4/29/2009
When going through a particularly difficult time of underemployment, I had a conversation with my dad. Whilst I complained and cried railed against the evil corporate system, he just sat there. He would nod once in awhile, just to let me know that he was listening. After my lamentation was finished, he looked me in the eye and asked the following question: "Do you know how often I quit this job?" Knowing that he had been employed there for nearly 20 years, I had to respond that I did not. He continued, "I quit several times a day. My first 3 years, I cried every single day. I didn't have the option of quitting. I had a family to provide for."
11/3/2008
Lately, the search engines seem to have become more intelligent. I say this because the suggestions they make seem to be more accurate. Now, this obviously goes back to a human decision to leverage data that had already been collected, rather than a vast improvement in the suggestion engine.
10/14/2008
Disclaimer: The following article is merely an examination of the way these sites engage their users, and not an endorsement of the content or viewpoints advanced by these sites. So I'm a news junkie, My phone can't refresh the page fast enough. I read the news at stoplights, during long restaurant waits. I have to know the current levels of the Ic...
6/2/2008
My company is very focused on the global marketplace. Thus far this year, we've targeted the Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, and British languages in search results. If you're playing "One of these things is not like the other..." you probably feel the urge to inform me that "British" just doesn't belong. On the technical merit of your argument, I woul...
11/15/2007
I was doing some routine research this morning, when I noticed a disturbing trend:Less search results for any given KW that I typed in. My search terms generally return results of 500k or more. Today, they return results of ~93k.So I did a search in the larger category. My search for "tires" turned up 5M results. Last week t...
10/19/2007
Six months ago, I was a very different person. SEO was something I knew little about(I still do not claim to have above a beginner's understanding), and I was running an OS that I did not care for. Then one day, after struggling with a lousy driver install and a Lexmark printer(Die!! Lexmark...DIE!!!) I said some rather foul words, and went to the Ubuntu website, intending to dual bo...
10/1/2007
The web/tech community tends to be a helpful, compassionate bunch, who have great zeal for sharing knowledge and promoting various social and political ideals.Last week, my employer sent me to a grant-writing conference in Washington, D.C.(the other Washington, for those of you residing in the Pacific NW.). It was by far the most intense week of my life, and along the way, I met...
9/19/2007
Like many in the web-design field, I was a conscript as opposed to a volunteer.My html was limited, my javascripting was poor, and the concept of LAMP sent me running away from the light. Okay, I'll be honest. I had no idea what LAMP actually did or how it worked. I wasn't going to try to find out, either. The one ace-in-my-pocket was a basic Flash/Actionscripti...
9/13/2007
Yesterday morning, I did the same thing I always do: Check my company email, talk to the salesmen, scour SEOMoz for new info,and check on my site's analytics for the day prior.Man, did I get shock...my average time on site had been reduced to less than one-third of what it had been. I panicked, screamed, shaved my head and burned a picture of Matt Cutts in effigy. After ...
9/11/2007
Whether in life, SEO, or content generation(for some of us, these have sadly become one and the same) passion is key.I'm sure that all of us have a past teacher or professor that sits on the lid of our mind's eye, and continually stomps around in disgust as we mindlessly churn out "okay" content. We rationalize that the keywords all appear in a semi-natural fashion, and...
