Jul 1, 2007
I have just spent most of the weekend out at my parent's place, building a gigantic wooden playhouse for my 2 little girls.Today, I caught up with my dear old grandad who was visiting, which was lovely. Grandad has Alzheimers, and it's normal to have the same conversation over and over again in any given visit - that's just how it is, and it's fine.
Today Grandad asked what I was up to and what I did for a job. I was about to say that I did search engine optimisation and internet marketing, but saw my father shaking his head as in "don't go there". So I said I make websites, and still got a blank look.
So I said that I "do stuff with the internet" and got more blank looks.
So my final answer was that I repair computers, which is what I did do about 5 years ago. Grandad understood this, having run a projector repair business for as long as I can remember.
This got me thinking...
My old Grandad, who is now in his eighties and has no short term memory would have LOVED the internet if he had been say, 20 years younger. He's technically minded (more so than me) and quite capable of solving problems by applying logic to them.He was amazed today when I explained that we don't actually "fix" computers anymore, we just swap out faulty parts. In his day he would be spending a week with a soldering iron nutting the problem out. Last time I saw him, he was also amazed with the graphics on some 3D world war 2 games I showed him, being a WW2 veteran and all.
Keeping up with it all
Grandad is old enough that he doesn't have to deal with this whole interweb thing. But for everyone else, you have to learn as much as you can or be left behind.I'm not even 30, and I find myself just not understanding certain parts of younger culture - Myspace I just don't get - I honestly thought the whole site was taking the piss until someone explained that the designs are supposed to look like they do. And Justin Timberlake's "music" is another example that come to mind.
And then there's Youtube. I totally appreciate and respect it for what it is, but I'm not spending hours each day trolling through content like many users are. I have very little interest in creating my own video or uploading content to Youtube, and haven't yet considered the different ways of leveraging Youtube for marketing purposes.
How long before I get left behind? I'd say less than 5 years with that attitude.
Viral video marketing, as only one example, is already changing the way websites, SEO and marketing happens. It's worth keeping an open mind if we are to survive in this amazing new world we have.
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Comments
Harvey - Aug 21, 2007
Totally agree that search is heading in that direction. Initially, we are seeing Youtube videos popping up within regular search results, but it's only a matter of time before most search queries include a couple of relevant video results along with text and images. And all the better if they are pointing to the chapter that matches your query, as you say.
Video is currently more of a marketing tool than a SEO tool, but I can see this shifting to the point where not having rich video content will affect your organic rankings.
Michael - Sep 16, 2007
I don't recommend Viral Marketing Techniques unless your really looking for getting Black Marked from the Search Engines. The problem is that Viral marketing focuses on just getting visitors to your sites. It might as well be a traffic exchange.
Myspace and YouTube, just like blogs are really a great way to advertise. I'm not a big fan of spam but if you accept me as a friend I'm sure I'll leave you an interesting Clickable Picture.
YouTube is just like that, the goal is to publish a good video that people like while using that as your advertising. Its almost a good commercial that makes people say "WOW" or "HA HA" that gets the big ratings. Making Videos is easy but making good videos is nerve racking.
In the Tripple O's we are required to follow along or get left Behind. Yes, this is true, and Ignorance is Bliss. Then you have business and Rankings, and ignorance will not help.
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Chris Giddings - SEO and Video Chaptering - Aug 21, 2007
Based on the newest codecs for video coming out I am excited to be able to play around with optimizing video chapter titles for SEO.
The most recent codecs provide chapter naming options with the ability to bounce to that specific time in the video. In that vein it's not to hard to think we will end up being able to link directly to a chapter inside a video from anywhere. We'd also be able to ensure that search engines can read the chapter titles to help someone find relevant content within a video.
Say you were searching for information on how to fix widget A with method B and up popped a video podcast talking about A widgets. Say then that the podcast covered fixing A widgets using method B in that very video.
With the ability to link to chapters within a video you could pop directly to the part of the video podcast you wanted without having to click on anything. The search engine would drop you directly to the chapter in the video that was relevant based on proper use of keyword phrases used to name chapters in the video.
Exciting. What do you think?