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

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