My policy on SEO and blogs has always been: Spell things right and use correct terminology / brand names, but don’t push it. Until now I’ve not had any back up on my hands-off policy of Blogging and SEO.

I can tell you that my other blog gets a lot of on-target and WAY FREAKING OFF target traffic from search engines. But blogs are about frequency and diversity of content, so be yourself and use the right voice and you should be as successful as the Patagonia blog, The Cleanest Line. I asked my friend Localcrew what their SEO policy was and this is what he said:

SEO: answer is nope, for the reason you said. Our blog works as it does precisely because we don’t try to make it work like so many think we intentionally do. That might not make a lot of sense, another way to say that is: we get free reign to do what we want with it. The only direction is to “stay true to the voice of Patagonia.”

I shudder when I see those business articles that talk about all the different ways to “build master-planned customer communities.” Actually, that’s not right. More like: those things make me queasy. The folks who buy that stuff are missing the point about what makes blogs what they are. They want to control the beautiful chaos that gave rise to those communities in the first place. Success lies not in “embracing” chaos, but in bearing enthralled witness to it . . . and occasionally participating

-M

Not usually one up for mass political demonstrations, Smella and I went to the First Nevada Caucus last Saturday. I was feeling under the weather, or I’d certainly have been out skiing, or riding my bike. But we rolled down to the Downtown Library and moseyed down into the atrium along with 181 of our neighbors.

We saw Randy of my neighborhood bike shop, College Cyclery; Ryan Stark and others from the Holland Project and a bike geek named John. Very stoked to see so many young people interested enough in the process to volunteer to be delegates. Of course they were all in the Obama camp. Mostly.

After that we rolled down to the Imperial where we chatted with Colin, Tyler, Stahl, Anthony, Duke, Dizz, and Kate.

All together a sublime day from the standpoint of civic duty, friends and drinking three pints before 4 O’Clock.

-M

this is a semi-ongoing series I’m doing now that I am a Social Media Marketing Expert. Tell me what you think. Hopefully I can come to some conclusions that will make me look smart.

Presenting and linking to photos

Photos are awesome. Even though “text attracts attention before graphics,” you have to have pictures in your web content or people will get scared and run away. And by run away I mean click over to youtube to watch skiBASE jumping Videos.

Social Media Marketing is about a lot of things, but also about multiple content vectors . (I made that up just now…) OR, it’s about having lots of ways into and out of your site, all while keeping the user looking at your content.

Example: Photos. What good does it do to have your own image folder on your server that’s not searchable, or viewable? Proprietary photo galleries are a little better, but still locked to your website. If you use a photo hosting service like Smugmug, Picasa or, my personal favorite, Flickr you can extend your content without much effort. These services are cheep, easy to use, and have MILLIONS of users viewing, commenting on and searching for pictures that interest them.

Use your website to give people what they want, to click around and look at pictures, read captions and make comments. And use the photo hosting service to funnel traffic to your content.

So here’s my statement: Always use a stand alone photo hosting service for your photos. Always link an image embedded in your content back to the image in your photo stream. And always have a way to get from your photo stream back to your content. This lets you maximize links and SEO, provide a better user experience, and foster community.

There. What do you think of that? (keep in mind that I AM an expert…)

Up next: Why long, rambling, authoritative, search-baiting, header-riddled, ZERO graphic blog posts with no examples or practical solutions are lame…

-M

“I’m not a scientist, but I play one in real life.”

Yeah, you might have heard me say that. Well, no more. From now on it’s, “I’m not a tech geek, but I play one in real life.”

What’s that? Anyone who spends this much time blogging and twittering his late night snacking habits has got to be a tech geek! Well, I managed to fool some pretty sharp dudes, cause THEY GAVE ME A JOB!!!

After weighing the offer over TWELVE donut holes last evening and eating like a heard of HORSES @ Super Burrito, I decided that “Content Developer” sounded like a job made especially for me. (they even specified, “6 foot 2, skinny, scruffy looking, rides bikes. experience with fart jokes preferred.”)

Since I spend about 90% of my cognitive time thinking of ways to be clever on the internets, and the other half making fart jokes, this will be the perfect job for me. And since the guys I’ll be working with seem like a bunch of weirdos, I’ll fit right in. (I wonder if I have to re-up my membership in the RTYFN (Reno-Tahoe Young Foux-hawkers Network…)…)

Thanks to family and friends for help and support in my, uhh, whole thing!!!

-M

ps Stay tuned for details on my celebratory Organic Chicken Bake, and pics of me riding my bike through the new office. (It’s not boredom, just something that needs to be done.)

This is my grandfather, John Henderson. He was a Navy Fighter pilot on an aircraft carrier in WW2. After his service he settled in Baton Rouge Louisiana with his wife Rosemary and raised the family which included my father, John. (more…)

I dreamed I was a rancher and the people in the old photographs on the kids walls were me and mine: my own pastoral utopia with a meadow and a creek. I dug in the meadow to channel water for our cattle. Hunted raccoons with a lanky lop-eared dog. I smelled mud and grass and manure, carried a knife in every pocket. When I looked up I saw a girl waive from the house telling me to come in for lunch. I saw a sandwich and potato chips. I smelled coffee in a stove-top percolator and home-made donuts, and the girl smiling at me. I held my shovel in my hands as I ate. My back ached no matter how straight I sat. She wore modern clothes, street clothes; sneakers, and denim. And though I ate and drank continuously I never grew full, and my hunger and thirst followed me out of the dream to the kid’s old ranch house.

(more…)

This is what blogs are for.-M

It’s hard to say when it all began. Things grade into each other like biscuits rising on a pan that’s too small. Some adaptations aren’t nearly perfect. It may have started when I fell off the ladder.

But you could say that climbing the ladder was the beginning, or when my ladder left the factory with too few rivets securing the little rubber feet that are supposed to keep the whole thing from crashing down upon you. But that may have been years ago and continents away from the little patch of dirt in my yard toward which I was just beginning to fall.

I had climbed the ladder to remove the old semi attached and rusting antenna. There was nothing on the main channels anyway, and only the buzz and apparition of something, but probably nothing, on channel two, which never comes in that well anyway.
So I decided to get rid of it all more or less; take down the whole damn thing and rip off the wire that dangled down the roof line and poked in a cracked window. It was all an eyesore. What can you do? I could tell how it was going to end, that much was clear.
The bucket I was carrying was heavy and full of tools and tar. To keep them from hitting me when I landed I let them pull me down to the dirt where I’d be injured for sure. How bad was the only thing up in the air. But the antenna at least was gone. All the channels I could already tell were the same, only static and gray noise. Every color but one. The color of dirt and the smell of roofing tar.

-M

The place was spotless. A little dusty, but out there it’s hard to tell the dust from the air, if there is a difference. There was a box labeled Original Turkish Delight on the coffee table, and a bit of white powder beside it. The name meant something to me, but I couldn’t say what. There was an illustration of some kind of candy on the box representing, not in actual size, the boxes contents.

“I apologize for the mess,” the boy said after we had been inside a moment, but it seemed more of a formality rather than a sincere concern for appearances. (more…)