In some ways this puts Spokane Web Designers, Developers, and SEOs at a disadvantage. We either have to make costly trips, pay expensive conference fees, and sacrifice precious work time to learn about new industry innovations or we are relegated to watching post conference video presentations. Don’t get me wrong, I am very thankful these options exist but it is not the same as interacting with industry experts. Also, if people less motivated than I, they are unlikely to take the time to research these virtually attend these events on their own. I believe this creates a barrier to information and contributes to a lack of innovation in our local market. In time, this will cause our local designers and developers to fall behind the national competition in major cities. This trend is bad for our regional economy and the local customers that rely on us to be industry experts.

What was this Event About?

This event was primarily an introductory course to Google Local and SEO. This event was really useful for anyone involved with marketing a website but it was especially useful for those with little or no practical knowledge of SEO. I personally do quite a bit of reading on the topic and I follow several of the presenters’ blogs so I wasn’t expecting much new information. For me, this was primarily a refresher course but for the business owners in attendance there was a wealth of useful information.

While the presentations were good, I believe most of the new information I learned was in response to audience questions to the experts. The event allowed for two separate Q/A sessions and there were some great questions asked by the attendees.

What did I really think about the event?

As I said previously this was a great event. If GetListed.org’s Local University was return to Spokane, I would attended again, even if it were just to hear the same information. Prior to the event, we didn’t know how technical the information would be so we didn’t market the event to our clients. In retrospect it would have been a great event to bring clients to, especially those with local retail locations who could benefit from better leveraging of Google Local.

I only have 2 complaints about the event. The first, it would have been nice to have a 10-15 minute intermission after the first Q/A session to get up, stretch, and socialize. During the 3rd hour I begin to lose some focus and I think a break would’ve helped immensely. Second, I think it would be a good idea to put the entire presentation into one Powerpoint file to make it easier to jump from person to person. It appeared the presentations were very coordinated, however, the different styles of presentation and the constant changing between presentations was a bit distracting.
One other note, I really enjoyed having a hand-out for Ed’s presentation and it would be great to have some take-away documents from each presenter even if it just had their contact information, an overview of what they do, their blog address, and some general points regarding their presentation.

So who did the presenting?

David Mihm
Ed Reese
Mike Blumenthal
Mary Bowling
Matt McGee

What is the website for the event?

You can read more about the event at: http://getlisted.org/spokane/

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The video is from the Poetic Prophet (AKA The SEO Rapper) The rap is actually pretty funny. I have seen a couple other videos from the SEO Rapper but I hadn’t come across this one. Some of my favorite lines are:

“Don’t use italics use emphasis”

“Don’t duplicate it or you might face a litigation”

“Your photoshop functions, slice that design, do your layout with divs, make sure that its aligned”

“Please don’t use tables even though they work fine, when it comes to indexing they give search engines a hard time”

“The competition will get bitter, you’ll shine like glitter”

It isn’t every day you hear a rap song about web design. In fact I have only heard a couple and they were mostly done by white guys skinnier than I am. In all honestly I can’t believe this exists but since it does you have to check it out. If you’re really bored check out some of his other videos. I know some of you may have seen them already but if you’re like me and missed out on the SEO Rapper thus far, you need to check him out.

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Web developers are experts but the main problem I see in web development is blatant disrespect for customers. Web development is a confusing topic for many. If our customers understood design, programming, and SEO they wouldn’t need to hire us. As experts, it is our job to guide them in the right direction and to give them all of the information and advice necessary to make a good decision, even if the result is they work with a more qualified company. Much like CNBC we have a duty to our customers.

Recently, I have been getting bids to do some landscaping and fencing in my backyard. If I really, really tried I could probably do these projects myself. In reality, I know very little about fencing and less about sprinklers, I have some opinions but I am no expert and that is why I am hiring someone to help. When talking with the various contractors, my lack of knowledge really got me thinking about how web development customers feel in meetings.

I don’t think of myself as a dumb person. In fact I feel like I am pretty good at what I do but what I do is web development NOT landscaping. Our customers are smart people. They run businesses, have families, and shape our community. The problem with web design customers isn’t that they’re dumb, the problem is that they don’t understand web design and that is exactly why they’ve hired you! Instead of criticizing your customers for their lack of knowledge you should dance circles of joy. If everyone was a web development expert then you would probably be watching Oprah from your mom’s couch.

As a fellow web developer I challenge you all to try to provide your customers with a good value, good information, and the respect they deserve. Customers are a requirement of running a web design agency but they’re also people with families and lives. Web developers, SEO experts, and marketers in general should work hard to avoid the snake oil salesman reputation that is often given to financial professionals. Both web developers and financial professionals deal with complex topics. Working to provide customers with good, honest advice will help your customers get an ROI, help your reputation, and help the reputation of our industry in general. Don’t become the Bernard Madoff of web development.

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Realizing just how important personal development is to the graphic and web design industry, I’ve been seriously considering the implementation of a mandatory personal development policy for our employees at Zipline. What would it have in it, you may ask? The answer is, I am not quite sure. At this point I am thinking out loud. I have seen bits and pieces over the years about companies encouraging employees to partake in personal development. Some companies offer tuition reimbursement, others offer expense paid trips to conferences. While these are both great ways for employees to expand their skill set, they’re often cost prohibitive for small businesses.

My primary source of personal development is this blog. Every morning I get up at 4 AM and I read dozens of articles on marketing, advertising, graphic design, web design, and programming. After I have digested all of that content I will write an article relating to something that caught my eye, or something I experienced or learned the previous day. Then I will head into the office and attempt to put into practice the various interesting techniques, methods, and ideas I absorbed during my morning read. While I have learned a great deal by doing this, I am quite aware it would be unreasonable to ask my employees to work from 4AM – 5PM everyday, mostly because they’re a bunch of sissies.

So what if we paid our employees to blog, read, and network? During a time when many companies are banning social networking and other personal Internet usage it may seem counterintuitive to encourage employees to browse the Internet while on the clock. I think however that a couple hours of personal development per employee, per week would help the company become more innovative in the long run. I also think that this would help employees stay motivated. I know I personally feel excited and refreshed when I find new technologies or ideas to try. It helps to stave off the feelings of monotony that many developers begin to experience after their 1000th contact form.

While a personal development policy is an interesting concept, the question most managers will have is, how do you control it? In truth, I have no idea. Perhaps the first 30 minutes of every day is devoted to reading articles in a mandatory Google reader account and then it’s back to work. Maybe each employee is required to produce 2 work related blog entries a week. Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer. Personally, I hate to try to govern creativity. Personal development should be something fun and enjoyable. I don’t want to have to stand over someone’s shoulder with a ruler like a Catholic school nun and force them to read Sitepoint or listen to BoagWorld. In reality, if they love what they do it should be something they want to do not something they have to do.

My intent with posting this article was get some ideas out there. I am sure some of you work at companies that have some sort of personal development policy. Please share any ideas, thoughts, or comments you have about what should go into a personal development policy like I described above. Whenever I get a good, comprehensive policy developed, I will share it on the blog open source style for all of you to read, adopt, and share.

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The first company I will name because they’re actually using Flash correctly. The company is called Seven2. They create Flash based websites for movies like Rush Hour 3 and online games for places like Nick Jr. I believe it is fine to build these types of projects in Flash. These companies, organizations, or promotions are using traditional means to drive users to the websites. Movies like Rush Hour 3 are going to be found by searching for their name directly and users expect a certain amount of interactivity from a site for a major motion picture. While I still hate the amount of time all flash sites tend to take to load, the guys at Seven2 know what they’re doing and they create some great marketing pieces for the right clients. Their clients are the exact people that need interactive Flash websites.

Unfortunately, the “Company 2” doesn’t do things quite as well. This company whom I won’t name works with local businesses in varying industries. Their clients include a broad range from realtors, to shops, restaurants, to manufacturing firms. Almost every one of the sites they’ve developed is 100% Flash based. Just like Seven2, this company creates some great designs. Unfortunately, unlink Seven2 their clients don’t need all Flash websites. This company’s clients are primarily local companies, and companies in industries that really need successful search engine optimization to thrive. Customers of this firm do not rank well in the search engines. Over the last year, we have talked to a few previous customers who have never gotten a lead from their website. Not because it isn’t well designed but because people simply cannot find it. Often websites designed by “Company 2” cannot even by found by searching for the exact name of the company. We work with a number of local companies that generate a lot of business through their website. Before working with us, many of these customers had a website for years and had began to see it as black hole not as a powerful lead generator.

All Flash websites serve a purpose but they’re not a good fit for most local or even national businesses who intend to drive traffic from the search engines. I feel firms that are out there selling and creating these are doing their customers a serious injustice. The goal of any web developer should be to create a return on investment for their customer. Not to win awards or impress their developer friends.

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The video lasts about 20 minutes but has some cool and interesting information about Google and their index.

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It works by adding a simple tag to the HEAD section of your HTML

<link rel=”canonical” value=”http://www.stemkoski.com/page.php”/>

Would help clean up a set of URLs like

http://www.stemkoski.com/page.php?sort=desc

http://www.stemkoski.com/page.php?sort=asc

Making the search engine list page.php instead of page.php?sort=desc or sort=asc. Obviously choosing page.php as the primary isn’t always the goal. You very well may want both dynamic pages indexed. However, if they have duplicate content to page.php and some small customization, perhaps ranking, then you can select page.php as the default to be indexed.

If you don’t get it or want more info watch Matt Cutts from Goole explain it:
http://videos.webpronews.com/2009/02/13/breaking-news-matt-cutts-explains-canonical-tag-from-google-yahoo-microsoft/

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I haven’t had a ton of time to analyze the quality of the information but at a first glance it seems like there is some good information mixed with an unusually large number of commercials. I guess on the plus side a good portion of those commercials seem to be unnecessary self promotion advertisements instead of external sales advertisements but there is a mixture of both. Here are a few examples of shows available via Webmaster Radio:

- Webcology
- Search Engine Strategies
- Cover Story
- Life Tips
- PRSA
- Strike Point
- SEM Energy
- Webasters on the Roof
- Domain Masters

I will listen to it over the next couple days and then I will do a follow-up. In the meantime if you have any information about WebmasterRadio.fm please leave your comments. Also, if you know of any other good web design podcasts or information sources I would love to hear about them! If you’re bored listen to it here: http://www.webmasterradio.fm

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GateHouse Media Inc., which owns 125 Massachusetts newspapers and several web properties, sued the New York Times Co. saying its Boston.com-run website “Your Town Newton” was posting headlines and small article snippets from WickedLocal.com. Generally, it is considered acceptable to print a title and a synopsis as long as you’re linking back to the original source for the full article. This type of content aggregation is becoming increasingly popular online. GateHouse Media’s complaint was based on the fact that users don’t see the source of those articles and may not realize they’re coming from WickedLocal.com. While this may be true, I think GateHouse Media failed to realize that many users may never have seen or read their articles if not for this syndication. GateHouse Media likely benefited much more from the linking than they lost. Hoarding content was a fantastic strategy in the Newspaper era but if you want to survive in a new media society you have to participate, share content, and generate traffic. If the New York Times or Boston.com wanted to link to my content I would be more than happy to provide them with full access to whatever they needed to make that happen.

The settlement the two parties reached in this suit basically said the New York Times will remove the links from their Boston.com site and will not repurpose content from GateHouse Media. Congratulations tools, you lost by winning.

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Yesterday, I saw a press release from Network Solutions announcing a new web developer community called LinkTogether. I am of course leery of any community developed by a corporation, especially one that is so closely tied to their target audience. That being said, I am a sucker for anything that is targeted at web developers and designers so I had to check it out.

After an hour of investigation I have to say I am intrigued. The majority of LinkTogether is made up of already common tools like forums, tutorials, and a developer community. What makes it different is it has some other fantastic resources for web developers like a list of pre-developed legal documents, white papers, and downloadable tools and applications. In addition, they have LinkTogether Challenges where developers can win money for their applications. I didn’t have much time to explore the challenges section but it seemed like an interesting concept.

Overall, I thought this was an interesting community that offers some great free tools for small web development firms. From a usability standpoint there are some changes I would make, particularly the way they force your password format. It will be interesting to see how this community develops, and what caliber of web professionals you will be able to find here. At this stage, it is still a little weak from a content standpoint but I think it is worth monitoring for awhile to see how it grows. If you sign-up and try it out leave me a comment to let me know what you think.

Check it out: http://www.linktogether.com

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