Guest column by Ryan Poliakoff, Esq.

In 2009, the Florida Legislature dramatically modified an older law that was designed to encourage Florida-friendly landscaping in communities governed by homeowner associations.  Under Florida Statute section 373.185, “Florida-friendly landscaping” is defined as “quality landscapes that conserve water, protect the environment, are adaptable to local conditions, and are drought tolerant.”  Such landscaping is also sometimes called “xeriscaping”—the use of gardening and landscaping to naturally reduce the reliance of irrigation water.  As you can imagine, xeriscaping is an extremely active discipline in drought-laden areas of the country, such as Arizona, and our own repetitive winter drought conditions have increased interest in xeriscaping in Florida.   

The statute specifies that Florida-friendly landscaping abides by nine governing principles: planting the right plant in the right place, efficient watering, appropriate fertilization, mulching, attraction of wildlife, responsible management of yard pests, recycling yard waste, reduction of storm water runoff and waterfront protection.  The law directs water management districts to create their own plans for managing Florida-friendly landscaping in their communities and to provide incentive programs to encourage such plantings.

The law also states “a deed restriction or covenant may not prohibit or be enforced so as to prohibit any property owner from implementing Florida-friendly landscaping on his or her land.”  This law is then supplemented directly by the HOA Act (FS 720), which provides that homeowners’ association documents may not prohibit or be enforced so as to prohibit any property owner from implementing Florida-friendly landscaping as defined in s. 373.185, on his or her land.

Note, however, what these laws do not do.  They do not require that HOAs or their residents must only use Florida-friendly landscaping in their plantings.  Nor do they mandate that HOAs remove or force owners to remove their own traditional, non-native plants.  All the law does is encourage water management districts to create programs that endorse and incentivize appropriate natural plants and landscaping plans and prohibit HOAs from enforcing covenants that would keep residents from following Florida-friendly landscaping principles if they so choose.  

The law also does not establish an agency or mechanism for enforcing the law.  If your HOA is attempting to prevent you from installing Florida-friendly landscaping, you will unfortunately need to sue the association to enforce your rights under the Act.

Rather than a mandate, the law encourages healthy landscaping practices such as using native, drought-resistant plants, reducing reliance on fertilizer, encouraging composting, providing natural places for wildlife and insects to live and breed, and limiting pesticides.  Would this law allow a homeowner to tear up their lawn and replace it with pebbles, or artificial turf, contrary to HOA covenants?  Probably not.  The Florida-Friendly Landscaping Program, developed by the University of Florida, has guidelines that specifically provide for covenants that prohibit artificial turf and for covenants that require natural plantings at turf-alternatives.  And “Florida-friendly” does not mean “ugly.”  Plants native to Florida can be quite beautiful–full of exotic blooms, easy to care for and very resistant to changes in water.        

Visit the University of Florida’s IFAS website for tools and ideas on how to assist your HOA in enforcing landscaping rules and drafting new ones, and for ideas to help residents adopt a Florida friendly landscape that is both attractive and kind to Florida’s environment. 

http://fyn.ifas.ufl.edu/community_association_kit.htm.

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Expert Advice

October 5, 2012

Steve Maxwell

SPECIAL TO THE STAR

“Nestled into a thin layer of black soil, beneath a sparse covering of small white cedar trees, there’s a layer of limestone like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

“One side benefit of small operations like this is that it’s easy to manage things responsibly, in a way that doesn’t leave an ugly, damaged landscape behind.”

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While it’s obvious that the Internet has changed the world in big ways, the full extent of these changes isn’t always easy to see. One of the most influential is the way the Internet lubricates the wheels of tiny ventures across the globe. Entrepreneurs with business ideas that used to be too small and specialized to be commercially viable can now find customers they’d never have connected with otherwise. Sometimes lots of customers.

As a homeowner, this also means you’ve got access to items that no physical store could ever carry, offering real benefits for those of us looking to add unique details to our houses and yards. This dynamic of small businesses reaching out digitally to find wider markets is at least as true for home improvement options as anything else. And a one-man venture offering the most unique landscaping stone I’ve seen is a perfect example.

For 25 years it’s been a serious hobby of mine to seek out formations of limestone bedrock, quarry the materials using simple hand tools and then use the blocks I unearth to build traditional stone walls, arches and foundations. I love stone and the shapes imposed on it by human hands following traditional methods. The work has taken me to countless outcroppings of bedrock in the fields and forests near my house. My long-term preoccupation with stone has also prompted me to look at bedrock farther afield wherever I find it, and that’s what led me to a guy named Pete Paquet.

In 1982, Paquet discovered a few acres of rural Ontario that are quite a geological oddity. Nestled into a thin layer of black soil, beneath a sparse covering of small white cedar trees, there’s a layer of limestone like nothing I’ve ever seen. The geological composition of the rock itself is the same as what you’ll find for miles around, but that’s where the similarity ends.

Paquet’s rock sits on the unproductive outskirts of what has been used as cattle pasture for the last 100 years, and exists in layers 6 to 20 inches thick, naturally separated from underlying stone by a fortunate accident of nature that put a few inches of soil between it and the bedrock below. More importantly, however, is the striking way each piece of stone has weathered into one-of-a-kind shapes as it sits on the thin soil. I’ve never seen anything like it, and neither have professional stone guys I’ve talked with.

Points, holes, fingers, lobes and crevices make each stone unique, and much different than the standard blocks of landscaping limestone you see everywhere these days. Pete pulls these stones out carefully with his loader, brushes them off, then packages and ships them to individual customers across Canada and the U.S. for installation around homes and businesses. Although all the stones formed horizontally under the influence of rain and sun and wind, their beauty comes through visually when the stones are mounted vertically, held that way by a reinforced concrete base poured just below ground level.

Unlike my work shaping stone for traditional building projects, Paquet’s aim is completely different. No scratches, breaks or damage can be tolerated on these things. They’ve got to remain completely natural throughout the extraction and installation process, and this is a trick that he has perfected.

For more than 20 years, it wasn’t possible to do much with these stones beyond the small, local market, but then the Internet kicked in. Paquet has created a digital outreach that he calls Signature Stones (signaturestones.ca, 1-705-377-4213) and the only problem is that it’s making him way too busy. As it turns out, even a small slice of widespread demand can be huge for little guys.

One side benefit of small operations like this is that it’s easy to manage things responsibly. After the stones are removed, the thin soil cover remains for new cedar trees to move in, just as they had grown there originally. Paquet’s only real ecological concern is the appearance of a very large black bear that regularly visits his operation from time to time.

One popular lament about modern life is the way creativity and unique details are extinguished by technology and mass production that only gives us access to the same consumer goods everyone else has. And while this fact has been strikingly true in the past, something unusual is happening. As technology is becoming more advanced, a certain threshold has been reached. We now find ourselves moving into a whole new world of creative home improvement options, rippling out into areas no one could have guessed even 10 years ago.

Who would have thought that the Internet would ever be instrumental in connecting a tired, rocky pasture in a very quiet corner of rural Ontario with the landscaping around swanky homes, offices and corporate headquarters across North America?

Steve Maxwell, syndicated home improvement and woodworking columnist, has shared his DIY tips, how-to videos and product reviews since 1988. Send questions through stevemaxwell.ca/ask-steve, connect with him on Facebook at Canada’s Handiest Man or follow him on Twitter at @Maxwells_Tips.

Editor’s picks

Did you know almost 70 percent of household water use is outside the home? Consider a change to low-water-use plants and groundcover as an alternative to a thirsty turf landscape.

Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District provides free landscape workshops twice a year to homeowners who wish to design a new landscape or convert existing landscape to low water use. Classes include landscape design, drip irrigation, native and California Friendly plants, and watering and fertilizing.

Join landscape architect Jean Marsh for the free fall landscape workshop hosted by Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District on Oct. 13 at 9 a.m.

The four-hour seminar will include basic landscape design and drought-tolerant plants. Residents can learn about the most appropriate landscaping choices for our climate. Landscape ideas presented at the workshop are designed with cost, time and water savings in mind.

EVMWD customers unable to attend the workshop can visit the beautiful Temescal Garden Showcase at The Diamond baseball stadium for low-water-use plant and landscape design ideas. The gardens are always open to the public.

The workshop will be held at the EVMWD offices at 31315 Chaney St., Lake Elsinore.

EVMWD provides service to more than 140,000 water, wastewater and agricultural customers in a 96-square mile service area in Western Riverside County. The District is a subagency of the Western Municipal Water District and a member agency of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

Visit the EVMWD website at www.evmwd.com for additional information.

Nearly two dozen participants made their mark on the county’s bike trail plan – sharing their thoughts on how far the trail should span, what amenities should be included and what types of landscaping should accompany the various paths.

Trail and mile markers, historical signage and rest areas are just some of the ideas participants mentioned, while others expressed the importance of eventually connecting pathways to all cities and towns within the county.

Jeff Martin, Sr. project landscape architect for Farnsworth Group, says members of his team mostly focused on Lincoln and Atlanta during their initial planning and would not have considered adding other towns in the mix if it weren’t for the design charette.

‘What really hit me was some of the towns that haven’t been brought up in previous meetings and just how important it is to make sure that there’s trails bringing those people over…and not to leave those folks out,’ Martin said. ‘The importance of Mount Pulaski and Elkhart…It seems I underestimated how important it is to make those on the same level as Atlanta and Lincoln.’ Martin says regardless of which routes are included during the final planning stages, Logan County is the missing link to several trails throughout central Illinois. He says any path routes that would get built here could help fill the gap. Martin and several plan enthusiasts believe the county should play up its rich history to draw in visitors from all over. Suggesting trails could center around Abraham Lincoln historic sites, Route 66 and area parks.

‘I think these communities, each one has so much unique history and current stuff going on and I think this is only going to enhance that – so it’s going to bring people to the area, but also give the people that live here even more stuff to do.’ Martin says Farnsworth Group will work over the next two months to assemble the master plan so that the county can move forward to apply for federal and state grants to obtain funding.

“By the end of the year we want to have a plan in place,” Martin said. “Whether that’s officially adopted – the goal is by the end of the year to have something that the county can eventually adopt. So, we’re two to three months out from – two months out from, making that happen.”

Lincoln resident, Jan Dickerson who has had a long interest in having offroad recreational trails in the county says the latest proposal differs from previous bike trail plans because the level of interest from area residents and local governments is greater than in years past.

“It takes the support and backing of government entities, I mean you can be a private (group) and do all you want,” Dickerson said. “But it has to have the backing and support of a government entity that can then go for funding from either state or federal sources. And having a master plan and having a purpose behind it, not just hit or miss trails helps to get that funding. So the difference is now, I think there are some government entities working together behind this to get it going.”

The Logan County Regional Planning Commission will continue to discuss the progress of the Bicycle and Trailway Master Plan during scheduled meetings.

For more information about Farnsworth Group, visit their website at www.fw. com.
 

Landscaping for the dinner table is something professional designers and home gardeners should incorporate in ornamental flower beds, arbors and landscapes of trees and shrubs, says Kyle Huffstickler, director of educational programs at LSU’s Burden Center.

Huffstickler, whose degree is in landscape architecture, was until recently the landscape coordinator at the LSU AgCenter’s LaHouse. Burden is part of the university’s agricultural center.

“Your Landscape: It’s What’s for Dinner” is the title of Huffstickler’s first-day workshop at the 24th annual Southern Garden Symposium, scheduled for Oct. 12-13 in and around St. Francisville, a 19th century Mississippi River town north of Baton Rouge.

“You don’t have to get rid of anything in an established landscape,” Huffstickler said. “There are places you can put edible plants to provide interest, texture and shape.”

In a new landscape, substitute artichokes, rosemary, blueberry bushes, lemon grass, fig trees, citrus and persimmon for an azalea, Indian hawthorn, camellia or gardenia, he said.

Edible landscapes produce fresh fruit, herbs and vegetables for the table. The landscapes are good conversation starters, too.

“An artichoke has a tropical look,” Huffstickler said. “When the plant produces a choke, someone walking by is going to ask you what you’ve got growing in the front yard.”

Leave some artichokes on the plant to produce exotic blue flowers for floral arrangements.

Go high. Go low. Go, Tigers.

Plant Cheddar cauliflower which makes golden heads and Graffiti cauliflower, purple, in open spaces in beds and around trees.

“Instead of pansies,” Huffstickler said, “plant strawberries. You might get enough berries for a salad or dessert. Plant strawberries now for harvest in February and March.”

Huffstickler brought edible landscaping ideas he had at LaHouse, a demonstration house and garden across from the LSU baseball stadium, to Windrush Garden, near the LSU Rural Life Museum on the Burden property.

Edible landscaping trains the eye to see possibilities.

“From my experience at LaHouse,” Huffstickler said, “I look at landscaping and see places to incorporate citrus, figs, blueberries and persimmon. People use limited plant material in the home landscape.

“Instead of pansies or violas, we have some beautiful leaf lettuces.”

Huffstickler likes using “C’est si bon,” a packet of seed that includes red sails lettuce and arugula.

To keep maintenance to a minimum, Huffstickler suggests putting in transplants of edible plants in the fall and early spring when insect populations are low.

Mulch to lessen the need for watering and help control weeds.

“In May and June, you start pulling out edible plants to get the ground ready for fall,” he said.

If you like the look — and taste — of fresh bell pepper, eggplant and tomatoes, put those plants in the summer edible landscape. Herbs, warm weather ones and ones that do best in cool weather, may be added through the seasons.

Keep in mind that rosemary and thyme require good drainage and do best in morning sun only in south Louisiana summer.

Most edibles need at least six hours of full sun, good drainage and a soil pH of 6.5 to 7. Blueberries require a more acidic soil, 5.5 to 6. Use elemental sulfur to lower the pH.

Pick up soil testing kits at the Burden Center or from a county agent. For more information, go to http://www.lsuagcenter.com.

If there are places in your yard that don’t drain well, consider planting in containers.

“It’s thriller-filler-spiller,” said Huffstickler. For filler, consider mint marigold, a tarragon substitute that makes small, golden flowers in the fall that might be considered thrilling to the easily excitable.

Rosemary pruned to resemble a small Christmas tree could be the dominant plant in a container with viola, variegated thyme and oregano providing “spiller.”

“Beets have nice red stems and leafy foliage for little pockets of color that you harvest for salads,” Huffstickler said.

Fences, trellises and arbors lend themselves to plantings of purple pod green beans, snake gourds, luffa gourds, sugar snaps and English cucumbers.

“If you eat flowers (in salads), roses, geraniums, pansies, dianthus, day lilies, use botanical names to know what you’re eating,” Huffstickler said.

“You can eat Begonia x tuberhybrida,” he said. “Don’t eat other begonias. Eat the petals, not the tubers. Eat in moderation because begonia petals contain oxalic acid.”

Or just look at the begonia in a cut flower arrangement while eating nice lemon grass soup.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican White House candidate Mitt Romney is offering new ideas on the controversial issues of taxes and immigration, sparking a fresh flashpoint with President Barack Obama before their inaugural debate Wednesday.

In interviews, the GOP nominee suggested an option of limiting deductions to pay for his across-the-board income tax cut and revealed that he would honor temporary permission the Obama administration granted to young illegal immigrants to allow them to stay in the country.

The candidates stepped off the campaign trail Tuesday for debate practice and left their running mates to rally voters in swing states. The Romney campaign pounced after Vice President Joe Biden told a North Carolina audience that the middle class has “been buried the last four years.”

Romney posted on Twitter that he agrees with Biden. “The middle class has been buried the last 4 years, which is why we need a change in November.” The campaign also scheduled a conference call with former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu to criticize Biden’s comments.

Biden told about 1,000 people in Charlotte: “This is deadly earnest. How they can justify, how can they justify raising taxes on a middle class that has been buried the last four years? How in Lord’s name can they justify raising their taxes with these tax cuts?”

Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith said Romney’s campaign was making “another desperate and out-of-context attack.”

“As the vice president has been saying all year and again in his remarks today, the middle class was punished by the failed Bush policies that crashed our economy — and a vote for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan is a return to those failed policies,” Smith said.

Biden’s staff responded to the Romney criticism, also via Twitter, saying Biden “made clear in his remarks today that Romney-Ryan would take us back to the failed Bush policies that crashed our economy.”

The dispute followed the Obama campaign’s criticism of Romney’s remarks on immigration in an interview published Tuesday in the Denver Post.

“The people who have received the special visa that the president has put in place, which is a two-year visa, should expect that the visa would continue to be valid. I’m not going to take something that they’ve purchased,” Romney said. “Before those visas have expired we will have the full immigration reform plan that I’ve proposed.”

Obama announced in June that he would prevent deportation for some children brought to the United States by illegal immigrant parents. Applicants must not have a serious criminal record and must meet other requirements, such as graduating from high school or serving in the U.S. military.

The program closely tracked with the DREAM Act, a bill that failed to pass Congress that would have provided a path to legal status for many young illegal immigrants. Romney said during the Republican presidential primary campaign that he would veto DREAM Act legislation.

Obama campaign spokesman Gabriela Domenzain said Romney’s statement to the Denver Post “raises more questions than it answers,” including whether he would repeal Obama’s policy or deport those who have received a deferment after two years.

“We know he called the DREAM Act a ‘handout’ and that he promised to veto it,” Domenzain said. “Nothing he has said since contradicts this and we should continue to take him at his word.”

The Denver Post interview comes as Romney and Obama are fighting a heated battle for Colorado, whose significant Hispanic population could determine which candidate receives the state’s nine electoral votes.

Throughout the Republican primary, Romney took an aggressive tack on immigration, saying in debates that he approved of “self-deportation,” where undocumented workers would choose to leave the country on their own because they were unable to find work. He assailed rival Rick Perry, the Texas governor, for allowing illegal immigrants to attend Texas state colleges and universities at reduced, in-state tuition rates. Romney always has said he supports a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who serve in the military.

After Romney secured the nomination, he indicated he would review potential legislation from Florida Sen. Marco Rubio that would allow some young illegal immigrants a way to stay in the country.

In another interview Monday with Denver television station KDVR, Romney laid out a possible scenario for paying for proposal to cut all income tax rates by 20 percent. He’s previously said the cuts would be funded by closing loopholes and deductions, but that the specifics would have to be worked out with Congress.

“As an option you could say everybody’s going to get up to a $17,000 deduction; and you could use your charitable deduction, your home mortgage deduction, or others — your health care deduction, and you can fill that bucket, if you will, that $17,000 bucket that way,” Romney said. “And higher income people might have a lower number.”

Obama spent Tuesday preparing for Wednesday’s debate at a resort in Henderson, Nev., while Romney was spending most of the day in practice with plans to tour the debate stage set up on the University of Denver campus.

___

Associated Press writers Philip Elliott in Clinton, Iowa; Mitch Weiss in Charlotte, N.C.; and Kasie Hunt in Denver contributed to this report.

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Did that title get your attention?  I’m not the smartest guy in Canada but for the past 3 plus years Google has had me ranked #1 for that search phrase.  When I did that in July  of 2009 it was a neat little gimmick to first, see how fast I could get to page 1 and then top spot and second to show people how easy it can be to rank for long tail search phrases with low competition.

Long Tail Search Phrases

Did that just make you say “what”?  Let me explain.  If you search on Google for “landscaping”,  the search engine algorithm (a long, ever-changing equation that calculates over 200 minute factors on every website page to determine search engine results) searches through its database of billions of web pages and delivers up the top 167 Million of them that relate to the search phrase “landscaping”.

But then if you search for “front yard landscaping” the competition is narrowed down to just over 4.7 Million results.  And then when you add the word “ideas” to the end of that, you are down to just 1.25 Million competitors.

Coincidentally our client Cedargate Landscaping comes up in position 5 in the organic search ranking for that phrase but also in position 3 for the short tail search phrase “landscaping”.  The point being, that it is easier to rank high for a phrase that includes three or more words in the search query and once you gain a high position for the less competitive phrases you can turn your focus onto the more competitive ones.

So the phrases of three or more words are the long tail search phrases.  To gain quick ranking in the search engine results, going after the long tail first is the key.  By doing proper keyword research to identify long tail phrases with low competition and relatively high search volume, you can be assured quick positioning at the top of search engines as long as you use the right strategies and best practices.  More on that later.

My example of  the Smartest Guy in Canada is a great example of a long tail phrase with low competition, but actually very low search volume.  It was fairly easy for me to rank well for that term and it has taken a bit of effort to maintain since we did have someone try to compete for the top spotbut they gave up after a year.

Content is King (yawn), Content is Jedi Master Yoda!

The term “content is king” has been thrown around so much that it has become like white noise.  I don’t think it has the same impact that it once did.  So think of content as Jedi Master Yoda, the most powerful Jedi in the whole galaxy!

However you think of it, well written keyword focused content is critical to your SEO success.  Once you have identified the long tail keyword phrase you want to target for that page you need to sit down and start writing or hire an SEO copywriter to help create powerful content.

Good content is not about you.  You need to focus on your visitor.  What problem do they have that would cause them to search for that phrase.  In my landscaping example above, the best long tail phrase in terms of lowest competition and high search volume is “front yard landscaping ideas”.   So the content on the page should not be focused on landscape design, or landscape architecture or anything other than front yard landscape ideas.

Writing great content is not as easy as you might expect, or perhaps you are well aware of how challenging it can be.  My recommendation would be to hire an experienced SEO copywriter who can put your thoughts and expertise into content worthy of a Jedi Master.

Are people searching for ideas in the early or later stages of their buying process?  Probably early, so it’s a good time to give them something of value in exchange for their email address and start nurturing a relationship with them.  More on that in a future blog post.  Be sure to subscribe to my blog.

Back-Links are The Force

A Jedi is nothing but a guy (or elf) with a fancy sword without The Force.  The Force is where a Jedi gets his power.  Similarly, high-quality inbound links are where your content will get its power with the search engines.  Each link pointing to your content is like a vote, telling Google that your content is important and valuable.  Links are like referrals for your business.

Credible inbound links are preferred.  Just like a referral, the more credible or believable the referral source the more likely it is you will get the business.  So a .gov website linking to you or from amazon.com or facebook.com will carry a lot more weight than a link from bobsyouruncle.com.

Professional link-building services are a great way to create hundreds of high quality inbound links to your web pages.  The process of building high quality links is extremely time consuming and requires a certain skill set to do properly.

There are some good tips that I recently came across if you prefer DIY Link Building:

Guest blogging

Other ideas for a successful link building campaign include guest blogging. The general idea behind guest blogs is to get a link to your website posted on an already established website/blog. These links tend to carry more weight in Google because they are harder to acquire. Some sites will have very stringent requirements for the types of articles they will accept, so links from these sites have more value. Another popular and highly successful method is to contact bloggers or webmasters in your niche and simply ask them for a link. Or, ask to be a guest blogger for the sole purpose of getting the chance to link your guest blog posting back to your site. Establishing relationships with reviewers, authors, professors, enthusiasts, topic experts or anyone else who is operating a website in your niche area, whether it be through social networking or message boards, is a great way to build a network of people who might be willing to reference your website in their content.

Join web 2.0 site

Joining a web 2.0 site is an excellent method of developing search engine friendly links. If you are not familiar with the name, web 2.0 is the term used to describe websites that have a social networking component to them. Sites like Squidoo, StumbleUpon, and Delicious generate most of their content from the site users themselves. These types of pages facilitate interactive information sharing as well as collaboration, where you yourself can add articles that include up to 9 free backlinks per article to your website. Don’t duplicate any of your existing articles on your website and use them for either Squidoo or HubPages though, as search engines are filtering out content that way.

The best way to build links and create strong SEO benefits through Squidoo.com is by creating unique content that focuses on your keywords. Always try to incorporate multimedia, such as videos or images to gain more trust and authority quickly. It only takes a few articles until you’ll be able to add on a number of backlinks in your articles to your main site. I also really like Squidoo’s RSS feed widget, as this gives nice backlinks plus context to the links, which is great for search engines.

Link request to your connections

And finally, source your own networks for possible opportunities to build more links. Business contacts, suppliers, distributors, family members, friends, even your children’s school, all have the potential for providing you backlink opportunities. If you have been nice to them and they like you, ask for a free backlink on their website. Of course, the higher page rank or relevant websites you can link to, the better. If you can manage to obtain powerful and valuable links from websites like edu.com, that would be highly beneficial to you SEO efforts.

There are a lot more tactics involved in SEO to help you compete and surpass your competitors in search engine ranking results. The aforementioned tactics are basic initial strategies that help build a strong foundation and starting point for your SEO efforts, and will immediately help you move your website traffic and search engine ranking results to the next level.

Read more.

And there you have it!  SEO 101.  In a nutshell that is all I did to rank #1 for “Smartest Guy in Canada”  was write some good content, blog about it and build some links from various Social Media channels.  It took about 4 hours to get to page 1 and within a couple days I was in the top spot.

This article is an original contribution by Jason Gervais.

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