Friday 18 January 2008

Searching for a web designer

There is a novel new way to search for people called Spock.com a search engine for people using tags to find individuals who meet your chosen search terms. I thought maybe I would look up some web designers to get some inspiration or make some contacts. I started at the home page, I logged in as I am already signed up though I think you can search without being a member. I stated my search terms as follows:
“Website, Design, SEO” as I think that an ideal combination for a web designer is one who gas artistic flair (design as a keyword will bring up art & design and graphic design too) as well as knowledge of SEO…

Click on the screen-shot to go to my search results...

I found a suitable individual who seems to have a good grounding in artistic design by clicking on a link at the bottom of the results page, her name is Leanne Campbell. And in proper social networking style, there are numerous links to her work and even a picture along with links to other social sites.

What I really liked is that I could really get an idea of what this individual was all about, and then it would be up to me to get in touch if I felt that she could help me or even if I thought I could help her in some way. You can get in touch via Spock.com by requesting contact - this allows the contactee to check your profile before approving contact. This site differs from other sites (you are expected to add your other social site links too ie. linkdin, facebook etc..) in that the intention is that searches are purely keyword oriented. The more keywords (tags) you have the more chance you have of popping up in search results...

Wednesday 2 January 2008

SEO - New Years Resolution

It's the start of a brand new year - Happy New Year!... and I'm as busy as ever with internet projects. I am halfway through introducing a completely new template on my 'cassette to CD' website whilst still building content on 'livewyre.NET'. On top of that, I have to get properly into PHP and code some new pages on a commercial website which will (hopefully) integrate with a MYSQL database - Oh and I also need to code an interface for the database so that anyone can use it... PHP is new to me, so getting to grips with that little task alone will be a very steep learning curve.
Running through this 'to-do' list in my mind, I realised that while I have been concentrating on getting these jobs done, I have not been as SEO-aware as I should have. The routine (mundane) tasks have been left for later whereas they should really still be a priority. These tasks include:
  • When adding pages to a site, make sure your sitemap is updated
  • Make sure that new pages are included in your site-wide links
  • Make sure that new terms are included in your Glossary
  • Make sure new pictures are SEO-friendly with keyword-oriented tags
At the end of the day, there is little point adding new material if your visitors can't find it, so my new years resolution (and I don't make them as a rule...) is to ensure that I put my SEO thinking cap on every time I add new content to one of my sites.