blogposts.txt

PPC and Demographic Bidding                                                  Asteroids and comets are really interesting to learn about. Here is some information on the most famous comet of all, Halley's Comet: http://www.scientificamerican.com/gallery/is-seeing-a-comet-like-halley-s-a-once-in-a-lifetime-event/  You may or may not be using pay-per-click marketing (PPC) by way of Google AdWords, Microsoft AdCenter, or Yahoo Search Marketing. Did you know that what works excellent on one engine can (and will) lose money on another? Each PPC provider has a very specific audience (generally), and when it comes to an industry, or even a specific keyword, that specific audience can change completely.  AdWords provides a demographic bidding model for Google Content Network ad placements. While this particular strategy is not profitable for everyone, it can hold extremely high click-through rates and conversion rates for the right advertiser.  You can refine your reach based on users' gender and age on certain sites in the Google content network such as MySpace and Friendster, whose users provide that information about themselves.  Think about that for just a second. Instead of throwing out valuable impressions and potential clicks to just anyone, you can show to only those users who meet your target audience. How much better would your conversion rate be if you excluded those who were very unlikely to purchase from you?  Sometimes, it's not about reaching more people. It's about reaching the better ones.
SEO Experts                                                                  There are countless "SEO experts" available. Online, locally,...just about everywhere. They're like fire ants. You get rid of some, and twice as many pop up later.   You have to give these guys some credit. These "SEO experts" can undoubtedly make a page appear high in search results. However, it's for a keyphrase that is not realistically profitable (or even useful) for your business's website. Long-tail keywords have value, but you just can't build a business from that.  Search Engine Optimization is really becoming an archaic term. We're no longer needing to appease the crawlers; it's the user that is really important here. There are some things that should be done for the sake of the search engine, but ultimately, it trickles down to making it an easier surfing experience for the user.   Optimizing for the user won't get you front page results in hours, days, or maybe even weeks. It does take time and effort to appear in natural results for your profitable keywords. And, while it's true there are ways to game the system, these almost always result in a much more costly and time-consuming negative impact for your site. It's simply not worth it in the short or long term.  Keep in mind that you're selling to the user, not the search engine.
Backlinking: High PR vs Relevancy                                            In my most recent research, I've come to discover that the high PR versus relevancy debate is less important than most think.  The typical procedure for creating backlinks (from high PR sites) usually goes as follows: pick a keyword or a couple of keywords, start linking from high PR sites, and then wait for the traffic to come in on those keywords via boosted SERP rankings.  The relevant linking is much more drawn out. Join some sort of community, build a relationship, and people will naturally link to you, but most likely from low-PR sites that are usually, in the end, NOT relevant.  For the most powerful linking strategy, we need to combine the best parts of both procedures, and create one supercharged backlinking plan.  High-PR advantages: 1. High PR (obviously) 2. Bigger PR voting to Google  Relevancy advantages: 1. Narrowed scope of potential visitors (however, for normal backlinking, this isn't really something we should worry about yet)  2. Diverse spread of anchor text  Take a look at the italicized items: High PR and diverse anchor text. I'll skip the high PR one, since we all know that high PR is preferable, and focus on the second one; diverse anchor text.  Unless you stumble upon something that becomes an Internet meme overnight, building a lot of links in a relevant, organic manner will take months. The only benefit from this method is the diversity of anchor text that links back to your site. While you might have a site dedicated to "green widgets", you could easily have anchor text linked from someone's blog that reads "cool widget", and yet another that used "cheapest widget I've found online". Extrapolate a decent organic linking pace over a year, and you'll have a respectable amount of backlinks with hugely varying anchor text.  Now, with the amount of refereeing that Google (and the other search engines) have been doing recently, it's starting to become less easy to quickly build a library of links without unwillingly participating in the Google Dance.   So, how can we avoid this? Internet memes seem relatively unaffected by the Google Dance, yet it's possible for thousands of links to a site to happen overnight.   By creating backlinks with a very diverse (15-20 at least) set of widely varying anchor texts (albeit linking back to one or two key pages), it's possible (but not guaranteed) to sidestep Google's penchant to temporarily penalize a page that suddenly gains a large number of incoming links. We know that this likely to work in most scenarios because of the way that Google already handles hot trends: by not penalizing seemingly organic waves of backlinks. It also gives the impression that the links are much less likely to be automatically generated, and the endpoint site is more likely relevant within a larger cross-section of varied, but related contexts for your subject/keyword..  Essentially, you're creating your own "hot trend", and because of the varying anchor texts, you'll have a stronger position over a greater number of what should be longer-tail keywords (if you follow the formula for creating your anchor texts that I'll show later).  Here's the formula that I typically use, and seems to work fairly well:  50-60% of your anchor texts should be keywords containing the root keyword that vary slightly. For example, "red widgets", "blue widgets", and "green widgets" would all be good if you want to target "widgets". You could even do something like "widgets repair". They should all be (assuming you have a single-word keyword) 2 or 3 words, but preferably 2 words.  Some people will tell you that it doesn't matter what the rest are, as long as they are somewhat relevant, but I disagree. I'll take about half of what's left (20-25%) and make up a short sentence with your keyword in it, and create a phrase anchor text. "I found a shop that repairs the special edition orange widgets for half of what the dealership does." I would then use the full sentence for linking, and actually link only the italicized text as the anchor text. I will also make about 10 variations of sentences, repeating them only a few times (if at all).  As far as the rest of the links (20-25%), I will usually pick 3-5 high-converting, long-tail keywords (use AdWords to test for click-through rates from Google), and backlink those without ANY modification to the word itself.  So, to recap: 50-60% - Variation of primary keyword 20-25% - Phrase within a sentence, loosely-related to main keyword but highly relevant 20-25% - Only long-tail keywords, higher traffic ones with good conversion preferred  Try out this method in your next round of linking, and see if you can skip the Google Dance altogether!
Site Speed As A Ranking Metric                                               Site speed is important from a usability standpoint. If you've got a Flash-heavy site, or large images, the bounce rate tends to go up, given that people are, by nature, impatient. So, for Google to announce that they're taking page load speed into account is no surprise.  I've said many, many times before that the ultimate goal of Google is to see the web as a real person does, and rank accordingly. They're getting quicker and better at it. People need information and want data quickly. They want it to be updated and as efficient to access as possible. Attention spans are simply shrinking, and unlikely the surfer will stay very long if the page takes forever to load.  Google's Webmaster Tools has a great Site Performance tool that highlights possible issues on the page, and gives some detailed information on the issue.  You could also install the Page Speed plugin for Firefox to study site speed problems.
Open Graph Protocol For Facebook and Wordpress                               Recently, I toyed around with the Open Graph Protocol implementation on Facebook. I think there's a very possible way to elegantly promote Wordpress posts on Facebook while taking the responsibility of actually pushing it to Facebook off of the reader.   Robert Reinhard's post mentioning the incompleteness of it got me to thinking about how to effectively incorporate it into Wordpress. It seems that if you use the by-the-book way to setting it up, Facebook wants you to only promote objects (actors, movies, musicians, businesses, etc.) but not necessarily content (blog posts, news articles, etc.). There is an "og:object" META tag that lets you assign a specific object type so that the properly categorized page is created on the Facebook side of things.  This is well and good, since most modern CMS systems allow for a custom field wherein the value can be accessed via a variable. One could conceivably use a custom field in an aggregation page to mark an artist's name, and insert the "og:type" programmatically as "artist", and insert the artist's name value into "og:title". This would, in effect, create a Facebook Page linking back to your aggregation page on the original site. While this isn't the exact intent of Facebook's Open Graph implementation, it will become a trend in the near future once widespread use starts to occur.  Additionally, there's another method that I think could prove useful in the blogging/news article implementation. Omitting the "og:type" attribute will cause Facebook to NOT start a new Page, but the Like action will show up on the Wall of the user Liking the article, and, subsequently, the newsfeeds of Facebook users following that person. Another added benefit is that the deep link is not "nofollow". I've yet to be able to determine whether or not Public walls (even when exposed to search engines in the settings) are being crawled by Google, but, a followed link can't hurt. The key to making this method successful is properly titling your posts/articles to make them enticing to click through to. You'd then want to use whatever "title" variable in the "og:title" meta tag so that it is pushed through to Facebook.  I think that the biggest thing Facebook could do to make this great is implementing a way to attach non-object Likes to existing Pages. That would bring out a much more effective Page when real users are promoting articles on your Page versus a cross-posting module that can sometimes be a bit screwy. All in all, it's a step in the right direction, but, we've still got a ways to go.
WordPress 3.0 – What’s New                                                   New Stuff: the_shortlink() - Short URLs Gives http://wp.me shortlink.  get_template_part() - including template files New Way: get_template_part(file.php)  comment_form() - includes comment form Replaces entire   comments. Labels changed using $args array in function call. Documented in Codex.  wp_nav_menu() - include nav menu wp_nav_menu("menu=Main") wp_nav_menu("fallback_cb=wp_list_categories") - fallback menu before user definition Needed in function.php: add_theme_support("nav_menus");  New theme types: single-content-type.php author.php author-id.php author-nickname.php category-slug.php  Custom Post Types: register_post_type "supports" array can define features of custom post query_posts('post_type=post,posttype"); - Adds to existing Loop. Custom Post Type Feeds: /?feed=rss2&post_type=posttype Custom Post Type UI plugin manages all of this  Create custom page template to list custom post types.  Multisite/WPMU Requirements - subdomains: wildcard DNS Requirements - Subdirectories: .htaccess Supports domains with Domain Mapping plugin.  Went Away: Option For Global Tags Misc. Settings Page Plugin auto-importers  Questions - Stephanie Leary @sleary http;//www.sillybean.net www.slideshare.net/stephanieleary
Wordpress - Optimizing Performance                                           Why Performance Matters:  	 User Experience 	 Search Rankings 	 Server Resources/Costs 	 Digg/Slashdot Effect  Front End Performance  	Fewer Requests 	Progressive Rendering 	Concurrent Downloads 	Expires Headers 	Reduce cookie size or use cookieless subdomains.  Performance Grading Use YSlow  and Google PageSpeed to grade performance, figure out expires headers to use, find opportunities to make fewer HTTP requests and DNS lookups. Lots of other things to check, each service has strengths.  Use CSS Sprites Uses fewer file requests. Spriteme does a lot of work for you; renders changes in browsers and gives you changes to CSS.  Combine and Minify External JS and CSS W3 Total Cache does this for you. Be careful of JS that needs to load in order.  Death by Social Media Buttons Most are going to kill performance because of page waiting to load external buttons/javascript.  Waterfall Effect CSS at top and JS at the bottom. JS in <head> causes page redraw issues on slow downloads.  jQuery Use Google CDN for jQuery needs.  .htaccess Leverage browser caching with Expires Headers and Proxy Cache Control Headers. Enable gzip compression for reduced file sizes. Set Expires times farther ahead when possible.  Caching Wordpress  	Static Page Caching - not good for dynamic content 	OpCode and Object Caching with APC, eAccelerator, X-Cache - Best Performance, not for shared hosts, works best with mod_fastcgi (cPanel uses older style) 	Memcached Server with PECL memcache 	Wordpress Transient API - small snippets stored in DB that will frequently expire  Static Page Caching + Opcode with W3-Total Cache and APC Object-Cache plugins. Does not work with Zend Optimizer.  eAccelerator - Most stable. Easy to install, easy to configure, Caches PHP and can be used as Zend extension.  Memcached + Memcached server - Persists across multiple servers. Cache stored in memory. Good to quickly scale hardware.  Memcached + Wordpress Transient API - Wordpress will store the cache in memory if Memcache is installed. Stores small fragments of data that should expire quickly in MySQL. Good for things like social plugin streams.  Server Optimization  Traditional LAMP Stack - old, reliable, but slow.  Linux-nGinix(reverse proxy)-Apache-PHP (LEAP) - Fast, lightweight. Sends static content from nginix, lets Apache/PHP do the heavy stuff.  Matt - "Almost every blog can be fast enough with built-in WP-Cache plugin."
Wordpress - Theme Development                                                Exploring Theme Development Planning Your Build   Know what you want before pen hits paper. Create site map/outline so you know what page templates you need.  Single project or reusable theme? Submitting theme to WP theme repository will have certain rules you need to follow. Certain pages in theme, copyright issues, etc.  What do you want your theme to do? Is WP even right for the project? You can do anything PHP can do, but not all things are good projects for Wordpress (ecommerce). Wireframe Use boxes to show your content areas. No Page Left Behind  	Know which page types you will want to use so you can build for them ahead of time. 	Public Release? You should include default template files.  Development Environment  Physical Environment   	Code is poetry, workspace should be clean and tidy. 	Avoid distraction 	Respect your sanity, or lack thereof. Take plenty of breaks.  Essential Tools  	A good text editor is essential. 	FTP client for uploading/downloading 	Image editors (Photoshop, GIMP) 	Utilities (code snippet storage, digital color meter, Firebug, on-screen ruler, Web Developer in Firefox, MeasureIt)  Hosting   	Mimic anticipated deployment environment 	Local hosting vs. remote hosting  Local Filesystem Efficiency  	Organize your files - common plugins, icons, textures, etc. 	Become a packrat; you never know when you might need it again.  Frameworks  	Framework is a almost-blank canvas. Functions sans styles. 	They are a huge time saver to help you not repeat code.  Options  	Build your own 	Popular frameworks - Thematic, Sandbox, Hybrid 	Be careful of upgrades killing your theme. Save as a completely new theme, or do merges via repository.  Development  	Template Tags in Codex covers frequently used tags in theme development. Plugins use Function References. 	Template Development Standards is important for getting into public theme repository. 	Child theme are less strict since already based on parent theme.  Theme Unit Test  	Theme Unit Test will test theme with every possible type of data in WordPress template.
Using Proper Wordpress Conventions                                           Coding Standards  	Always use single quotes, never double quotes 	Vertical space is poetry; curly braces on same line. 	Use whitespace for readability.  Avoid Raw SQL  	Use $wpdb object 	Use $wpdb->prepare() if SQL is needed. 	Use existing table if possible instead of custom tables. 	prepare() method handles santization and quotes. No reason not to use it.  Use the esc_* API  	Provides sanitization against XSS and SQL injection attacks. 	esc_html(), esc_attr(), esc_js(), esc_url() - uses are obvious. 	Trust no arbitrary data, even your own.  Use Nonces (Number Only Used Once)  	Use for single-use action (forms) 	Add wp_nonce_field() to all forms  Use The Shortcode API  	Allows javascripts/embeds in post safely. 	Functions: shortcode_atts() and add_shortcode() 	Shortcodes are wave of the future for WP.
Wordpress - Beyond Blogging                                                  Using WordPress as a CMS Frameworks  	Rapid Development 	Reusable Code 	Thesis for simple stuff, Genesis for more complex sites. 	In Thesis, custom loops are bad. 	Custom taxonomies and BuddyPress would great with Genesis. 	Core theme and child themes - Core can update function without messing with child theme's form.  Custom Post Types  	Job Listings, Products, Portfolio Items 	Create Post Type themes for each different type. 	Custom taxonomies can refine where contain is and should be located.  Sidebars  	Useful, but often overused. 	Use only where content should repeat on all pages.  Multiple Content Areas  	WordPress is limited to one content area. 	Can retool unused header tags to force content into new div.
Office Parking Lot
Nice Low Angle Shot Of The PRO6                                                This is our new Midas PRO6. Superb board, but then again, you get what you pay for.
Twitter As An Authoritative Backlink                                         A while back, I did an experiment trying to prove that while Twitter links are marked as nofollow, that they actually ARE followed.  I had a registered, but never-used domain. Google searches for the domain name yielded zero results. I published a simple, static HTML page (no possibility of trackbacks/pinging/RSS/etc.), and tweeted a link from a public Twitter account (the published link was nofollowed). Within 16 hours, the page was picked up and indexed.  This alone tells us multiple things:  	Links on Twitter accounts can be followed, regardless of the link state. I'm sure that some spammy accounts are "sandboxed" and not followed, but for the sake of discussion, we're referring to good accounts. 	The next logical step here is to push for a self-hosted short URL service. Even though most services (like bit.ly) do 301-redirects, it's better for it to redirect from your own domain. 	Links from good Twitter accounts are a probable ranking metric.  My personal Twitter account currently has a SEOMoz Page Authority of 58. That's pretty respectable. So, it's not crazy to assume some of that will get passed (Google did crawl the link, after all). If nothing else, it's a great way to get a site indexed quickly!
Top 3 WordPress SEO Tips For 2011                                            WordPress is an excellent CMS for building easily edited and updated websites. It also has a well-structured architecture that performs reasonably well and is mostly well-optimized for search engines. However, depending on your use of WordPress, there are a few tips to keep in mind when building your WordPress website.  Well Written Content Without decent content on a page, getting a page to rank organically is an extremely tough and often fruitless endeavor. Simply stuffing keywords has been proven countless times to cause a page to perform very poorly, and provides no real value to a human who finds your page. The best rule of thumb is to write for people first, and fill their need before considering any SEO implications.  Use An SEO-Optimized Theme The core of WordPress is pretty good by itself when it comes to structuring content for SEO considerations. However, the bulk of the work falls upon the theme (also called a "template"). Many of the more common frameworks (like Genesis and Thesis) are very well constructed and perform very well in respect to SEO. Some even have configurable settings dedicated to common parameters that may need to be tweaked for optimization purposes.  Use An SEO Plugin While the optimization of many of the popular theme frameworks is fairly well thought out, there are many important details that the theme simply cannot control. Robots.txt files, .htaccess editing, and XML sitemap files are all important for proper crawling and indexation. Most of the better SEO plugins for WordPress (Yoast's WordPress SEO, SEO Ultimate, and Platinum SEO) can control these natively. If you prefer another SEO plugin that cannot access these settings, there are tons of standalone plugins for each of these functions.  There are thousands of SEO tools and plugins available, but keeping these three simple tips will be a great start to optimizing your WordPress blog or website for SEO.
WordPress at SXSW 2011                                                       I just thought it was fitting that I jot down a short post while sitting in the WordPress/Automattic Lounge area. I met the very knowledgeable Ian Stewart (he is on the theme team for WordPress.com). He gave some good insight on transferring a .com theme to a regular hosted installation (I'll cover this in more detail at some other point).  Additionally, he alluded to something very interesting around the concept of local WordPress meet up groups, much like the one I'm a part of here in Houston. Hopefully, with enough input from the folks on the ground (us), and the network and reach of the WordPress entity, we'll start to see a more unified and cohesive message between the user groups.
Jessica Lea Mayfield @ American Songwriter Showcase, SXSW 2011               Shot a few cellphone photos at the Billy Reid American Songwriter Showcase.  [gallery link="file" ids="392,388,387,386,385,389" orderby="rand"]
Funemployment                                                                As of 9AM this morning, I officially joined the ranks of the unemployed freelance community.  I've been keeping a radio silence this weekend to mull over and discuss the situation with a few trusted friends/advisors, and making sure I have everything in order. While TopSpot Internet Marketing has been nothing short of an excellent place to work and learn, my first love has always been my freelance gigs.   To the TopSpot friends I've made in my time there: Keep #winning. I've learned a lot from everyone there (and hey, maybe I taught someone a thing here and there). I couldn't have asked for a better company to spend my time with. If you ever need anything, you know how to reach me.  There are two areas that I am specifically passionate about: WordPress and Search Engine Optimization. I like to think that I'm extremely talented in both areas. So, that is how I'll be (and am) making my income, through providing WordPress-specific consulting and programming, and search engine optimization services.   I've got a great network of people that have inspired, helped, and pushed me to go for this goal, whether it's been through an active interaction, or simply letting me observe them in their natural habitat. I won't name names here, but thanks for letting me be a part of what you're doing.  While there is absolutely nothing wrong with working for someone else, for the things that I want to do, a "normal job" certainly isn't in line with those things. Other than working, I've set goals to do a few things: travel to a foreign country (I've never been outside of the US), be on a panel or a presenter at SXSW, help build the best WordPress Meetup Group ever, and get in better shape than I've probably ever been in. There are plenty of other goals, but these are certainly near the top of the list.  Questions? Feel free to ask me in the comments below.
Facebook's Video Chat Will Kill And Save Skype                               Facebook's announcement today included information about the much talked-about video chat. Now, video chat is nothing new or particularly special. It's been consumer available since the mid- to late 90's (CU-SeeMe, anyone?). However, it's always been something that hasn't been accessible to many folks, especially the less tech savvy among us.  Think about it for a second. Not only do you have to purchase the hardware (easy), you have to find a suitable chat program (less easy), set up and successfully connect your camera (not easy or impossible depending on driver support), and then convince your chat partner to do the same (nearly impossible). Unless one was very determined, the average user would rarely get over the hump of setting up a workable video chat on both ends.  Nowadays, most laptops (and all-in-one desktops) come with built in cameras. Even many of our phones have multiple cameras, along with iPads, some Android tablets, etc. So, we've solved the hardware issue mostly. Facebook has come along and solved the rest of the equation by providing a mostly ubiquitous solution to the chat program fragmentation issue.  Facebook's fastest growing audience is the 40+ demographic. They're more likely to have children and grandchildren that are tech-proficient, and in an attempt to connect with them, have joined Facebook (and other social networks) en masse. Many times, this is driven by physical distance between relatives. Considering all that, I believe that we'll see a surge of Facebook video chat use by this demographic.  This surge of use is exactly what will keep Skype in business. Microsoft made a smart move to acquire this property in light of their current partnership with Facebook (the rumors of video chat had to come from somewhere). Otherwise, the prospect of a Facebook-built chat within their infrastructure and application would have spelled Skype's doom. Although it is certainly one of the easier video calling applications out there, that extra step required to use it is what will make the majority of users choose Facebook's solution over the official Skype application.  I predict that Skype will get out of the standalone video chat game within the next 3 years. Although Google+ is making a solid run at whittling away the nerdier social media users, integrating some of Skype's advanced video chat features will eventually phase out Skype application users, and turn them into Facebook video chat users. There are very few (if any?) Skype video chat users that wouldn't at least be familiar with using Facebook's version.  If they can also launch this feature for businesses via the Page application, that would solve many of the privacy concerns that some people would have with switching from Skype to Facebook. The framework is there (via the "Use Facebook as ABC Company" feature). You'd switch your session to login as the business, and then be able to chat as ABC Company to someone who has Liked the business. There is a huge potential for businesses using this by the ability to broadcast to your Page (much like uStream).  I believe that Skype made the right move. While they could likely still keep a small portion of video-only users on their service, I think that handing that over to Facebook will be a wise choice for them in the long run. It's a real life example of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em".
Three SEO Metrics You Should Monitor, or, "PageRank Is Still Mostly Useless" It's been pretty commonly agreed for quite a while that PageRank (in the form that's publically viewable) is a number that just doesn't match up to the real authority of a particular site. The latest post from the Webmaster Tools blog solidifies that fact that this just isn't something to base your success metrics on.  The key phrase of the article? ...PageRank comes in a number. Relevance doesn't. Anybody with any marked SEM experience would agree that conversions are the ultimate goal. Beyond the obvious (conversion rates, bounce rate, number of conversions), there are a few numerical metrics that I like to keep tabs on. Domain Authority and Page Authority Domain Authority is a pretty good indicator of how you're doing when it comes to building your link profile. Yes, it's a number, just like PageRank, however, there's a clear definition of what's being figured into that number. Inside of Domain Authority, you'll notice that MozRank, MozTrust, number of linking domains, among others. Page Authority is a similar score, but limited to the single page. The domain's Domain Authority score is a site-wide average of the Page Authority metrics. Visit-To-Goal Conversion Rate Trending You can have all the #1 organic rankings in the world, but if you can't convert, you may as well just not have a website, right? Far too often, clients are so focused on achieving first place organic rankings that they lose site of why they're spending money on internet marketing in the first place; to make a sale, a contact, or a lead. Thorough documentation of SEO efforts (dates included) will help you determine with pretty close accuracy as to what is working and what isn't when it comes to your conversion rate metrics. People tend to overlook high-converting, low competition, long tail keywords because they normally don't bring an appreciable amount of traffic. However, these quick and easy wins can make the difference between an okay month and a great month of conversions. Top 100 Keyword Metrics I like to individually monitor the top 100 keywords that are sending traffic to the site. This could even trickle down to single digit visits, but that's okay. The goal here is two-fold; we want to make sure that we're attracting the right traffic by watching the entrance keywords, and then look for areas that we're not optimizing for that would be yet another easy win. Just so we're clear, this list is going to naturally morph over time.  Additionally, 100 isn't a hard limit. Your particular list could be much larger, or even smaller depending on the site. The methods and reasoning is still the same: getting the correct, targeted traffic to the site with the least amount of hassle.  While there are many more metrics that you can and should be monitoring, these three are certainly very (if not the most) important things you should be keeping a close eye on. If you do well in these metrics, you'll be pleased with your site's performance (and hopefully, your client will be also).
C2 Creative's New Co-Working Space                                           Houston, if you don't know, has one of the best job markets in the country right now. We're a town rich with industries in the high-tech, medical, and petrochemical/energy fields. Something that's a great byproduct of this is a strong and prosperous entrepreneurial community. Whether it's a new-idea-incubation startup, or a creative/tech service like what I do, right now is simply this best possible time and climate to start a business.  Through knowing great folks at places like CulturePilot, Primer Grey, and Ecclesia Church, I've come to become connected to a great non-profit organization called C2 Creative. C2 is launching a new creative co-working space in the Montrose area of Houston (just west of Downtown). Ecclesia is proving a great facility for not only a top-notch co-working space, but a great performance/presentation venue, art gallery, and some of the best coffee in Houston.  Take just a moment to learn more about what C2 Creative is doing, and if you're so inclined, donate. I know it sounds cliche, but every dollar certainly helps!  If you're an entrepreneur and you're looking for an environment that will help you grow (both mentally and in your business), I'd suggest you check out the memberships. They're extremely affordable no matter what level of resources you might require.
Two Years In...                                                              ...and here's what I've learned.  	Someone will always know more than you. Sometimes, they actually do. Often, they don't. Listen to the ones who have actually been there and done that, and then put it into action. The ones who haven't? Listen to them too. You'll still probably learn something, but it's probably not what they're trying to teach you. 	Help people. No matter what your skill set is, someone could use your help. If they can't afford you, help them anyhow. It doesn't always mean working for free. Maybe it's a introduction to someone who is in their price range. Perhaps it's just a "try this instead of that" tip. Don't expect payment, but expect for it to pay off. 	Go big(ger). Sure, you can get work by being the cheapest, but unless you're just stepping foot into the industry, you don't always want whatever you can get. Be choosey about who you work with. Turn down jobs that aren't quite a good fit. Bid for jobs that are bigger than you've ever done. Charge more than the other guy, but deliver an excellent product that's worth paying more for. Someone will take a chance on you, and then you've successfully bumped yourself up the food chain of perceived value. 	Don't spend money on "stuff". Spend it on growth. You don't need the newest MacBook Air. You do, however, have to keep up with your competition. Whether it's a conference, workshop, online training, or whatever; if it'll help you directly bring more revenue and retain better clients, spend the cash on it. 	Don't be everything to everybody. It seems obvious, but it's easy to be oblivious. Don't try to do it all. Partner with other people who do the things you need well, and stick with what you know. It works out better for everyone that way. 	Take care of yourself. Get plenty of sleep. Don't eat crappy food. Take a walk. It helps you stay productive, focused, and healthy. If you ignore this, your work will be affected.  I learned most of these the hard way. You've just learned them the easy way.
Here's One Of The Few Nice Pics I've Taken With My dSLR.
Rebel                                                                        Taken with my T3i, 50mm f1.8 lens, and a ring light. Also, many, many treats.
Adding Wistia as an oEmbed Provider in WordPress 4.0 & WordPress 4.1         (originally posted on Bring Your Own Design)  With today's WordPress 4.0 sendout, embedding content from other sites just got way easier. While there is a pretty large list of oEmbed providers, a very important one for us SEOs was left out: Wistia. Don't worry, though. There is a way to make Wistia videos work the same was with a simple paste of the video URL, much like a YouTube video works. In your theme's functions.php, paste the following code: wp_oembed_add_provider( '/https?://(.+)?(wistia.com|wi.st)/.*/', 'https://fast.wistia.com/oembed', true ); This will let you take the native Wistia video URL, and have the video show up in the Visual editor for easier formatting of the post. It'll take this: https://fluiditservices.wistia.com/medias/5yltawbi5t ...and turn it into this (it's a video from one of our spectacular clients!):  Have any questions? Let us know in the comments!
Responsive Design Is A No-Brainer For 2015                                   (originally posted on Bring Your Own Design)  If you ask most C-level executives, they assume because they can get to their company site from their tablet, that they've got a "mobile site".  However, having a site that merely loads on a mobile device isn't enough nowadays. Users expect a different, tailored experience when they visit a site from a mobile device. Tiny text and hard-to-activate menus are simply unacceptable byproducts of relying on desktop layouts to work on mobile.  Over 80% of the top 10,000 websites are still not using responsive design. With mobile usage now surpassing desktop usage, putting time and money into content creation, search optimization, and paid advertising can be a waste of resources when mobile users aren't going to stick around when they don't have a tailored experience.  [caption id="attachment_1677" align="alignleft" width="169"] Notice the "mobile-friendly" tag on the mobile search engine results page.[/caption]  Additionally, search results on Google now display whether or not your site is mobile-friendly or uses responsive design. Imagine if you're looking for a nearby business while on your mobile phone, and of the two best results, only one shows that it's a mobile site. The majority of users are going to click on the site that's labeled as mobile-friendly first, and possibly skip the non-mobile site altogether!  Creating a mobile site is certainly an added cost when building a new website, or even just retrofitting your current site to use responsive design. But, the minor amount invested up front can translate to returns many times over if a customer can view a menu, find out if an item is in stock, or verify that you provide a service while they're in the prime instant gratification mode and ready to pull the trigger.  For many situations, WordPress can be a great solution to solve the mobile site quandary. Themes can easily be made responsive without much (if any) affect on the back end of the site, and there are numerous options by the way of plugins for enhancing the mobile experience. Responsive menus, mobile-only content, localization, and many other functions are as simple as installing the appropriate plugin and configuring a few settings. There really is no excuse to have only a desktop site with WordPress!  Whether you decide to create a unique mobile experience for your users, or simply make your site take advantage of responsive design techniques, the payoff is pretty clear. Don't turn away potential profits by turning your back on mobile users.
WordPress Security: 4 Easy Things You Can Do To Avoid Disaster               (originally posted on Bring Your Own Design)  If you have a WordPress site, eventually you'll become the target of a hacking attack. Whether it's brute force, SQL injection, or something even more sinister, no one is safe. However, you don't have to end up becoming a casualty as well. We've recovered more sites from attacks than we care to count, and more often than not, the initial intrusion was 100% preventable. It's time to stop being lazy, and start being proactive about WordPress security! We've compiled a list of three things you need to do right now to help prevent becoming the next on the list of victims.     	Use strong passwords. Especially nowadays where the average person has anywhere from 7 to 30 online accounts, most people use the same passwords repeatedly, and they're usually quite simple. This means if, by chance, one of your online accounts is compromised, it's pretty easy for the rest to follow suit. There are a number of plugins available that will force strong passwords for your user accounts in WordPress, so take advantage of those. Also, don't forget to change up the rest of your passwords often, and use smart self-policies when doing so. 	Invest in great hosting. It's easy to get lured in by cheap hosting, but it's truly a get-what-you-pay-for product. Proper WordPress hosting is going to be faster, easier to work with, and more secure, because it's specifically tailored to run WordPress sites. The concessions that have to be made to run all types of software will be non-existent, and therefore, less chance of a security hole being exposed. We recommend managed WordPress hosting by companies like WPEngine and Synthesis. 	Use a firewall. You wouldn't leave your vehicle unlocked and unattended on a busy city street, would you? Leaving your website up without an application-specific firewall is just as dangerous! Having a good firewall can prevent brute force login attacks, attempts to inject malicious code, and many other performance-degrading actions that hackers take to mess with your website. While the best firewall is always the one built into the server itself, you should also use a firewall plugin in WordPress to help catch the rest of the dirt. WordFence will help monitor and act on traffic in real-time, as well as scan your site on a schedule for unknown alterations and vulnerabilities that might have popped up. You can even go as far as blocking entire countries. Since many US-based sites don't do business outside of the country, it could be beneficial to block incoming traffic from an entire country where a lot of hacking activity originates from. 	Backup, backup, backup! We're consistently surprised how often we find sites that have no backup. When it comes to sites that have been hacked that we've repaired, the number is nearly 100%. Really, it's not a surprising number at all; if you aren't backing up regularly, you're begging to get hacked. Many folks use BackupBuddy, but we prefer ManageWP. It has a ton of great features (like managed upgrades to WordPress and plugins, database cleaning, etc), and will let you back up to multiple sources like Amazon S3, Dropbox, and others.  It doesn't matter whether or not you're a WordPress developer, designer, or just a guy who has a blog. Anyone can do these four simple things. While the old saying of "if they really want it, they'll find a way" holds some truth, these steps will put you well on your way to having bulletproof WordPress security for your site.
WordPress Theme Bloat: Premium Themes and Layout Builders                    (originally posted on Bring Your Own Design)  Inspired by a thread on Reddit, let's look at one of the main complaints about WordPress these days: bloated installations that run slow.  One of WordPress's greatest strengths is the fact that anyone can purchase or download a premade theme and have a "custom" website up in a short span of time. It's also one of the things that can cause the most headache for more experienced users. Many theme developers are obsessed with cramming as much functionality into a theme as possible in order to attract the greatest number of potential users. The byproduct of that is a theme that causes the site to load slowly, causes conflicts with plugins, or is simply difficult to arrange the content the way you want.  The vast majority of users who buy layout builder themes probably don't actually need them. With custom-built WordPress themes, just about any layout can be accommodated through the use of widget areas and custom post types; both of which are built-in functions of WordPress. The will cut down on the number of running functions in the back end of the site, and speed up how quickly the site loads and increases the number of concurrent users it can serve.  Additionally, a custom WordPress theme can be geared towards serving exactly the sort of content that the site needs. Instead of forcing your content into a pre-built theme's layout, a custom built theme can be laid out in a way that makes sense for the information you want to communicate to your users. Using the custom post type functions, you can configure custom "things" for displaying and managing on your site. Most pre-built themes don't use custom post types, and the ones that do use them have a lot of added overhead with functions that make them possible to configure in a theme manager.  Finally, a growing reason many companies prefer custom built WordPress themes is for search engine optimization. Although many pre-built themes have SEO functions built in, they tend to be extremely basic, or even outdated. It's also more difficult to add functionality to premium themes in regards to things like OpenGraph code, A/B testing, or heatmap tracking. Custom built themes give you the space to choose where and how you'd add these sorts of things, and it makes it easier to troubleshoot when it's not working properly.
Improving WordPress Site Speed                                               (originally posted on Bring Your Own Design)  Most of us don't need to serve up millions (or even hundreds) of pageviews a day, but, eventually you'll run into a situation where your site is running slow. While the reasons for a slow-loading site are countless, there are a few things you can do to help increase your WordPress site speed. Hosting It's easy to get tempted by cheap hosting. You can even find free WordPress hosting if you look hard enough! But, the old adage of "you get what you pay for" definitely applies to the web hosting world. Cheap hosts tend to overcrowd their servers, and one badly-behaving site can take down multiple others! For mission-critical sites, we recommend using a managed hosting provider like WPEngine or Synthesis (if you're on StudioPress Genesis). If you're handy with a command line, a managed VPS like A Small Orange offers is probably your best bet. Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) If you have a lot of images or other media, a CDN is the way to go. Content Delivery Networks are basically copies of your local files that exist in different locales for faster access around the world. For example, if you have a site that is popular in Europe, but your hosting is based in the US, it would make a lot of sense to use something like MaxCDN or Amazon Cloudfront to cache files on one of their locations in Europe for quick access from that part of the world.  While speed is the ultimate payoff with CDNs, cost can be a beneficial factor as well. Most CDNs will allow you to store gigabytes of data for pennies, compared to the much higher prices of purchasing additional storage and bandwidth from your hosting provider.  To help you manage using a CDN with WordPress, we'd suggest W3 Total Cache. While it is a full-fledged optimization plugin, it can be used only for the CDN functionality (but you really should use the other stuff too!). Minify, Static-fy Minifying your static files will make an incremental improvement on site loading speed, but all those small improvements really can add up in the long run! HTML, CSS, and Javascript can all be minified, and you can even combine your CSS and Javascript files for even more improvements.  W3 Total Cache is our favorite for handling those tasks. Another thing that it does well is generate static files to serve up, instead of hitting the database on every single request. This method works best on sites with pages that don't change much, but even busy blogs can benefit from it. NGINX Here's where we get into the really heavy stuff. If you've outgrown managed hosting, and are running a VPS, you'll definitely want to swap out Apache for NGINX. Many of the biggest and most popular WordPress-based sites run on it (because it's simply just faster than Apache for WordPress). Another huge advantage for WordPress site speed is being able to easily use APC and memcached on NGINX. With a VPS, you're typically on your own to get these things running, but some VPS hosts offer configurations like this as an option or a paid service. Either way, it's well worth it to squeeze the extra speed out of your installation. Plugins (or rather, getting rid of them) Many people make the big mistake of overdoing plugins. Even for the simplest task, a plugin has to make a database call, which slows loading of the page. Simple things like social media buttons can be coded directly into the template to save resources. Offloading plugin functionality to the theme really does make a huge difference in speed. Finally... While this is by no means a comprehensive list of to-do items, it certainly will give you a solid set of ideas and tools to work with on making your WordPress site faster. Is there a trick or tip that you think should be included? If so, leave us a comment!  Share our post by clicking on your favorite social site below!
Adding Your Plugin To The WordPress Plugin Directory                         (originally posted on Bring Your Own Design)  Recently, I pushed my first plugin to the official WordPress Plugin Directory called Simple Wistia Embed. In the past, adding your plugin to the directory has been no small feat, but with the streamlined process, it's now easier than ever to get your plugin in the official plugin repository.  	Build your plugin. Simple enough, right? Even if your plugin is extremely simple and lightweight, there are still some things that you'll want to keep in mind. For example, having a README.TXT is required; it helps to populate information about your plugin in the WordPress Plugin Directory. There are also a number of other requirements and suggestions for your plugin that are spelled out in the Codex. Read them carefully, since you don't want to go through all the work to get rejected for something simple as a formatting issue! 	Submit your plugin. Once you've done all the preliminary work of documenting your plugin according to the formatting requirements, the actual submission process itself is quite easy. Simply compress your plugin into a zip file, and visit the Add A Plugin page over at WordPress.org (login required). You'll need to upload the actual plugin zip file to your own hosting account, so be sure to complete that first. Give your plugin a unique name, describe the method for using your plugin, and paste the link to the zip file. 	Once you have approval, you'll upload to the WordPress SVN. Once your WordPress plugin is approved, you'll get an email with instructions on how to upload your completed plugin to the WordPress SVN. This is where you'll eventually upload updates and patches to your plugin in the future, so take some time to become very familiar with the process if you're not experienced with tools like Git or Subversion. Most IDEs support one or both, but there are plenty of standalone clients if you need them. 	Promote your plugin! Now that you've got a plugin out in the universe, get people to use it! Be sure to take problems and suggestions seriously, since absent development support can quickly destroy a plugin's credibility. Updates are critical, since WordPress displays how often you've updated and if you're indicated whether or not you've tested with the current version. Outdated plugins get abandoned in favor of up-to-date ones, even if the updated plugin might be a better one.  Hopefully this short post has shed some light on the process of submitting your plugin. It's always a great feeling to see your work being used by many people to accomplish a task that previously may have been difficult or impossible, so take ownership of your plugin seriously. If you have questions or problems submitting your plugin (or need a custom built plugin), get in touch!
Why Social Media Is Important To SEO                                         (originally posted on DesignBigger)  The lines between social media and SEO continue to blur more and more each day, and there is only one reason; social media is important to SEO! Why is social media so important to SEO? Simply put, social media is content and content is important to a well-executed SEO strategy. So, big deal; we already knew that content was important to SEO. But, what we know and what we practice are often two very different things. Every social media post you schedule has the ability to reach your brand’s target audience, and it’s your responsibility to schedule engaging content. Engaging content could be things such as personal insights and stories, useful videos and tips; resources that help your customers solve their day-to-day problems. Just keep in mind the key is to add value. If you aren't adding value, then why are you posting?  You can earn customers via social media without spending a ton of money." -Jennifer Lopez, Director of Community at SEOmoz As you continue to add value to people’s lives, you will slowly (and sometimes, if you’re lucky, rapidly) see your social audience grow. As your social audience grows, so does your influence, and in turn your authority. There is something funny about authority, when we are young we want nothing to do with it, but once we are older it’s all we want….well that is if you are searching for Google’s authority! The amount of engaging content you produce on your social networking sites result in Google passing a certain amount of “authority” to your brand, as it views you as an authority in your specific area due to the amount of people commenting, liking, sharing, re-tweeting, etc. The important thing to remember is that Google is looking for social validation. The SEO industry has developed a bad reputation with people buying thousands of links and following the worst of the worst black-hat SEO practices just to get a step ahead of the curve, but remember cheaters only win for a short while. Spend the time building quality content, and you won’t have to worry when the next Google Penguin update hits. I’m no fortuneteller, but the signs are as plain as day. Social media will continue to become more and more closely linked with SEO. Make sure to spend the time developing your content, and remember to always ask yourself if you are adding value.
3 Ways To SEO Someone Else's Site (And Benefit From It)                      (originally posted on DesignBigger)  All the time, we're told that all of our efforts should push traffic only to our site. We should be building links to try to raise domain authority, take advantage of referral traffic, and building up rankings for our site. While we can't abandon those ideas altogether, sometimes there are moments where stepping outside of that thought pattern can really help us in the long run. 1. Great PR, Bad SEO If you're doing content marketing the way you should be, chances are, you'll have some writeups in various publications. Ideally, if you get a great review from the local newpaper calling your business the best in town, you'd want that to show up when someone searches your brand name, right? Unfortunately, most of the traditional-media-turned-online-media are still pretty bad at search optimization. Getting a branded search to show that glowing writeup will do great things for your conversion rate, so take some time to point some branded links towards that resource. You'll help build up the link profile (and the authority) for that page, which hopefully will flow back down to your site. But, more importantly, that site will show up for someone searching for information about you, and perhaps be a little more convinced that you have what they're looking for. 2. Pass The Authority Sometimes there are keywords you really want to go after, but they're just too competitive, or you've got a brand new site that hasn't quite taken off yet. That doesn't mean that you're left high and dry. Just because your site doesn't have the weight to show for that keyword, there are plenty of properties you can control that do. This is where social media properties can be a great asset. Not just your company page on Twitter and Facebook (although properly optimizing those can help out), but the "second tier" stuff like Eventbrite and Slideshare. If you do ANY sort of presentations, upload them to Slideshare. You can control nearly any aspect of the page, and optimize it pretty nicely. If you get a fair amount of action on that Slideshare presentation, you'll show up on the front page of the site. That will get your presentation ranked for some pretty competitive keywords, and in turn, drive some educated and interested traffic back to your site. You could do something similar for Eventbrite if you're in a business that does events. Create your event invite, and optimize the page for the keywords you'd like to rank for. Tying the Eventbrite into your social networks will promote action on that page, and in turn, will push it up, giving it a solid chance to rank well. Here's where it starts getting even more meta: guest posting. If you don't have much in the way of blogging, or an already established authority, it might be a little more difficult, but if you can swing it, it's worth it. Find a blogger that ranks well for your niche, particularly, a keyword or two you'd like to rank for. Offer a guest post, but don't ask for a link back. Yes, you read that correctly. You're much more likely to get a "yes" to a guest post if you make sure that you aren't asking for a link. You simply want to provide an awesome post that's associated with you and your brand name (an unstructured citation). When you're shopping for guest-posting opportunities in the future, this will give you a leg up on the link-hungry wolves going after every blogger out there. 3. Six Two Degrees Of Seperation This is a little bit of the first tactic, mixed in with a little bit of black-hat tactic, but cleaned up a bit to keep your site safe from harm. Sometimes, you'll get what should be a great link from a great, high-authority site. But, you're just not getting the traffic you think you should from it. Maybe it just wasn't a relevant or a popular idea yet, and kind of got buried in the noise. It might not have even been indexed. If it's on a high-authority domain, it may be worth it to point some links at it to give it a bump. Once you help it get indexed and show the search engines a little bit of traction on it, often, it'll start to inherit some of that high authority and begin to rank much better. It's a great case for re-posting on your social media profiles, dropping a comment on a forum you frequent already if it's a pertinent article, or (and here's the little bit of black-hat for you) testing out that directory that you aren't really quite sure about yet. Just remember though, what goes around, comes around. Don't get crazy and blast it with spammy links. As Wil Reynolds could tell you, that sort of thing can come back to haunt you. Finally... This all boils down to one idea: increasing and enhancing the rankability of other sites that can directly affect you in a positive way. The better those guys do in search, the more business that'll be pushed your way. Search engine marketing sometimes takes some odd and unique ideas, and this is one that can work for you.
Yahoo Testing Cost Per Lead Search Ads                                       Since the Bing/Yahoo merger, Yahoo's ad system has been in a serious state of turbulance. While it's never been on par with AdWords, there was some value to be had in certain verticals. In what we'd call a bold move, Marissa Mayer and company have launched Cost Per Lead ads, in a bid to earn some income in advertising apart from the Microsoft deal on normal PPC ads. The new format won't be sold in the auction-style pricing like you might be used to with normal pay per click ads; the pricing will be set depending on the size of the advertiser and the vertical that advertiser is in. One ad per search results page is the plan for now, and if you're not the only competitor in the space, the higher ranking advertiser shows up (who knows how that's determined). The supposed upsides are higher click-through rates, verified leads, and prominent positioning on the page. You can have up to six fields in the ad itself, and customize your "thank you" text that's displayed after the form is submitted. Yahoo has had a disappointing time in the ad space since the Bing merger. Perhaps this is just the thing to pull them out of the slump.
Four Ways That Search Marketing Costs May Rise In 2013                       (originally posted on DesignBigger)  In successful SEO campaigns, long-term return on investment tends to be better than in a PPC campaign. It's almost like renting versus buying; even though you might have spend more upfront, you're building equity that can be "cashed in" later in the form of organic rankings, citations/backlinks, and search engine results page domination. That being said, a well-run SEO campaign will likely become more costly in the new year; more work and time has to be devoted to keep an acceptable level of success. Let's look at a few ways that costs might rise in 2013. Content Generation For Link Building With the massive amount of Panda-related algorithm changes in 2012, SEO efforts have shifted focus from primarily technical and link building to quality content generation. "Link building" activities now aren't just about finding great directories; it's about providing content to site owners/editors for publishing purposes to gain the all-important contextual link. Site owners are becoming more picky as to what content they'll accept for guest posting, editorials, and article submissions. Unless you're an excellent author and providing your own content, you're probably outsourcing writing tasks to a third party. If you're having trouble getting content accepted and published, you may need to review the writer and quality of content being submitted. It's not unusual to have to change writers after a time; at some point, you'll outgrow your current team and need to move on to someone at the next level. More Emphasis On Conversion Improvement Because of blended SERPs, traffic resulting from straight organic results are declining. Google is funneling more and more traffic through avenues like AdWords, Local results, YouTube videos, and Product Listings. Therefore, the traffic that does come in through the organic keyword results becomes much more valuable. Conversion rate testing takes time and money to develop content, graphics, and code for each new iteration, and through aggressive testing, the rising cost of organic traffic will be offset by increased organic conversions. Experienced SEO Talent Will Be Harder To Acquire With nearly every company in the world looking towards inbound marketing, experienced SEO talent is becoming an in-demand workforce in almost every industry vertical. This creates problems on both the in-house and agency side, even at the beginner level of the game. Few colleges offer any sort of online marketing classes, and the ones that do are outdated before the syllabus is even printed. Subsequently, new graduates are not a reliable source of fresh talent. To simply keep up with their industry competition, companies will be forced to poach experienced employees from other firms with offers of higher salaries and better benefits. Although this will raise budgets for inbound marketing in 2013, most companies will find favorable growth with a solid internet marketing plan for the new year. Diversifying Content Generation Plans While many agency or in-house search marketing teams might have an excellent writer on staff, with the blended search result pages, creating more than just written content should be in every SEO's game plan in 2013. Whether it's product videos, an industry roundtable discussion on a podcast, or snappy infographics showing the state of your business sector, it's all an important part of a content marketing plan these days. If you're a very small company, you might be able to bootstrap these projects and do "good enough" to get by, but for many companies, hiring outside talent to handle these type of tasks is usually preferred. If you're in a highly competitive niche, production quality of content will be a weighty qualifier for customer. Looking second-rate to your customers will have a negative effect no matter how great of a product you have, so leaving this to the professionals is the only logical choice for most companies. Be prepared to invest significant cash, but reap bigger long-term rewards through repurposing content, organically viral campaigns, and customer engagement and loyalty. Although costs for search engine marketing are poised to rise in 2013, this is a necessary expenditure to keep up with the constant pushback from algorithm updates, industry competitors starting new inbound campaigns, and finding/acquiring experienced talent. While no one wants to have to spend more money on marketing, the potential payoff of beating out your sleeping competitors can be huge.
Analog Keyword Research                                                      (originally posted on DesignBigger)  When it comes to keyword research, I'm guilty of doing the same old thing; I open up the AdWords Keyword Tool and start pecking away, hoping to take a few general head keywords and turn it into something workable. I'm pretty sure every other SEO on the planet starts out keyword research pretty similarly, if not the exact same way. Most of our customers are traditionally paper and pen kind of businesses; the digital landscape is pretty new to them, and subsequently, they may not really have many online assets (service manuals, documentation, whitepapers, etc.). It kind of struck me today that while getting these things online and working in our benefit might be extremely costly, we can still take advantage of them for the initial brainstorming phase (not to mention content fodder down the road). Here are some non-electronic assets you should absolutely be looking at for keyword research and content generation: 1. Product manuals Typically, manuals exist for everything from CD players to industrial equipment costing thousands of dollars. Most manuals contain professionally-written content about the exact item you're trying to market, and probably address (in the instructions or specifications) features that might be selling points. "Bar length = 20" can easily turn into "20 inch gas chainsaw" for a pretty solid keyword to bid on or build a product page around. It seems simple (and it is!), but it's quite effective. 2. Tech Support/Customer Service/Receptionist/Sales Ask any of the phone-answering employees in your company, and they'll be able to tell you what the top 3 things people call and ask about are. These are get things to write FAQs about, and will give you keyword ideas for pages that could be built out or improved upon. If you want to get really tricky, use a service like CallRail and record your calls, and have them transcribed by an outsourcer inexpensively. Use the resulting data to generate a word frequency list. Pull out the winners and research the surprising outliers. Better yet, parse your helpdesk and customer service emails for this information; if you use a CRM system, this functionality might even already be available to you. 3. Sales Literature/Contact Cards/Trade Show Materials Yes, finally, there is a use for those cards you're made to fill out before you can get a free t-shirt. Where there's a greater than 100% chance that John Doe isn't going to buy from you, you probably got some information in the way of his job title (and it might even be real!), problems that they're looking to solve in their business, and location. If John Doe's a chemical engineer in Seattle, and he's looking for pollution control devices, targeting "thermal oxidizer manufacturer seattle" might be a good idea. It's going to be insanely cheap to bid on (if you're doing PPC), very targeted for content, and will bring in buying traffic versus researching traffic. As far as sales literature, of course, review your own first. However, your next step should be poring over your competitor's information to see where you might've missed something. Perhaps they use a slightly different term for something that might be familiar to customers, and if so, addressing that term will bring in extra, already interested, traffic. These aren't groundbreaking new sources of keywords, and they won't replace what we currently do. But, they'll give you ideas for things that you can't find in the AdWords Tool or WordTracker, especially when you're in an industrial or technical niche. Glean some solid starting phrases, and then build on that success. You'll be ahead of the rest of the people who keep doing the same thing they've always done.  
7 Steps to Google Places Phone Verification                                  This article has since been outdated by changes to Google Places, but left for "historical value".  (originally posted on DesignBigger)  Stop the presses, and get ready to clean up your business listings in Google Places!  It appears that a new year has brought a few new things along with it, and one of those is phone support for local verification issues in Google Places. If you are like me then you probably have a few local listings that are still pending verification, and you have probably sent out those pesky postcards at least 3 or 4 times with no success. Maybe it's Google's fault or maybe it's just the postman's fault, but one things for sure, they aren't making it to their destination! Below is a step-by-step guide of what you need to know if you are having a problem verifying your business and need to take advantage of the new phone verification option: The 7 Steps to Google Places Phone Verification  	Login to your Google Places account 	Go to: I'm having a problem verifying my listing(s) troublshooter 	Select, "I tried PIN verification for a single listing" 	Next, select the "postcard" for "Which verification option did you most recently use?" 	Next, select "yes" for "Have you waited 15 days" 	Next, hit the hyper link for "call us" 	Next, you will be taken to a call back/contact form  Within about 15 seconds or so after you completed the process above,  you will receive a call from an automated machine which will prompt you to press 1 for support. It will then quickly transfer you to a live english speaking person. This is a new service and is of course still something that is rolling out so we will see how Google continues to implement and develop it. What is actually being offered right now is phone support for any business that is pending verification (that has attempted the 15 day process). This is being offered via a US based, english speaking individual. This is a valuable and costly investment by Google, and should show us that they are and will continue to focus attention on local. As SEOs we all need to make sure that we are paying enough attention to our customer's local needs as well.
90% of Webmaster Tools Alerts Are Black Hat Related                          (originally posted on DesignBigger)  In the thousands of Google Webmaster Tools alerts and messages that are sent each month, about 90% of those are estimated to be black hat related. Another stat that's interesting is about 3% are notifications of a hacked site; chances are, you've seen pharma spam in the SERP results that lead to a normal-looking page. That same 3% covers malware-infected sites, too. Check out the video for Matt Cutts' take on these alerts.  What we're interested in knowing is what percent of notifications are for non-spam/non-black hat issues? Does this mean that webmasters are doing better at keeping a solid, optimized site? Is the popularity of good CMS software helping site owners adhere to standards easier? What do you think? Let us know in the comments below!
Google Rewrites Page Titles To Push Brand Over Keywords                      (originally posted on DesignBigger)  The Google+ expert, Mark Traphagen tweeted a link to an article that talked about how Google seemed to be testing yet another method of rewriting the page title, or that somehow, colons in the title could be a new ranking factor. Other Twitter people reported seeing it as early as Friday. Now, we've known for a long time that they'll craft a new page title if they think what's there isn't relevant enough. That's nothing new. But, to explicitly pull out a brand name and put that in front of everything else is certainly new, and much bigger than just a test. Take, for example, our own site.  [caption id="attachment_1241" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Here's the title in the current HTML.[/caption]  [caption id="attachment_1242" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Here's the page title as it appears in the SERPs.[/caption]  I've had discussions as early as two years ago about how brand would be extremely important in the SERPs; even back then it was pretty clear when they started automatically segmenting B2C-centric results by brands. At the time, those happened to be major brands. Now, that's not a direct connection to this particular issue, but it was certainly indicative of where their mindset was, and where they'd be headed in the future. So, should you start re-crafting all of your page titles? As of now, I say no. I don't believe that changing from "Keyword Text - Brand" will be better than "Brand - Keyword Text". At least, not yet. What they display and what they see as valuable has often been two very different things, and there's no concrete evidence to start switching. However, it would certainly behoove you to test this. It's becoming clear (as if it hasn't been already) that Google is pushing business to build their brand. That means we have to move beyond the anchor-text heavy link building and start going after things that actually matter. Beyond the obvious Moz metrics, imagine the weight that a branded link from a major news source would carry. I'd be interested in seeing how valuable that link would be versus an anchor text link from the same source.  The verdict? It's not a test. Get on board and start building your business's brand, or you're going to get left out to dry.
Divide and Conquer: Why You Shouldn't Do It All                              (originally posted on DesignBigger)   If you're lazy, here's the short answer: Because you can't. Because you shouldn't. Because you'll do a pretty bad job at it. I came from a background of having to do it all. I started my online marketing career with a company who, other than me, had a population of 1. I was responsible for pretty much anything that was related to technology. I had a pretty solid IT background, so building up the technological infrastructure for a small company wasn't difficult. I'd done it a hundred times before. After my initial six months of cranking away and getting to the point where we could hire actual employees, I was told my focus was shifting; I would be responsible solely for the website and increasing sales through it via SEO and PPC. PPC was just starting to be worth considering at the time. We brought in a lot of traffic (mostly junk traffic), but it was outsourced to India, as was our SEO and web development. After a couple of years of learning, experimenting, and lots of failing and some succeeding, I was becoming pretty good at SEO and PPC. We went from clearing just over $800k the first year I was there, to $14.7 million the year I left (5 years later), and it was almost entirely online sales. I was pretty confident that I was, well,...awesome. For various reasons, I decided to see what else was out there for me employment-wise, and landed at a great local search marketing agency that focused on B2B clients. Although it was out of the norm, I was brought in to take on SEO and PPC accounts for clients. While I could easily kill it for clients from the SEO side, I just found little need for paid search marketing with these same clients. In fact, I began to HATE taking care of their AdWords accounts. I felt like it was wasting resources that could have been put to better use on SEO initiatives. Eventually, I tried to migrate to doing nothing but SEO (with other employees taking on PPC), and it worked out better...or so I thought. I noticed during reporting time that the PPC accounts were starting to get some positive action going. The problem wasn't the fact that we were doing PPC; the problem was that I was doing the PPC. With this realization, it let me spend time on figuring out deeper issues on the SEO side that benefited the paid search side as a byproduct. I couldn't do it all, but what I could do, I did better. Figure out your strengths, but more importantly, figure out your weaknesses. Those are the areas that will make you money. We (as agencies) tend to downplay and not try to upsell our weaknesses. It's self-preservation. While that's fine and admirable, it doesn't pay the bills. What could you do for a client if you could take on that business in your weak spot? Would it make them an extra $10k a month? Maybe they could start a new campaign that would eventually incorporate what you are good at. There are tons of ways it could play out, and hopefully for you, pay out. So what happens when you do sell a client on budget for something you're not great at? You try it anyhow and screw it up? You hope they forget about it? Why not try giving it to someone else? If you aren't out there actively trying to partner with people you compete with, you are going to get left behind. The other agencies will outgrow and overpower you because they have solutions that you don't have. They don't do video marketing? That's okay, because they've got a partner for that. What about a designer that really gets industrial and commercial design? It's probably not worth it to keep that person on staff, but being able to call them up for a job because you've got an existing relationship with them is money in the bank for you. A lot of people I talk to refuse to consider doing business this way:  	It's helping our competition! - By NOT doing it, yes, you are. Every service you can't adequately offer puts you that much further behind the next guy. This is the biggest farce in marketing partnerships. Actively stealing work from you only will serve to hurt them in the long run. 	I swore I'd never outsource work! - This is simply a deflection. You outsource everything in your life. It doesn't make it automatically worse because someone else does it. While you are responsible for what gets produced for the client, nothing says you have to tolerate poor work from a partner. 	We're going to lose money by paying someone else to do it! - What are the implications of NOT doing it? Does the client get a poorer return on their marketing investment and end up canceling anyhow? Maybe they cut budget because they are seeing slow results, which end up being more work per hour for you to be able to still make enough impact to keep the account.  In the end, everyone wins. The client gets a solid service offering. The original agency gets to look like a hero, and probably increased budgets over the lifetime of the client (not to mention the dividends from referrals happy clients make). The executing agency gets to save money on having to find new work, and gets revenue from actually executing the plan. It's not a hard concept to be successful with when you put the effort into building the relationships. So, get out there and start building.
Nell                                                                         Taken with a Canon t3i, 50mm f1.8, handheld. Also, eye boogers.
Ireland                                                                      [gallery columns="3" link="file" ids="1833,1834,1835,1836,1837,1838,1839,1840,1841,1842,1843,1844,1845,1846,1847,1848,1849,1850,1851,1852,1853" orderby="rand"]
WooCommerce HTTPS Fix For Chrome                                             In response to the Chrome 44 issue that's been plaguing some sites, someone was kind enough to roll the fix into a plugin for folks who may not want to poke around their woocommerce.php file.
Programming Sucks                                                            You still have to learn more at the rate of about one a week, and remember to check the hundreds of things you know to see if they've been updated or broken and make sure they all still work together and that nobody fixed the bug in one of them that you exploited to do something you thought was really clever one weekend when you were drunk.  Exactly. Programming Sucks.
Help! Googlebot Cannot Access CSS And JS files On My WordPress Site!           If you received this message this morning from Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools), you're not alone. Google has recently been pushing harder for webmasters to allow crawlers full access to all Javascript and CSS so that they can render a site to determine whether or not it meets mobile standards (among other things). Many WordPress sites (along with the other major CMSs) received an ominous warning that their site was blocking assets, and it could affect rankings. While technically true, many of the sites were only blocking /wp-admin/, where absolutely no public-facing assets should live. For those of you that are in that situation, relax.  However, a number of sites are also blocking /wp-includes/. While it doesn't seem obvious, there are a number of things that live here which would need to be accessed by users (i.e., crawlers) to render pages properly. For example, Dashicons, the small icons you generally associate with the admin side of WordPress, can often be called by themes for front-end usage. Another major thing that can hinder proper rendering by crawlers is jQuery. Sometimes, themes will enqueue a different version, but by default, it lives in the /wp-includes/ folder. If we dive even further into the issue, we'd see that the built-in emojis and comment reply handling would also be affected.  So, what can be safely blocked? At this point, here's what a "compliant" WordPress robots.txt would look like (as far as what is safe to block). Of course, you'd want to add in your own sitemap directives and other special cases, but this is a good starting point.   User-agent: * Disallow: /cgi-bin/ Disallow: /trackback/ Disallow: /wp-admin/ Disallow: /xmlrpc.php   One big word of warning: DO NOT block anything under /wp-content/. You can assume anything blocked here is going to hit you pretty hard eventually, since everything to do with site rendering exists here; plugins, themes, images, and so on. It was popular at one point to block crawlers (like Googlebot) from plugin folders, but given the amount of Javascript and CSS many plugins employ now, it's a dangerous proposition. If you're blocking anything here, open it back up immediately.  Questions or comments? Leave them below!
Help Me Learn Javascript In 2016                                             Taking a page from a fellow Automattician's goals for 2016, I am making a goal for myself that I've put off far too long: learning Javascript.  I've built many, many themes for WordPress, but was always able to get by with jQuery and learning just enough to do something simple. However, backtracking and learning Javascript from the beginning will open up many more opportunities for me. I want to be able to do things like:  	Contribute to projects like Calypso. With WordPress.com moving to Calypso, and the potential for self-hosted WordPress.org sites to use it, being able to understand it on a deeper level (along with the API) can help me be able to dig out bugs, submit fixes, and work towards enhancements. 	Build out home automation controls. My home automation system runs on a Mac Mini Python server. While it's got a suitable app and prebuilt web frontend, there are a lot of things about it that are lacking that could be solved with even a simple HTML/CSS/Javascript site instead of the built-in stuff. By goal is to access the site via older iPads throughout the house for a "whole house" automation and monitoring solution. 	WordPress Plugins. I've got a couple of very niche plugins out on the main WordPress.org plugin directory. While they're very basic, they work well for what I needed at the time, and it seems a few other folks needed them too! I would really like to work on enhancing one of them with some settings, since it enables Jetpack functionality for a theme framework that otherwise would require the user to modify their theme.  Additionally, with all of the frameworks heavy hitters are getting behind (like React), Javascript shows no signs of becoming irrelevant in the foreseeable future.  So, how can you help me? Send me resources. What site/book/course helped you learn Javascript quickest? After the basics, where did you go from there? More importantly, what parts did you struggle with, and what helped you get over the hump?
Arizona WordPress MeetUp Slides - December 17, 2015                             Intro To Calypso: Simplifying WordPress  from Christopher Smith    Github for Calypso - https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso WordPress.com Account (no site needed) - http://wp.com/start/account
Testing Android                                                              I recently purchased a Nexus 5x for testing out Google Fi's service. It came in today, so I chronicled the setup on Twitter.  https://twitter.com/chrisfromthelc/status/818518293061349377  https://twitter.com/chrisfromthelc/status/818518293061349377  https://twitter.com/chrisfromthelc/status/818521699226259456  https://twitter.com/chrisfromthelc/status/818580194768220160  While the setup had a few bumps and took longer than anticipated, I'm somewhat impressed by the phone itself. I'm still poking my way around Android, but I don't have any major complaints so far.
Downstairs Bathroom Renovation                                               First, a couple of Before pictures. This disgusting, dirty thing posing as a bathroom was what I encountered when I first arrived to the house as the official owner. It was basically being used as a dog kennel/dog washing station. The toilet, sink, and shower were all completely clogged and non-functioning.  [gallery link="file" ids="1961,1962"]  I cleaned the crap out of it, and ripped out that sink unit and the toilet, and replaced them with a temporary pedestal sink (gotten from the ReStore for $10) and new toilet. The shower was still functional (it was built from 1/2 thick fiberglass...it took me two evenings to cut that monster out during the real renovation). We Kilz'd twice, and painted. I also put some cheap trim up to give it the illusion that it was being taken care of. Basically, just making it functional and clean in the meantime until we could afford/get time to do a proper renovation down the road.  [gallery link="file" ids="1959,1958,1960"]  This is the finished product (the shower curtain will change, though). I basically had to reframe the entire shower area, and replace all the sheetrock from the sink to the shower (with greenboard, with is mildew/mold/water resistant.  The vanity is this one (31" version). I found it in the "damaged" clearance area at Lowe's. A brace on the backside was damaged, so I got it for $50, spent $25 on cabinet paint, and changed the color while I was at it. It came out much nicer than I expected; painting cabinets is always dicey.  The mirror and shelving brackets are IKEA. I used some scrap wood to make real wood shelves instead of IKEA's particle/veneer ones; I stained both the mirror and shelving using General Finishes Java gel stain. The toilet is the new one I originally replaced. The tile is 6x24 gray cement-looking tile. We're doing the same tile in the other (upstairs) bathroom, and a 12x24 version in the laundry room (through the dark doorway in the last image).  Since we only have 8ft ceilings, I decided to scale up the trim and use 7 1/4 everywhere (I'll do slightly shorter in a couple of areas with soffits lowering the ceiling). It really makes a difference in pushing the ceiling up visually. I also went ahead with shoe molding in the bathroom; we'll have it most other areas (soon to be wood floors), and it helps with covering the tile/baseboard transition unevenness.  All told, we probably spent around $2000 to do this. The shower stall itself, and the tile, were the big ticket items (the tile mostly because of needing to buy additional tools). I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. Hopefully, the things I learned on this one will make the next one go much faster.
Premixed Old Fashioneds                                                      750ML of your bourbon or rye whiskey of choice 2.5 oz simple syrup (1.5:1 ratio sugar/water) 40 dashes Peychaud's bitters 40 dashes orange bitters (Fee Brothers or similar)  Pour the entire bottle of whiskey into a glass container that can be shaken or vigorously stirred. Add the simple syrup and shake/stir the mixture.  In a separate cup, combine and measure the bitters, and then combine that with the whiskey mixture. Shake again, and chill overnight in the refrigerator (do not freeze it).  To serve, shake the container to ensure there's been no separation, and pour 1/5-2 ounces over a few cubes of ice.