Wii – I’m improving my game July 29, 2008
Posted by bohenriksen77 in Sports.Tags: Golf, Wii, Wii sports
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I play golf, I’m lousy at it, but I play golf. The main reason to why I haven’t really improved, a least I think so, is that I only play 3-5 times a year. The last couple of years I have played to a handicap around 48, which I’m not entirely satisfied with.
But in november 2007 we got a Nintendo Wii at work, so people can play in their lunchbreak and after work. I have played a lot of golf on the Wii, and on the Wii like in real life, I have a really bad slice. So game after game on the Wii, during the winter, I have tried to correct this slice, and I have succeded. So a little month a go, when I was out playing my first real game of golf this year, to my big surprice, I did in real life as I did on the Wii, and my slice was almost gone. Now I have played a couple of more games, and each time to a handicap around 40 and almost without slicing. With this in mind, I have played a lot of Golf on the Wii for the last week, to prepare for the next game of real golf, which will be on sunday. This time I have focused on controlling my swing speed, to be more persistent. Hopefully It pays off.
I just thought I would share this mini epiphany of mine, and I will report on the result of the next game.
Keyword strategies part I – the Mom test July 29, 2008
Posted by bohenriksen77 in SEO.Tags: keyword, keyword strategy, SEM, SEO, the mom test
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This is vacation week in Denmark, meaning that less than half of our company is at work, and the rest of us are strugling with the heat, we doen’t have A/C and rigth now there is about 86 degrees in the offices. So I thougth this migth be a good time for rambling about keyword strategies and how to pick good keywords in terms of SEO.
This first talk on keyword strategies, will be a very simple approach to getting started, which I’ve chosen to call the mom test. The principle behnd this way to find a good set af keywords to begin with, is to have someone without a deep knowledge, technical insigth or understanding of your products, services or business to help you, for example your mom. The reason for doing it this way, is that people with a good knowledge of the product, or people working with it every day, tend to be blind to the way their clients search. One example of this could be a computer parts webstore optimizing keywords for specific harddrives like ‘Hitachi CinemaStar 7K500 320GB’ because they always know what they want for themselves, but they migth have bigger success if they optimize keywords like ‘Cheap Hitachi harddrives’ or ‘Reliable harddisks’.
They point is, that even though you know every bit and piece of your business, you migth not know the how your users search for your products or services, so ask people who doesn’t know your business what they would search for, if they were to aquire your products or services.
End of part I, I’ll be back soon with part II.
Getting started with Scrum – A cry for help! July 23, 2008
Posted by bohenriksen77 in Misc. Stuff.Tags: agile methods, scrum, software development
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The R&D department that I manage, has two main products, that are continually developed on. One is a solution management tool, where our production, support and sales staff, can manage and produce solutions for our clients. The other is a monitoring and reporting tool, where our clients can see the status and progress of their solutions, and download monthly reports.
Every time we are working an update or addition of a feature, we include our users, which means that their will be lots of requests and changes during the development process. Until now, I’ve managed these project in a traditional way, which means that often deadlines have been changed, missed or dropped because of the changes during the development project.
But since our projects are becoming larger and more complicated, with even more request and changes during the process, it is no longer possible to manage the software development in this fashion. So I have been looking around on the web for information on methods for iterative software development, an have found the Agile software development methodologies. Of the Agile methods, Scrum is the one that seems to fit my situation the best, so I have chosen that I want to dig a little deeper into that. But before I start buying books, lessons or certifications I would very much like a few pointers to books or resources that are good. Hence the cry for help.
Option for Google shopping needed! July 22, 2008
Posted by bohenriksen77 in Misc. Stuff.Tags: google shopping, new features, shipping
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As a part of my job, I am responsible for all hard- and software purchases. Being the nerd that I am, I am also responsible for all hard- and software purchases on the home front. An important part of this job, is the priceawareness, and what a fantastic help the web is on finding the best price.
BUT I am from Denmark, the world champion country of high taxes, which means, that it is often cheaper to purchase my goodies from the US og the UK. This has made me painfully aware of one small feature I really wish for in all the price indexes and price comparison sites. A lot of Uk and especially US webshops do not ship outside their countries.
So yesterday, when i sat and read Paul Grahams list of startup ideas, something sparked in the creative part of my brain. Why doesn’t these price comparison websites make a ’ships to’-option.
For example, I am thinking about buying a Canon EOS 40d D-SLR with the 17-85mm lens, the current lowest price in Denmark is equivalent of about $2000. Using Google shopping, I have found prices as low as about $1000 adding shipping and import taxes I would end up around $1500, which is still a $500 save, my problem is that you can’t see on Google shopping whether a shop offers shipping outside US, so I have to go to their website and look at their shipping options.
It would save me a lot of time if I could just do a Google shopping search like ‘Canon eos 40d 17-85mm ships-to:Denmark’ and get a list of shops that ships to Denmark.
SEO != 42 July 17, 2008
Posted by bohenriksen77 in SEO.Tags: search engine optimization, SEM, SEO, usability
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For those finding the title of this post a little cryptic i recommend reading the Wikipedia articles Operators in C and C++ and Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.
In the time I have worked with SEO, most of the sales pitches I have heard regarding SEO and SEM, from our own sales staff, partners and competitors, has concluded that “If you wan’t your online business to succeed, all you need is SEO/SEM, and your ROI will skyrocket!”. I know and accept that salesmen tend to glorify the product, and will do almost anything to sell it. I know they will make it look like you doen’t need anything but SEO/SEM and you will be fine. But I disagree.
While I’m not a business genius, my understanding is that keeping a client happy means keeping a client, and it takes less effort to keep a client, than to gain a new client. Assuming that my simple business understanding is correct, I have fougth for a more holistic approach, where SEO is an important part of the foundation for online success, but not the one true answer.
My view on things is that SEO/SEM should go hand in hand with usability, design and market analysis. Having the best, most userfriendly website in the world won’t do anything good, if nobody can find it. Having lots of search engine top rankings won’t do anything good if people exit your website as soon as they get there, because it is ugly or userhostile. Even the best website with great rankings won’t do anything good for your business, if users can’t relate the website to the search they just did, so this is where market analysis comes in.
The market analyst in cooperation with the SEO/SEM can help tailor content and searchphrases to match your products and services, so that rankings on the rigth words will lead to qualified traffic. The market analyst together with the usablity and design teams will be able to apply a model like AIDA to make sure the relevant traffic has easy access to your conversion points, so you can earn your profits.
Summed up, when done rigth, visibility will lead to traffic which leads to conversions.
A quest for qualified coders July 16, 2008
Posted by bohenriksen77 in Misc. Stuff.Tags: Denmark, hiring, jobs, programmers
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Managing the development department of a small IT company, can from time to time be a challenge.
Today I we say goodbye to one of my key programmers, who leave us to try new challenges in network security instead of SEO. This is all ok, I am a big fan af giving employees room for continuous personal growth, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. The challenge lies in replacing a programmer, or any employee at the time being. There are multiple reason, that all contribute to make this a difficult task to overcome.
First of all, we are located in Copenhagen, Denmark, and for the last year, we have had the lowest unemployment rate ever in Denmark. This is not only the IT businesses, but all kinds of businesses. This supply and demand relationship between workforce and jobs has the unfortunate effect of increasing salaries for all kinds of jobs. The increased salaries and the availability of the jobs, even for jobs with no demand for an education, means that more people will take a job rigth out off highschool, instead of getting a degree, which again means that we can expect a serious lack of new programmers in 3-5 years, thus leading companies to do whatever they can to hold onto their programmers by giving benefits and increasing salaries even more.
For a small company like us, with limited budgets, this makes it extremely hard to get qualified programmers, without giving away your soul or your firstborn child.
So if anyone has any advice on alternative ways to attract programmers, I really need some helpful comments.
Googlicate content July 15, 2008
Posted by bohenriksen77 in SEO.Tags: duplicate content, googlicate content, search engine optimization, SEO
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Working in the R&D department of a SEO company, I often get the following two questions:
First people ask me “What is SEO?”, and after having answered that, or pointed people to the Wikipedia definition of SEO, they usually follow up by saying “That sounds like a nice thing, how do I do that on my website?”. Then when I start answering the question, or give them some general advice on SEO, they tend to either loose interest in it, or say that its to complicated for them to do.
Tor those who think it is too complicated, I must have failed in my explanation, for in my opinion SEO is a pretty simple concept. So I end up telling them to read Matt Cutt’s blog, for he often has som easy free advice on what to do, or at least on what not to do.
Then a little while ago I discussed SEO with technically savvy friend of mine, and we got into the details of duplicate content issues and stuff like that and he ended up saying “So one would rather have Googlicate content than duplicate content!”. I kind of like the him naming it Googlicate content, and have used it since, in my trying to make simple what good content is from a SEO point of view.
So after some thinking, rethinking and reformulating my (pretty long) rule of thumb on creating Googlicate content is:
When creating content for a specific keyword or keyphrase, have someone, preferably from your target audience, read the page. Then ask them if they would be satisfied if they found that page when searching for that keyword or keyphrase.
If they are satisfied, you should be satisfied, but most often there will be parts of the text that needs a rewrite or two. This is because the people writing the text typically has a deeper understanding of the product or service they are writing about, and then the text will be to complicated for the target audience.
Having said this, there is a lot more to SEO than good content. Before starting to write, you need to find the keywords/keyphrases that you will write to, and this is often a more complicated task than writing the text itself.
To sum up this post: When trying to write Googlicate content, think about the user, not the search engines. A good relevant user experience will result in good search engine rankings in the long run.
New adventures in physical exercise July 9, 2008
Posted by bohenriksen77 in Sports.Tags: physical exercise, Squash, squash beginners advice
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Being a sportsnut, I enjoy trying sports that I haven’t tried before, so a week ago I tried Squash for the first time. Squash is very similar to Racquetball. After an hour of playing, with a friend who like me had not tried it before, we came to the conclusion that it was a fun, physical form of exercise. In that first hour we worked up a good sweat, and burned a lot of calories, and that was just with a beginners ball, more on the difference between balltypes later. So after this initial adventure into the world of Squash, my friend and I decided we would play more, so we went out and bought racquets and balls, balls for experienced players.
So this morning we were going to play squash for the second time, this time with our own racquets and balls. During the warmup we quickly found out that these new balls bounced less than the beginners ball we first played. This means that you have to hit the ball harder, to get it to bounce back from the walls. And as we soon found out, when the ball doesn’t bounce far back, you will have to run more. During this second our of play, we both got the grasp of the game and the new ball more and more, and our rallies became longer, sometimes up to almost 20 strokes. This drastically increased the amount of physacal exercise of the game, but at the same time also increased the fun of the game. So more fun and better exercise, its a win-win situation.
So to anyone considering trying a new sport, I can higly recommend squash. I know I will be playing it a lot more. I will even give you two pieces of advice for beginners. First, use a pair og tennis, badminton or handball shoes, do not use a pair of running shoes, you risk ruining the shoes and tearing your feet apart. Second, do not try making fancy strokes against the back wall, unless you got the skills, you risk hitting yourself in the eye, which is really unpleasent. Believe me, I’ve tried 
Blogging about blogging? July 8, 2008
Posted by bohenriksen77 in Misc. Stuff.Tags: Blogging, blogging subjects, personal projects
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In the end of June, I started wondering what my personal project for the second half of 2008 should be, and thougth about that even though I’ve worked with computer science for 11 years, and with SEO for the last 4 years, I’ve never had my own blog.
So I decided that on July 1st I would start a blog. Now, a week later, a realize that the decision was the easy part of blogging. I’ve spend the last week thinking about what subjects I want to blog about, how I will structure my blog and stuff like that. So after reading a lot of other blogs, dicussing blogs with my friends, and reading about blogging, I have come to the conclusion, that I will just start writing, and that with practice comes perfection.
Hopefullly people will read my blog, and help me improve by commenting on writing style, chosen subjects and in general.
Since I have the attention span of a goldfish, I imagine that my blogging subjects will be many, and very different. But there are a few subjects, that I keep coming back to, and therefore expect to write about, every now and then. These subject include Food, both the DIY kind and the fancy restaurant kind, Sports and my job.
