I’m not an experienced professional but I have more websites and blogs on the topics of my career than any of the other people at my workplace do. That might be because they spend a lot of time actually doing the work, while I am an inexperienced young newbie with lots of free time and mad web design skillz. Or it may be because they know so much about the topic that blogging disconnected bits and pieces that might do more harm than good doesn’t make sense to them.

But it makes great sense to me, because every little thing I discover (usually because they showed me) is cool and interesting and (to me) seems to solve all of my problems (at least until I run into the next one).

Therefore I blog “how to” tips all the time. Even if they are often short-sighted, usually incomplete, and mostly lacking in sufficient detail. My blogs get hella traffic. I’m kind of a big deal on the Internet (amongst my Facebook friends). I might even get a raise because of that.

Today’s post is about Advanced IT Topic “A”. I had no idea about this stuff until this week, when my plain vanilla install of Open Source MegaPackage broke. It was throwing error messages like a circus monkey. Most were crazy incomprehensible but one caught my eye. I asked the old dude in my department about it, and he gave me a wicked smart command to run from the command line of the web server. I posted it below, so you can use it too. It might totally fix your broken MegaPackage install, especially if you get error messages like the one I got (which I used in the title of this post, so you could find it via Google).

So if you got that error, just try this command. It might work for you, too! If not, just keep trying stuff, because you might eventually come across a command that works for you, too. That’s how you learn! Or else you can just try a different open Source MegaPackage and see if that one works. No sense wasting hella time if the bugs seem too strong.

Oh and be sure to blog about your experiences, to help others!

Online, we live in a literal world. I can’t over-emphasize that enough. Literal, as in “understood exactly as it was stated”. I suspect your readers are taking your communications far more literally than you suspect. True for visual as well as written. They see and “hear” (inside their reading minds) what they want to see and hear, and will use your communications to confirm what they already “know”, whenever possible.

When a policeman says “everything you say and do can and will be used against you in a court of law” she is being very specific. She didn’t say “may be used against you”, although many people hear it that way. She said “can and will”. And she said that because in our legal system, professionals paid by the government are charged with a mission of searching through all available evidence to find the parts that support a case against you. They have no interest in finding anything that helps you. That is presumed to be someone else’s job.

Every observation will be taken literally if it serves the intended purpose — convicting you. Otherwise, it can be disregarded or perhaps used as leverage in an effort to obtain additional, more convicting evidence. Your readers (and viewers) similarly examine your communications to find what they need to “convict” you. That’s all negative language, but the same is true for positive perspectives. It’s not always bad.. sometimes they are fans seeking affirmations of your godliness. How literally do they take your messages?

If people love your brand, they see the love in your messages. Much has been written of “confirmation bias”… a related concept.

So be literal in your communications. Add specific captions to your images, even if they are “obvious”. I assure you not only are they NOT obvious to everyone, but to some, they are “obvious” in ways you never intended.

Also be literal in your press releases. When you say “Our Firm was awarded a prize for great web design” you are telling the world that you do great web design work. But you may find that a much more literal communication will serve you far better towards that goal. Your readers need to hear more explicitly what the facts actually mean. I used the word “need”… because in order to receive your intended message (that you do great web design work) they need to be told that you do great design work.

By the way, the people closest to your customers know the best language for reaching your customers with your message. It’s one thing to win a design award, and quite another to win a design award that proves you are an awesome partner for your clients to be so lucky to have on board.

“Our Firm consistently produces award winning web designs. We received the great Web Design Award from The Official Counsel this year. Careful review of our work demonstrated we consistently produce more excellent Web Design work than other design firms.”

That said it plainly… we do great work and others agree we do great work, and we have Great Work awards to prove it. Now tell them why it is so important, to them.

“Great web designers often produce winning design comps in the first round, saving time and expense compared to less capable designers. Great designers also bring state of the art designs to you for review, instead of waiting for you to first decline common, more easily mass produced designs.”

You need to tell them the facts, but also tell them why those facts are so important. Place it into the context of your marketing message - you want great, we are great, everyone knows we are great, you need us to be great because of A, B, and C. You want US to work for you.

Get literal. It works.

Update: I’m “live blogging” my evaluation of DIYSEO.com, a new service that promises to facilitate the basic SEO kick-start for small businesses. As I sign up and run through it (as a professional SEO consultant in Seattle) I will add thoughts here, so if you are reading this on Tuesday April 6 be sure and refresh the page for the latest notes.

DIYSEO.com has been under development for a while and is now “live”. I love the concept - an easy, thoughtful kickstart to adding search engine optimization (SEO) to your Internet web site. Given the tools available these days for SEO research, and the established basis of SEO as a web business strategy, it should be possible to provide serious value through such a subscription service. Did they do it? Did they at least build a foundation for success? Is it worth $49/month? I hope to find out. Here we go.

DIYSEO Sign Up

There’s an affiliate program, which should be excellent for established SEO professionals. This promises to be the kind of service I would love to use as a reference for small business contacts. I will definitely sign up for this. Update: I hesitate… the affiliate program is part of the Google Affiliate Network, and requires an Adsense account etc. Not my favorite company for financial data. I will pass on the affiliate program for now, and pass along the feedback.
Nice web 2.0 site… promises a 27 second signup.. took me more like 18 seconds. I did have to sign up for the free trial with a credit card, but I know the people behind DIYSEO have a lot of skin in the online marketing game. No worries about handing over a credit card. I know where they live ;-)

I’ve got 7 days of free usage under the sign up, after which it’ll be $49/month. Seems reasonable. How hard is it to recover $49 per month? Given most SEO consultants charge between $100 and $500 per hour and most initial consults with an SEO cost upwards of $500, small businesses need to take risks like the $49/month trial (as do I as a professional.. I need to know the latest staus of the mythical “SEO in a Box” we expect one of these decades).

SEO Process Feedback

Wow.. that’s way cool. I just graduated “SEO Kindergarten” by adding a site for evaluation, identifying competitor sites and core keyword niche, and following prompts for some automated keyword research. And then awesomeness… it asked me to do a 1 minute optional feedback survey on that process! That’s has got to be awesome for the developers of DIYSEO… great time to ask. I will now add my feedback…

Keyword Research

DIYSEO uses APIs to keyword research tools. I think I noticed when it was returning Wordtracker and SEO Pivot results. Two things I noted as I worked with it:

• The keyword research was no better than initial runs at Wordtracker, at first, but then as I added more specific keywords I could see SEOPivot coming in (with keywords pulled from my site’s historical performance in search engines). I imagine there is no upper limit for improvements to the automated keyword research of an SEO tool like this.
• I love that the small business client is walked through this basic keyword research step! They see how “easy” automated keyword research is, but also how inefficient and time-consuming it can be.

I expect the automated keyword research to get better.

My Blog is Horrible. My old blog and its hosting are way sub-standard at this point. too slow, too slow. Alas, it is what it is for now.

SEO Middle School or Primary School

I forget what it said… that I was now in SEO primary schol or whatever after graduating kindergarten. Whatever. Building in some game theory is a great idea, but I’m not the typical doi tit yourself SEO tool customer and, well, meh.

SEO Dashboard

I am staring at my SEO dashboard for my site. Ranking reports (not available for 24 hours). Domain age, index status in Bing, Yahoo, and something called “Google” (what a stupid name). Anyway my s”Key SEO Metrics” are there, sans Page Rank (nothing shown). Bythe way I kid about the Google name. I actually know what Google is ;-)

SEO Backlinks

The Dashboard shows me 3 core areas: Key SEO Metrics (indexation & status), Rankings (not avail for 24 hours), and Backlinks (total backlinks and unique backlinks). Again, no backlink data available yet.

There is a social component.. I see a silhouette avatar and mention of forums. I can see how future clients will start here and either grow into DIYSEO as it grows, or use it as “k-12″ education for SEO. Again, another stroing reason for established professional SEO consultants to participate in the community and secure a presence.

SEO Education

Okay now I see it on the right side column… SEO Steps with thevarious education levels shown with their sub-parts, with Kindergarten items checked off. Nice work on the interface. Now I need to do SEO Grade School, SEO High School, and SEO College.

Overall it shows I completed 5 of 56 steps, for 1.50 “hours logged”.. I suppose towards graduation? Will there be a party?

Spring Break

Okay it’s time for my Spring Break. I’ll return to this later, and look at what’s been updated. Then I’ll make a push to get to High School and see just what that entails.

Doing the SEO Tasks

I think this is pretty cool for customers who are adding SEO processes, but also for its potential as an SEO community project. The steps are good.. whocould argue with advice to add target keywords to your page content, consider adding target keywords to your page titles, and other SEO basics? For those just getting started with SEO for a website, the task list is great. Behind the list is the potential for awesomeness. Each “task” has a “how” link with a top on how to accomplish the task. Not everything is in there obviously. I’m sure this is a big undertaking, and I would expect them to start with basics and add depth over time.

For example, when I added this site I was asked about the platform and I selected Wordpress. Now, whenit says to edit my page titles, the help doesn’t know I am using Wordpress so it suggests I consult the documentation for my CMS to edit the page titles.

Newbies might think that’s a FAIL… that if it nows I use Wordpress, it should provide Wordpress instructions. The rest of us know, however, that the page titles are designated in the Wordpress template, or perhaps within a Wordpress SEO management plugin. It would be quite a feat for an automated tool like DIYSEO to know those details, yet.. do you see the potential? It’s a no brainer to watch the activity and supplement the help tips with content including links out to smarter help (such as is likely to exist inthe forums someday).

Again… SEO pros should be involved here. This system is showing customers just what it takes to be awesome at SEO, and we all know that takes talent and experience. kick start and edcuation… that’s what DIYSEO can provide, plus an interface to advanced, sometimes custom-specific knowledge for implementing SEO in specific circumstances (like whenusing SEO plugins or popular themes).

I am clearly more excited about DIYSEO for its impact on the SEO industry than client websites. More to follow.