Learning SEO, Bing, Windows Server, Syntactical Sugar, Home Owners, Death, Tron Legacy, Hair, Billable Hours and other Associations

How do you create and learn best practices for SEO? I am glad you asked! Sure there are those who will tell you, (and usually charge you) to cheat the Internets, but eventually, as we have talked about and discussed, it (the Internets) will catch up to you. And then you will be, as they say in the business, hosed. Great SEO is all about finding the words and phrases that people use and "associate" in their heads around the products or services that you have to offer. For examples of this, take a look at the sidebar and try out some of the searches in the People versus Inoun games. What you will notice (besides the really strange associations), is that words do actually mean something. And what they mean, just like the Marketing 101 class you didn't pay attention in, is that branding is all in a consumer's head. Or another way of marketing or talking about, "branding" is that a "brand" is basically what people "think of" or "associate" with your product or service. It is all in the mind. It is in their head's. So to speak. SEO is about branding.

And this is true of SharePoint, SharePoint Search, Bing, Windows Server, Home Owners Associations, and the other syntactical sugar that we have played with over the last few blog entries. Some of the funnier associations have been words like Home Owners Associations(HOAs) and then associating them with things like "Death", "Taxes", "Billable Hours", "Satellite Dishes" and the new movie "Tron Legacy". And it has been a blast. If none of this is making any sense, go back and read some of the strange and often comical (well, I hope anyway) articles that Inoun wrote to create these associations I like to call "Syntactical Sugar". As a BID, I really like that phrase (syntactical sugar), because if you have ever noticed that little sugar high that kids get when eating a candy bar or drinking too much soda pop, and then in your mind, if you try real hard, are able to make the association with linguistics, words, syntax, and the euphoria it gives you when a word association is made, you will understand what I am talking about.

An Inoun example!

The other morning, some of the random molecules were running around the house and others were eating their non-syntactical sugar for breakfast. The Misses said to one of them, "You need to eat something besides just hot cocoa for breakfast! And I mean it!" To which of course another one of the molecules answered, "Stop rhyming and I mean it!" To which of course the Misses remarks,

"Ahhhhh!"

You see? Now that is syntactical sugar! Everyone laughs, and then the conversation leads and eventually gets associated with bodily functions. Always happens. I don't know why. BID.

Even "the dog" knows how this works. It is amazing. In casual conversation, if anyone in the room mentions the word, "walk", the four legged, tree'd cat, feline chasing, bird hunting dog knows what it means. It is one four letter word that is completely banned at our house. Unless of course you really do want to take the pooch for a "walk."

Words are soooo cool. And just for fun, we have over the last few weeks made a tonne o associations that have, for the most part been funny. Anyone remember LAX? How about Tron Legacy, Britney Spears and piles? How about going green?

Think of it as a form of "branding". Not in the literal sense (as in cows) of the word of course, but it does kind of work that way. These words and their associations "stick" to you. And it is also why "politically correct" will never work. An association is always easier to create than to correct. BID.

"But what does this have to do with Bing and SharePoint Search Inoun!!!???!!" Well, everything!

Hey kids, wanna here a store e? Hm? Yes, I knew you did... (Okay, the first one of you to comment on where that association came from wins some free syntactical sugar.)

So to make this interesting, as you can tell, I just love syntactical sugar. But there are things that I absolutely, positively, when it has to be their over knight, well, strongfully don't knot dislike.

Billable hours. Well, not really, it really isn't the hour's fault. That isn't it. It is really that sometimes it is the only thing that is measured. And as any intelligent, graduating, degree carrying engineer will tell you, that when you only measure one thing, really bad things happen. And so it is with billable hours. It is like non-politically correct speech. It has a way of feeding on itself and people start to believe that what we "say" is what we "are". Billable hours is the same way. Pretty soon you have people not doing their training, not taking care of their families, working weekends, driving poor text messaging idiots off of the road. Billable hours, quite simply, means death. When there is a focus on only one thing, it is quite simply the beginning on the path to the end. Think of what would happen if we only measured "creativity"? So everyone is all of a sudden "more creative". We have all of these processes and systems in place to "make" people "more creative." We do things like have swimming pools, free food, come to work any time you want, create cool things that have nothing to do with work or the success of the company, people fighting and competing over "who is the most creative", and well, the next thing you know, you are out of business. And it is not because creativity is a bad thing, it is primarily because we only focused on one thing, and we lost sight of the real goal. Running and staying in business. The same thing happens with billable hours. BID. </rant>

But that isn't the story. That is mearly the introduction and the begining of our book.

Chapter 1.

The other day my niece went to pick up a car with grandpa (well, not really, neither one of them is strong enough), after having had some work done on it . While they were waiting, my niece said something like, "hey what's up with that guy, that is just gross..." So grandpa looks over and sees one of the mechanics, head first, shirt too short, belt not tight enough, skin and other things showing, face down, mostly body inside and underneath the hood of a truck. So grandpa explains, "well that is the engine, and their are various parts inside, a fan, hoses, radiator, and other parts that make the car go." And then he looks over at her and says to her, "so tell me, what did you see?" She gives him a disgusted, and mangled face kind of look that only a child can give and in a loud voice says,

"HAAAIR!"

"Get to the point Inoun!" Well, I am getting there.

Chapter 2.

So in a former life, a long time ago in a job far away, I ran a company. My company had billable hours. But I learned very quickly that if I didn't pay very close attention to how my employees were doing, travel, learning, vacations, always building new things, processes, training, taking care of each other, taking care of their families, that things went south pretty quickly. And it was oh so much more difficult to go back and catch up. I also learned that any measurement that has a percentage of time associated with it that is higher than 50% was the end of civilization as I knew it. Employees aren't dumb. And people will generally do what you measure them on. Especially if it is above 50%. It always ends badly. Sometimes for the division, but always bad for the employee.

"So enough of your rant Inoun! What is the point of this article anyway? What does this have to do with SEO, Bing and SharePoint Search?"

Well, I am glad you asked. Word associations are very cool. I love working with SEO, Bing and generally just plain helping customers improve their search and SharePoint search implementations. I love teaching how words work together and how they create "branding" in the minds of the consumer. And search is where all of this comes together. Where these associations are "found" and where we find other words, documents, and most of all people that care and want to make the world better. It is a very cool, interesting, exciting and rewarding career. And remember kids. Search works. SEO works. And they both work because words are these really cool things that create associations in those little things we call "noggins.".

"But what does getting a car worked on and billable hours have anything remotely to do with search or SEO?"

Haven't you been listening? Everything. It is all about the associations.

Okay. Fine. Let me explain it this way. When I see people doing stupid things to try to get their SEO numbers or ranking up, or when I see people focused on only billable hours or pontificating on how well we are doing as a group, and how bright and rosie our future is... Well, I clearly only C one thing:

"HAAAIR!"