This week I learned two weird things about other companies that do SEO.

I shouldn’t be surprised; after all, too many businesses have had bad experiences with blackhat SEO firms and swindlers taking advantage of people who aren’t tech savvy or hip to the interwebs.

So here’s what I learned this week. It’s creepy and I don’t like it, but it’s something to keep in mind when looking into an SEO firm and its tactics.

SEO Firms Will Outright Lie. WTF?

This week an SEO firm contacted one of our clients and made some pretty outrageous claims. Laughably outrageous. Maybe some of the claims were true; I can’t really verify all of them. Here’s what he claimed:

1. His company was the very first design firm on the Internet. BS-o-Meter Level 9

2. A domain name that he owns (and wants to sell to our client) is worth more than $3,000. Please note, the domain has zero authority. BS-o-Meter Level 8

3. The keywords featured in the domain are searched for 1,000 times each week. Some very simple Google keyword research indicated that this keyphrase is searched for approximately 16 times a month. BS-o-Meter 11. Through the roof!

4. If you own the domain name with the exact keyphrase in it, and it ends in .com, then Google will ALWAYS rank your site number 1 for that search term. This one is fun. Here are his exact words, as they appeared in the email:

I did a little experiment. Here’s what a Google search uncovers for the phrase “what is kennel cough”:

Hey! Where’s whatiskennelcough.com? It’s certainly not number one. Or two. Or on the first page. In fact, more than one-million websites outrank whatiskennelcough.com when it comes to the search “what is kennel cough.”

While having a domain name with the keywords in it may hold a tenuous sway, it is by no means a universal indicator of a high ranking. BS-o-Meter 9.

The moral of this story: If an SEO firm approaches you, do your research. Ask us to double-check first. Commerce Kitchen is willing to verify or disprove another SEO firm’s claims for free. We want people to trust our industry.

Negative SEO Is Evil

Okay, so negative SEO isn’t necessarily evil. If I see a site that’s obviously using illegal tactics to rank higher, I will report it to Google.

But every time someone maliciously performs negative SEO against white-hat SEO firms, a baby tadpole cries.

This week one of our SEO gurus, Rand Fishkin, discussed negative SEO: it’s a strategy where unethical SEO firms will try and get your site punished by Google by either reporting you for spam or actually doing bad SEO to your site.

So instead of doing good, creative work for their own clients, these firms target their clients’ competitors and purposefully do black-hat SEO for them, to get Google to punish them. CRAZY! We think this should be illegal if it isn’t already.

When an SEO firm approaches you, find out exactly what kind of work they plan to do. If they won’t tell you, or if they explicitly state that they do negative SEO of any type, then you should run in the other direction.

We’re really proud of the work we do. Our transparent SEO strategies take time, but in the end the results that we achieve for our clients are incredibly positive, Google-friendly, and completely ethical. Be careful when selecting an SEO firm so you don’t end up with a lying a**hole or a company that spreads evil through negative SEO.

What weird SEO crap have you encountered? What’s your biggest concern about SEO companies? Respond in the comments below!

1. Being selective doesn’t mean being stingy: Don’t share every piece of garbage that people post. But guess what? Not everyone posts garbage. People post great articles, blogs, videos, infographics, and images all the time.

   Humans are amazing. We’re smart and creative and funny and considerate. Choose what you post based on quality and relevance, but don’t be stingy. There’s no right or wrong number of times to retweet or share someone’s Facebook status. Make sure you’re posting your own material, but don’t be afraid to share other great material, too.


2. Sharing shows you are interested in people who aren’t you: Unless you are a complete sociopath (apologies if you are), then you care about other people. Most of us are genuinely interested in other people–interested in what they’re creating, things they’re learning, and how they’re putting this information out into the world.

   Creating a successful business is about making connections. How many of us would be where we are today if it weren’t for a friend, a former co-worker, and college buddy who helped us get a job, who helped us find our footing in a new industry?

   We are interested in each other, not just ourselves and our own well-being. That’s kind of beautiful, man.


3. There is great content out there that you’re not creating; so what!: It’s easy to become self-obsessed in the world of social media. We want thousands of people to “like” us, to follow us, to re-post our material.

   Coming up with brilliant ideas is hard work, and getting those ideas to go viral is even harder.

   Work hard, work smart, but be proud of other people’s achievements and share them. There’s plenty of love to go around.


4. Jealousy / being overly critical is a terrible trait: I’m guilty of being overly critical. But if I’m working hard to create the kind of material I want to create, then I have no reason to be jealous of other people’s achievements.

   Okay, so I realize this sounds like a self-help manual, but many businesses don’t connect well on social media because they’re unwilling to acknowledge other organizations’ successes. Did a competitor create something awesome? Great! Be happy for them. Now, what can you do that’s even better?


5. It’s all about reciprocating, baby: If you share your love then people will be more willing to talk about you and your work, to share your articles and blog posts with their friends.

   They’ll feel a connection with you just by seeing that you’ve publicly acknowledged their work.

   Everyone deserves to take pride in their creations, and the more we work to appreciate each other, the more our connections and networks grow and strengthen.

How often do you share someone else’s blog posts, articles, images, and other information? Do you get a positive, neutral, or negative response when you share other people’s material? Answer in the comments below!

Awesome! Right?

All you need to do is send us a cover letter that discusses why you’d like to work with us, what your experience is, and two faculty references (email and phone number) who are familiar with your work and skills. Email all this to natalie@commercekitchen.com and we’ll get back to you right away!

Compensation: $10/hour, college credit may be available

Time: 16 hours/week, maybe more later!

Take a look at these ecstatically creepy stock-image interns to get an idea of how amazing Commerce Kitchen is. No, really.

This week I noticed that Google is pulling up some weird stuff in the metadescription field. Natalie, what’s a metadescription field? you ask. Check out all the yellow arrows:

A metadescription is the brief description of your website that appears in the browser when your site shows up in search.

You have the option to write whatever you want as a metadescription, but we encourage people to write a description that accurately represents whatever it is that you do, make, sell, write, promote, or whatever it is that your website is designed to do.

Check out the metadescription for Commerce Kitchen’s homepage.

Check out what we’ve written in the code, then look at the image of the metadescription in the first image above.

That’s right. They’re not the same. Why? WHY, GOOGLE, WHY? Why would Google not pull the well-crafted metadescription that we’ve written, and instead grab some bits of content from one of our pages?

After some research I’ve discovered that the metadescription (and even the title tag!) that Google pulls (invents!) varies according to the search terms used to find your site.

In that first example above, I searched for “Commerce Kitchen Denver.” So, Google searched for content on our site that had all of those terms in it, and pulled that up as the metadescription rather than the metadescription we wrote.

At first I was angry [insert image of Natalie shaking her fist and stomping her feet], but then I realized that this is actually really good feedback to have. Denver isn’t mentioned anywhere in our metadescription! If people are going to be searching for us with that keyword, then I need to put it in the description.

Here is another example of how the metadescription of your site changes according to search terms. When I search for “SEO Denver” this comes up for Commerce Kitchen (note, even the title tag is different):

Now let me be frank for a moment. We are totally against keyword stuffing in any capacity. So even if the Google-bots respond to it (I don’t even know if they would), I would not advise you to awkwardly cram every keyword you want to get hit for into your metadescription field.

Instead, make sure the content on your site is well written and clear, and hopefully when Google pulls a metadescription that you didn’t write, then they’ll still pull something that looks good to people who may come to your site.

Hi Shelly.

Hi Natalie.

You went to SXSW Interactive last week, and we wanted to catch up with you to find out what you learned.

I know there’s always a ton of information on new innovations in technology and robotics and all sorts of awesome stuff, both directly related to the work Commerce Kitchen does and only sort of peripherally related.

I did learn that GNR doesn’t always refer to Guns N’ Roses.

Oh? Tell me more.

I went to a Ray Kurzweil talk with Lev Grossman. Kurzweil was talking about some of the advancements in Genetics, Nanotechnology, and Robotics, a.k.a. GNR. Took me awhile to catch on, embarrassingly. I knew he wasn’t talking about the metal band, but…

That talk was cool because he’s been predicting the arc of technology for several years, and he’s been surprisingly accurate. He predicted the unleashing of the web on the world within a few years’ accuracy and a couple of other bizarre spot-on predictions.

He started the talk referring to Watson–the IBM computer that played Jeopardy. He gave a room full of thousands of tech geeks an answer from  that Jeopardy match, and no one was able to come up with the right question, but Watson did that in seconds.

So that was the starting point in his talk on the inevitable evolution of A.I. As we incorporate more and more technology into our lives–the way we interface with technology (smartphones, wearable computing) it becomes possible for us to access this sort of augmented brain.

Using our phones, we have this posture where we walk through the world staring down at our hands, so what happens when we don’t have to do that? When heads-up displays can overlay reality with the info we’re getting from those devices? When this becomes the norm?

I had this idea that smartphones should have a live camera that shows what you’re not seeing when you’re looking down at your phone. So, the floor below you, or whatever is in front of you.

That also came up in a talk with Amber Case. She was talking about location-aware services and how those affect engagement in the world around us. The problem is that these devices have such great potential, but they disengage us at the same time.

If we’re sitting in a conference with a ton of tech geeks, but we’re all hanging out with people in virtual spaces instead of the people near us, how does that impact us?

However, everyone seems really excited to see what the Google Goggles will look like. And that in-lens display will change a lot of how we interface with the technology that’s currently being beamed to us right now in our pockets.

But location definitely seemed to be a big theme at the conference. The founder of Foursquare gave a talk as did as these other two heavy hitters [Case and Kurzweil].

So this thing about location. That seems to really apply to our industry. Location-aware services. I know this conference was more about tech than marketing, and while Commerce Kitchen does a lot of tech stuff, we sort of do it from a marketing perspective. Do you think any of this applies to marketing?

Sort of. There was a really interesting talk on contemplative gaming. The three panelists were freaky smart. When we think of games typically we think of blowing shit up and war-like gaming, and there’s not much space for contemplation in games. These panelists were talking about play vs. work. They referenced a marketing situation, how Starbucks has turned play into work.

So, you may have always gone to go get your Venti vanilla iced latte, but now you’re scoring points while you do it. It’s basically work-ifying a game. These panelists were discussing game-ifying work instead, making play out of things we usually think of as work. So that pulled in the marketing piece.

Do you have any insight into how that would progress? Because it seems like it is a game, right? I mean, you score points, you get a free latte or whatever? Isn’t that what a game is? How is that work?

Well the difference is between work and play, right? Just because it’s a game doesn’t mean it’s playful.

Ah, I see. Play-ify vs. game-ify. So how would that change things like Fourquare or location services?

I have no idea.

Let’s speculate.

Okay!

That wasn’t terribly enthusiastic. But let’s just suppose that Foursquare, or ‘checking in’ somewhere, or even Klout, Favstar, etc., right now they’re game-ifying something fun and turning it into work; how do you think marketers could add the element of play back in?

I don’t know. I could think about it. This isn’t to say that there’s a problem with game-ifying. I don’t think it’s a problem. It was just an offhanded observation. There’s work to be done and we can get that work done through play.

Do you want to talk about the Juggalos? Because that’s the talk that was most closely tied to marketing.

Yes. Totally. But I’m sort of fixated on this local thing because that seems really huge in search right now. Local signals, local communities. And that expansion of local. There was an article a few weeks ago that discussed this new idea of local and how it relates to what cities your city is directly connected to by flight.

Someone is Los Angeles is a lot more likely to be friends on Twitter with someone in Toronto than someone in St. Louis. But I feel like there’s a lot more to this location thing–to play, to work, to rewards, to gaming. Definitely something to think about. But let’s talk about Juggalos.

Well it’s interesting that you mentioned community because the ICP’s [Insane Clown Posse] marketing method is all about community. It’s about creating local threads–much like you were talking about with Twitter–these ties to community where it doesn’t really matter where you are.

The woman that gave the talk on ICP, Jenny Benevento, highlighted a few things that ICP has done really well. More than anything, they’ve highlighted community before product. You see that also with Harley Davidson. It’s more about being a Harley guy than actually owning a Harley.

So it’s more about self identification than consumerism?

Right, but at the same time ICP is still pulling in $10 million a year, even though they haven’t released an album in a long time. It’s all coming in through merchandise.

They’ve given their audience something to believe in; they’ve created this whole mythology. And they’ve built this crazy community. They throw their fans a party every year that they lose money on. Something like 100,000 people show up at this enormous gathering in Illinois. This year they only lost $15,000 on it, but they consider it one of their best investments.

Another interesting piece that the speaker mentioned is that ICP protects its community in ways that most brands don’t. A sketch comedy group was going to do a spoof of a Juggalo child funeral–and it really does happen, Juggalo funerals with “Wicked Clown” [ICP's label] coffins. ICP actually contacted the sketch comedy group and said you can make fun of ICP itself as much as you want, but don’t make fun of Juggalos; don’t make fun of our community.

Wow, so they’ve really built themselves an empire and they actually protect their people.

Yes, I think they’ve actually published a book on their marketing approach as well.

That’s amazing. Do you think that this kind of approach to marketing could work for any other industry or brand? What can other organizations learn from this?

Find something people are excited about. Find a niche – Jenny also mentioned Jimmy Buffet’s Parrotheads movement and Harley Davidson. Find it and build from there. Most of ICP’s online environments are created by fans. Basically this kind of marketing only works when you can create a lifestyle product. These are all things people can get excited about.

So it isn’t necessarily something we can try to apply to all industries?

No. Or all products. Though she did make a connection between tech companies; when ICP first started, they were a small band in Detroit and nobody knew who they were. So someone asked, how do you build from there? This goes back to the local discussion.

It makes more sense to have a small group of dedicated individuals spread the word about your product than to spend $50,000 on an ad campaign you bought and paid for. You have to get people really really excited.

The hard part is distilling that into lessons. It might be impossible to build a hardcore fan base on something like lawn care, so how can you distill some of those ideas so they’ll work for your industry?

That seems to be the big question, doesn’t it? How do you get something to go viral when you’re creating a product of necessity rather than a product of identity?

I do believe that if you have a great product or service, and if you treat people well, then that builds its own devout fan-base, don’t you think? When you have an ordinary product vs. a lifestyle brand, then you just have to be really good at the basics: customer service, attentiveness, etc.

Right – and that reminds me of this crazy customer service experience I just had. I had to buy a replacement part for my favorite earphones, and I called a Denver-based sound company that carries the headphones. They gave me a part number, but couldn’t order them for some reason. I searched the web and found some company in Indiana – Sweetwater Sound – that carried them.

I placed the order, and within a couple of hours I got a phone call telling me that they were able to ship my product same day, and that I should have them within a week. A phone call. Crazy, right?  Then the next week I got a call saying “Hey – we just saw that your package should have been delivered today. Just checking to make sure it’s what you wanted!” I opened the package and it was filled with candy. Smarties and Tootsie Rolls and stuff. I was totally in love with this company on the spot.

BUT – the part was wrong. My local company had given me the wrong part number. I emailed the guys at Sweetwater and within a couple of hours again, I had someone call me to clarify what I was looking for and to apologize that it might take them a few days to see if they can find the right part.

So, I still don’t know if I’ll get the right part, but you know what? If I can’t, and if I have to replace the headphones I’m definitely going to order them through these guys, even if it means paying a bit more than ordering through Amazon or some other online retailer. I don’t have a lifestyle built around good earphones or other sound equipment, but these guys’ customer service blew my mind to the point that if I can order from them, I will.

So you’re a Sweetwater ambassador? Are you gonna start dressing up like a giant headphone and promoting this company like mad?

Totally. Does that come with face-paint?

Most definitely. Well, thanks for telling me all about your SXSW experience. There’s a lot to think about here, with localization, lifestyle marketing, and game / play-ification.

You’re welcome!

Shelly Drumm is a WordPress junky with upwards of seven years of WordPress web development under her belt. A librarian by profession, she has a finely-tuned understanding of information seeking behavior and she uses that expertise to build websites that are thoughtfully structured and, as a result, easy to use. Her passion is to give clients, regardless of their tech skill level, control of their web content by delivering beautiful websites built with an intuitive, web-based content management interface.

To skip the pontificating and get straight to the signing cat video just scroll down the page.

The elusive VIRUS. We all want it to happen to us, but the chances of it happening are like winning the lottery. This week a nonprofit hit the jackpot with its Kony 2012 video, which exploded on Twitter and Facebook.

After the video hit viral status people took a step back to analyze its merits and legitimacy, but regardless of either factor, it is a prime example of a huge-ass virus infecting our collective consciousness (whoa, I just realized that social media has made us into a real, live breathing Borg. Mind. Blown.)

I wish this blog post would teach you how to make something go viral, step-by-step, but I think that’s unrealistic. Frankly, I believe virality is a combination of knowing your audience, finding the right mixture of cleverness and predictability, and pure luck.

Let’s look at cats. As a dog person I believe that cat people literally have a virus that makes them especially crazy for cats.

But even on the Internet cats are like this magical force that generates a ridiculous amount of luv and lulz.

While the rabid fascination with LOLCats seems to have died down a little bit, people will still spend a disconcerting amount of time looking at pictures and videos of felines.

So maybe if you want something to go viral you should include a cat doing something weird. PEOPLE LOVE MEMES. Prime examples: Ryan Gosling (being romantic to any number of professional women); Keep Calm Carry On; What My Parents Think I Do…; and on and on.

If you hop on a meme at the right time, you can be incredibly successful. Dare I say, viral. Cats being lazy, cute, vindictive, or scheming is a meme that just doesn’t seem to want to die. And cat people love being cat people.

So without further ado, the best cat video I’ve seen in a long time. Granted, these cats aren’t living, but this video is so freaking weird and awesome. With nearly 100,000 views it isn’t as successful as Kony 2012 (28 million views), but it should attract a decent audience of weirdos and cat lovers alike.

What is the most memorable viral video or cat meme you’ve seen? Answer below!

This week I did something challenging. I turned around, unplugged my laptop from the external monitor, and scooted my office chair six feet toward Scott to interview him.

Scott’s one of our AMAZING AND BRILLIANT developers. As a less techy member of the Commerce Kitchen team, I’m always impressed to learn about what Scott does and why he likes it. So this week I’d like to present my interview with Scott on custom web apps, or Why Scott Loves Ruby on Rails.

Natalie: Hi Scott.

Scott: Hi. Nice to see you on this side of the office.

Natalie: It’s great to be here. I wanted to ask you a little bit about Ruby on Rails. Cool?

Scott: Let’s do it.

Natalie: Great. So my first question is this. How would you describe what Ruby on Rails is, in your own language?

Scott: It’s a web framework written in the Ruby language. It allows you to build web applications faster and more securely than building them from scratch.

Natalie: Ah. Okay. So what’s up with the Ruby language?

Scott: It’s a high level scripting language that is very orthogonal [According to Wikipedia, "orthogonality has to do with the ability of a language, method, or object to vary without side-effects"]; there aren’t a lot of exceptions in the language. So basically you can intuitively figure it out because of the orthogonality. It’s designed to be very readable.

Natalie: You’re smart. Ok, so what does Rails do to the Ruby language?

Scott: Rails brought Ruby into the mainstream as a scripting language. It was more of a hobby language, but Rails allowed it to become a mainstream production language.

Natalie: Huh?

Scott: Rails is the framework. Ruby is the language.

Natalie: Alright. I think I get it. Why do you like Ruby on Rails?

Scott: I like Ruby on Rails because Ruby is awesome. It employs the MVC (model view controller) design pattern. It’s a design pattern that keeps your business logic and your views / presentation separate.

Also, I love the community. The Ruby on Rails community is a very active, very small tight-knit community. And they’re zealots. The collective intelligence of the community is ridiculously high.

There are some serious nerds working on that stuff: Ryan Bates, Obie Fernandez. There are a bunch of people like that. The community is one of the biggest reasons I like it.

Natalie: How long have you been using Ruby on Rails? And how did you learn the language?

Scott: I’ve been coding in Rails for about five years now. I’m self-taught, pretty much from books and projects I picked up at another company I used to work for.

Natalie: What kind of web apps has Commerce Kitchen built using Rails?

Scott: Commerce Kitchen has built a bunch of different types of sites using Rails. We basically build the site / app based on the business process of the client. We’ve built Ruby on Rails apps for websites that are e-commerce, leads, intranet based, etc.

Natalie: Do you have a favorite Rails site that you’ve built?

Scott: Right now I love working on the Landesa LandWise project. It’s an incredible library database that will provide access to a ton of articles, documents, and information about land rights in developing countries.

Natalie: We love Landesa. They’re awesome. Commerce Kitchen also builds sites in WordPress. Why would you need a Rails site versus a WordPress site?

Scott: WordPress can be really great, but any time you need custom software built it’s better to do it in Rails. WordPress, while versatile, is specifically designed to be a blog and caters to that functionality.

Natalie: Wow, thanks Scott. Any closing words or praise for web apps built using Ruby on Rails?

Scott: Well, for web apps it’s great. It does a lot of the heavy lifting for you.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. Why is George Takei, an actor best known for his supporting role in the original Star Trek series, so incredibly successful on Facebook?

Let’s take a look.

As you can see, Mr. Takei has just over one million fans on Facebook. Sure, one million fans is a lot of fans, but for a better perspective on what it means to have a huge following, Coca-Cola has thirty-nine million fans.

However, check out these screenshots below. The first is an image posted by George Takei and the second is an image posted by Coca-Cola.

Look at the startlingly different share rates on these two images. Takei, who has one million fans, had his image shared by 10,697 people; that’s almost one percent of his followers. Coca-Cola’s image, on the other hand, was shared by about 700 people, less than .0002% of its fans.

Nearly every item that Takei posts on Facebook is shared with rates like this. So why does this guy have such an insane share rate compared to other public figures and companies?

I believe it comes down to three things: edge, niche, and politics.

1. Edge: George Takei isn’t afraid to get edgy. He posts funny pictures that are often profane, challenging, or just plain stupid. But people love that kind of stuff.

If you spend any time on Twitter, check out the Twitterati, or as SNL recently called them, the Twitter Famous.

These are people who aren’t celebrities, but who have made a Twitter name for themselves, often based on their proclivity for edgy or stupid jokes. For reference check out Rob Delaney or Kelly Oxford.

People enjoy sharing things that make others uncomfortable. This is not something that most businesses or public figures can easily imitate or capitalize on (see this disastrous vodka billboard for proof of how being edgy can be a really, really bad idea).

George Takei doesn’t have as much to lose as Coca-Cola does, so he’s more willing to share edgy or slightly-offensive images, knowing full well that people will be happy to share them, and that it won’t do much to his reputation.

2. Niche: Though Takei’s Star Trek days are long behind him, he still finds a fan base among SciFi nerds (we can call them that; we are SciFi nerds).

He posts images that speak to a certain aesthetic of Geek Chic.

It’s cool to like Star Wars these days–both for people who were alive when the first (and best) films were originally released in the late ’70s, and for those who learned to love the films with a sort of nostalgic irony.

What is Coca-Cola’s niche? Coca-Cola is so well known, so completely branded, that it almost can’t have a niche outside of itself. People may like to drink it, but that’s it. There’s not much of a community that surrounds the consumption of soda, no matter how hard Coca-Cola may try to convince us otherwise.

3. Politics: George Takei isn’t afraid to get political on Facebook. He’s fully out as gay and supports LGBT rights across the board. His images obviously speak to people with similar political leanings.

We could argue that he isn’t being political, he’s just being himself, and that is also definitely true. As an entity Coca-Cola is probably terrified of making a political statement one way or the other.

This isn’t to say that Coca-Cola is apolitical (claiming rights to water to make soda across the world, etc.), but to make a public statement on how they would or would not vote on a social issue is something that most companies won’t do, unless they’re completely confident in their customer base (see Chic-Fil-A).

I always like to conclude my blogs with a tidy little lesson on Things We’ve Learned From Analyzing Other People’s Behavior and Success, and this blog is no different.

Can your company or organization imitate or at least learn from Takei’s success, or does the edge-niche-politics trifecta work only for public figures who have less to lose?

I have no doubt that niche is crucial. You should be proud of the work you do, proud of the community that you’re part of, and proud of sharing this with other people. If you’re not, then maybe you’re in the wrong industry.

Edge and politics should be handled a little more carefully. I don’t think that a company has to avoid posting edgy or political ideas to its social networks, but make sure you’re delivering a message that fits in with what you do.

I encourage everyone to always be aware of whether or not your material could possibly come across as racist, sexist, or homophobic, and to veto it if it does.

Edginess and politics can be fun without being offensive, and posts that are edgy or political will get shared more than many other posts. But they may not be as sustaining or effective in creating a solid customer base as capitalizing on your own niche.

For a great example on how edgy and funny marketing can backfire in the end, no matter how well it’s shared, check out what went down between Burger King and Crispin Porter & Bogusky.

What it comes down to in the end is this: yes, George Takei is a Facebook Hero, but how does this translate to his career? Just because his images are shared so frequently, do more people want to see his acting?

Your success on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks should be determined by direct conversions and high ROI for your business, not only by shares and likes.

What has worked for your company on Facebook? Do you take a George Takei approach or a Coca-Cola approach to social media?

To get straight to the awesomely awkward stock photos, just scroll down.

One of my favorite things to do on the internet is to find and collect the creepiest and most nonsensical stock photos. It’s a weird pastime, I realize this.

Stock photos are almost inherently awkward. They’re posed, staged, and usually don’t quite capture an essence of reality.

This blogger may have said it best:

When users see and recognize general stock photos they tend to feel like the site is fake or cheesy. Relevant photographs let the user know that you care about the experience and that you want to show them what is important to you. Also, bad photos — even relevant ones — can drive the user away for the same reason. Great photography is always a wise investment. Hire good photographers to take product, location and staff images.

While I agree wholeheartedly, sometimes we can’t afford a good photographer, or sometimes we’re in a situation where we need an interesting image, and fast. I would say avoid stock photos if you can, but if you can’t, then definitely avoid awkward stock photos like the ones below, unless your post, page, or content is equally as awkward.

If you follow us on Facebook, you’ve seen my obsession with awkward stock photos. So here is a gallery, which includes some of our favorite awkward stock photos along with our Facebook fans’ captions, where they exist.

Awkward Stock Photos

A Gallery of Awesomeness and Hilarity

All Images Courtesy of Shutterstock

I could go on forever, but I’ll stop at 20. At least for today.

At the Commerce Kitchen office we spend a lot of time coming up with weird metaphors for what SEO and web design would be if they were something done offline. Would they be construction? Remodeling? Housecleaning?

Let me explain. You see, we’ve come across a pretty consistent problem among business owners, an understandable problem, but still a problem nonetheless. Many business owners want their websites and SEO to be a one-step process.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), web technology is constantly changing, updating, and improving. A website that you paid tens of thousands of dollars for five years ago may need to be completely re-hauled today to perform well in search.

That’s not to say that your original design team did a bad job. In fact, they may have done better than anyone else could’ve done at the time. However, as technology changes, websites absolutely have to change in order to meet the standards of the web.

So you have two choices. You can either try to patch up an outdated website (which becomes increasingly harder to do as your business grows); or, you can invest in rebuilding your website so that it becomes more usable, searchable, and shareable. You can remain stagnant in the face of change, or you can improve your business.

I’m sounding harsh, aren’t I? Let’s talk in metaphors for awhile, wanna? Okay, so when you buy a car you expect to be able to use it for maybe ten years or so, right? What if every couple years the city completely redid the roads, and suddenly your car was uncomfortable to sit in, didn’t accelerate well, and none of your friends wanted to ride in it.

Luckily that doesn’t happen, but if it did you’d have to find a way to either buy a new car or invest in a monthly bus pass much more often. Web design is like that, especially if you want to keep up with your competitors, be competitive in search, and increase your conversions.

Here’s another metaphor: you can think of your online presence like a donkey or like love. Donkeys are reliable, predictable, strong, and loyal. Those are great qualities to have. However, according to our resident donkey expert Niki, if you change things up with a donkey, they get confused and ornery. Yikes. That is not a good quality for a business owner to have.

Love is also strong and loyal, but to make a relationship work you’ve got to be willing to change and grow. This is true for romantic relationships, for parent-child relationships, for all relationships where you love and care about someone.

Your customers and clients need you to listen to them and their needs. If they’re unable to navigate your site smoothly then you’re neglecting your relationship and they will leave you. Simple.

So what can you do? Well, you can set aside part of your budget for technology. Know that when you have a website built that you’re going to have to have it built again as your business grows and as technology advances.

My conclusion? There are no concrete, real-world metaphors for web design. We are living in the future that previous generations only envisioned: this a world that is temporary, virtual, and constantly in rapid flux.

Commerce Kitchen is your love donkey! Contact us today and we can help you plan your site redo so you can stay competitive.