Code Camp: October 3rd & 4th – Foothill College, Los Altos CA

Massimo Paolini on August 30, 2009

Code camp. It is like summer camp without the mosquitoes. No macrame, no wood carving just great workshops from local speakers including myself.

For instance, Programming Microsoft Office using Python, Beginning iPhone Development and Teaching Kids Programming with Scratch, Alice and Python.

Of course I hope to see you at my session, Web Analytics – Do I really need it?.

You built the killer app, created an awesome web site, and started a social media buzz. But nobody is buying. You have tons of visitors, but no conversions. Using a variety of free tools you’ll be able to track who, why and from where your visitors are coming. Re-adjust you marketing buzz, optimize your site, and ultimately get more people more of what they want. Learn to match your product to your customer needs. We’ll cover the basics, the installation and configuration of Google Analytics and answer any specifics you may have.

Do I need SEO? –Greg W.

Massimo Paolini on August 27, 2009

I spend a lot of time around my seven-year-old, so I’m going to employ a little imagination for this answer. Try it with me:

Pretend you are Google–or any other search engine. Someone sits down at their computer, opens your search Captain Super Searchwindow, and types. You spring into action and get to work! Within a fraction of a second, you need to scan millions of websites to return the best results for this person. So, let me ask you, Captain Super Search: what are you looking for? In a millisecond, you went from 4 million pages to 100 and now you need to give your waiting person 15. What will make you pick those 15? Keywords that have been sitting still for the last four years? The title of the page?

The answer is simple: you will return the most recent and relevant sites in the database. While in the past this was performed by using things like keywords in title tags, meta tags, bold text, and other little tricks, today’s Captain Super Search is far too savvy for that and you will mostly ignore those.

My belief is that standard SEO techniques will give you only marginal advantage and bare nudges in search engine rankings. I will go as far as to say that Google will even skip the title tag and go straight to the content. If that passes muster, then it will check the site for valid links to other validated content. Only when that is completed will it grab the tag to add to the listing.

The bottom line is that you want to write sincere content that contains the proper information for your readers. Magically, your keywords will come to life in your text. If you are writing about cookware, you will “naturally” talk about the pots and pans (feel free to change the example) and thus take care of the keywords without having to worry about it.

So if you want to spend a lot of money on SEO techniques, call me and I will gladly apply those for you. Otherwise, just write sincere and on-target content, comment on other blogs about the same topics, create conversation on your blog, and your page ranking will take care of itself. And, Captain, that frees up your time to fight other content crimes!