We’re all about blogging this week, as some of you might have seen from our recent post on whether blogging is dead. So in keeping with this week’s theme, our infographic of the week shares some quick insight on the state of business blogging from last year and this year. Have a look, then we’ll share why we chose to visualize these particular stats and the industry opportunities we seen in the coming months.

Click to see the full infographic.

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Why We Chose These Statistics
A Look at Numbers that Directly Affect You

One could say that any of the current business blogging stats might directly affect businesses. However, we decided on these for a few reasons. First, we felt that these stats might have a direct affect on your blog marketing and web marketing strategies. The numbers give insight that could be useful for everything from when the best time to blog is to how you need to structure your web marketing to target the majority of regular bloggers. There are also a few industry opportunities we thought you might want to be aware of so that you can take advantage of them going forward.

A quick look at the infographic tells us that the majority of bloggers are men. This is important for 2 reasons. Men respond differently to certain topics, marketing messages and correspondence than women do. They also tend to blog at a different time of day (as you’ll soon see in the next part of our Science of Timing series). So keep in mind that when you’re blogging or commenting on blogs, you’re more likely to be dealing with men authors than with women. Be sure you understand how to talk to men and get your message across in a way that works for that market.

We can also see that a small number of bloggers engage in mobile blogging while an even smaller percentage are actual professionals and self-employed individuals. Here are 2 areas where we saw a lot of opportunity. Mobile blogging is expected to increase dramatically this year, especially with the rise of the tablet industry. This could also mean an increase in the number of professionals and solo entrepreneurs blogging on the whole.

And it comes as no surprise to us that WordPress leads the market in terms of the preferred blogging platforms. Blogger still sits in second place, as it has for many years now. And other platforms such as Movable Type and Tumbl.r remain more popular than platforms like Drupal & Joomla (perhaps because of the learning curves associated with each).

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Blogging Opportunities for Businesses & Professionals
How to take advantage of these stats to increase leads & sales

So how can you use all of this to your advantage? We thought of a few quick ways that we hope will be helpful, and we encourage you to post your own tips in our comments below!

Create campaigns targeted toward men aged 35 – 44. We also saw in some of the other stats not mentioned here that the majority of bloggers are aged 35 – 44. And since you know that the majority of bloggers are men, you may want to test new web marketing campaigns geared toward this audience if you’re looking for partnerships with influential bloggers, reviews from bloggers or back links.

Calling All Women! Women make up the lowest percentage of bloggers, which means that if you’re a woman there might be a chance for you to build a big name for yourself without a whole lot of competition! If you’re already a woman who blogs, there might some opportunity here for you to start meetup groups and networking groups around the topic of business blogging just for women to give the numbers a boost.

Get the jump on competition by blogging often. Again, 13% is a pretty low percentage in terms of professionals and self-employed individuals who blog regularly. But that means that you can get in and carve out your place in the industry without a lot of competition. We suggest you start blogging a few times a week to begin making a name for yourself.

If you’re a marketer, get into mobile. We see opportunity for both bloggers and marketers in the mobile sector. Marketers can start to target mobile bloggers via ad networks such as Ad Mob. Businesses can also offer specific services for mobile bloggers or create advertising relationships with local bloggers using geolocation services. If you’re a blogger, start blogging on the go to increase RSS subscribers and relationships with local businesses. With so little competition here, there’s a lot to be gained on both sides from mobile blogging.

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See other opportunities from these stats? Share them with our readers below!

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I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this in recent months, and it bothers me each and every time. Someone who considers themselves an “expert” in the web marketing arena feels that because social media is what’s talked about more these days, that blog marketing is dead. That’s one of the worst myths floating around out there, and if you decide to believe it you’ll find yourself missing out on a LOT of traffic, interaction with true experts and potential customers, and eventually sales.

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How & Why Businesses & Customers Use Blogs
The how’s and why’s for each are different, but achieve the same goal

Businesses and customers use blogs for completely different reasons, but when a blog is done right these 2 sides of the coin can meet comfortably at the middle. Businesses want to inform customers about what’s happening with their company, brand and products. They also want an easier way to provide support, status or system updates and facts. A business could use Twitter or Facebook for this, but the reality is that posting content solely on those networks won’t do one’s website a bit of good. Your corporate website should always be the original home of your content, and blogs provide a great, inexpensive and easily managed way to do this!

Customers, on the other hand, use blogs to learn more about the company. Not just about what’s new, but they read between the lines. How often does this company blog? If not very often, then it might seem like they don’t have a lot of expertise in their field, or they haven’t had a lot of work recently. That could be a turn-off for customers who are in the process of making buying decisions. If the company does blog a lot, how educated does it sound and how many other people seem to care about what they’re talking about? If blog posts aren’t proof-read and have a lot of misspellings and grammatical errors, it could make your company look bad. Customers don’t need too much of a reason to decide not to buy, so you certainly don’t want to give them even more reasons by not using your company blog in the right way. Try some testing and observation to discover why and how your customers use corporate blogs so that you’re spending time on efforts that really matter.

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A Very Recent Example of Blog Marketing in Action
Is last night recent enough for you?

To prove my theory that blog marketing isn’t dead, we’ll use a real experience from just last night. The day before, I had come across a blog post on a well-known web design blog that seemed to be downing SEO as an industry. That didn’t seem very fair to me, as I feel that a lot of the issues with SEO come about because of web designers who aren’t willing to go a little beyond their literal job titles. I wanted to comment on the post, but as it was kind of old the comments were closed. So instead, I decided to write a rebuttal blog post of my own here on our site.

The result? The author of that post came to read mine, and left a comment. It just so happens that he’s pretty well known in the web industry (he works with WordPress, he speaks at conferences and he’s worked with big-name companies). So just him showing up and leaving a comment here brought in quite a bit of traffic. But then he tweeted about our blog post, and because he has a huge network of followers they came to read up on the conversation as well. And then others tweeted, or shared on LinkedIn. And as a result, we’ve had a steady flood of traffic coming in since last night! How do I know? Because we use live, real-time analytics that tell us just about everything we’d want to know about our visitors!

So, we went from being a little company that got a modest amount of traffic to being kings for a day because of one blog post. Imagine what will happen if we create more blog posts that catch attention like this? It was free, and only took me about 30 minutes to research and write. And because we’ve seen these visitors moving to other parts of our website after they finished reading the blog post, we know that the traffic means more than just a few tweets and comments. Any of these visitors could turn into a customer or partner, or any other customer could come by and see how much buzz we’re generating and decide to buy from us instead of a competitor.

Is blog marketing dead? Hardly. In fact, it fits so seamlessly with social media and other forms of web marketing that it will probably never die. It will just grow up, become more mature, and become more of a staple in a web marketing strategy like email marketing or SEO has. If you’re still not blogging, or not doing it often enough, you might want to step your game up. Because you’d better believe that your competitors are probably taking advantage of a golden opportunity!

We all know that Facebook has become an extremely popular way to promote one’s business. Anyone who is anyone now has a presence on the social network. And with good reason. Facebook has reached out to brands, organizations, local businesses, artists, musicians and more, welcoming them with open arms and providing such tools as Facebook Ads and Facebook Places to help them spread their message far and wide. But there are a few things that some brands seem to miss when it comes to Facebook marketing. Because Facebook Marketing isn’t a set-in-stone method for promotion, there are some who would say that there isn’t a right or wrong way to use the network. But there are etiquette rules to social media as a whole, which Facebook falls quite comfortably into, and when not obeyed the results can mean the death of your brand. We take it that’s not something you want. So here are a few tidbits to help improve your Facebook marketing by showing you the right and wrong ways to represent your brand on the network.

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Have experiences representing your brand through Facebook Marketing that you’d like to share? Why not click here to leave a comment?

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Facebook Marketing the Wrong Way: No Brand Strategy
Lacking a solid brand strategy can negatively affect Facebook Marketing efforts

For some strange reason, social media is one of those things that many small businesses and solo entrepreneurs seem to go into without any kind of brand strategy. Perhaps the reason is the very nature of the beast – social media feels more conversational, more informal and more comfortable. We therefore think that planning and strategy aren’t as necessary as they are for other forms of marketing. That couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, you’re likely to get into a LOT more trouble if you haven’t created a well-thought-out brand strategy when it comes to social media. Why? Because the main focus of your audience on a social network is YOU. Nor is it the purchase of products & services (unless it’s a social shopping network). Your audience members are their to unwind, the keep up with friends, to find out where the next happy hour is, to share photos from their weddings and generally to have fun. Throwing business into the mix without understanding how your audience interacts on a given network can be a huge buzz kill. So before you jump on your Facebook profile and start dishing out links and promos, you might want to step back and see what your audience is interacting with and how. Then work your brand into the conversation & word-of-mouth realm first, followed by the heavier marketing later. It all really depends on your audience, so the best thing you can do is take the time to observe and learn them first.

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Facebook Marketing the Wrong Way: Using Profiles Instead of Pages
Unless your friends are your target audience, get a real business space!

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen this. I go to check out a brand or company on Facebook, perhaps even from a link on their own site, and instead of being directed to a Facebook Page I’m directed to a personal profile that I have to become “friends” with before I can learn anything. Some do this unknowingly, and some think it a smart Facebook Marketing tactic. If you are in either of these groups, ask yourself this: why would Jane or Billy want to be “friends” with your brand? They don’t know you, and chances are they don’t know much about your brand (especially if that’s the way you choose to market on other networks as well). Social media is supposed to be about transparency, but when you hide your brand behind a profile that someone has to become “friends” with you’re likely to either get a lot of false friends (many of whom might be doing the same thing as you, by the way) or none at all.

Facebook created its Page feature for a reason. Pages are the space where businesses are able to shine, friends or no friends. Mildly interested users can visit a Facebook Page to learn more about a company, and even see some of the conversation that’s going on. Then they can choose to “like” that company page only if they feel the need to. But whether they like your page or not, potential customers will always be able to find out what’s happening with your brand.

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Know of other wrong ways to use Facebook Marketing? Click here to share your thoughts!

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Facebook Marketing the Right Way: Use the Tools You’re Given
Learn how to make use of Facebook Ads, Pages, Places & More

As we mentioned before, Facebook welcomed businesses, organizations, local professionals and artists onto its network with open arms. And they did so by providing a variety of tools and features that are meant specifically for businesses. You’ll see the best results from your Facebook marketing when you learn what all of these tools and features are and learn how to use them. Here are just a few you should research for your Facebook marketing brand strategy:

• Facebook Ads (With Deep, Targeted Demographics)
• Facebook Pages (Apps & Tabs for Nearly Every Purpose)
• Facebook Places (Check In With Mobile Devices)
• Facebook Apps (Host Polls & Surveys, Post Video & Blogs + Sell Products!)

We suggest going through each of the tools mentioned above as well as each tool’s features and creating a brand strategy based on what you feel you can use for your particular business. It won’t be the same for everyone and this is just a start, but it will move you in the right direction. We’ll be sharing more Facebook marketing tips in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!

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Rebranding is something that has no doubt come up for every company in existence at some point. Perhaps you’ve purchased a business from someone else and you’ll be completely changing things up. Or maybe you’ve been around for a while but you feel you’re in need of a fresh, new look. Or for some, moving on from negative publicity might be the reason for considering a company-wide rebrand. All of these reasons might be valid ones, but if you’re considering a large-scale rebrand right now there might be factors to consider that you haven’t even thought about yet.

Our friends over at Site Reference wrote an awesome post on company rebranding a couple of weeks ago, and hit on some important tips for to consider for when to rebrand. It was a very helpful read for anyone thinking about rebranding or going through issues that might lead to a company-wide rebrand. In reading the post, we realized that we too have quite a bit of first-hand experience in rebranding that might be helpful to others, having just gone through a major rebrand ourselves. After a few comments traded back in forth we agreed that a full-out case study might be in order. So welcome to the preface of our 7-Part series on rebranding! Every week we’ll be looking at a different part of the rebranding process, exploring the best times to rebrand, and sharing some insight about branding strategies with the ultimate goal of helping you plan a smoother and more effective company rebrand. You’ll also get the benefit of seeing start-to-finish examples of the rebranding process with us in the hot seat! You’ll get some insight into how we planned, what worked, what didn’t, how we made up the difference and the complete before & after of our rebrand!

You might think that the first step to rebranding is understanding when & why a company might need to rebrand. But there’s a step that comes even before this, which most companies fail to consider or plan in advance for. Before you starting thinking about why you want to rebrand and if now is the best time, it’s important for you to understand the different types of rebranding. There are 2, and as a preface to our case study we’ll go over both so that you can go into the process without any missing information.

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The Full Company Rebrand
Rebranding your company from head to toe

The first type of rebrand described the total make-over of a company, including business name, target audiences, products & services, pricing and in many cases service location. This type of rebrand is much more extensive, so it goes without saying that there should be more research and planning involved in the rebranding process. We’ll even go so far as to say that before you lift a finger to get started, your company needs to develop a whole new business plan which includes a well-thought-out branding strategy. If you don’t, you’re likely to miss some important points and steps that could end up making your new brand perform worse than the old one.

Later in the case study we’ll be providing a rebranding checklist, but right now here are just a few important company elements that should be considered or planned for in your branding strategy:

• New name – check for trademarks, copyrights & competitors
• Logo – your company’s main image
• Target audience
• New products or services
• Competitors
• New keywords
• Domain name & website

UberTwitter, after a huge suspension from the Twitter developer network, was forced to rebrand – and fast!

Changing the business name can be an entire process all by itself, and needs extreme care, caution and legal advice. There was a big hoopla just a couple of months back about two companies I’m sure you’ve heard of. If you’re at all familiar with UberTwitter and Twidroyd, popular Twitter apps in the mobile space, then you probably heard about the big suspension of the apps (and a couple of others made by the same company) handed down from Twitter. Why? Because parent company UberMedia failed to do the proper amount of legal planning when they decided on product names (among other things). Twitter suspended the app giant for trademark infringement (after all, one of the products used Twitter’s own name in its name, never a good move).

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The result of UberTwitter’s forced rebrand is UberSocial

The result was that the company was forced to be banished from the Twitter client market forevermore unless they underwent a complete (and expedient) rebranding. The problem is, this forced rebranding has meant a lot of down-time for UberMedia, loss of new sales and much confusion, anger and frustration for their customers. Because there are paid versions of both apps customers who had purchased these apps had no clue at first when they’d be able to use their apps again, and once it was announced that UberMedia would be changing up their apps and requesting reinstatement into the twitter developer circle customers didn’t know whether they’d have to pay for apps all over again. The lesson here? Such problems could have been easily avoided had UberMedia simply taken the time to do more research and look at the legal ramifications of their brand decisions. Our theory is that with the mobile market progressing so quickly, many companies clip their planning & development time in order to get their products out as quickly as possible hoping to gain a foothold in the market. Making hasty decisions is never a good business practice, and UberMedia suffered for theirs.

So before you embark on a complete company rebrand, we suggest you sit down with partners, business consultants, lawyers and whoever else you deem important to create a solid branding strategy that won’t come back to bite you in the future. More tips on creating the best branding strategy coming in Part 1 of our Rebranding Series!

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The Image-Only Rebrand
Teaching an old dog new tricks

KFC rebranding through the years – an image-only rebrand.

There are also times when you might want or need a new image for your company. This 2nd type of rebrand, the image-only rebrand, is not as extensive as the first but still requires quite a lot of planning. Again, we’ll even go so far as to suggest you create a branding strategy for this type of rebrand as well. You’ll need to consider:

• Whether to keep your logo or create a new one
• Whether to keep elements such as color scheme the same
• Whether you’ll need a whole new website to reflect the change in image
• Where your brand is currently represented (so that you’ll know where to once it’s time to change things over)

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Of course, these are general thoughts as well. There is much more that should go into the planning of your image-only rebrand than what’s listed here. Just remember than an image-only brand has the potential to confuse your customers a lot more than a total company rebrand. You’ll need to tell your current clients that you’re changing things up and why, and prepare them in advance. Then you’ll need to make sure you change your old brand to the new one in every single place that you’re currently represented. If you don’t, you’ll likely run into problems that could cause you to lose sales. More tips on creating the best branding strategy for an image-only rebrand coming in Part 1 of our Rebranding Series!

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The Virtual Sidekick Rebrand
A bit of back-story on our 2011 rebrand


If you’ve followed us in the past, you can probably tell that we’ve gone through quite a few rebrands. Our first was a total company rebrand, changing the image as well as the services we offered and the areas we served. The others have been image-only rebrands. Actually, we’ve had a total of 4. Why so many? Well again, the first was a change in services. We initially started out in the real estate marketing industry, providing video-based virtual tours to realtors, apartment complexes, For Sale By Owner clients and even event venues. That was back at the beginning of 2008…and then the big Crash came. With it went our target market and even our secondary markets. With the economy in the state it was, few people were buying houses so Realtors weren’t all that keen to spend on additional services. And consumers had little money for the frivolity of big weddings, so the event venue market dried up as well. That meant we had to move into a new space with new services if we wanted to stay afloat. We broadened our scope with web marketing, social media & web design and haven’t looked back since!

But once all of that was out of the way, we couldn’t seem to get clear on the kind of image we wanted to present. We went for super conservative & corporate to fun & funky but without the success or impact we desired. It has taken quite a bit of soul-searching for both of us to determine what our true focus was, and 4 rebrands later we finally have a solid sense of who we are, what we offer, why we offer it and where we’re going. I used to get questions about what inspired our business name and logo. The business name question I could answer pretty easily. The logo question was another story. While I loved our old logo (it spoke to the fun, free and funky side of both our personalities), I realized that it didn’t really describe the business at all. And it showed in 2010. That website redesign was probably the worst-received we’ve had and it took us a while to figure out why. It came down to the 1-year itch – the feeling that it was time for a change before it actually was. Because of that little itch, we didn’t do the planning necessary for rebranding success. We didn’t create any kind of branding strategy, and it showed. And as a result, our sales dropped.

So where are we now? Well I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but I can say that we’re much happier with our brand than I think either of us has ever been. We can actually tell the story of our brand’s inspiration proudly, the new site has already increased in traffic over this time last year and we have a truly seamless image – something that has been seriously lacking until now. You’ll get to see exactly what I’m talking about in this 7-Part Rebranding Series. We’re publishing a full case-study with us in the hot seat. And if we can find it for you, you’ll get to see VSK over the years, from day one to now. Hopefully our past failures can be your lessons and your ticket to a smoother rebranding process.

So stay tuned for the Rebranding Series Introduction & Part 1 coming later this week, including a couple of podcasts and screencasts as well as some Q & A.

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How does HTML5 stack up for web design & WordPress design? Post your comment below to weigh in!

If you own or manage any kind of website, then the chances are high that you’ve heard all about HTML5. The major question though, is whether it’s all hype or valid excitement. After taking some time to learn what’s new on the development side, we feel we have a little room to share what our take is. Perhaps it will help those of you who’ve heard about HTML5 but aren’t really sure what it is or how & when to use it.

In general, HTML5 can be used in the development of websites, web apps and mobile apps. We’re sharing a little of our feedback on HTML5 as it relates to web design and WordPress design because those are the 2 aspects of your business that HTML5 is most likely to affect first. Out of the box, we’re pretty excited about some of the new features. While many of them deal more with aesthetics than functionality, they do seem to make for a very cool web browsing experience.

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A Different Way to Code
Old friends meet new & find a better way to get along!


A lot of what goes into coding in HTML5 reminds me of what it’s like to introduce your old friends to your new ones. It’s always a little awkward, but if all of them are truly your friends they’ll find a way to get along for your sake (and their own). HTML5 is a lot like that. Many of the elements were used to from XHTML1 and older versions of HTML are still here and make up the bulk of our functionality, but the new elements have found a way to come in, play nice and make themselves feel right at home. What results is a good combination of tried & true with a new & funky twist. It doesn’t always work and it certainly has its hiccups and unforeseen issues, but if you can find a workaround the result ends up being cooler than you ever would have thought!

In our eyes, HTML5 makes a few things a lot simpler. Some of the newer elements offer a sort of built-in functionality, whereas before we had to combine a lot of elements, classes, id’s, divs and so on to make things work the way we wanted them to. Just with the little bit of tweaking and coding we’ve done so far, we’re seeing web pages with a lot less code clutter! But beware, HTML5 also presents some new challenges, and because of its newness we’ll have to work that much harder to find viable solutions – or else leave some things out completely.

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Designing, Animating & More Right in the Browser
A long-awaited way to design for the Web


With HTML5 comes the canvas element, a new way to draw & animate directly in the web browser. This is cool in a variety of ways, but again presents new challenges with few solutions (yet). We’ve had a lot of fun playing with canvas so far, though it makes me wish I’d paid a little more attention in Geometry back in high school. If you’re up on your high school math, however, it can be quite simple. Essentially, canvas allows us to put what we want, where we want, using a combination of HTML and Javascript. We’ve found it particularly useful for creating fancy headings like the one above. Ok, so it’s a fairly simple font that’s not so fancy, but it’s also not a regular font that most browsers on their own would understand and interpret correctly. Our fonts are a big part of our site design, so using canvas has provided us with a way to use our desired fonts throughout the site in a way that can be viewed by most of the updated browsers. A simple use, but it helps us and will probably help lots of others who find font to be an important part of their web design.

As cool as canvas is though, beware! Certain aspects, such as drawing text, can alter a user’s experience for the worst (and you don’t want that for your website or app). It also means your site now comes with a lot more images per page than you might have planned (an issue that affects load time and something we’re currently struggling with). Until better support and more best practices come about, it’s probably best to use canvas sparingly and not for text when you can help it.

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Hooray for Native Audio & Video!
Long overdue but still too new…


We’re especially excited about the ability to have native audio & video in the browsers now with HTML5. But it’s not what one might think. We’ve heard a log of hype about HTML5 being iOS’s answer to lack of flash, particularly on Apple’s mobile devices. And when done well, it can be. But HTML5 can’t be a fix-all for missing flash when it’s ultimately the browsers that determine what type of video is supported. Basically, HTML5 works as a switchboard, redirecting the browser to multiple formats to find the one that’s best supported. The browser will pick up whichever format it naturally supports. In many cases, this will be a fluid and happy situation for all. But there are many cases where browsers may not support any kind of video format. In these cases, HTML5 can’t do much more than it’s already done for you. So again, not a fix-all but it certainly puts us farther along than we’ve ever been on this road.

Another cool thing about the audio & video elements of HTML5 is that each browser can now provide native controls. For a lot of us, that means less time spent designing or searching for video player control sets ( play/pause buttons, volume icons etc.) and more time designing what we were hired to design! They all look a bit different, but they’re better looking in some cases than a lot of the more popular video players!

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HTML5 in WordPress Design
Making some theme highlights & functions easier!


We’ve also had a chance to see HTML5 in action in more of the modern WordPress design. What we’ve seen so far is a great use of many of the features to make WordPress design even more robust. Designing new themes can be tricky, but the newer elements in HTML5 make a lot of the aspects of theme design easier to deal with (and change or fix when things break). Canvas has been especially helpful with this, as have the section & heading elements. But beware! If you’re designing themes with the intention of mass sales, you’ll likely run into quite a few browser compatibility issues. Hopefully as the web progresses we’ll see more and more users updating to the latest versions of their browsers (and hopefully moving away from IE altogether), which will solve a lot of browser compatibility issues. But until then, use HTML5 sparingly but just enough to give your themes some real flair. And don’t forget the best practice process below for planning your themes before your begin development!

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User Challenges & Best Practices
Helping to create a smoother transition into the future of the Web


Because of how new it is, HTML5 will present a lot of challenges for those who’re starting the trek – particularly with accessibility and usability. And if you want all of your audience to be able to enjoy and interact with your website, those aren’t issues to scoff at. We suggest taking the time to map out how you want your site to function, seeing which browsers your audience members use most, and then seeing which features of HTML5 will accomplish your goals while being supported by the browsers your audience members use. This will help to eliminate a lot of your accessibility & usability issues, but you’ll still want to consider how your use of HTML5 will affect users on devices other than desktops or laptops (mobile phones, tablets & assistive devices for the disabled). And if you’re bent on using HTML5, be sure you’ve included fallback options for browsers that don’t support the features you’re using, and perhaps even different versions of your site for mobile & screen readers. As long as you’ve covered all of the bases you can think of, you should be able to avoid any major disasters.

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John O’Nolan, WordPress UI Team & Professional Web Developer

That seems to be what one guest blogger over at Webdesigner Depot would have you think. The uber-popular web design blog published a post by John O’Nolan back in Sept. of 2010 on the topic, and from the post it seems that the general feeling was against the need for SEO. In a nutshell, John discussed how simply using the principles of good web design will eliminate the need to focus specifically on SEO for any website. To some extent, we agree. But knowing what we do about the Web as it is today, we can’t fully agree with the theme of that post and what it suggests…especially for small businesses and solo entrepreneurs.

The post breaks SEO down into the categories of White Hat SEO & Black Hat SEO, and goes on to describe what the result of each is from the author’s perspective. And we can see that O’Nolan is not just some random guy voicing an ill-informed opinion. He’s quite well known in the industry for his work with the WordPress UI team, and has worked for such large corporations as Ubisoft, Virgin Atlanta Airways and Nivo Slider. We give credit where credit is due, and John has had a wealth of experience in the industry. And his opinion of SEO as a whole is nearly spot on. From John’s perspective the vast majority of firms and professionals claiming SEO expertise are only concerned with getting top rankings, not helping to bring quality content to light. He expressed his feeling that many of these “seo experts” even use underhanded techniques to achieve what their clients feel are results, but only for the money. In most cases I have to agree with him. Since the concept of SEO became mainstream, it brought on a Youtube-like phenomenon. Think about the virtual doors that Youtube opened up. Suddenly, anyone and everyone could be a star and claim their 15 minutes of fame. It didn’t matter if they became known for ignorant or unintelligent behavior, stupid situations or anything else that painted them in a not-so-good light – as long as they became known. SEO has gone the same way, giving rise to a hoard of “experts” that probably can’t teach you much of anything except how to make a quick (albeit illegitimate) buck. For years (and until the recent Google Farmer / Panda update), the search engine’s top spots were claimed by rehashed, grammatically incorrect articles filled with links to peddle one product or another. Meanwhile, all of the good quality content that couldn’t compete with the rubbish fell to the depths of Page 3 on back.



Cick to read the full article.

So in a sense yes, we agree with John on his general assessment of SEO. Does that mean we think it unnecessary, or that good web design principles will shoot you to the top of search engines? Not at all. That would be like me saying good guys always finished first – so not true. When I first read the article, I was a little offended. True, John wasn’t speaking about me specifically or even about our company. But he was speaking about an industry that we’re deeply involved in, in a way that could dramatically affect not only our success but the success of small businesses and solo entrepreneurs. Being a writer, avid reader and web marketing consultant myself, it was like saying that what I do isn’t necessary. But again, I have to remember that John wasn’t talking specifically about me. He did mention in the post that there are a few SEO’s out there who truly do care about helping the good quality content to shine. I consider myself one of these. Like him, I understand that top rankings mean nothing (and are fleeting) if your site isn’t truly relevant or offers no real value to users. It’s the main reason why I don’t just take any job or client that comes my way. The passion for offering something of value and the care taken to create the product is what helps me decide whether to take a project or not. So no, I’m not like the wayward SEO’s John describes in his post, but I still don’t agree with everything he’s said.

I wish I could say that simply adhering to good web design principles will give you the same kind of boost that SEO will, but I’d be doing our current and potential clients a major disservice. There are 2 unfortunate reasons for this. First, I’d like to you to believe that hiring a good web designer will provide you and your new site with everything you need to hit the ground running. Unfortunately, there are too few designers these days who pay the proper amount of attention to simple elements that could boost SEO on their own. I can’t tell you how many clients, for both Web Design & Web Marketing, we’ve had come to us with less-than-satisfactory sites in this regard. Despite being designed professionally, we’ve seen clients whose sites were missing meta tags, alt tags and even solid internal link structures. It’s no wonder they weren’t getting in traction in the search engines. There are also too few designers who build SEO into their design & development. Sure, there are good ones out there who do everything they’re supposed to. But there are far more who do half-baked jobs or no SEO at all. They don’t even set the sites they do up with meta tags and the like. Perhaps the lack of web designers who are willing to marry the two services is what gave rise to SEO as a service industry in the first place.

Next, I wish I could leave you with the impression that a fundamentally-sound web design will put you among the top-ranking search results forever more. Unfortunately, I can’t. The industry changes much too often and too quickly for that. SEO is an aspect of web design that needs regular monitoring, something that few to no web designers or developers do. A good developer may set you up with everything you need from the start and your new site may enjoy first-page rankings for the next few months. But what about 6 months down the road, or one year? The industry changes a lot in just a few months’ time. Sticking with the same old meta tags and link structure may get you good for a while, but the success and traffic will be short-lived if your SEO isn’t given constant attention.

In our experience small businesses and solo entrepreneurs hate spending, probably because they don’t have much of a budget to spare. I understand it, we’re a small business too after all. But the worst thing any web professional can do for small businesses and solo entrepreneurs is convince them of why they shouldn’t spend on something that is sorely need, or scare them into thinking that they’ll be scammed by almost any other web professional they meet. That’s what I feel John’s article has done, and because he’s well-known in the industry his opinion could have a dramatic effect. Unfortunately, that’s only going to hurt small businesses and solo entrepreneurs without the budget or man-power to compete with bigger corporations. If you’re a small business or solo entrepreneur, you NEED SEO. I’m not just saying that because we offer it as a service. The web is much too competitive these days for a site to be found and recognized off of good web design principles alone. Google is working on throwing out the rubbish, and I’m sure the other search engines are too. That will help a LOT. But you’ve still got the major brands in your industry to contend with, and the best way to do this is to provide high-quality content that’s properly optimized using SEO. Our take is, good web design and SEO go together. They should be sold and delivered together. One without the other makes for an incomplete product that not likely to get you the results you desire.

There will always be rotten apples out there, and these are no doubt what inspired John’s post. But don’t let that scare you into not doing the best thing for your website, or into a false sense of security. SEO is not a scam. It’s the people who pretend to be experts but don’t have the Web community’s best interests at heart that make it seem less valuable than it truly is. You’ll achieve good results with good web design, but that’s only half the battle. The next time you’re looking to have a website done, take the time to research the professionals you’re interested in hiring, and look for web designers who build SEO in while sticking to good web design principles. That way, you can avoid the scam artists without jeopardizing your website.

]]> http://virtual-sidekick.com/web-design/seo-is-a-scam-or-is-it/feed/ 5 http://virtual-sidekick.com/client-spotlight/total-car-solutions-roadside-assistance-for-the-triangle-of-nc/ http://virtual-sidekick.com/client-spotlight/total-car-solutions-roadside-assistance-for-the-triangle-of-nc/#comments Tue, 12 Apr 2011 17:35:30 +0000 admin http://virtual-sidekick.com/?p=868
A big congrats to this month’s spotlight client, Total Car Solutions! Total Car Solutions, a new provider of roadside assistance in the Triangle area of NC, is officially opening its doors today! The company was founded by soon-to-be husband & wife team Joshua Adams & Molly Butler. The focus? Provide local roadside assistance with better service & technology than the current options available on the market. We were happy to provide them with their first official & custom website to get the ball rolling!

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Total Car Solutions will be proudly offering the following services to the Triangle of North Carolina:

• Flat Tire & Tire Inflation Service
• Dead Battery Service
• Vehicle Diagnostics
• Fuel Delivery Service
• Car Locksmith Service
• Junk Car Removal + Compensation

Congratulations again to Joshua Adams & Molly Butler on the launch of Total Car Solutions! Stop by their new website to say hello & welcome them to ranks of small business owners!
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]]> http://virtual-sidekick.com/client-spotlight/total-car-solutions-roadside-assistance-for-the-triangle-of-nc/feed/ 2 http://virtual-sidekick.com/company-news/infographics/new-infographic-future-of-the-web-browser-market-share-support-html5-css3/ http://virtual-sidekick.com/company-news/infographics/new-infographic-future-of-the-web-browser-market-share-support-html5-css3/#comments Fri, 08 Apr 2011 15:20:52 +0000 admin http://virtual-sidekick.com/?p=842
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With talk of HTML5 & CSS3 becoming more popular, we decided that it might be necessary to help our current & future clients understand what it means for their websites and their businesses. In a nutshell, HTML5 & CSS3 are newer web standards designed to allow web designers & developers to do cooler things on the Web. Essentially, these 2 new standards can help to make certain aspects of your websites more interactive, more easily viewed on mobile devices, more streamlined and in some cases, more accessible to site visitors with disabilities. More on that will be coming later, but I’m sure with all the talk you’re anxious to see what this means for your current websites.

Our latest infographic, Future of the Web, offers a couple of quick snapshots to help you understand exactly where things stand between the browsers, their support for HTML5 & CSS3 and your site visitors.



Click to see the full graph.

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Breaking Down Browser Market Share
A look at how far the Web has come in one year


At a glance, you can see that the largest little stars in our night sky represent Firefox, and it’s held the bulk of the market share for the past year. Internet Explorer’s market share comes in 2nd, but it’s dropping fast (a more than 10% drop over the past year), followed by Chrome which is making huge strides and rounding off with Safari & Opera respectively. Chrome’s market share has caught up to IE and we expect it to move well above IE in another year. And as more users get their hands on iPad 2′s and other mobile devices, we expect the market share for Safari & Opera to gain a few notches as well.

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Amount of Browser Support for HTML5 & CSS3
How many features of HTML5 & CSS3 are supported by percentage


So what about support for HTML5 & CSS3 across the major browsers? Well you can see from the infographic that Safari 4 currently offers the highest percentage of support for HTML5 & CSS3 features. Unfortunately though, Safari still holds one of the lowest market share percentages. So we wouldn’t suggest going out and developing specifically for Safari – yet. But it’s closely followed by Chrome, which we mentioned in gaining a LOT of momentum in market share. So it might not be a bad idea to start planning how you intend to develop your websites for the Chrome browser. Firefox 3.5 is next at 70% support for HTML5 & CSS3 features, and currently holds the largest chunk of the market share. So you’ll likely be able to get away with most of the cool new features in HTML5 & CSS3 if your audiences use Firefox primarily. And we’ve heard that with Firefox’s latest version 4 out of beta and available to the public, you’ll have even more of a chance to sneak some of those cool features into your websites. Then you’ve got Opera at 25% support for HTML5 & CSS3 features, which is great for mobile users. And finally, we have IE versions 6, 7 & 8 which come in dead last for HTML5 & CSS3 support. That’s no surprise, and not a huge worry since we can see how quickly market share is declining.

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Browser Market Share + Support for HTML5 & CSS3
Knowing whether you should be designing & developing for the new standards


So should you being going out and requesting all of your new sites to be developed in HTML5 & CSS3, or should you be looking at redoing your current site? Not quite yet. Both standards are still pretty new and need a bit more fleshing out. But it really depends on your target audience. Take a look at your analytics to see what browsers your website visitors are currently using. If most of your visitors are coming to you from Firefox, Chrome & Safari then you’re pretty safe developing new sites with most of the HTML% & CSS3 features. But if you’re visitors are coming to you mostly on IE, you should definitely wait a bit to see how things shift over the next year. After all, it’s all about usability and accessibility and a site that your main audience can’t view well is no good to them (or to you and your sales).

We hope this helps all the business owners, solo entrepreneurs and non-developers out there understand a little more about where the Web is headed and sift through all of the hype surrounding HTML5 & CSS3 a bit more easily. They’re great standards and we can’t wait to starting implementing more of their features on our own site and our clients’ sites, but we can all probably take a little time to see what’s best for our site visitors first.

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Data Sources

Browser statistics
Browser Support for HTML5 & CSS3



]]> http://virtual-sidekick.com/company-news/infographics/new-infographic-future-of-the-web-browser-market-share-support-html5-css3/feed/ 0 http://virtual-sidekick.com/google-instant-seo/why-you-should-be-worried-about-more-than-just-seo-with-google-instant/ http://virtual-sidekick.com/google-instant-seo/why-you-should-be-worried-about-more-than-just-seo-with-google-instant/#comments Thu, 07 Apr 2011 14:30:35 +0000 admin http://virtual-sidekick.com/?p=838
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In a previous blog post, we discussed Google Instant Preview and what it means for your web design. That’s great for one side of your business, but we think Google Instant Preview might have more of a hand in the success of your web marketing strategy than you might think. If you haven’t begun planning or improving your website with Google Instant SEO and Google Instant Preview in mind, you might want to read on to learn how not taking action might be keeping you from achieving web marketing success.

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Why Consider Google Instant Preview for Web Marketing?

The main point of Google Instant Preview is for users to be able to preview a page and where their search term is located on a page before they click on a search result. This helps the user define their own ideas for how relevant a site is to their search. Based on the first few months of Google Instant Preview’s existence, we saw that users were using the feature to get an idea of where inside the content their search term fell, how often their search term showed up in the content, and the other content related to their search term on the same page. That may not seem new, different or big to you, but it is a BIG deal for your web marketing. If you don’t know how your target audience is using Google Instant Preview, you may be missing out on users who don’t consider your content as relevant to their search as competing content.

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Take Steps to Develop, Write & Optimize for Google Instant Preview

We strongly suggest taking a few steps to ensure that Google Instant Preview supports your web marketing rather than hurting your efforts. Here are a few quick tips to get you going and keep in mind that if these tips seem elementary, it’s probably because they’re common sense for web marketing anyway!

• Use your page’s prime real estate (the area above the fold) for important, relevant & up-to-date content focused on 1 or 2 keywords.
• Keep keyword density in mind, but be sure that your main keyword appears a few times on the page before a visitor is forced to scroll down or over for more info.
• Don’t overrun your pages with ads and images that make your page look cluttered at first glance. If users feel that they’ll have a hard time finding what they need on your page, they’ll quickly move on to the next result without so much as click.
• When possible, include your main keyword in tags, navigation links and image captions on your page to increase relevancy from a Google Instant Preview perspective. You might also want to tag photos & videos with your main keyword for added juice!
]]> http://virtual-sidekick.com/google-instant-seo/why-you-should-be-worried-about-more-than-just-seo-with-google-instant/feed/ 0 http://virtual-sidekick.com/2011-web-marketing-trends/creating-a-web-marketing-strategy-using-the-science-of-timing/ http://virtual-sidekick.com/2011-web-marketing-trends/creating-a-web-marketing-strategy-using-the-science-of-timing/#comments Thu, 07 Apr 2011 14:00:02 +0000 admin http://virtual-sidekick.com/?p=829
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One of the main things we suggest to our clients is that any strategy created needs to take timing into account. Timing can drastically affect the outcome of a campaign, from the number of users that see your ads to the days where you get the best or worst results. And because timing often depends on users and how they interact with the world around them (which involves a bit of psychology), there is a science to it. We (and most other professionals) call this the science of timing. And like most processes, web marketing has its own timing – the days and times of day when users do and don’t interact with blogs, social networks or websites. Creating a web marketing strategy without taking the science of timing into account is like trying to work out without tennis shoes – you’re unlikely to be successful or to get the results you want. So we suggest that before you create your web marketing strategy, you take the time to learn about the science of timing as it relates to web marketing. Then use what you learn to create the best strategy for your business based on your needs, budget, time you have to devote to web marketing tasks and your audience. This blog series will help you to do just that!

In order to create a web marketing strategy based on the science of timing, you need to first understand what days and times are best for each individual aspect of your web marketing. We won’t go into too much detail about which aspects of web marketing you should be using, but we suggest you schedule a web marketing consultation with a professional to help you determine what you’ll need to focus on. Once that’s done, it’s time to look at days and times of day that users interact most with web content. This varies by content type and/or network.

A little-known fact is that weekends are great times (in fact often the best times) to blog, post to facebook and send out newsletters. Why? Because during the week, your potential customers are bombarded and bogged down with tweets, posts and emails. After all, people tend to assume that people pay more attention to business stuff during normal business hours (i.e. week days). Unfortunately, that means that there’s a LOT for them to sift through so you’re content will probably be buried at the bottom of their inboxes and feeds. You should also take into consideration the fact that many corporate offices block access to personal email and certain websites in the workplace. That means that unless you have exclusive clearance from their employers to connect with your customers while they’re at work, they’re unlikely to see your content.

But on the weekends, potential customers are free from the stresses and overload of the work week. They have more time to explore the content they receive, and often more time to respond or interact. Businesses, whether selling B2B or B2C, benefit most from distributing their content early in the morning on the weekends. That way, it’s there when potential customers first check their email or log into their social networking accounts. And because they day hasn’t gotten into full swing yet, they’re likely to have some quality time to read, comment, retweet, like and share – all good things for you!
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Best Days & Times for Retweets, Blog Comments & More
When to do it & what to expect


Stay tuned for our next post in the series as we share which days & times offer the best possibilities for favorable web marketing results. We’ll be covering blogging, email marketing, tweeting & retweeting, Facebook sharing & posting and more. Remember that while it’s helpful to know what the science of timing means for your web marketing, you won’t gain anything from it until you put what you’ve learned into a solid web marketing strategy. We’ll be covering that in the 3rd and final installment in the series. So stay tuned for Part 2 later this week!

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