May 29, 2008 Comments (10)
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I remember when favicons first started to appear, it was like, hey, how cool is that. But now they are so common that I hardly notice them anymore. Well, no, that's not exactly true. I do notice them, and like them, it's just that I'm not surprised to see them anymore. But I AM surprised when I don't see them.
Ok, let's back up. What is a favicon?
If you're reading this post on Search Engine Guide, rather than a feed reader, then you need to do no more than look up to the address bar. Here is an example of the favicon used on my company blog:
See that little icon of EMP with the orange line above it? Yep, that's the favicon. It's such a little thing, but it can make a pretty big impact. Site's that don't have a favicon show a generic icon like this:
That's in FireFox. In Internet Explorer, if you don't brand yourself with a custom favicon, Microsoft with brand themselves in your place. Here's what it looks like:
Now I won't go so far as to suggest the favicon will increase sales, but it does provide a nice visual cue for your site, especially once it gets added into a visitor's bookmarks folder. Take a look at this snapshot of Netflix open up in my browser, along site my open bookmarks:
Look down at the very bottom, see the icon circled in red? That little guy there is a bookmark from a site that has no favicon. So you can see that not having a favicon prevents you from standing out among the others. This can be important when you're bookmarked a list of your competitors!
Favicons are not that difficult to create. I found this great Photoshop Tutorial on How to Create a Favicon.
In a matter of minutes I created an entirely new favicon:
Granted, this new one took me all of 5 minutes to create from the site logo, but what do you think? I could definitely clean it up a bit, for sure. But not bad for a few minutes of work.
To add your new favicon so it appears in the location bar and bookmarks, in the <head> tags of each page's code add this:
<LINK REL="SHORTCUT ICON" HREF="favicon.ico">
That's it. You're all set with your new favicon.
Stoney deGeyter founded Pole Position Marketing in 1998 working from a home office and has since turned it into a leading search engine marketing business with a small team of seasoned Reno SEO and marketing experts. Stoney pioneered the concept of Destination Search Engine Marketing which is the driving philosophy on how Pole Position marketing helps their clients expand their online presence and improve online conversion rates.
Stoney is a moderator at the Small Business Ideas Forum, a regular contributor to the Search Engine Guide blog and has a monthly column on Search Engine Land. He posts his SEO and business insights at the E-Marketing Performance blog where you can also find his e-books: E-Marketing Performance: Effective Strategies for Building, Optimizing and Marketing your Website Online and Keyword Research and Selection: The Definitive Guide to Gathering, Sorting and Organizing your Keywords into a High-Performance SEO Campaign.
Stoney is married with five wonderful children and, if away from the computer long enough, enjoys riding his dirt bike, watching DVDs, reading books and spending quality and quantity time with the family.
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