Posted by paul novak on February 17, 2011 at 3:43 am
I don’t know what your spiritual views may be. I can be pretty assured you have some though since just about everyone does. From the early Aztecs and their somewhat unfriendly tendency to pull the beating heart from faithful schleps whose only mistake was to stay in town on holy day, to the positively benign by comparison Shi’ite Islamic fundamentalists willingness to beat themselves into a bloody mess during the Tiq Zani ritual, there’s a plenty wide range of beliefs out there to choose from. Kinda makes our own fire and brimstone Christian services here in the south seem downright social now that I think about it. I’m somewhat exempt from any of it though by virtue of my own unwillingness to concede any kind of belief until I have some authentication, which pretty well puts me on the spiritual group W bench with father rapers for the equivalent of littering. I do, however, sometimes imagine what spiritual beliefs I would subscribe to though if I were to make a choice.
Perhaps the most attractive to me is reincarnation. For some reason, the idea that we are doomed to repeat past life mistakes over and over until we get the point and thus further perfect our soul for its eventual meeting with its creator holds a certain degree of appeal. Sure, if I were to REALLY find myself reincarnated after my demise I would promptly kill myself since there is no way in hell I’m going through all of this again, yet there still remains a certain amount of attractiveness to the idea. With a little more thinking on the matter, I’m on a roll here with the thinking stuff, I imagine this appeal is due to the possibilities reincarnation holds for practicing denial and shifting blame; two things I’ve already admitted to occasionally finding quite useful. Especially when combined with Rum. You don’t end up on the group W bench for nothing you know.
For instance…
You would think that a guy who enjoys words enough to work with them for a living would be pretty well organized. You’d imagine him sitting at a stately oak desk with a row of prestigious books neatly arranged on the corner. There’d be a well stocked pencil holder full of sharpened pencils and shiny pens that actually work placed strategically next to the work area. You’d probably picture neatly arranged files, tabbed and labeled for easy reference arrayed in alphabetical order in his file cabinet and within easy reach. He’d have an uncluttered desktop and a neat little wastebin off to the side with precisely three crumpled pieces of paper lying in the bottom because by golly, this guy is serious enough to keep mistakes to a minimum.
Well, in my past life I was obviously a dyslexic compulsive hoarder because the inability to achieve anything resembling neatness and organization is the biggest reason for my currently higgledy piggledy state of existence. Apparently there was something I forgot when I embarked on this writing career of mine, in particular, that I am a disorganized slob. As pretty as the above picture is, the reality is cold and stark, a veritable wasteland in fact where organization and neatness go to die. Prestigious books? Well, if you count dog eared copies of Bloom County and Dean Koontz novels as literary greats then I guess it’s possible. I have all the classics; Huckleberry Finn, Gulliver’s Travels, War and Peace, Of Mice and Men and more do in fact reside in the same household as me. However, my spouse has wisely arranged them on ledges around the house, unmolested and safely out of my reach. My pencil holder is well stocked indeed although out of the fifty assorted pens and pencils there are approximately two pens that work, one of which contains lime green ink and none of the pencils has a point. I don’t even know where the pencil sharpener is although I do remember seeing it once. A moot point at best since there isn’t a doctor alive who can match me for mangled handwriting.
I’m a great one for taking notes and keeping hold of important information. At first glance this would seem a good and promising glimmer of hope. Problem is, the contents of my file cabinet look more like something you’d find in a third grade teacher’s confiscated items drawer than anything else. There aren’t any files in there but if the in-laws are going to visit and I need to find a Whoopee cushion, I know exactly where to look. My actual notes and papers are spread all over in heaps as if a confetti stuffed piñata exploded over my desk. There are bills and notices, hastily scrawled bits of inspiration on half shredded paper napkins that I’ve long forgotten the inspiration behind, passwords and logins that I have no idea what they unlock, client notes and instructions that I somehow manage to remember even though coffee stains make them look more like Rorschach cards than anything and a whole host of miscellaneous detritus and random objects. Wastebasket? Not a one in sight. Since I’m not sure what half this stuff is, I throw nothing out until I am absolutely and positively certain I won’t need it again, which is about twice a year. Of course, three days after throwing the stuff out is when I end up needing it.
Lest you think this is a simple matter of bucking up and taking charge of things, consider that this has been my case since I first managed to get hold of a marker and the family photo album at the age of three. School was a nightmare and while the rest of the class had to turn in their notebooks for grading every semester, my teachers took one look at my lumpy book-bag and the trail of loose papers following me from class to class and decided to just take my word for it as long as my test scores stayed high. I still have vague memories of my English teacher praising my above average CAT’s while holding my notebook between thumb and forefinger as if it were radioactive.
It’s not that I haven’t tried. There have been periods where I’ve managed to maintain the appearance of tidy efficiency for weeks at a time. I’ve learned though that these attempts are in fact serious mistakes. Apparently, whatever forces are at work during the actual reincarnation process remain active during your lifetime in order to insure that should you catch on to what’s up, you still get your lumps. In this case, these brief periods of neatness only serve to cause an eventual explosion of disorganizational chaos. Things will roll along swimmingly and I’ll present to the world the happy and self congratulatory face of one who has their inner slob demons licked, then one day I’ll open the door to my room and it will appear as if a pack of rabid squirrels were fighting over a ten pound acorn on my desk. Far worse than the gentle and slow buildup I’m accustomed to, this will be a torrent of disorganization bursting forth like water from a dam. Everything in its path is obliterated and only time can allow things to once again resume their normal state of serene disarray. In these cases I usually just drag out the hefty lawn bags, scoop everything in, and resign myself to more of the status quo.
I’m told there are those whose offices are clean and tidy examples of happy efficiency. It might be true because I’ve seen things resembling this in corporate buildings. I’m a bit suspicious though because the mere fact that they pay someone to come in and do the cleaning smacks of conspiracy. I mean really, who pays someone to clean up their office? Messy people, that’s who. And I resent the picture of efficient neatness they foist on the rest of the world as if they never left a piece of paper out of place or a pencil unsharpened.
At any rate, let’s get back to spirituality.
If one day we should meet in another life? Kill me.
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Posted by paul novak on February 7, 2011 at 5:33 am
Just about anyone who freelances their skills online is all too familiar with the steadily degrading state of the industry. Outsourcing to countries like India is driving down rates and quality concerns are running rampant, all of which is conspiring to create an increasingly difficult to navigate freelancing landscape. Well, talk about a spew your coffee moment, imagine the acid buildup I experienced when I read this recent news item. Apparently, India has a new scheme in the works. One that raises questions we would never have to ask in the U.S., and adds to popular sentiments of offshore outsourcing being a prime suspect in some of the worst trade corruption today.
In what can only be viewed by most of us here in the West as exploitation, India is going to be turning its prison population into the next source of cheap outsourcing labor. As if their free citizens did not do enough to degrade rate averages and add to the perception of outsourcing as being a minefield of unreliable services, they will now be literally “training” their inmates and putting them behind computers. Yes, the next time you call to dispute your phone bill, the next time you place a job on a work board, you may just end up with not only a foreign national you can barely understand, but one who may be serving time for murder and spent 6 weeks training to be your “professional” service provider.
Kind of makes you feel all sharp and pointy inside don’t it?
Read more at the Guardian
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Posted by paul novak on February 2, 2011 at 5:22 am
If you were having any doubts that content indeed truly is king, look no further than the new brouhaha revolving around Demand Studios and its successful debut with an IPO that not only opened higher than initially expected, but ended 35% higher. To further cement the fact and add a big fat exclamation point, Google in turn immediately makes public that it is all of a sudden so concerned with the quality of the content it is returning in its search results that it is going to be changing its algorithms to address the problem of content mills. Apparently content is not only king but it is in and of itself, regardless of its quality, enough to build an entire $1.4 billion dollar company around. There lies the problem as it’s not the quality of the content that’s made this possible but its sheer volume. It’s almost enough to make a web content writer forget all about substance. Almost.
Despite Demand Media’s successful first outing, there is a huge question mark of whether or not this content er, company *cough cough* has a sustainable model. Demand’s CEO, of course, in disputing the unattractive content mill label his company has been saddled with is quick to point out all the great plans for expansion his company has. But the truth is Demand Media has yet to show a profit, which has caused many would be investors to question whether Demand is even viable as a business model. Sure Demand can rake in the traffic, but at this point in time Demand appears very much like a paper tiger. They can make a lot of noise and pull in a lot of traffic, but once you get past all the theatrics the substance is hollow and disappointing.
In an interesting peripheral development, Google’s Matt Cuts less than two days after Demand’s successful outing announces Google’s plans to begin aggressively dealing with the problem of content farms. Now, Demand Studios has been around for six years and in the last 3 or so has pretty well buttoned up the top slots in Google with its Ehow and Answerbag sites. What is interesting about this is the fact they have done this with what must be honestly called poor content. Oftentimes, very poor content. If you have any doubts about this, I invite you to have a look at this list put together last year by Jeff Bercovici. It’s enough to make me want to do penance considering I’m an “approved” Demand writer. I’m fortunate I stuck almost entirely to simple fact lists and never wrote about how to put on a pair of eyeglasses or anything equally asinine.
What Demand has done is nothing more than exclusively exploited Google’s own expressed interest in promoting fresh and consistent content. While many of us were busy building the BEST possible content we could, Demand threw quality to the wolves and went full bore after producing a lot of fresh content on a regular basis that was targeted to some of the most common search terms currently in demand; a whole LOT of content. We are talking anywhere from 3,000 to 7,000 new articles a day. What this amounts to is nothing less than a brute force attack on Google’s fondness for fresh and relevant content. More importantly, it exposes the weakness in the Google algorithms by showing us that far from quality being as important as Google has repeatedly stated it is, simply dumping tons of content regardless of quality will cement you in the top rankings and make you an ad revenue hero. I can’t help but imagine that some of the Google bigwigs must be feeling somewhat chagrined to find that not only has someone revealed just how little importance Google really places on content quality, they demonstrated this by creating a 1.4 billion IPO around it.
As you can probably see, it’s not surprising Google would now decide the time is right to address the “problem” of content farms. This is annoying because there are a lot of damn good writers out there turning out some amazing content, yet they are consistently buried in the SERPS because several others have decided to load tons of well optimized garbage into a site. Many of us have known for years that the true value of quality content lies in its ability to form the bedrock of your online presence. It establishes your skill, your knowledge. It builds your network and authority. Building ranking though? Not so much. That’s better done addressing search engine algorithms and feeding the search bots. It’s almost ironic that little startups like Blekko with little presence or chance of dethroning the big guys like Google and Bing have already added controls allowing their users to block results from some of Demand’s outlets from their search results.
Once again, Google is behind the curve and only shows real concern when we catch a glimpse of the man behind the curtain.
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Posted by paul novak on January 31, 2011 at 8:06 pm
I like to write. I can sit with a simple idea and within a few minutes find myself sitting in front of over a thousand words. Watch what happens with this post if you need proof. Good for production, bad for just about every practical application of web text. Despite this natural proclivity and willingness, writing alone has turned out to be only a fractional part of the job.
As a web content writer I’m finding myself dealing more and more with the SEO aspects of content rather than the construction of the actual content itself! Depressing and a damper on my plans for world domination through media control of the masses yes but alas, one does what one must. So, I spend inordinate amounts of time sifting through SEO data and implementing it into my client’s content in an effort to give them as much value as possible. Sure fresh and interesting content is supremely important, but when you also consider links, anchor text, relevancy, titles, keyword placement and all the rest and the great deal of authority that search engines seem to place on them, the importance of the content itself becomes diminished.
There are those who will even tell you to forget about grammar and substance as long as you can get all the SEO aspects correct and to be honest, they are right to a point. Simply using every SEO trick in the book and using them correctly, it is possible to build some incredibly fast ranking with some incredibly poor content. Not something I would recommend, however, if you intend to have a web presence that lasts more than a few months and does more than generate a temporary run of click-throughs. A content writer can certainly be successful making SEO his main priority, but without maintaining content quality, the job becomes much more difficult.
I’ve come to feel this is because writing is by itself simply not beholden to outside algorithms and internet fickleness. You won’t write something today and find it obsolete six months later. This is fortunate since I imagine it would be pretty hard to produce any classics of literature if every six months some outside element decided your work was now relegated to the ashes of history, never to be important again. Certainly it can be a bit difficult for the uninitiated to read original Shakespeare for the first time; the construction evolves over time, but the writing remains true. A writer today could construct stories in a similar fashion and find himself regaled as an authoritive voice of literature. Try promoting an old SEO tactic like link stuffing or hidden text today though and you’ll be instantly and rightly branded a blithering idiot.
In order to be effective, you have to meld effective content with effective SEO. The result is that the web changes the rules of writing. The simple fact is, writing alone is not enough for the web. You can’t just tell a story, you have to “sell” it to the search engines as well as the masses and anyone who owns a website, runs a blog, or relies on the web for exposure is subject.
When it comes to SEO it seems everyone either believes themselves to be knowledgeable, or they feel it’s just so much voodoo and won’t touch it. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of middle ground. This is likely because of the amount of importance SEO carries and the sheer terror of being revealed a bumbling fool if your advice or beliefs are seized upon and used, then summarily result in the death of an entire promotional program. At the other ends of the spectrum are those who will swear to every SEO belief that sounds good and promote their opinions as gospel; this is usually accompanied by a link to their website offering their web services. Many of them are well intentioned, yet few really have the weight of authority behind them. I cannot tell you how many times I have read discussions about SEO and watched as participants wrangle back and forth with their own statements of authority and professed knowledge, only to find with a little research that their own websites are buried in the SERPs for the best relevant text. I don’t claim to be a guru, but I can at the least be satisfied with my targeted keywords consistently landing me on the first and second pages of a Google search in a fairly competitive niche.
When assessing the authority any source of SEO claims or advice holds there are two things to keep in mind.
- SEO is not static.
Search engine optimization is a constantly evolving and almost ephemeral process. The tiniest appearing changes to how search engines view links or text can have a massive impact on their effects. Because of this, anyone making SEO part of their professed repertoire must literally be constantly on the watch for new developments and changes. Knowing what works right now is no great accomplishment; there is a wealth of reliable information available for the reading. Knowing what is coming, what new developments mean for SEO, and how to make the most of them is where true authority lies.
- None of the search giants tell us the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
For obvious reasons, Google does not tell us everything there is to know about their search algorithms. Google really doesn’t tell us much at all in concrete terms unless it serves their purposes and poses little chance of giving anyone the opportunity to game their systems. This means that there are in reality NO SEO “experts”. Some are better than others, some are really damn good, and still others only know that there is money to be made by adding SEO to their repertoire and simply want to ride the bandwagon and garner a few profits from those unwilling to deal with the whole thing. The experts are the ones setting the algorithms that define how SEO is practiced, the ones setting the rules for the game.
The rest of us are only players.
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