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The SEO Edge: Choosing your keyword battles, and fighting them well!

By Phil Kennedy in Featured

Looking forward from the early stages of web site development and search engine optimization can be a daunting thing. A little research will show you that trusted domain names that have been around for several years will almost always outrank new domains. This fact can cause some distress among webmasters - it can seem that you’ll simply never catch up. Combine that with the fact that there is now massive competition in just about every niche, and it’s almost enough to bury your head in the sand.

But chin up, there is hope.

For starters, take a look at some of the competition in your niche. Take a close look at their source code. Looks sloppy? Table-based layouts, improper markup techniques, title tags that do nothing to target search traffic? Every optimization point that you can find that your competition isn’t fully utilizing is another place where you can develop your edge.

That said, there are simply going to be some keywords and search phrases that will be too general or competitive for you to hope to rise above the organic search competition and get to page one of results. There is more search traffic every day and more competition as well. The general keywords return millions of results, and there will always be competitors who have been at the SEO game longer than you, have done more writing, have older domains, more inbound links, etc. That’s just the way it is. However, with the increases in competition a natural phenomenon has occurred.

Recognizing this phenomenon is as easy as putting yourself in the place of your target audience or customers. A potential customer visits his or her favourite search engine with the intention of satisfying whatever need it is that your product, service or information targets. There was a day several years ago when they could enter a simple, generic search phrase and get limited results. That day has long gone.

A fact: search users are getting smarter. Just as you have realized your inability to compete effectively for the more general search phrases search users have come to terms with the fact that they’ll need to enter more targeted phrases to get the results they’re looking for. Maybe they’re looking for local services, or they want to weed-out low-quality, cheap-o products from their results. While major search engines strive every day to better their search results search users are creating their own internal filtration systems. Nobody wants to waste his or her own time - if being more specific when searching saves them a few moments of browsing results pages you’d better believe search users are going to do so.

What this means for you, woeful newfound webmaster, is that there are more search phrases to target. If yours is a product or service that is more likely to be sought geographically start targeting geographic keywords with your content. If your product or service satisfies a niche need or has a unique quality or feature find out what search terms users are entering when looking for it.

In short: do your keyword research. It’s the first step to any successful SEO campaign, and for new webmasters keyword research will be the cornerstone to your content creation efforts. Find out what users are searching for in your niche, run a few test searches yourself and see what kind of results show up. If it doesn’t look like your competitors are targeting that particular phrase it’s a likely place for you to dig in.

This is best done with a keyword research tool such as WordTracker, but there are plenty of free utilities out there to do some keyword research. Google’s keyword tool, while more geared towards AdWords management, can give you a general idea of how much traffic there is for a given keyword and how many competitors are bidding on that keyword. If there aren’t many advertisers bidding for a keyword there’s a chance it is also under-targeted for organic SEO.

It’s a brave new search world out there, true. For new webmasters it is easy to become discouraged at the level of competition - and most of them have been at it longer. Fret not - research your keywords, find out where you can take advantage of something your competition has overlooked or not-yet-discovered. Then set yourself to the task of creating as much quality content that your users will find beneficial and interesting - the kind of content they might willingly link to. Targeting the right keywords with high-quality content is still the recipe for success with organic search engine rankings - and success is still very much within reach.

Author:  Phil Kennedy has recently purchased his own UK website design company called Swift Media UK which offers  affordable web hosting,  logo design & search engine optimisation services. This company is now under new management and welcomes your questions with regards to any webmaster related issues.

Does the PPC budget determine the agency fees?

By Jacqueline Dooley in Featured

This is a question that I often get from direct clients, smaller agencies or larger agencies who are just starting to offer search marketing services. In all three cases, my client (e.g., the agency or the advertiser) is looking to me to help them price out search services.

For agencies, I actually favor a hybrid model of media percentage and flat fees for larger and more complex PPC campaigns. I personally base my fee structure on hours worked, something I provide prospective clients in the form of a 2-3 page estimate after we’ve hammered out the overall scope of work.

Estimating a PPC Job - A Consultant’s Viewpoint 

To answer the main question here - I rarely base my estimate on the size of the budget because there’s not much difference between putting together a campaign with a $1000/month budget and a $10,000/month budget (for example). In my opinion, budget should only influence fees when it’s very large – over six figures a month, and that’s mainly because it’s generally indicative of a more complex campaign.

Here are the factors that I think should affect the estimate:

• The number of vendors (engines) in the plan – it’s a lot more work to launch campaigns on three engines, monitor, report and optimize them than it is to focus on just one (*cough* Google *cough*) engine
• The number of keywords/categories in the campaign– An e-commerce site with 12 categories and thousands of products has many keyword variables to test, while a company that just sells one product or service (e.g., online tax filing) has a limited number of keywords. Keyword expansion and refinement directly impacts the number of hours spent optimizing a campaign, and should be a factor when estimating hours.
• The potential for campaign growth. Many campaigns I launch start small and then grow into great monstrous beasts that require a lot more time to manage then when they initially launched. As such, I find it’s important to do three-month trials so the scope of work can be re-evaluated to see if 1) an agency is even needed at all and 2) if the campaign has grown/changed significantly where the number of hours needs to be revisted
• The amount of reporting involved. I provide weekly summary reports to most small clients as well as monthly keyword reports. If a client requires more reporting than this (e.g., CPA reports by keyword by week) than I would likely increase the amount of the estimate. Very large campaigns (of the type I manage with the large agencies) often are very complex and have teams of PPC specialists working on them, which justifies the higher cost of retaining these companies to manage a campaign. Well, that and the higher ROI the campaign achieves.

Many of the projects I work on with small agencies or directly with the client amount to about 25-40 hours to launch, and 20-30 hours/month to manage. This doesn’t seem to deviate much for budgets of $50,000 or less, and I’ve begun moving to a flat monthly retainer fee for these types of campaigns.

I’m certainly not sayng that the way I do things is the best way, but so far my clients feel it’s fair and I’m happy with the compensation. I have begun exploring the idea of getting paid for performance with e-commerce or lead-generation campaigns, but I haven’t yet taken that plunge. Still, it’s got some exciting potential.

Author:  Jackie Dooley is the owner and founder of Jacqueline Dooley Internet Marketing, where she works primarily with agencies large and small as a consultant on a variety of search marketing campaigns. Read more of Jacqueline’s bio here.

Do it Yourself Social Media Marketing

By Ross Dunn in Featured

SEO Meet SMM (Social Media Marketing) was the most information-dense seminar that I attended at SMX Advanced, a multi-day conference geared for advanced web marketing professionals. As a result, it has taken a while to view my footage and pick out all of the best tips to share with you. The SEO Meet SMM seminar was paneled with an all-star cast of Rand Fishkin, Neil Patel and Cindy Krum. Between these three incredibly bright people, and my own experience and research I have put together this whitepaper on how to use social media marketing (SMM) to your advantage. I believe this is the most current (timely), accurate and cutting edge information available for those who want to start marketing in this field.

The Concept
Social media marketing is a method of promoting your brand (be it yourself, a product, a service, or a company) by strategically making your presence known across various social media networks (such as Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Myspace, etc). This may seem overly elementary but “making yourself known” is the kicker because each category of social media has a different, sometimes intricate method for effective promotion.

Business from Social Marketing is Indirect
A key concept to social marketing is that it is not designed to immediately provide business but instead it provides the visibility your brand needs to ultimately convert fans into buyers. I often get clients saying “I don’t think being on MySpace will sell anything”. The truth is that often they are correct. Having a commercial presence on MySpace that provides great content and interesting free tools (aka. widgets) serves to raise the awareness of your brand so that users remember your service for later and/or provides you with a podium to share the benefits of your brand. In short, it is important not to forget this essential concept: social media marketing drives brand awareness which later translates into sales.

Social Media Categories and Associated Strategies
Here is an introduction to the various top portals segregated into their appropriate categories and mated with a recommended strategy. Please keep in mind the following is only a partial listing of some social media sites. If you want a more comprehensive (but unorganized) list check out this list of web 2.0 sites which includes social media properties (very extensive list).

I have organized Social Media Marketing into the following categories or themes:

1. Social Networking Sites
2. Business Networking Sites
3. Social (Collaborative) Bookmarking Sites
4. Content Voting Sites
5. News Sharing Sites
6. Collaborative Directories
7. Video Sharing Sites, and
8. Photo Sharing

1) Social Networking Sites
The following social networking sites experience a volume of activity unrivaled in the social media marketplace. These sites provide it all; personal blogs, videos, music, classifieds, mail, and much, much more.

1. MySpace: this site offers the widest variety of tools and social networking capabilities.
2. Facebook: great for connecting with old classmates and creating a personal profile.

Associated Marketing Strategy
Each of these sites allow you to create a powerfully diverse and engaging web presence complete with photos, articles, and bookmarks. MySpace even provides the ability to ‘skin’ your profile! In other words you can actually brand it to make it totally unique; a powerful marketing capability (To view a great example see Starbuck’s MySpace account). Assuming the site is already done it is best to then start linking to the site from key areas of the Internet so the search engines will have no problem finding and indexing it. You can do this by linking to it from a social media section of your website; a section that I believe will be part of the status quo structure (as ubiquitous as the About Page) of all new websites in the near future.

2) How to Market on Business Networking Sites

These sites are devoted to networking business people and provide direct access to upper level management / executives for sales people and for those looking to create industry connections.

1. LinkedIn: the premier business networking site where job profiles are shared, jobs posted, questions asked and then answered by industry professionals (my current favorite).
2. ZoomInfo: a search engine index of company names and people. Find yourself (if you are there) and claim your space or create your profile.
3. Spoke: a database of contact information for people at all levels of business.
4. Jigsaw: a database of virtual business cards that can be traded and shared amongst members.

Associated Marketing Strategy
Create a personal profile on each of these sites and connect, connect, connect. The concept is so simple I could almost stop there but it is important not to forget that some of these services also allow for interactivity in forums and Q&A sections. I recommend participating as often as possible in these interactive sections in order to gain positive references and to further expand your network.

3) How to Market on Social (Collaborative) Bookmarking Sites

Here are a number of websites that specialize in social bookmarking. When you register with the service the service will collect and organize the sites that you choose to bookmark and allow you to share them with other others. The social concept allows each service to create content-specific directories of user-selected content; which states (theoretically) the content is of a high quality.

1. Del.icio.us: bought by Yahoo in 2005, Del.icio.us is the web’s leading bookmarking site.
2. StumbleUpon: in the past when my best content got ‘stumbled’ by users I found this community to offer the highest quality response in terms of traffic and buzz.
3. Yahoo! MyWeb: Yahoo’s huge following has made MyWeb a popular bookmarking property and a top property for promotion.
4. Backflip: started in 1999 (or possibly earlier) this site is the one of the granddaddies of bookmarking but it came on harsh times and was sold to passionate employees who maintain it now. This is not a leader in the industry but it was my first bookmarking site way back in ’99 so I feel I owe Backflip a little time in the limelight.

Associated Marketing Strategy
Create a personal profile on each site and then spend some time using them as though you were a potential customer of your own service. In other words, search for terms you target in your SEO campaigns or ask questions you or your target market asks regularly. After a while you will see a trend in the results you receive that you can use to your advantage.

For example, after typing in “marketing tips” on StumbleUpon you may notice that many of the articles that are getting positive reviews are written like tutorials whereas the other articles are getting little or negative feedback. This type of observation will give you the insight you need to write quality articles that are more likely to get positive ratings; which ultimately translates into increased traffic to the article source (your website perhaps). In addition, you can go back and bookmark tutorial content you have already written (as long as it is still viable).

If you are not writing your own content at the moment it is still advisable to find other great content and bookmark it for your profile. Why? If you create a reputation for providing excellent bookmarks it is more likely you will get additional, positive attention when you ultimately feature content of your own.

4) How to Market on Content Voting Sites

The following are the top sites used for people to vote ‘on the fly’ for any content they find useful online. The resulting vote then adds the content or increases its visibility within each resource so that others have a chance to read the content. Once something has received a certain number of votes (this is a moving target) the visibility of the content may gain momentum as others have a chance to read and vote on it.

1. Digg: currently one of the most popular social media websites in the world and has been known to show a high degree of technology-based news.
2. Netscape: is in many ways a successful clone of Digg but Netscape has been accused of providing more entertainment news rather than technology news.
3. Reddit: the news here is more politically inclined and the site has a very strong following.

Associated Marketing Strategy
First a caution: it is crucial that you pay attention to the etiquette of these content voting sites; otherwise your promotions could backfire and/or you could be banned. To read up on etiquette visit the associated help files for each site (i.e. How Digg Works) and the FAQ – these will give you the necessary background info to get you started.

To make these sites work for you I recommend participating in each group for a while in order to pick up on what articles do well and don’t do well in your selected industry. In addition, creating a respected profile by bookmarking new and interesting content and posting thoughtful comments on other people’s bookmarks will go a long way to improving your chances of success on these sites. Once you have a respected profile you can ask other respected users to check out your new content to see if they deem it worthy of a thumbs up. Whatever you do, I do not recommend voting on your own content due to the obvious bias and potential damage it could do to your profile’s reputation.

5) How to Market on News Sharing Sites

These sites serve as private news hubs where information is collected (aggregated) from blogs or other syndicated content that the user has decided he/she wants to be kept up to date on. The users are also provided with simple methods to share their chosen feeds with other like-minded users.

1. Technorati: the grandfather of the lot, Technorati is a search engine that specializes in providing current content from millions of blogs from all over the world.
2. Bloglines: subscribe to feeds, groups, or websites and share your favorite content. Bloglines also allows you to create a custom blog within your profile.
3. Newsvine: this excellent site is similar to Bloglines in that you can submit your own articles and have your own blog hosted within their system(s).
4. Google Reader: add a multitude of feeds, categorize them and share them (if you wish)

Associated Marketing Strategy
Each of the above sites has varying characteristics that should be considered separately when marketing:

• Technorati: first setup a free account at Technorati and claim your blog. Once it is claimed ensure that you tag each of your blog postings using categories or labels depending on the blog software you are using. If your software does not offer tagging functionality Technorati has a tagging help page that will provide you with instructions to add custom Technorati labels to each blog posting. Once your blog is set up appropriately try to use descriptive keywords when tagging your posts so your content is more likely to be found.
• Bloglines & Newsvine: create a profile of your favorite web feeds and articles including your own (if they are of a high enough quality) and share them with the community. Create a custom blog and separately post teasers of your articles that link to the main article on your own site.
• Google Reader: create labels (aka. tag) using keyphrases that are popularly searched and then share the labels with the general public; label sharing is found in the “Settings” and then “Tags” area of Google Reader. Then attach top quality content from your own site and other sites that you find in your day-to-day online activities.

In each case where you create a unique blog or share a label make sure to link to these pages from a social media section of your website and/or site map. These links will provide the search engine spiders with crucial access points to your socialized content. After a while, gauge the success of each social site for driving traffic or backlinks by checking your backlink reports (Yahoo or Google webmaster areas) as well as your own website analytic reports and add more backlinks to one if it is standing out as a particularly positive performer. These extra backlinks should not be from your own site but from offsite areas such as forum signatures, online bios, syndicated articles, etc.

6) How to Market on Collaborative Directories

These directories are compiled with recommended sites or content maintained by online volunteers. 

1. Wikipedia: an online reference/dictionary where the content is created by volunteers.
2. Open Directory Project: the oldest human-edited directory of websites.
3. Prefound: a directory of shared favorite sites from a wide variety of categories.
4. Zimbio: a directory of fed content from external and internal blogs and shared favorites.

Associated Marketing Strategy
Each of the above sites has varying characteristics that should be considered separately when marketing:

• Wikipedia: check to see if your company name is already in the Wikipedia index. If it is make certain that the link to your website is active and the content within the profile is correct. If a profile for your company is not online yet then sign up with Wikipedia and create a profile while making sure to provide an encyclopedic viewpoint. Wikipedia discusses in detail the type of writing that will be flagged as spam so don’t waste your time being promotional because your write up is likely to be flagged as spam or removed if you are. What you want is a link to your website from Wikipedia and a profile that properly describes your offering and company history. You can add links to external websites but do so sparingly.
• Open Directory Project (ODP): check www.dmoz.org for your website listing by typing in your company name or the name that you are most likely to be listed under. If you find your site listed make certain the listing is accurate. If you do not find your site listed then you need to submit it by finding the most appropriate category (only one is generally allowed per URL) and submit your listing via the “Suggest URL” link at the top of the page. If you need to make an alteration use the “update listing” link where you will have to explain the reasons for the change – they have to be good to have any chance of success. I also suggest checking for a “weblogs” or “newsletters” category for your industry where you can separately submit your blog(s) and newsletter(s). Links from the ODP are useful because they are often well indexed by search engines and offer direct unblocked links to your website.
• Prefound: create an account and document sites and content related to your profession that you find particularly interesting. Befriend users within Prefound community that regularly contribute to categories related to your industry. When you write a blog and you believe it has enough merit to benefit other users then ask others within your community to consider your content for addition; it is generally not a good idea to add your own content but on occasion, if your content is extremely relevant I see no reason to avoid doing so.
• Zimbio: while setting up your account you will be prompted to enter the URL of your own blog. Once you have completed the setup you will have access to a list of your recent blogs which you can then, one by one, categorize into their various ‘wikizines’ which are essentially topic-focused pages within Zimbio. Now, don’t just use Zimbio to publish your own work but try to find other great content out there which adds value to the site. There are easy “add to Zimbio” buttons you can add to your various browsers to populate your profile with new content regularly. If you create a clean mix of both external and personal content you will have a far higher chance of creating a useful profile at Zimbio.

7) How to Market on Video Sharing Sites

Video sharing is one of the foremost methods of social marketing and it requires different technologies from the previously discussed content-based social marketing formats. The following are some of the top video sharing sites:

1. YouTube: YouTube is the premier video sharing website exponentially out-distancing its competitors in terms of traffic and popularity.
2. Metacafe: claims a global audience of 16 million unique visitors and offers a free video editing package to its users along with decent payouts to those whose videos appear on the front page.
3. Break: similar to Metacafe, this site is well laid out and offers payments to users for videos that appear on the front page.
4. DailyMotion: it has a jam-packed home page and according to Alexa it has a very strong following.

Associated Marketing Strategy
Videos have the power to catch on and travel through millions of desktop screens within a matter of hours. I am not going to tell you how to create a quality video but as the incredibly popular Apple videos have shown, even a commercial video can perform famously online. What I can tell you, however, is that whatever you do create for video sharing sites should be uploaded to as many sites as possible – there is no harm in doing this. Furthermore, when you upload each video it is crucial that you creatively populate the video title, description and keyword/label fields with words that both ignite the interest of viewers and allow the video to be found. Did what I just say sound familiar? It should, after all optimizing a video for the Internet is currently no different than optimizing a page was using META description and keyword tags back in 1997. Just do not assume that spamming is just as successful as it was back then; these days you have to craft your tags very carefully in order to be found in the dirge of competing content.

Once you have uploaded all of your videos embed a copy within each of your online blogs. Which video source to embed is up to you. You may want to mix it up and use YouTube on your main site but some of the others on your satellite blogs (i.e. Newsvine, Bloglines, etc.). Another option would be to create a slick introduction to your video from each of your blogs and then link them to your main blog where your video is embedded.

How to Market on Photo Sharing Sites

Digital cameras are everywhere from pocket sized point and shoots and cell phone cameras to popular digital SLRs that appear to be around the chest of every tourist. Unfortunately all of these pictures take up a great deal of digital space that the average amateur photographer cannot accommodate. As a result, the photo sharing marketplace has exploded to provide numerous homes for avid photographers to host their stash of family, business and artsy pics. The following sites stand out as serious performers in this socially-driven field:

1. Flickr: extremely popular and by far the leader in this industry to date.
2. Webshots: has a strong following and requires free software download to upload photos.
3. ShutterFly: offers an excellent interface with image editing tools and a whole host of photo-related services.
4. PBase: has been around since 1999 and offers decent functionality to a moderate user base.
5. SmugMug: according to Compete.com it has experienced rapid growth over the past year (41.6%) – great design!

Associated Marketing Strategy
Pictures are optimized much the same way as videos: carefully craft a title, a description and keyword tag that best represents the image and piques the interests of your target viewer. But the question that I often consider is, “what is the best way to make photos generate business?” My first recommendation is to use pictures to show your interest in your field. For example, if you sold cars you could benefit from posting your photos from the most recent car show you went to along with a note that you will soon have the cars available on your lot. In this regard it is useful to provide a link to your own website so viewers can investigate you when their interest is piqued. Showing that you are interested in your industry and that you are active within it implies a level of knowledge that many viewers may find comforting.

Don’t Forget to Create a Plan
Now that you have an idea of the various social web properties and their potential marketing application(s) it is important to identify what you want to get out of social media before you market in this space. Be sure to ask yourself the following questions:

What is your ultimate goal?
Consider the objectives that come to mind. Here are some examples of common answers and what they might mean to your planning efforts:

1. “I want people to know my name and acknowledge my expert status.”
   In this situation you may want to drive traffic to your main website bio where you feature your services, testimonials or even your resume. Using social media you can build your online reputation by participating in sites that appear to have a strong following of potential customers; provide answers to their questions, find associated content that you know will help them and bookmark it. All-in-all you want to make friends and create a personal profile above recrimination.
2. “I want my company name to be found within all of the major social media sites when my industry-related keywords are typed in.”
   There are a variety of ways to achieve this end result but I expect the most effective is to create quality content that no one can help but link to. That is far harder than it sounds but the fact is that company names don’t rise to the cream of the Internet crop without blowing people away with helpful and thoughtful content. Once you create the content use a blog to disseminate it quickly while placing a snippet (say the first 3 paragraphs) into your social media profiles in such sites as MySpace, Bloglines, and Newsvine along with a link to your main article (where readers can continue reading). By only providing a teaser for your article and pointing readers to your website for the full article you will be emphasizing the original posting on your flagship site as the original article and as well, you will heighten its visibility.

   TIP)  Be sure to work hard to create a network of friends within each social community. You can leverage this community by letting them know you have just released an article they may be interested in.

3. “I need to get the word out on my product/service.”
   News releases are not mentioned within this article but I would be remiss not to mention them. Use PRWeb.com to submit a carefully crafted press release to the web. Next go to each of your established profiles and tell your friends about your launch and perhaps even offer them a free product or trial of the service. Whatever you do the ultimate goal is to make it unavoidable for them to help you market it.

In each of the cases above I also recommend participating in answer forums like the LinkedIn Answers area or Yahoo Answers where people (and in turn their businesses) can prove their worth to questioners. In fact there are people whose sole income comes from impressing people in Yahoo Answers and getting their business. Indeed, each of those programs offers a point system where, if you are providing top answers you can rise in their ranking of your industry brethren which will increase your company’s visibility significantly.

How much time are you willing to commit to social media marketing?
This is a crucial question because it will determine just how big you want to make your social media plan. If you are doing this yourself then force yourself to set a few hours aside every day or every two days to keep your profiles active. If that is too much work then consider hiring someone to help you keep the profiles fresh OR just select the top social media websites to market. Whatever you decide to do start out small and then increase your social marketing workload only when you know you have the time and patience to do the additional work correctly.

Get Out There and Participate!
As I researched this whitepaper I found myself blown away by the shear number of social media websites that appear to be prospering and are regularly adding new incredibly creative methods to share and receive great information. This whitepaper will likely be out of date within a few months (at best) but for now I am confident it will provide many with the necessary roadmap to get started in social media marketing.

Author:  Ross Dunn is the founder and CEO of StepForth Search Engine Placement. Celebrating its tenth year in business, StepForth is one of the oldest and most trusted brands in search engine marketing.

Internet Advocacy and Online Technology for Non-Profit Organizations

By Joem Hughes in Featured

In this modern world, online and other communication technologies change at a very rapid pace. Web conferences, email advocacy campaign, and blogs are being considered by many nonprofit organizations as new, exciting, and somewhat mysterious technologies that they can use to communicate and mobilize.

The emergence of podcasting, wikis, or text messaging campaigns has made all of these technologies seem obsolete. For nonprofit organizations keeping up with the latest technology trends can be very challenging. Many nonprofit organizations face basic technology challenges such as keeping a strong network up and running and maintaining an effective Internet advocacy site.

It is necessary for organizations working to reach their constituencies, lawmakers, and other stakeholders to become familiar with and effective at using new communication technologies. This is due to the fact that these technologies are a means to an end, and that end is communicating with people and influencing them.

The majority of thought leaders and civically engaged citizens who then influence their associates, family, and friends are online. A large number of Internet users also share information between one another via email, social online communities such as myspace.com, listserv groups, and more.

There are some steps that nonprofit organizations can take in order to tap communication technology to further their missions through advocacy work. For instance an organization can “lower the bar”. This means providing more opportunities for users to get involved through features in emails and on the Web site. Such features include calls to action, free newsletter sign-ups, and online petitions or pledges.

It would also be a good idea to “engage and educate” the online users. An organization should provide useful information through online communications and update that information regularly to keep the audience engaged.

Enticing users to “train to click” is also advantageous for an organization that wishes to attract online users. People should be enticed to visit an advocacy campaignwebsite to get further information and engage in calls to action. Creating links in emails and e-newsletters to a website for access to further information and full newsletter articles can increase the traffic throughout the pages of an advocacy website.

A nonprofit organization can also benefit from creating incentives for users to take action. A website may offer free access to online or print resources for signing a petition or registering and simply celebrate successful online activists with featured profiles.

Making contact with other Internet advocacy communities is also a good idea. An organization may find the online communities that the members of its audience are a part of and join the conversations, post videos and photos, or place ads. An organization that is trying to reach influencers and young people will find this particularly effective.

Making sure that the online audiences have fun and reporting the results can also improve the online advocacy campaign of any organization. Fun and interactive sites and email communications keep people engaged. Reporting on the successes or challenges of advocacy campaigns and initiatives can keep the audience engaged and build momentum for further action.

Author:  Joem writes occasional articles on Internet marketing, Internet advocacy, Internet advertising, and advocacy campaign for www.optimumresponse.com and other similar websites.

Simple Web 2.0 - How Web 2.0 Can Help Your Business Grow

By Melissa Fach in Featured

Well, first it is important to say that the phrase “Web 2.0″ was coined in 2004 by O’Reilly Media, Inc. So, how can Web 2.0 help you? Basically it can allow you to use some free, but very popular, aspects of the net to advertise your business, products and/or services. You have several ways to do this:

• Blogging- You can blog for free! Blogging, if done right, is a great way to advertise your business, your expertise and your knowledge. Update your blog at the bare minimum 3 times a week (should be 5-7 if possible). With your blog you can discuss the benefits of the services you offer, you can give advice or tips, explain dangers or give warnings and while doing all of these things, you can also show that you have the knowledge a potential customer will need. When you use labels or tags you help the search engines index your pages effectively. Blogger and Wordpress are free bloggers, others are available for a small fee. If you want your blog to be successful you must promote the blog and there are several ways to do this:
• Blogging and RSS Feeds- RSS Feeds are web feed formats that are constantly updating digital media/content such as blogs, podcasts and even news feeds. Everytime you update your blog your can let the RSS feeds know and your blog’s information will be accessible to people worldwide. I have a tiny blog with not a lot of info, but you would not believe how many people around the world come here. So for all of you new people, HI! When you update your blog you can use Pingoat to let many RSS feeds know at one time that you updated your blog. I also recommend using Feedburner and claiming your blog at Technorati. There are millions reading RSS several times a day.
• Blogging Communities- MyBlogLog is a great way to interact with Internet users and find bloggers that are writing about the same subject you are. It will bring traffic to your blog. You will be surprised how far your blog will go if you promote it.
• MySpace- yes, myspace MySpace has allows you to suggest your site, blog or RSS feed to be used in their MySpace news section. Believe it or not MySpace is not just for kids.
• Podcasts can be seen through syndication feeds and can be easily seen on MP3 players, personal media players or on computers.
• Wikipedia- In case you haven’t heard wiki is a free online encyclopedia that allows Internet users to update it. You can place information about yourself or your business, but there are guidelines you must follow.
• YouTube- YouTube allows you to place commercials, movies and even informational videos on the web. You can learn to play the drums or learn how to garden. You can create videos with tips and advice you feel consumers need (while also advertising your business).
• Craigslist.org- Free place to advertise and find whatever you could possibly need, from real estate to IPODs. You can use Crazedlist.org to scan many cities quickly.
• FaceBook- a social networking service that is typically used by those college-aged and under. Great way to target this demographic.
• Message Boards/Forums- There are forums about every subject everywhere. You can go and review forums that are discussing your products and/or services and offer your opinion. You do not want to go in and discuss why people should use you. Add your business name and a description in your signature. Everytime you respond to a post your sig is there for advertising. People will look.
• YFly- Another social networking site that also allows people to download music. It is not as big as MySpace, but you can create a profile (discussing you and your business), add some music and gain some exposure.
• del.icio.us- not my favorite, but many love it. It is a social bookmarking manager that can bring in some traffic.
• DIGG.com - DIGG is more about news stories, but if you have a news stories about something your business is doing it can be beneficial.

If you have something you would like to add about web 2.0 and advertising please leave a comment and a link to your blog. I will be glad to add it.Melissa Fach- Sarasota SEO Copywriter and Copyeditor and Blogger

Author:  Melissa Fach has always been an Internet Junkie. A successful copywriter and SEO, Melissa works with a wide array of clients. Melissa runs Panaca Writing, SRQ Web Design and the Sarasota Print Shop.

Search Engine Optimization for Universal Search - Back to Square One?

By Scott Buresh in Featured

Organic search engine optimization, until recently, had been a fairly straightforward endeavor. The goal was to optimize the content on a website so that it would show up in the organic results on one or more of the major search engines - results that were comprised of nothing but other websites. However, in the middle of May 2007, Google began rolling out its new “Universal Search,” something it had been working on behind the scenes for several years. This new search option may have long-term repercussions for every search engine optimization company in the industry if it is something that is preferred by the public at large and if it becomes the standard going forward.

What Is Universal Search?

Someone using Google’s Universal Search will find that a query brings back results that encompass not only web pages, but also videos, blogs, images, news articles, and other media available online. While Google already had in place options for searching each of these areas individually, many searchers did not notice those options or did not know how to use them, a phenomenon that became known as “invisible tabs.”

With Universal Search, there’s no need to select a separate menu item - the search will return results that encompass many different types of media. For example, a search for “breakdancing” might bring up not only web pages about breakdancing, but also blog posts about it, videos showing technique, and news articles about it. It would not, however, give you the reason why you were wearing parachute pants and trapped in the eighties.

However, Universal Search hasn’t been rolled out fully yet. Currently, certain terms will give Universal results, while other searches will remain the same as before. This is a classic Google move - roll something out gradually, see how it plays in the public eye, and then decide what to do from there. Basically, Universal Search as it exists right now is very likely to change, depending on user feedback.

And if the limited queries that now return Universal Search results do not garner positive responses, it’s likely that Google will revert to its previous, webpage predominated results. They obviously don’t want to lose market share, and they already learned a valuable lesson not long ago when they released a new algorithm that was poorly received and which was subsequently dialed back.

What are the Benefits of Universal Search?

Universal Search brings several benefits to searchers. A searcher no longer has to specify the media he or she is looking for - one keyphrase search will cover everything. And the results from a search will be more comprehensive in many instances, giving a well-rounded picture to the searcher that may include better information than would previously have been found in a search of just one type of media.

What are the Drawbacks of Universal Search?

The problem with Universal Search is that it can muddy the results, and it can also introduce irrelevant results that a searcher cannot use. A search for “Paris Hilton” (ever heard of her?) will bring up news, videos, and other information about the heiress. But it will also bring up a map of the city of Paris showing locations of Hilton hotels, something most searchers that typed that exact phrase probably did not have in mind. Plus, 28% of Internet users are still using slow dialup connections¹, according to RVA Market Research. Many of these people are likely not interested in videos or other results that require much bandwidth, and such users may turn away from Universal Search entirely - there are, after all, other search engines. No, really - there are.

In addition, there is no way to turn off Universal Search; as it exists right now, it is part of the standard “Web” search, eliminating the ability to simply search web pages and introducing a new wrinkle in search engine optimization efforts. Now, a website is competing not only with other websites, but also with all the other media that will be included in the results that an average searcher achieves. And Universal Search makes it difficult for Google itself to determine the relevance between different types of media, since the factors that determine a web page’s relevance are much different than those that would determine a video’s relevance, for example.

What Can You Do Now to Make Sure Your Site Is Ready to be Found in a Universal Search?

Clearly, Universal Search will change how an SEO campaign is run if it catches on. But this is a real if - users’ search habits are hard to change overnight, even if you are Google and you essentially define what searching is and how it works. If it does catch on, you’ll need to analyze the industry you are in and figure out which types of media might be most important for you. For example, if you are a real estate firm, images of the buildings and homes you are selling might become a very important part of your site, and so you will want to focus on adding alt tags to each image so that not only does your site show up for certain keyphrases, but your images do as well. If you are a business services firm, you instead might want to focus on news items produced by your company - press releases and white papers - and make sure that those are available to search engine spiders and optimized for critical phrases.

If you are working with an outside search engine optimization company already, now is the time to ask what they plan to do in regard to Universal Search. Your search engine optimization company should at least have an awareness of the magnitude of this new way to search on Google and should be able to present you with some sort of plan of attack, even if they plan to wait to embark upon the plan until they know for sure that Universal Search is going to catch on. If you are looking into hiring an outside search engine optimization company to launch a new campaign, the same holds true - ask your contacts at the firm how they are planning to handle Universal Search. They should at least be familiar with the concept and have a general outline to present to you.

Conclusion

If you thought that it was just Google that was working on what it calls Universal Search, think again. Yahoo, MSN, and Ask, as well as several minor search engines such as A9, are all working on their own versions of a universal search that will display different media types. These versions are currently still in the testing phase, but they could be rolled out at any time. What all this means for you and your search engine optimization company is that the face of SEO will be changing dramatically over the next several months - or it won’t. Only time will tell.

¹http://www.birds-eye.net/directory/statistics/2007.htm - Accessed June 2007

Author:  Scott Buresh is the founder and CEO of Medium Blue, which was recently named the number one search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld. Scott’s articles have appeared in numerous publications, including ZDNet, WebProNews, MarketingProfs, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, SEO Today, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. He was also a contributor to Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004). Medium Blue is an Atlanta search engine optimization company with local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, Cirronet, and DS Waters. Download Medium Blue’s latest exclusive whitepaper, “Adding Search to Your Marketing Mix,” for more insight.

Increase Search Engine Traffic With Quality Content

By John Dow in Featured

Every web site owner wants to íncrease search engine traffic. It’s free and the visitor is targeted to your subject matter, product or service. What more could you ask for in search engine traffic? The downside is that you need to understand search engine ranking methods and that is quite a challenge for many.

The number of opinions and “experts” on ways to increase search engine traffic is overwhelming. And regardless of what anyone might tell you, they’re all guessing. The search engines themselves don’t divulge how their methods work for one simple reason. As soon as anyone figures out the method, there’s a mad rush to implement changes based on the method.

In a perfect world, where there were no scoundrels, this might not be a factor. Everyone would organize their web site information so that a visitor could easily find what they are looking for, and life would be good. But we certainly don’t live in a perfect world and scoundrels are everywhere.

So we are at the mercy of the search engines to help us sort through the clutter to find what we want. And that’s the value that the search engines provide, accurate and meaningful search engine results that are related to the search terms or phrases. So it goes back to the quality of content, that’s the only common factor in all 3 major search engines’ ranking methods.

Each of the big 3 (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) search engines use a little different method and technology to arrive at any given web site’s ranking under specific search terms. As mentioned above, no one knows exactly how each method works. But you can test different strategies and methods to see how they impact your rank.

And therein lies the only true method of determining what the search engines might look for when ranking your web page on specific search terms. I’m sure most of us are aware that most processes can be expressed in mathematical equations. I’m not sure if that’s the best method for search engine ranking, but it is the most popular for the search engine ranking process.

And consider the fact that when someone has determined (or thinks they have determined) one of the factors used in search engine rankings they beat it to death. Every discovered aspect in the past few years has been exploited immediately to the point of the search engines abandoning the tactic. As soon as the search engines see that someone can beat the system, they change it.

That’s one of the big reasons you see constant change in ranking methods. Since there is a tremendous amount of revenue at stake for all concerned, i.e. sales of products and services for the web site owners, plus the advertising revenue for the search engines, any advantage is huge.

If you would have tested and tracked all the changes and methods in search engine rankings for the past few years, one constant factor would stand out. This is also one of the most misunderstood and often overlooked elements in search engine ranking for a specific term.

So what’s the one thing that the search engines can’t change about their mathematical algorithms? You got it, CONTENT! The search engines can play with the process, methods, or means to judge web site content. But, if web site owners stick to the basic philosophy of providing meaningful content, in relation to the search term, the impact of changes are far less, if even felt.

And that is where many web site owners run afoul of getting good search engine rankings. Many jump on the bandwagon with every new revelation in search engine strategies based on the latest changes. It’s the old forest and trees scenario, Internet style. Even if you get a slight advantage from all these “new” tactics, it will be short lived. As soon as the search engines catch on that you are working the system, they will change the system.

So the best way to increase your rankings for a particular search term is to provide meaningful information or content based on that search term. Here a few guidelines I’ve found that help:

• Make sure you focus on the subject matter (don’t try to satisfy too many terms with one web page).
• Get inside the searcher’s head – figure out what they want and give it to them.
• Be specific and provide details – don’t generalize and be descriptive.
• For a sales page use benefits and features to fully explain the problem and the solution.
• Update your information often – setup a schedule to update and add more content.

There are many sub factors that can have an impact on how well the search engine bots can determine the value of the content. The search engine bots are software programs that go out and “read” your web page and then provide the information to rank your web pages on what they discovered.

You’ll find many “experts” who will give you a hard list of items and how to present this information. And I don’t disagree with suggestions to include the search term in your web page in key areas like title, description, and font designations like H1. That helps the search engine software bots to determine the content.

But I’ve seen web pages with no meta-tags, title, or description but that had rock solid content and still had high search engine rankings on a particular search term. So make it easy for the search engines, but always remember that the content is the single consistent factor in search engine rankings.

There are a lot of different aspects to consider when trying to improve your search engine ranking, and increase search engine traffic. The keyword and phrase research, interpreting the search term or phrase to provide the best result, reviewing other popular web sites with the same intentions, linking to other like content web sites, and more. How you present the information and content is also an important issue.

But all those factors come after good content. So if you start with providing the best content, you can’t go wrong. After all, this is both an art and a science, not to mention a moving target.

Author:  Visit John at jd WebWorks, to see some recent case studies and get better results with SEO Web Site Design.

The Hidden Costs of a Cheap Dedicated Server

By Henry Walsh in Featured

Finding the right web hosting for a determined purpose is not an easy task. The variety is so immense, that the offer of a cheap dedicated server might be tempting. The advantages of having a server exclusively reserved for you are widely known, in terms of customization, bandwidth, memory, storage, whatever traffic the hosted site may have, but at the beginning this option was nothing but very expensive and restricted to wealthy clients.

After a little while, some companies thought that it would be a great deal, to give users with a tight budget the opportunity of renting a cheap dedicated server. But… is a cheap dedicated server really cheap? Unfortunately, in most cases, it’s not.

It is important to notice that frequently what is supposed to be hosting cost is not actually hosting cost. Many corporations offer very low cost servers, but hide tricks which can lead the user to fall into a trap. People argued that they found out some services where not included, when they were billed by the end of the month, with astronomic prices for basic usage of control panels, an essential feature of dedicated servers.

What happens afterwards is that the client must wait until the contract is over with the subsequent waste of time and, of course, money.

How to spot hosting hidden server costs

The most important thing to do is to read the terms of use and service thoroughly, to find out specifically what kind of software is included, which hardware is implemented and whether the possible license fees for managing the control panels are included in the final price, as they are crucial to customize the features of your dedicated server.

In general, dedicated servers’ providers may offer different types of managed server support and several levels of administration services: Fully Managed, where customers are completely hands-off; Managed, where customers may perform specific tasks; Self Managed, where customers provide most operations and tasks on dedicated server; and Unmanaged, where there is little to no involvement from service provider and customers provide all maintenance, upgrades, patches, security and everything else that is needed.

Whatever type of support a provider selects to offer to its customers, it is essential that every specific aspect is mentioned in the contact to avoid surprises by the end of the month. Other important issue to consider is what kind of hardware is offered. It’s very usual that the devices offered by cheap dedicated servers’ providers are not enough to keep the dedicated server running in a high load scenario. Therefore, you may eventually need to upgrade the hardware, and that will leave behind the idea of a cheap dedicated server.

As a general rule, the finest web hosting providers ensure redundant systems that will decrease the number of potential data or connectivity errors, which allows them to be able to guarantee higher uptimes. However, some web hosting companies offer additional redundancy for a fee, and if you choose to go with one of these offers your cost will definitely be increased.

Keep in mind that these are only some of the aspects to consider when choosing the right cheap dedicated server; sometimes cheap ends up being costly, and if you take the time to double check what your web hosting company has to offer at first, you will definitely save yourself a lot of headaches later.

Author:  Henry Walsh is a reputed expert in the web hosting industry. He is a regular contributor of several specialized web pages and ezines related to the subject. To get more information on the dedicated server hosting industry, please visit us at www.DedicatedServerAdvisor.com.

Choose Wisely: PHP Templates and Search Engine Rank

By Jacob Fillipp in Featured

PHP designers who create their own template systems should be concerned about how their choices affect the website’s position in search engines. Below is a discussion of three types of systems, their impact on search ranking and a recommendation for the best approach.

Webpage as a CGI Argument

In this architecture one PHP script contains the entire template, and plugs in content from a file it reads in - getting the file name from a CGI parameter. These types of systems are not only prone to security problems (as users can modify the path argument to retrieve arbitrary files) but are also ineffective for search engine optimization. This particular design does not allow for titles and keyword/description meta-tags to be associated with individual pages. This is because the header portion of the template includes the <head> section within it, and only allows for one site-wide title and set of meta-tags. Titles are one of the most important page elements, and having one title - unrelated to the actual content retrieved - results in a lower rank in search engines.

There are two other detrimental SEO effects this type of system has. The first is that each unique page is viewed as an aspect of the template script, rather than as a unique standalone page. This can result in search engines lowering the importance of individual content pages relative to the template script - which is often not the desired result. The other weakness of this approach is that having individual pages set up as CGI arguments makes site metrics harder to track, as statistics often show a visit to a specific page as a visit to the general template script. The popular web statistics packages AWstats and Webalizer are most affected by this.

However, this type of templating system is popular and sucessfully used in the world of e-commerce. In such systems, product information is stored in a database and is inserted into the template when a product is requested by its code. This means that both a unique title and a set of meta-tags can be stored alongside the product data (or generated on the fly), and inserted into the global template effectively. The only detrimental effects that remain are the latter mentioned two, and are usually an acceptable tradeoff for the increased ease of administration that a database-driven system provides.

Template as an Include

In this architecture, each page on the website has its own filename with a .php extension. The top and bottom portions of the template are stored in separate files that are included (using include_once() ) by each content file. This technique increases the importance of the page with search engines, as each page is its own standalone page rather than a CGI argument. This type of template system also makes it simple to track page views through regular website statistics software.

On the other hand, this type of template system still has the weakness of having one title and one set of meta-tags for the entire site. This is, again, because the header portion of templates has to include everything from the opening of the <html> tag to the end of the code for the header portion of the template. And this area includes the title and meta-tags. One workaround for this type of system is to code the top template page to check which file it is being called from, and to substitute a suitable pre-coded title. Although effective, such a system is cumbersome to maintain as each new page that is published warrants a new title and meta-tag entry in this secondary system.

Body-Only Includes

The ideal PHP templating system will permit content producers to enjoy the reusability of templates, while maintaining unique titles and metadata for each page with ease. The system that meets all of these SEO needs is a “body-only include” system: a system where each php content page includes the top and bottom portions of the template (as in the previous approach), but only includes the elements below the body tag. This translates into a document that has its own html, head, title and meta tags, has an include_once() statement which is called at the top of the body element and includes the top portion of the template, has the content, and an include for the footer portion of the template. Such a system allows for individual editing of the title and meta-information during the creation of documents and solves the problems that both of the aforementioned systems face.

I find this system the most search-engine friendly, because it keeps the title information and the content together - allowing for the presence of relevant, unique titles for each page. This system is also the most human friendly, as storing the title information in the same file as the page content allows for fast updating and avoids maintaining a second “workaround” system that attempts to match titles to content.

Conclusion

The types of template system that PHP developers choose to implement for clients’ sites have a crucial impact on the future search-engine popularity of the client’s webpages. Important factors to consider when developing a template solution are: relevant titles tied to content, relevant meta-tags, standalone files and ease of statistics tracking. The popular approaches of page-as-an-argument and template-as-an-include do not effectively provide these functions. Including template information after the body tag, and keeping headers intact is the best way to ensure that sites are optimized for search engines - and this is why you should consider using the Body-Only Includes model during your next project.
Author:  Jacob Filipp is a search engine optimization specialist at Toronto’s Powerspirit company (powerspiritonline.com). Jacob draws on 7 years of experience as a programmer, and 2 years of creating PHP websites.

Becoming the Change You Want to See

By Nicole Young in Featured

I am in the business of change. Everything I develop, teach, share and do as a consultant is related to changing skills, strategies or systems in organizations. However, I typically use other terms like “building capacity”, “producing desired results” and “improving organizational effectiveness” to describe my work. These are all ways of saying I help organizations change without scaring people off.

Why would people be scared off? Because change can be very stressful, even when it’s perceived to be positive. For example, 15 of the 43 life events listed on the Stress Scale (Holmes and Rahe, 1967) refer to some type of change (e.g. “Change in responsibilities at work”, “Change in social activities”, “Change in financial state”). Notice how there is no reference to whether the change is positive or negative - just that there has been a change.

Holmes and Rahe found that people who score higher on the stress scale are more likely to develop an illness. It’s no wonder that people avoid change like it is an illness.

So why is change stressful? Change is often unpredictable or driven by external forces. People tend to resist things they didn’t choose or that they have no control over. Change is hard because we don’t always know up front whether it will be positive or negative…so why take the chance? Change also forces people to think and behave differently, which is hard for those of us who are creatures of habit. And sometimes with so many other things happening at once, dealing with “one more thing” just feels impossible.

But change is necessary. Think about how humans have evolved into the highly intelligent, sophisticated beings we are today. I’m sure we didn’t start out that way, just as I’m sure that the human race isn’t done changing. Charles Darwin said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, not the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

So what does this have to do with your organization? In an environment characterized by constant change - shrinking resources, turnover, new initiatives, emerging needs - people at all levels of your organization must be skilled at managing change in order for the organization to survive. Here are my top ten guidelines for becoming a true survivor:

1. Analyze the need for change. Gather information about factors inside and outside of your organization that create a need for change. Look at trends in fundraising, employee morale, utilization of services, client satisfaction and community needs. If you get in the habit of analyzing the need for change, you’re less likely to have changes forced upon you by someone or something.

2. Involve others in the change process. Lower people’s resistance to change by getting them involved in designing and implementing the change process. It may feel like it takes longer to do this, but you will save time in the long run if you take steps to gain people’s buy-in early on.

3. Create a shared vision. Link the need for change to your organization’s mission, vision and values. Ask yourself, “How will this change enable us to serve our customers better?” Describe what the organization and its people or processes will look like after the change has been made.

4. Create a sense of urgency…which is not the same as crisis or panic. Clearly convey why the change has to happen now versus later - otherwise there is no reason for others to make it a priority.

5. Know when it’s time to let go of the past. History is important, as long as it doesn’t keep you from moving forward. Learn the lessons from past successes and mistakes, and then keep going. Statements such as “It’s always worked this way” or “It’s never worked that way” only keep you and your organization stuck in time while everything else around you is changing.

6. Create an implementation plan. Develop goals, activities, timelines and measures of success. Use the plan as a “road map” to keep everyone headed toward the same destination. Just remember that plans, like people, need to be responsive to change in order to survive.

7. Support people’s efforts to change. Once you’ve gained people’s commitment to implement the desired change, make sure they have the knowledge, skills and institutional support to do it well. Develop clear processes and provide training and ongoing coaching. Otherwise it will be too easy and justifiable for people to say, “I told you so,” and it will be much harder to gain their buy-in the next time around.

8. Communicate about the change before, during and after implementation. Provide opportunities for people to give feedback about how the change is going. Give periodic updates about what is working well and what is being continually improved. Share successes to show that people’s efforts are making the desired difference.

9. Institutionalize the change. Once you have determined that the new process, strategy or activity works, make it an everyday part of business. Write up a policy. Train new staff as part of their orientation. Talk about the new way of doing business in staff meetings. Pretty soon, what was once a change will become the norm.

10. Be the change you want to see. Be a spokesperson for the change and keep people focused on the vision. Work with others to find ways to implement the change effectively. Model the attitudes and behaviors that are necessary for the change to happen successfully, and eventually others will follow suit.

Why This Matters for Your Mission: Change is constant and inevitable. If you can embrace this concept, you will see the possibilities that change creates. Instead of being held back by limitations and fear of the “what if’s”, you will be able to plan for and manage change effectively.

Author:  Nicole M. Young is the Owner/Principal Consultant of Optimal Solutions Consulting in California. She helps organizations overcome the everyday challenges that keep them from fulfilling their missions. To learn more, go to www.opti-solutions.com