Periodic Table of SEO Factors Infographic by Search Engine Land

Search Engine Optimization continues to be as important as ever, and the landscape is always changing.  Here are some SEO best practice tips for 2012 so you can keep your SEO strategy cutting edge.

1. Get Local

Google has been going local in the last year, and Google search results are now more focused than ever on Google Places. It’s crucial that your business is on Google Places and here is a guide for getting the most out of Google Places and local search.

2. Get Social

It may seem obvious, but social platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ really do affect search rankings. Google has confirmed that Twitter and Facebook count.  Being active on social media is also a great linkbuilding tool, which is a longstanding tenet of SEO.

3. Use Smart Keywords

Make sure your website’s title tag is descriptive and contains a plethora of relevant keywords. However, don’t worry about the keywords meta tag too much – Google has admitted that it doesn’t consider these in search rankings.

4. Markup Your Data

Schema.org “is a collaboration by Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! to improve the web by creating a structured data markup schema supported by major search engines.”  Adding this markup data to your website makes it easier for non-human search engines to understand what your business is all about.

5. Comply with Google’s Webmaster Guidelines

Make sure your website complies with Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. High quality content is paramount.

6. Be Mobile Friendly

Users are browsing the web from mobile devices and tablets with more and more frequency. Make sure your site is mobile ready so that your users don’t get frustrated and move on.

7. Be Interactive

Add original photos and videos to your website.  When Google crawls web pages it searches for diverse content, and including unique photos and videos diversifies your content.  Be sure to SEO optimize your photos and videos – always use descriptive and human readable file names, and include relevant ALT and TITLE tags for photos.

8. Last But Not Least…

This one may be the most important, and it’s entirely in your hands – make sure your site’s content is original and unique.

It was over one of those long lunches with too much wine, that we decided on the Noise 13 name. My current reasoning: you want your brand to make some Noise in your industry, to be noticed by customers and press, plus 13 is just my favorite number. Just by luck, first office was on the 13th floor, and legally our business was confirmed with the state on Jan. 13th of 2000.

The first official client on Noise 13′s books was TeddyCrafters, and Fred Rubenstein, who is now the owner of photograph & frame. It says something nice about our services to know that we’ve been working with some of our clients for over 10 years. Beauty Company fits into that camp too.

Over the years, Noise 13 gained interns, hired a bookkeeper, moved a few times, then found our next main office on Folsom street. That’s when it started to get really fun = full time employees! That office had some great people, most of which still meet up for drinks. Anna Tou, Shalin Amin, Jamie Scanu, David Handlong, Kerry Nehil, and Chelsea Carpenter are some of my favorites. We even knocked down the walls, put in new floors and had some fantastic parties in that crooked old building.

We moved to South park after that, I got a dog, and had some staff changes: André Quiroz and Erin Hunt joined the office and others moved on.  Then in 2011 we moved to the current space on 7th street. Currently the office is full of great ladies: Hien, Christine, Evelyn, Marisa, and Victoria. We also have a few partners here with us, Erin Finnegan of Notori.us, Marc Fiortio or GammaNine, and Kimball Starr, Interior Design.

I am so grateful for all the wonderful people who have worked with Noise 13 over the years as clients or staff or partners. I am looking froward to another year of great projects, good wine, and passionate new clients. Year 13th will bring the best party I can manage, so be sure to save the date: 1/13/13.

It’s always nice to see how paper can be pushed beyond its flatness. Jen Stark uses regular old construction paper to create mesmerizing, three-dimensional sculptures.

We also love infographics. A lot. Here are some beautiful ones made of paper that pop right off the flat page.

In his novel Tree of Codes, author Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything is Illuminated, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close) uses die-cutting to create a really cool and innovative reading experience.

We’re all familiar with the flip book from our childhood days -- a petite animation made of multiple pages of slightly different images, right in our own hands. But did they ever create rainbows out of thin air? I think not.

Here’s more paper in motion, and perhaps another familiar trompe l’oeil that intrigued us as youngsters — the zoetrope animation. But now it’s on a bike wheel! Who wants to make one?

And how about paper as attire? While not practical, it surely looks cool. At least this dress reveals messages to the wearer as it deteriorates.

Sometimes it’s hard to envision paper beyond its 8.5 x 11” footprint. But with a little color, organization, and shift of perspective, here’s what can happen. Incredible.

But what does one do with the waste that inevitably results from using all of this paper? Make a lamp, of course.

There are a lot of proponents in favor of Facebook implementing a “dislike” button along with its very popular “like” button. Facebook announced in October 2011 that it will not allow any developers to create apps that have a “dislike” button since the possibility of negative ramifications outweigh the users’ need to express displeasure. In the light of recent cyber-bullying reports and increasing participation from businesses on Facebook, there is little hope that Facebook will allow the implementation of a “dislike” button. Dislike your neighbor’s photos of her cat in multiple flattering poses posted on your wall? You will have to suffer passive aggressively in cyber silence.

Facebook is not the only social media platform that shares the same feel-good sentiment. Social media platforms containing personal content from users are more sensitive and vulnerable to abuse. Flickr, Google+ and Tumblr either allow you to “favorite,” “like,” or “+1” an entry, but there is currently not an option to “dislike.” Creative material, however, is subjected to a different set of standards. Websites that rank their creative content based on votes allow users to vote “thumbs down” or “thumbs up.” YouTube, Digg and Reddit use this data to highlight the most engaging content as voted by their audience. The option to give a popular entry a “thumbs down” is an expression from the online community that the entry may not contain any substantial or relevant information. The number of views may only indicate the controversial nature of the piece and not necessarily indicate an audience’s preference. My Facebook feed informs me that 15 of my friends has read the article “Snooki Finally Reaches Goal Weight of 98 Pounds – But Has She Gone Too Far?” whereas only 1 friend has read “Guantánamo, 10 Years Later.” I can state with absolute confidence that all of my Facebook friends will agree that Guantánamo’s anniversary is more important to the course of history than a skinny Snooki.

But the web is just like your family, there is always one black sheep. Yelp, whose description is “the fun and easy way to find and talk about great (and not so great) local businesses,” is a collection of reviews from the general public. Yelp allows you to vote a review “useful,” “funny,” or “cool,” but is devoid of any option to mark the review as containing less relevant information. We are all familiar with the petty Yelper that hands out a 1-star review to our favorite hole-in-the-wall for not having red-carpet worthy service. Or the Yelper afflicted with a Catch-22 dilemma who waited “endlessly” for a table at a very popular restaurant that Yelp helped make popular. User reviews need to be protected against vengeful businesses, but a democratic system needs to be in place to demote small-minded sentiments. Useful details should be more readily accessible to the information-seeker instead of being drowned in a sea of nit-picky complaints.

Adding the option to “dislike” is usually a controversial decision for social media platforms, but it can also improve user experience by promoting better content. Currently, the most popular icons visually depicting pleasure and displeasure are “thumbs up” and “thumbs down,” respectively. “Thumbs down” is strongly perceived as negative in popular culture. Perhaps, a compromise can be reached by choosing an icon or adjective that has less of a negative connotation. If a “thumbs down” icon expresses too much negativity, we can follow the example of my first grade teacher–handing out silver foiled stars instead of gold ones.

Matthew Latkiewicz Wine Label Wheel from Sloshed.com

When creating a wine label, a designer’s first hurdle is the government: a label needs to include the producer, where the wine is from, what kind of wine it is (what grapes? a blend? sparkling?), the amount of alcohol in the wine, and that lovely little warning from the Surgeon General. The next hurdle is a little less straightforward: dealing with the fact that most people are buying wine based upon label alone, because they don’t know the fascinating story about who made the wine and how it should taste.

At first, this sounds fantastic. Just make that label stand out on the shelf, and out of the store it will fly.  But in fact, this customer tendency is what makes wine label design particularly interesting.  Not only must a wine label stand out and look great on a shelf, bar, and website, but the wine label’s design has to really speak to the wine that is in the bottle.  Chuck House explains this perfectly for Food & Wine:

“A wine label is all about getting someone to ask a question. A great label should stimulate a conversation… It could be a conversation between you and the bottle… But most importantly, the label has to suit the wine. The wine has to be at home in the bottle.”

As a label-driven consumer, however, this puts you in an interesting place where you need to ask yourself “if letterpress were a Merlot, would I want to drink it?”  Matthew Latkiewicz put together a hilarious ‘Wine Label Wheel’ to illustrate quite cleverly just how winemakers and designers are interpreting the juice that’s making it into those bottles.  Who wants a glass of Pottery Barn Catalogue Chardonnay? A leaping animal Aussie blend?

All joking aside, here at Noise 13 we take our wine (and wine labels) very seriously.  So, drink the wine you like. Buy the wine that looks good. And appreciate that vintage poster label accurately capturing the dusty, terroir-driven, oak-aged Willamette Valley Pinot Noir in your glass.