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8 out 5 dentists say...

I have been to busy to write something enlightening (or at least slightly original and possibly entertaining)> I found this today and thought it was clever, with a great message, too bad libraries couldn’t get the same ad budget as aftershave. Bet you didn’t know that libraries make you smell better

How great leaders inspire action

I found this on TED last night, what an awsome talk, now I know why Apple is so popular...

How to increase your organic search engine ranking with w3c complient code

W3C stands for the World Wide Consortium, a group of people, companies and universities that set the for all aspects of the web. The w3c defines how each HTML tag, or css style behaves in web browsers, they are also responsible for maintaining a database of all the tags that are in use, along with the spcifici functions of these tags.

So what does this have to do with Search Engines and your site ranking? A lot, for example if code your site to use standard tags then it will display correctly in all of the standards compliant browsers, it will also allow for the search engines to crawl your entire site (this is good), if your site contains non standard code then when the search bot is crawling your site and it comes upon some non standard code it will stop the crawl and part of your site will not be indexed (this is bad). Also if your site is not compliant it will not display correctly in different browsers.

If you would like to see if your site is compliant you can go to http://validator.w3.org/  you will be surprised at what you find.

If it were only that easy -- Photoshop in the kitchen

This is so clever, the Photoshop UI (user interface) used to bake cookies, what an adaptation. I wonder what would happen if someone used the recipe for scrambled eggs as the process for designing a website or editing a photo? This is great, now lets see if we can make webdesign more like cooking - how would you use a mixer to generate code?

Adobe Photoshop Cook from Lait Noir on Vimeo.

This is so clever, not to mention the cookies look really good.

How can I get my site to show up on the first page of Google?

I have come up with a a way to explain how Google PPC works and how to approach the purchase of PPC advertising, this list is designed to quickly help clients understand how to purchase PPC advertizing and make it easier for me to help them make smart cost effective decisions.

  • Review
    1. Review current website with regards to
      1. Organic Search
      2. Usability
      3. Messaging
      4. W3C*  Standards
  • Competitive Analysis
    1. Review competitors websites to determine
      1. Content Quality
      2. Messaging
      3. Ad-words, Ad-sense, and other PPC (pay-per-click) expenditures (we have tools for this)
  • Goal Setting
    1. Work with client to determine goals for the ad campaign
  • Budget
    1. Based on competitors expenditures, and key word choices we recommend a budget
  • Campaign Creation
    1. Setup ad campaign with various services, Google, MSN, Yahoo, Hotmail, and various other services
  • Tracking
    1. Install Google Analytics on clients website
    2. Install server based stat program on web server (webalizer, urchin etc)
  • Recommendations
    1. Based on results of web-traffic and conversions; make recommendations to client on budget, PPC locations, and ad-words.
    2. Determine ROI for current campaign and make adjustments based on success and budget.

    How does this all work? (google)

      • Cost: The costs associated with your typical PPC campaign can vary dramatically based on the words or phrases you wish to purchase, the location that you purchase them in and what your competitors are paying for those words or phrases.  Google uses an auction and budget format to charge for their PPC services, Below is an example of how Google sets the price for the word "Condo"
      • Location: where do you want to purchase the word, if you just want your ad to appear in Seattle, your cost would be less than if you wanted your ad appear nationally.
      • Popularity: if your word is popular, with your competitors the price will be higher than if it is specific or unique, for example 2 different entities are interested in purchasing the same word, the person that is willing to pay more gets first position on the page, until their budget is used up. If you are the only person that wants to buy a specific word then your cost would be very low, an example of this is “Condo” vs “Paul Fasel”  Paul Fasel is very unique and no one but Paul Fasel would want to bid on that phrase. While “CONDO” is very popular, and thus would be very costly to purchase.
      • Budget: you pay for views and clicks until your budget is used up, for example you have a $500.00 per month budget, and you are willing to spend 17.00 per day for your word in the Seattle area, you are willing to pay up to $1.00 per click for your word. This means that you will get at least 17 clicks per day before your ad disappears from the page, you may get more if your competitors budget is less and they have used up all of their clicks but the minimum you get is 17 clicks at $1.00 each.  If you do not get 17 clicks that day your budget rolls over to the next day, at the end of the month you only pay for the clicks that you use. If you only got 400 clicks in the month you only pay $400.00 for that month.
      • Management: After the initial setup the management fee includes monthly analysis of campaign success and tweaking of ad-words and phrases, and emailing of a simple report showing what words preformed well, and what words did not, along with budget and recommendations as how to change your campaign to optimize success.

      *W3C – World Wide Web Consortium www.w3c.org, they are the standards governing body for all websites, web code and browsers. To ensure your site is visible to search engines and your customers, the more compliant your site is the better it will perform in both search engine ranking and in your customer’s browsers. Click here to read more about W3C and how if can affect your search engine ranking.

Everything you need to know about social media in 5 minutes

Here is a great talk about Social Media, and what you need to do...

Google AdWords & Page Relevance

Back in the day (2005 or so) you could sign up for a Google AdWord account, and within a few hours you were buying keywords and driving traffic to your website, but then came the iPod, and Viagra merchants offering free laptops and X Box consoles. You see what was going on back then; folks were creating Google AdWord accounts for their websites then they were bidding on whatever words they thought would to drive traffic to their site, regardless if the words were relevant to the page content. (Bait and Switch), for example I am a company that is having a very hard time giving away new laptops and iPods I am up to my eyeballs with these fancy electronic devices, so I go to Google and buy an ad-word campaign for Viagra hoping to trick folks with ED to go to my website and sign up so that I can send them  brand new iPods, Laptops and xBox consoles. After a little while there were bunch of very frustrated men that needed Viagra but were conned into signing up to get a mailbox of the latest trendy electronic gizmos

Wawrika trades email marketing for Bronze sink!

Wawirka logo - Hand Made Bronze Sinks and Bathroom Accessories

Look what our friend Julie Wawirka from www.Wawirka.com made for us.

Wawrika Bronze sink traded for email marketing campaign

Julie Wawrika traded us this awsome sink for an email marketing campaign (click here to view ).

Warika makes some very nice hand cast bronze bathroom sinks available anywhere. Julie makes her sinks here in Portland, OR, so if you are local to Portland, or if you want to visit the place where your sink was born, you can contact Julie to schedule a time when you can visit her studio.

Just in case you need somthing special for your bathroom, and you already have a sink, check out the towlbars, drawer pulls www.wawrika.com

Covad Netopia 4622-xl-t Router password reset & more

Username: admin
Password: admin

I just inherited a Netopia 4622-xl-t router it was a leftover from a clients network upgrade. I wanted learn about how it works, and since they are not worth very much I was hoping to see if there was a way I could re-program it to do load balancing and fail over on our network.

The reason I am posting this is because it is a COVAD branded Netopia, and COVAD routers have passwords, the standard version of this router does not. So after about 10 tries I guessed the correct username and password combo, and POOF! I was in. now to see what this thing can do.