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Recently I had the opportunity to speak at the ExpressionEngine annual conference - EECONF 2019.   In my 25 minute talk above you will find some small but powerful words you can use to reframe common situations we all have faced.  I hope you enjoy it and please feel free to reach out if it strikes a chord.

Our good friend Jimmie Maverick has been hard at work creating an outstanding fantasy football draft tool to assist you in picking the best players for your teams.  This year the site sports a new design, great tips on draft strategy, and the new Value, Outlook, Reliability & Consistency (VORC) score to help you prioritize picks in each round of your Snake draft.  

The VORC score is a proprietary formula designed by Jimmie to surface the players that you really want, not the same players everyone else is trying to grab and will likely be gone by the time your pick comes up. …

The community surrounding ExpressionEngine (EE) is just one of the many reasons we choose to work with this enterprise level CMS, and the ExpressionEngine Conference is a highlight every year. It draws together the diverse group of developers, marketers and business owners that use it and welcomes new developers into the family.  This year, the conference is taking place in Nashville, TN and will see hundreds of developers with a wide range of experience come together to connect, share and learn from one another.  As our company’s lead EE developer, I will be representing Xynergy and Consumer51.  I look forward to three full days of workshops to further hone…

Google Maps API (Application Programming Interface) has been hugely popular since it opened to developers in 2005.  Not only was the platform free, it was easy to use. All you needed was a little snippet of code on your website, and in return Google Maps API provided a rich variety of location-based services and applications.

And if you anticipated a lot of traffic to your website, all you needed in addition to the code, was an optional API key to identify the Google map embedded on your website.

What’s an API Key? You can think of the API key as basically a code that helps…

Hopefully by now everyone knows that having a mobile friendly version of a site is critical for mobile-based searches, though now Google are taking things even further.  Earlier this year, Google started rolling out a fundamental change in how they ‘index’ websites and it’s something website owners should be aware of and understand.  Essentially Google is transitioning the way they index websites to start primarily looking at the mobile version of the site rather than the desktop version, which has been their standard since they began indexing pages.  If you’re not familiar with the term “indexing pages”, it might be worth reading up on how Google searches work, but the…

Thanks to Jimmie Maverick’s Fantasy Football Draft app, developed in partnership with Xynergy, you can skip the research and spreadsheets and just sit back and make awesome picks.  Using https://ffmaverick.com, you get a curated list of the top draftable players.  Select one of the pre-defined league point schedules or create your own.   Refine the player list to your liking by selecting from over thirty customizable filters.   Eliminate your keepers or any other single player you don’t want in the list. You can export your list to Excel, email it, or print it.  This year, if you are in a Snake draft, you can try out the special Draft Mode, which…

Okay, so it’s not the most recent issue that I could be writing about.  In fact, a simple Google search regarding ‘click-fraud’ returns articles that were published in 2007.  So, at best, I’m late to the party.  Despite my tardiness, recent lawsuits and experiences I have had marketing for my clients have brought this issue to the forefront of my mind.  So now seems like the perfect time to address some of these ‘click-fraud’ issues.

Click Fraud can be simply defined as repeatedly clicking on an advertisement in order to increase revenue for the site that is hosting the ad, or increase cost of running the ad for the advertiser.  These…

The phrase UTM codes may sound like an overblown plot element for world domination in the next Mission Impossible movie. But in actuality, UTM codes or Urchin Tracking Module codes are a great tool to tag your marketing campaigns. The codes allow Google Analytics (as well as other analytics tools) a little bit more information about each link in your campaign so your acquisition reports are filled with the right data.

UTM codes are like bread crumbs that tell you how your customers found you.

Essentially, UTM codes tell the story of how your traffic is coming to you. They are…

As a business owner, I’m sure you’re familiar with Google’s ranking system and how it affects online searches for your website. And if you’ve read my last blog, you also understand how local backlinks play a critical role in local SEO.

Focusing on local SEO helps businesses rank high on Google for online searches of products and services. And being ranking number one is of course desirable. But being ranked number zero is even better.

Google’s Search Algorithm can Rank you Higher than Number One

So how can zero be your hero? Because Google’s search algorithm now makes it possible to rank you much higher than number one through…

Whether your app is an avocational adventure or a business necessity, you want to know that your application of hours and dollars is worth the investment.   You probably also want to know where to most effectively concentrate your effort following your app's first release in the App Store and the Google Play Store.   Apps that do not evolve along with the underlying device technology eventually drop out of the stores, so developing an app is more of a journey than a destination.  

Let’s first distinguish between the types of monitoring that are available to you.  Depending on the nature of the app and…