I was born prematurely and very sick due to my mom’s toxemia that she passed to me. The goal of the March of Dimes is to work toward identifying the reasons for premature birth and combat them. If a baby that is born prematurely can be carried to term, there is a marked difference in their ability to survive.

The March of Dimes is most known for their funding of the research that found the vaccine for polio. They have also funded research that developed surfactant, a solution that is sprayed into premature babies lungs to help them breathe because their lungs are not fully developed. They have also pushed for better health coverage for all children in the US (CHIP program) and the early identification of many diseases that can be treated at birth but are rarely tested for.

Another win has to do with mothers. The March of Dimes funds programs all over the nation to push for mothers to be aware of the risks of smoking and drinking during pregnancy, as well as the risk of using other drugs. They give out many grants to help teach women about the benefits of breast feeding, and most of all the need for Folic Acid. This product is now a required part of the US’s grain supply. A woman needs to have at least 400mg of it in her system at the moment of conception to aid in the development of a baby’s brain. Folic Acid has been shown to reduce the possibility of many types of brain development issues in fetuses.

Now, all of this is off the top of my head. I should go research all of this, but I think most of it is dead on. See I was the “Youth on Board” for the Killeen and Austin Board of Directors from high school through college. The March of Dimes has been a huge part of my life from the start.

See you all in Vegas!!

Favorite Charity: March of Dimes is a post from: Kate Morris

Running has become a love of mine, and once I found out that a 5k was part of the Livestrong Challenge, I was in. I set up my page … and kinda forgot. So a week out, I sent a Twitter update once a day, and an email to friends and family. The result was over $260 raised in a week! (I have three donations outstanding, so it could get bigger)

So I want to thank everyone that helped. The people that donated, retweeted, and supported me before and on race day. But most of all to the people that inspired me. Fighting cancer is one of the hardest things a person can go through. The people that have won, lost, and are still fighting this disease are what kept me running Saturday morning.

They inspired me so much that I broke my goal. Please note: I am not a fast runner. My goal was to run the 5k in 30 mins. I had been running about 32-35 minutes in training the week before. Well on race day I completed in 27 minutes. I not only broke my personal goal, I bested my time for the mile by a full minute.

Here are some pictures from the event and my shirt which I dedicated to those that have touched my life.

Thank you to all of you again.

Livestrong 5k Update is a post from: Kate Morris

A few weeks ago, I noticed that I wasn’t able to fully access some sites from home. Mainly MailChimp and Twitter. I could get to them, but I couldn’t fully load them. Oddly enough, when connected to other networks, things loaded just fine. So I turned to my ISP, AT&T DSL for help.I have been a huge advocate of them for years. As a power user, I have never had an issue with the speed or connection for years. Until now. And with them being the front runners in the opposition to Net Neutrality, I began to wonder of they were restricting the sites?

My call to AT&T was of no help. I was transferred to another country to be told that they could help by diagnosing my router, and it would be $30 for every 30 minutes. I was not paying for them to look at my router. I had tested another connection, so that couldn’t be it. (Just wait.)

A blessed AT&T employee, Johnathon Franklin, reached out to me on Twitter when I was at my last straw. I was debating about changing to Time Warner Cable (who I really dislike) because the issue was affecting my work. He spent a good amount of time with me on the phone and we figured it out.

It wasn’t AT&T DSL. It wasn’t one issue actually. It was a combination of two. I had recently updated to Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6). It apparently has an issue with Belkin routers (and only Belkin from what I can find). Changing my router solved the problem (I had an old D-Link to use). My roommates Mac running Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) worked just fine on the Belkin. Finding this problem was like a circular reference in Excel. Almost impossible to identify. But online forums almost always help.

The issue is that there is no fix just yet (Update, see above: no fix from Belkin or Apple). Belkin isn’t even talking about the issue, and the Apple forums don’t have a solution. Not sure who needs to solve what. Who needs to patch. Who is responsible. My computer works with every other router, and the Belkin works with every other operating system. So could you two get together and fix this please? For now, I will be purchasing yet ANOTHER router (my third in the year). I’m not excited about the prospect, but at least I have a solution that doesn’t involve installation of another ISP.

I’ll update if I ever have a solution for this other than changing routers or uninstalling Snow Leopard. Thanks to the AT&T Customer Service team for helping out!

Belkin Routers and Snow Leopard is a post from: Kate Morris

Thanks to Kristy Bolsinger for her help!

You are an SEO’s Parent If … is a post from: Kate Morris

The Circle of Life

His major point was that communication has come full circle. Like almost everything else in life, how we convey messages and stories started out in the form of story telling person to person, and it seems to be headed back there. Now this gentleman made this point in about 2005, which in Internet years was decades ago. He was right then, and I am hoping some of the businesses present that day took note to what he was saying. So going in a broad but general order of how communication has changed over time …

Caveman Communication

In the beginning of communication, cavemen and human that developed after (many years after) communicated by storytelling. Think The Odyssey and campfires. The Bible is a collection of such stories and revered by many as God’s Word. They were stories passed down person to person, generation to generation. There were no books, no editors, not blogs. You trusted the story because it is all you had to go on. Who said Zeus wasn’t Hercules’ father?

Writings Abound

Once people began writing down stories, stories began to transfer a little better. Until the printing press though, these writings were for the rich and educated. Many writings were in Latin and other “high” languages that the masses could not read. So people still relied on authority figures to tell them what was real and true. When it came to everyday life, the masses told each other who the best butcher was, who the best matchmaker was, and so on. The spoken word had more impact to the common consumer because there was no other way to transmit stories among the masses.

Printing Press

The invention of the printing press opened up the world to stories and … pamphlets. Politicians and stores could finally let people know about their issues/stories. Newspapers abounded with current news and stories, and books were written with the old tales, and some new ones. This was the golden age of the printed word. Think about the days of Jane Eyre and A Tale of Two Cities. Local businesses and some national ones began to understand that the printed word could be used to drive business.2

Mass Media

After that, mass media really took hold. We got radio, television, books, newpapers, magazines, advertisements, everything was printed and published. This changed how stories were told and how we got our news. Over the years it was the advertisers and publishers that held the power. They told us what to want, what to buy, and what to care about. From politics to soap, the power was in the hands of publishers. Consumers took in the knowledge they were given. Word of mouth still existed but on a much smaller scale than before. This was the time of “Keeping up with the Jones’,” people wanted what was popular, and that wasn’t always local.

New Media and Power Shift

Then the Internet arrived. At first it was supposed to “kill” brick and mortar stores, but we soon figured out that the Internet would compliment traditional consumerism, not overtake it. But there was a shift that few saw coming. It was the shift of power back to the consumer. Over the past hundred years, the amount of advertising began to overload people, and new technology was allowing them to edit out much of it.

Social Media: Back to Caveman Times

Today people get to choose what advertising they take in. The power is back in the hands of the consumer, and the spoken word is back in power, only now it is written and digital. Companies no longer hold all the cards. Television and newspapers still have large circulations and impact on our culture. Advertising in traditional media still works (despite what some may say), it just doesn’t work as well. This new world of commerce is one of more balance than ever before.

What works in today’s world to grow your business is allowing and influencing word of mouth. Going out of your way to help your customers, going that extra mile will ensure that your customers talk about you, online and offline. This combined with a well integrated marketing campaign will allow your business to fire on all cylinders.

There is no one trick to social media marketing, or the perfect marketing campaign. The best marketing campaign for you is one that reaches all of your target at the moment that they are thinking of your products or services. This could be any combination of mediums. As a marketer, it is your job to find that best combination. Social media is not the answer, it’s part of the answer. And it’s not difficult, it is conversation participation. Keep your brand consistent and be available. That is the secret. So easy a caveman could do it, and they did.

Social Media: So Easy a Caveman Could Do It is a post from: Kate Morris

But now there seems to be a trend (and it could be because I live in my little hole called SEO) recently where good SEOs are being suspended on Social Media sites.

Case #1: Jill Whalen (@jillwhalen) was suspended on Twitter on September 22 at about 1pm CDT and reinstated a few hours later. No reason, nothing. Community support and twitter contacts helped.

Case #2: Rishi Lakhani (@rishil) has been suspended as of September 22 at 3:34pm London time and not yet reinstated was reinstated later that day. A twitter search for rishil shows the large amount of support for his reinstatement. Update: We got the story of why, written up by SEOptimise.

Case #3: My own Yahoo! Answers account has been suspended for “spammy” activity. None of which has ever happened. I have appealed three times, and gotten nothing. Yahoo seems to just not want to hear it. So my efforts to remove spam on Answers, and my support of that site are all for nothing. I am still not sure if I will ever return.

So what is the deal here? Are we being identified and purged no matter what? Yes, this is taking three small cases and making a HUGE assumption. But why are these accounts being marked and taken down? All have been in good standing and done nothing wrong.

Anyone else seen this happen? I’ll update as I learn more.

Fake Spamming by SEOs? is a post from: Kate Morris

If you read any magazines like Marie Claire, Shape, or Men’s Health and Fitness, you have seen the little notes about what food has been proven to reduce heart disease, increase metabolism, or make you happier. Have you ever wondered what would happen, what your diet would look like if someone followed all of that advice? Would they be perfect, have no cancer, heart disease, or be obese? Nope. Because everyone responds differently to things. Our body chemistry is not the same even though we are all human.

In that same respect, you can read articles all day (and I wholeheartedly recommend it), but in the end there is no magic road map. There are best practices, and ideas to try all the time. But that magic combination belongs to you alone. Will you find it someday? Maybe, but it will change. That is the magic of this business and every business. The goal line is moving all the time. The point is to keep running the race and have fun while you are doing it.

Make mistakes. Try something new. Don’t be afraid to fail. If you ever stop learning … or feel as you have stopped learning, it’s either time for something new or you are dead. Always strive to find that new finish line and have fun on the path of life and success. It’s your path, embrace it.

There is No Map for Success is a post from: Kate Morris

There are sometimes that people/businesses follow me that I know and want to follow when I see their names. Just the other day, someone I thought I was following added me and I had no idea I wasn’t following them until I looked them up. Sorry again @WarrenWhitlock

But that’s not the point … the others I have been running across are restaurants. There have been a few in Austin that have added me and gotten some business as a result. One is @kahunastikibar. They added me and tweet discounts and specials that get my mouth watering. So when it’s time for lunch, I have inspiration on where to go. And that is what happened. That day, I visited them for their Monday 2 for 1 special.

So for the restaurants out there, get cracking. No, not eggs. Get on twitter. Find the influencers in your metro area and follow away. Twitter Grader from HubSpot is one of a number of places to get this info. You never know who might visit and start talking about you.

And points go to @SagraAustin for doing the same and inspiring this post.

Restaurant Discovery on Twitter is a post from: Kate Morris

My main issue after Google answered some questions was that these searches are not the keywords that the advertiser specified. How were we to know when our ads were showing?

I came across something recently that makes things a little better. After some research, others (cough Brian Cater cough) have noticed the same thing. Read more on this topic by Brian over at Search Engine Journal.

When running a search query report (that’s your how to right there, pull a search query report) for a client (sorry I had to fuzz out the keywords), I noticed some really weird entries. Sure enough, it noted that they queries were session-based. The person had changed their search, and when they did, the ad showed for their next query … in this case (the one that doesn’t identify my client) “richard session austin texas”. This had nothing to do with my client!

Sure enough, right after that it shows (Session-Based) in the query type column. I see these for only broad matched keywords across my clients, but I am not saying that this is all that happens. I am hoping that this is the only match type this happens in, but we’ll see.

Now for my wishlist. Google … can we get the option to filter for session-based searches? We can filter the Search Query report for a number of things but not match type. It would be awesome to be able to pull a report of just these keywords. It would be an interesting insight to what our searchers are looking for after they put in a key phrase we target. Thanks.

Finding Session-Based Ad Clicks is a post from: Kate Morris

The Seven Year Itch is by Kate Morris, but another wonderful lady that lives in England. She has a blog hosted on blogspot, and her book is available through Amazon UK only (sigh, I’ll have to bug someone to get it for me). I have not read it yet, but plan on it.

It seems like my kind of book — I go for the girly novels that I can just read for the story. Don’t get me wrong, though provoking novels like The Kite Runner and Middlesex are big favorites of mine. But sometimes it’s best to just have a good story you don’t have to think about.

What’s the point of all of this? Nothing. I just want to give some love to another Kate Morris in this world, especially one that has accomplished something that I want to do someday.

The Seven Year Itch is a post from: Kate Morris