Site Launch: lwfc-kidsworld.com

Think back to when you were just a wee tyke... when the sandbox was the closest thing to a safari you needed, and the Happy Meal toys at McDonald's were the highlight of your life. Now, imagine yourself at that age speaking fluently in a foreign language. Hard to imagine? Not anymore.

Introducing the Language Workshop For Children at Kids' World, located in Rochester, MN. Kids' World, founded by Christopher and Rebeca Sedarski, provides quality foreign language classes to Rochester and the surrounding areas. The courses they provide focus on children ages six months and up. That's right, children can start learning a foreign language at a mere six months of age. How is this possible?

The concept is simple -- the younger you are, the more "spongy" your brain is. This means that infants can absorb far more information than a teenager first learning how to drive. The process of developing a teaching technique, however, was a bit more complex.

The original Language Workshop For Children (LWFC) was founded by François Thibaut, inventor of the Thibaut Technique. The Thibaut Technique was developed over 35 years, and is a teaching method that employs both sides of the brain using a series of games, songs, vocabulary, and more. You can learn more about the Thibaut Technique on the website, as well as course and tuition information, class schedules, and more information about LWFC at Kids' World.

It was a pleasure working with Christopher and Rebeca of Kids' World, and we look forward to their continued success as they help shape the minds of the next generation. Adios!

Want to Make A Profit? Get Crazy.

Have you heard of Federal Express? Of course you have. What you may or may not remember is one of their earliest advertising campaigns, where a FedEx agent actually got into a helicopter just to make sure he got his package delivered on time.

Pretty crazy, right? Well, how about Richard Branson. One of the wealthiest entrepreneurs on the planet. You ever seen him dressed as a chicken? Or a woman? These are all things he has done to get his brand into people's faces. He didn't do this for his own entertainment.

The University of Central Lancashire carried out research which discovered that people have an easier time remembering faces if they are presented with a caricature of someone, rather than a photograph. In that study, the researchers then recommended that police use caricature artists when they presented witnesses with images of suspects. And it works.

So what does this mean for your business? Well, the same thing it meant for Richard Branson, or Federal Express, or any other firm that pokes fun at itself just a little bit. Make yourself slightly ridiculous and two things happen in your customers' minds. First of all, they notice you. They will notice you a lot more than they notice your competitor down the street who is still using business cards with raised lettering.

The second thing that will happen is even better. They will like you. It will take just a sliver of that hard-edged business image away and make you look like a firm that has confidence in itself. It takes confidence to dress up as a chicken, for example. Even better, it's memorable. Always strive to be memorable.

Now this doesn't mean that you literally have to dress up as a chicken. Sir Richard Branson is one in a million. But it does mean that, once again, you have to think about why you do what you do, and deciding how you can show confidence. People love someone who makes them laugh, even in a small way. The more you can laugh at the bizarre world of business and show your customers that you love your job so much that you can poke fun at it now and then, you will be rewarded with happy customers who enjoy working with you.

Mistakes to Avoid in Web Design

Music.
When was the last time you found a site that contained music and actually enjoyed the experience? If you can think of any, it's probably the exception rather than the rule. In general, the only time music should play on a site is when you are visiting a music related website. Your favorite band can play their latest song on their site, for example. But that's pretty much it.

If you have to have music on your site, let the visitor have complete control over it. This cannot be overemphasized. A fundamental rule of the Web is that the site owner is not in control of the experience -- the visitor is.

Splash pages
See the last point. People hate to wait when they're using the web. Anything that slows their access to the information on your site makes them that much more likely to look elsewhere. How many brick-and-mortar stores would put a TV in the doorway to the store that customers would have to step over to enter?

Blink and they miss it
Blinking text on websites went out a long time ago. But there are contemporary equivalents in the form of distracting animations and poor color choices. These things show that a site owner hasn't invested time and effort into his Web presence. Since people judge a site's credibility within a few seconds of seeing the page, this lack of attention says that the business doesn't care about the customer experience.

Multiple Versions
In spite of the previous points, there is such a thing as too much choice. Don't make visitors choose between Flash and HTML content, or select a "printer-friendly" version of the page. Modern Web design allows stylesheets to be specified by media type, so print formatting should be completely transparent to visitors.

Research has shown that even small improvements in usability can have a huge impact on website ROI, so it pays to pay attention.

The Apple Picking Story Unpicked

Did you work out what it was all about? In the previous post we looked at the story of five apple pickers and their fortunes. The entire story is a great metaphor for the SEO process. How?

The apple pickers are website owners. The apple trees are keywords and the apples are website visitors.

Remember the first guy in the story? He just sat there under the tree and waited. No prizes for guessing what kind of website owner he is supposed to be. That's right, the lazy one. He just sits there and waits for visitors. We know that doesn't work in the world of online commerce.

The second apple picker only chose to pick apples from the trees that looked healthy. This is the website owner who optimizes a page with words that they think are going to grab visitors. But they haven't really done their homework, and their keywords don't do much business because they aren't the phrases that people are really using to search.

The third apple picker who checked out all the trees and chose the one with the most fruit he could reach is like the owner who builds a site, does excellent research, and optimizes the site for good, relevant keywords that his site is well placed for. They are not the most popular words in his area of expertise but with good optimization of the on-page variety he is able to get his site somewhere near the top 10 search results and generate sales or leads.

The fourth apple picker who looked at all the trees, chose the one with the most fruit she could reach, and then built a ladder to get at them is like the site owner who works hard at keyword research, makes a real effort at optimizing his site, and begins building strong links to his site. He not only receives better results at an early stage, but his traffic and sales increase sharply as the number of links grows and he is then able to work on more competitive keywords (or for the purposes of our story, bigger trees).

Finally, the fifth apple picker who looked at all the trees that were there in the valley, then built a ladder, and then took the notes about the number of apples from each tree is like the website owner who does keyword research, content optimization, strong link building, and tracks his rankings with ranking reports and then his site traffic with good analytics. He is able to build a website that competes for the best phrases and can reflect and adapt as his field and search marketing trends change.

The Apple Picking Story

This is a truly ancient story that is told by many professors in business schools the world over. The message behind the story has now been given a 21st century twist, and the tale is now used to teach web designers and business undergraduates the principles of good SEO.

We'll look at the story first, and then in the next post we'll unpack the story to see what it tells us about SEO.

Once there were five families who lived in a beautiful rural valley. One day the man of the first house said that, because his family were starving, he would go up to the apple tree on the ridge and pick some apples.

He got there and soon became tired after his walk. So he set his basket down under the tree in the hope of catching some falling apples, and promptly fell asleep.

One apple was there in his basket when he woke, so he took it home to feed his family.

He did the same thing every day, but of course one apple a day was not enough, so his family grew weaker and weaker.

In the second house the woman said, "My family is hungry. I will go to the apple tree by the river and pick some fuit to feed them."

So she walked down to the river. With her picking stick she reached up for the apples. But while the tree had looked healthy from a distance it wasn't doing so well up close. She found only two good apples, and took them home to her family.

On two apples a day, they grew weaker and weaker.

The man in the third house thought bigger, he knew of many trees in the valley that bore apples. He visited them all but chose one small one that bore much fuit. His family had enought to eat each day but no more.

At the fourth house the woman thought that she knew where the best trees were. She too visited many but then settled on one with a lot of fruit. She brought home many apples for her family. They too had enough for each day.

After dinner she felt frustrated and thought that if she made a step ladder she could reach the very top fruit. This was true, and each day she managed to add another rung, until she was indeed reaching the top of the tree. Soon she was selling her surplus apples to the rest of the families in the valley.

The man in the fifth house was a savvy guy. He did exactly what the woman in the fourth house did, but he picked from many trees and kept notes as to which trees bore the best fruit. If he noticed a tree was bearing less fruit he would pick less from it. If he spotted new fruit at the top of another tree he would add rungs to his ladder. Pretty soon he was having a whale of a time, bringing home more apples than the valley would ever need. Eventually he was packing the apples into crates and selling them around the world.

What can this tell us about SEO?