Jeff Woelker : Chicago SEO, SEM, and Online Marketing Consultant

I discovered a site today called CrowdSpring, which is a fantastic community based design site based right here in Chicago. The concept behind Crowdspring is this:

1. I have a project I want designed (logo, website, t-shirt, etc.)
2. I post it to Crowdspring with some information about my project and a prize. Most of the prizes I saw were around a few hundred dollars.
3. Designers submit their designs and the community and myself (the buyer) choose the winner.

The designs that I saw were pretty amazing for $150. I really like the site and wish them well. I think they have enough of a first to market advantage to get some steam.

Well, the day has finally arrived.
Google transit has finally answered my plea.

The result? Pretty nice actually. You can accomplish everything on my checklist:

1. Finally get a map.
2. Find local businesses near your destinations
3. Share the maps with others, either via link or on your website, as below.
4. Although transit chicago’s interface, since being redesigned, is actually pretty nice, Google’s is a little more intuitive for anyone using the mapping interface.

Here’s a map from my office to O’Hare:

View Larger Map

That’s the title of the CADM (Chicago Association of Direct Marketers) Lunch & Learn on November 14th, at which I will be presenting and auditing web sites submitted by CADM members. In this session, several members will be providing their website along with several keywords they want to optimize well against. I’m really looking forward to it, and if you’re a CADM member and interested, you should check it out.
Here’s a few links from previous “quick tips” I’ve done, to quench your SEO thirst:

• Beginners Guide to SEO ~ 25 Quick Tips to keep in your back pocket
• SEO as Usability ~ Title Tag Overload
• SEO Tip: Write content to answer your users questions
• Search Engine Friendly URL’s

And here’s a previous presentation I gave at the Chicago Arts and Business Council on blogging.

Photo courtesy of me

Yesterday, the ChicagoTribune’s urban entertainment site, Metromix.com, got a bit of a face lift. My initial thoughts - I like it. Let’s go through the pros and cons of this new design.

Pros:

1. No tables - To start, it’s a LOT better than the previous iteration, which was entirely table based and a hodge podge of information presented to the user.
2. Cleaner experience - The new version is much cleaner and has more dead space which makes the experience much lighter than before. And if you really want a clean, adless experience make sure to install AdBlock for Firefox. Sorry Metromix advertisers.
3. User Friendly URL’s - I like this a lot. The old site was pretty good about this, but the new information architecture is a bit more discoverable, although I don’t know why they needed to add “/content” on the end of each URL. Seems like they could have changed it based on the function: “/print” or “/email” depending on the user action, leaving “/” as the default url suffix. Examples: Big Ten Bars
4. Prominent Calendar - Although the old site did feature a calendar, it wasn’t featured as prominently as it is here. At least that seems to be my primary use for this site. Just hit Metromix and see what’s going on tonight, tomorrow night, or this weekend. Here are some other competitors in the “social calendering” scene: Gapers Block, Upcoming.org, Going.com, and Planyp.us.
5. Search Prep - This is the SEO nerd in me talking for this one. I’m impressed that they redirected all the old pages to the new pages. I’m not sure how involved the mapping process for that must have been, but I’m sure it was good times. In case you’re wondering what I’m talking about, this link was indexed in Google today and redirects to the new site right now.
6. What’s Nearby - I love this feature and it’s been a long time coming. When you look up a business, you can see what else is nearby. Here’s one of my favorite sushi places: Grande Noodles. Yelp has been doing this for a while now, so it’s smart for Metromix to incorporate this feature.
7. Sharing - They’ve also added a “share” feature to each page to post to Facebook, Del.icio.us, etc. as well as a feature to post your photos (ala Yelp) for your business. Both of these are nice features, but just a wee bit late to the game, although I suspect that is mostly due to the size of this project redesign.
8. Nice font - Unlike the Tribune’s choice of logo fontage, this one is much cooler.

Cons:

1. Already been done - Although I like the features Metromix is bringing to the table here, it’s nothing earth shattering. The website functionality will not end up being the big draw, it will be the content.
2. Stylesheets for mobile - If you disable stylesheets, which is how most sites appear on my cell phone, the site gets pretty ugly. Although most of the content is still there and easily readable, it’s kind of an ugly read.
3. Clean up your code - Looking at the code, I found some proprietary statements and some other stuff that I don’t think needs to be in there “Begin SiteCatalyst code version: H.0. Copyright 1997-2005 Omniture, Inc. More info available at http://www.omniture.com” or “/************* DO NOT ALTER ANYTHING BELOW THIS LINE ! **************/”.And if you’re going to use style sheets, let’s do it across the board and not have inline stylesheets:
   <li style=“float:left;display:inline;height:12px;line-height:12px;”>
4. Video player doesn’t really fit - This is nit picking, but the overall look and feel is slick and then there’s this vanilla video player in the middle of the content. Perhaps a bit of styling can be applied?

So overall, I’m liking this site. Nicely done Tribune. Many of the dislikes I had here are resolved here. We’ll see who ultimately wins out in providing the best information for my nights out on the town.

There has been a lot happening in the local search spectrum lately: here, here, and here. It looks like some of the big players are really getting into local search, especially with the release of Google universal search (although I think Ask 3D is better), which mashes everything in the Google universe together in one data stream. So why all the hubbub about local search? Well, it appears that as Google acquires more knowledge, both from online streams and offline data, they are presenting more and more detail down to the neighborhood and street level so marketers are trying to continually jump in the mix as Google and other’s launch new features.

And as SEO rankings become ever more specialized and “the long tail” takes over, advertisers and marketers are looking for anyway they can get in front of the user with as few terms as possible. That’s where local search comes in. Here’s an example I’m quite fond of: chicago web development. As you’ll notice, those terms are pretty competitive with lots of optimization in both natural and paid search listings. Local search is the new backdoor to top SEO rankings. How did I acquire this listing? Well, it was as easy as creating a local business, entering my address in Chicago, and then selecting the categories for my business: web design, web development, etc. etc. Viola! I’m #1 with a HUGE piece of real estate at the top of the listings.

I’ve advised a few of my clients (and previous employers) on this and have seen it work wonders for them in highly competitive markets. In case you’re wondering how to get in on this, read over my previous post of how to set up a local business even if you don’t have a local business. So get on the local search bandwagon if you haven’t already.

It’s definitely worth the investment.

Image courtesy of ToastyToastyToasty

It appears my photography skills are getting better and better these days.

CTA Tattler - Blood on the Redline
KEXP Review of Ghostland Observatory show
Chicago Reader - You Shoot Page
Gapers Block - Farmers Market Photos

I’m planning on taking a course through the Chicago Park District this fall, but if you have any recommendations, I’d love to hear them.

I haven’t checked the Chicago Transit Authority’s Trip Planner in a while, but it looks like they’ve done a bit of a redesign on the interface.

The new interface is a nice grid layout (point #4 on my recommendation list) as opposed to the previous layout, pictured below. They’ve added some nice MaqQuest-like iconography and moved the form over to the left, making it easier to jump right in to get directions. They still haven’t added any visual mapping of where you’ll be going during your journey across the city, but that’s still not imperative I guess if you fully trust the CTA to get you from point A to point B. It would still be nice to have a map of the beginning and end points at least so you have SOME orientation of where you are in the city.

I’d still like them to add the ability to export the directions via email or SMS, both to myself or to a friend. That would make it easy for me to tell my friends or relatives who are unfamiliar with chicago transit how to get around easily without having to explain the interface to them or give exact directions.

Overall, it’s a great next step. Clean design, CSS based layout. There are still a few things I’d like to see (embedding directions, sharing with friends, easier use on my cell phone*), but I can look past those things to the next iteration of the transit site. Thanks CTA!

* You can make it easier to use on my cellphone by either hiding the upper navigation (shown in the image below with CSS disabled) all together so I can skip right to the form to get directions, or providing me a link to jump right to the form “Click here to jump to directions”. Otherwise, I have to scroll past all the navigation items to get to the form.

Some pretty interesting things going on at the Tribune today as they redesigned the layout of ChicagoTribune.com. Compared to the previous layout, it’s quite different. Lots of white space, lots of easy to read text. Here are the things that I like:

1. CSS based layouts - Thank you, Thank you, Thank you! No more table nightmares. Thank you Tribune. Screen readers, search engines, and web designers every where applaud this choice.
2. Prominent Search - I like the prominent search box in the upper left hand corner. If I can’t find something within 10 seconds, boom, search.
3. Sectioned content - The old tribune page had LOTS of content all over the place and not really in any real organizational manner. This version at least makes an attempt at that.

Here is what I am not that fond of:

1. chicagotribune.com - That’s it? That’s the title of the site? No “Chicago News, Sports, and Weather - ChicagoTribune.com”? We’ll see how long that lasts when people start clicking on Paid Listings, Topix links, or CBS2Chicago’s link in search results because they don’t immediately see “Chicago news“. If I were another media company in Chicago, I would be ALL over paid listings to try and drive people over to my site before the Tribune changes this.
   UPDATE: So it appears that the Tribune has seen the light and added the “Chicago News, sports, …” back into their page title for the homepage.
2. Helvetica-ish logo - Really? Pretty first year art school if you ask me. No finesse my friends. Plus, the Chicago Tribune font itself is so classic. Why change a good thing?
   
3. Where’s sports? - The new tabbed navigation is nice in that it allows me to see a few stories with a few clicks, but what if I want to go right to sports. First I click on the Sports tab, then I click on either the story itself or click on the “Go to the Sports Section”. I can also access Sports by scrolling down the left hand side of the page. I understand from a business perspective that Classifieds are a money maker and you are driving people there for a reason, but people use this site for lots of reasons and a newpaper site should display the big sections above the fold immediately and within one click - Local News, Sports, Weather, and Traffic.
4. BLUE - Nothing else? Everything is blue. No gradients, no call out color, no subtlety, just white and shades of blue. Kind of boring.
5. All text / no icons - On each drill down page, the tribune has provided some easy to use tools to manage each content piece. E-mail, print, single page view (which I really like) and reprints (which I don’t imagine are they important, but ok). The one thing they missed though are easily identifiable iconography. Why not an envelope next to email? Why not a printer next to print? They could also provided the somewhat industry standard “A” and “a” for larger and smaller text instead of an up and down arrow. An up and down arrow indicates movement and not an increase or decrease in text size. Just my opinion.
   
6. Dead space on the top of the page - I understand the need for white balance and white space, but did the header bar need that much space for the logo and a small weather icon?
7. Old hat - Didn’t we already do this at least once? USAToday did it better than both, I think.

What else am I missing? Am I completely off base here? Let me know in the comments.

UPDATE: My brother in blogging, Lucas, has pointed out that this has occurred across multiple Tribune properties as well.

So I’ve been debating recently whether to ditch my car all together or not. Here are some of the pros and cons of both. Should be pretty obvious which is the better decision at this point:

Keep My Car:

1. Personal freedom - the ability to drive where I want, when I want and not wait for anything or anyone
2. Moving - Every so often I have to move this thing or that thing around for friends or family and it’s just nice to throw it in the car and move it, as opposed to having to think about getting a truck or having to borrow someone’s car
3. Travel - This really isn’t a big deal for me, as I prefer to take Amtrak or, as my sister is trying to convince me, the MegaBus back and forth to Michigan. But what about weekend trips or impromptu trips? I guess it just requires a bit of planning to rent a car or book travel ahead of time.
4. Supporting US auto makers - This really is the weakest reason I can think of, as I only got a Chrysler Sebring because of my grandfathers discount, and with Toyota and Honda opening more plants everyday in the US, what’s the difference anymore?

Lose My Car:

1. Car and Insurance Payments - This is really the biggest motivating factor. My car sits on the street 5 or 6 days a week and doesn’t do anything for me except suck up money.
2. I’m an enviro-hypocrite - I talk about fuel economy, environmental preservation, protecting existing resources, reusing, and recycling, but I drive a huge metal box that spews CO2? As my sister so eloquently puts it “Man Up!”
3. iGoCars - There is an iGoCar right around the corner from where I normally pick up the train every morning. So if I need a car, it’s just a short walk away and how can you beat these rates?
4. Car Rentals - There are several car rental places within quick riding, walking, busing, or training distance from my place.
5. Oil changes and upkeep - Since my car only sits on the street most of the week, it isn’t getting proper usage and is only going down in terms of resale value and money I’m going to have to invest in it eventually to keep it going.
6. Public Transportation and Biking - I have both a bike and easy access to numerous methods of public transportation to get to and from work.
7. Constantly moving your car - One great thing about living in a city that cares for the appearance of neighborhoods and streets is that there is constant street cleaning. As a result, I often have to play the parking game at least once a month and during the winters, I have to double check every time I park that I am not in a snow removal zone.
8. Cold hard economics - So the economics of my current car are $302 per month for my car payment (until Feb of next year), $160/month for insurance, and probably $10 in gas/month. That’s $472/month in sunk costs. If I were to take a cab to the grocery store and other errands, we’ll say 10 times per month (probably more like 3 or 4) for about a $10-15 cab ride on average, that costs $100. I could use an extra $370/month.

I think it’s pretty obvious. Anyone need a lightly used 2004 black sebring? 35K miles, original owner.

Any reasons I have forgotten either for keeping or getting rid of my car?

So I got my APTA buttons today. I’m such a nerd, but I love them. Many thanks to Mark Neuville for sending them over. I really appreciate it. Go visit the APTA website if you have a few minutes. It’s a great site with lots of information about how you can rediscover your city via public transportation.

There really is something nostalgic and community based about taking public transportation in that you get to see and meet so many interesting people you would not have otherwise met by driving by yourself in a car. So on that note, are you taking public transportation as often as you could? If not, give it a shot. It’s not as bad, dirty, loud, noisy, smelly, etc. etc. as you might think it is. Really it’s not. So enjoy Illinois!