Tech. Business. Life.

So - wow - a whole summer with no posting.  I suppose you could say I’ve been busy, but really, I’ve just been lazy.  You can only do so much before something falls off - and this blog was it.

I’m working on several projects at the moment - not the least of which is still pushing to get HHOD off the ground.  I pursuit of that, I’ve moved back to working completely from home, cutting down my hours at the agency significantly.  This has allowed me to focus more on my clients, as well as new projects to enhance my personal life and hopefully help fund HHOD.

I’ve been looking in to a lot of personal development tactics to go along with this - and I can honestly say, over the last 6 weeks, my overall level of happiness and productivity has skyrocketed.

I’m also currently shopping for some sort of fitness program to get back into the swing of things - since I moved, I’ve been lax in hitting the gym.  Thankfully, I haven’t put any of the weight I lost back on, but I doubt very seriously if I could hit the sidewalk and cruise through a 4 mile run like I could have 4 months ago.

I’ll try my best to keep things posted here - lots of stuff going on to offer my completely unqualified opinion on

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This post is inspired by Seth Godin’s “Alphabetical Order is Obsolete” Post a couple weeks back (sorry, sorry, I can only get through my aggregator every so often).

Anyway, he makes some pretty awesome observations about  how senseless the alphabetical system is for some applications…..

Your address book is in alphabetical order, right? Why? If you want to look someone up, type the name in. Alpha is least useful way to browse 4,000 names in an address book. I want them sorted by recency of contact, or in tickler-file order.

It’s a difficult concept for many people to grasp, simply because it’s been hammered in as THE default ordering system (sharing it’s reign with Numerical…) since we were little kids.  It caught on because, simply, we weren’t looking for the best way to order things…we were just looking for A way to order things. So, the default catches hold and we are stuck with it…until someone smarter than me rifts really hard and figures out a better way to do it.  (I’m looking at you - Dewey Decimal System)

Now, I can manage libraries sticking to alphabetical order, and my address book search is good enough (thanks 37signals!) so that I don’t need it to change.  But, you can correlate the seemingly senseless adoption of alphabetical order as “The Way” to the adoption of Google’s Search Results as the end-all-be-all for ordering what you’re looking for on the Internet.  If you’re looking for specific information, a specific product, or a certain web page - what you generally get is 1MM+ nonsensical results.

Don’t believe me?  There are 3.2MM results for a search for “Polynomials” - from a Wikipedia entry (not bad), to some worksheets, a glossary page, and a couple practice tests.  Of course, I was looking for information about Integrals, but Google didn’t know that.  So, they pushed back results to me that were relevant…by their standards anyway.  (the Title Tags, Content, and Inbound Anchor text matched my query…the domain was old enough, and was registered for the next 4 years) Granted, these results weren’t useful to me, but they were ‘relevant’.

That’s my problem - if we rely on a system that, while the best one out there, is still not even close to good - we are missing out on the greatest learning opportunity in history.  There is a great deal of information out there that we only have access to if we’re willing to dig, dig, dig through pages of SERPS.  What we’re working on at HHOD is a way to give you back results that aren’t relevant to you.  They will be USEFUL to you.

Relevant or Useful.  Which set of results would you rather have?

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So, I’m currently running around the web, learning as much as I possibly can about the science behind how search engines work - and how their API’s interact with partners.  While I consider myself a pretty darn talented SEO, I’m not a computer scientist - so this is interesting to me.  It’s also very important to a current project I’m working on.

Reading the existing patents that some search engines have out there is great fun - although it’s similar to reading long, convoluted contracts.

I’m feeling very academic today.

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So - if you’re a fan of any other sites I’ve started over the last several years, you’ll notice that they are all gone…..that’s right folks, this is the only blog type site I am operating at the moment.

Here’s what I did:

1)Sold TriathlonTraining.net to someone who could do that community justice.
1a)Included EnduranceAthletes.net as a domain in the package…forgot I had other sites hosted on that server.

2a,b,c)Had a panic attack because all of the great content disappeared, and the years of domain age and acquired links. Beg for backups from my host.  Get denied.

3)Told myself I have enough going on, and everything would be ok.

4)Cried

5)Realized, I don’t have time to do those sites justice.  But, I DO have time to run one site, that is a real reflection of who I am.

6)Permanently Redirected 6 domains into this one.  So, everything I had floating out there is consolidated.  This means, you may read a post or two about SEO, a couple of recipes, a horror movie review, my training log, and a rant about Paris Hilton in the same week.

Buckle in friends and neighbors.  This is going to be fun!

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Guess what folks - I’m feeling the holiday spirit pretty hard core right now.  Or, it could be the endorphins from the great run I just had.  Either way - I’m giving away some free SEO consulting.

That’s right - the first 5 folks that contact me via LinkedIN, Facebook, or Twitter will get a custom built “5 things to help your site rank dramatically better” document to implement.  It’s really that easy.  SEO consulting is expensive (at least the good stuff is) - and can yield great results, and I’m going to let you have it.

No commitment on your part - you won’t have to pay for anything.  This may or may not help me acquire new business, but it WILL DEFINITELY help your website.

I’d even offer some sort of guarantee, but since this is totally free, I’m not sure how that would work

Just contact me through one of the channels on the right sidebar.   I’ll post as spots fill up.

Technorati Tags: Free SEO, SEO Consulting

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