BonFX | Graphic Design & Art Blog

Saturday, August 19, 2017

Oxbow SEO - Providence Social Media

Oxbow SEO Social Media Profiles

http://oxbowseo.com

This list should serve as a great indicator of just how many social media sites there are that you can use to help establish your brand online in both the eyes of your customers and clients, but also that of Google. The more trusted sites you have that point to your site, the more Google understands about your site and brand, which leads to Google trusting your site more, which then finally leads to higher organic search results, all other things being equal with your competitors!

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

A great deal on landing page templates

A collection of squeeze page graphic template resources

I just posted a short little article on a great product that is handy if you are used to putting together landing pages by hand, or need graphic elements to make the job easier inside your favorite CMS.

http://bonfx.com/squeeze-landing-page-templates/

If you aren't sure what a squeeze page is, read here, and Wikipedia will set you straight!

Give that a spin!

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Granite Countertops in RI in the Lab

Here we are in the BonFX labs, and we are working on how YouTube rankings of videos affect the websites that they point to. We know that you can rank a video, especially in a niche, with relative ease compared to ranking in the general search engine results.

One site we are trying to establish for a local client is:

http://granitecountertopsri.com

We have a video which references the site at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk8FDDreNzo

The video is short, and is a essentially just words and music describing the service for granite countertops in Rhode Island. So we are tracking the effect of this aged Blogger blog we've had probably 10 years! Let's see...

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

SEO Services in Rhode Island

We wanted to take a minute on our first and oldest blog to announce the availability of our SEO (Search Engine Optimization) services at OxbowSEO.com.

We started designing sites by hand 20 years ago this year! We started on the "Hotdog" HTML editor. There were almost no tools for doing anything. Photoshop was only on version 1.0. We used the ever-famous "WS FTP" application (the free version), and it rolled forward from there.

Since those early days, the industry has undergone countless sea changes. Our skills and interests have moved up from font combinations and design et al, to basic under the hood development of simple websites, beyond automated design tools and powerful CMSs, to what matters most: rankings! Without search engine optimization, all your web design efforts are a waste.

OxbowSEO offers a specific SEO Rhode Island approach that understand local competitors. Local SEO is not like national or global markets, and it takes understanding to know what the recipe is for your local business to be able to outrank your competitors.

So, head on over to OxbowSEO here, and we'll see you on the inside.

Watch our cool 30 second intro video while you are at it!

Facebook

https://facebook.com/oxbowseo

Twitter

https://twitter.com/oxbowseo

Meetup

http://www.meetup.com/Providence-SEO-for-Businesses-Meetup/

Friday, October 17, 2014

Where to get expired domains?

Anyone following SEO trends knows that Google released an algorithm update the penalized PBN sites. It affected 3-5% of all searches, and several well-known PBN networks were effectively destroyed: Google detected them and delisted them. Does this mean PBNs, or private blog networks, are bad?

No. It just means that the networks that got caught were sloppy. Google ranks sites based on backlinks, and the quality of those backlinks. If you have good content on your own network, where each site offers some value, it can pass it's link juice on to your main site, or money site. This is just how Google works, and will continue to work for the foreseeable near and long term.

You can focus on link building from authority sites, or you can build authority sites, in your niche, and link from them to your main site. Getting natural backlinks from sites you don't control, though, is extremely hard if you aren't 100% immersed in a niche, and have developed relationships with the site owners.

The next best thing is to acquire quality, spam-free, expired domains which have a history of backlinks that Google can't discount. Put some quality content on these old sites, redirect their incoming links to your sites main page, and then direct a link or two from that entire site to your main site. Boom - you have passed a quality backlink to you main site you could not have otherwise gotten. Watch your rankings go up now. That is the power of backlinks.

So, how do you get expired domains? You need a quality expired domain vendor, like Oxbow Domains. We built our own tool to crawl sites, find expired domains, and sort them for us by authority. From there, we hand-check each site for spam, and only sell the good stuff.

No, PBNs are not dead, not by a long shot. So grab some expired domains and get going on quality content!

Monday, July 09, 2012

How to find the most the most popular graphic design blogs

So what graphic design blogs should you follow? There are lots to pick from but you want the design blogs that are publishing content that is both helpful and fresh. Read too many old design articles and you might start wearing bell bottoms or growing big sideburns. A lot of design blogs have gone dark in 2012 that were busy and popular just in the last couple of years. You have to find and stick with what's relevant.

The Big List of Lists takes a different approach to the venerable "list post". Instead of simply recycling readily available older list posts of varying quality, it takes a social pulse of popular graphic design blogs with it's latest post, 135+ Top Graphic Design Blogs (Ranked and Sortable!) for 2012 , and measures 1) frequency of posting useful design articles, 2) Alexa Rank and 3) Google Pagerank.

But there is a twist! You can sort the list by different criteria to find out the blogs score against each other, which is much more revealing that simply a big list of stats.

So if you like list posts do yourself a favor and visit the article above, and don't forget to follow or sign up for the email newsletter!

Wednesday, August 03, 2011

Combination Lamp Review

Back in college, I inherited a combination lamp from my older brother who took some engineering classes at the local community college. I was just starting art school, and had attached the combination lamp to my art desk and loved it.

The lamp had an incandescent bulb in the center, which gave off a warm yellow light. The second bulb was a ring-shaped fluorescent bulb, which gave off a nasty blue light at close range.

Using either bulb by itself was impossible. But when both bulbs were turned on, it was the surest recreation of natural sunlight I had ever seen, especially in the context of working on fine artwork up close. I loved it!

I finished art school and moved on. I wasn't doing much drawing one period of my life, and sold off some items, including the combination lamp, that I thought I didn't need. Big mistake!

Years later, as I eased back into producing art, I realized I needed a new lamp, and knew exactly what kind of lamp and light I wanted. I looked high and low but could not find a lamp like I remembered on the market. I eventually settled for a "natural light" bulb goose neck lamp using some special filters and a unique shape. It was a beautiful lamp, but it was not close at all, no matter how much the marketing said "natural", to the lighting I remembered.

I keep searching and one day stumbled on the lamp I had been looking for! I had been looking for "dual source" and "multiple light bulb" lamps, but the key terms was "combination lamp". It turns out, I could only find one company making them. I eventually found a few places I could buy it from, and decided that Utrecht art supplies (utrecht.com) was the place to get it.

Combination Lamp (2 bulbs)

I ordered it, and when it arrived, set it up immediately. I dug out some old artwork that I had last worked on under the same kind of lamp, flicked on the lamp, and was immediately transported nearly 20 years into the past. It was as if I was still working on the same drawing after all that time. Yes, I do have unfinished artwork from 20 years ago.

Anyway, I have a new lamp and am back in the saddle, ready to create new art with the best indoor lighting I've yet seen.

So if you want to cut to the chase, go look at the lamp, Model CL1755 at Utrecht, and order it! You won't be disappointed!

Here is the description from the site, for quick reference:

"Lite Source Combination Lamp - Black
Combination incandescent and fluorescent lamp. Indispensable for color correction. Comes with a 100W Incandescent A Type Bulb and a 22W Fluorescent T9 Type Bulb with a 3-Way Switch
Color: Black"

SEO Reboot

Lots of interesting experiments, and some interesting results. But it's time for an SEO reboot. Hat tip to Glen Allsopp and his Cloud Living (which is now closed to new members) program.

As usual, since bonfx.blogspot.com is "old", it's a good place to try some related long tail SEO experiments. Since the blog has always been about design and art, we'll stick to those topics and see what we can make happen!

Here we go!

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

SEO Experiment: Basil Pesto Recipes

I just set up a Basil Pesto Recipes website over at bonblogs.com, where we keep a few interesting projects and kid stuff. It's a dev box and we have fun and learn with it:

Basil Pesto Recipes

This Basil Pesto SEO experiment has to do with identifying a term using the External Keyword search tool that has several thousand (between 2 and 10) hits per month, but is also not competitive.

The generic terms in "basil pesto recipe(s)", split apart, represent high value searches. But when combined, specifically in the niche phrase "basil pesto recipes", there is not a lot of direct competition. So we are seeing what we can learn by creating a very small site, doing all the basic SEO work, and seeing where we land in the Google index, whenever their next update includes us.

Long term, the strategy is to use what we find out to identify a loose formula that we can apply to uncover other medium quantity searches that have low competition, but specifically in fields we have an interest in, like cooking, music, art, graphic design, etc. If and when we are able to capture a steady stream of visitor, the plan is to then develop some kind of product around that very small niche.

I think there might be a new niche arising, as a result of the acceptance of eBooks due to the success of Kindle, Nook, and other eReaders. Ponder this: what is not quite a book but not quite a blog post? Posts are generally short and free. Books are generally much longer, even on their small end, than the longest blog post. But books are not free. eBooks are in the $5 to $25 dollar range depending on the topic. What if you had a "micro book" that was in between the size of a big blog post and a short book and had "app" style pricing to go with it? Think $2.99, and sell several hundred a month. Do this with several niches...see where I'm going?

I should retitle this post "How to build a microbook empire". :)

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Top Graphic Design Books - some for a penny!

I have 2 other posts that are of interest if you are a logo designer or graphic designer, or if you are simply interested in some very cool coffee table books:

I'd act quick on those 6 books if you are interested in any of them. There is a very limited quantity from the used booksellers. Some are classics!

Doug

Top Fonts for Graphic Designers

Don't miss a couple of new articles over at BonFX.com about fonts that I just published.

If you are looking for a logo designer or other graphic designer for any other service please contact me over at BonFX.com. You can also reach Mary at marybonneville.com.

Thanks!

Tuesday, September 08, 2009

BonFX relaunches with freelance graphic design blog focus

I just relaunched BonFX at http://www.bonfx.com with a focus on freelance graphic design. I won't be using this venerable old blogger area anymore. It's been a fun ride, but I get to leave the kiddie park and go on the big coaster now.

The new site features a custom child theme I developed using the WordPress theme framework called Theme Hybrid. Hybrid provides a "skeleton" child theme which is essentially raw XHTML output, and a blank CSS filled with all the class names but no values. This has been extremely helpful, to understate it. Check out Theme Hybrid if you have a chance. You'll be glad you did.

I'm focusing the content on graphic design topics, which will include everything from objective resources to subjective evaluations and everything in between. Please stop by and subscribe to the RSS feed and leave some comments! The new site is still get spit polished as of this writing, but it's mostly done. Have a look!

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

SEO Conclusions - Humorous to say the least!

I don't have time to elaborate much...perhaps sometime in the future! But here are the basics, backed up by several months of data starting from scratch.

1) Niches without a lot of competition work. For instance, I have handily cornered the market on "how to stretch pizza dough" with ONE article with ONE blog on blogspot. Do a search and be jealous of my results.

2) SEO is a lot of work if you are trying to the move the needle by means other than hard work.

3) Post real content about something you love in a niche that is not heavily competed in and you will be king.

4) Content, content, content. The more competition in your niche, the more content you need and the busier you will have to be on other blogs and sites and whatnot to get good inbound links.

5) When competition is thin, just a little bit of good content goes a LONG way. Again, weep at my "pizza" success.

6) Niche niche niche.

There it is. Use the Google external keyword tool, don't go after "ipod" or "lcd screens" and you should be on your way.

Oh, one more:

7) If your niche isn't a money maker like my example, forget making money from it. Theoretically, if you had the time and smarts and patience to find say 100 niches like my example, you could make several hundred a month.

One more more:

8) If you worked 80 hours a week for 6-9 months, I factor, you could make a couple grand a month.

The final last one more:

9) If you *really* want to make money, do#8 for a year, and then start selling information on how to do what you did. Then you can work from the beach sipping drinks that have little umbrellas in them.

Question for you now that you have 9 points to ponder:

Q) What is more fun than SEO?
a) sorting paper clips and detangling them
b) cleaning your junk drawer
c) painting a spiral oak bannister
d) walking 20 miles barefoot on pavement
e) all of the above

Hint: "e" is the correct answer. How did you do?

Question for you now that you passed the quiz with a 100%:

Q) Should you mess with SEO beyond the basics and focus on awesome content or should you read up on secret SEO techniques and copy content from random places and try to game the system in your favor?

I will leave you to figure that one out. However, for a limited time, I'm offering "the answer" for a special, today-only, limited-access, secret, private, amazing, one-time-only price of $495, woops $295, woops $34.95, woops I meant $9.95. But act now because once I take this offer down in 5 minutes, it will never be offered again....

(Note to self - take down this add in the year 2036, put in calendar)

Doug

Friday, April 17, 2009

SEO Experiments: Some conclusions

Some very clear conclusions can now be drawn from the various experiments we've run in the last few months. I'll be posting an article shortly that summarizes what I found out to be true. Very interesting, but not surprising...

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Capital Good Group logos

Andy Posner of andyposner.org has highlighted some of our latest freelance graphic design work on his blog. He is getting ready to launch a community micro-finance endeavor, and we are doing branding and websites for him. We are targetting March 1.

Read about the logos and the ideas behind them.

We handled the logo, web design, and development, for andyposner.org as well, which is a multiblog website running on Expression Engine. If you haven't checked out Expression Engine for doing highly customized websites or blogs with a super easy backend UI and utterly easy and powerful develpment method, you need to check them out. Andy's site is a testament to how powerful and customizable Expression Engine is. As an HTML/CSS nut, it can't any easier to integrate your code the way you want into a template system. It simply doesn't change anything whatsoever, and you can work locally on the code and upload as a file to make development very easy.

Big Blog Discovery, relatively speaking

I just came across WordPress MU, or multiple users. It's pronounced "Em Yew" and not "mooo" like a cow. This is dangerous :)

We are moving ahead with the foundational concepts and tech work on a few "deep" blogs we'll be running longterm. I was looking for something in WordPress to mimic the native functionality in Expression Engine, where setting up multiples blogs with distinct feeds and templates was possible. I just discovered MU, which makes this very easy.

WordPress MU is the same basic platform used on WordPress.com. If you have a main site and would like to host "sub blogs" on your sub domains or other folders that feed into the pertinent info on your main domain, this could be extremely powerful.

In addition to the main blog which will feature important links and freshly written articles, I wanted to bring highly selective niche auto feeds to the overall value of the new blog(s). Auto feeds can of course be abused. But used correctly, they are a huge time saver and a great boon to anyone with a legitimate use for them. Legitimate, in my opinion, is simply anything other than spam blogs that create useless sites. But if you are in a niche, and nothing in that niche is optimized for SEO, and people in that niche are struggling to find information in that niche, well, auto blogging in the right context is very powerful.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

SEO Experiments: How to stretch pizza dough

Keep laughing. But man are we learning. We are in the SEO school of Trial By Inundation.

Our next experiment is about how to stretch pizza dough. The searches are less than a thousand a month, and very little specific results. It's funny to see what people type in Google. I like this one "pizza dough won't stretch" with a whoping 12 searches a month. I can almost see the frustrated pizza maker saying "Man, my dough won't stretch" and then a benevolent voice whispers, "Go ask Google" and the compliant chef pensively sits down and tells Google his pizza troubles...

Well, no optimized results for such an obscure search term, for sure. But I have been making pizza for 25 years or so, and can speak to the subject. If you are really bored, read on:

http://how-to-stretch-pizza-dough.blogspot.com/

Saturday, February 07, 2009

Migrating to Wordpress

We are in the process of moving our Catholic News website, Bon Report to Wordpress from another CMS platform. Same goes for E-Ink Report, our e-ink news and blog review website. We follow up with a big explanation later...

New: Grain Mill Blog

One more I forgot to mention. This experiment is a deliberate attempt to be somewhere between a shallow or long tail blog and a deep blog. Snippets of articles, full articles, photos, etc.

Grain Mill at Blogger

More on why we chose this term for this experiment later. The other experiments, if you bother to look at them, aren't going to make a lot of sense. I can't help but chuckle if someone visits the "frog" blog mentioned earlier and scratches there head. I'll just kind of delight in that for the time being...

SEO Experiments continue...

We are currently trying about a dozen different strategies we've culled from some high-quality SEO sites and blog. Here are some of the latest experiments. Don't laugh. Well, don't laugh yet. It's difficult to weed through all the bad information on SEO. We have found, through copious amounts of surfing and reading, that there are no secrets to SEO, and that everything you need to know, to at the least get started and get started very well, is already out there. But, you have to know how to search and how to avoid reading useless articles and sales pitches. This is really the hard part - knowing what NOT to bother reading.

For sure, you don't need to buy anything. You don't need to join forums and ask questions and wait for answers. You just need to search around and be clever. Get your Sherlock hat out, find good SEO blogs (try for 10 minutes - not too hard), and start experimenting.

I have found that trial and error is the best way to learn this. It's diffuse and complex at first, to get your head around what SEO is and how it needs to be done "white hat", but it's not harder, but maybe just as hard, as your average college level class. Yeah, I think that's a good analogy.

So here are our new experiments. After this list, I have a homework assignment for you:

The Richest Americans
Frog Stuffed - I said, don't laugh, OK? If you laugh, it's only because you don't know why we chose this. No, I don't want stuffed frogs. But some numbers said I might want some, so maybe I will!

These are "shallow" or "long tail" experiments. We have a few ongoing "deep" blogs that we are in the process of redesigning, moving from Expression Engine to WordPress. That will be the subject of another post for sure!