Keep it Fresh - Search Engine Optimization

I am not a good writer. I know some amazing writers and I am not one of them. I'm a designer, a visual person, I'm all 'show' and not so great at telling. This is a problem on the web because it doesn't matter how beautiful my designs are or how amazing a photo might be, search engines are blind to images.

Lori Culwell's recent article in the Huffington Post reminded me of my SEO rule number 1 - a rule which for some reason I have a very difficult time getting people to comprehend - which is simplistically "SEO is all about content".  I guess that is very simplistic because here is Lori's take;

"There is not a week that goes by in my capacity as a Search Engine Optimization and Marketing Professional (a field I've been working in since the dotcom boom in San Francisco) where someone doesn't email me to say some combination of the words "Can you fix my metatags? My site has a really high bounce rate."

So, my answer this question is: yes, I can fix your metatags. There is a slight (a very slight) possibility that you've put something really awesome up on your website, and that because the site is wrapped in Flash, or your web guy didn't know anything about keyword analysis or where to put the tags, Google is not finding it, and that's why no one is coming. But, can I just be honest here? The high bounce rate is the giveaway. The fact that once people get to your website they leave, because YOU'RE NOT TELLING THEM ANYTHING NEW, is what lets me know that all the SEO in the world is not going to help you. ..."

So yeah. Translation, get a copy of Dreamweaver or Contribute or start blogging or do something to change up the content on your website more than once a year. For a website to get a decent SEO ranking you have to keep your content, I mean your TEXTUAL content fresh every week or so. There is no amount of photoshop magic that can possibly be done to make Google rank one page over another.

Design and visual elements absolutely do affect a site's bounce rate (how long a visitor stays on the site once they find it) but these have no affect on SEO. My recommendation is always have a beautiful website and always keep the content fresh.

Get more SEO advice in Lori's book:

She Has A Blog?! - How I Began Blogging

I finally saw Julie & Julia last night. Loved it! The movie is a true story about a 'lowly cubicle worker' (Julie Powell) who decides to transform her reality by becoming a food blogger. Julie assigns herself a monumental project, a theme for her debut blog, cooking Julia Childs' Mastering The Art of French Cooking.

There were some funny parallels for me in this story. Like Julie, I love cooking. Like Julie, I was struggling with some career angst when I turned to blogging as affordable mental health therapy. But unlike Julie I was in Silicon Valley and my perspective on blogging was quite different. My workplace (AOL) encouraged blogging, and I remember my coworker Holly getting all the love in the office just for going to geeky after hours meet-ups (like Mobile Mondays) and writing about it. At the same time one of my friends was rocketing to the all-time blogging hall of fame, winning webby awards year after year, just for sourcing and posting the cutest photos of baby animals.

I guess I was a little jealous of Meg, but not so much of Holly. Neither of these two ladies got me to start blogging, I'm not competitive that way. When you work for any company everything you create, all that you write or draw, BELONGS to that company. The company, not you, owns your work. On top of that I had a retarded manager at AOL who was constantly 'cherry picking' other peoples ideas among other things (like playing favorites with only male coworkers!!!). Like Julie my thought process to begin blogging went like this; I could while away my days for an egomaniac who obviously doesn't respect me  - OR - I can be the master of my own time with all these great web 2.0 tools at my disposal? So I quit and I started working as an independent consultant.

Blogging for me has been a revolution. I started mostly to learn about how it works, so I could design and develop blogs for clients. I wanted to understand how a blog works with search engines, how it affects a business, and all the different ways one could use a blog as a software tool.  I found myself in the middle of a communication revolution.  This blog, Info Geo, is more than my journal, it's an ongoing experiment in internet communication... it's a laboratory for ideas. 

So THAT is how I began blogging & I haven't looked back. Now, you will notice that I have no advertising here (that's only because Adsense won't work well enough here). I hardly write every day (I'm just too busy right now). But believe me - there will be a lot more to come.

I Wish Google Still Suppoted Notebook

I think Google Notebook was the best all around research bookmarking tool-thing on the web, but Google recently stopped supporting it. I'm not sure why they did this but I think they want me to install the google toolbar instead. I tried that out and it just taxes my whole setup here too much, I don't like it.  Notebook was better.

What was especially awesome about Notebook was the way that I could gather and organize images and photos... conveniently remembering the URLs for me.  Letting me share that visual info with other people on the same project collaboratively. It was a great tool for visual professionals... sigh.

Putting My Foot Down on New Years Commitments

Resolutions are sooooo zero. You're not gonna resolve to do anything! How about a commitment? Now that's change I can believe in...

From now forward I am commiting to:

#1 Be positive in action, thought, and words ALL OF THE TIME
This means I wont watch murder shows on TV, nor will I entertain fighting, war, or horror movies. As far as I'm concerned the only violence I ever care to learn about is something affecting a direct relative.

#2 Eat to live a long healthy life
As much as I can control, I will only eat sustainably grown foods by local producers. Mostly fresh vegetables. Everything I consume must be labeled organic & local & fair trade or else I simply don't want it.

#3 Zero waste
I'm tired of leftovers and having too much leftover stuff lying around useless. This is an end to overbuying for the sake of making myself look like a hero to my family... The real heroism is CONSERVATION.

Goodbye Zeros

Good bye Zeros. As a decade you sucked. You started off with a great personal loss for me, and turned into a big financial zero really quickly. Seemed like most of the decade was hijacked by backward, political & ideological systems that drove this country to the brink of collapse. Only good thing about you was the lessons you dealt forcing me to rely on myself more. I'm ready to forget about you now.

* mom died of cancer, lost all my savings in the tech bubble, 9/11, hurricanes and tsunamis, and a painful realization of how corrupt all the "systems" are that I'm supposed to depend on to live.

Nothing Says Merry Christmas Like HOT Artichoke Dip

I make this Hot Artichoke Dip every Christmas Eve... This year I'm trying it with an added teaspoon of habanero paste for extra hotness. I'll add a photo here very soon!

Ingredients
- 2 (13 3/4-ounce) cans artichoke hearts (drained & broken into smaller chunks)
- 1 cup mayonnaise
- 1 cup freshly grated Parmesan
- 1/4 cup of (canned or fresh) jalepeno tomato relish
- 1 large garlic clove, mashed
- a few dashes of tobasco sauce
- a few cranks of fresh black pepper

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl and stir well. Scrape into an oven proof dish, cover and bake for 40 minutes. Serve this savory dip HOT, with bagel chips, corn chips, crackers or bread. Enjoy!