Search Engine Optimization – A necessary evil?

There has been a lot of chatter in my industry recently with regard to SEO or Search Engine Optimization having negative connotations. My boss describes this SEO phenomena on his blog. The fact is, most of the negative stereotypes are based on situations where website owners, seeking a quick profit at low cost, were taken advantage because they didn’t know what they were buying.

Solid Search Engine Optimization is time consuming and detailed work that doesn’t result in overnight windfalls of profit or massive upward shifts in traffic to a site. Sure there are ways to profit on the quick if you’ve worked hard to build a system that allows you or your team to respond to current events AND you have a business model built around doing just that. But developing that system is time consuming and detailed work; just ask Brent Payne at Chicago ‘s Tribune network.

My point is this: Search Engine Optimization is something that should be researched before being purchased. If you are the consumer of SEO services that cost you $2,000/yr or more (quality SEO, like any other service that will boost business, has a cost), you should take an hour or more and read about it before you buy the service or sign a contract. Here’s a good place to start.

Keep in mind that SEO is a marketing activity, and an important one. Everyone searches for everything. If they hear about “IT” on the radio or see IT on TV or in print, they are going to look for IT on the web, and they’re going to use a search engine to find IT. When they don’t hear about IT or see IT they are still they going to look for IT on the web when they don’t know what IT is. Here are several different ways to think about what SEO does for your website and your company, and make sure to read the comments too.

The last thing I want to say on this topic is that Search Engine Optimization is essential to getting the most out of your website. If you run a business and have a website, but you don’t have time to learn and implement SEO for yourself, you should seriously consider hiring a good Search Marketer to do it for you. Your website isn’t doing you any good if it’s not driving business through your doors, making your phone ring, or filling up your Inbox. The potential return on your SEO investment can be enormous, and if you talk to qualified Search Marketers, they should be able to get a feel for the magnitude of potential benefit within a few minutes of talking with most small and medium sized businesses.

Some of my Friends and Family are Climate Change Skeptics

It’s sad but true!

So I wanted to write a blog post about all the things I have learned in the past couple of years so that I could sharpen my arguments and try and convince them to act with more respect for the environment. I found something as I was researching sites like these:

• http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/
• http://www.unep.org/Themes/climatechange/
• http://www.pewclimate.org/
• http://www.noaa.gov/climate.html

What I stumbled upon was this site that has all the answers: http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics

So anyone who wants to argue with me from now on is going to get directed straight to this website so they can either enlighten themselves or choose to continue being misinformed and unaware of their ignorance.

Instead of arguing with my friends and family about this, I will make a point to only inform them that they are misinformed and direct them to where they can find the resources that reveal the true story.

Short and sweet, just the way it should be!

Tim Staines

Last weekend was one of the most enlightening experiences of my life. In no more than three hours travel time from Annapolis, I was in the middle of paradise. It was a marsh island in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, a former hunting lodge built 50+ years ago, a Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) Learning Center, and by far, the coolest place I’ve ever been in the state of Virginia (or Maryland for that matter).

The building was constructed on pilings, as there is no solid ground for a foundation. It sits roughly half way between Tangier Island, Virginia and Crisfield, Maryland . . . don’t try to look for it on Google Earth; with a full-time population of one, it doesn’t seem to be on the radar (or satellite) for the high technology world, and that’s exactly the point.

You have to see this place to believe it, and I will add some amazing pictures to this post if I can figure out how. But what I really want to convey is how inspired I was to have had the chance to visit this place. Everything about it and CBF is incredible. We were fortunate enough to hitch a ride on the Karen N., a huge, diesel powered, jet-drive propelled, work of art that is Captained by Shawn Ridgely, a long-time friend of mine.

This beast is 40+ feet long, has an 18″ draft, and cruises at 20+ knots . . . if you’re not a boater, that’s like a bus that can carry 25 people at highway speeds and fit into your local parking garage. He teaches kids about the Chesapeake from the southern tip of Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, which happens to be where we boarded. From there, we took an hour ride to our destination, arriving a couple hours before dusk.

We might as well have been in the South Pacific. The island serves as another CBF Learning Center, housing kids for 2 to 3 days at a time, and educating them on some of the issues that affect the Bay while providing them with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience this magical place first-hand. You cannot leave without feeling moved. The whole facility is run with electricity produced by three solar panels and the occasional stationary bike ride for some added water pressure. Adam, our host and the current manager of the Center, lives there full time. His only connection to the modern world, besides a weak cell phone signal and a marine radio, is a 20foot Carolina Skiff that he uses to cross the miles of open water between the island and the closest civilization.

We had a great night with a wonderful sunset and perfect temperatures, and then headed off to our third CBF station the next day. The Isobel Island Learning Center is managed by Willie with the help of Lauren, two of our bunk nights from the previous night. We all went into Tangier, had lunch, and visited the newly opened museum. If you haven’t been, you need to go. Tangier will be another blog post all together.

So here’s the deal, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation owns and manages some incredible facilities. They provide a service to our generations to come, by opening everyone’s eyes to the issues that challenge the Bay’s health. I love the Bay, I miss it when I haven’t been around it for a while, I don’t take it for granted, I am amazed by almost every place that I visit within its reach, and I don’t want to lose it. If you haven’t experienced any of these feelings, you need to. Check out the CBF website and find something that interests you. Sign up to go to one of their centers, grow your own oysters, donate some money.

Do something! It will change your life, I promise.

Tim Staines

Some people are innovators, some are acceptors . . . I’m an early adopter. I tend to let kinks get worked out of new products before I acquire them, but I certainly wasn’t the last person to realize that I needed a cell phone or a wireless router.

I don’t have an iphone or a blackberry, because I’m connected enough as it is, but I do now have this blog, and a Twitter account, and I’m trying to get a grip on Digg and Reddit and Sphinn. They seem to be more necessary for my line of work.

Most of my friends aren’t even aware of this networking driven sub-culture that could potentially dominate communications over the next twenty years. They still use IE, and manipulating their ipod is the leading edge of their technological expertise (which isn’t necessarily bad). I think there’s a good chance that the skill of adopting technologies sooner than later is becoming mandatory for success in many ways.

Before computers and swift technology advancement you didn’t really need to pick up on things quite as fast. It would be decades before a more efficient way of doing something came to market, so you could learn how to apply your skill and you never really had to worry about learning that new skillset because you would be retired or in management before the innovation changed your process.

Now, improvements are occurring so fast that adopting and keeping current with new efficiencies in your field is critical to not falling behind. This is still a relatively new phenomenon, but it’s one that is only going to become more exaggerated over time. So help your friends out, tell them about the tech tools they could benefit from, get them to join LinkedIn, or set them up with a Blog. They’ll thank you for it later!

Trying to get Google’s attention.

How do you let Google know they have a problem on one of their pages?

http://www.google.com/support/faqs/bin/blogsearch/about_pinging.html/

UPDATE:

Looks like they redirected the URL above to the generic help page when they should have redirected it to:

http://www.google.com/help/blogsearch/pinging_API.html

I’m just now teaching myself how to blog, so don’t expect too many revalations at first.