LizWelsh.com

Content is Queen

Clients with websites dominated by Flash (whose only text is embedded in graphics and video) sometimes ask me how to rank higher in search engines for their industry. My answer is simple. Content is Queen.

Do what they do with their lyrics, but in html-visible text on your site, not audio or graphics.

Take, for example, this song: http://youtube.com/watch?v=NOHXPNvVEwo

Notice the the focus and repetition of the keywords. Emulate Queen’s lyric length and poetic placement of keywords.

Write a magnum opus on industrial equipment sales, stationery, or the decks you build. If it helps, rent a smoke machine and wear a shiny white body suit in the process.

Happy Birthday to the “Blob”

It’s inevitable: new technology catches up with you no matter how old school you try to remain.

Until recently, I swore I’d never show my face on Facebook. Seo was the last name of an up-and-coming activist named Danny, blackberry was my favorite Kool-Aid flavor, and CSS … wasn’t that a TV show about crime in Miami? Email was instant enough for me. In the good old days I had IM-less relationships where we held hands, looked into each other’s eyes, and even (gasp) called one another. Just last year, a successful internet entrepreneur I worked for thought LOL stood for “lots of luck,” and I played Scrabble on a board.

Yet tonight I tutored a student from Korea learning English using a NYT article about Facebook.com. This Saturday’s lesson: create a profile for her, complete with an arm’s-length pic of herself looking thoughtful. She’ll be throwing sheep in no time. (And maybe, since she’s younger, she can help me figure out what that’s about.)

And then I helped my daughter create a “blob” on Wordpress. She had overheard me on the phone with a friend (and gifted writer) about her new blog, and suddenly she had to make a “blob” too. (My answer, of course: “You already have one. It’s called your room — go clean it up.”) Hers became one of the 120,000 new blogs created today, the 10th anniversary of the coining of the term “weblog.”

It is ironic to me that I helped two younger people — one of them from the most wired nation in the world — still learning how to write and speak in English utilize technology that will very soon pass me by me at break-bandwidth speed, leaving them to teach me.

In the mean time, Facebook just announced they’re teaming up with Match.com for a Little Black Book dating application . . . wish me LOL on finding someone who doesn’t know what that means either.

Cloud Nine

I’m on Cloud Nine. Or rather, Cloud Nine Creative’s website, gathering some last-minute facts for an article I’m writing about the multimedia company for an upcoming magazine article. For the past couple of hours I’ve been reading two issues of WedLuxe, their luxury wedding magazine sold throughout Canada. I went to bed day-dreaming of fairy tales, Prince Charming, and honeymoons. Visions of Vera Wang gowns, pint-size ring-bearers clad in Perry Ellis, Swarovski crystals, and Thailand retreats spun in my head. But I didn’t fall asleep. I couldn’t fall asleep.

I lay there with words ringing in my ears: decadent, artisan, haute couture. I lay there remembering my wedding. Not so luxe. Not so long ago. And no so lasting.

No Carmela Sutera gown for me. I wore one from JCPenny’s — a pretty white prom dress, in fact, that I returned with the receipt for a refund afterwards. The ceremony? I left the planning to my then husband-to-be, who arranged for us to walk down the aisle to a Smashing Pumpkins song at his home church in Kokomo, Indiana. (His uncle forgot to press play.) Our reception was held in the church basement with folding chairs and paper tablecloths. We dined on cheese chunks and grapes and opened K-Mart presents from selfless relatives who could barely afford to pay their trailer park rent. The cake we froze to eat on our first anniversary got thrown out.

In the premiere issue of WedLuxe, editor-in-chief Angela Desveaux waxes poetic on what a luxury is, exactly. She says, “Depending on who you ask, luxury can be defined in many ways. Some will describe objects of opulence while others speak of intangible qualities like time, passion and excellence.”

Since my wedding eight years ago, I’ve come to appreciate the fine details involved in wedding celebrations, in large part thanks to EventDV magazine, a publication I became involved with as a result of my background in film/video and writing. I was thrust into the world of weddings — a world I didn’t belong in but now feel, in some small way, a part of. I’ve come to know many of the North American players in the wedding world — filmmakers, in particular, who make art films that would blow you away. I’ve begun to see what all the fuss is about.

But as for opulence, it’s something I write about, not experience. Unless of course you subscribe to Desveaux’s second interpretation of luxury. After a $10K custody battle and half a decade of heartache, I am surrounded by those intangible luxuries she speaks of. Not just my darling daughter, but also my ex-husband, whose closeness to us is remarkable. Unconventional family unit, yes. But we vacation together, cook together, laugh together, and love our daughter together. Today he watched the Packer game with Granny as I worked. He made her dinner, and dessert.

Our Edy’s ice cream with Hershey’s syrup may not hold a candle to a monogrammed cake created by a world-renowned pastry chef, but the warmth in this broken family is felt. It is nearly tangible, and as I prepare to try yet again to fall asleep tonight, dabbing the liquid one of my dogs just vomited on the carpet with Brawny, I feel blessed. I feel like I am on cloud nine.

accolade sillier than Yahoo Ambassador?

When I became certified as a — drumroll please — Yahoo Ambassador at a former company, my colleagues and I joked that they should start addressing me as Madam Ambassador. I have always wondered how many brainstorm sessions took place before the Yahoo folks settled on “Ambassador.” And was it supposed to be funny, like my coworker whose official title is CSS guru?

For those of you who don’t know, the Yahoo Search Marketing Ambassador Program was developed to provide training and professional recognition from Yahoo Search Marketing to search engine marketers who complete all web-based training and receive a passing score on the final test. Though not required, before becoming certified, as with pay-per-click platform Google AdWords, I honed my expertise with real experience creating and managing hundreds of online ad campaigns, driving tons of traffic to local business who might otherwise not have been on the first page of Yahoo or Google. There are a lot of Yahoo Ambassadors out there with the logo and title but no real experience or proven results. Those of us who have that deserve a title a bit more serious, don’t you think?

Years ago I worked as a mental health professional at a residential school for boys who were hard-of-hearing or deaf and who also struggled with issues like mental illness and developmental delays. There was one little boy diagnosed with sociopathy, who I’ll call Tommy. At the time, Tommy was 13 (but his physical appearance, as well as his emotional maturity, were stuck at about 7 years old). He had moments of pit-bull like rage and yet he could be as yielding as a small puppy. I remember him standing outside, as the other boys played football in the courtyard, kicking his foot against a brick wall, head down, lonely and dejected because they wouldn’t let him join in. But the sweetest memory I have of him was him watching those old Yahoo! commercials — the ones where a cowboy would yell, “Yahooooooooooo!” Tommy was so tickled by these commercials, and when the voice Yahoo’ed, Tommy (who was almost completely deaf) sang right along–with gusto–in his shrillest voice, “Yaheeeeeeeeeeee!”

I guess it’s one of those things you had to be there for. But it makes me laugh out loud to this day, as does the title of Yahoo Ambassador. But to answer my own question, is there a sillier title? Yaheeeeeee!