribe RSS icon which will take you to the ‘feed’ page: http://www.skyboxcreative.com/news/feed. Simply choose the reader of choice, if you use Google RSS Reader, which we recommend, all you have to do is copy and paste the feed link into the reader.

If you are an RSS novice, contact us and we would be happy to walk you through the process.