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Dec
21
Should You Always Design With SEO In Mind?
Filed Under Online Marketing, SEO, Video | 2 Comments
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And a quickie version for those of you sitting in cubes who can’t watch because you’re pretending your working:
This video is in response to a post by Jill Whalen on Search Engine Land this week following up on a debate in the High Rankings Forum about whether SEO is an extra skill or a prerequisite to being a website designer or developer. A lot of the conversation seems to center around what is best for the client or what the designers responsibility is to educate the client about SEO. I would argue however that the focus of the conversation should be what is best for your business as a web designer or developer. If you are not already offering SEO, you will be in the future. If you already offer SEO services but the client chooses not to invest in SEO at the time you design their site, they probably will invest in it later. If you were good at what you did for your client, they will most likely return to you for their future web services so you should make it easier on yourself when they do want SEO.
When you are designing and coding any new site, you should already be keeping basic principles of conversion, usability and code standards in mind anyway. So if you develop the site properly from the start, whether they are your SEO client or not, if they do become your SEO client you’ll have an easier time doing the optimization. And even if they do go to another company for their SEO services, you will want that company to see that you provided a top notch product to your client or you may quickly get a name for being a poor web designer. Anyway you look at it, keeping SEO in mind when developing websites for clients is a good idea for you and for your business.
Dec
19
Last week Yahoo! announced the release of the Shortcuts Plug-in for Wordpress which will automatically offer relevant popups to Yahoo related resources such as maps, Yahoo! Shopping and Flickr among others. As the publisher, you have the ability to choose which links you use and which you don’t. I can see this being helpful in some cases, such as linking to information on a company’s stock, an obscure location or a word you think you’re audience doesn’t know.
However, I don’t think that truly creative bloggers who frequently link out from their posts should use this tool much, if at all. One of my favorite things about Lisa Barone’s posts, other than her writing style of course, is her creative linking. If I don’t have time to read her entire post I like to scan her link text for a laugh or two. People using the Yahoo! Shortcuts tool may get lazy and resort to referencing exactly what the other gazillion people who inevitably typed the same word referenced.
Naturally, my question is when advertisers will be able to start paying for placement on keywords of their choice in Shortcuts or buy advertising inside the Shortcuts popups, making this another way to monetize your blog.
I will probably download the plug-in to test and keep an eye on it, but since I prefer writers who put a little thought into their links, I can only return the favor by not taking too many “Shortcuts”.
Dec
13
Facebook Drops the “is” Again
Filed Under Social Networking | Leave a Comment
Back in November, we saw the “is” disappear from the Facebook status for a very short period of time. This morning it is gone again and it seems to be official. Most people had resigned to just ignoring the is or being creative with their status messages to accommodate it. Now we have one less thing to bitch about today. But I bet we’ll find something new soon enough.
Dec
11
Shout Outs (Shouts Out?) After PubCon
Filed Under Conferences | 2 Comments
After being at PubCon all last week, I am getting back into the swing of things at home and working on catching up on email. But, I wanted to take a minute to thank a few people that made last week great.
First, of course, Pat Sexton for sponsoring me in the poker tournament even though there was some argument about whether my shirt qualified as low cut. You decide:
The BOTW guys, especially Greg and Brian/”Baldwin”, for all the laughs. David Klein and all the sponsors of the poker tournament. Thursday was my favorite night there, even if I did spend 4 hours just watching Shoemoney take 2nd place.
Thanks to Steve the bartender at Wynn that insisted we were talking about topless bars, not tapas bars, making our conversation much more interesting. And thanks to Chris “You F***ing Twat” Snape for putting up with us drunk chicks on Friday night.
And now, my apology to Tamar for never seeing you and your schwag. If you find yourself in San Diego, dinner is on me! But only if it’s at a topless tapas bar.
Dec
4
Poker? I hardly know her!
Filed Under Conferences | 2 Comments
Pat Sexton over at SEOish.com is sponsoring 3 players in the Purposeinc.com SEO Texas Hold Em’ charity tournament at PubCon and I am one of the lucky winners. I am sure I will lose fairly quickly when I go all in on my 2-7 off suit. But, it’s all in the name of charity and fun. I look forward to losing Pat’s money to those that are participating. If you aren’t, you can still donate to the charities by visiting the SEM charity poker tournament page.