Month: January 2018

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11 Places to Create Your Perfect Logo–for Free

We’ve all heard about the importance of “branding” one’s business. It’s important to present a strong, cohesive image to customers, and a logo can help you do that. Online free logo generator speeds up the process in designing your own logo.

Now, you don’t need to be a design expert to create a logo that grabs someone’s attention for all of the right reasons. And you don’t have to pay a professional a small fortune to get a high-quality result (shocking, I know).

There are numerous resources that will let you design a logo for free, and some of the unicorns in the industry will even allow you to download it without having to pay a penny.

Here are 11 stunning resources to create a logo for free.

1. Logomakr

The free version of the Logomakr service allows you to choose from thousands of stock icons and use hundreds of available fonts. The color options are plentiful and adjustable, and all of the objects used can be resized and rearranged for a truly custom experience.

Once you create a logo, you can save it to your computer for free. Paid services are also available for those who would like professional assistance designing (or redesigning) a logo.

2. Free Logo Design

You can also choose Free Logo Design for your logo creation needs. Completely free options are available, letting you create a logo using their range of icons, fonts, shapes, and colors. You can also use available templates to help with the design process.

The free version is not high-resolution, but it can be created at a size that allows for multiple uses even at lower resolutions. A hi-res version of your logo can be purchased.

3. Logo Type Maker

Logo Type Maker has a logo generator that can be used to create a logo that you can download for free. The resolution of the final image is somewhat low, and customization options are limited, but it can still create a high-impact design for no cost to you.

4. Designimo

Low-resolution files are also free at Designimo, and high-resolution variants can be purchased. The process is extremely simple. Just enter your business name and see the samples.

You can search through the samples using keywords to help choose images that fit your business, and a basic level of editing can be done before you download.

5. Logo Garden

Another site that offers requires a purchase to download your creation, but lets you design for free, is Logo Garden. The image, font, and color options are vast, giving you a lot of power when you create a logo. After the design is complete, just download it to your computer after paying a small fee.

Logo design services are also available, as well as options for creating websites, business cards, t-shirts, and promotional items.

6. Design Mantic

If you want a site that helps you create a logo by walking you through simple design steps, Design Mantic is easy enough for just about everyone to use. Simply select one of the three logo categories, one of three font options and how many colors you would like included in the logo. Next, enter your business name and choose an industry, and the site generates numerous designs for you.

Once the logos are created, you can search using certain keywords and view variations of one of those displayed. From there, you can keep it as is or customize various aspects before saving. It does require purchasing the logo, but the design tools can all be used for free.

7. Graphic Springs

Graphic Springs also allows you to use the logo maker for free. It includes access to some features that aren’t necessarily available on every site that allows you to create a logo for free, like certain visual effects. However, you must purchase the files before they are available for download.

If you do want to make changes to the logo after purchase, those can be done at no extra cost.

8. Logo Maker

Another site that uses the “try before you buy” model is Logo Maker. You can create a logo for free and then make a purchase once the design is to your liking.

This site boasts 10,000 available icons, so you may be able to find something more unique with this service compared with some of the others.

9. Free Logo Services

All of the design related functions are available for free through Free Logo Services, so you only have to pay if you create a logo you love.

This site walks you through the process, letting you view their creations and customize your selection. As a bonus, you can also use the design software to create other items, like business cards, making it closer to a one-stop shop than some other offerings.

10. Logo Yes

The design portion of the Logo Yes site is accessible for free, though a purchase must be made to download the file. However, they offer their services at a significantly lower cost than some others, with some buying options falling under a dollar. The available options are somewhat limited, such as the number of fonts from which to choose, but you can still create a logo worth using here.

11. Flaming Text

With Flaming Text, you do get access to some logo creation capabilities for free. However, downloading the files for business use does require payment. Personal and academic users can use the available logos and fonts at no costs, though the available features are somewhat limited.

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How to Prove SEO Is Working For Your Website

In today’s economy very dollar has to be accounted for. For many websites, they want to see that when they invest one dollar in their SEO campaign it’s going to bring a $1.50 or $2 back into their business. But in order to prove SEO is working for your website you need to know what to look for. A reputable SEO consultant Sydney should be open to sharing a brief list of current and former clients and his or her contact information

Here are three things you want to look at to be able to prove SEO is working for your website:

Is organic traffic from the search engines going up?

This is a very simple metric but it can speak volumes when trying to prove the value of your SEO campaign. Simply keep an eye on the percentage of traffic that is coming to your site from the search engines. Most sites, unless you have a huge brand like IBM or Apple and consumers search for you by name directly, are going to see that a lion’s share of their traffic is coming from the search engines. For instance, in the graph below you’ll see that for this site 73% of their traffic was coming from the search engines (for the set time frame anyway). If they compared that percentage to the same length of time to before they implemented their SEO campaign and saw that organic traffic account for 68% of their visitors they’d know that SEO was having a positive impact. A 5% jump might not sound like much, but it could mean thousands of extra visitors!

Just to make note–you want to make sure you aren’t accidentally counting any traffic that comes from your PPC campaigns in this total, as SEO is a different campaign. Depending on how much you invest in PPC this could be inflating your numbers and won’t help you prove SEO.
Are more referral links coming from your link building activities?

Referral links are any inbound links from another site that drive traffic your way. For instance, a link from a YouTube video is a referral link. Or a link from an industry forum or business profile is a referral link. You can zone in on traffic from your referral links in Google Analytics, which is a great way to find out if any of the new links you’ve built as part of your link building strategy are sending targeted traffic your way. Hopefully you (or your SEO partner) have kept track of all the sites you’ve created links on—are any of them in the top 500 referral links? Remember, a new referral link might only send a 5 visitors in a month, but if you multiple that by 10 more referral links that’s suddenly 50 more unique visitors a month that are highly targeted. Over the course of a year you’re looking at 600 extra visitors from 10 referral links (and more link building strategies will build a lot more than 10 links!)

When you’re trying to prove SEO it’s important to not pigeon-hole your numbers. One month’s worth of data might not look like much, but when you expand it to 3 or 6 months suddenly the numbers look much more impressive.
What new non-branded keywords are driving traffic to your website?

Even though SEO can help with branded search, the real value comes from the non-branded keywords. Keep an eye on the keywords that are driving people to your site. What keywords are slowly gaining more traction over time? Are there any new keywords suddenly pushing traffic that you never saw before? When one of Brick Marketing’s clients implemented their SEO strategy their organic traffic actually dipped down in the first few months because super broad and non-relevant keywords were no longer sending traffic their way (which was fine because they weren’t the right kind of visitors anyway) and over time that loss was recovered and actually improved upon as the newly targeted, non-branded keywords of their SEO program started gaining traction. More traffic is good, more targeted traffic is better. Being able to show a higher conversion rate with your new non-branded keywords is a fantastic way to prove SEO.