Branded For Success

The last two posts in this mini series dealt with finding keywords and then once you have found them, how to implement them on your site. This post really is the warning label for using keywords. You need to tread carefully because the integrity of your company’s brand is at stake. I am not trying to be sensational but I hope I have raised a red flag in your head and I hope you pay attention to it. When it comes to brand integrity, you should have a level of sensitivity to protect your company’s brand.

Just like in advertising, you do not want to say something that you are not or that you do not do. It will ruin your company’s reputation. So it is the same if you choose keywords for search engine optimization that really do not fit your company’s brand.

Examine this for a minute. Imagine that you are a jeweler of high quality, exquisite jewelry that you sell online.  You go ahead and do keyword research for your online business and find out that “cheap jewelry” is a highly searched and low competitive keyword (not likely but go with this). Then you decide to implement that keyword on your website hoping that you will get tons of organic search engine traffic. You just sunk your company brand.

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Last time we look at the importance of keywords and how to find them. So the next thing is, what is the proper placement of keywords?

They should be in places where both search engines and visitors will see them. Most often we forget to put them in places where visitors will not see them, but the search engines will.

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Keywords are the foundation to search engine ranking. They are where it all starts. It is what the search engines look for to know what your website is all about. With all the different formulas that exist to get ranked, it all boils down to the keywords for your web page/website. It is keywords that people use search for what they want on the Internet. The number one thing you can do to improve your search engine ranking is to improve your keyword use and selection on your website.

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Last time we looked at how important professional design for you products are and what to look for in hiring a graphic designer. Once you have secured the services of a professional graphic designer, find out exactly what he or she needs from you. Then make sure you give everything required to the graphic designer. Try your best not to give what is needed by piece-meal. In other words, do not give a few things here then wait a fews days then give a few more required pieces and so on. For the graphic designer to give you the best he or she can, make sure everything that is needed is given in short order. It is hard to design a piece well when everything is not there and may end up requiring more changes than necessary thus raising your costs for design.

Any graphics or images that are required need to be high resolution. Web images are not high resolution. Even if your product design is going to be for the web only, give the graphic designer high quality images. It will make the job easier. The resolution of a web image is usually 72 dots per inch or dpi. An image that is considered high resolution will be 300 dpi. Dots per inch is simply how many dots or pixels that are in one inch on your computer monitor or paper. The higher the dpi, the more information the graphic has to make a good image. Curves and shades look smoother with a higher dpi. Any editing will look more seamless with graphics that are a higher dpi. It is very difficult to use low resolution images an make quality work out of them. After the design is finished it is simple to make the image web-ready.

Also do not have your graphic designer overload your design with images. Less is more here. A graphic designer worth their weight will know how to design well with “whitespace” - the area where there is no design element. Too many graphics or images is just distracting and will be less successful in converting sales.

Also have in your plans the time needed for the graphic designer to do a quality job. Handing a graphic designer a job that needed to be done yesterday will probably will not get you the very best he or she can do. That does not mean it will not be good, just not the best.

To learn more on how to create successful products through targeted design, go to http://www.designedforsuccessseries.com and order the Designed For Success Series for more information.