If you’ve noticed the #SEODJWed hashtag in your twitter stream, it’s a safe bet you have asked yourself that very question – I know I did.
In a nutshell, #SEODJWed is a group of SEOs from around the world with a wide range of musical tastes, each sending out links to music they enjoy, or have been asked to play… and it happens on Wednesday. It’s been dubbed “Social DJing”, I just call it fun. It’s the way radio ought to be, great music, an occasional interesting story and no commercials. It’s defiantly NOT your parents’ radio.
To find out more about what it is and how it got started, I did an email interview with some of the frequent contributors. I sent questions to Monica Wright (@MonicaWright), Tony Verre (@TonyVerre) and Steve Plunkett (Steve does his DJing as @djpaisley), and since I recently started pitching in, I figured I provide my own answers as well – that doesn’t make me crazy, right?
In my last article I published a list of “TEN DO’s” from the 1998 edition of “Web Publishing for Dummies”, today we review ten things the authors thought you should NOT do. You might be surprised, as I was, that all ten are still applicable today.
The great thing about this book (if you ignore references to CompuServe, Prodigy and GeoCities) is that it was written before the search engines moved to the front of everyone’s mind. The information presented is primarily focused on creating a better experience for your visitors, and that is something that we should all be working towards.
Take a moment or two and review this list – did I miss anything? more…
I was somewhat startled to discover a copy of “Creating Web Pages for Dummies (1998)” on my desk this morning. The book promises I’ll be able to “Create Dazzling Home Pages – In No Time!” I’m still not sure who put it there, or what they are trying to tell me, hopefully that mystery will soon be solved, and hopefully they were thinking I’d get a laugh from it and not that I’d learn something from it. As I glanced at the table of contents, it did generate a grin or two – there’s a whole section devoted to geocites. However two chapters stood out more than the rest “Ten Web Publishing DO’s” and “Ten Web Publishing DON’Ts.” I just knew these tips from the early days of the web would create some laughs, so I flipped ahead and looked at the lists. I could not have been more wrong. Why I was wrong is connected to the fact that there is something very important to note about this book – the ONLY mention of anything search engine related is this brief definition:
Search engine: Web-based services that help you find things you are looking for.
Why is that important you ask? Because this book was written before web designers/developers thought that getting attention from Google was more important than giving visitors good content. The fact that the authors were concerned with content makes both of their lists still (mostly) accurate. Below is the list of ten “DO’s” along with my comments about how they may (or may not) apply today. more…
With SEO, like life, it’s about the questions you ask, not the answers you get.
Not long ago, I was dropping some shirts off at the cleaners. I had noticed that a few of my buttons were cracked and broken. I asked the young woman working the counter if they repaired buttons. She simply replied “No, we don’t.” I was puzzled, I thought all cleaners did this – now I would have to either find a new cleaner, or repair them myself. But then, possibly sensing the building frustration on my face, she added; “We can replace the broken ones if you’d like.” What? I was dumb founded. How could this woman be so clueless as to not understand that is what I had meant? It seemed fairly obvious to me that I didn’t actually expect them to be sitting back there with a tube of crazy glue repairing the buttons. Then it occurred to me, I had asked the wrong question. Even worse, I had expected them to interpret what I asked into what I meant.
What’s your reason for asking the question?
Before you ask any questions, you have to have a qoal – or two, or 10. What is it you want your Web site to do? Guess what? Tony Robbins and all the other self-help dorks have something to teach us about SEO. If you can’t measure it, it’s not a goal. It might be interesting, but it’s not a goal. more…
If you’ve noticed the #SEODJWed hashtag in your twitter stream, it’s a safe bet you have asked yourself that very question – I know I did.
