So with that said, I say to you, please keep up your blog if you want to keep your customers interested.

Now, hopefully I will have more content up before three weeks go by again!

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Normally I read quotes and say “whatever” but I guess I really needed this one today.  Why is it that we often look at our lives in respect to the “what-ifs”, “should haves”, “could haves” and failures?   It’s amazing what a great saying can do for the spirit.  I feel re-energized today.

Are there any quotes that you feel you couldn’t live without?

The SEO specific site is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time.  I have a wonderful repository of facts, opinions, ideas, and websites which I have been wanting to share for a while.

I’m also hoping to conduct some interviews of existing small to medium sized SEO companies to share strategies and thoughts about today’s SEO.  If you’d like to be considered for a possible interview, you can email me at contactus@epoff.com with the subject line: SEO Interview.  In a sentence or two tell me where you conduct business, an example or two of what you are doing to establish SEO best practices, and anything else you would like to share and why you think you should be interviewed.  I will try to respond to all requests but may not conduct the actual interviews for a while.

Cheers for now!

For whatever reason, the master bathroom renovation turned out to be one of my favorite rooms. I think it was the fact that we were able to easily and cost-effectively transform a 25 sqft space into something that worked for us.

Master Bath Before

This was the room that was the big deal breaker for me. I did not want to purchase this house for two reasons: the kitchen and the master bathroom. I wanted a bathtub and not a shower and I have a true aversion to paneling. Because my husband loved the yard, trees and location, I caved but with the understanding that I would get a house with which I could be happy. Of course, I had visions of an addition with a soaking tub, walk-in closet and vanity to die for, but I settled for a modest redo of the space we had since we really didn’t have the money for whiz-bang addition.

So, I started the project by keeping the paneling, but jazzing it up a bit by filling in the lines, priming it and coating it with a layer of Venetian Plaster to make it look like drywall without having to rip everything out. Of course, when we removed the cabinets, there was thick drywall there. This caused a bit of an issue, since we were going to have more wall exposed once we had the new cabinet installed. We decided to try to even the wall out, by removing the piece of drywall that was showing and replacing it with a piece of extra paneling we had from the kitchen. It wasn’t perfect, but it seemed to work.

Everything's Out!

We also removed the existing vanity and linoleum flooring. We temporarily removed the commode and placed it in the family room – lovely! The commode was fairly new, low flow and worked well, so we placed it back after the floors were completed.

We upgraded to marble flooring in this small space and I’m glad we did. I think it turned out very well and it didn’t cost much more than regular tile. I thought it would be much harder to cut, but it proved to work just fine with the tile saw as long as I moved the tile through very slowly. We were able to complete the floor in this room in about a half a day. Of course, we still had to grout it, but that proved to be fairly easy too.

Shower Grout

Luckily, this 60s ranch did not have pink, green or aqua tile in the bathrooms! We were blessed with a nice low-key white tile, but the grout (what there was of it) was in pretty sad shape. I decided to take on the task of re-grouting the shower. I will NEVER DO THIS AGAIN! It was a huge pain and took much longer than I had anticipated but the results speak for themselves, so I am glad I did it – once.
We finished the bathroom off with baseboards, a new special order vanity and medicine cabinet, updated plumbing and drainage for the sink, a new light fixture, and Ikea wall cabinets for extra storage. I threw in a basket hamper and a few plants and there you have it. I bathroom redo for well under $1000! I may not have gotten my soaking tub, but at least I don’t have to worry about finding money to eat!

Master Bath After

I started by going to Google and typing in his name.  I scrolled down a bit and saw his site: http://www.justinbiebermusic.com/ and clicked on that.  I kept looking for his Disney or Nickelodeon affiliation and couldn’t find any.  I clicked on his video to watch him and hear him sing.  I thought, “This is a cute kid with a decent voice.  I see why all the girls like him, but why is he so DARN CRAZY WILD popular?”

Okay, so he’s not from one of the kid factories: Disney or Nickelodeon.  His mom and dad aren’t rock stars.  His uncle isn’t Simon Cowell…hmmm?  Well, here’s the story in a nutshell.  His mom thought he was cute and talented and I guess encouraged him to put videos of himself on YouTube.  He became a YouTube sensation.  Some music peeps saw him and decided he should be looked at more closely.  He got a manager who thought he was talented and then they went to work to try and get a record deal.  Somewhere along this journey, the doors slammed in his face over and over again.  The manager and Justin were told that since he wasn’t already known through Disney and/or Nick that he wouldn’t “catch on”.  Finally, Usher thought he was worth a shot and thus a star was born.  (I think there are a lot more famous people and details to this story, but you get the pictures!)

Anyway, the point is his manager saw something in him – his appeal through social media – which makes him a star like no other.   A little nobody kid from Canada used YouTube to launch himself to the top of the food chain and now he stays on top by using his Twitter account to connect with his fans?  That is true genius if you ask me.

Besides this, he’s been on David Letterman, Jimmy Kimmel and The View in the past few weeks and he is quite charming.  He’s a true salesman.  He knows what the people and his fans want and he gives it to them.

I think we can all learn a little something from Justin Bieber here.  Being on top takes work and it takes talent and it takes dedication.  I checked his twitter activity today and he seems to really connect with fans pretty often.  And I’m sure he has publicity folks helping him actually update his status, but he is in touch with his age bracket and he understands how to use the right technology to stay connected and to keep sales up.

Justin Bieber has broken the mold.  He wasn’t a Mouseketeer or a hit on Nick, he was an average kid with a nice voice who knew what he wanted, went for and got it.  And for those of you who don’t think social media is going to “catch on”, you should probably busy yourself by reorganizing your 8-tracks or perhaps by hanging out with all of those recording studio managers who slammed the door in Justin Bieber’s face because it’s going to be a long wait.

Front Bathroom Before

The front bathroom renovation didn’t involve any demolition, so it wasn’t as intense as some of the other projects.  The bathroom was one of the more pleasant rooms in the house to start.  We decided that we would not remove the yellowish tile that was in the shower and on half of the walls.  It was pretty neutral and we felt that removing the butterfly wallpaper and adding a complimentary color would help a lot.  We also decided that the peach sink and bathtub could be refinished to white and this would further help the color coordination of the room.

This room involved a ton of painting!  We started with the cabinets.  To lighten up the room, we sanded down the dark brown cabinets, primed and painted them white.  We removed the original hardware and later replaced them with new oil-rubbed bronze accents.

Originally, we had planned to remove the sink and cabinets, but the day we were going to rip them out, we realized that we would also be removing some of the wall tiles, and we knew that there was no way that we would ever be able to match those up, so we decided to keep it and paint the cabinets. So, after we painted all of the cabinets white, we took down the fluorescent boxed lights and replaced them with something a little more soothing.   The lights were the biggest pain in the room.

Painting the Cabinets

The original lights had no electrical box (fluorescents usually don’t) and were not centered where we needed the new light fixture to be.  And of course, there was a stud in the way.  Add to that, the bathroom is way at the front of the house and there is no crawl room in the attic over that area, so it was very difficult to get the wiring right.  What started as a project that should have taken a couple of hours, it took us almost a week to do!  (Sigh!)

The only thing that went right was ripping off the old wallpaper.  I had planned to paint over it after a serious ordeal with wallpaper at the old house.  I noticed a few spots where the wallpaper was coming off, so I decided to rip those parts off so it would be smooth to paint over.  To my surprise, the wallpaper ripped right off.  I was able to remove the wall paper with no tools or goop to loosen the glue in about thirty minutes!  Woohoo!  The yellowed butterflies were gone without the fuss.  After priming the walls, I decided to use Venetian Plaster to cover the walls.  I had never used the stuff before, but figured that I’d give it a try.

Venetian Plaster

This is not a faux finish but rather a thick plaster-like substance you goop on your walls with a spreader.  It was actually easier than I thought it would be.  It took a lot of time to apply but it’s really fun and a bit artistic!  I think it turned out well and I like how it complimented the tile.  It’s hard to see in the pictures, but the tile had little specs of the same color throughout.

Swan Shower Door

To finish off, I removed the swan shower door.  It was okay, but I’m not a fan of swans or shower doors.  When I removed it, I left it outside for our annual bulk item pickup and I felt so awful when our neighbor said he had the same shower door and that he loved it –oops!

I tried to refinish the tub and sink myself.  This was a big no-no!  Besides making me high as a kite, the kits they sell out the home improvement stores just aren’t up to the job.  After a failed attempt, I called in a pro – The TubMan, and in a day and a half he had the tub and sink looking like new.

Bathtub Refinished

It didn’t cost very much, so I should have just had a pro out from the start.  You live and learn.

After

Okay I’m switching gears here and I am finally going to post some pictures of our house renovations.  We bought our house almost two years ago, and I am just now getting around to posting the work we did (and are still doing).  So I’ll concentrate on a room per blog post.  Today I’m going to start with the living room/dining room.

When we first saw the house, we thought the living area looked a bit like a funeral parlor.  I’m not really sure if that’s an accurate description but it smelled a little musty and was empty except for one small table at the end.  The previous owner had given away most of his living furniture.  This was no big deal. The big deal about this room was the paint!

AQUA PAINT - Lovely

My goodness there was aqua marine paint everywhere.  Pictures cannot ever do this paint color justice.  Once we moved in and removed the carpet and drapes, I felt like I was living in a pool.

Okay so the first thing we did after pulling down all of the 70s drapes, was to pull up the 70s carpet and start painting that puppy!  Boy oh boy is it difficult to cover 25+ year old paint.  We primed and the next day I swear the color was more intense and aqua than it had been before we primed.  It was like we were splattering the walls with milk –skim milk.  After trying to prime, we decided to texture the walls so they would be a little easier to paint.  Even after the primer and joint compound cover, it still took two coats of paint and a third layer of “touch up”!  I should have chosen a darker color but the house was so dark, I really wanted to lighten it up.

Painting the Ceiling

Okay, so once the painting was done, we patched the floors where the carpet tacks had ripped out the cement.  Then it was laminate time!  We laid down the moisture barrier and bought Pergo with the cushion attached.  My hubby Ken and I aren’t very good at making quick decisions.  This has been a long and sometimes painful process having to make so many decisions.  The first thing we decided on was the floor.  It went on sale at Lowes and as soon as I decided I wanted it, when my husband, Ken, went to go get it, someone else decided it was nice too and took all of the boxes.  I think we visited four or five Lowes with the “other person” grabbing all of the boxes of flooring just minutes before we arrived.  Finally, we found one store with enough boxes but they weren’t on sale.  Ken used his charm and bargaining power and got the manager to give us a lower price and we bought all of the remaining boxes.

Installing the flooring was interesting!

Installing the Floor

My husband and I were under the impression that a five year old could install this stuff.  It was a real pain getting started.  The first few pieces did NOT want to go together and we bent a few grooves and had to toss some of the boards.   After a day of pure frustration and only getting two rows done, we finally figured out what we were doing.  By the next day we finished most of the room, except for the entry and a closet.  We even brought our then five year old in to tap in a few pieces.  So yeah, once you figure out what the heck you are doing, a five year old CAN do it!

We thought we’d have more time to renovate before moving in, but we sold our other house quickly (which was a good thing) and had to move into the house way before it was done.  So we moved in and placed most of the furniture into the middle of the rooms so we could finish the baseboards.  So we worked on the baseboards which came out very nicely.  Special thanks go out to my brother-in-law Tim who let us borrow his miter saw.  That saw rocks!  If you ever need to install baseboards, don’t attempt to do it without a good miter saw.  We were worried that the baseboards were going to be a real problem.  The first couple of cuts took us several hours to get right, but once we realized that 1/16^th of an inch makes a huge difference, we found our groove, worked well together, and got them done fairly quickly.  I have to say doing the baseboards was probably one of my favorite parts of the renovation.  They really make the house look “finished”.

New Chandelier

And for this room, one of the last things we did was get a new chandelier.   The original was interesting and I actually liked it.  My sister liked it too, because she took it!  I think that chandelier would work better in a house with taller ceilings and I tend to like more contemporary things.  Anyway, I like the new light and it was reasonably inexpensive.

So that’s the living/dining area!  That took us about two months to complete.  Of course, we were working on other things at the time and small things like new drapes and the light came much later.

Let me know what you think.

Living Room with Baseboards and Furniture

1)      Clear mission:  This sounds like business-talk and it is.  Most good business people will tell you that you must have a clear mission and set of goals before you embark on a successful business.  Why should a website be any different?  Before starting a website, ask yourself, “What is it that I’m trying to accomplish?”  If the answer is “Make Money” you need to start over.  All businesses want to make money.  You must dig deeper and determine how you will make money.  What is going to drive people to your site and why?  What will keep people coming back to your site?  If your main mission is to make money, you will fail because even if you get people to your site, you won’t keep them and they won’t come back.  They’ll see through your tactics.  You have to offer something of value.  For example, say you found an affiliate that pays you 70% for all referrals.  Sounds great, right?  You sign up and start selling the product.  Have you tried the product?  Have you researched and made sure it doesn’t turn people’s urine purple?  Seriously, you need to be the expert on that product.  Obviously with 70% return, you’ll have a lot of competition and you have to stand out from the crowd.  You become the expert and people will come to you.  Your mission here is to become the expert on said affiliate product.  The result will probably be that you will “make money”.

2)      Market that Puppy:  Blog, Tweet and By All Means Tell People You Are Out There!:  One of my favorite lines is from Field of Dreams where they say over and over, “If you build it they will come!”  Well, if we all had an all-star ghost baseball team lined up ready to play for us that might be true, but for those of us trying to make our way ahead of millions of other sites, it’s going to take a little more work.  You must let people know that you are there.  Some of the easiest ways to do that is by social marketing yourself.  Signing up for twitter probably takes 90 seconds and that’s while you’re getting yourself another cup of coffee.  Seriously, sign up, write a profile, and add a link to your page.  Find some friends.  If you start following people and you are a legitimate person or business, chances are they will follow you too.  If you start tweeting about things that make sense, are important to people and are interesting, more people will following you, you’ll get retweeted and things will actually start to roll in your favor.

Also you need to blog.  If you don’t have a blog on your own site there are plenty of places you can set up shop for free, like blogger.com.  If you have a blog, make sure to register it on business specific sites, and sites like technorati.com.  Also, go out and start commenting on other people’s blogs.  Make a name for yourself.  Marketing is a huge topic, but you get the idea.

3)      Clean code: I’m going to get a little “techie” on you.  The more valid your code is and the more direct, concise and easy it is to read, the better.  Why does anyone care what my site looks like on the backside, it works and looks good! ?  Well, the less cumbersome your code is on the backside, the easier it is for the bots (Googlebot especially) to find and properly index your site.  Less tags and code on the backside make it easier for your keywords to be spotted and keyword density to be noted.  Also, the pages will load more quickly and bandwidth will be saved.  I highly recommend a tableless design with a separate css page.  Sometimes this last step is easier said than done, but if you start cleaning up your code, Google (and others) will reward you for it.  I’ve personally optimized two sites with the same area of focus, one with clean code and one without (I did not build the one without  – I tried my best to make it better though).  Even though the site with the not-so-good code had more backlinks, exposure and a blog, the site with the squeaky clean code actually ended up at the top of the natural search results.  Go figure!

A combination of all three of the above must haves will keep people coming back to your site and help your popularity.  You must realize that true results require a lot of hard work and dedication.  This doesn’t happen overnight.  Anyone who tells you they can get you to the top in seven days is either lying or is utilizing “black hat” or inappropriate techniques to help your rank and in the end you will be penalized.  Google will find sites that don’t play by the rules.  I think this list is actually just common sense.  Have a business plan, market yourself and do it well.  Easy!

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is the “art” of driving organic traffic to your site via search results from a search engine such as Google or Yahoo.  I call it an “art” because there is a bit of trial and error and dancing to get things optimized so that your site shows up naturally in the search engine results.

You may be asking, “Why would anyone care about that, can’t you just advertise and get the number one search spot?”  SEM, or search engine marketing will get you to the top of the ranks, indeed.  This, of course, comes at a price – and a big price at that.  Most search engine marketing campaigns run on a cost per click scale.  When someone types in your keywords, your ad appears either on the top or on the side of the “natural” listings.  In a cost per click setup you only have to pay if someone clicks on your ad and goes to your site.  Impressions occur when your ad is seen (i.e. makes an impression on the customer) but is not clicked and these don’t cost you money in a cost per click scenario.  The downside to the SEM approach is that it can cost you a fortune.   Some ads may only cost a quarter while most competitive ones will run you from $3-12 per click, depending on the competition.  SEM is a much bigger topic that will be explored later.

Back to SEO…

A site that is well optimized will return natural search results near the top of the page and you don’t have to pay anything to the search engine for that.  It’s free – well sort of!  SEO can come at a price.  If you have an obscure website with unique content, you may have an easy time getting your site listed at the top of the search results.  If you are trying to make your mark on the Las Vegas, Nevada Real Estate search results, you have a lot of work ahead of you and may have to hire a professional to get your site on the organic map!

In the coming weeks I’ll explore some of the basic things you can do to help get your site better suited for the search engines and we will also explore the costs associated with professional SEO and when and if it is worth it for your business.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

About four years ago I launched my site after spending about 30 minutes on design and content.  I wanted to launch something quickly, but knew I would go back and fix it up shortly.

So here I am, four years later, fixing her up!

I decided to use a pre-made WordPress template since I am busy with other projects.  I’m sure I could have designed and created at least a dozen templates with the time it took me to decide on one.  I looked at over a 1000 templates.  Yes, that’s correct, there are three zeros there – that’s not a typo.  Anyway, I’m not sure how my path led me N.design studios, but I finally found my template!  This template is simple, soothing to look at and list-like!  (I’m a big list maker so this really fit with my personality). It was easy for me to add my twitter feed and set it up the way I wanted.  So far, I really like this design and am so happy for wonderfully talented people who share their skills with the rest of us.

I hope to post some useful information in the days, weeks, months and years to come.  I had a New Year’s Resolution to share some of my knowledge and use this site more fully.  I love to share my knowledge (it’s the teacher in me) and hopefully I can offer some SEO tips and tricks, web design and development opinions and talk about appropriate e-learning practices.  I have a lot of opinions too, so I’m sure if you keep up you’ll get a myriad of information.

If you haven’t already, follow me on Twitter – if you are a person or viable business I’ll follow you back.  If you are trying to sell skin, I’m not interested!

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…