Daddy Daughter Podcast: Episode 3

In today’s podcast we talk about going to IKEA for breakfast. If you haven’t gone there for breakfast, we both highly recommend it. From a kids perspective, the food is great. From a parents view point, there’s no better value available for a decent meal. We also touch briefly on the Chipmunk movie that comes out in theatres next week – December 16 to be precise. We argue over who owns the iPad and based on toddler law, clearly it’s Ava. She also says that we should have a house https://buycbdproducts.com Hawaii, which I gladly agree with. The only things is we don’t have the millions of dollars to by a place. And of course waffles and pancakes make their way in to the conversation as well. This episode is nice and quick and filled with laughter and good times. Enjoy.

Subscribe in iTunes to the Daddy Daughter Podcast

Dec
10

Daddy Daughter Podcast: Episode 2

In today’s podcast we talk about red fire trucks, police guys (and their cars) and how Ava hasn’t been in one. For the record I have and it was the front seat voluntarily when in elementary school. Though I’m thinking about asking a cop friend for a ride along in the ‘hood. We mention that mommy is off to Vegas for a conference even as well. Seems like she’s always gone, but she’s not — it’s just when we record. There’s a brief mention of my Pentax Camera, which is actually a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS3 and is waterproof and shock proof too. She takes some great photos with it. And of course Ava still wants to see Chipmunks. This episode is nice and quick and filled with laughter and good times. Enjoy.

Subscribe in iTunes to the Daddy Daughter Podcast

Dec
6

Daddy Daughter Podcast: Episode 1

In today’s podcast we talk about Happy Feet 2 that we saw in theatres as well as The Muppets. This episode is nice and quick and filled with laughter and good times. Enjoy.

Dec
3

The growing list of projects

Well it’s definitely been some time since I last put anything in the projects section. There’s no doubt that there have been a lot of different projects on the go. Some have come and died while others haven’t even really started. I’ll take the time to list a few of them here and provide some updates, reasons and direction. Read the complete article.

Oct
28

Doing something is better than doing nothing

I’ve had numerous ideas for a long time about different ways to make some money. Some would say that it is actually annoying that I look to monetize almost every thing in life that I can. I won’t lie, I think it’s annoying too. My quest for money comes from reading things like Rich Dad, Poor Dad – which I actually found tucked in a seat pocket on an airplane. From there I kept buying more and more Robert Kiyosaki books to read, which for me was a revelation since I generally don’t like to read. That was about 6 years ago. Now I find myself doing a lot of reading online. Read the complete article.

Sep
22

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Dec
29

The Last Original Idea provokes the inner cynic

There’s a saying “you can’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been.” This line has stuck with me since I had to debate it in my grade nine English class. At the time I believed there was no truth in the statement. In fact I argued against it. Had I had the chance to read The Last Original Idea at that point in time, there would have been no way I would go against it.

Diving into the book was easy since it tops out at roughly 100 pages. Co-author Alan K’necht wrote a great post on why the book was kept short. In fact I felt a little guilty reading my preview copy of the book on my iPad; apparently not such a green idea.

The Last Original Idea was in and of itself a great idea and a great read. Flipping through the pages it was sprinkled with the right kind of cynical humor, reference and real content. References to seeing just how history repeats itself in the world of social media, online news and even online dating made me realize just how easy it should be to see the future of internet marketing.

A particular case study about gun dog supplies and the quote un-quote rednecks behind it, gave some real world examples. Using examples to overcome natural disasters, encroaching large corporate competition (which I’ll use that term loosely) and even family loss. It truly proves how looking back can enable people and businesses to move forward.

Since the book is a quick read, honestly under two hours, I won’t give away any of the secrets. What I will say is that is was definitely worth my time to read and I would recommend you do the same whether you’re involved in Internet Marketing or not. And when you purchase your copy online from Amazon*, I’ll donate 80% of the proceeds to a charity of the authors choice – a little surprise for them when they get around to reading this. So what are you waiting for? Become a fan on Facebook, then get your copy today!


This review is part of the Green Books campaign. Today 200 bloggers take a stand to support books printed in an eco-friendly manner by simultaneously publishing reviews of 200 books printed on recycled or FSC-certified paper. By turning a spotlight on books printed using eco-friendly paper, we hope to raise the awareness of book buyers and encourage everyone to take the environment into consideration when purchasing books.

The campaign is organized for the second time by Eco-Libris, a green company working to make reading more sustainable. We invite you to join the discussion on “green” books and support books printed in an eco-friendly manner! A full list of participating blogs and links to their reviews is available on Eco-Libris website.

*Purchases of The Last Original Idea made through the Amazon link contained in this article will apply, so please use it instead of a direct link.

Nov
10

Sometimes the best SEO is executing the fundamentals

It doesn’t surprise me when people want to increase their organic page rankings through the use of search engine optimization. It makes sense. It’s effectively free traffic to your website. What does often amaze me is when there are plenty of talented IT and development individuals behind a website and they neglect, or simply forget, to execute on the fundamentals of SEO. Take a look at the fundamentals of SEO here at Shibga Media and more insights from Local Viking if you are interested in growing your business.

Percent of traffic from search engines

To those of you who know me, and those who don’t, there’s no hiding that I work for Canada’s preferred airline. One of my “unofficial” responsibilities is executing some SEO tactics to improve rankings and traffic. We hired an external consulting firm to validate a number of my recommendations and offer their professional opinion on others. This wasn’t cheap by any standards so I was happy when we received their report of numerous pages detailing different things to execute on at length. What did come as a shock though was some of the things that were missed along the way – items I’ll consider “SEO fundamentals.” Bear in mind, that white label web design is customized to your client’s needs and is perfect for growing business.

On page SEO

Optimum Web Hosting:  Once you decide to create a website, you have to make a wise choice of the company that will host it, if you have not choose yours, check these knownhost’s wordpress hosting plans. This choice will primarily help you boost your rankings and reach the widest target audience possible. If you want Google to help you stand out in the severe competition of similar websites, web hosting is something you need to focus on.

Title tag: Yes the title tag is still relevant and vitally important. Approximately 87% of all clicks on SERPs are on organic links and of those, the vast majority click on the keyword in the title that’s displayed. Not only does this make sense as a viable tactic, it also boasts well for the argument to ensure your title is well constructed utilizing your keywords appropriately.

Meta tags: These are old-school methods. Seriously 1996 era methods, but they’re still relevant. There are three main ones to look at and target.

Description: In the 90’s this was a great location to stuff more keywords knowing that the spiders were hungry for content. In today’s world, it doesn’t work quite that way, but the description tag is still relevant from a user experience. If you don’t utilize the tag, then on a SERP you will simply see the first 160 characters of content on your site. This may not be the most relevant thing to display to your user and might impede them clicking through to your site. Utilize the description tag to a maximum of 160 characters and provide a concise overview of the content that exists on the page.

Keywords: Honestly one of the least important tags as it’s not indexed by most search engines, however it can be of great use. Yahoo relies on it as part of their algorithm, at least until all of their results are powered by Bing – probably be end of 2010. The keyword tag can be utilize to add common misspellings of your keywords, brand name, etc. While it’s not indexed, it is cached as part of the page (at least in Google) and thus it is still searchable. Seriously, just add them to your page.

NOINDEX tag in a global template preventing indexingRobots: There’s a whole conversation that can be had on utilizing a robots.txt file appropriately and cloaking it based on user versus search engine, but like I said, that’s a whole other discussion. In this case you want to be aware of the NOINDEX and/or NOFOLLOW utilization in the robots meta tag. The low cost airline I work for had it in their global template for testing purposes but it made it through to production. Oops! This would explain the recent drop in indexed pages and in site traffic from search. Make sure that your developers and team understand the importance of this tag and the potential effects it can have on your website and don’t confuse it with the rel=”nofollow” tag as the two are different.

As an example, WestJet has 135 pages indexed in Google when in fact there are over 300 pages submitted via different sitemaps. It looks like Google is in fact obeying the NOINDEX tag.

Google only has 135 pages indexed for WestJet.com

Copy: Yes it’s often said, content is king. It’s true. Well crafted copy, utilizing a good page structure (i.e. p, h1, h2, etc) will help boost rankings getting you more visitors and more clients, this according to the recently posted article about When to use SEO as a Roofer. Copy writing for the web is different then copy writing for print or other mediums. Having a solid copy writer as part of your staff and communications team is vital. Spend a little extra, if you need to, to get it written well for the web and make it natural. Utilize associated words and stemming within your copy. If it’s natural for speaking with each other, then it’s natural for writing and should be utilized in your copy.

Close to page SEO

Sitemap.xml: This is super easy to create and should be used and implemented at the root level of the domain if at all possible. Google, Yahoo! and Bing will allow you to manually submit a sitemap.xml to their webmaster tools if you need to host it in a different location. It won’t ensure that your pages get indexed, but definitely can help you provide relevance and ranking to the pages you feel are important as well as allow you to suggest the pages on your site to have indexed. You can create a sitemap in a few simple steps automatically online.

Submitting a sitemap.xml won't necessarily get all items indexed.

URL structure: Even Google’s Matt Cutts has said that “Google will attempt to read words contained within a URL structure.” Honestly, why not make it easier for Google, and those other search engines out there, to read your URL as well? The latest recommendation is to utilize hyphens as word ‘spaces’ – not underscores or camel case. This is true for image names as well. Don’t go crazy, keep it to five or less words. Additionally keep your more important pages closer to the root of the site. Silo, or theme your sections (i.e. directories) and utilize a good IA (information architecture) to pass page rank more appropriately.

Ensure that a page not found sends 404 status not 200Server header response codes: You know them all too well, or you should. 200, 301, 302, 304, 404 – those are the fundamental ones you should know and understand. Ideally every page should end up with a 200 OK status as the end result unless of course the page isn’t actually found. Utilize any number of free tools to check the response code. Personally I use the Live HTTP Headers extension for Firefox to see the status. Make sure that your 404 page always and consistently returns the 404 status; definitely never a 200.

Closing thoughts

There are in fact more fundamentals to look at in optimizing your web page for search engines, but the above is what I truly believe to be the very basics and the sometimes overlooked. I welcome your thoughts and feedback on my SEO fundamentals, don’t forget to check the Victorious website to get more SEO tips. What do you have on your list?

Jul
6

Q&A: Ruud Hein on Ruud Questions

A while back I had a thought to post some interviews on my blog so that I could begin to reach more people and it also gave me something to write about. When the idea came to mind I put a request out to people and got an answer back from Alysson Fergison on her thoughts. She figured I should interview Ruud Hein of Ruud Questions since he himself interviews many SEO industry experts but few people ever interview him. I sent him a quick note and happily got a reply. Enjoy the first entry of Q & A.

Ruud Hein working in his home office.

Ruud Hein pounds out another post for his regular column, Ruud Questions from his home office.

Ruud, I’d like to thank you for agreeing so quickly to be my first victim – I mean personality. I’ve been reading your Ruud Questions on Search Engine People for some time now. It wasn’t until I made a post thinking about people to interview that your name came up. So here we are. “Sitting down” to get my Q&A section started. Thanks again in advance of you revealing a little more about yourself.

It’s been quite a while since you started writing your Ruud Questions. If I had to guess, you’ve no doubt had some inspiration on targeting the people that you interviewed. Somewhere along the way I’m guessing you’ve had people say “thanks, but no thanks” to the interview. Is this really the case? Who was the one that got away that you still target regularly? And of course everyone wants to know what was the worst (or best) “escape” someone has used on you?

I started “Ruud Questions” for two, coupled reasons. I felt very touched by the economic devastation so many people went through and wanted to do something that helped regular folks to build up a (new) life: to earn at least a buck extra, maybe create another job. I wanted to have them talk with some of the smartest people in SEO, marketing and web site building. And — I was in a writing slump, feeling that I was adding no value but instead stating what anyone in SEO should already know.

Those two combined led to the format of “Ruud Questions” and who I ask for an interview. The people I target are the people *I* would want to ask questions of, it’s not about Who they are. In other words, it’s who I ask vs. the Who who gets asked.

I’ve had only one “no thank you”. A very talented photographer who was suggested to me. I started following the person on Twitter and thought, yes, this person has a view on things I would love to pry into, would love to ask questions about. But when asked he was quite adamant that, no, our readers wouldn’t find anything interesting in what he would have to say. Remarkable, I find.

Some interviews have gone nowhere *yet*; they are agreements to do an interview but somehow they never crystallize.

I’ve noticed you recently talking a lot about Stephen King in some of your posts and emails. I’m guessing that you’re a fan of his which makes me wonder, if you could interview any single person, who would it be? It makes no difference the industry, country or language. Who would be that single person that you could lay back afterward, take a deep breath and feel confident that you were done. And of course, why that person.

That’s a hard question because then it comes down to “who is the most important person I’d want to talk to”, in an almost unreachable sense.

Mr & Mrs Hein

Ruud Hein and his wife: "I can ask her anything day to day."

Asked like that it would exclude my wife as I can ask her anything day to day. Yet knowing how her life was, getting as much detail as possible, understanding what she thinks and why is one of the most important things to me, creating a bond that makes me love her more and building the grounds on which I can walk when practicing how to be forgiving and understanding in our relation.

The unreachable sense also has a “for one more day” aspect and then who would I ask questions? My father who I grew to understand as a man, a father and “just this guy” a tad late for my taste? My sister whose mind I would love to understand more, now? My grandfather who I experienced as this wise man but who *also* must have been a “just this guy”, one that saw the world change around him?

Finally it implies “unreachable” in a “wish for” sense, implying fame too large to be a prospect but so far I’ve found people I would consider famous to be quite reachable and very agreeable. Brain-care specialist Gag Halfrunt would say they’re “just this guy, you know”.

From those present right now I’d love to interview Stephen Hawking. The opportunity for better understanding there is huge.

On a simpler level, for work, I’d like to do an interview with David Plouffe, the man behind Obama’s web campaign back then. I like how he factors people’s bullshit-o-meters, as he calls them, into his work. Asking him questions about how it was old school marketing instead of new school social networks that won the campaign, as he has explained, would be great.

As a new guy starting out in the targeted area of interviewing people I’d like to make some mistakes, but still minimize those as much as possible. What would be your advice on where and how to start? And of course the single “biggest thing” that you’ve learned along the way you think anyone doing an interview should know.

Interviews are just conversations with people you likely will never talk that way with again. So don’t waste a question. Don’t ask Stephen King “how do you come up with your ideas?!” I’d rather ask him; “writers say it is about what you take out, about what you delete — how do I do that as a writer? At which point does deleting a few words or a redundant sentence become rewriting?”

So, start with something you would really want to know yourself. Or, start with something the people you interview for would really want to know.

The “biggest” thing in interviews is that it’s not you. It means that when the interview is really, really good, the interviewee has responded really, really good. Also means that when the interview sucks, it most likely wasn’t you. When you ask “With mobile phones being so important in Africa, what are the market implications for educational services here in North America” and you get as an answer “Yes” or “Big” — that’s not your fault 🙂

Is there anything that I’ve left out of the previous questions that you think I should have asked? Were the questions about right? Too long, too short? Be brutally honest in your feedback please. It’s really the only way I’ll learn and have any insight into improving.

I think the questions were fine. Fine as in: good stuff man! The “any single person” question had me occupied as I wanted to give an honest, genuine answer. That’s good: you asked me a question today I really thought about, that did something inside me, made me contemplate and had me sit down with my wife to talk with her about it.

There you have it. A BIG thanks goes out to Ruud Hein for helping me get this started. Now I want your input. How were the questions? Did you think they worked and provided some additional insight into Ruud? Who would you like me to interview next?

Images © Ruud Hein. Used with permission. All rights reserved.

Jul
2

SEO Bootcamp with Bruce Clay

This post is so past due it’s not even funny. It’s been just a few weeks since having had the chance to attend Search Engine Land‘s SMX Advanced in Seattle and it was awesome. Not only did I finally get to put real people and faces to their names like getting to chat with Danny Sullivan and of course Rae Hoffman who was great at being friendly and introducing me to others. Thanks for that. Honestly there were so many if I wrote them all it’d probably just look like link bait…so I won’t. It was my first SMX and I must say, I’ll be back. I’m hooked.

Bruce Clay and Marshall Stevenson

Bruce Clay & Marshall Stevenson after completion of the SEO Bootcamp

Beyond the great parties, informative sessions, amazing food and great networking, the best part had to be the SEO Training that Bruce Clay put on. I’ve dubbed it SEO Bootcamp because he effectively and efficiently crammed in a weeks worth of content into an all day session. I owe it to Shannon Poole for convincing me I needed to hear it from one of the original SEO Experts. Find custom-tailored marketing ideas at RoofEngine.com.

The format was great. It was structured enough to start “precisely at eight thirty-ish” in the morning, yet relaxed enough to have some insightful conversations alongside some great questions. There were clearly people of all skill levels and I would say everyone got something out of it…at least a basic understanding of the Facebook Like button (I hope).

For me there were a lot of ideas. Too many to list, in fact I think Bruce (or maybe I should call him Mr. Clay) wouldn’t probably like me to share them all with you anyway. What I will say is take the course.

iframed source referenceIt even came with a copy of Search Engine Optimization All-in-One For Dummies…that’s almost a $50 value in Canada. One thing that came up was right near the end and I think I might try it out as an effective way to help sculpt pages (as I duck and cover). I’ll share it, but only because you can see it in practice on the bruceclay.com web site – using an iframe to included content to more accurately pass page rank.

I won’t lie. It sounded really lame at first. Everything I’d read and heard was avoid an iframe almost like one would avoid a frameset. Then Bruce mentioned that BCI had run tests (I hear just a few of them) and determined that the content in an iframe is crawled and indexed. This was perfect and allowed for common items like header, navigation and ad space to be included commonly, client side. This is a good thing he said. I disagreed.

To me SEO is about ensuring the user has a good experience. I was concerned that the user could land on the source page in the iframe from a SERP and be orphaned on the site. As expected Bruce had a very easy solution. Simply place the included elements in a directory then disallow them with an entry in the robots.txt file. That’s when the light bulb went on and it started making sense.

From there it was a quick illustration and calculation of how the link juice would actually flow and I was convinced I should at least give it a try. Since I build most of my sites using WordPress, a plug-in would be ideal but I haven’t had a chance to look. That just means some manual work to create a few custom pages developed in the theme and we should be good to go.

Does it make sense now on why you would do something like this?

Oh and three other things I learned from Bruce Clay were

  1. you can create a solid brand around your name;
  2. Google speak should be an official language;
  3. at the end of the day, keeping it White Hat SEO over Black Hat or Grey Hat SEO tactics will make life easier for everyone.

Were you expecting better ideas? Like I said above I’m not giving away all the secrets and neither is Bruce. Have you taken the Bruce Clay SEO Bootcamp or any other SEO Training? What was the one most intriguing theory or idea you got out of it? I’d love to know so please be kind, leave a comment behind.

Jun
30