As a former hiring manager, you wouldn’t believe how often I wouldn’t consider a resume because of the awful email address associated with the resume.  These email addresses were probably set up in high school using a free email service like Yahoo, Hotmail, or Gmail and usually entail something like sexy diva, punk rocker, blunt smoking, something totally inappropriate for a professional setting.  I often wonder what large percentage of people are still sitting on unemployment because they got a nice looking resume with experience but that one turn off gets their credentials filed in the circular filing system – the trash can.

The excuse I would imagine is that they don’t want to  lose all of the email (*cough SPAM) that they get at this old email address.  My advice to you is to get an appropriate email address just for your resumes.  I don’t really even mind if you get another yahoo, hotmail, or gmail account.  But if you can get an email address with a domain you do stand out.  It costs about $10 to get the domain and about 5 seconds to set up the email address.  It looks really professional.

What surprises me is that there is a group of people who still don’t get this concept.  They aren’t looking to be employed per se, but they are looking for a job.  I’m talking about Freelance Internet Workers – people who make a living at buying domain names and setting up websites.  If you are one of these people and you still use a Gmail address on your site to get leads I want to tell you that this looks unprofessional and is giving the wrong idea.  Customers may be wondering if you are really serious about what you do.

You’re also giving the okay for your clients to do the same thing and if you are then you shouldn’t be doing this kind of work.  If you think it’s ok for your client to use these free email addresses as their sole point of email contact then you don’t pay attention to the industry. Your clients may be wondering why people aren’t responding to their emails soon.  You may be wondering why prospects aren’t responding to your emails soon. Why? Because of our little friends known as spammers.

Because of the large amount of spam, email addresses from Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, Gmail, and more will be downgraded.  If you want to make sure that your email makes it through and gives the right impression to who counts, then I would advise you to use a domain related email address with a valid SPF record to ensure delivery.  Plus it just makes you all look more professional.

I officially got into this business in late 2006 when I decided to put my education to the test and decided to go work at Xeal, Inc. in Tulsa.  I left behind my amazing supervisor job at DirecTV with excellent benefits includig free VIP service, equipment, and programming.  I put myself into debt to do this and we even filed bankruptcy just so I could pursue my dream.  But that’s a different story.  For the two years I was there I learned that Xeal had previously gone by a different name – The Dreamstar Group.  I came to learn that the Dreamstar Group was highly successful.

I’m not sure what exactly they did, but for a time they were able to make their clients a lot of money which in turn made them a lot of money.  I imagine they had a high end office in the Citiplex Towers in Tulsa and were really enjoying the spoils of some sort of trick that required little to no effort.  The only thing I know about the service was that someone in Russia was running some kind of program and it was driving traffic like crazy.

Life was good, until it got so bad, and everyone caught on to the same trick, that Google changes their Algorithm and gave what was known as a Google Slap.  In one small change to the way Google worked, an entire industry went down the tubes.  When they reformed as Xeal, Inc. it was completely driven on how to prevent this from happening again.

I was fortunate to learn how to pretend like “Google doesn’t exist” and on how to promote your site with honesty and integrity.  In everything we did, we had a vigorous checklist to make sure that we were not depending on Google (or any entity for that matter) to drive traffic.  We had to do it the old fashioned way in the new modern era.  That’s mainly where I got my inspiration to start Finding Innovation.  I wanted to do old school business in the modern world.

I used to think of my time at Xeal to be negative because I used to think about the stress, lack of pay, no benefits, etc.  But what I got was an opportunity on how to learn how not to run a business.  I love Tony Baker like a brother and he was the first mentor I had in this business.  I learned  a lot of great things from him.  But what I took the most away from the experience was how to not run a business, because I saw how much of a struggle it was to try to recoup from such a disaster.  Before I left Xeal, they were hit with one disaster after another and the giant was finally taken down.

Why am I telling you this story?

Because it’s about to happen again.  There are millions of “Internet Marketers” out there that are taking a  lot of shortcut and they aren’t putting in the work it takes to get to #1.  Do you know why they want #1?  Because the #1 organic link gets 46% of all of the traffic on a Search Engine Results Page.  They cheated, and now Google is about to mete out its punishment.

I am excited! Because I have built all of my client’s presence on honesty, integrity, and hard work.  I did it as if Google didn’t exist and for that reason my clients will prevail while all of the trash is taken out.  Apparently Matt Cutts of Google announced this would happen at SXSW and now I am getting a warning message from every Internet Marketing Guru that I subscribe to.  They likely taught shortcuts and now they have pie in their face.  There are no shortcuts in life.  Even in the Internet world.  Just ask Tony Baker.  He will tell you.  That’s why he is a guru with over 15 years experience.  He’s experienced it.  He taught me the lesson and now I am telling you to brace yourself.  Good Luck.  Stay Classy, San Diego!

Here’s a free strategy that I learned from Tony Baker while working at Xeal.  I haven’t seen many people use this strategy but I think it’s great.  Check it out and let me know what you think:

Attract: Get More Visitors

We attract potential clients to the site with search engine optimized content and pay per click advertising.   We have a goal to achieve the number 1 spot in Google search results for key phrases.

Capture: Convert Visitors to Leads

We capture leads by pointing to a conversion point in the site.  We continue to optimize this conversion point to facilitate more completions and generate more leads.

Educate: Warm the Leads

We educate leads by teaching them about our business before the sale with free to use videos on the website.  This in turn helps attract more visitors to the website.

We also educate our leads with information regarding our industry that will help facilitate the sale.  This helps us reach 40% of our leads that would normally be lost.

Sell:  Convert Buyers to Customers

We sell our service to hot, ready to buy leads and exceed their expectations when it comes to fulfillment, training, and customer service.  It’s easier to continue to sell to existing clients than it is to gain a new client.

Which step do you think most people forget and which step makes the most money in our industry?

In this industry, you want to finish a project as quickly as possible to get it out the door and be ready to move on to the next project.  This is made simple with experience because you are basically selling the same thing to every client with a touch of individual flare to each project.  This is where having a good plan has it’s advantages.

I was listening to an audio book recently and the premise behind it is that a person is successful when they do not drift in their decision making.  A person who is adamant to follow their definite major purpose and has a plan is always successful as opposed to someone who doesn’t have a plan which fails to attain any success at all.

I started looking into my life to see if this was evident and I can distinctly remember times where I was wandering aimlessly and I couldn’t find any success.  However when I had a plan I could always attain success.  I guess then it would behoove me to always have a plan.

Recently, a couple of girls in Tulsa wrote a song for Rick Santorum (not an endorsement of any kind) called “Game On” that applauded the fact that he’s the man with the plan and proceeded to outline that plan.  The video recently exceeded a million views.

At the same time, Invisible Children posted the now famous KONY 2012 video that has become the most viral video in the history of mankind.  Right now they have over 80,000,000 views.  In this video, Invisible Children outlines a horrible (apparently supposed) problem in the world.  The whole world is watching the plan that was outlined at the end on how to gain a solution.

People like it when someone has a plan.  They tend to elect people with a plan. Remember the plan to effect “CHANGE” in Washington?  I voted for that plan.  Did I get it?  I think reality set in.  But I was optimistic.  This is not a political rant, but If any candidate can show a plan on how they are going to change the world we live in then they will get the votes.

For instance, I had seen campaign materials for our congressional district’s candidate.  He came to my door and explained his plan to me and it sounded legit.  He could have been selling me horse manure and I would have bought it because he had a plan.

A candidate for our district’s cit council came by our house and outline his plan.  He’s got me vote.

I think that it doesn’t matter what the plan is… if it sounds reasonable, and it sounds logical you are going to get the support you need.  The execution of that plan or any plan for that matter gets you enduring support.

Have a plan, +share the plan + execute the plan= Success.

I have been talking about some great things happening in my life.  There have been many opportunities presenting themselves to me and I have to remain vigilant and choose the right path that is my Greatness.  Well sometimes there are those that try to come and kill, steal, or destroy those opportunities.  There’s no denying there is an enemy.

You ever hear people say that when things are going good you should brace yourself?  I thought “Why invite that into my life?”  Shouldn’t I handle that differently.  So when things are going good I have to rely on the stories in my foundation to take over.    So I began to think about how I would deal with situations when the enemy comes knocking.

I decided that I would maintain my pace.  I wouldn’t let the enemy slow me down, because if I’m doing something right, the enemy will come.  I’m not going to run away.  I’m not going to slow down.  I’m going to maintain my pace.  By focusing on maintaining my pace, I won’t quit.

I decided that I am going to be self-aware.  I’m going to be grateful for what I already have, because what I have is already great!  I am going to know where I come from and how I got here and where I am going.  I am going to know that I have balance in my foundation and nothing can stop me.

I am going to protect my focus.  The enemy is someone who comes to break your focus.  If I can protect my focus, then I have already won.  By protecting my focus I maintain discipline, I stay on pace, I remain self aware and as the enemy tries to throw flaming arrows into my camp, I’m just going to put them out – without breaking focus.

Well, the enemy came knocking yesterday and I made sure to follow these guidelines and it didn’t hurt me one bit.  I woke up this morning and kept on chugging.  I didn’t lose focus, I maintained discipline, and I kept walking with Greatness.  I didn’t get the thing I wanted, but I didn’t get hurt either because I maintained communication with my TUG.  I don’t know if this makes any sense to you, but if it does I hope it helps.

The story is this, I saw a house for rent that met the needs of the burden on our family’s hearts to move into a bigger house.  The terms were almost too good to be true.  My TUG reminded me of this.  I did due diligence and everything about the house checked out.  I found information on it, the names matched up everything.  I determined this wasn’t one of those Nigerian scams.  But then my TUG started working on me. (Your TUG by the way, is your True Ultimate Guide.  It’s a gut feeling.)

First, I shared the news about this house with my wife.  My TUG told me to tell her to not be disappointed if it didn’t work out.

I started doing the due diligence and everything was checking out.  Then my TUG revealed that it would be a pretty good scam.  I thought, wow, that would be a good scam and even I, an experienced webmaster, wouldn’t even see it right away.

So I mentally checked everything in my head.  Then I got a call from person and I instantly knew it was a scam.  There is no way someone with a Nigerian accent would ever own a house in Pryor, OK.  But I kept my mind open, and I began to test the person at which they failed at all steps.  I realized for a fact that this was a scam.

The first thing I did was call my wife and tell her.  She was disappointed. Then I went to the real estate agent where the house was listed.  Turns out, I was the fourth person that day to report the issue.  I also learned the police couldn’t do anything.  No worries.  I didn’t hand out any information that can’t already be found online.

Then I went home, fully expecting my wife to be heartbroken, and she wasn’t at all.  She has the faith to believe this feeling of hope was just a taste of what we are going to be fulfilled with and that we were content with what we had for now.

So, when the enemy comes to kill, steal, and destroy, don’t let him steal your joy.  Maintain discipline.  Keep the pace going.  Don’t stop.  Don’t slow down.  Don’t run.  Just keep swimming.

If things are going good in your life, don’t become afraid of the negative to follow, just be ready to toss it aside and keep going.

UPDATE: By the way, if the guy is reading this, I want you to know that I love you.  God loves you. And I thank you for giving us a bit of hope despite the turnout.

I love to watch big brother.  I think the reason I love to watch Big Brother is because of their motto: Expect the Unexpected.  I love to watch when the new recruits show up with a plan in mind and you can always expect their hopes and dreams to be ruined when the producers present a series of twists that throws the game for a loop.  It’s almost like the producers have the winner in mind from the very beginning.

I’m a planner.  I like to make lists.  I have about 10 notepads with various lists.  I keep a budget.  I like to plan things out.  Sometimes those plans work out exactly how I planned.  Often times this is not the case.  This used to frustrate me to no end.  I used to call this phenomenon the “Bane of my Existence.”  When something didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to, I would get a hothead, my blood pressure would rise.  I would not be a happy camper.

What I have had to learn is to become flexible.  You can talk about patience all you want.  But if you can learn to become flexible in your life, you can learn to overcome the reality that you are not in control of everything.

A couple of weeks ago I had a meeting.  I spent  alot of time preparing for the meeting, getting myself ready, preparing my presentation.  I wanted to make a good impression.  Before I left, my wife told me to go get em tiger, and I told her that everything will work out exactly how it should. (Kismet) I get all pumped up, I get into the meeting, and things start falling apart – and I don’t mind.

People knew about the meeting and they asked me how it went.  I told them it didn’t go as planned, but it went exactly how it should have.  They didn’t understand this.  I explained that the meeting went exactly how it should have.  I expect great things to come from it, but this is just a baby step.  I didn’t expect to something in one day.  It wasn’t even clear with what that was yet.

I didn’t give up.  I just kept walking on my journey.  In the meantime, I found a hundred other ways to make my presentation better, set a pace in my journey, and connect with people who I hadn’t connected with in a while.  I also had the opportunity to reflect on my journey and admire what I had accomplished.  My effort didn’t start just because of the meeting.  I realized that the meeting was part of the effort I started over 14 years ago.

So when things don’t work the way you plan them to work, just remember to be flexible, expect the unexpected, and see the opportunity in the situation.  You’ll kind that the producers of your life, already have the winner in mind from the beginning.

I wrote something 2 years ago and I like to look back on it and reflect.  I though I would share it here and see what you think:

Quitting my job over a year ago and starting my own business allowed me to escape the 9-5.  But now I’m ready to get focused and move on with my success and new lifestyle.

I want the Freedom:
-To be able to go to bed at night knowing I achieved something each day
-To have the time to commit to living an active healthy lifestyle
-To unchain myself from my own desk and take some time for myself
-To be able to take a vacation when I want
-To be able to experience the world with my family
-To turn work down because I don’t need the money
-To be debt free

Fulfillment:
-To be able to continuously learn
-To be there with my family life every step of the way
-To share my wealth with others without taking credit
-To be able to change my lifestyle to make more healthy coices
-To supply my family’s wants and desires
-To share my knowledge with others

Recognition:
-I want to be recognized as a problem solver in my industry
-I want to be recognized as an innovative concept creator
-I want to be recognized as someone who is fulfilling their life’s desires
-I want to be recognized as a person whose hard work has paid off
-I want to be recognized as a person who earns what I am worth
-I want to be recognized as an awesome husband and father

I wanted to share my story about how I am applied the principles from Mentorfish to my life at 5 o’clock this morning. First, my TUG gave me instruction. I walked in my Greatness. And then my TUG gave me validation. See what you think.

The site looks horrible right now, but I still need to post something.

I want to talk about something this morning that a lot of us think about.  We all have dreams of what we want to become or what we want in life.  I remember that when I used to do work for people I would get resentful.  I used to think that all I ever did was build everyone else’s dreams.  I though, “When am I going to get to build my own dream?” Then this morning I realized something. While I was busy building everyone else’s dreams I was building my own dream.

Each person I connect with, I was able to learn something from.  I was able to be introduced to new people that I could learn from, earn from, and meet even more people with.  I didn’t realize that while I felt like I was toiling at someone elses dreams I was building the strongest foundation for my own dreams.

When you feel like you are doing nothing but building everyone else’s dream take a second to determine whether or not that is in fact building your own dreams.  Is what I am doing serving me and my future.  If not it’s time to move on.  If it is, it’s time to dig in more.

Yeah, I’m under construction right now.  I decided it’s time to give myself what I really deserve.  When I wrote this I meant my website.  But I realize that it is applying to me.

My recent events have inspired and motivated me and reminded me that I can do better than what I have been doing.  (Not as far as clients, they are all great, I mean with myself.)  Well, now it’s time to set a pace.  I had this huge high of doing everything within my Greatness and now I have to mindful that this is a marathon and not a sprint.

I couldn’t help myself when I got the inspiration again.  I had to sprint in order to keep up with the flood of thoughts and strategies I was getting, but what I got was a glimpse of what I need to.  Now it’s back to baby steps.

Baby Step. Baby Step. Baby Step. Baby Step. Watch for the Opportunity.

Baby Step. Baby Step. Baby Step. Baby Step. Watch for the Opportunity.

Baby Step. Baby Step. Baby Step. Baby Step. Watch for the Opportunity.

Baby Step. Baby Step. Baby Step. Baby Step. Watch for the Opportunity.

I saw the opportunity now it’s time to get back to work and make it to the next step if that makes sense.  It’s like when you arrive at the next destination, it’s time to read the map.  It reveals the next destination.  Then you have to put the map down and drive, bike, run, walk, crawl there. Baby Step. Baby Step. Baby Step. Watch for the Opportunity.

There were about 8 more pages to that report I was writing and it’s good stuff if I say so myself.  But I realized that the rest of the report really lets the cat out of the bag on my case study.  When you’re working on a new concept it changes considerably and since I last posted I realized quite a few things.

First of all, when people ask me what I do I really haven’t been able to answer them.  Here’s why: I don’t want to call myself a webmaster because that would imply that I am a master of the web.  Those don’t exist.  I’m not a web developer because right now although I can create some really nice websites, I don’t fluently write client or server sided scripting.  But I can have a conversation with it.  I do Internet Marketing.  I can optimize for search engines which is to say I don’t do VooDoo, but I build a web presence.  I’ve always thought of myself a bridge.  I can bridge business with technical.  I was reading a snippet on the 97 things every software architect should know and I learned that what I would be called is a web architect.  So that’s what I’m calling myself an architect.

I’ve been looking into a lot of my heroes and didn’t ever realize that Matt has his entire blog from the day he started blogging available.  It’s the best book I’ve read in a while.  You can see how he saw a need, developed a plan, and essentially built WordPress.  It’s a pain by numbers scenario.  It’s made me think about the things I need to think about.

For instance, the Internet doesn’t need more social networks.  Thought leaders need a way to teach what they know.  They don’t need to hack five programs together to do it, they shouldn’t have to pay some developer in the Ukraine an insane amount of money for a custom payment gateway, they need to be able to control it on their own hosting solution, and they need to have no barrier to entry.  What does that mean?  It needs to be free.  It needs to exist in a way that developers can download it, make it better, create a better social experience for end users to be able to pay an expert to teach them.

I just need to figure out how to monetize that idea.  I think eventually, instead of Web Architect.  I will make an amazing CEO of a leading technology firm that makes money by giving something away for free.  Basically, I want to be Matt Mullenweg.

Recently someone told me that they read my blog… Really, lol? Ok, so here’s the deal. Creating social networks is my passion. A few years ago I started seeing that being on MySpace and Facebook and such as a business were not going to be enough. Businesses could have a viable need to have their own social network. If you have the right kind of following and the right kind of content you could essentially have a collaborative environment that you could control and essentially have a honey pot for making a revenue.

The kicker is that you have to do it the right way and there really is a formula behind it. I’ve been studying the people that have followed this formula and they have become some of the richest people that I know. The problem is trying to explain to someone that this formula really works. Now there’s two sides to this formula and I’ve have met people from both sides. There are people that swear by giving everything away for free and live by that to their dying day and they are seen as crackpots. Then there are people that know that the long hard road to monetizing their creations pays off larger dividends in the end and they are seen as the evil geniuses that they really are. I want to be one of those.

So, anyway. A couple years ago I was raving about how I created a social network for a client building a system called iGroops and how it was so easy. It really was. I was able to have a viable Social Network up and running in about two weeks. But really, it was a SAAS platform that you had no backend control over so it was like pretending to have a Social Network. We figure this out after only being live on the platform for only 5 months and it became a nightmare.

Now don’t get me wrong, it worked for our purposes. We had no idea if it would even be successful. But it was. It was successful enough that after the first year we were close to making about half a million dollars in revenue. But, I’m here to tell you we could have made more. Coulda. Shoulda. Woulda. If?

Shortly after we started planning the next phase which would allow us to have a script running on our own server with complete control over the backend. Really at the time there were not any viable Facebook clones out there with a subscription utility and it was a waiting game to see who came up with the subscription utility first and sadly we chose the first one which was wrong. But the right script didn’t come out until just a few months ago which would have put our timelines in a huge delay.

No worries. What we hacked together works. It’s impressive. People like it. But I can make it better now. The people read my blog and liked what I did. Now they are going to like what I am about to do. Here it goes.

I’ve been working on an amazing project for the last few weeks and I can’t begin to tell you how fulfilling it has been to my life.  Since I started working for myself I have had countless numbers of clients asking me for their very own social networking site.  I’ve tried hard to hack things together with Joomla, WordPress, and tried looking for the best system out there for a couple of years now and just couldn’t seem to find it.

With this current project I was basically being paid to find the “it” platform and make it happen.  I started off with Ning but I couldn’t rely on them since they recently switched to only paid subscription.  I didn’t mind paying monthly for it but they were talking about features that I wanted that just weren’t possible.  I wasn’t going to suffer through promises for a couple of years like I have been while waiting for WordPress 3 to come out.

So I finally found another platform that I thought would work and we quickly tested it out.  Needless to say we built the site in just a couple of weeks and have memberships rolling in. Let me tell you what all we are doing.

We have a paid membership system setup.  The only thing required was either a PayPal business account or Authorize.net.  We currently have 2 different levels of members but we can have up to three.  It also integrates promo codes and trial periods.

It also has an integrated referral program and include an integrated affiliate system.  We’re not using it but it is there and I believe it has a two tier system as well.

You can upload and integrate media into its integrate blog system with podcasting, forum system, and private messaging system. It also has web chat, live video conferencing, telephone conferencing.  If you can think of a way to communicate it has it.

I love the Frequently Asked Questions module. I will notice that I start getting the same questions from people so I just post it there and they are ready to go.

If you want to sell something, it has an integrated shopping cart.  All you have to do is plug in your payment variables from Authorize.net and it takes care of the rest including providing downloads for virtual products.

There are a large number of applications that we haven’t even started using yet such as audio video postcard system where you can send audio and video postcards to each other, you can also upload presentations for people to view.  There is a file sharing module, a document creator module, member webpages, photo galleries, reviews system, and even task managers.  It’s amazing how much is included in this program and you wouldn’t believe that you get it all for only $99 a month.

With this system we were able to build the new site in just two weeks and have over 200 members in less than a month.  The members are blown away by the content we have provided so far and we haven’t even scratched the surface of it’s capabilities.

Now I will admit that the system is a little bit quirky.  It doesn’t always work the way I think it should.  But if you are looking for an affordable fast way to create your own social networking site, then you need to check out iGroops.

Our plan is to start building our own platform where it works exactly how we want it to but in the meantime this system provides us with the blueprint that we need to get started today.  After years of trying to hack BuddyPress, and Jomsocial, as well as try out many other social networking platforms, you won’t find anything as extensive as what we have found with iGroops.  I’m happy to say I have found a platform that I can recommend to my clients looking for a system like this.

A few years back when I was working at a firm. The company had a co-located server that would get hacked all of the time.  At least once year we would be brought to our knees trying to recover from an outage.  You would think we would need to beef up our server but it would always turn out that whatever would cause our downtime would be causing other servers in the area downtime as well meaning that the problems were coming from within the data-center.  The last time that server went down it became toast and we ended up having to have them ship it back to us.

It’s a little bit funny when servers go down.  Web services go down.  Web sites go down.  Email goes down.  Everything related to our clients online business which we had created was lost.  I quickly came to learn something though.  Clients don’t mind as much when the site goes down or if a service goes down, but when their only connection to their clients goes down, then I have a problem.  For weeks during recovery, the major complaint of all of our clients was that we had to do something to get email back online.

It doesn’t take a hacker or an outage to bring your online business to its knees.  Sometimes it could be not paying your bill.  This morning I received a call from a client with a complaint that their websites were showing up with the words “Account Suspended” at the top.  I’m assuming this is a billing issue and I can’t control it because I didn’t handle their hosting. But once again, they are left without any communication through their websites because their email was through their hosting service.

So, what’s my point? After recovering from the last server issues at the firm, we had somehow come to realize that we could set up Google Apps for our domain name and run all of our email in the cloud.  From that point forward I have always run my email through Google Apps, because no matter what happens to my site or server, or whatever, my email is sitting securely on Google’s servers.  I will have communication with my clients in the event of an emergency.

When I set up new clients I try to explain to them that I will be setting up their email through Gmail and they get confused.  They don’t realize that you can set up your domain through Google apps.  You not only get Gmail with Google apps, but you also get Google Docs, Google Calendar, and Google Sites and you are using all of these Google services in the name of your domain name.  Its easy to set up and its free for the basic service if you have less than 50 users.

Now, it can be difficult to make this switch if you are already established on a hosting server, but if you just starting out or are making changes to your policy, I highly recommend that you move your email to Google Apps.

In case you haven’t heard (and where have you been), meta tags are dead.  Apparently no search engine gives meta tags any kind of clout since very early this decade.  People have been declaring the death of Meta Tags for years but apparently they are about as hard to kill as IE6.

I don’t consider myself an SEO expert (or guru), but I do sell specialized my SEO knowledge.

Don’t get me wrong, Title Tags are a vital part of any website, but declaring the extent of your SEO skills to be the inclusion of Meta tags is weak.  Personally, I include the keywords into my posts and pages.  I even include automatically generated tags.  But I don’t go around stating that I am a Search Engine Optimizer because I know how to use Meta Tags.  Honestly, they shouldn’t be teaching Meta Tags in curriculum these days at all.

Just give me your money

If your Internet consultant wants to submit your site to search engines – Fire them!  Why would anyone want to charge you for something that takes 5 seconds and does absolutely nothing.  When a site is built correctly, search engines will be attracted to it.

Pfft… I scoff at you

If your Internet consultant guarantees you results – they better offer a double your money back guarantee or you should steer clear.  Any Internet marketer who claims they can guarantee you instant results that last forever are out of their mind.  I have been able to get within the top ten results of Google within 4 minutes of starting a campaign but without running consistent campaigns that content will disappear over time.

Keyword Stuffing = Google Sandbox

If your Internet Consultant thinks that adding a ton of “keywords” at the bottom of your website is Search Engine Optimization, please slap them upside the head for me.  I would hate to be blind using a screen reader and trying to figure out why there are a million towns listed on the bottom of your website.  Search Engines utilize the same logic and get confused too.

There are more debates over what can be considered correct and what can be considered wrong, but it all boils down to a few simple steps:

1. Build your site correctly from the beginning
2. make sure its comfortable for a human to use it
3. Develop it so it’s easy for a search engine to read it
4. Create good content that reads well
5. Keep adding fresh content to your site weekly

Act as if Google doesn’t exist, get the word out the old fashioned way using the Internet as your wire and your site as your home and you can go a long way.

Can you identify other ways that people misuse the term SEO in their skill set? Please tell me I’m not the only one annoyed by “SEO Gurus”.

The new default WordPress theme, “twenty ten” is moving in a direction that makes WordPress a system to be reckoned with.  During the “State of the Word” (WordPress’s Keynote about WordPress futures) at WordCamp San Francisco last week, co-creator Matt Mullenweg stated his commitment to spend more time on themeing and twenty ten is definitely a move in that direction.

I love the new menu features in WordPress 3.0.  I love the fact that you can set a custom header image for seperate posts and pages.  You can set the background to any image or color.  I have yet to figure out how to change the colors for the main navigation though.  I probably have to dig more into that.

One new tool that I found that was a cool way to compliment this new theme is bgPatterns (http://bgpatterns.com/).  You can design a custom background tile.  You can see the one that I am using right now.  I went through their little system and generated an image that I uploaded and set to be tiled as my background:

Check it out and see just how cool you can make your new default theme.  If you build one I would love for you to share it with me.  Do you have any tips to share on how to make the default theme as cool as possible?  Let me know.