Morgan Stone's Blog

July 31, 2008

Simple Search Engine Optimization

Filed under: Church Marketing Theory — Morgan @ 10:44 pm

Here is a few points to make your site more optimized organically (which means not paying to rank higher):

  • Use title tags with keywords. I suggest keeping your brand name first then the title of the page
    Note: Although it is better for search engines if you put your keywords first, For me brand recognizability is more important.  You really have to judge this one by the purpose of the website and the market you are targeting
     
  • Meta Description & Meta Keyword tags have been irrelevant ever since people started spamming them
     
  • Have one H1 heading per page and strategically place keywords in it
     
  • Make the H1 heading, the page name (whatever-it-is.html) and the title of the page be the same exact thing
     
  • Have your domain name registered for at least two years 
     
  • Content is king, but updated content is even better (so keep that blog updated!)
Here is some links that I trust about search engine optimization: 
http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/category/seo/
http://www.alistapart.com

July 30, 2008

Church Email Marketing 101

Filed under: Church Marketing Theory — Morgan @ 9:59 pm

A few short bullets on how to make a successful email marketing campaign that works for churches

  • Always include text that will be rendered as HTML somewhere in the design. Some email programs block emails with only images
     
  • Provide something of value. People who signup for church email newsletters want something more than the average church goer.  Experiment by introducing new event information by email campaign before releasing it to the general church via Sunday morning announcements.  Who knows you might create some buzz…
     
  • Insider secret: Use the slice tool in Photoshop combined with File > Save for Web to export your newsletter design into HTML code and images
     
  • Take advantage of an email marketing program’s statistics. Look at open rates and bounces to gauge how successful your subject line was
     
  • Every email that you send must have a purpose.  In the industry we like to call this the Call to Action..
     
  • I would suggest sending out a newsletter once a week. Any more than twice in a week and it could end up being considered spam
     
  • A good time to send a weekly newsletter (if you run a Sunday service) would be Thursday morning about 10 A.M.  
If your new to this email marketing thing try looking in to Constant Contact

July 29, 2008

Group Layers Fast

Filed under: Photoshop Shortcuts — Morgan @ 10:19 pm

To group layers in Photoshop CS2 & CS3 multi-select the layers you would like to group in the layers palette then use the shortcut Command (Control on the PC) + G

To multi-select layers in a row:
Select the first layer then while holding down shift click the ending layer

To multi-select layers in random order:
Hold down Command (Control on the PC) while selecting multiple layers 

Note: if you are using a previous version of Photoshop (CS or below) these shortcut will not work

Merge all layers w/o merging all layers

Filed under: Photoshop Shortcuts — Morgan @ 9:52 pm

Perhaps one of the best Photoshop shortcuts that I use
Command (Control on PC) + Alt + Shift + E 

Makes a copy of the Photoshop composition and places it on a new layer above the current layers.

Note: This Photoshop function is only available by using this shortcut, it is not available in any menu

It’s like merging all the layers w/o merging all the layers!

And for reference to merge all layers in the composition:
Command (Control on PC) + Shift + E

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