With all the excitement that comes with starting your own blog, and wondering when Google will get around to crawling my new pages, I began to wonder where I stand in rankings currently. Granted, while I built my portfolio site with SEO in mind, I never really put much effort into enhancing it’s placement—largely because I never needed to. I was always applying for jobs, seeking them out, and never really had to worry about anyone ever looking for me.

But now that I’m <sarcasm>going to be a big blogger,</sarcasm> I got curious about where I currently stand. Because the content on my existing website is largely images with very brief descriptions, it’s not really scoring much in the way of SEO points. But blog articles are quite different. (Yay SEO fodder!) A quick Google search on my the name “Scott Springer” revealed some disturbing news. There are a bunch of Scott Springers from a variety of professions (Educators, doctors, musicians— thankfully I’m the only Scott Springer The Web Designer). The third link in is actually a blog article by some marketing guy bashing someone with my name. Even though it’s some other guy, it was still pretty disturbing to see something that spiteful with my name attached.

I finally found a link to my web design portfolio all the way down at number 28. Not too bad for no SEO, and using just my name as the keywords. I’ve kept a pretty low profile online up until now, so just for shits and giggles, I decided to check out myself on the image search too. The only photo of myself in the first 100 results was a photo from a high school alumni event back in 2002. It was on the first page—in this case, unfortunately, because i have a self-inflicted buzz cut, and odd-looking ho-chi-minh beard.

As an exercise, I’m going to make an effort to drive up my placement in Google’s results over the next couple months. Because I have absolutely no timeframe or traffic goals, I’m going to take my time and tweak one element at a time. By checking the results regularly, It will allow me to paint a fairly clear picture of what impact each action has. The basic principles are pretty easy. This is the order that I think I’m going to follow:

1. Generate keyword-rich content
   • Focus on my name, Scott Springer
   • Focus on relevant keywords, like web designer and online portfolio (See what I did just there? I put my name right next to two relevant words that I want associated with it.)
2. Secure inbound links with my target keywords in the link
3. Post more images of myself, making sure my name appears in the alt tag, and title tag
4. Post more images of myself, making sure my name appears in text immediately surrounding the image

So with any luck, over the next several months, I’ll become a much more popular Scott Springer. Maybe one day people will actually look at Jerry and ask him, “Are you related to Scott!?”

Ok, that might be a bit unlikely.

Over the past month or so there have been a bunch of different ideas kicking around in my head that would make great blog posts. But being that it is in fact late on a Sunday night, I decided to go after the low hanging fruit… A quick discussion about process and quality in product development.

There are very few companies that measure up when it comes to making a great product these days. Very few need to. Americans have long loved a great deal: All you can eat buffet; Buy one, get one free; Bigger, better feature lists. However, I argue that things are changing. Because of things like Web 2.0, (Note: I hate to even utter the phrase “Web 2.0” because it’s really just an outgrowth of the technology finally being able to offer the kind of quality user experiences that designers and information architects have been drooling over for, well since the Web.) the iPhone, and Apple’s overall strong market surge as of late, consumers are starting to understand that what looks good on paper is not always what works the best in practice.

I’m reminded of a quote I saw once on a Mac news site:

“We are very careful about what features we add [to the iPod] because we can’t take them away”. —Steve Jobs

This pretty much sums up the way that Steve Jobs thinks. Feature lists are irrelevant if the user experience is compromised. That is not to say that features are unimportant, but rather that the implementation of the features is at least equally important as the feature itself.

The old adage, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression” comes to mind. This is especially relevant in the technology sector because you have many companies rushing and fighting to be the first to market with a new technology or device that your competitor is invariably also developing. Conventional business wisdom is to cut corners on the development process, trim features, or skimp on design, and get it out the door. Then fix it later.

But what happens with all those people who your marketing department is able to dupe into actually buying your inferior product? They’ll forever have the sub-optimal user experience you sold them stuck in their head. (This is why I’ll never even consider buying another Sony Ericsson cell phone.) Even worse, your users will complain about their experience to their friends—or anyone who will listen. You’d better hope that the unsatisfied user doesn’t happen to also run a popular blog, lest you end up in the situation that Orbitz got themselves into. (Side note, I’ve never used Orbitz, and after reading this that story, I never will.)

Being first to market doesn’t really mean much if you don’t have what it takes to get traction. Just ask the creators of MySpace, or even worse, (gasp!) Friendster. I’ll bet there were a ton of people who thought, “Big whoop. Another social networking site.” And now they’re likely all users of it. Getting back to my point about features vs implementation, everyone thought Apple was bat-shit crazy for entering the cell phone market after it had been cornered by Nokia, LG, and Motorola. But that’s because they’re thinking about the feature list on paper. All in all, the iPhone on paper is rather unremarkable. It doesn’t do as much as other smart phones, and it costs more. Why would anyone buy it?

Well all you have to do to answer that question is to pick one up and use it for five minutes. Everything about it is fun. When compared to using a “regular” phone, it’s just downright amazing. The benefits of properly implemented features can be seen in the statistics of mobile web browsing: In six months since it’s launch, Apple’s mobile safari has already become the most dominant mobile user agent, out pacing mobile IE and all other cell browsers. Amazingly, this statistic was achieved on AT&T’s pitiful edge network.

The take away from this statistic is that people actually enjoy browsing using the iPhone. (Or even more likely—people can actually use the browser for something relevant!) Even when faced with slow speeds, people responded better to intuitive interface over beefy features. It’s no longer enough to be the first to release a product. You have to be the one who makes the product truly useful.

After loads of procrastinating a bit of php research, some css tweaking, and a beer, I think I’m ready to go ahead with the posting.  I expect that there will be further theme tweaking and learning that needs to be done, but I also want to start generating content.

So.  Since Scoop is new, lets talk about what it is…
Scoop is my brand-spankin’ new blog. I’ve been working as a web designer for the past eight years, so it only seems right that my blog be focused on the creative field—particularly as it pertains to Web design. You can expect me to link to, editorialize on, and generally ramble about things affecting the industry. However, I’m also a bit of a geek, so I’ll very likely be posting stuff that falls into the realm of product reviews, tips/tricks, etc.  Who knows.  Enough fluff, time to get started on a real post…