Between a friend’s divorce and helping her move (and losing her as a steady client in the turmoil until her business can be moved and formulating can resume), my 91 year old mom falling and fracturing a hip and being back in her wheelchair, and spending a lot of time working with and learning Sony Vegas Movie Studio video editing software I’m still just one step away from taking a job as a forest ranger somewhere, hopefully with a horse.
So after a few edits and Youtube uploads (see my Caddy’s on the Beach video) I’m happier now than in a long, long time since my frustration with Nero’s video editing software knew no bounds. Sony Vegas even permits me to upload video’s longer than 15 minutes (with a warning) which is perfect since Google/Youtube granted me longer video status a while back.
As a “don’t take life so seriously” move I’m also doing an amateur series of exercise and martial arts Youtube videos and articles on my personal blog for the casual get in kinda-sorta awesome shape without competing with anyone but yourself.
Search engine optimization really deals with the question of how do you deal with strangers. Strangers who google whatever they google to find you have to find optimized pages, but what and how optimized? What does optimized mean to you if it’s not making you money?
Well that’s just it. If it’s not answering customers’ needs then it’s not optimized right. If you have a shop you know that everyone who comes in the door year after year is not the same so you’e learned to ask questions. You’ve gotta do the same on the web. Ask, listen and respond. Watch where they go, see where they seem to be having difficulty and and then mork to make it easier for the next time.
Keeping improving a web visitor’s quality experience means knowing what they want and why they’re there on your site by asking for feedback and by tracking their movements on and in your site, and tracking them from wherever they’ve come from to see how they react differently when coming from different referral points on the web (Google searches vs a link in DMOZ for example). If you can do that then you can optimize content differently in each area to satisfy every segment of visitor.
So it’s not mere keywords and return page position we’re talking about, but true optimization that will take your site to the competitive forefront of your market niche, keep you there and gain you the strong advantage that you need.
Live blogged from my Droid.
