Skybox Creative Blog

Google makes over 500 changes to its search algorithm every year, keeping Search Engine Optimization pros and web marketers on their toes. It’s hard to stay on top of what the search engine is up to. Recent changes, though, have been much publicized. Local searching – finding San Diego-based businesses if you’re in San Diego, for example – has gained importance as people access the internet on mobile devices. But now, precision in internet searching – and so in search engine optimization – is showing up in new ways.

Fresh Content

We’ve always known that new, current content on your website is important in ranking high in Google’s search results. But now it may be even more important. First, search results will include more text from your website, not just headers and menu. This means the more relevant content you have on your home page, the more meaningful your search listing will be to users. Google also recently tweaked their algorithm to check for levels of freshness for each user query. This will be used in combination with detectors that can tell whether sites are official, and thereby yield more authoritative results – official sites will rank even high in their search ranking. So people can’t game the system by simply throwing up new copy. Users can also specify date ranges in their search, with Google yielding only results relevant to that date range. All of this means that if you’re a San Diego retailer, you might want to consider homepage updates or blogs to keep ranking high for local searchers.

Verbatim Search

Another interesting change at Google is the “verbatim” search choice. When users select this, Google won’t suggest spelling corrections or alternative “close” search categories.  Verbatim searchers will find results that match their spelling (correct or not), tense (past, present, etc), exact verb form (“run” or “running”), and number (singular or plural), while using all of their search terms. This means that if you REALLY know what your customer wants, and you REALLY know the way they talk about it, you’re at an advantage.

Search engine optimization is an ever-changing part of marketing and Google’s secrecy can make it even harder. But when they DO let out some clues about algorithm changes, it’s worth taking a look.

Skybox Creative is a San Diego based Branding Agency with an emphasis on Web Design and SEO. Get in touch for a free quote on your next design project or search engine marketing campaign! info@skyboxcreative.com or call us at 619.381.3825

To web developers, Google can be intimidating – its algorithm daunting. One of the tough things about staying on top of SEO is that the standards by which websites are rated seems to change with every tiny behind-the-scenes tweak to the search engine. But a recently leaked training document for Google’s team of human URL raters offers a peek into how the search engine rates websites. (Don’t bother Googling that doc, that juicy little number’s already been removed from most sites.)

The rating scale goes from “Vital” (singular, specific sites, a celebrity’s site, for example), to “Useful” (helpful to most users), “Relevant” (helpful to many users), “Slightly Relevant”(not very helpful to most users, but not irrelevant to web search query), and “Off-Topic or Useless” (helpful to very few or no users).

According to Search Engine Watch, that scoured the document for rating clues, what Google’s really paying attention to comes down to just a few important points that web developers and designers need to keep in mind. But they’re also really intuitive – much like Google search itself. The search engine’s human evaluators look at the how useful a page is – how well a web page addresses the real desire (intent) of the user. They also look at the website’s interpretation of the search query – and how well the landing page addresses the query.

Other criteria include location, language, and whether the language of the video content – if the page uses video – matches the query language and landing page content.

One particularly interesting point is that, yes, current, timely content is important. But what these human evaluators look for is whether timeliness of content is necessary for the content. So, sites that follow trends should have timely information, but sites about historical sites, might not have to.

After all considerations of keywords, inlinks and bots, it’s nice to get a glimpse of the human side, isn’t it?

Skybox Creative is a San Diego based Branding Agency with an emphasis on Web Design and SEO. Get in touch for a free quote on your next design project or search engine marketing campaign! info@skyboxcreative.com or call us at 619.381.3825

Understanding SEO can be quite a task, and making it work is even more challenging. We’ve compiled a list of the top 10 best free SEO tools to help you understand your site, how it ranks against competitors, and the power of keywords, anchor text and back links. Watch this quick video and start crafting a strategy to boost your rankings on search engines!

SEO Tool #1 Google Keyword Tool
www.adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Research is key, this step requires a bit of time, but it’s worth it’s weight in gold. Provided by Google, this tool allows you to research your industry keywords to learn about local and global traffic statistics.

Now, what does your site look like to search engines in terms of SEO?

SEO Tool #2 SEO Website Grader
www.websitegrader.com

SEO Tool #3 SEO Blog Grader
blog.grader.com

SEO Tool #4 Check Backlinks & Anchor Text
www.bluebacklinks.com

SEO Tool #5 Search Engine Spider Simulator
www.webconfs.com/search-engine-spider-simulator.php

SEO Tool #6 Alexa Ranking (Worldwide Rank, Search Analytics, Audience Stats, Etc.)
www.alexa.com

SEO Tool #7 SEO Book – Free SEO Tools (These SEO tools can be used for ongoing website analysis and stats.)
www.tools.seobook.com

Next, it’s a good idea to asses what your competition looks like. (You can use the tools above as well as the tools below for this purpose)

SEO Tool #8 Spy on Your Competitors (Learn About Competitor Keywords & AdWords)
www.spyfu.com

SEO Tool #9 Search Engine & Directory Submission Tool
www.ubl.org

Once your ready to move forward with an SEO strategy, these tools will hep you with search engine & directory submission as well as PR article distribution.

SEO Tool #10 Press Release Article Distribution
www.prnewswire.com

Knowledge is only half the battle! Once you understand the status of your current site and have a better understanding of what you need to do, it’s time to hire experts to handle the workload so you can get back to business.

Overwhelmed with information? We’re here to help. Contact us today for a free SEO quote.info@skyboxseo.com or call 619.865.8881

Using social media for marketing sounds like a great option for small businesses – you can brand yourself to a niche market and extend your marketing reach beyond traditional avenues. But just how is a small business supposed to wrangle Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and now even Google+? Managing posts and tweets and friending the right people can all be a bit overwhelming.

Fortunately, there are plenty of companies already using social media marketing that can serve as great models. Social Media Examiner recently handed out their 2011 Small Business Facebook Pages Awards to companies who are already maximizing their social media reach on Facebook. And if you look at the winners, there are some common characteristics.

Most of the pages feature great visuals – photos, logos and video – and offer a wide variety of content including blogs, customer testimonials, and Q & A’s. And without exception, the pages feature clear branding with appealing design and use of logo.

But what’s interesting is that the pages were often standouts for very small-business-y reasons. That is, people like the same things about mom-n-pop shops online that they do in the real world.

Yeah, it’s Personal

All the winners of the Small Business Facebook Pages Awards kept their pages personal. Some, like SnapRetail, feature photos of staff to put faces to their company name. Companies Piggies & Paws, Easy Lunch Boxes, and Garden Quest were praised for their consistent, individualized responses to wall posts. And Dog Training Ireland and and Brasserie Sixty6 use Facebook to accept reservations – personalized customer service right online.

Market with Me, Not at Me

One of the ways award-winning pages kept it personal was by offering interactivity. Top-ranked Intrepid Travel features an interactive game and an online community. Others, for example, New Jersey Family use their Questions tabs to ask fun questions – think of it as a trivia night at your local pub.

And a Little Quid Pro Quo Never Hurts

Several of the award-winning Facebook pages offer incentives for “Liking” the page. Some of these are simply “Facebook Specials”, like at Obeo, but Arizona Pro DJs actually gives out prizes. If you’re in a business with easy giveaway “perks” or are able to offer free consultations, this can be a great way to get your brand out there. Maybe that San Diego surf shop can hand out a free surf lesson?

So these are some of the lessons learned from this year’s top small business Facebook pages. Of course, Leo Burnett’s marketing adage holds as true for social media marketing as it does for traditional marketing, “Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read.”

Skybox Creative is a San Diego based Brand Consultancy with an emphasis on Web Design and SEO. Get in touch for a free quote on your next design project or search engine marketing campaign! info@skyboxcreative.com or call us at 619.381.3825

Should we thank the Android? Is it mobile device users searching for local restaurants and repair shops who are making the web so, well, local? Perform a Google search today and the first results will be marked on a Google map. These are local businesses and Google finds them using their Google Place pages. For example, even a search for Skybox Creative, returns a Google map of San Diego and our address. When did the web get so local?

Google search is getting more and more localized. And what does this mean for Search Engine Optimization? Aside from the general SEO rules about having updated, fresh and relevant content and using carefully selected keywords and terms, what else can you do to boost your company’s ranking in local search?

Local Directories

Local directories can be a great asset in your SEO strategy. Bing Local, Yahoo Local, and Yelp are great places to start listing your business to get it recognized in the local market – and boost your page ranking in Google. There are a lot of specialized local directories, as well, that often rank high for the kind of keywords you’d like to be found for. These are often organized around industries – legal, web design, dentistry — and you can search by region, for example, web design in San Diego, and find listings.

The best way to determine how you can boost your ranking in search results is to search keywords you think customers would use to find you and see what directories appear on the first page of Google results. Then make sure you’re listed in those directories. Many listings are free, but you might want to think about paying to be listed in the top-ranked – and most relevant – local directories.

Skybox Creative's Google Place Marker

Google Places

Google Place pages are another essential for SEO. Basically, you create your little marker on the Google map. This is the page that pops up most frequently on mobile devices.

Some of these pages are automatically created by local directories, so search your business to see if you’re already listed. If you are not the creator of the marker, you can contact Google to get a PIN number so that you can maximize the reach of Google Places. You’ll want to link the address to your primary website, instead of a directory listing and fill out your place page with your logo, keyword-rich copy, and even photos and video. You can also select relevant categories for your company, to make sure you’re included in a broad category of searches.

On the ever-changing landscape of SEO, it’s important to remember where you come from. After all, with the trend for searching local, that’s where your customers will find you!

Skybox Creative is a San Diego based Brand Consultancy with an emphasis on Web Design and SEO . Get in touch for a free quote on your next design project or search engine marketing campaign! info@skyboxcreative.com or call us at 619.381.3825

Free PDF Download!

We all know that colors provoke feelings. When we’re mad, we say we “see red”; when we’re down, we’re “blue”. We describe jealous people as “green with envy”. And we’ve become comfortable making our color choices reflect out personality — from the early days of personalizing pages on Myspace to colorful backgrounds on mobile devices. With customer-facing web and graphic design decisions, choosing the right color scheme is critical. The last thing we want is to have our design choices saying something that conflicts with our brand.

Skybox Creative recently published a Color Theory report that explores the implication of color and design choices worldwide. As a graphic design and branding company based in San Diego, we know that blue skies can suggest tranquility and golden sunsets bring happiness. But how does that translate to the branding, business strategy and the web design choices you make?

What’s Your Message?

The first thing you want to decide when making design and branding choices is what “message” you want to send. In other words, what’s the “vibe” you’re after? (I mentioned we’re from San Diego). If you were to loosely name the “themes” behind your business, what would they be?

If friendly and personal is an important part of your business, consider pinks and oranges. If you want to express health, healing or nature, green’s the way to go. If you want to convey trust – consider blue. Ever noticed how many banks use blue in their designs?

The Web’s a Small World After All

Since an online presence means a global presence, it’s important to know what your color themes mean to cultures around the world. It may not be what you think. Yellow, which to US audiences suggests summer, sunshine and optimism signifies mourning in Mexico. And red – sexy and dangerous in America – is a sign of purity in Asia. For more information about what colors mean around the world, download the report from Skybox Creative.

Apart from our Color Theory report, there are other great web and graphic design resources like Computerarts and Designtaxi that regularly report on the best approaches to color including reviews of software that can help make those colorful fantasies a reality.  A Google search of “color theory” will also return results with tutorials where you can read more and even try out color combinations without going public in mismatched clothes!

Skybox Creative is a San Diego based Brand Consultancy with an emphasis on Web Design and SEO. Get in touch for a free quote on your next design project or search engine marketing campaign! info@skyboxcreative.com or call us at 619.381.3825

San Diego may have beautiful beaches, great weather and a reputation for fun, but almost everybody here — just like almost anybody anywhere — is searching for something. A recent study on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) reports that outside of e-mail, the number-one activity people perform online is search. In fact, 72 percent of all Americans use the internet for search, with 60 percent doing it every day, primarily with Google, but also with Yahoo and Bing. If you think about your own online behavior, that’s probably not surprising. These behaviors are habitual, almost knee-jerk activities we perform as soon as we open our laptops or check our mobile phones. And with usage on mobile devices increasing — checking email on the commute home or looking for nearby restaurants — you can see that the findings make sense. So what does that mean for business?

SEO = Seriously Excellent Opportunity

This data means that Search Engine Optimization is as important as ever. And the good news is that the search engines want to help searchers — all of us, in San Diego and otherwise — find what we’re looking for. They are constantly updating their algorithms to root out sites that are simply trying to game the system and provide little real value. Which means that SEO can be less about percentage of keywords and tags and more about providing real content that customers want. For example, much was made of Google’s Panda update which helped users avoid “content farms” where content that was rich in SEO search terms but shallow on real information and could waylay users. Constantly changing to yield more valuable results, search engines are providing a perfect opportunity for businesses that want to provide substantive information to their customers online.

You can get a glimpse of this “only the real deal” strategy behind the algorithm adjustments at SEOmoz. They recently published a report that attempts to track all of Google’s algorithm changes since 2000. The approach is complex, but the objective is simple. Since almost everyone is looking for something, it’s just good customer service on the part of the search engines to help them find it. That’s something we can all understand.

And since we’re on the topic, we here at Skybox Creative have launched an SEO division serving our local San Diego clients as well as those from around the world.

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

From Pac-man to Bastille Day, Google has honored key dates and anniversaries for over a decade with their special doodles. Who doesn’t anticipate a fun new logo every now and then on their Google homepage? Today, over 300 Doodles have been designed for the USA, and over 7oo for international countries.

Curious about the conception of the Google doodle? It all started in 1998, when Google founders Larry and Sergey tweaked the logo to announce their attendance at the Burning Man festival. This concept of decorating the Google logo received a hugely positive response from users, and as a result, then-intern Dennis Hwang was appointed “chief-doodler”, and doodles became a recurring feature on the Google homepage. Today, a special team of designers is responsible for the creative doodles that are enjoyed all over the world.

Here are a few of our favorites:

Some of the most memorable doodles have actually been animations!

This most recent one, honoring the work of contemporary choreographer Martha Graham, instantly became viral:

Watch the video here

This stunning animation, commemorating the birthday of writer Jules Verne, is even interactive!

Watch the video here

We’re excited to see what they come up with next!!

Skybox Creative is a brand consultancy with an emphasis on web development and technology solutions. Get in touch today! info@skyboxcreative.com or call us at 619.381.3825

Startup America, an initiative launched this year to encourage high-growth entrepreneurship in the U.S., is introducing a huge partnership program this month — and Google has announced its $100 million commitment to the cause!

Click to read about the commitment on Google’s official blog

The Startup America Partnership‘s goal is to help entrepreneurs launch and nurture successful companies, with the support and resources of already well-established businesses. The program offers different solutions depending on which of the four stages the participating start-up is in — Idea (no company yet), Startup (newly created), Rampup (initial growth stage), or Speedup (exponential staff and revenue growth). Regardless of which stage a company is in, Startup America is offering a new free membership program for young companies who sign up!

Here’s how Google comes into the picture: From June 1, 2011 until June 1, 2012, Google advertising platforms (such as Adwords and Boost) will be available for Startup America members to use, and $1,000 spent will be reciprocated by a $1,000 match from Google. This is an amazing resource for promising young businesses who are starting out by humble means, just as Google once did.

And Google is not the only big contributor to the program — HP, Facebook, Cisco, and IBM are some of the other seasoned companies giving the newbies a boost. You can view a list of all the established organizations that are providing resources for the Startup America Partnership program here.

Do you know – or are you – an entrepreneur who could benefit from being a Startup America member? Look through the Resources center to find out if you should get involved!

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

Back in the summer of 2009, Google announced on its official blog that retail hardware featuring its new operating system, Chrome OS, would be launched in the winter of that year. However, this release date has been pushed further and further back, and bets are now on a May 2011 launch date. Is this new OS as exciting as the wait is making it seem? Here’s a brief overview of what Chrome OS is foreseen to be when it’s officially launched.

The concept behind Chrome OS revolves around web-browsing — because Google realized that users spend the majority of their computer time surfing some internet browser, the only default application on the device will be a browser that incorporates a media player. That means that every action that a user performs while using the upcoming OS will be executed via the internet. As demonstrated by the Google development team, most files (music, text, video, etc) will be stored in internet accessible servers, thus antiquating the need for hard drives. Basically, Google’s philosophy with Chrome OS parallels that of its browser: simplification.

Here’s a screenshot of an early version of the Chrome OS, demonstrated by Google vice president Sundar Pichai in 2009:

The desktop looks pretty similar to the Chrome browser (Google did announce that the OS would be a natural extension of the Chrome browser), and we see application tabs as well, which are quite space efficient, and can be pinned for convenient access.

There was early concern with this minimalistic approach — a major con of everything being web-based is that the operating system is likely to be mediocre at handling more intensive tasks, such as running Photoshop. Other skeptics suggest that existing operating systems already have what Chrome OS promises to deliver, plus the added benefits of supporting native applications as well.

However, the sheer progressiveness of a web-based operating system prevents Chrome OS from being legitimately comparable to other OS’s based on the mere specifications at this point — it looks like we’ll have to wait for the launch to feel out whether it’s just what our internet-loving selves have been aching for… or if it’s just too revolutionary for its time.

Skybox Creative, Inc. – Elevate your business with tech-savvy brand + web design.