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Blog Writing Under Your Own Name

Your pen name is your brand. Just like any brand, it should be protected. I only write articles showing my own name for my website. When I supply ghost written articles, I do not brand them with my name.

Personally, I feel that by name should only be used to promote my own services and my own website. I do not lend out my name or for that matter my content to others. I want to retain close control of my brand and my intellectual property. Before you write for someone else under your own name you may want to consider these important points.

1. Will the content you supply be changed in any way after you provide it? If it will be you may not like the changes or the meaning of your original piece may be different.

2. Is the site where your content will reside a good match for your ideologies? How about types of advertisers? Remember your name will give credibility to the site. Are the products and services one with which you would want to be linked?

3. If you are writing under your own name, remember the Internet archives all content literally forever. Will joining your name to a site or cause be a problem in the future for potential clients or job opportunities.

4. You may even want to consider receiving a higher level of compensation for any pieces that you write for other websites using your own name.

Once you let something go, it is nearly impossible to get it back again, that goes not only with your reputation, but with the value of your own brand or pen name.

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Getting the Most Bang for Your Buck – Special Issue

You’ll want to click in to read our November e-newsletter that tells you how to get the most bang for your buck on the Internet. Learn our top picks for pay per click, search engine optimization, and e-newsletter services.

With the economy tanking and business climates slowing, now’s the time to check out our tips to see if you can easily implement some of them to get your own business rolling again.

Here’s the link!

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Scaring Up Fun on Halloween

Today is Halloween and it’s time to have some fun with scary costumes and treats. Kids of all ages love to go out tonight, visit with neighbors, see kids in costume, and paw through the kids candy loot looking for a favorite sweet snack.

I have triplet 11 year olds and if this year is like last year, each kid brought home a pillow case full of candy about the size and weight of a 20 pound turkey. This year they all vow that they will range farther in the neighborhood and stay out later in the search for massive quantities of sugar.

Usually my husband and I take turns minding the house and giving out treats and walking with the kids, but the kids have already told us that this year they are going with friends, in a pack, to be able to move faster, and get more candy. We appear to have been holding them back in their “Holy Grail” search for the home that provides the “biggest candy bar” or the most amount of candy as 8:00 PM rolls around. (For those of you that don’t live in my area 8:00 is when you start dumping the candy on any kids who come to the door so you will not have left overs that you will then have to eat yourself. We start out at 6:00 giving out two pieces to each child but by 8:00 PM it is fist fulls of candy.)

This year I have only bought the candy that my own kids like, not that I expect to have any left though. It is crazy that as much as we do give away, with three wide-ranging kid-candy fiends, the haul at the end of the night will be enough to make our dentist feel that they can now afford college for their youngest child.

I hope that you will have fun tonight either going with your kids, going to your own party, or just even staying home handing out candy. Happy Halloween!

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Great Web Design Does Not Equal SEO

A super great looking website does not equal a well optimized website!

I have found from experience that many excellent web designers simply do not understand the nuts and bolts of search engine optimization. An excellent, good looking website does not mean that your new site will place well organically.

Here are several things to ask your web designer to make sure that your are getting a good balance of design versus SEO:

1. State that you do not want text to be incorporated into your website as images. In many cases a web designer (due to control of elements) will create text with images. I particularly see this in titles above content. Search engines cannot read images and so you lose opportunities to include your keywords by a designer using images where they should use text.

2. Do not over use Flash. Flash is pretty, but search engines including Google still do not do a good job indexing all Flash websites. I cannot begin to tell you how many calls I have fielded from clients whose Flash website is not performing organically and who want my help to improve. You cannot search engine optimize Flash. One thing to think about is that Microsoft’s new Silverlight which is like Flash is search engine spiderable, but many browsers do not have Silverlight enabled at this point. Contain Flash only in your banner at this time for best organic performance if you must use it at all.

3. Make sure that your web designer understands how important the source code title tag is and the meta description tag is. If they do not understand your concern, your designer does not understand SEO. Sometimes to get the best of both worlds it is best to hire a super designer and then an SEO consultant who makes sure that the site architecture, images, file folders, and even page names are built around keywords. We do provide consulting services in this area if you have already selected a great web designer, consider using our consulting services to assure that your website has the best possible chance of top organic placement when it is launched.