Memphis Marketing and Advertising

South Main will be hosting the second annual Sidewalk Sale this March 8th. Many of the galleries and stores will be open from 10-6 with much of their merchandise on sale. Check out the Memphis Flyer the week before for more information.

In case you were interested, NYGADI is sort of tripping upstairs into the world of art promotion. Having the two principals living in two separate states doesn’t help. It also seems that juggling business, bands, family, and life pushes the mega risky art startup to the back burner for a while. Alas, we’re still trying and have made some headway in the past couple of months. Homer Hiccolm is gearing up for a spring tour. We’re pushing their media contacts to the limit with press releases and graphic marketing. Sue Layman is starting a new phase of her art promotion, and we’re in meetings right now setting up a possible art lease program. And finally, NYGADI is sliding behind the wheel of Web 2.0 with accounts at Capazoo, Uber, Myspace, Facebook, Del.icio.us, Stumble Upon, and Digg. We figure, get the name out there, so that when we rule the world, no one will be surprised. So if you have some social networking time while sitting at your computer, come socially network us into the best position to promote our art. We’d really appreciate it.

For a while now, I have been preaching the importance of quality content and true CSS design as key factors for SEO. It’s a fact that the easier your website is to crawl and index, the more likely the search engines will like you. With content, the same has been true. The more keyword rich content your site contains, the better you typically fare. But tonight, I have finally grasped the most important factor in a brilliant example. Gucci.com has received a PageRank of 7/10 even though it hardly has any content whatsoever. There are no keyword-rich meta tags, no paragraphs of text and the majority of the site is flash based. There is hardly any text at all on the whole site. Upon further examination, I found that they have 3,070 unique links to their site. That is not really a surprise to me considering the fame of this company, but what is surprising is how a completely invisible site to search engines manages a 7 Pagerank. More than that, their Google listing has a series of smaller Sitelinks below the main search result. My conclusion is that something besides content is weighing heavily on Google. Besides the number of links, it must be the quality of links. Maybe they have a really low bounce rate. All of these factors are somehow creating a great situation for this site. After a long thought, I come back to my original argument. Great content is one of the most important factors to SEO. Of course you’re probably really confused at this point because I just made the argument that Gucci has almost no searchable content but still does great in search results. I will now explain.

There’s a phrase batting around the internet called Web 2.0. First coined three years ago, the definition has been construed and misconstrued over and over again. Most people choose to label social networking sites as the true Web 2.0. Myspace, Facebook, Stumble Upon, digg, and del.cio.us are all social networking and/or bookmarking sites. The thought is that Web 2.0 is user generated. Users of the web create networks and content through blogging, bookmarking, and social site creation. Forums and Blogs now consist of most of the search results, and static sites seem to sometimes get lost in the crowd. Within all of these sites is the unique idea of a user generated web. Major companies now use these tactics to increase their visibility and customer return. Ebay and Amazon allow users to create custom accounts where their preferences can be stored and used for targeted advertising. All of this is an about face to the idea that we simply search the internet for company supplied information. Now, we create, vote, add to, review, and individualize the internet to our tastes. So I will argue the point that Web 2.0 is simply the organic result of technological advances and the growth of the internet as an extension of personal expression. That is why PageRank and linking are so related. Google considers links as votes for a site. Obviously, the more people that link to a site, the more important it looks. Where does content come into the equation? Well simple really. Even though Gucci doesn’t have searchable content, they have a brand name that is desired and a website that is updated regularly on products that people desire. Even those who can’t afford Gucci’s purses will visit the site to see what they can’t have. Bloggers, Fashionistas, and other clothing websites hold Gucci up as a standard. That standard, when coupled with seasonal updates on their site, creates great content. If you want more people to visit and link to your site, create content that’s irresistible, even to those who can’t afford you.