Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO – It’s all the rage and why wouldn’t it be? How many times do you actually click through the numbers at the bottom of Yahoo or Google’s search results? After you type in your search string you probably click on one of the links that pops up on the first page or you try a different search string to get a better result.
So how do search engines work? How do they rank sites? How do you get your website listed at the top of those results?
After doing some research it is clear that this is much more complicated than just adding a few key words to your meta data. It actually involves a lot of work and know how and like all things technological, it is constantly changing. However, Google and Yahoo both have published tips for better ranking in their search engines.
Check Out Webmaster Tools from Google – These tools are free, but they do require some technical savy since they require you to upload content into your websites in order to verify that you own the site. There is also a few additional features such as setting up a Sitemap. Google also has Google Adsense where you can purchase ad space and increase site traffic, but their system isn’t as easy to use as Yahoo’s. You can also sell ad space relatively easy but I have had mixed results with my monetary earnings, but I have had friends that have been quite successful with earning some extra income with Google Adsense. Google also has a website optimizer tool which will allow you to run tests on your site based on where you place content such as images, links, etc.
Check our Yahoo Search Marketing Tools – I can’t seem to find any ways to improve your search ranking on Yahoo’s tool without becoming a paying customer. They have a lot of great tools but most of them seem to reference ads that you are selling and how to improve their performance. I used this feature to promote an event http://08ball.com and the results were pretty good. However, you better be sure to setup your credit card not to auto-renew for payment or else the system will bill you excessively! Customer service is excellent though and when I submitted a trouble ticket I got an almost immediate call from a real person.
Other ways to increase traffic to your site is to become involved in social networks. This concept has been around for quite some time but only recently seems to be getting the attention it deserves. A Recent article published in February of 2009 states, “if you want to be effective in getting the word out about your content to a community, you need to understand the community.”
I’m often surprised by the number of individuals who don’t understand the power of adding a blog to their business website. Sites that are updated often can use Technorati Pings and Google Analytics to notify various services that their site has been updated, not to mention RSS Feeds and other services that tell users, “Hey, we’ve updated our site!”
Lastly, don’t ever underestimate the power of a simple domain name. If you are doing “Affordable Web Design” then get the domain name http://www.affordablewebdesign.com because if your domain name is the search string that a user enters, well, most likely it will be at the top of the list and you don’t have to do anything to get it there. Try typing in my name Eddie Renz or my blog Posted Note and see where they rank in Google.
So I’ll end it for now with this post, but check back as I continue to scour the web for the best ways to improve your search ranking.
No-Spec. Say “No” to Free Design
Is the design industry the only industry where people are constantly duped into doing free work? I know of very few professions where you can have a project completed in its entirety and then when the customer sees the finished product, then they decide whether or not to pay you. This happens all the time when it comes to graphic and web design.
Enter http://www.no-spec.com
I first stumbled onto the No-Spec website when I was first starting to do website design. I was a Nemo in a world of Sharks. Eager to please big name customers I would spend hours whipping up designs for their approval. Hours would be spent, but without any investment on their part they could easily lose interest or change their minds about the design as easily as Joan Rivers changes her face.
After reading this No-Spec site I realized that by doing design without payment was not only doing myself a disservice but doing a disservice to the industry as a whole. If you are a graphic or web designer then create a portfolio of your work. Allow your customers to work-up what they would like based upon a good example of what you can do. Then, require a portion of the payment up front before you get started. This allows you to get paid something for your work and your client has a vested interest in what you are doing.
Also, be careful of design contests as they are often a form of Spec work too.
Dooce’s Book Signing
“I’m going to Dooce’s Book signing in April…”
“Who’s Dooce?”
“You don’t know who Heather B. Armstrong is? Heather is Dooce who coined the phrase ‘dooced’ which means to get fired from our job for blogging about your bosses and coworkers in a negative manner. BUT… She has also turned her job into a 6 figure salary and is able to support her family with her blog.”
“WHAT? Really? I WANT A BLOG!”
It is amazing to me how many people who are on this planet that don’t understand the power of blogging. The community, the networking, the financial opportunities, but that is not what this post is about.
Dooce will be in Texas in April and I plan to go and meet her and go to her book signing. I’ve been reading her blog religiously for over 6 years now. It is fun to get to know someone, sometimes more intimately than I know my real-life friends, through a website.
You should come with me in April, we can carpool if you live in the Dallas Ft. Worth area. Book signing locations and dates below.
NEW YORK, NY
Tuesday, March 24
7:00 PM EST
BARNES & NOBLE
97 Warren Street (at Greenwich)
New York, NY 10007
CHICAGO, IL
Thursday, March 26
7:30 PM CST
BORDERS
1500 16th Street, Suite D
Oak Brook, IL 60523
PORTLAND, OR
Monday, March 30
7:30 PM PST
POWELL’S
1005 W. Burnside Avenue
Portland, OR
SEATTLE, WA
Tuesday, March 31
7:00 PM PST
THIRD PLACE BOOKS
17171 Bothell Way NE
Lake Forest Park, WA 98155
SAN FRANCISCO, CA
Wednesday, April 1
7:30 PM PST
BOOKS INC.
301 Castro Street
Mountain View, CA 94041
LOS ANGELES, CA
Thursday, April 2
7:00 PM PST
BOOK SOUP
8818 Sunset Blvd
West Hollywood, CA 90069
DENVER, CO
Monday, April 6
7:30 PM MST
TATTERED COVER
9315 Dorchester Street
Highlands Ranch, CO 80129
AUSTIN, TX
Wednesday, April 8
BOOKPEOPLE
603 North Lamar
Austin, TX 78703
SALT LAKE CITY, UT
Wednesday, April 15
7:00 PM
KING’S ENGLISH BOOKSTORE
1511 South 1500 East
Salt Lake City, UT 84105
How Design Conference June 2009
I’ve been looking for an affordable design conference that was here in Texas so I wouldn’t have to add in the cost of a flight to the total price and I found this one:
I hope to go to a few conferences this year, SXSW and this How Conference would be two at the top of my list. What really intrigued me about this conference was their cool marketing pages in a design magazine I was reading. It included preprinted networking cards so you could meet up with people for lunch or networking. The marketing pages also included a 100lb stock paper design that you could cut out and make a business card holder for your newly retrieved networking cards. How cool is that?
Here is the conference information…
Contact by phone at 800-436-8700 or 513-531-2690, ext. 11450
The Big Deal $1395 (Full-Conference registration plus choice of two workshops, all available session MP3s (within 30 days after the Conference), and 8 HOW Conference Webinars (beginning in July 2009) Note: Studio Tours are not included with this registration; to attend a studio tour, please select either Single or Group Registration below
Combination Offer w/Full set of Sessions MP3s $1295 (Full-Conference registration plus choice of two workshops and all available session MP3s (within 30 days after the Conference) Note: Studio Tours are not included with this registration; to attend a studio tour, please select either Single or Group Registration below
Combination Offer $1195 (Full-Conference registration plus choice of two workshops) Note: Studio Tours are not included with this registration; to attend a studio tour, please select either Single or Group Registration below
Single Full-Conference $1035 by April 1 Early-Bird deadline (regular rate is $1135)
Group Full-Conference $995 by April 1 Early-Bird deadline (regular rate is $1075) Group rates are per person; require 3 or more registrations from the same company received at the same time.
Student Full-Conference $575 (must provide a copy of student ID and proof of 12 current credit hours to qualify)
Social Networking
You’ve just been laid-off your job that you have been working at for 5+ years. You take a look at your resume and realize that you don’t have as many skills in this competitive marketplace as you thought you did. What do you do?
It is important to maintain an updated resume because in this economy or any economy, you never know when you might lose your job. However, once you have that freshly updated resume in hand where do you go with it? Sure you can visit monster.com or post it on a number of job boards, but what was true eons ago is still true now. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.
When you start job searching you can always use your social network to put the word out that you are looking for work. Friends will know of job openings and can even make recommendations. Aren’t you more apt to try a product when it has been given a good review? Well, the same goes for your employment opportunities. Get a good recommendation from a friend and you could be turning down job offers left and right.
Now if you don’t have a social network, then it’s time to join one immediately. I recommend Facebook for it’s ease of use, but if you don’t have time to keep up with status updates and meem requests then I recommend using LinkedIn. If either of those aren’t doing it for you, then check out the other social networks on the link bar on the right of this site.
Best of luck!
Filtering the Clutter
When I want a solution, I want it IMMEDIATELY! Please don’t make me click 14 links to get to the information that I need. Why do I need to click “Download Here” 4 times before I finally get to download the information? 
So what I am trying to do with eddierenz.com is create simple and quick solutions for bloggers, designers, and social networking/media. I won’t promise that in these blog posts that I won’t babble on occasion, but the most pertinent information will be immediately accessible from the links on the right side bar.
I plan to update this site daily with new links and information. I’m in the process of testing multiple forms of social media/networking to see which one is the most user friendly and I’ve spent the last 7 years mining information about some of the best design and blog sites on the web.
If you have ideas, sites, information you’d like me to pass along, I’ll be happy to share.
When He’s Just Not That Into Your Blog
The world wide web exploded back in 1995 when windows 95 came out and the personal computer was made affordable. Hideously designed Geocities websites flooded the blogosphere as well as a huge dump of poorly design web trash that is for some reason still floating around 13+ years later. People, we’ve moved beyond dial-up and Internet America, we no longer use pagers or type writers (At least those of us in the 21st century) so now it is time to start cleaning up your website.
My recommendation for businesses or bloggers is to use WordPress for all of your online web needs. It’s an excellent content management system that allows you to easily update your website with content that not only look professional but is easy to change by novices that still have trouble with the double-click.
I’ve been blogging now for 8 years and I started out writing each html page by hand and adding it to my site. Nothing was dynamic and the static pages were an cluster (insert expletive) of bad organization and poor writing. Eventually I upgraded to Blogger which is a great tool for beginning bloggers who aren’t web savvy at all.
After Blogger I looked at using Moveable Type, Drupal, Joomla, Textpattern – I even installed a few of these complex CMS – but they just weren’t as user friendly as WordPress. I now feel that Xanga, MySpace, and Geocities are all Junior High and High School versions of these newer and better tools: WordPress, Facebook, and Blogger.
There are a number of companies now that can create a great website for you, but you can do a lot of it yourself by editing a template that has been created for WordPress. With literally thousands of templates to choose from you can easily find a layout that works for you and if you don’t know how to modify it, then you should be able to find someone who can customize it for a few hundred bucks.
Check back often on this site as I will be updating it with popular links for affordable – and GOOD – web design, social media, marketing, advertising, and best web tools such as Flickr and Twitter.
Branching Out
I’m entering the design and entertainment world – FULL TIME! This is a big step for me since I come from a home where my Dad is still planning for Armageddon and self-employment was synonymous with an expletive.
These days I make the bulk of my living doing creative and technical support for churches, small businesses and individuals, however, I still do corporate work as well.
I’m in the process of updating this site with my portfolio so you don’t have to traipse over to Flickr to see it as well as adding links to all of my blogs like: http://www.corporaterambo.com and http://www.postednote.com – which are “two of the best blogs on the web!”
So if you are looking for an affordable website, stop looking, the good ones aren’t necessarily affordable. If you pay less than $1000 than it’s probably going to be poorly designed and you’ll wish that you dropped the extra green for something great – in design, you really do get what you pay for.
Call me if you need some work done… 214-606-8752
Who is Eddie Renz?
Don’t ask me, I’m still trying to figure that out!
Currently, I’m doing creative projects: Writing, Web, Paint, Graphics and I’m doing technical projects: Networking, Office 2007 and BlackBerry Support.
I also have a full-time job at Texas Instruments.
My Clients are small businesses, individuals with lots of money and very little technical know-how, and a few friends and family.
This site needs a new face really bad and I plan to udpate it along with all my portfolio of projects soon. In the meantime, contact me by phone at 214-606-8752 and by email eddo@postednote.com