Google is getting fast

We have started to see some really interesting results with Google lately. For example we started to optimize for the words Concert Flyer Design and Club Flyer Design. Around 3 weeks ago we were not in the top 10 pages on Google for either. Out of no where I noticed for Concert Flyer Design we shot up to the first page and #5. After some more edits and tweaks we moved to #4 a few days later. A few days after that we had a 2nd page listed, and then about a week after that we moved to #3 overall.

For Club Flyer Design we were not in the top 10, then when we got ranked it was on page 9. A few days after that we moved up to page 5. In addition to that we have several other first page rankings and some #1 positions as well.This now means that SEO should be an even bigger part of your online marketing strategy because it is so fast paced. If you do not stay up on it your competition will be able to take advantage of this and gain position. This is done with a good strategy of on-site and off-site SEO. Please contact us for more information regarding our Design and SEO services.

Do It Yourself - Pro’s & Con’s

In the latest issue of Print Magazine there is an article on DIY - Do It Yourself. There is no “right” or “wrong” when it comes to that. It’s great that people are branching out learning and trying new things, when it comes to design and writing many people try to “do it yourself”. It’s not hard to put up a website these days and write a few paragraphs about your business or product, but if design and writing is not your specialty then it is best to leave it to professionals. If you have zero to little budget sometimes DIY is the way to go.

Specialization is a part of our daily lives. Doctors are a perfect example of this; even though they are all in the medical field they are highly specialized to something specific and are experts in their field. You may have a first aid kit in the kitchen but that doesn’t qualify you as a doctor.

You get what you pay for. Having your secretary or the kid down the street design and code your website for your business that you have worked so hard to build is often not the best thing to do. If your website is going to be part of your business it needs to be treated seriously like any other part of your business such as overhead, insurance, marketing and administration.

“To fear that shoddy DIY work will replace good professional design is to suggest that the two are indistinguishable to the untrained eye. But the whole idea of good design or good writing, is that the untrained audience, will in fact, respond to some work better than others. In a competitive marketplace, clients value that edge.”

Print – March / April 2007

There is more to a website then what you see on the screen. The way the site is built, designed, coded, usability factors, hosting, seo, marketing all tie into the website. Someone who just knows the basics of Photoshop and an HTML editor will not know of all of the additional elements that goes into making a successful site. They may be able to make a decent looking site which may be fine, but if you want your website to be an important part of your business then you need to go with professional designers, programmers and writers.

New Photographs

Spring is here and that means baseball season is starting. There is nothing like a ballpark in the late afternoon. Here are some photos I took the other day following a University of Maine baseball spring training game.

Photo 1 |Photo 2 | Photo 3 | Photo 4 | Photo 5 | Photo 6

To view more of my photographs head over here and also check out Andy’s photos.

Welcome

Digital Skratch has set up a blog! We will try to update this with useful content, information, links and anything design / art / marketing related. We have also started to publish articles on design related topics which we will post here as well. In the mean time you can check out our main site at www.digitalskratch.com, thanks - Josh