I’ve always been in touch with my feminine side. Well, as far as I can remember. I mean I don’t think I’ve been overly feminine like with an extra chromosome or something. I just think I’ve been able to associate better with women. I get them. Well that’s a pretty fucking bold thing for me to say, right? I didn’t say that I knew the female organization like the back of my hand. I just said I get them more then I get a lot of the males I run across. I’ve been called gay plenty of times in my life that it doesn’t phase me at all. I don’t consider it a bad thing to be called, yet a lot of men do. I just like getting my nails done and looking pretty. Is that so bad? I remember getting women ask me how I get my hair to do whatever it was that it was doing that day. That was quite the compliment for me, I felt. At the same time, I had dudes poking fun at the “feminine” color of my shirt. That was back before pink was made in everything for men. I also like purple. In fact, I think I look better in purple. My mother will tell you I look the best in green. It makes my eyes pop. I thought it was the cash I had my eye on, but apparently it’s simply the color of shirt I had on for Mother’s Day.

With that little blurb being said, it makes sense that I would own (purchase) a company that was primarily pink, Polka Dot Design. I was the IT Manager for Polka Dot Design for a few years and the opportunity came up for me to purchase it. I took that leap and the net will appear, right? Kidding, I’m working on rebuilding the legacy that Julia & Aaron Brickman began. This was once a prominent cutting edge company and I intend on bringing it back. I’ve got to. I’ve got a mouth to feed. Take a look at the website. There is pink all over the place and I can dig that, like a garden. My current project is rebuilding the site to conform to Google’s rules for SEO and security. It’s tough to always be one step behind Google and ready to make an SEO or some sort of structural change when Google tells you to. To stay on top of the game, you’ve got to have a friend at Google (maybe Vince Vaughn is taking calls today) or buy into the mass amount of snake oil that any one of the “reputable” search engine optimization companies are trying to sell. Part of my job as an IT Manager has always been to sift through the bullshit the world is trying to sell you. You need a new phone system. That will increase your says they will tell you. You need a new T1 line and that will really bring the customers to you. Everyone is trying to sell something and I’ve got to act like I’m panning for gold and weed all of them out. Really though, I’m no different. I will try to sell you something too. What I’m trying to sell you though, is a ticket to happiness. That sounds like a line, doesn’t it? You buy some party invitations and you will be happy. I can tell you that much. Who is not happy at a party? Bring them to me and I will turn that frown upside down. How about a christian hug, Mrs. Sadface or a good ol’ game of grabass Mr. Down Dogger. See what I’m saying? So get those party invitations now and you’ll be glad you did. Feel free to invite me to said party. I’m booking up fast, so hurry up with the invites.

When I decided to rebuild the site, I employed a company that specializes in WordPress hosting, WP Engine. They even have a 40% off coupon code for WP Engine when you use: SSL40OFF. Hashtag you’re welcome. Anywho, the guys at WP Engine really know their stuff. The beauty is that all they do is hosting for WordPress, so that’s what they know. When you specialize in one thing, you can be really bad ass at that one thing. The guys at WPEngine are WordPress geniuses. So, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not as easy as it sounds, but it is achievable in the internet world. I ask myself often, “Can you really be fully optimized” in Google’s world? Odds are that Google will continue to evolve, so I will have to continue to evolve. Sitting still is not an option. Yoast makes an SEO plugin that helps out with a little do-it-yourself search engine optimization. Some may call it DIYSEO. We can all call it that if Google will let us, Actually though, all we need to do is start saying something a lot and Google will start saying it too. If you really think about it, we are the one’s that are programming Google with new terminology and trends. From hashtags to at-sign shoutouts, we actually giving content to Google. Google is all about solid content and user experience. It makes sense that someone is in charge of that. Otherwise, the world wide web (the white version) would be a goddamned mess and you wouldn’t be able to find anything without getting hacked a dozen times in the process.

SEO is quite the process. You’ve really got to be married to providing good content. A lot of businesses have to have an entire department committed to search engine optimization. Others outsource their SEO to expensive SEO companies. Should you choose to take the latter route, be careful who you employ. There’s a lot of SEO companies selling snake oil out there, so make sure to do your research before handing over the cash.

I’ve been writing content and optimizing sites for quite some time now. It’s a long and tedious process, for sure. If you want the traffic which leads to the money that leads to the freedom that you want, this is what you’ll do. Every one of the words that I write is searchable. Sure, there are so called “stop words” in content marketing and search engine optimization, but they’re words that we all have to use anyway. Stop words refer to the most common words used in any given language. There is not a real universal list to go off of though I’m sure you can find plenty of lists on the internets. A few examples of stop words would be a, and, the, be, at, then, there, were and plenty of other tiny filler words. If I were you, I would try to be less verbose while getting your point across with more important and less used words.