What is your favorite…

Color: purple
Movie: Grease
TV Show: Seinfeld
Season: Fall
Food: Peas
Drink: Pinot Noir
Book:  The Witching Hour by Anne Rice
Music/Band/Artist/Song: The Red Hot Chili Peppers
Pizza Toppings: Tomato and Basil

If you were an animal, what would you be and why?
Eagle, to soar above the earth and observe nature.

If you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be and why?
Greece, to see the history.

Are you a morning or a night person?
Morning.

What are your pet peeves or strange dislikes?
Dirty car, fingerprints on my computer screen.

How would your friends describe you to someone you don’t know?
Dependable.

Have you ever won a trophy? If so, for what?
5th Grade Essay Competition

What is the best vacation you have ever had?
Golfing in Scottsdale, Arizona

If your house was on fire and you could only take 3 material things with you, what would they be?
Family pictures, wedding ring and Blackberry

What do you think the secret to a good life is?
Be grateful and appreciating each moment.

An effective search engine optimization strategy is vitally important to the long-term success of your business. Without one, you may occasionally get lucky and rank well enough in the major search engines for potential customers to find your web site. However, you will probably still need to rely heavily on paid forms of advertising to bring in enough visitors to grow and maintain your business. Even if you plan to run a sustained PPC (pay-per-click) advertising campaign, you will still want to take advantage of all the free web traffic you can get.

Here’s How to Obtain Better Search Engine Optimization Results in 3 Easy Steps

1.    Do Your Research. Keyword research is the cornerstone of any search engine optimization campaign. Keywords are the terms or phrases that Internet users type into the search engines when looking for something online. For example, phrases such as “dog boarding” or “dry cleaners in Cleveland” may be used by individuals needing those services. When looking for keywords for your search engine optimization efforts, you will want to consider several variables, including your target market, your key products or services, your geographic location and most importantly, your customers’ main challenges or concerns. Once you develop this list, you’ll need to use a keyword research tool to determine how many searches are performed each month for that term and how strong the competition is for it.

2.    Create Great Content. Once you find a list of keywords or phrases with the right blend of high demand and low-to-moderate competition, the next step is to develop strong content around those terms. This content should provide real value to your audience by addressing their problems or concerns. Don’t go overboard when adding keywords to your content, however. Although there are no hard and fast rules on this topic, a good rule of thumb is to include your targeted keywords in the title and first sentence of your article or blog post, then once for every 100 words. This will give you a keyword saturation of approximately 1%, which will give the search engines a good idea what your content is about without alienating your human visitors.

3.    Promote Your Content. Once you’ve added keyword-optimized content to your web site, the next step is to help it find an audience. The best way to do this is to develop quality backlinks pointing into your site. (Backlinks are simply links to your site from other web sites). The major search engines read each backlink to your site as a vote of confidence for it. Therefore, the more quality backlinks your site has, the more of an ‘authority site’ the search engines will perceive it to be – and the more likely they will be to ‘recommend’ it (via higher search rankings) to their customers. Submitting content to article directories, writing guest blog posts for respected sites in your industry, and commenting on relevant blogs and forums are all great ways to accomplish this.

Although it takes time and effort to develop and execute a successful search engine optimization strategy, the long-term results are definitely worth it. Once you have a substantial body of well-optimized content ranking well in the search engines, your web site will receive a steady supply of free traffic for years to come.

During the week of August 8-13, teams of students from nine Ohio universities gathered at Baldwin-Wallace College to participate in The Entrepreneurship Education Consortium's "Immersion Week" program.

Each student team gathered on the first day to develop an idea for a business or product and spent the rest of the week putting together a business plan and presentation for the final day.

On Wednesday, the team was visited by Carmen Fontana, Web Services Manager at WRIS, who presented the What, Why and How of Web Marketing with a focus on new businesses.

On Friday, Charlie Meyers and Bonny Lafave attended the final presentations and awards ceremony. The winning team was from Hiram College with a product concept for flavored straws. WRIS presented the team with a free inPHASE Introductory Site and a full year of free web hosting.

The winning students were excited and overwhelmed with the prospect of their new business venture and will be coached by the EEC's representatives on their college campus.

What is your favorite…

Color: blue
Movie: Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
TV Show: Futurama
Season: Summer
Food: Pasta
Drink: Fresh OJ with pulp
Book: Mistborn
Music/Band/Artist/Song: right now I’m pretty big into post rock music, ie: Russian circles, el ten, explosions in the sky
Pizza Toppings: pepperoni, onion, jalapeno

If you were an animal, what would you be and why?
A tiger, cause they’re a smart animal but still huge.

If you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be and why?
Tokyo or Seoul.  Tokyo cause I’ve always been interested in Japanese culture and would love to experience it sometime.  I also know a couple of people in Tokyo I could visit.  Seoul because it’s one of the most technologically advanced cities in the world, and I’d like to see that.  Also know people in Seoul to visit.

Are you a morning or a night person?
Night

How would your friends describe you to someone you don’t know?
Short, nerdy, gamer, nice.

What are two things that you are good/bad at?
Good – Frisbee, painting.

Have you ever won a trophy? If so, for what?
Not since I was a kid and they gave everyone trophies.

What is the best vacation you have ever had?
My first family vacation to South Africa. The place is quite a culture shock. We got to ‘play’ with the ‘baby’ lions.

If your house was on fire and you could only take 3 material things with you, what would they be?
Cell phone, snowboard, PCs

Do you have any phobias?
Heights.

What is your favorite...

Color: green
Movie: The Usual Suspects
TV Show: Chopped
Season: Fall (up North) Winter (in Florida)
Food: Sushi
Drink: Mojito
Book:  Who has time to read?
Music/Band/Artist/Song: No real favorite - I listen to a lot of different music
Pizza Toppings: sausage, eggplant (but probably not together)

What are your resolutions/goals for 2010?
To get back in touch with long lost friends.

Are you a morning or a night person?
I try to be both, but my body fights me the whole way.

Do you have any hidden talents?
Maybe, I'm searching for them.

Have you ever won a trophy? If so, for what?
Winning the Pinewood Derby as a Cub Scout.

What is the best vacation you have ever had?
I traveled a lot with my family when I was young. The highlight was a 2 week trip to Switzerland when I was a teenager.

What do you think the secret to a good life is?
Finding the right balance between doing for yourself, for your family and for others.

Do you have any phobias?
I don't think so.