William Yarbrough

So a few weeks ago, I was at a party and the ever popular, “So what do you do?” was met with a blank stare. The conversation is (roughly) as follows:

ME: I do Web Development
HIM: huh?
ME: I build Web sites – all shapes and sizes
HIM: Oh, cool! My brother’s in a band and they want someone to do their MySpace page!
ME: Cool, I’ve done a few for bands. They’re not as easy as it seems.
HIM: So how much for a Website?
ME: How much is a car?
HIM: Uh, that depends, what kinda car?
ME: Exactly. If you wanna think of sites as a good, rather than a service, think in terms of investments like cars. How fast do you need to go? Where will you be driving? How long does it need to last? A Porsche doesn’t do too well off-road, you know?
HIM: Cool. So about how much for a MySpace?
ME: Well, MySpace sucks. You have to use a lot of hacks to get the code to do what you want and on top of that, you’ve got little room to work with. Remember, you’re paying for my time…
HIM: So, like $250 or thereabouts?
ME: Add another zero to that, mate – then we’ll talk, sad but true – shit’s expensive
HIM: *unintelligible gurgling noise*

And so it goes. This is really common with a lot of professionals (that is, I’m sure it’s happened to you in your job) and it stems from either preconceived notions about what a person does or it stems from having no idea what the job is. Asking me to do something like fix your email is like handing a mechanic at a bar an oil filter and asking him if he could fix your car. The mechanic’s off work. He fixes engines, yes the oil filter’s part of it, but are you gonna fork out for the time and labor?

So I’m moving forward. I’ve gotten a new job with a new team. It’s something of a change – I’m no longer senior staff, but I’m getting paid more. I’ve no longer got to handle much back-end programming, but the front end programmers I’ll be working with still work in tables at times (they should be beaten around the ears for this, obviously). I’m no longer working in Austin, but I can’t telecommute. I’ve never heard of a Web firm which doesn’t understand telecommuting. The management was boss, though, as they’re giving me a stipend to cover gas and toll! So on the whole, it’s cool.

Disclaimer: everything I’m about to say could be completely off base. I have not worked with the team yet and in fact not even met a fellow code monkey there. So even I have to take this all with a grain of salt.

I’m worried about job creep. I understand SEO, but I’m not sure that making a position dependent upon the SEO for the client I’m working on seems a bit much. I never claimed to be an expert on the subject and probably never will. I am not privy to the innermost workings of the great goddess Google and her spider minions. I do know what I know, and I hope that will serve me well.

I got the official and very pleasant letter of employment yesterday saying: programming world class coded websites (new & updates), e-mail marketing campaigns, landing pages, managing on page search engine optimization, identifying gaps in content, analysis using google analytics to improve rankings and conversions. Now, the Web program and the e-mail campaigns I can handle – it’s what I do. I can handle landing pages, it’s just an upkeep thing. My main concern is the “on page” optimization – this is a lot more than I’d normally do, I feel you really need specialized search engine gurus for this kind of thing – with every page optimized for a strict level of searchability. Research shows that as the algorithms incorporate more fuzzy logic sets, the more search engine optimization will depend on well-written content and clear, well done short paragraphs.

The part that also worries me (going in, at least) is the identifying gaps in content bit. The new group’s got an in-house copywriter but I get the impression I will need to be keeping up with the page SEO to the point that I’ll be telling the copywriter what new paragraphs we need on said page and which we need to remove. It’s always been my impression, that job belongs to the copywriter.

I’ll post more as it gets closer to my start date. I’m taking a week off between jobs, so that should afford me some time to relax a bit.