Design

8 Step Cycle of Search Engine Optimization with Blogging

Gerry Heidenreich — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:02:32 GMT

We will be training our lawyers shortly on the value of blogging. This diagram is my take on the SEO lifecycle as it pertains to blogging, and it I hope that it illustrates the concept enough for good comparison with traditional media, like articles and print.

It should also be perfectly applicable to social media in general.

Search Engine Optimization is the process of using the following steps to maximize your search result ranking and areas of expertise on the major search engines.

1. Write
Your new post is given a URL to uniquely identify it on the internet.

2. Share
Start or join in on a conversation via LinkedIn, Twitter, email, or comments in another blog, by referencing your post's URL (Alt+D selects your current url, Ctrl+C copies it for later).

3. Discuss: A conversation occurs, with URL references to content in posts and articles on the web.

4. Archive: Google notices the conversations, and records ('crawls') it, following the path of URLs. This occurs roughly 2 weeks after posting. The actual time period varies between sites. [How often does Google crawl the web?]

5. Reward: Google identifies the topics discussed, and boosts the rankings for the participants and sites involved. The measure of the boost is based on the size and impact of the conversation.

6. Search: 250 million searches are made on Google alone each day, across every topic (vertical) imaginable.

7. Subscribe: Over time, you will start to gain subscribers (or followers) to your content. When you add new posts, your subscribers will be notified. Most social networks including have some method of subscribing to their users.

8. Grow: The audience grows for future conversations by author, topic, etc. There is a snowball effect as the cycle continues.

... design tweaks ...

Gerry Heidenreich — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 04:57:31 GMT

Just some updates to make it sharper... lost the #88Fish baby blue, got this sharp #008ish blue thing going on with links, it is a step in the right direction, I like it...

Salesperanto AND Coderian?

Gerry Heidenreich — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:03:47 GMT

"Stop Thinking Like A Programmer"

I swear it's the theme this week.. I was actually told this by someone at work. In my own defense, I was thinking like somebody that would rather script a solution than wait 3 weeks for it (ok yeah, that's like a programmer)....

Think about this...

1. Business: Coders should be able to think in terms of features, interface complexity, barrier to entry, design and visualization, and capable of elevator pitching their product (notice I didn't say solution?) to a customer in these terms.

2. Innovation: getting the "I can do that" people (e.g. your engineers/architects/coders) to be able to speak directly to the "it would be cool if..." people (e.g. your billers, customers, parents, etc)

3. Apple's innovation/momentum and Microsoft's shift in perspective & ability to compete: Microsoft has always been guilty of "thinking like programmers", and it has been very profitable for them, but things are changing, and they are reacting accordingly.

4. Black & White: on one side are the geeks that appreciate your architecture and could debate code/frameworks/paradigms all day. On the other side are your customers, who want to know how you are going to make them more profitable/efficient/confident/marketable/competitive. Not much of a grey area here. 2 different languages: Salesperanto AND Coderian.

5. Intentional Programming [wikipedia]: Your skillset is in demand, but we are getting closer to the day that "Everyone Writes Software"... Lutz has a section dedicated to this. Developers must learn to understand the intent of their users. Stop thinking in syntax, start thinking in semantics... Mashups, FDD, REST, RDF, Pipes & Popfly (Google SETS prediction).

There is a pattern developing here, and there is A LOT of money being tossed around because of it (check this out!).

That Van Wilder RainbowWordCrunch movie :)

Gerry Heidenreich — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 03:35:00 GMT

The trailer looks funny [here] but the logo, as trendy as it is... is horrible.

This looks like one of the rare movies that Jeanne & I may enjoy together... it looks chicky enough for her and has a good cast & enough immature comedy to keep me happy.

The last of it for now...

Gerry Heidenreich — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 04:54:00 GMT

These guys went the extra mile... they enhanced the power of their RainbowWordCrunchiness with additional graphics & effects...

More RainbowWordCrunch

Gerry Heidenreich — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 15:59:00 GMT

So I noticed this trend about a year ago and kept any logos I tripped across, people would send them to me if they found them, and I ended up with quite a collection... My goal was to write up something clever and present everything LogoHell-style, at rainbowwordcrunch.com, throw some adsense up there, spam the discussion groups, and hope for some beer money. My time's more lucrative doing other things... and the blog's been a quiet place lately... so I decided to get this stuff up online through here. Here are some more original rwc logos:

Introducing the RainbowWordCrunch™

Gerry Heidenreich — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 01:36:00 GMT

For those of you out there getting sick of the old 'MOCS' cliche (see previous post), there's a new trend that's fixing everything:

Some of my favorite examples are also the most ironic: the 'branders' and imaginators...

The Millenium Orbital Crescent Swoosh revisited...

Gerry Heidenreich — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 04:08:00 GMT

In the late 20th century, The Millenium Orbital Crescent Swoosh™ was the technique used by prominent powerhouses as AAA, Ameritech, Sony, and Al Gore. Steven Lekowicz (I believe) cleverly aggregated these and many other examples of this technique in Logo Hell.
[Link]

I love logos. I enjoy seeing new ones, recognizing something about old ones, The Logo Hell page, and other sneaky logo trickery like the FedEx arrow and the Playboy bunny (there's got to be something there I just keep getting sidetracked)...

[Millenium Orbital Crescent Swoosh] [Google]

A few extra examples gathered:

Photoshop: Copy layer mask

Gerry Heidenreich — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 05:55:00 GMT

This is as helpful as it is unintuitive... This will take an existing mask and apply it to another layer.

ScottWater's Cojax - Async Sourcecode Viewer for Community Server Source Code

Gerry Heidenreich — Mon, 30 May 2005 16:44:00 GMT

Found this from Rob Howard's Blog, then on ScottWater's Blog: A code viewer that uses async calls to retrieve file info & populate a treeview control.

Scott did it all within a couple hours, by wiring up a few prebuilt controls:
TreeView - ComponentArt TreeView control
Callbacks - Ajax.Net [blog]
Syntax Highlighting - ASP.Net Resources.com Highlighter

Cojax Source Code Viewer

Also, a note to myself because I never seem to remember this page:
[Milan's AspNetResources.Net online code highlighter]