Here’s a scenario: You’re redesigning a site – maybe it’s yours or your client’s site – and you’re concerned about how the redesign is going to affect your current SEO state. The redesign is anticipated to launch about 6 months to a year. You decide that, to make things easier for your “redesign,” and for fear of becoming a victim of another Panda update, you hold off on all of your SEO optimization until the redesign is done. Which means no content updates and no on-page or off-page optimization, among other SEO campaigns you’re running on the site. And to make it fair in your mind, you plan on saving or cataloging your content so that you can maintain that “ranking content” when your site goes live. Sounds like a plan, right?

As the words of one of the greatest rappers of all time, LL Cool J, plainly put it: “I don’t think so.” And here are reasons why it’s a bad idea to postpone your SEO:

Content is STILL King

Your content still matters to your audience, and by that measure alone should be reasons why you cannot stop your SEO. You need to be able to continually revise your content to increase your exposure and engage/re-engage your audience into your site. If halting your SEO campaigns for a period of time is your choice of measure, you’re not updating your site with fresh, relevant and usable content for your audience. Think about the long-term snowball effect this has on your content production: stale content over a fixed long-term range can damage your content appeal to your users, which will force users to look elsewhere for what they need to find. When users look elsewhere for the content they need, search engines won’t see your site and your content as relevant and useful to the users looking for it. This will force your content to be perceived as little value by search engines, primarily Google, and thus your page ranks and perceived value will decline.

Metrics? We Don’t Need No Stinking Metrics?

That’s exactly what is going to happen when your SEO is postponed: your metrics will be shot. I can’t say for every site that your traffic, page views, conversions, etc. will fall dramatically, nor do I guarantee that at all. However, I do know that you will experience a drop or dip in some way, shape or form on your site. How dramatic of a drop will depend on how long the redesign will take, how big of a redesign your site will span, and the number of pages will be affected.

It should be noted that your metrics and analytic reports should be part of the equation when planning on redesigning while postponing your SEO. If metrics are not part of the marketing strategy behind this redesign, then I suggest educating your managers, directors, and/or executives on the potential issues that will show up on your reports. Make them aware of what will happen before and after the work stoppage and how much work it will take to get back into the search game.

Bye, Bye, Bye (Rankings)

Google has stated that they take into consideration user interaction and engagement towards your content in its algorithm to determine site rank, weight, and overall value. If your users don’t see your site to be relevant in the time that you do the redesign, search engines will take note of that and use it against you. By not changing and refreshing your content over that period of time, you’re providing your users with more useless, irrelevant information that, in this “give it to me now” day and age, will be seen as “so 10 minutes ago.” Not engaging your users with relevant, up-to-date information, you’re more than likely going to lose your rankings and your search exposure due to stale, unchanging and boring content.

Redesigns And SEO Can Co-Exist, But Only If Your Managers Know How

I know this for a fact that redesigns and SEO can work together and in unison. I have done it as a Senior SEO Specialist for a marketing agency, working with content developers, designers and developers, and IT to create redesigns, newer/fresher content, along with revamped on-page and off-page optimization. It’s not too difficult to do in most respects, but the knowledge and best practices of managing your redesign and SEO should be passed on from the top down. Think about it: If you’re an SEO expert in your company, and you’re told to stop your SEO campaigns/optimization because of a redesign, and the reasons given to you are a load of crap by industry standards, then it looks like the managers, directors, or C-level executives responsible do not know the massive implications of this tactic.

You’re Not Using Technical Assistance That Can Help Your SEO

Are your managers and directors not helping you argue and protect your SEO investments? Your managers are probably afraid that by doing the redesign, they’re going to screw up any optimization (and results from those optimization campaigns) already done throughout the site, such as keyword-rich URLs, title and description tags, landing pages, etc. If that’s the case, let your IT team help out with 301 and 302 redirects during and after the redesign. This will help your site get positioned to visibility while your managing the redesign and the work after that has transpired. Moreover, sitemap submissions conducted on a regular basis will keep spiders up-to-date on what’s hot and what’s not on your site, including relevant temporary or permanent redirects that can push your older contents aside for fresher meat.

Social Media Won’t Be Enough To Replace Your Search Position

If you think that pure social media alone will help you offset your SEO, think again. Do you really think that tweeting and posting content on your social platforms pointing to your outdated site is going to make your site have a stronger relevancy on your searches? Do you really expect to push old and stale content to your users who are looking to the here and now? Social media needs updated content just as much as SEO does, and the integration of two will create more firepower for your brand online. So why screw your SEO campaigns over?

You’re Screwing The SEO Work Previously Done To Get You Where You Are

By conducting SEO stoppage on your site, you’re basically screwing the work that was previously done to get where you are on a search visibility scale. If you’re the marketing genius who wanted to stop the site from being optimized while you’re redesigning, do you really think that picking it up again later on (whether it’s 6 months, 1 year or worse) will put you back in the map automatically?

If you’re the SEO person, content writer, or SEO team involved (or chosen to NOT be involved) in this predicament, are you already conducting a short-term and long-term strategy to help decrease the time that you’ll be gone from your user’s search? If not, I believe that you and/or your team should have a back-up plan, and plan it well.

You’re Screwing Your SEO Foundation, Then Starting From Scratch

SEO is the grounds that hold the foundation of your online marketing. Halting and restarting your SEO campaign is like taking out the foundation of your existing house, and then re-building the foundation under the weight of the existing house. It’s going to take a lot more effort from an SEO perspective to get back the ranking and relevancy you would lose if you were to continue to halt your campaigns. Imagine the amount of work that your content marketers, SEO specialists and other online marketers will have to do to ramp up back to the relevancy that you probably enjoy now. Now, imagine the time it will take for that work to actually produce fruit for your site.

My Conclusion

If it was up to me, I would not halt any SEO work during a redesign at all. Not now, and not ever. If you’re not too concerned about SEO like some companies I know of, then this is up to you to conduct and likely at your own risk. However, if you are concerned about your overall visibility and you’re conducting the halt anyway, then I suggest  conducting a vast project management and risk assessment before proceeding with your redesign project. Having a solid SEO strategy for your website is great for long-term benefits, but these long-term benefits depend on your short-term work. If your short-term work involves no SEO whatsoever, then your long-term SEO strategies are useless, like microphones given to Milli Vanilli.

As I sift through my plethora of social media feeds and apps, I can’t help but think of Google Reader and its relevancy in today’s marketing and business world. Personally, I use Google Reader to sign up and subscribe to feeds of websites that I want to follow. I also use Feedburner and Guy Kawasaki’s My.Alltop.com (you can find me at http://my.alltop.com/zioneyemedia) as my feed resources, but I tend to check out Alltop moreso than I do my Reader. I love the look, flexibility and ease of use on Alltop, and I can get a lot of sites’ feeds within Alltop off the bat without having to subscribe to individual websites.

So is Google Reader still relevant to feed readers? Maybe I should ask this: is Google Reader even relevant now to those who search for sources of inspiration? Did Google +, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook Pages, and the thousands of other social networks taking more of your time?

Let me know your thoughts!

Apple’s release of the iCloud has fanboys and critics alike raving about what that means to both the public and developer community, not to mention what it will spark in the business, retail, and tech sector. For it seems that the iCloud’s sweetest value proposition, outside of it being FREE, is its seamless integration with its current (and future) product line. More appealing for Apple fanboys and tech gurus alike is the fact that Apple’s innovation drives more and more businesses to be more innovative, thus generating more business to the company.

With iCloud, Dropbox has a better, more viable competitor to its business model. iCloud’s free storage – a “whopping” 5GB – is miniscule compared to Dropbox’s 2GB offering. How I think Dropbox can leverage their position – and keep their customers in the process – isn’t so much in how much free storage it can counter with Apple’s. That will be a great start, but that won’t be enough to make things work for them. Brand popularity and business model is already on Apple’s side, so no use competing in that regard. I think that Dropbox will have a better positioning  with Apple in the following areas:

Customer Service

I’m torn on Apple’s customer service and customer development, and it’s not just within their “Genius” bar. The sales associate that sold my iPhone was a rockstar: helpful, informative, engaging, and was definitely not pushy. She listened first to what I needed to have before offering any solutions or products available to provide.

The “Genius” bar on the other hand, was not as helpful nor offered insightful comments to my conversations and my issues. The person hardly kept eye contact, let alone listened carefully to what I needed to have done to my iPod. As a result, I had to reschedule with a different “genius” to settle my grievance, and ended up telling me something different than the previous “genius.”

As one who has worked and managed a retail store, the ability to listen is everything in my book.

The point is that if Apple’s customer service is not their strongest point, then Dropbox should take advantage of that weakness and use it to develop a stronger backbone to their product line.

Customer Relationship Development

I may get some hate mail for this, but I’ll say it anyway: Apple is not the best company that develops customer relationships. I repeat that: Apple is not the best company that develops strong customer relationships.

Let the hate mail and comments begin.

Apple’s product line isn’t necessarily a true indicative of its customer relationships. Yes, their products can be great, and people buy Apple products for whatever “greatness” they find in it. That reasoning doesn’t fully quantify nor qualify that the people buying those products have strong personal relationships with the company. There may be some truth to the greatness of their products, but at times, it just means that the products are great. Simple enough.

For example, I can like a product (iPod, iPhone, iPad) created by the company and not necessarily be infatuated with that company. I’m more interested in the quality of the relationship that people have with the company, not necessarily the product. It’s in this angle that Dropbox can use to leverage their offering from the competition: by increasingly reaching out and strengthening the core customers to develop a healthy and stronger relationship that is long-lasting.

Take Lessons from Google, circa late 1990s

Back in the day, strong search engines that were not named Google were very prominent, while Google stood quietly, strengthening their algorithms, creating clean/modern UIs and used simplicity as their mantra. Standing the test of time, they were able to overcome the big boys to become THE big boy, all the while changing the face of the internet as we see it today.

Dropbox can certainly learn from Google’s business model, especially when faced with bigger competition. Strengthening the core structure with innovative ideas, clean design, better usability, and seamless integration will be needed to keep Dropbox healthy over the long haul.

In 2009, I posted a blog about what types of marketing applications people like me would use to help their business.  I’m recapping that list here (in no particular order), and then I’m going to grade them based on how they worked or didn’t work for me.

1. Twitter
2. LinkedIn
3. StumbleUpon
4. Delicious
5. FriendFeed
6. Magnolia
7. Technorati
8. WordPress
9. Ning
10. Squidoo

Twitter

Let’s start with the obvious, shall we?  Twitter has been an awesome complimentary tool for all areas of marketing for Zion Eye Media, and has been an increasingly greater customer relationship engagement application as well.  In my honest assessment, I feel that Twitter has done a better job handling my marketing needs than most, if not all, of the applications I’ve used within the past several years.  I would consider Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn as my top 3 choices so far.  Grade: A

LinkedIn

I would say that LinkedIn is up there in my rankings next to Twitter and Facebook.  Back when I wrote my previous article, LinkedIn was not in any way, shape or form the kind of tool that it is now.  Integration with other web applications and social media were non-existent, or at least very, very limited.  I have seen it grow to the awesomeness that it is currently, and I hope that it continues to grow and blossom (especially with their recent IPO).  Included features like questions and answers, and company profiles are great ways to get free marketing for the business.  Grade: A

StumbleUpon

This is one of my favorite apps for collecting inspiration links for design and marketing.  I know that some of my friends have moved on to other similar apps, but we’ll get to that in a second.  Frankly, if I had to rate StumbleUpon with other apps, I would rate it within the same realm as Evernote.  The browser toolbar can be wonky at times, especially when it doesn’t sync as well as it should.  Nevertheless, it’s still being used on my book, so that’s a good start!  Grade: B

Delicious

I still use this but I wasn’t (and still am not) very fond of their UI.  I understand that it’s the application and the data functionality that is more important (at least from what I understand of them), but if other apps can be as aesthetically pleasing, Delicious can also do a better job on the front end.  Grade: B-

FriendFeed

At the time, I use this application to tap into Facebook so that I can market through Twitter and Facebook at the same time.  Back in 2009, Facebook didn’t have their Pages sorted out yet, and integration with Twitter without using 3rd party party applications were minimal.  Friendfeed was a good choice back then, and is proving to be of somewhat relatively good value presently.  With newer abilities for social integration, I think Friendfeed may be on its way out of the door for me.  Grade: B/C, depending on past/present workings.

Magnolia

Unfortunately, this is an application that went down like MySpace being punched by Facebook’s Iron Mike Tyson.  I was fond of their bookmarking tool for a while, then when they lost my stuff, I was thinking that’s it for me.  2 years or so down the road, I realized that they were doing their own cloud computing work (go figure), which is something that I am pretty much an evangelist for nowadays.  Maybe it’s a safe bet NOT to do your own IT work..?  Grade: F

Technorati

Well, I’m not as versed in Technorati as I have hoped to be, at least in terms of content value and integrity.  I may not have as much credibility here, and while I was hoping to use their value as a way to integrate my knowledge and skill set as an online authority, that has not yet been the case.  I think this is a 50-5o for me.  Grade: C

WordPress

As you can see, my site is built on WordPress, and I’m using it fairly well, I believe.  However, I think when I wrote my previous post, I was merely referring to as a way to create landing pages FOR my marketing, and for that initiative, I have met my purposes.  Needless to say, it’s not really a “marketing” tool, so may have to scrap that as an application for marketing use.  Grade: B-

Ning

I signed up for Ning a while back, and honestly I haven’t really done much with Ning the past two years.  In a perfect world, I would be all over Ning and be more of a power user than a spectator.  But, with all of the things I have been doing, I can’t be doing 200% of everything… at once… 24/7.  I think Ning is a tool that I could use in the definite future.  Grade: C+

Squidoo

Well, Squidoo would have been very useful for me if I could have had more time to use it.  Unfortunately, all I ever did with Squidoo was show other people how to use it, but not really use it myself as a marketing tool.  Grade: C+

Now let’s talk about my top 5 applications for my marketing tools today, and what has worked for me as of late (in no particular order):

1. Twitter
2. Facebook
3. StumbleUpon
4. TweetDeck
5. LinkedIn

What are your favorite applications?

As some of you may know, I have been splitting my time with Zion Eye Media to write for Your Social Media Mogul with Knikkolette Church. I believe that helping write content for those in the midst of grasping social media marketing best practices is paying off, as I can see her getting more and more in depth in the social media realm. Whether you’re a beginner, intermediate, or advanced-level marketer, I believe you will be able to benefit from reading the blog posts that we have there.

On that note, I’m not saying goodbye to writing posts for Zion Eye Media, I’m just going to be creating less social media content here and focusing more of my social efforts with Your Social Media Mogul.  Unfortunately, I still have a plethora of web design, flash development, and SEO posts that are still on draft mode, so I need to revise them to make them more relevant.  Time flies by when you’re working non-stop!

When you have a chance, stop on by and let us know what you think.  How can we serve you today?

Just a quick note that I’ve been doing some of my blog writing as a guest writer for Your Social Media Mogul, a site that explores more heavily on anything that touches social media.  I’ve been talking about different methods, strategies, and techniques of social interaction, and I hope to continue doing that there.  I may have a handful of social media posts here as well, but I may divert more of my social media topics there and keep things in house more SEO and design-based.  But then again, who knows, right?

Anyway, please do check out Your Social Media Mogul and let me know if there’s anything that you want to see covered and we’ll get it done!

I’m reiterating a post that WebProNews wrote a couple of days ago regarding the future of emails and how it’s being impacted by social media.  In this article, the author pointed out that:

People might turn more and more to social networks for casual conversations, link sharing, and things like that, but call me when your banking and all your professional communicating are done through Facebook.

I totally agree that people are more inclined to use social networks for casual and social conversations.  But from a strict business standpoint, I don’t think email will be going away anytime soon, as I believe they still have a place in business and marketing, just as billboards, TV spots, and print media still do today.  As he pointed out, banking through social media (a la Facebook) isn’t practical (maybe not yet) and probably not going to happen with most people, and I for one support and relate to that mentality.

I also think that there is a prevalent mentality that emails (or even using email marketing as an example) are going to continually be static while other marketing avenues are expanding and evolving.  Like other marketing avenues, whether social or not, emails and email marketing will be evolving alongside other mediums, although I think it’s difficult to tell how fast or slow this evolving will transpire.  Currently, email marketing is still a strong asset and factor for inbound marketing, just as social media is as well.  Combining the two together, in addition to other methods of inbound marketing, make a better overall marketing infrastructure than using each medium separately by itself.

Will email be replaced by social media?  I agree with the author: I don’t think so, at least not anytime soon.