Cre8tive Flow

You’ll see many people who feel that SEO is marketed using FUD, that’s Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. The assumption is that all those spamming emails you receive offering to get you on the first page of Google use this. You must have thousands of web pages and thousands of back links or you will not achieve this obviously important ranking.

I realized the biggest creator of FUD in this scenario is Google itself.

Discuss Fear and Loathing on the Search Engine Marketing Trail

With cutbacks, slowing conversion rates and a general sense of despair and fear among consumers, those who research online marketing and advertising techniques are presenting  new information based on recent studies.

You’ll find their findings in books, such as The Brand Bubble, and conferences. However, we already got the heads up via The Cluetrain Manifesto, back in 1999.

Flat Earth Rules for Marketing discusses “Five New Rules for Marketing” that came out of a recent Ad Age’s Digital Conference. You’ll find reminders and a quick refresher on engaging the web community.

Every forum you participate in, every community you feel are family and every social networking hangout you love has volunteering people devoting nights, holidays, vacations, days and weekends to serving YOU.

We, at Cre8asiteforums, think you’re all sweethearts.  PS…and we love hugs.

Happy Valentine’s Day Everyone!

Image courtesy of Risa Borsykowsky

At Cre8asiteforums, we’re still celebrating web sites whose primary goal is to give back. During our week long focus on “green marketing”, Earth day topics and willingness to let volunteers and non-profits show us their projects, we launched the Cre8green Directory.

Check it out and if you meet the criteria, contact us for inclusion. We’d love to meet you and hear about your project.

We honor you this week.

What do you tell your client when they approach you for web site search engine marketing and their entire web site is built in Flash? Do you talk to them about usability and accessibility issues? Do clients listen to your advice? If they have a Flash introduction page, do you let that slide? Are there some forms of Flash that are more flexible than others?

A Cre8asiteforums thread explores this common experience in Your Client Insists On Flash – What Do You Do?

Two weeks later and the discussion is still going strong. It contains stories, references and examples.

A thread on Semantic HTML has inspired a number of interesting questions, and spawned some interesting directions.

The thread was kicked off by Yannis, who asks

The word semantic has many different meanings for different people. Have you got your own definition and meaning? Have you got your own rules about semantics that you follow?

A great question, it’s followed by some excellent posts, which ask a number of other questions.

What is semantically rich HTML? How well does it work with SEO, with standards?

Should a logo be placed within a <h1> element on each page of your site?

Just when you think you’ve seen every kind of question asked in a forum, someone comes along with a new one. This question was fun for everybody. What Does A Normal Person Call A URL?

I’m having trouble deciding what to label the input. Should it be URL, address, web address, link?

“Normal” people, like us web folks, never did agree on just one way. The song about the “Funny Farm” is an added bonus…

I feel stupid when I see a TV ad from ASK.com about “The Algorithm”. They don’t make sense to me. So the advertising makes me feel dumb and somewhere in there should be incentive to use the search engine?

Nope. That can’t be right.

Since so many people question the logic and message behind ASK’s ad campaign, I find I’m not alone. Many of you have no idea what the hell is going on either.

Cre8asiteforums’ members are all over this, in Ask’s Bizarre Bad Taste And Weird Ad Placement