After taking my water kettle off the stove I left the burner on – and returned to a HOT kitchen. Then I found that the honey, that my honey had left upside down because it was nearly empty was now easy to pour and all over the counter and running between the cabinets and the stove – and I NEARLY said to myself – “really, what else could go wrong” and I stopped and realized that the Universe might be listening and it inspired this graphic today. Feel free to share it, pin it, like it – whatevah – if you feel the same way too, sometimes.

Yeah, this is how my morning is going.

When we started our first website, the playing field for small business was level. In fact, if anything it was better for the small business website because we weren’t restricted by corporate policies, we just made them up as we went along. And there wasn’t much competition not many brands were online, yet. And if you could create pretty good on page SEO, have a couple of directory listings in Yahoo or DMOZ your listing would hover on the first page of search.

And for several years, we didn’t really have to work that hard to stay at the top of our game. Then the game started changing. And the competition started heating up. More and more folks wanted to a piece of the Gold Rush – and why shouldn’t they – it was a VIRTUAL LANDSCAPE where everybody wins, right?

The one thing we learned when Google came out to play was that links counted – and if one link was good — ten links was better (not entirely true, but for the sake of simplicity, it works). Over time website owners began creating massive amounts of CRAPPY content just for the sake of getting links. And I am not saying I’ve never done that – I’m simply saying it worked – good or bad – right or wrong – it worked.

For a long time, the SHEER volume of links needed to compete in a competitive niche was unreachable for many businesses who were just entering

Will Panda & Penguin Help Your Online Business?

the arena. The Panda and Penguin updates from Google are changing that. Google has gotten better and better at identifying quality content and giving it a higher score, and I think we’ll see that continue to change and grow as more and more emphasis is placed on quality and the sites that have quality content rise to the top, and the sites with lower quality falls deeper into the abyss beyond page 2 of Google. In fact, in my effort to match some of the grey hat my competitors were doing, I found one of my own sites moved off to page 3 after 8 beautiful years on the front of Google. And I am working diligently to correct the problem, one piece of quality content at a time.

Whenever I have presented at the Jacksonville SEO Meetup, I have always said that there are choices to be made – risk your own site if you want to do the spammy grey hat stuff, but don’t run the risk of having a clients site banned or deleted because of your grey or black hat choices. I was on the phone yesterday with a colleague, and he said, and I quote, “Michelle, I don’t know why you’re not out there selling SEO services, small businesses are hurting and they need help with SEO real bad.”  (He is a dear friend, and he is from Mississippi). I laughed and reminded him that I was “retired” from doing that. But if the right project comes along, hey, perhaps I could be persuaded. ESPECIALLY since the playing field is more level again.

Going forward we are going to do things a little differently in our own business, and if I take on new SEO clients I’ll be doing things differently for them, too. We have been shaken out of our comfort zone, too, thanks to Dan Thies. He reminded me that we (not just me, but all businesses) have to have a better marketing mix, and not rely so heavily on just one source of traffic or one source of business. He is absolutely right. That’s so obvious in the offline world, too.  So we are shaking things up over here doing a little business deconstruction so we can grow our online businesses to be even stronger. Doing research, finding new product mixes, establishing more PPC, and the like is kinda fun. I’m like a kid in a candy store with the never ending bounty of information and opportunity.

So to Google, where others have said some really sad, disheartened and sometimes nasty things – I simply say, “Thank you.” Thank you for the opportunity for me to build a stronger business on a more level playing field.  I <3 Pandas & Penguins.

A Horse Outside Publix - Oceanway - Jacksonville, FL

My cousin Mel snapped this picture as she pulled up to the Publix Supermarket in Oceanway, here in Jacksonville, FL. Wanna help me write a caption for it?  Please leave your caption suggestions in the comments below.

From: Susan Pelter, Copywriter, Jacksonville, FL -

“I saw most of your presentation for the Marketing Matters group a few weeks ago and you were fantastic! Rarely can I pay attention to ANYONE for more than 45 minutes, but you kept me engaged and interested. I have already put the eminently practical information you provided to good and profitable use for myself and my clients. Thank you!”

Trying to improve your placement on the Google Places / Google Map … you probably need more citations. Here’s a great citation tool to help with finding places right for your business.

What is a CITATION you wonder? Well it’s all the places where your business is listed on the web – in directories, address tools, info lists and more.

Looking for ways to grow your business with Pinterest? Here’s a great opportunity to learn from Don Crowther and his Pin Income Pinterest Course. And we all know that luck is really being prepared at the right place and time.

Not only is there a course here … he has a FREE 19 minute video that is definitely worth watching!

Chance favors the prepared mind - Louis Pasteur

Here are a few of the modules in the course:

• How to get more clicks
• How to get more followers
• How to monetize Pinterest

I’m not sure why Don has this priced so low – at only $47, but I don’t know how long he’ll keep it at that price. Get started with Pinterest today.

Disclaimer: YUP, that’s an affiliate link for the product. From time to time, I will get paid if you choose to buy from links on my site — and you should always know I will NEVER recommend anything that I don’t believe has value for you.

Photo credit: http://www.artelista.com/ypobra.php?o=20082

Web Equity by Mike Blumenthal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.blumenthals.com.

If you’ve ever heard me give a presentation on SEO, I tend to RANT ON about Title tags, but not for the reason that most people think. YUP its the most important on page factor (or so we believe) … but I have a passion for title tags for another reason. It is the invitation to the SEARCHER, (remember the human LOOKING for your site but doesn’t know where to find you) to click …it is the WELCOME MAT for them to OPEN the door and come inside your website.

Today I have one more reason you need a GREAT WELCOME MAT (uh title tag)… As of this publishing, Google continues to include fresh Twitter in the relevant results, and if your TWEET includes a URL (web page link), then Google is serving the Title Tag of that page … NOT the link… Google is inviting them to CLICK for you, by showing them your WELCOME MAT.

What does your WELCOME MAT say to the people who want to find you?

Here's a snip from the web today that shows a sample of the TITLE TAG as a Link from the Tweet:

Title Tag Example Shown in Browser Clip

Doing it all, all at once is bullshit. Listen, I know that may sound a little snarky at first glimpse, but if you’ll invest just a few minutes to read further, you’ll understand what I mean.

Nearly all of us wear what I like to call the “Cloak of Overwhelm”, it’s made of mentally thick heavy wool and we drag it with us every where we go. It absorbs more than it releases. And on some days the weight of it feels like someone has doused it with a fire hose, soaking it completely through to the point that we can barely support the weight of it.

We didn’t start out that way, we just had a few things here or there and slowly we increased our burdens to bear – “that’s life” after all. But over time, just a little bit at a time, we put more on our list than can be done, and then berate ourselves for not being able to “do it all”.

You can do it all, eventually, over time, you just can’t do it all, ALL AT ONCE. But you can, if you do them one thing at a time.

Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step. – Lao Tzu

So how can you remove this cloak of overwhelm? It’s not easy to take off, and often it’s really easy to put back on.

First … what is it that you’re doing? Re-evaluate all the things you’ve commited yourself to doing. If they are not giving you joy, enhancing your life or improving your business – perhaps they need to be scrapped.

YES, Scrapped! Quit doing things that are not making your life better.  Make a list of all you’re commited to doing – practices, events, charities, etc. If you’ll be honest with yourself some of it is just crap. Sort out what is important to you, to your family, to your lifestyle and (for the entrepreneur reading) to your business then make a plan for your day around that.

There are dozens, probably hundreds of time management methods – but time isn’t the problem – you get the same amount of it every day, day in and day out. Its not the time that needs to be managed, it’s YOU.

So take off that cloak, reprioritize your life and take control – because you don’t need to do it all – just the most important things. 

Want to read more about a simple approach to time management – you should check out 3 Things Each Day on Doug Sundheim’s blog or for a longer read – this is a great book by my friend Pam Dodd and Doug SundheimThe 25 Best Time Management Tools & Techniques: How to Get More Done Without Driving Yourself Crazy

The first thing you have to do is CLAIM your business in Google Places Fill out your profile completely and accurately. The goal is to be 100% complete which includes keywords, video, photos, hours, etc.

Next, complete company profiles everywhere – especially Merchant Circle, Linked In and the like.  You can use a local directory listing service like UBL - it’s not free but can save you a ton of time.

TIP: Use consistent company data … make it match everywhere – same business name, same spellings, same abbreviations, same zip, phone etc.

If you have visitors, customers or attendees that come to your facility, restaurant, offices – you MUST get your profile updated on the MOBILE CHECK IN sites – Facebook, GoWalla, FourSquare, Yelp and any others.

The paper from David Mihm features 79 detected aspects of local search / Google places.

Here’s a short list of places you can get citations (aka listings – aka links) from:

Hat tip to VERTICAL MEASURES for this list of local citations

Best of the Web – Local

Insider Pages

Super Media

Jacksonville City Search

Hot Frog

Yellow Pages

Local.com

Yelp

Matchpoint

Zoom Info