Ok, so we have been for a while…but still, we’ve actually been ADDING stuff recently! My boss put up an ADORABLE video of the time one of his twin boys (don’t remember if it was Matt or Marc) snuck into mommy’s closet and ate up like 15 chocolate bars (luckily they were the lil ones!). His face as daddy is scolding him is PRICELESS!

Oh, and his very talented twin girls (yes, that’s right, TWO sets of twins!) made their acting debut as well - pretty awesome stuff. (Again, not sure which one, but either Emily or Haley had a GREAT fight scene!).

Oh, yeah, there’s some work related stuff on there…with more to come!

So yeah, go ahead and check out GetMyHomesValue.com on YouTube. It’s worth a few minutes of your time!

Coming in 2009…the intervention we held for our brick-licking addict coworker (hi Adam!).

Oh wait, he’s our videographer too…hmm, how’s this gonna work?

Haven’t had too much time to post things lately. By the time I’m done being on the computer 8-10 hours a day for work, I just do NOT feel like comin’ home and spending even more time on it. I sucks.

That’s why it’s so important to blog about a topic you love - so it’s not a chore, but a favorite hobby. Of course, my favorite hobby is reading. So maybe I should just say bump it and center this blog around books I’m currently reading. Just a personal rant blog with no professional association whatsoever.

Then people can see all the trashy fiction I read. YAY!

I don’t know. It’s a thought. I set some goals for myself a month ago and am no closer to reaching them. It’s a huge weakness of mine - I love to set goals, just not see them through. Pretty frickin’ stupid really.

Wish me luck getting my shit in gear…

So I’ve been thinking more and more about my time here at GetMyHomesValue.com and ProspectMX. I actually started 3 years ago as a CS rep for GMHV, and have since moved to several different companies within the umbrella of GMHV - namely, WebXtreme and ProspectMX.

I love what I do with ProspectMX - Internet Marketing is fun and always innovative, so it’s hard to get bored. However, a big part of me is still with GMHV - so much so that I find myself sticking my nose into GMHV’s business probably more than I should. But hey, screw it, I went through a lot as a CS rep - and if I can make it so that others don’t go through as much, then good for me!

It helps that we all still work in the same building…lol, it’s always interesting! And it looks like GMHV is going to be hiring more account managers and what not, if the GetMyHomesValue.com Jobs On MySpace page I found is any indication.

It’s about time is all I have to say! We’ve finally got a great team of people over there, being agent advocates and doing everything in their power to ensure that our agents have success with our service…but there’s too few of them, and too many agents! Add a few more key people to the team, and we’re close to having what we’ve always strove for - the most superb customer service dept. in the biz, making GMHV a service agents don’t want to live without!

So, obviously, this blog has no direction so far. I’m definitely disappointed with myself, b/c I get all excited about something (like having my own website!) and then I totally don’t follow through with it past Phase 1 or 2 of the project. It drives me nuts.

I guess the first thing I need to do is decide on my site theme and concept. I want this to be an online portfolio of my accomplishments of course, but what should my actual BLOG focus on? That’s the question…I want it to be something I’m interested in, something OTHERS are interested in, and something that I could eventually monetize b/c, let’s face it, I WOULD like to generate some kind of income with this site eventually.

Once I know the theme/direction the blog is going in, I can sit down, make sure this WP theme is right for me and really start learning all about Wordpress. I’m thinking I need to invest in a Wordpress for dummies and what not - I want to understand all the programming language, the CSS, everything that goes in to Wordpress. (Tall order much?) But if other people can do it, I KNOW I can. I’m a sharp girl and a fast learner - to the point where I sometimes surprise myself at how capable I am of learning things.

By the end of the summer my goals are to:

• Be proficient in wordpress, from user interface to actual css and programing.
• Have a theme for my site
• Have a portfolio of my work up on the site.

These are the things I’m interested in blogging about (at some point, I’ll probably have multiple blogs)

1. SEO, Internet Marketing, PPC - but my company ProspectMX, already focuses on that…so I really should just blog about that stuff on our blog
2. Going Green - I’m really in to the “going green” phenomena, how we can be more eco-friendly, etc, and that is a BIG thing right now.
3. Copywriting and Content Development - I love to write, and I’ve done a lot of writing for the web and some for print, so I think I could definitely have a professional writing type blog.
4. Dogs/Animals - I’m a big animal lover, dogs and wolves especially, and I would love to come up with a blog all about dogs, pets, tips, home remedies, etc.
5. Book, Movie & Music Reviews - I’m a HUGE fiction bookworm, as in, multiple books per week (I wish I could read non-fiction, self-educating books that fast) as well as a movie and music buff. I just don’t know how good I am at “reviewing”.
6. God, Jesus & My Spiritual Path - (Last on the list but first in my heart ALWAYS)I was saved in Jan ‘07, so my growing relationship with God and Jesus Christ is VERY important to me. I am FAR from a good Christian at this point, but I’m working on it and praying daily for Him to change me into what I’m meant to be. I have a lot of “aha” moments that I’d love to share in a blog - for others AND for myself to be able to revisit it.

Well holy shit. Today at work I logged onto Google’s external keyword tool and low and behold…I got approximate NUMBERS for search volume instead of a crappy green bar graph that gives me no idea what the actual NUMBER of searches done are, just whether there’s little search or a lot of search.

I mean, c’mon - a bar graph? How many searches does it mean when the bar’s half way green? All the way green? Does all green = a million searches per month?  100,000 searches per month?

Or maybe somewhere there was a key or legend explaining that and in all my years of using this tool, I never realized.

Boy would I feel stupid.

Either way, nice job with the numerical data Google - it’s about time!

I should probably go to Google’s blog and read some updates, cuz they HAVE to be messing with their spam filter. Either that, or spammers just had a big old evolution in their spamming techniques, b/c all of a sudden in the past week I’m getting more and more spam emails in my gmail inbox.

What’s up with that? Hopefully Google’s already on their next generation of spam filter to combat this latest strain of spammers that are getting emails on through.

It’s kinda weird that SEO and Spam can kind of be compared to viruses. You come up with a way to get links or two spam (that method is your “strain” of SEO or spam) and then the Doctor or Scientists (Google, or a webmaster, or whoever is on the receiving end of that strain) has to come up with a vaccine, or an antibiotic or medication of some sort to fight the strain - be it rank penalties, a twist in the algorithm, etc.  But then the strain mutates, gets stronger or more crafty and the “docs” have to tweak their medication to fight the new strain.

I love metaphors. They help you get a grasp on concepts that you might not easily grasp otherwise. Though the concept above isn’t exactly a groundbreaking, earth shadowing idea. Just an observation.

So c’mon Google, c’mon! Get that spamfilter tweaked, b/c ya’ll had me spoiled! Now I actually have to check the email off and hit that Spam button…TOO MUCH WORK! Ok, that’s a joke, I’m not THAT lazy…

So, in case I haven’t mentioned, I work for ProspectMX in Lancaster PA. We’re an Internet Marketing firm with a specialty in SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay per click) advertising. We do all kinds of other stuff of course, and we do them WELL, but I tend to be focused mostly on SEO and PPC.

For a while I was setting up Google adwords campaigns for lead gen pages we made, and let me tell you - I was doing it ALLLLL wrong. From keyword research to how I grouped my keywords together, I laugh about how little I knew about adwords even back in Jan of 08.

Now…well, now, I definitely know what’s going on, thanks in part to my boss Dave, our programmer Alex, our girl Ashley over at Google and of course…thanks to SpeedPPC.

SpeedPPC is a program you can purchase for $400 to $500 for 2 licenses. It is basically a program that allows you to build indepth and LARGE ppc campaigns for Google, Yahoo, and MSN in minutes (once you get the hang of it that is).

It’s especially useful for national campaigns that may have locations attached to them and campaigns in which you want to hit the long tail keywords so that your cpc is cheaper. For example, if I had a national real estate company, I COULD market the keyword “real estate agent” in the whole United States on Google, but that terms is COMPETITIVE. Highly competitive terms = HIGH cost per click minimums.

However, the phrase “real estate agent in lancaster pa” is not going to have nearly the same amount of competition as plain old real estate agent, therefore you’ll keep a lower cpc when bidding on THAT keyword.

SpeedPPC not only allows you to combine your seed keywords with expansion lists (like U.S. cities), it also allows you to dynamically generate the ad text based on the particular keyword a person searches for (which is always good for the quality score of your Google adwords at least.
Well, this was supposed to be a short post just letting everyone know about what a good product SpeedPPC is for those working on HUGE PPC campaigns, or campaigns in which you wish to incoporate cities and states into the keywords. For the above mentioned reasons and many more, SPeedPPC is great tool for anyone who’s going to be spending weeks and MONTHS on a ppc campiagn.

As I sit here at work making and posting MAJOR changes to HUGE HUGE HUGE adwords campaigns for one of our new projects, I keep thinking about the things I wish adwords COULD do.

Our programmer tells me I need to add it to their “New Feature” suggestions, but I’m a cynic and therefore think there’s no chance in hell they’ll even look at my suggestions, let alone consider them.

So instead, I’ll bitch about what I wish adwords could do. I’m sure I’ll be having a part 2, 3, 4 and so on as time passes, but here’s the 3 things I WISH adwords would do RIGHT NOW!

1. No limits. I’m tired of trying to upload my big ass campaigns, only to find there’s too many adgroups or too many keywords. Yes, I know I can contact our rep and get it raised, but that’s pain. Give me big ass limits up front - or, dare I ask, NO LIMITS AT ALL? Ok, I might not be handle to the responsibility…
2. I want to see a line graph of the average position of my ads for a given keyword over time. That way I can see pictorially just how my price tweaks are helping me. So for the week of June 1-7, show me where my ads have placed for the keyword “company picnic” on the 1st, on the 2nd, on the 3rd and so on…
3. Last, but not least - Please let me view my campaigns by time AND day. If I make changes on June 15th at 3P, and then go back on June 16th to view how my campaign did the day before, I want to be able to choose to see how it did from 3P on AFTER I made the changes. Talk about transparent advertising…would that make things too easy for us Google?

That’s about it - as always, I love Google, but it’s more of a love-hate relationship…

So yesterday (6/15) was my birthday. Possibly one of the most uneventful birthdays ever, but that is exactly what I wanted. I woke up, went to church with my significant other (I’m 25 - boyfriend sounds way too high school for me) and then got to spend the day just chilling with him. My parents made us a great dinner and the feral cat that hangs around our house even brought her kitten out to play with us!

All in all that was EXACTLY the kind of birthday I was looking for. I know most people would have been out partying, at least Saturday nite, but I’m just not as into that as I used to be. One, because I’m trying to be a good little Christian (I still have far to go, but I’m getting there); 2, b/c I’m broke and lazy and don’t usually FEEL like going out and 3) I always feel like shit the day after drinking - its just not worth it.

So here’s to being a bum on your 25th birthday…cheers!

On a random note, my AWESOME coworkers and I started a new site on Friday. It’s our way of getting to test out a bunch of affiliate marketing, SEO ideas, etc without using company time or money. It’s all about finding the best free, bargain or discount offers online - check us out at OfferGeeks.com.