By immersing myself into SEO, I've learned that once you've made up your mind that something is easy, then it becomes EASY. Why aren't we taught more practical stuff like this in public/private school? College? At work? From Our Parents? I'm a big fan of seeking out great people (experts), dissecting their strengths and weaknesses and then incorporating their strengths into my skill set (I pray that I've left their backage at the dumpster).

SEO like chemisty, engineering (all 100 of them), biology, computer programming aren't hard. We as people have been ssubconsciously taught that anything we don't know, is.....you guessed it?? ??HARD :(

Stop complaining about how hard things are, go to Google and/or your local library and master what you call "HARD".

Two more things:

1- Replace "HARD" with "EASY"

2- If an SEO "expert" tells you that they can rank you #1 for a keyword, tell them to go shoot themself because they're lying. 

Tell the Penguins I said hey! 

Corey Blinks

I've been teaching myself Javascript with CodeAcademy and it's a great site to learn programming languages (HTML/CSS/JavaScript).

I was having difficulty on a particular question:

Remember the functions isOdd and isEven from Exercise 3.4?

We'd like you to code them here again! But this time, the aim is to define one function in terms of the other using the ! symbol.

Define isOdd, and then define isEven in terms of isOdd. 

I went back to Exercise 3.4, copied & pasted the code into my main problem. Look closely at the code enclosed in the red circle.

First, I did the simple parts: 1) created the isOdd variable 2) Made isEven a dependent variable of isOdd. I prefer doing the easy parts of a question then moving onto the harder parts.  Now the hard part....smh :(. 

Then I thought to myself; what makes a number an "odd" number. I felt really stupid, because I knew what makes an odd number odd, but I couldn't figure out how to mathematically show it. I Googled around and typed: "What is an odd number?", "What's a prime number?".I struggled with it for a few minutes.

Then I hit my ahhh...haaa moment!!! 

(n % 2 === 0)  => I looked at the line of code and said "Well, all even numbers when divided by 2, leave whole numbers left with no decimals"; hence odd numbers don't.

Bingo!!!

If (n % 2 === 1) => When Odd numbers are divided by 2 they don't leave whole numbers and it worked!!!! It's time to pop the champagne!!!

I learned a valuable lesson here: Sometimes, it's best to think backwards in order to solve a problem. A few people call it reverse-engineering. 

Corey Blinks

The internet is becoming a wash with bloggers (professionals, wannabe newspaper reporters, companies) positioing themselves as experts in their respective field.  I guess I'm doing the same thing. :) A quick history lesson: 37signals, was one of the premier startups in the late 90s & early 2000s, during the dot.com bubble, to proclaim the importance of blogging and how it was going to have a transformative effect on search engine marketing, hence SEO. They have one of the biggest followings online and are popular among hackers, programmers & startups as being "anti-Silicon Valley". Fast forward to today (2012) and almost every company & person (tech-savvy or marketing geek) has one. It seems that their prediction has come to fruition. 

So how can you harnest the power of blogging? 

1 - Be Consistant.

 Companies & people, alike, it's important to create a schedule and stick to it. Be it, once a week, daily & etc.

2 - Produce Relevant Content

 Most bloggers do a horrible job at writing relevant content which brings me to my next point...

3 - Know Your Audience

Who are you trying to reach? Who is the person your blogging for? Think of blogging as an extension of your overall marketing strategy. Write from your intended readers' point of view and be sure to give them an "insiders' view" on your particular subject or industry.

*Companies shouldn't rave about  how good their product(s) are, let your customers do it.You should aim to be a source of information*

4 - Establishing A Following

This aspect is very methodical and works best for bloggers with a long term approach. Where does your audience live online? Go where your audience lives, communicate in their "language" in their setting and eventually they'll come to your blog. Most people live on social media (including social-curators). 

5 - Determine Your Purpose

Why are you blogging? Do you want to generate more leads? Position yourself as an expert? Boost SEO ranking? Figure out why you are blogging and everything else will fall into place.

Corey Blinks

Here's a list of things everyone who wants to conquer SEO should know:

1- Linkbuilding (Backlinks)

2- Microdata (Meta Tags)

3- Penguin Updates (Google)

4- SeoMoz (Great resourse for learning SEO)

5- Search Ranking

6-Types of Search Engine Ranking

7- Content Marketing

8- Trust Worthiness of Site

9- Search Engine Optimization

10- Social media (Starting to influence SEM more)

11- SEM (Search Engine Marketing) 

I'm still learning more and more about SEO myself. When I learn more, you learn more. 

Corey Blinks

In the picture above, do you notice anything that stands out?? Look closely, I'll wait (Katt Williams Voice) .

Well, if you haven't notice, the presentation of the iPhone looks and feels more aesthetically better and more compelling than those other andriod phones. Everytime, a person walks into this Sprint store, the iPhone sticks out like a sore thumb and tells each person sub-consciously, "Hey, the iPhone, is unlike any phone you've ever seen, touched, felt, smelled, tasted and experienced"(ok...I went a little over-board). It's demanding you to buy it on site and trash your existing phone or any thoughts of buying those other cell phones. It's telling you, how much they are "NOT" A-typical. Think about it, people don't call an iPhone a cell phone, they call it an iPhone. People don't call an iPad a tablet PC, they call it an iPad.

Everybody should take 5 minutes out of their day and study how Apple is killing it,in their marketing department. Branding is more than just creating a great product, it's all about being a maverick and differentiating yourself from the competition. 

Kudos to Apple, from a wannabe iPhone user.....

Corey Blinks

I was surfing the internet and looking for a virtual fax service. I went to a particular site and then left (My typical web-surfing nature). I went to one of my favorite blog sites and then I noticed something strange: A banner ad, from the website I had just left.

Was this just a coincidence? Deja Vu!?

Hmmm...I doubt it. I did some Googling around and typed "Ads appearing from sites visted" and I found an article from the New York Times about Ad Re-targeting. I thought to myself, the things these companies do and how most people don't even know what's going on. Sad right.... :(

EPIPHANY MOMENT! 

Ad Re-targeting is that creepy aspect of digital marketing which reminds you to go back to a website you just left. Like a boomerang effect...so how does it work? When people visit a website, your computer communicates with that websites' host server and cookies are transmitted to your computer from  their websites' host-server. Most people don't delete these cookies regularly, however servers still remember who you are.  All the big guys do it, Amazon, Zappos, Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft and even Wal-Mart (How could I forget Google!). 

Studies have shown that in order for brands or companies to make a sale it takes multiple interactions, for prospects to become customers. Companies are now dumping more and more of their marketing budgets towards retargeting because it's proving to have a higher ROI on their overall budget. The beauty of these ads is that, they are only shown after being triggered by internet users engagement with their site which means that these ads are shown far less than "regular banner ads" increasing the overall conversion rate of their marketing campaigns. 

Here's a few sources I've found helpful:

http://www.retargeter.com/what-is-retargeting-and-how-does-it-work

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/retargeting-basics-what-it-is-how-to-use-it

http://www.zenwebsolutions.com/blog/2011/what-is-ad-retargeting-cookies-and-the-display-advertising-boom-1390

Corey Blinks

So what is microdata? 

Glad you asked :)

According to Wikipedia, it is a WHATWG HTML specification used to nest semantics within existing content on web pages. Whatever that means...I'm still confused by that "definition". In layman's term, microdata is a combination of keywords & HTML tags, used by search engines and web-crawlers (such as Google & Bing) to parse webpages across the internet in order to provide sufficient information for internet users looking for reliable information. I must gives thanks to Bryan Young, BEC CoFounder, for sharing this term with me. Ever since than I've been a mad scientist optimizing my HTML code to boost my organic search rankings. 

Here's a few tips for optimizing SEO through with microdata:

1 - Look at other websites (competitors or favorite sites) and right-hand click their webpage and scroll down, then press "view source code". I've learned a ton by just analzying other websites' HTML code.

2 - Be creative and use relevant "keywords" which perfectly define your service & customers. 

3 - All meta-tags geared towards SEO should be nested inside your header tags (Place after the first header tag <html> & placed after the ending header tag </html>). Web browsers look are your header section first, before any other part of your site. 

4 - Find blogs online who blog about SEO, all day and night. These include SEOmoz & Hubspot. There are more, go and find them! :)

Corey Blinks 

1 – Solve a “REAL” problem.

2- Pay It Forward

3 – J Don’t steal peoples’ ideas, ask first. J

4 – When doing marketing tests, test 1 variable at a time.

5- Be stingy with your vision.

6- Get a “Social” life.

7- Live modestly and justify all expenditures.

8- Exercise your body.

9- Be an active listener and tune out bad advice.

10- Embrace failure.

1 MORE FOR GOOD LUCK!!

 11- Don't chase laggards, they come last for a reason. 

This post was inspired by the 10 biblical commandments as well as my million failures; I say a million because I lost count after my 100^th failure. Feel free to rank these commandments by their importance.

I had the pleasure of watching "Black In America: The New Promised Land-Silicon Valley". It has left me with an interesting perspective. As a young-black entrepreneur, I do feel a sense of David up against Goliath. Is their prejudice or racisim in the various tech & business communities around the US? Yes. Are older entrepreneurs wiser than young entrepreneurs? Yes. Do I think anyone on Earth can out passion me? No.

My point is that even though their may be all of these perceived obstacles against minority entrepreneurs. At the end of the day, IT DOESN'T MATTER. Your perceived disadvantages are your real advantages. Being a minority entrepreneur, differentiates you automatically from your white and asian counterparts. One of the fallacies with BIA, was that all of the NewMe participants expressed raising money as being successful. That in itself, is what causes bubbles. I was surprised that none of them weren't pushing out minimum-viable products immediately. It was surprising not to hear any talk about bootstrapping or the lean startup principles and/or about selling vaporware (Bill Gates sold vaporware in the early days of Microsoft). Facebook had an 1+ million active users before raising a dime.

Overall, I appreciated Wayne Sutton, CNN and the other startups for putting BIA together because they did shine light on a grey area in the tech-world. However, in order for minorites to move-forward we have to look at our glasses as half-full versus half-empty. 

For more information about Black In America: http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/

Corey Blinks

The video below is a presentation I gave about my website, blinktextbooks.com, to a group of people in Durham, NC. I was apart of business incubator and all 15 teams gave a "Final Pitch" on the last day of the program. I hope you enjoy it!

Things I've Learned:

1 - Engage Your Audience

2 - Be Yourself

3 - Know Your Audience ( I wasn't pitching to a bunch of investors, just good and average people.)

4 - Make Eye Contact

5 - Be Confident In Yourself

Special Thanks to the Blink Team!