Wednesday
Aug012007
Why I now have an email signature
We've been on an SEO binge over the last 4-6 weeks. I've been educating myself by listening and reading to everything I can find my hands on.
What's SEO anyway? It stands for "Search Engine Optimization" and it refers to the science and art of getting your site to come up when people are searching with Google or one of the other search engines.
As I tell the story to many people, I summarize what I've learned by noting that it's all more or less common sense, once you hear it. But for some reason common sense isn't always so common. The source that I have learned the most from (and where I've learned to really appreciate educational podcasts is the "Beginning SEO podcast" from Neo1Seo.com.
To illustrate common sense, here is how you can put a subtler and deeper interpretation to the above sentence.
SEO is the science and art of...
If you bother to actually read those repetitive sentences, each one is a logical and common sense step beyond the preceding one, but many people - including me, pre-enlightenment, never get beyond level one. There's a whole lot more to it than that of course but even that little bit may be a profound insight for someone who never gave it any thought.
So what about that email signature? Well one of the episodes of my favorite podcast talks about the other things you can do to help people to actually come to your site, in a mindset to act, and then doing whatever you want them to do.
And this one is so common sense and yet for years now I have not done it.
Starting today, everyone who I correspond to in email will have this friendly little signature line at the end of it:
What's SEO anyway? It stands for "Search Engine Optimization" and it refers to the science and art of getting your site to come up when people are searching with Google or one of the other search engines.
As I tell the story to many people, I summarize what I've learned by noting that it's all more or less common sense, once you hear it. But for some reason common sense isn't always so common. The source that I have learned the most from (and where I've learned to really appreciate educational podcasts is the "Beginning SEO podcast" from Neo1Seo.com.
To illustrate common sense, here is how you can put a subtler and deeper interpretation to the above sentence.
LEVELS of SEO ENLIGHTENMENT.
SEO is the science and art of...
- ...getting your site to come up when people are searching...
- ...getting your site to come up when people who have never heard of your site are searching...
- ...getting your site to come up when people who have never heard of your site are searching and getting them to look at it...
- ...getting your site to come up when people who have never heard of your site are searching, not any time but specifically when they are in a mindset to act, and getting them to look...
- ...getting your site to come up when people who have never heard of your site are searching and in a mindset to act, and getting them to look, and then actually place an order, sign up, or whatever it is you want them to do...
If you bother to actually read those repetitive sentences, each one is a logical and common sense step beyond the preceding one, but many people - including me, pre-enlightenment, never get beyond level one. There's a whole lot more to it than that of course but even that little bit may be a profound insight for someone who never gave it any thought.
So what about that email signature? Well one of the episodes of my favorite podcast talks about the other things you can do to help people to actually come to your site, in a mindset to act, and then doing whatever you want them to do.
And this one is so common sense and yet for years now I have not done it.
Starting today, everyone who I correspond to in email will have this friendly little signature line at the end of it:
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Check this out: http://www.blogbridge.com/look
Wednesday, August 1, 2007 at 4:07PM 
Reader Comments (6)
Great post! And a great look at common sense...
Thanks for the link love too ;)
David Brown / NeO
Might you want to expand the signature to say what I'm to check out, or why? "Check out this nifty blog reader:" would, I think, increase the click-through rate.
@david, oh and I am now never going to wear only BlogBridge t-shirts :)
@jered, yeah I played around with the signature trying to make it short and sweet but enough to make it pique someone's interest... but you are probably right...
Glad you're finding the show useful.
Re: Signature
A good idea is to send the BlogBridge Blog feed through FeedBurner and use their beautiful tool 'Headline Animator' (in tab 'Publicize').
You can have several different ones by now - including your own branding!
Feeding FeedBurner with your feeds is also a good SEO thing...
[...] Engine Optimization. As I’ve said before, it’s one of those topics that sounds like all common sense once you hear it, but then why didn’t you think of it [...]