Archive for February, 2008

Around half a mile from my office is a low-velocity industrial air-moving company named Big-Ass Fans. They win awards, support the arts community, develop environmentally sensitive technology, support HVAC efficiency research, fund animal shelters, and more. They employ a bunch of people and they are growing. On Fridays, small foam donkeys start to fly around the building. Let’s just say they’re a stand-up firm, with transparency in their marketing, and I’m proud of them. They’re remarkable.

They also advertise in over sixty industrial and agricultural trade magazines, and have a unique product and corporate identity that transcends brand erosion an advertising blindness giving them huge bang for their advertising buck. They’ve been featured in the New York Times, Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Discovery Channel Canada and National Geographic Channel. (more…)

This week, my call log shows four companies calling me with sad stories to tell about ill-conceived internet marketing strategies executed by way of an agency or part-time “SEO.”

It’s unacceptable. Business customers deserve honesty, integrity and more help in understanding which are selling bullshit and which have the needed expertise. If a product or service isn’t going to fly online, they deserve to be told so, and why- not bled dry.

I envision a process including the following steps in order to make this happen: 1. Define commonly used search marketing tactics; 2. Rate the tactics by risk level; and 3. Educate webmasters on the ratings… he search engines provide Webmasters with guidelines on what tactics they consider right or wrong. Enumerating the various tactics, and the risk rating associated with each tactic would allow people who are not familiar with search marketing to make informed decisions. It would also go a long way toward fostering a better understanding of the work that goes into organic search engine optimization.

So here I cast my link juice to this article about SEO/SEM Standards and why they’re needed. Chris, you did well, my man.

Go check it out.

Wait, what?

While we’re talking about Flash, check out this post about 4 SEO Solutions for Flash, where graceful degrading is discussed.  Also check out this bit about Flash Detection over at Adobe Developer Connection.

They say playing the lottery is a “special tax” for the “math challenged.” I think that’s true. In the search world Google’s new Automatic Matching setup is a special tax on the uninformed advertiser.

What I’m hearing about the new Google Automatic Matching beta is that they will look at unspent funds in your account, and “spend it for you” on terms its algorithms deem appropriate. I blew this off at first thinking it sounded like a rumor, but am now hearing more buzz about it. (more…)

It was pretty sad to see. CompUSA today fell victim to throngs of bargain hunters picking every nook and cranny, fixtures included, from the store in Lexington Green. What struck me most was that, despite 50%-60% discounts, some of the prices were still higher than web-based pricing on the same items.

I feel badly for the folks who lost their jobs at the company and I’ll miss the ability to get a quick part when needed. Best Buy and Circuit City just don’t cut it when it comes to parts. I only shopped in the store 4-6 times per year, though.

Wow, I miss Fry’s.

Taken in Lexington KY, here are some Lunar Eclipse Photos (300mm, Canon EOS 40, ISO 200, f11, 1 sec)

Showing Planets in orientation…

From Images Above… Rings of Saturn


Mars

Click for more on my Flickr Feed

I’ll be hopping on I64 and heading to the Social Media Louisville meeting at Ramsi’s Cafe tomorrow night. Hope to see you there!

WHO: Social Media Club Louisville

WHAT: February Gathering

WHEN: 7 p.m. until 9 p.m., Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2008

WHERE: Ramsi’s Cafe on the World, 1293 Bardstown Road, Louisville

WHY: To share, learn and grow as social media experts both individually and together

About the meet-up:

Three members of the group have graciously volunteered to lead our discussion, which will focus on selling social media to clients, bosses and CEOs and the public, media and more. Brian Wallace of NowSourcing.com, a full-service social media and reputation management consulting firm, will share his thoughts and expertise on pitching social media to clients. Clay Marshall, a social media specialist with Digital Business Solutions (DBS), will tackle the topic of convincing bosses and CEOs to buy in and Rick Redding of The Ville Voice (and LEO columnist) will offer his insights on selling social media through to the media, advertisers, media buyers, friends, co-workers and more.

PS: It looks like the SMG was covered in Louisville Business First - on the front page. Nice Job Guys.

Webpronews did a good Interview 

I just learned the source: Modern Mechanix

I have six professional heroes presently - and I don’t mind sharing. In random order, they are:

• Seth Godin - For telling me to quit dead ends and focus on being the best.
• Edward Tufte - Guided me into information design, recognizing and avoiding chartjunk, and telling stories visually.
• Jakob Nielson - For telling it like it is even when it’s totally unpopular.
• Richard Florida - For drawing attention to what drives creative people.
• Steve Wozniak - For his approachable demeanor as well as the desire to spread knowledge.
• Steve Jobs - For his relentless passion to innovate.

I’ve met Florida, Tufte, Jobs and Wozniak. If only for a moment (they wouldn’t remember me.) I had no trouble making the list above. It came to me in 3 minutes. Each have contributed through a career of hard work with a real passion to improve things.

Have any heroes emerged in the SEO world? Should we expect it? As I sat in a meeting recently all eyes were on me to save the business. My answers about content creation, social media, and slow, steady growth were not superhero answers. Some are looking for the cape crusader to save old-school companies with new marketing feats of awe. People start looking for a mild-mannered SEO to burst from the phone booth and fix the problem. I don’t know why.

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A quick search of Google News shows dozens of cases where homeowners, business owners, and community code enforcement officials are embroiled in battles over improper building permits. In many cases, the builder is forced to tear down the structure - at great expense. Communities put permitting procedures in place so that an even-handed process is applied and ensure safety, prevent shoddy workmanship, and preserve home values. You must stand in line, fill out forms, and pay fees when your project is already complex enough, they reason. So lots of people try to get around it, and some succeed. Houses crack. Fires start. Communities get uglier.

In the website construction industry, we can draw a parallel between SEO advice and building permitting. Pressures placed on any web development project can cause marketing goals to be ignored or at least diluted. The builder doesn’t have to “live” with the results. They get paid and can easily vanish independent of the commercial success of the venture. The SEO gets called to come fix the mess. But the mess is already sealed in the walls. The cracking foundation has already been built upon.

Many companies invest heavily in their web design and construction, and then call on SEO experts to come in after the fact to make suggestions to help traffic flow. Unfortunately this often results in bad news. The website was not designed with search in mind, and you have to re-build it if you want organic traffic to flow. This is the equivalent to being forced to tear down that addition to your home, or that big warehouse building you just put together. You’re stuck. The expense to rebuild it is too high. The expense not to build it is too high (paid search.) I’d like to make the plea to the business community to consider thinking about SEO earlier.

I propose that people involved in web development look to the construction industry for guidance. Involving an SEO/SEM consultant before, during, and after your web development plans are in place can be a money-making proposition. I think that in some ways this is like permitting your building project. In my opinion, SEO/SEM experts should be project managers for any web development project where marketing the site is a core business directive. Decisions will be made with the social, search, and traffic goals take center stage, not the aesthetic “high” of the site being finished and wowing a committee. (more…)