SEO is a tricky business; just when you think you know everything, the game changes, and you’re back where you started. It’s important not only to be plugged in to current changes in the SEO landscape, but to be able to bounce ideas off of others.
The SEO Team at Nolo has taken this idea to the next level; 4/5′s of us currently share a 12×15 room. That’s 80% of us crammed into one, tiny 180 sq. ft. space. Oh, and the windows don’t open, either.
You would think this would drive us a bit insane and, well, you’d be right about that. But there have been some advantages to our new location, the foremost being how easy it is for us to spitball ideas with each other.
Managing the thousands of pages on Nolo and Nolo affiliated sites is a balancing act between filling them with as much information as possible and keeping them user friendly. There are times when the design of the page is nearly more important than the content (“nearly” being key there; content is king here at Nolo). But not everyone has the same idea about what looks good and what doesn’t.
It’s helpful to have other eyes near by that can look at your screen and give you immediate feedback. Granted, that feedback generally ends up being things like “why does that look so horrible?” or “did you break all the sites?” but it’s all taken in the good humor that it’s meant (usually). Besides, that’s just the first round of commentary. From there it breaks down into a constructive discussion of what works on a specific page and what doesn’t. There are some days when we spend nearly as much time talking about the sites as we do actually changing them.
Being in the same room together is also particularly helpful if one of us happens to accidentally hit a button we shouldn’t hit, like, say, changing an entire section of every single one of our pages. It’s nice to have back up who can come to your aid as soon as you realize that you’ve done something you regret. It’s a position we’ve all been in (okay, fine, all of us but Tomek).
The collaborative process that goes on in this room is something of a microcosm for Nolo as a whole. We are nothing if not the sum of our parts. From the talented editors who guide our content, to our stable of writers who put cursor to screen, there are a lot of people involved in making Nolo as great as possible.
If we have to sit a foot and a half away from each other to make that happen, then so be it.
But, please, someone send fans — it’s broiling in here!
