Search engine optimization is the daily dental care of blogging and webwork. While most of us I am sure have regimens that ensure a reluctant nod to SEO, I am sure that there is a great number of us who are annoyed with the bothersome tediousness of making sure everything is google friendly.

I my case, I was still using the broken and frayed stick method of this SEO routine. Wordpress helps. They make it pretty easy to add tags and keep things organized, but I am lazy and (embarrassed) I rarely use categories and tags. I am mostly a “write and post” kind of guy.

So I am trying to fix that problem and I found two plugins that are both easy to use and make a world of difference. One is called Headspace2. It is a meta tool that easily creates and suggests tags and allows custom page specific information to be applied to pages, archives, even themes.

The next plug-in is called Google XML Sitemaps. As most everybody knows Google uses its own secret magic formula for generating search engine results. However we do know that is scrubs for data from sites in a specific way and if if your site doesn’t mix well with the web crawlers you ranking drops. This particular plug in creates Google Friendly sitemaps that ensures that Google has the most up-to-date info every time you add delete or update a post. What is even better about this plug-in is the Ron Popeil “Set it and forget it” nature. It just works in the background as you write.

OK, this is a thinly veiled Blogo test. I am nowhere near the net. Exciting isn’t it? I thought that it was time that I blogged the Thunderbird project. The initial brief asked for a design for a 6 foot by 4 foot standee. (A store display). I started with a thumbnail that was actually headed towards an illustrative solution. However, after playing with the type a little, I thought I might be able to create a photo composite using the logo, the storefront shot, and a stock photo. In the end the client liked the photo composite; they changed the jacket from blue to red and then ordered a counter card, a flyer, a 12 foot x 3 foot banner, and a button. The banner called for a major redesign of the type element as well as some tweaking to the photos and backgrounds. All in all it was a fun job. I enjoy photo composites as much as I enjoy illustrations so this project was a win/win.

I run through these blog clients every couple of years. I think the Idea is to make blogging more accessible by giving us a simple interface from our desktops that allow us to post “on the run” without having to actually be logged into our blog site. Of course, my question to this is; “I’m not logged into my website? Is there anything wrong with this picture? I am constantly logged into my site, and Facebook and Twitter as well as a few others … 99% of the time.”

There is the argument, that if I had a blog client maybe I could let go of all these log-ins and concentrate on the blogging. Which is why I test them. The determining factor as to whether it stays active in my dock mostly boils down to a few features that I like and some others that I don’t and on which side of that weighted equation wilI the software fall.

We will see if my life gets more or less simple.

BLOGO link