Web Architecture, Management and Marketing

It seems like there has been a resurgence in a video file with an audio track automatically starting when a website loads.  I see that there are two reasons for this, the first is new video ads, the second is that people think it’s cool.  This is really annoying.  I was checking on a page on the ColdFusion developers journal just to be blasted with some stupid video ad starting up.  I’m listening to a podcast right now!  Sometimes I’m listening to music.  Eitherway, it’s arrogant to think that someone coming to your site isn’t doing anything else but looking at your site.  There should only be one reason that a video file with an audio track or an audio file should start playing right away and that’s when links used to get to the page make it clear that sound is expected.  For adverts, this means NEVER!  Everyone should know by now that marketing on the internet is a conversation because more interesting stuff is just a click away.  When you start to talk at someone without them wanting to talk to you, the best you can hope for is just to be ignored.

Time to give away a secret. Squidoo. This site allows you to create a page on something you’re interested in (a lens). On this page you can include items for sale that you’d get a cut from, books from amazon, itunes tracks, etc. The cut you end up getting is pretty small though. The big benefit of Squidoo is the authority given to page in google results. Search for my daughters name, Georgia MacDougall (search) or how about Learning Adobe Flex (search). You should see my Squidoo Lenses as result #3 at the time of this writing.

I didn’t give any marketing related thought to either of these pages and still ranking is pretty solid.

Think about it a bit and put up something useful on Squidoo … you’ll end up becoming an authority on the subject pretty quickly.

I just came across this cool article from the SEOmoz folks who interviewed several well known SEO’s, asking them to weight the various SEO best practices in use today. I also have personal confirmation from a good buddy of mine, responsible for millions in online revenue that this info is on the level. I’m considering signing up for the paid service for more articles and tools. If I do, I’ll post any interesting thoughts.

Speaking of SEO, nichelaunch.com is a friend’s directory service. It will be worth the effort to get your name out there.