However, I think most people are ignorant of the vast and titillating back-catalog available from the BBC of equally wonderful programming. To help guide you, I have picked a handful of my favorites and summarized them below:

North & South
By far, this one is my favorite. The story of a strong young woman forced to face a sudden down-grade in lifestyle when her father loses his position with the Church of England. Previously sheltered in a luxurious country home, she finds herself in a city filled with urban decay and awakened to the heart-breaking plight of the poor and struggling factory worker. However, when she goes up against the factory owner, she discovers that there are two sides to every story and falls hard for a man she can’t stand. Plus, let’s face it, Richard Armitage is HOT!!

Garrow’s Law
Although my husband loves to make fun of the giant bow in poor William Garrow’s hair, even he enjoys this series about how one man had such a major impact on our current day legal system. He acted as counsel for the accused and was the first to introduce the concept of ‘innocent until proved guilty’ at London’s Old Bailey. Intertwined with a delicious and estranged love affair with Lady Sarah, this still-running series is a must see in my book!

Cranford
This is a cozy little story about two miserly old women who take on a distant cousin several decades their junior. Throughout this series you meet each and every member of the small hamlet of Cranford and feel as if they are your own neighbors. Be sure to watch “Return to Cranford” (season 2) which will give you an update on all of the characters a few years later!

Lark Rise to Candleford
If you are fan of Mr. Bates on Downton Abbey, be sure to see Brendan Coyle in his role as the proud, quick-tempered and yes, sexy, Robert Timmins on Lark Rise to Candleford. This series portrays the saga of a Post-Mistress in a small town that is suddenly thrown into the industrial age. This is another great series and I can assure you that if join in on the lives of this small group of people struggling to survive with dignity and grace in 19th century Oxfordshire, you will not be disappointed.

Bleak House
By far the darkest of the series I have listed here, but well worth the watch. Gillian Anderson is magnificent as Lady Dedlock in this adaptation of the famous Charles Dickens novel. This tale of the injustices of the 19th-century English legal system is utterly mesmerizing!

I could tell you about MANY more, but I’ll stop here for now. As always feel free to leave me questions or feedback in the comments and I hope everyone enjoys the final episode of Season 2 of Downton Abbey on Sunday as much as I know I will!

We have been tracking this change (in my neck of the woods) and have seen the effect that Adobe predicted on our Natural Traffic data. So far, we’ve noted a small percentage (10-15%) of our natural keywords now showing up as “Keyword Unavailable” in SiteCatalyst.

So, essentially the small percentage of users who are logged into Google and searching for our site, are using keywords we are no longer privy to. Although this is a small number now, I can imagine that with the expansion of Google accounts we will only see this number rise, making the job of the SEO expert that much more difficult.

Alright Google –

This document has a lot of great research and predictions on what the next few years hold for Mobile/Smartphone/Android and Tablet search. My favorite part is found at the very bottom of the last page in Appendix 3:

Mobile SEO checklist

1. Google Places page for each “brick & mortar” business location.
2. Mobile User Agent detection segmented by feature phone, smartphone & tablet.
3. Site strategy for feature phone, smartphone & tablet rendering.
4. Have a page for each business location & properly optimized for mobile.
5. Smartphone & tablet specific rendering on the same desktop URL.
6. Feature phone rendering on an m. subdomain or /mobile subdirectory.
7. Declare the correct mobile DocType for each feature phone URL.
8. Use of microformats to better delineate the correct address & phone number for each business location.
9. Mobile XML sitemap & its submission to search engines for feature phone URLs.
10. Use of HTML5 on the desktop site to replace or supplement the business mobile app strateg

Learn more at Google’s Offical Blog.

Read more on the effects this will have on SEO.

My husband and I are long time Disney fans and spent our Honeymoon at Disney World. We have spent the last 8 months planning our 3-year old daughter’s first Walt Disney World vacation. We’ve learned a few things in the process so I thought I would share some of our knowledge with all of you Disney vacation planners out there!

1. Air Travel: The first and best tip we received was from our AAA Travel agent who turned us on to AirTran (now owned by SouthWest) for discount airline tickets. Boy, she wasn’t kidding! We bought our tickets 8 months prior to our trip, which I am sure contributed to the ridiculously low price, but we got 3 round-trip direct tickets from Detroit to Orlando for $500 TOTAL!
2. Resort: The second thing we did was book our trip through Disney.com. This allowed us to plan our entire trip out and buy what we wanted as we could afford it. So, we made our resort reservations first. We are staying at Port Orleans Riverside because it is our favorite resort and Disney had a 20% off special running for Aug-Oct stays. We put down $200 initially and then made regular payments (each paycheck) through the Disney website. Subsequently, we had paid off the resort portion of the trip by July.
3. Park Tickets: Next we priced out park tickets. Now, because we are traveling with a preschooler this means that we need to keep our schedule relatively chilled out – so no park hopper for this trip. We decided to go with the cheaper standard tickets and made reservations to have dinner at other Disney resorts on the days when we are visiting a park without good evening dining options (i.e. Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom). More on this next.
4. Dining: My husband and I are like a lot of people who love Walt Disney World specifically because of the fantastic food! This means that we spent the majority of our planning time on where we were going to eat.
   
   We chose all of the restaurants we wanted to eat at (some old favorites, some new ones we wanted to check out) and priced out the dining plan vs. out of pocket. In the end we decided we didn’t want to have to worry about the price of food while on vacation (Let’s be honest, it just gets in the way of our good time.)
   
   Well, we were pleasantly surprised at the beginning of August when we heard about the Free Dining special! I told my husband to immediately call Disney and ask if we were eligible. They informed us that you can only partake of one special and we already had the 20% off our resort stay, as I mentioned earlier. We inquired to the difference in price and they told us it was an additional $500 to pay full price for our hotel stay and get the Free Dining. Well, the standard dining plan we wanted is about $800, so this was a no-brainer. Hence we saved $300 on our food at Disney, SCORE!
• Character Dining: Because we were on our Honeymoon the last time my husband and I were at Disney World meeting characters was not at the top of our to do list. This gave us a great opportunity to schedule some fun character meals for our daughter. We researched them all and the ones we finally decided on were:
  1. The Crystal Place (Magic Kingdom) – Dinner with Pooh, Tigger, Piglet & Eyore
  2. Akershus Royal Banquet (Epcot World Showcase – Norway) – Dinner with the Disney Princesses
  3. 1900 Park Faire (Grand Floridian Resort) – Dinner with Cinderella, Prince Charming, The Step Mother and Step Sisters – which are our Daughter’s favorite Disney characters!
• Dining for Mom & Dad: As I mentioned earlier we are total foodies and couldn’t resist making reservations for some fantastic restaurants on Disney property:
1. Boatwright’s Dining Hall (Port Orleans Riverside Resort) – This is phenomenal restaurant right at our resort and we have a tradition of eating there the night we arrive.
2. Coral Reef Restaurant (Epcot) – One whole wall of this restaurant is a GIANT aquarium! As if that isn’t enough the food is fantastic as well! In addition, it has nostalgic value for me because it is where my husband did the most romantic thing EVER! During our honeymoon, he made arrangements with the Coral Reef staff to have us seated right by the aquarium glass. During dinner they had a diver swim over, tap on the glass to get my attention and hold up a sign that said “Happy Honeymoon Jenn & Kevin” while tiny white shells fell all around the diver from above. I kid you not, I had NO IDEA! In true Disney Magic fashion the entire restaurant spontaneously gave us a standing ovation while I blushed from ear to ear! Here is picture proof!



3. Ohana (Polynesian Resort) – This is a new one for us. We have heard great things about the food, plus they have fun games for the kids during dinner – Bonus!
4. San Angel Inn (Epcot World Showcase – Mexico) – We are having lunch here because this is my FAVORITE place in Epcot. The food is good and the ambiance is AMAZING! I have a thing for outside-inside, if you have been there then you know what I mean ;).
5. Cape May Café (Beach Club Resort) – They had us at all you can eat seafood buffet! Also, the ice cream at the Beach Club is supposed to be incredible, so we’ll need to check that out too!
5. Attractions: Just like everyone who visits Disney World we want to do EVERYTHING! However, with only 6 days at the parks we can only do so much. In order to keep ourselves sane and to avoid sending our 3 year old into atomic meltdown we decided on a few key attractions and some strategic breaks:
• Parks: We have devoted two days to the parks we want to do the most at: Magic Kingdom and Epcot. We have planned only one day at Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios.
• Breaks: We have a break planned for every afternoon at the resort, for some swimming and general downtime during the hottest & busiest time of the day. The exception being Thursday, which we will take the whole morning off, to give ourselves some downtime during the middle of our week.
• Misc: Some additional things that we have plans for include: Taking advantage of Magical Express, bringing our own travel stroller (rather than renting one), packing our swimsuits in our carry-on luggage so we can swim as soon as we get to the resort, packing individual snack packages and carrying them into the parks with us so we can use our snack credits for bottled water. We have an appointment for her to get a makeover at the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique and we have read that it is much cheaper to buy the outfit ahead of time so we plan on spending sometime at Downtown Disney shopping for our daughter’s princess outfit.
6. Preparation: Due to the fact that our daughter is so young we have done a lot to prepare her for this trip. We have, of course, watched all of the Disney movies, read books, painted pictures and generally prepped her for all of the different characters she will encounter while at the parks. We took her on a bus ride, using our local city transportation system, to get her used to riding mass transit. She has been to several festivals this summer, including a Renaissance & Scottish festival to see people in costume. We wanted to get her used to large crowds, hot days, lots of walking and the general atmosphere that she will encounter in the parks. We have gone on carnival rides with her and stood in long lines and eaten lots of fair food, all of which she has been a trooper for. We see all of this as a good indication of how she will handle the parks.

We leave this Sunday and I plan to put up a post about our trip once we return. In the mean time, if you have any questions please put them in the comments and I will answer as promptly as I am able. Thanks!

Beginning with Google’s purchase of YouTube in 2006 the video service has increasingly become an integral part of any good SEO plan. According to Avinash Kaushik, Co-founder of Google, 85% of the US Population has watched a YouTube video.

Therefore, I thought it would be helpful to create a guide to my best practices for optimizing videos for uploading to YouTube. This practical guide to producing optimized video material will hopefully garner the SEO boost you are looking for. Let me know if you have any specific questions in the comments section!

1. Do your Research!  Before you even consider creating video content ask yourself these very important questions:

• What is the most interesting way to present my brand/message in video format? YouTube considers a video “viewed” after 8 seconds. Make sure your video is interesting enough to get the viewer past this “hump”.
• What are the top keywords that I want to boost with my video?
• Do I have the time and resources to devote to keeping up a YouTube membership/channel?

2. Once you have decided to move forward and you have outlined your video strategy and content, it is time to get down to the nitty gritty. Optimizing your YouTube video for SEO:

• Title (99 character limit) – Use your top keywords within the first 3-5 words of the video title.
• Category – Choose the best possible and most general category for your video (i.e. People & Blogs).
• Tags – Use your well researched keywords as tags for the video but limit yourself to no more than 10.
• Description – Use your keywords in the copy of your description, include a link to a related website landing page, request viewers rank & share your video.
• Transcript – Create a transcript of your video for Closed Caption purpose. This can be very time consuming but well worth the extra effort as they are critical to ranking well in YouTube!

• Press Releases
• Facebook fan page
• Twitter feed
• Embed on website pages (where applicable)

• Monitor the video comments & respond to viewers.
• View, rank and comment on other YouTube videos.
• Link with other related videos by creating Playlists.

This morning while I was driving into work I was thinking about a lunch I am going to with an ex co-worker tomorrow. This led me to thinking about the job I used to have, the manager at that job, the owner and the organization as a whole.  Now that I am almost a year out of that position I have the luxury of hindsight and I think I have a grasp on what was inherently wrong with that workplace.

Then I remembered a conversation my husband and I recently had about the book, The Secret. We both believe that books like this, and others in the workplace-improvement genre, are mostly over simplified, dumbed and watered down messages to the masses. No, I haven’t read them all…but I have read quite a few: Who Moved My Cheese, Fish, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, a couple more that escape me at the moment. Not because I wanted to but because many a frustrated, confused, stressed out and/or well-meaning manager has required that all of their employees, including me, read them.

I usually reach the last page feeling insulted and underwhelmed. These type of books generally prize motivation, hard work and positive thinking as the cure to all that ails corporate America. The problem is that this is just plain WRONG!

I’m not saying that positive thinking isn’t powerful. It is! I wholeheartedly believe in the power of positive thinking/meditation/prayer. I think  it can change attitudes, emotions, physical health, personal relationships, lower stress levels, create a sense of inner calm and enlightenment. What it can’t do is fix the organization you work for and since we spend nearly 50% of our waking life at work, this effects a great deal of our lives!

So, what exactly is the issue? Is the answer just not that simple? Are we naive to think that the solution to such a complex and intrinsic problem can be simplified down into one concept, one catch phrase, one book?

No, the answer is simple, in fact it is one word! It’s something that is hammered into us by our parents and teachers from the time we are small children and yet it is the hardest thing in the world to get an adult in today’s corporate culture to truly grasp and exercise….RESPECT!

That’s it. Respect.

That is what we need to fix 99% of the problems in our relationships, our homes, our communities, our workplaces and our government!

Sure, we have respect for each other in small doses: our loved ones, our mentors, our elders (in some cases), our kids (I hope!). And we have tackled some of the larger instances where lack of respect is felt at a community level with the fights against: Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, etc. We have seen this issue time and time again with everything from the bullying of homosexual teens to the recent election’s attack ads.

However, we are still lacking that day-to-day, one on one, colleague-to-colleague respect. Robert W. Fuller calls it “rankism” in his book All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity. I had the pleasure of listening to Mr. Fuller speak a few years ago and I was struck by the simplicity and complexity of the issue he was trying to tackle.

With rankism he is trying to open our eyes to the fact that this is an “ism” that we are all guilty of on a regular basis and it has a ripple effect. When our manager scolds us, out of a feeling of superiority or simply the joy of bullying another, that makes us angry and frustrated. We then turn to our co-worker and chew them out for something that could have easily been handled with calm and compassion, but because we were made to feel small and powerless we act out our anger on them.

Then our co-worker takes that anger, frustration and shame home with him or her and takes it out on their spouse, and so on. Fuller went on to explain that some of the most successful and profitable companies in America are built on this very concept. Companies like Starbucks, Google and Apple treat their employees with respect first and foremost. This has lead to happier, less stressed, more productive and innovative employees.

The difficulty is the fact that this simple and successful solution only works when it comes from the top. The very top. It has to start with the CEOs, the CIOs, the Presidents, the senior managers, the principles, the doctors, the administrators, the teachers and the parents. When the people at “the top” start treating each other and their employees with respect (genuine respect), it has a ripple effect that spreads through out the  entire “organization”.

If you are a leader, manager, community organizer, government official, teacher, parent, etc. don’t waste your money on jargon-filled books, pointless presentations, stupidly insulting videos or the like. Just tell your employees, “I’m sorry if I haven’t treated you with the utmost respect in the past. I want you to know how valuable you and your ideas are to this organization. I am going to change my ways and I need your help to do that.” If you mean it, if you live it, you will see the change you have been searching for!

Douglas Adams joked that the world was a computer searching for the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything and that the answer was 42!

He was close, it’s respect!

Keywords: When you are outlining your list of keywords for your paid search campaign it is always better to start with a large and all encompassing list of keywords and then refine it down. Really put the effort into drilling down your list until you get a small but very effective list where each keyword is focused on a particular audience or demographic.

Remember that people, in general, are pretty bad spellers. Your’s truly included!

Landing Pages: Make sure that your landing pages are high quality and have a very specific call to action! You campaign’s landing pages should be loaded with relevant content, but not the home page! Link your landing pages to pages on your site that are already popular and vice versa. This will increase the site’s overall traffic.

Create Multiple Versions: After you create multiple versions of the ads you can then take advantage of Google’s tools which allow you to rotate multiple versions of the ad in a single ad group. Test different versions of the ad text to see which version works best and use this information to build a better version of the ad.

Track & Modify: Using Google’s Analytics tools you can tack the “hits” that are derived from your paid campaig. This will help you asses which keywords are working and create a list of “negative” keywords – keywords that you DO NOT want to be part of your paid search. You can also use this information to updated your landing pages and update your bidding costs.

Hopefully this information will allow you to create the most successful AdWords campaign and get the best ROI (Return on Investment).