by Keri Honea on March 11, 2010
The big search engine optimization (SEO) news from last week was Google’s announcement at the Search Marketing Expo in Santa Clara, California that the search giant would like to be able to index in “real time.” This would mean that any new website published and any new keyword changes in meta tags will instantly be processed and ranked in Google’s search engine accordingly.
They hope to implement this monster of an idea using a real time syndication protocol called PubSubHubbub (or PuSH). The protocol is ATOM-based, much like RSS feeds. When a website publisher adds new content, the publisher informs the Hub, and the Hub automatically informs all subscribers of the new content. If Google can use PuSH for indexing, Google could simply subscribe to website publishers’ PuSH feeds to find the new content and update the search engine ranks automatically. This way, Google would receive information about new, small sites immediately instead of the typical waiting period for the robots to find it.
So how will this affect SEO work?
Some say it won’t affect it very much, especially since so many companies use social media for marketing. However, there is big possibility that companies will need to master the SEO of their content BEFORE they even publish their website, as they won’t be able to wait around for their sites to be indexed before bothering with SEO. In addition, companies will also be competing with an almost definite flux of non-relevant sites and spam content getting PuSHed into the indexes. This may or may not affect their page ranks, but they will need somebody to stay on top of it.
That “somebody” should take the form of a SEO consultant, whether they are in-house with a web developer or a separate entity. Achieving high quality SEO is always important, and it may become even more important to hire expert help to make sure your website content will stay above the riff raff and most importantly, your competition.
Of course nothing is official, and we’ll all have to wait for Google’s (not to mention Yahoo’s and Bing’s) formal announcement on the matter. It will happen eventually though, so be prepared, and ask yourself, who handles your website SEO?
Popularity: 2% [?]
Tweet This Post 
Plurk This Post 
Buzz This Post 
Delicious 
Digg This Post 
Ping This Post 
Reddit This Post 
Stumble This Post
by Brittany Horton on March 8, 2010
I was going through 40-50 portraits taken by Louellen Coker at a recent event, and one stood out of the crowd. All of the images were taken around the same time of day, with the same lighting, for the same reason. Though, this one image still stood out. Why? I looked into this a little more, and I found these four photography tips to share to help you make a good photograph, excellent.
When photographing any subject, may it be your children, your dog, a landscape or building, or even your staff, there are four elements to keep in mind while shooting: the composition, the lighting, the gaze, and the equipment, all being equally important. If one of these elements is missing, you may only have a good photograph, not an excellent one. Today I will touch base on the first important aspect of an excellent photograph, the composition.
Composition, also known as the frame, according to the Mariam-Webster online dictionary is the “arrangement into specific proportion or relation.” When you begin to take your photographs, remember that you need to pay attention to your surroundings, you want to find the best spot for your images, that will allow for the best composition. Ask yourself a few questions while looking through your lens at your subject to find the best composition.
- Is anything important being cut-off, hands or even ears?
- Are there any objects directly behind the subject, pulling attention away from the subject?
- Are there any dark corners, or bright windows in the background that you should move away from (a good tip indoors with windows, have the window point toward your subject, not toward you)?
- Are their any objects in the frame that are unwanted, a loose sheet of paper or trash, a dirty coffee mug, or even a stranger?
All of these questions and the analyzing of your surroundings will help you frame your photograph, and arrange your subject to be the center of attention, while not having to be in the center. Which brings me to my next tip, the rule of thirds.
When it comes to photography, a lot of photographers will tell you that they dislike anything being directly centered, this is a common factor dating back to ancient paintings and artifacts. The rule of thirds, is a standard of dividing your image into thirds to help arrange your image, helping move the eye around the photograph and proportionally arrange your subject. This rule can be applied to both vertical and horizontal photographs.
Rule of Thirds
Photograph example using the Rule of Thirds
As seen in this example, we first have the rule of thirds alone, which divides the image into nine equal parts and into thirds. Then we have a photograph with the rule of thirds applied. You can see that the subject is aligned with one of the lines, and an important element on the subject, the bike, is centered on one of the points. Having the subject along the third rule, allows the eye to move across from the point of sight, to the rest of the photograph, the boy, the bike, and then to the puddle. One of our favorite photographer bloggers, Darren Rowse, stated “The theory is that if you place points of interest in the intersections or along the lines that your photo becomes more balanced and will enable a viewer of the image to interact with it more naturally.” Having this natural movement will allow the viewers to enjoy the entire photograph, not just small elements, making it an excellent photograph.
In my next few blog posts, we will discuss the other three important elements to a photograph, the gaze, the lighting, and the equipment.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Tweet This Post Plurk This Post Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post Ping This Post Reddit This Post Stumble This Post
by Louellen Coker on March 5, 2010
Every week we have literally thousands of blogs come through our Google Readers that offer great information. While it’s hard to winnow these excellent posts about branding, social media, graphic design, writing, editing, or other topics pertinent to the services we provide at Content Solutions, here are a few posts that caused us to take pause around the water-cooler to discuss this week.
From the Branding Front
From the folks over at Women Entrepreneur comes a post reminding us that branding comes from within. Lynn Parker discusses five components that will help you define, live, and deliver your brand promise.
Yep, we spend a lot of time doing search engine optimization activities for our client websites and conducting ad campaigns on Google, so we were interested to see how Google rated itself in their SEO Report Card. This 49 page report based on a study of the main pages of 100 different Google products as a means of giving their product teams ideas on how to improve their products’ pages.
From the Social Media Front
This is a great little post from twitip that runs down some of the top reasons to join the twitterverse. I forwarded this post to my favorite client, Duane L. Coker (OK, he does happen to be my husband of nearly 20 years as well!); and after reading it and attending IgniteDallas #1, he became a convert.
Nick O’Neill shared on All Facebook that images on Facebook have been increased “by almost 20 percent to 720 pixels.” For those of us who like to upload pictures for our friends and family to see, this is great news!
Here at Content Solutions, we regularly work with our clients as they set up their blogs. Our discussions sometimes start with our clients staring at us glassy-eyed across the table. As we ease our clients into their new blogs, we address the fears that Michael Martine over at Remarkablogger addresses.
Just as an aside, two-thirds of our staff are professional writers and editors that hold master degrees and have extensive consulting and teaching experience focused on this exact subject! We love nothing more than helping you overcome these fears.
Know of other great posts? Let us know in the comments.
Popularity: 3% [?]
Tweet This Post Plurk This Post Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post Ping This Post Reddit This Post Stumble This Post
