May. 25th 2011
Keeping up with the craziness of everyday life has suddenly become easier with the help of social media, especially in the realms of Facebook and Twitter. An increasingly popular topic on the Internet is a “2010 Recap.” Both Facebook and Twitter have created “Top 10” lists for the year, including top buzzwords in Facebook statuses and the most powerful tweets of 2010.
Social media and social networking are incredible tools for generating conversation about websites, products, and current events. By using these tools, Minneapolis web design firm, Rocket 55 is able to stay up-to-date on these trends and engage with others and be familiar with what is important to the clients.
May. 19th 2011
We here at Minneapolis web design firm, Rocket 55 recently stumbled across this e-book. Not only is it incredibly informative – a perfect crash-course on the history of Internet and what it all means – but it’s also amazingly designed. Illustrated by Christoph Niemann and written by the Google Chrome Team, 20 Things I Learned About Browsers and the Web is a great guide to understanding the importance of being on the Internet and what you can do once you get there.
Social awareness is important in business today, so, consider this your chance at virtual awareness. Know the tools you have and use them more effectively.
May. 12th 2011
After Minneapolis web design and SEO firm, Rocket 55 read the recently released Millward Brown Optimor’s BrandZ survey, there was quite a bit of discussion. Primarily, how Apple ended the Google reign in the number one spot but also how and why brand contributes to a company’s value.
According to the Millward Brown Optimor’s BrandZ survey, Apple ended the four year reign of Google — the internet search leader. Google has been at the top for the previous four years, but Apple’s monumental growth over the past year puts its brand at $153 billion. It has knocked out most technology brands with its success. Apple‘s portfolio of desirable consumer goods pushed it past Microsoft to become the world’s most precious technology company last year.
Apple, Google, IBM are the first three brands respectively. McDonald’s is the fourth and Microsoft drops down one to fifth. Technology and telecom companies hold six of the top ten spots. What can be drawn from this is that the rise of technology and telecommunications is amazing and very relevant. Millward Brown’s survey started with two or three tech brands in the top ten in 2006. Now tech brands dominate four out of the top five. It points out how central telecom infrastructure has become to people’s lives.
The study also explains consumer behavior and the importance of brand identity. Our fundamental assumption is that a high proportion of a company’s earnings is due to intangibles. One of the biggest intangibles is your brand. For the top 100 companies, about 30 percent of their total value is bound up in this thing called brand. Trust and social responsibility were the most important to brand loyalty. The ability to customize the product was another important criterion. Examples cited in the study: Google users can create personal home pages, and Apple iPhone users can customize their phones by downloading apps.
For some companies, branding is everything. Coca Cola has massive brand distribution around the world but without a brand, it’s just this brown fizzy liquid. A strong brand also reduces business risk, since it’s more likely to ride out a negative PR story or a recession. Last year Toyota fell because of recalls. This year it recovered faster than expected because it has very strong brand loyalty.
May. 2nd 2011
Minneapolis SEO and web design firm, Rocket 55 presents some more predictions about the future of SEO in 2011.
Original content is going be important but only as much as the content floor. It’s going to take more unique content for each link to count.
Web spam. Spammy sites will be consolidated into a few with the “little guy” no longer able to compete. Basically, large web sites will be able to compete because they have more authority.
Instead of Anchor Text being a strong signaling for ranking, it will now be more important for LSI and to help establish keyword relationships. Google bombing your anchor text isn’t going to be as important as using your anchor text to help Google associate your site with terms and synonyms that it wouldn’t find on its own.
More no-follow links are going to be selectively followed if the no-follow tag was not added by the developer of the page. Google will selectively start following some Twitter and Facebook links as long as they rise above the spam criteria. So a blog comment might still be no-followed as the owner of that page is the one dictating he doesn’t want it to be followed but a twitter page will be followed as it’s not the intent of the page owner for the links to be no-followed.
