Ever wondered about how to find that site you're looking for? Ever wondered how your customers find you?

Search Engine Tips
If you have a general subject in mind (like "cars"), type the word or words in the Search box and click the Search button. Results are usually listed in order of relevancy based on keywords and other factors.

Advanced Search Features
If you know exactly what you want, you can get better results by entering very specific information into the Search box. Despite differences in each search engine's tools, there are tools that many search engines have in common.

Searching for an Exact Phrase
To require that an entire phrase be found in a search, enter quotes (" ") around the terms. For example, "vintage cars" returns listings where the words "vintage" and "cars" appear together and in that order, either in the title, the URL of the Web site, the description, the keywords, or the document. If no sites are found that contain both terms, sites that contain either term will be displayed.

Searching For Required Words
You can type the plus sign (+) or the word AND before a word to require that it be found in all of the search results. For example, vintage +cars (include a space between the first word and the + symbol) or cars AND vintage returns all listings that contain "vintage" and "cars" but not necessarily together.

Searching For Excluded Words
Use the minus sign (-) before a word or the word NOT to require that it not be found in the search results. For example, vintage -cars (include a space between the first word and the - symbol) or vintage NOT cars lists sites containing "vintage" but not "cars." Some engines like AND NOT (two words) or ANDNOT (one word) better than just NOT.

Searching For Multiple Words
Use the word OR to require that one or the other term be found in the search results. For example, vintage OR cars (include a space on each side of the OR) lists sites containing "vintage" or "cars." You can combine AND, OR, AND NOT by using parentheses. For example, to find documents that contain the word vintage but not either the word cars or trucks type vintage NOT (cars OR trucks). You could also type this vintage -(cars OR trucks). Note: You cannot begin a search with a "-" term. You must put some other search term first.

Using Wildcards
You can use the asterisk (*) character to indicate a wildcard search. This is useful when you are trying to match a term that may or may not be plural or might use one of several verb tenses. For example chemi* will find results containing words that begin with 'chemi' (e.g. chemical, chemistry, chemist). You must have at least four non-wildcard characters in a word before you introduce a wildcard. This is not necessary for plurals because a search on cat will also return results containing the word cats, and a search on cats will return results containing the word cat.

Location, location, location
One other addition searchers forget to include is looking for a web site by its location. A search for vintage cars typically shows about 2 million results. Search engines have enormous databases due to the rampant frequency of newly added sites to their directories and because of this have changed the searching experience by offering local searches. Targeting your search weeds out the competition so that when looking for local businesses, only those pertinent to your search show up in the top pages. By doing this a search for "vintage" "cars" "Toronto" will result in the top relevant sites showing up with these keywords (about 25% less sites).

Now by habitually using these techniques, including the location, you waste less time by focusing your search on only those that you wish to visit. The drawback for non-optimized web sites is that even though they may have the offering you are looking for: unless they "play" the search engine "game", no one will find them.

Is your web site optimized? Are you tracking how many hits your site gets?

Frank Beecham
Webguy
Mystique Creative

Today I met a prestigious businessman while I was out at lunch. His overall appearance seemed to demand respect and authority. We ended up sitting together, and began talking. He told me about how he owns a significant amount of buildings, businesses, real estate here, travels there, loads of money, blah blah blah, etc. This man really seemed to be put together. Then he passes me his business card. I have to look at his logo four times before discovering that the blue goat sitting on top of the "L" was just the designers' way of uniquely dotting the "i". The kerning was poor, which made one word look like two. If that wasn't bad enough, the entire image was surrounded by a dreadful, dark drop shadow. Everything that this man represented was supposed to be displayed on this card, and all I could see was this badly designed piece of paper.

It is very important to start your business off on the right foot with a SIMPLE, UNIQUE, and RECOGNIZABLE logo. Many people do their own marketing materials or get inexperienced friends or relatives to do it for them. The unfortunate outcome is that even though your business may be the best in town and you truly have something unique about it, people will never know it. Many people these days take one look at a logo, business card, or website and make an assumption of what the company is like. A badly designed logo can make your company look cheap, unpolished, and inexperienced.

A logo is a part of something bigger. It is part of a brand and represents what your company stands for. It is an extremely important first step in promoting your business that many people overlook. It is best to choose a design firm or an individual experienced in logo design to create one for you, but only after viewing their portfolio to get an idea of the kind of work that you are paying for. Always remember that a good logo creates a long lasting impression in your customers and may be the difference between success and failure for your business.

Renee Richards,
Graphic Designer
Mystique Creative

It's been a while. Yeah, I know, I know - too long. I've come to terms with the fact that unless I schedule time to write that it won't get done. And starting today, I'm committing to writing a brief message on a weekly basis. Anyway…

First off - I'm sad to report that Shawn has returned to the Soo. Shawn came to Toronto with the intent of gaining a few years of big city experience to take back home to Sault Ste. Marie. We consider ourselves lucky that he stayed with Mystique for 8 years and in that time produced a lot of good design. We wish him continued success.

I'm pleased and excited at the addition of three new designers to the Mystique Creative family: Alyssya Polsinelli, Renee Richards, and Vincent Hiemstra.

Many of you may already know Alyssya as she's been on our payroll for a quarter now. We hired Alyssya after a successful internship with us.


Alyssya Polsinelli
Position: Graphic designer
Born: Toronto
Education: Durham College
Likes: Dancing, Baseball, Music and Traveling
Dislikes: People leaving garbage in my car and when my desktop is messy.
Inspirations: My mom


Renee Richards
Position: Graphic designer
Born: In Toronto but lived in North Carolina most of my life
Education: Appalachian State University
Likes: Seeing anything I've never seen before, innovative designs, traveling
Dislikes: Puppies with clothing, lemon meringue pie, movies with subtitles
Inspirations : Stephan Sagmeister, John Saunders, Lance Wyman, Sean Ohlenkamp

Renee has just moved back to Toronto and is looking to make her mark in the TO design community. Look for her blog tomorrow.


Vincent Hiemstra
Position: Graphic Design Intern
Born: Zeist, the Netherlands
Education: Graphics College Utrecht
Likes: Reading, Traveling, Online Gaming
Dislikes: Ketchup Flavored Chips, A line at the movies, Traffic
Inspirations: Chris Metzen, Jack Vergel


Please stop in and get acquainted with the new design staff here at Mystique Creative.
Paul Bies
President,
Mystique Creative

Google doesn't just love content, it loves 'new' content. The more we add web sites to search engines, the more changes are seen in keyword density parameters. Yahoo and other search engines are also affected by this. Google's new LSI algorithm (Latent Semantic Indexing) is the latest shake-up in optimizing a web site for better rankings.

In the old days, it was normal to stuff a page with keywords, but finding the best keyword density to satisfy all search engines was becoming increasingly difficult when it came to maintaining high rankings against the competition.

LSI now determines what a web page is about by assessing the theme of the page and how the words are associated with that theme. This means that when writing your theme naturally for a web page, it is important to keep the user's experience in mind. This will have a much greater chance of ranking higher than previously so. For example a search term such as 'venetian blinds' manipulates the LSI to look for words and links pertaining to related topics like window coverings, home decorating, valances, renovations and window shade, etc.

Newer content is also important for sites that target additional keywords. Each time a new keyword is targeted, a new link to a new page will invariably affect rankings. Many web sites employ the use of blogs or new articles to create fresh content. This greatly adds to a site's link building and ensures keyword rich content. Google loves the fact that most blogs write about different topics, opening up new keyword targets.

Keeping keywords in the beginning and end of an article proves that the article is relevant. Writing fresh content means that the site is offering the user with more pertinent information than the Google index crawlers have previously cached. This enables the site to maintain a higher ranking.

So make sure you write more than a welcome message on your home page. Google wants to see how you and your services can benefit the person searching for you. Content-rich web sites almost always rank high.

Frank Beecham
Webguy
Mystique Creative

As most of us know, ‘Pop Art’ is short for Popular Art and that in a sense, says it all. It is a celebration of the popular, the famous, the mass produced, the iconic image. It all began way back in the late 50’s and 60s when a few ‘Pop Art’ shock troopers decided it was high time they brought art back into the daily life of people. Wrest it away from the abstract sophistication and elitism that was prevailing at the time.

The main shock trooper of this movement was of course the cult popster himself, Andy Warhol (1928-1987) and his chief weapon was serigraphy (silk screening). This is a photo-realistic, mass-production technique of printmaking. His iconic Marilyn Monroe was a serigraph as well as his famous ‘Campbell’s Tomato Soup Can’ which in retrospect was his defining foray into mass media and marketing imagery. He suddenly drew attention to a product so ordinary in one sense but so extraordinary in it’s pervasive familiarity. A product that had established a cozy place in the consumer psyche of the mid 20th century through magazine/radio/television advertising and POP displays in grocery stores etc.

Okay, in the case of the ‘Campbell’s Tomato Soup Can’ it all became a kind of a celebration of the mundane, I get that but what else was going on? First of all, I believe art has always been connected to it’s time, although it often tries to transcend it. When it comes to the visually super-charged 60’s, the connection between art and it’s time had never been greater. In the case of Pop Art, there was a further connection going on which was a disposable, consumer connection that we all share. We share it when we watch TV commercials, look at billboards, watch movies and buy groceries etc. The ‘Campbell’s Tomato Soup Can’ image itself is frozen in the 60’s but the experience and the message it has continues to resonate with us as we click our way through internet banner ads and receive numerous email ads for hundreds of products.

Shawn Richards
Senior Graphic Designer
Mystique Creative