Search, Photography, Wine & Design

The Salesman Meets His Match: The Geek

As both an in-house and contract web developer, I get to see aspects of the development community that many don’t. I work with an office full of non-techie type sales people who know nothing about web development; whereas one who works completely on a contract basis, or in a development firm would have no experience in such an environment. I also know what it’s like to be a solo act, dealing with clients. I also, very often work closely with a partner, and am involved in a community development setting. Today, my story is about wearing the in-house developer hat.

The other day, I was sitting at my desk in my office when my office line rang. Now, for me, having the office line ring is a rare occurrence. I don’t give that number out to anyone, and rarely use it myself. So almost surprised, I answered. I got the usual confirmation of my identity, and after the 5 question spread I found out that it was a sales representative for an SEO company. Ok… pause… this is the part in a movie when the frame stops and there is an internal monologue, what comes to mind for me is a personal favorite… Snatch. The dialogue of course is, that this guy on the phone thinks he’s cold calling a run of the mill - in house - webmaster / IT support / geek. What he doesn’t know, is that I too am a search marketing professional… Un-pause. He proceeds to ask me if I am familiar with the practice of SEO, yes. Do I know what terms I am currently ranking for, yes. What terms am I not ranking for that I would like to be, none. Ok, now can I ask you a few questions? Wait, I’ll need to be transferred to a ‘technical expert’. Ok, so I listen to some hold music, that is half pleasing but not enough so as to remember what the song was. Alright, now we’re back online. So he understands that I have some questions regarding this companies SEO practices. So I proceed to ask him how his said company approaches strategic link building. To which I am given an offensive reply, ‘well we do some research to see what is relevant to your site, and then get links that will help your rankings’. OH REALLY!?! I might as well just read wikipedia! So, in a calm manner, I press him to explain how. But I am diverted, and the questions come back my way. I am obliged to comply. Am I ranking for keywords that are relevant to my company, yes. (He is obviously on my site) Do I rank for the term ‘electric power equipment’, yes. So if one were to search in google for that term, I would be found on the first page, yes, in fact on the first page, above the fold. His reply was “hm”. Well how did I do that? I came back with, so you still haven’t answered any of the questions I asked you. Ok. What questions do I have? How do you and your company attack strategic link building? Well, they of course do some research to determine relevant keywo… I know, but how do you actually obtain links. Well it’s a long process involving a lot of research..blah blah.. Right, I know, I understand link building. In fact, I’ve done link building myself! But how do they do it? Do they have a huge list of link farms that they pay to get on? Oh no, I am assured, we do not do link farming. But we guarantee 40+ links a month.. 40+ links a month! I literally said: “No thanks” cause I’m afraid that if I let this guy touch my site, he will in fact harm me. Now, 40+ links a month is no big deal, if you invented the iPhone, but believe me, the electric power equipment business pales in comparison for excitement next to the iPhone. That is of course, we’re assuming that there is no link farming involved. So I again ask how they approach link building, when he finally tells me that they first search their database of over 500 clients. Interested, I asked him if he had 500 clients in the electric power equipment business. He disappointed me by replying with a no. So I ask him yet again, then how is it exactly that he does link building. He trys to give me the 500 client jargon again, when I call him out on it, cause if his clients are interior designers and auto mechanics, links aren’t going to help me very much, are they? Well, of course they have other methods as well.. Oh yeah? Like what! Please explain! Do you pay for links? Well, they might, they don’t say that it is common, but they might buy some links, they certainly won’t say that they don’t. Well great. Still not helping me ey? Starting to grow frustrated with this ‘technical expert’ I ask him to show me an example of a client that they have, where they successfully built links to increase search engine rankings. Well, don’tcha know, they have logos of companies on the front page of their website! Wow, that’s impressive, so all I’ve learned so far is that they know how to rip an image that is on the web, and repost it elsewhere. Which, in not so few words, I explained to him. And again pressed him to give me an example, and show me what was done. But, unfortunately he can’t divulge such information to me. The same way, you can’t actually drive a car until you have put down a down payment. Wait, that’s not right.. Ok, fine, you won’t give me an example of your work; then PLEASE explain to me, what it is that YOU think that you do. And this time, please spare me the ‘research’ talk. Ok, now I’m asked if it would be ok to be put on hold. Yes Please! I would love for you to go talk to someone who actually knows something! Now, he comes back on the line, and reaffirms that he won’t give me any examples of his work. But rather he begins to harp on google page rank.. And they simply get links from people with a higher page rank than me. Oh yeah? Who? Where? HOW? I am then given an explanation of what page rank is.. I didn’t think I sounded confused as to what pr was, I actually even told him what my current page rank is.. But that’s ok, I’m beginning to grow accustomed to this wiggle-out-of-questions response. After another 10 minutes of trying to tell me that its all about page rank (roll my eyes) I decide that I’m gonna just nail him down. Right now, cut the bs. I tell him, that if he didn’t already catch on, that I am an SEO myself. And I ask him if he can make me rank on the 1st page of Google for the term ‘SEO’. He replies: *drumroll* “Yes, it is only a matter of time” I then laughed out loud, on purpose, on the phone. Ok, so then, if it’s only a matter of time, then why doesn’t he rank for that term? Well, he tells me, he doesn’t WANT to rank for that term. He doesn’t want to have a lot of business. He continues to blurt out this 2 minute recital on why he doesn’t want a lot of business, cause then it’s not personal.. blah blah. BUT (there’s always a but), if I would just go to yahoo, and search for his obscure term, I will see that he is #1 for that. I then said, well, how about I search for it on google… I do… he’s not on the first three pages.. I ask him about that, and (get this) he tells me: “We don’t optimize for Google” HAHAHAHAHAHA, what!?! He trys to give me his 2 minute deal again, but I won’t have it. I tell him that he’s stupid to even say such a thing. Especially when he tried to preach page rank to me, and knows that I do SEO!

So, case closed. I ended up talking to this guy for about 45 minutes. I had quite an amusing time, and if you’re as much as a geek as I am, you probably have too just reading this. I ended up telling him that I had to get off the phone, and that he could email me some info if he had it. The stuff I got in his email was absolute crap, it didn’t even look pretty. He called the next morning for a follow up, I tried to give him a chance to answer any ONE of my questions.. But he seemed far too incompetent to do such a thing. Oh well, sometimes you meet people that end up being great contacts. But then again, sometimes you don’t! -kenny

The Mystery of Adobe Space Monkey

So, Since my post about Adobe Space Monkey, I have gotten a few laughs and a few questions. Mostly, people have no idea what I’m talking about. Well, in fact, Space Monkey is not something I made up, although I wish it was. But, it’s actually an easter egg that Adobe put into photoshop CS2. There are a couple of ways that you can check it out for yourself. The easy way is to Command click the ‘About Photoshop’ button while the application is open. (For windows users I assume it would be ctrl click, but I am not sure) It will pop up the CS2 about information with a ‘Space Monkey’ theme. The hard way, which is the way I learned about it, is to copy over ps CS2 from one machine to another without reinstalling. When you do this, you have to alter some of the photoshop system files so that it doesn’t prompt you to reinstall. Now if you do this incorrectly, in an almost mocking fashion, the next time you try to open photoshop it will give you the space monkey screen. In the end, I had to completely wipe my system of any CS2 files, and reinstall from the beginning. I thought I would save some time by just dragging over the application image, but in turn I ended up spending a day and a half (in between working) trying to get the issue resolved.

Mostly I just think the whole Adobe Space Monkey thing is hilarious. And I was reminded of it because I was browsing through some photos and came across the screenshot I took of it way back when I first saw it. I thought I would do a little post, especially since it was on the same day that Adobe announced CS3. -kenny

10 Reasons Adobe Space Monkey Will Replace CS3

So, like all of you geeks out there, I too have been drooling over the recent product unveiling of Adobe’s new CS3 line of software. I am excited and waiting until it ships. But, despite all the cool new things you will be able to do with Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash, Dreamweaver, After Effects, Soundbooth, and all the others… What about Adobe Space Monkey? Am I the only one that has experienced the power of Space Monkey? Don’t get me wrong, I love the standard line of what Adobe has to offer. I use Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and Acrobat religiously. But I would like to see the not-so-popular Space Monkey get some hype!

Here are 10 reasons why I think Adobe Space Monkey will replace Adobe CS3:
1. It’s free
2. It’s free
3. It’s free
4. It’s free
5. It’s free
6. It’s free
7. It’s free
8. It’s free
9. It’s free
10. It’s free

All great reasons to replace your version of CS3, with Space Monkey -kenny

Office Politics

pol·i·tics (pŏl’ĭ-tĭks) - activities within an organization that are aimed at improving someone’s status or position and are typically considered to be devious or divisive : yet another discussion of office politics and personalities. -kenny

Pay Per Action - PPA, A New Google Service

It was pointed out to me today that Google has a new pay per action service available. The idea behind this, is that you don’t simply pay for clicks or impressions to your site, but you pay when a defined action takes place. (ex. a purchase is made) We’ll all be watching I’m sure, to see how this all pans out. My initial question is, what about sites that have a primary purpose of generating leads via a phone call? Does google zoom their imaging satellites down on your location when you click through to see if you pick up the phone? Maybe! -kenny

Music Lovers Unite

Today, there is a movement going on in attempts to start a reversal of power in the music industry. We all have had our unhealthy inundation of distasteful music from the major record labels. Even despite our vast differences in music taste, we all have heard something on the radio that has been pushed through from the record labels, into our ears, without our approval. Well, it’s time to unite for a cause! A small group called “Bum Rush the Charts” has organized for 1 song, from a band that was rejected by 2 major labels, to get pushed into THEIR face today. The song is titled “Mine Again” by Black Lab. Now, whether or not you like the song, or the band, the idea is to download it from your itunes store (or a link if you are not an itunes user) TODAY, so that it gets pushed to the top of the attention list. This way WE can show the music labels, who decides what is worthy music, and what is not! MUSIC LOVERS UNITE!!!

View the “Bum Rush the Charts” site here

Happy Listening!

Social Media Integration?

Here’s something I’d like to see: a plugin for my browser that integrates with my various site subscriptions to let me know when I view a page that I already have linked or bookmarked from a service like del.icio.us. It would have to store cookies locally and sync via iDisk. Because if you’re anything like me you work off a minimum of 2 machines, and often 3 or 4. I don’t know how many times I have come across a site that looks familiar, but I’m not sure if I’ve seen it before or not! -kenny

New Word

Folksonomy: A user generated taxonomy used to categorize and retrieve web pages, photographs, web links and other web content using open ended tags.

Perfect example: del.icio.us -kenny

Graywolf’s SEO for Wordpress

I just watched a video that Michael Gray put up today on his blog about how to optimize your wordpress blog. The video was mostly informative and insightful. Being that I use wordpress, it definitely gave me some things to consider. Mostly he talked about making sure that googlebot won’t read duplicates of your posts by disallowing the robots from your archive files. This way, he says, you will have the engines only viewing your content in the main place that you put it. Which makes sense. Except that I have three contentions with this idea.

1. Everyone, everywhere else is saying to not worry about duplicate content. It is situations like these that are going to make duplicate content inevitable no matter what. Duplicate content is something that happens naturally, and googlebot knows that.

2. The whole idea behind archives and categories is to increase usability on a website. It is extremely useful to be able to sort or seach posts by date, category, author, etc.. It doesn’t make any sense that we should be worried that our site is extremely accessible, aren’t most of us battling to make other people’s sites more user friendly and navigable by both humans and spiders alike?

3. We should not have Google dictating this kind of stuff to us. We should be dictating how we want THEM to function. IMHO it’s one thing to optimize a site so that it is viewable to robots by using text and rich content, and to build links etc etc etc.. Nit-picky stuff like this should not be mandated because googlebot might get confused! Google has one of the biggest, best and most expensive devlopment teams in the world, they for sure can figure this out.

So, mostly I like what Graywolf has to say. I read his blog regularly, and am for what he is doing in the “greyhat” area of SEO. But stuff like this, brings up feelings like noted in #3 of above. Let’s all use good technique as we develop. But let’s also develop from the bottom up, and not worry about who’s sitting on top. -kenny

Do you digg this?

Check out this Digg page on how to convert csv files to html. -kenny