Matt Cutts on Over Optimization

via: Search Engine Land

I forget how many years ago it was that Richard Shively called me looking for someone to update his website. He had recently moved to Wilmington from Virginia and needed the new contact information added to his site.

Honestly, when he called me, I wasn’t too excited.

“I’m sorry, you sell what? Turkey calls?”

But then I took a look at his site. The site was nothing great to speak of. It looked like it was designed in the late ’90’s. There was a text crawl near the top (oh my) but thankfully no blink tags. What grabbed me was what he did.

He made Turkey Calls. I’m not talking about plastic, pre-manufactured in china, but real honest to goodness wood – each one made by his own hand. The lines were clean and simple. The only ornamentation came from a laser engraved turkey on the front with a sans-serif font saying “Super Yelper”.

I was instantly convinced that this would be a cool project even if I wasn’t a full redesign. How many things do you find these days that have beauty & craftsmanship? How many things are handmade?

Not a lot.

If you know me, you know that I don’t do a hard sell. If you just want updates, I’m more than happy to do updates. So for about two years I did updates trying my best to keep in the style of the site (late 90’s). Improving things here and there would have  make it look odd. If anything, I try to blend.

But, this year, Mr. Shively came to me asking if I could redesign his site and so we did. A lot of cosmetic work went into it (Thanks Adobe for the extract filter in Photoshop), but the really important thing was making it easy for visitors to navigate and easy for the search engines to index.

As of right now, he’s on the front page for “turkey calls” so I’d say at lest that part is a success.

Thankfully, sales are up and the Star News did a nice little story about him. I’d like to take credit for that too, but I’m not entirely sure I can.

link: Super Yelper Turkey Calls

NORAD is tracking the big guy in the red suit once again this year. As I write this, Santa is making his was across Japan.

You can track him via their website, Google Earth (in 3D – Whooo!), or via @NORADSANTA on Twitter.

links:

• NORAD Tracks Santa
• NORADSANTA on Twitter

… and testing to see if I broke things.

I need to test the image upload as well, so this is my new twitter wallpaper… feel free to take and use as your own.

Wilson’s Restaurant to close after decade in business

Economy takes toll on Cavenaugh car lots

Both via the Star News Website

It’s really scary to see the economy taking a toll on local businesses. We bought our first two cars from Bruce and I’ve done a little web work for Larry over at Wilson’s over the years (no, didn’t design it – just cleaned it up from time to time).

I’m more than a little concerned for those that lost their jobs over the past week. Pounding the pavement is no fun.