The Hubs Birthday

I have a few minutes to kill right now. I have to be at a baby shower in about 30 minutes but I am waiting on some blondies to bake...so I thought I would share the hubs little birthday celebration we had for him on Thursday. He turned 37 this year. He feels so old:o) I thought it would cheer him up to have a little family party with all of his favorite things.

The kids colored this sign for him and I put it on the front door to greet him when he got home.

Here was the goody table. We didn't actually have super that night:o)

Just junk

He really likes spicy things...I added a few snacks that the kids could tolerate:o)

I made the party hats at the last minute. I have a Superman cricut cartridge and it had a party hat design. Super quick. I just drew 37's on all of them. 

 Here they are eating bacon...who doesn't love bacon??

 I love this shot!

 This was his "cake." Since I knew we were going to be loaded down on cake with E's party, I thought I would get a little creative with this one. Hubs LOVES Krispy Kreme donuts. I bought a dozen of the chocolate glazed...only 10 made it home;o) I stacked them in a pyramid shape. I then added scoops of Moose Tracks ice cream in the center of each donut and then poured magic shell on top of that....3 of his most favorite things to eat:o) 

Here he his blowing out 1 candle...I thought I would be sweet and not torture him with an extra 36 candles:o)

 The donut cake seemed to be a hit with everyone!

 S.R. is known for her crazy looks....

 every once and a while we get some cheese:o)

 Love these sweet faces!

I'd say this isn't such a bad way to turn 37, do you?

What a Party!

We had a great time and are so thankful for those who helped us celebrate E's birthday. I can't wait to share it all with you on Monday....have a great weekend!!

What I Can't Wait For....

I can't wait for...

our first REAL family pictures which will be taken on Friday. I am normally the one taking the family pics. It will be nice to have some one else do the hard work:o)

I can't wait for....

the chance to take a breath, sit down and peruse the pages of these 2 catalogs.

I can't wait for...

the celebration to begin. I am looking forward to watching E and his little buddies have a great time at his party. It's going to be so much fun!

I will be M.I.A. for the rest of the week. Hopefully I will see you back here Monday with some photos of the party!

5 Tips For Keyword Reseach

It’s no secret that keyword research is probably the most important aspect of getting organic search engine traffic. Without the proper keyword research, you could be targeting keywords that don’t get very much traffic or ones that won’t get ranked well in the search engines.

We all know that getting on to the first page of Google, preferably within the top 3 spots, is the best way to grab the bulk of the traffic. But, there is a key part of keyword research that must be done in order to determine if you can, indeed, rank in the top 3 – and most people fail to do it!

I’m talking about evaluating your competition – a step that is critical to your success and one, if ignored, could cause you to waste a lot of time going for the wrong keywords. Here are the 5 things to look at when evaluating the top 10 sites in Google:

1. Page Rank
While Page Rank per se is not an indicator of a top ranking it does show you how “important” google thinks those competing pages are. Do all the pages you are competing with have a high PR? Can you match that? If not then you might want to reconsider your keyword.

If the top 10 is filled with PR6 pages, you might want to move on, but if there are several PR3 or below than you can probably wedge your way in. Sometimes those top PR pages aren’t optimized for the keyword and you can beat them out by getting better backlinks and doing better onpage SEO.

2. Intention
Are the other sites targeting your keyword phrase? Do they have it in the title, the url, an image and sprinkled throughout the content? A lot of times Google can’t find good matches for keywords and find the best thing it can. If this is the case with your phrase then you can out SEO for those sites and sail to the top.

For the pages that are optimizing for your keyword phrase, you can assume they have done the proper keyword research and maybe formidable opponents. You must take a good look at them and figure out if you can beat them by optimizing better or getting better backlinks.

3. Domain Age

Domain age can be a factor in determining which site should come out on top for each keyword phrase. After all, domain age cannot be faked or gamed so an older domain can have some clout.

That being said, it depends on the overall niche the domain is in. I’ve seen some really old domains rank for terms that really weren’t what they were focusing on only because there was simply no one better. So, while you should take the age of the domains on page1 into account, you have to weight this with the other factors for each page and doing SEO on page.

4. Number Of Back Links
For any new keyword you want to target, you should have a back link campaign in mind so looking at the number of back links that your competitors have is critical. If they all have way more back links than you could ever hope to get, then you might want to reconsider. Then again, the amount of back links isn’t nearly as important as the quality of those links.

Also, you want to look at the back links to the actual page that you will be competing with, not the domain. I don’t mean to ignore how many links the domain has entirely because this can be a factor in the ranking as a lot of good quality links could signify that Google perceives it as an authority. But mostly, you should just look at the back links to the actual page you will be competing with.

5. Quality Of Back Links
This is another critical piece of the whole keyword research puzzle that a lot of people ignore. It’s not enough to just count the number of back links a page has – you have to evaluate the quality of those links. You see, a page could have 5000 links to it, but if they are all form PR0 pages on PR0 domains and many are reciprocal or nofollow then they will have little influence over rankings.

The types of back links that you want to be on the lookout for are those that have the keyword phrase as the anchor text, ones that are dofollow and ones that are from pages that have PR or pages on domains that have a high PR. These types of links will have a direct influence over how high Google ranks the page for your keyword phrase so you need to be able to get more of the same types of links to beat your competitor.

Doing keyword research properly can be a time consuming and daunting task. However, it is well worth the time spent because evaluating your competition properly can show you the keywords that you should focus on to really get that organic traffic as well as highlight the ones that would only be a waste of time.

Ask us your Google Places for business questions

A little more than a year ago, we collected your questions and feedback on Google Places for business via a Google Moderator page. You sent us some great feedback, and we had a blast responding! Check out our video responses here on YouTube, covering things like features of a listing, Report a problem and ranking.

It's important to us to continue hearing your great feedback — and we suspect you've had a lot of questions and ideas throughout the past year — so let's fire up another Moderator page. Starting today and for the next two weeks, you can submit your questions and ideas, as well as vote up other submissions from users. We'll answer some of the more popular questions directly on the page and post a new video or two to the Google Places YouTube channel.

Start sharing your ideas right now, and stay tuned to us here on the Small Business Blog to see a roundup of responses.

Posted by Vanessa Schneider, Google Maps and Places community manager

Getting Ready for E's Super hero party

I am in the beginning stages of decorating for E's Super Hero Party. Blue, red, black and yellow are slowly creeping into my home decor. E knows that the day is nearing, and he can hardly stand it. Every morning he asks the same question...am I five years old yet? Can you tell he is beyond excited:o)

Things are going to be nuts around here next week. I learned from doing S.R.'s party that decorating a week in advance really takes the pressure off right before the big day. Plus, the kids get to enjoy the awesome birthday decor for longer than a couple of hours.

The poster isn't finished yet. I am trying to decide whether to put an E in the middle with the Super Shield, or do the number 5.

  I am thinking about selling it after the party, so that makes me want to lean towards the 5.

Any thoughts?

 I am still trying to figure out what to do with these lanterns. I got them from a yard sale a few years back. They are Pottery Barn and they came with a string of lights to go inside each lantern. They may be hanging from the chandy in the kitchen...who knows:o)

 Here is the Batman table runner I told you guys about the other day. It was really simple to assemble and I have the pattern for you to download HERE if you are interested. 

All you need is 1 yard of 44" fabric. 

Cut 2 strips 10.5" x 36" Use the pattern on the ends of the strips.

Download Here

 Stitch all the way around using a 1/4" seam allowance and leave an opening. Trim corners and curves, flip right side out, press, and sew a running stitch around the perimeter. Very easy!

You can get 2 runners out of 1 yard.

Alright then....

and this will be the food table.

I have several more decorations to put up including some over sized spider webs. They are actually Halloween decorations, but they fit perfectly since Spiderman is one of the super heroes.  

In other news...look what the hubs got me yesterday. Isn't he a sweety?

Oh yeah, I ran 3 miles this morning...wahoo...first time in like 12 years! I have been running with some friends. We(the hubs and I)are too cheap to pay a gym membership:o)

Happy Thursday!!

Inc. Magazine and Google want to hear your online success story

In my role at Google, I am constantly impressed by the innovative and entrepreneurial ways that small business owners take their ideas or passions, and turn them into thriving businesses. One of my favorite business success stories is of a small boutique in New York City called Loopy Mango. For over a year, their storefront was covered by a scaffolding due to delays in renovation of the building next door. To overcome this challenge, they relied on online advertising to find customers and share what their unique lifestyle boutique had to offer.







Does your business have a unique online marketing story? In partnership with Inc. Magazine, we're now asking businesses across the country to share with us how they've used online marketing tools to improve their business. The three most impactful stories will receive tickets to the Inc. 5000 conference in the Washington, D.C. metro-area on September 22-24, 2011.



Inc. Magazine is taking submissions here. Please share your story with us by September 7, 2011 for a chance to win. Winners will be notified via email by September 10, 2011. Also, visit Google@Inc on Inc.com to learn more tips and tools from experts about how to grow your business online.



Posted by Ria Tobaccowala, Small Business Marketing Team