Blog of the Week – SEOMoz

July 2, 2009 By 4 Comments

If you are anything like me, you probably find the whole Search Engine Optimization (SEO) a bit of a mystery. Let’s face it, how many of us could claim to know our link juice from our Page Rank? Not too many I bet!

It seems to me that getting one of my lame sites to actually show in Google (or other search engine) results is as much black magic as technique. What makes the whole thing even more frustrating is that for a business, getting good search engine placement is pretty much essential for success. What is a sad marketing person to do?

Funny you should ask that because I have a solution.

For a while now I’ve been reading the blog over at SEOMoz and it is one of the best places I’ve found to learn about the basics of SEO. If you hang out in Social Media at all you’ll have come across Rand Fishkin, the inspiration behind SEOMoz.

I’ve not met Rand in person, but I have a lot of time for what he has to say. He is one of a small core of people who seem to love sharing their knowledge and I find myself reading his blog just about everyday.

Rand not only shares his thoughts on how to be successful with your SEO, he also writes about his business, raising venture capital and is an all around interesting guy – someone you know would be good to chat with over a beer or two!

Even better, SEOMoz isn’t a one-man band. A number of people from their team write on the blog or take part in the videos – serious geek factor sometimes, but always done in an accessible way. While SEOMoz clearly has the mission of selling their consulting and SEO products, there is just so much great info that they make freely available for anyone.

So here’s my thought – getting our websites found is vital for success so part of my strategy is to make sure I read the SEOMoz blog. That’s why it’s Blog of the Week!

How do you get found in search? Do you use a company like SEOMoz to help? Do you read Rand’s blog?

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: , , ,

How I stay in sync

March 25, 2009 By Leave a Comment

At any given time, I’ve got a lot going on. As well as working hard as part of the Winco Identification team, I have the UniqueDay wedding photography business, my wife’s beauty business and other projects to keep on top of – not to mention family things as well.

As a 21st Century guy, I’m able to keep everything reasonably under control, using some of the tools that are available today.

The one constant thing is my phone – I use the Apple iPhone, which I have with me just about all the time. I also have to report that Google (which seems to be taking over just about everything) has a big part to play in keeping everything working.

There are really three devices that I need to keep in sync. The phone, my PC at home and my PC at the office. Here is how it all works:

Dates and appointments. This area is controlled by Google Calendar. I use Google Calendar Sync to sync Outlook on my home PC to Google. I then use NuevaSync to Sync Google Calendar to the built in iPhone calendar app. This means that I have access to my calendar information even when I don’t have Internet access on my phone. I don’t have the ability to sync to the Outlook calendar at Winco so I only use office Outlook for email.

Email. I have 3 main email accounts. Winco mail, wedding business mail and a general Gmail account. All 3 are synced to both my iPhone and home PC. The office PC isn’t so helpful since I can only access Winco mail there (of course I can also get to Gmail via the website), but no problem since I always have my iPhone when I am there.

Contacts. Synced between the iPhone and Gmail contacts using NuevaSync.

Tasks/To-Do’s. To keep all my tasks and projects under control I use the great Toodledo service. This a basically a website to keep track of all these things (great if you use David Allen’s GTD techniques) and also has an iPhone app that automatically syncs with the on-line version. This means I have access to all my task and project information even when there is no web access around.

Notes. The Toodledo website service includes a basic, but useful Notes section. A third party developer, Appigo makes a really nice Notes application for iPhone that syncs perfectly with Toodledo.

Documents. For colaborating on documents with the rest of the marketing team, I use Google Docs. (see a bit of a Google trend going on here?)

Jott.com. Jott is the final part of my sync strategy. Signing up for the Jott service, lets me call in to the service to make make note of appointments, add to my to-do list, send a text message or update my Twitter or FaceBook status. It is a great way to capture thoughts and ideas while driving, anyone who has attempted to type on the iPhone while trying to stear knows what I mean!)

Calling Jott and telling it about an appointment and having it appear in Google Calendar, iPhone Calendar and Outlook a few minutes later is just really 21st Century.

These days we all have to try and get more done in less time – I’d really suggest you check out some of these services. Also let me know if you have a better way. I’m always wanting to get better!

One final thing; since I set up my system, Google has come up with some additional sync solutions that replicate some of the functionality of NuevaSync. Because my NuevaSync has worked really well for me, I have not felt the need to change.

Filed Under: Tech Tagged With: , , , ,