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May 2019
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Chief Executive Officer's Notes
Chris Reardon
Upcoming Events
Expo 2019 and Board of Directors Meeting
Golf Tounament - Click here for our Golf Registration Form ($175/golfer and $200/sponsor) _______________________________________________________________________________________
September Board of Directors Meeting Thursday, September 12: Golf Tournament (Information to follow) 
Legislative Update
This month has been more politically active than in past years. In previous years, the rodenticide bill was already killed and the other bills we supported were sailing through the legislature. This year is different in that the bill we want to die (AB 1788), or at least amend, is continuing to gain momentum in the legislature, and the sponsors of the bill are gaining traction on social media. As an industry, one the strongest actions that we can take is the proper use and stewardship of the second generation anti-coagulant rodenticides (along with all of our products and tools). If we use these products in a way that is consistent with labels and what is best to ensure the product stays where we put it, our chances of adapting to whatever restrictions are imposed increases. The amendments that we are working on to become part of the bill are based on education, enforcement, and exemptions that would protect our food supply farm to fork in commercial establishments. We will see what happens, but it has passed the State Assembly and is now going to start the process of working its way through the State Senate. We will continue to engage the author and sponsors at every opportunity.
Darren Van Steenwyk, M.S., BCE Affiliate Corner
Ken Arai, BURRTEC’s international sales manager. Ken has been working with PCO’s and Distributors throughout the U.S. and other countries promoting the Burrat Samurai Armor Door Sweep® and Burrcut Flex Door Sweep® since 2016. BURRTEC CO LTD is a Japanese industrial brush company located in Osaka, Japan. Prior to BURRTEC, Ken was a salesman and door sealing technician for the Japanese Museum Industry with a Museum IPM license. Ken knows how to seal doors! Ken has experience in sales, marketing and leadership. Ken has a strong passion about exclusion and using BURRETEC’s door sweeps. In Ken’s words, “I am sure our professional door sweeps will bring more profit and trust with PCO’s and their customers. Our Japanese designed door sweep will help your business!” Ken believes “Using Professional products is the key to maintaining the good relationship with customers. As IPM is the mainstream these days, check out our beautiful looking door sweep as one of your options! I will be more than happy to support PCO’s for installation demo or techniques.“ We will be attending PCOC’s 2019 Expo and Pestworld 2019! Ken Arai BURRTEC Chicago office
PCOC Monthly Insurance/Safety Tip
More than 300,000 Americans die of sudden cardiac arrest every year. If one of your employees had a heart attack while at work, would someone there know what to do?
When blood flow or breathing stops, seconds count. Permanent brain damage or death can happen quickly. Knowing how to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) could save a life. When a person’s heart has stopped or he/she is no longer breathing, CPR can maintain circulation and breathing until emergency medical help arrives. Even if those who haven’t had training can do “hands-only” CPR for a person whose heart has stopped beating. “Hands-only” CPR uses chest compressions to keep blood circulating until emergency help arrives. If you’ve had training, you can use chest compressions and rescue breathing. Rescue breathing helps get oxygen to the lungs for a person who has stopped breathing. Many organizations offer CPR training, including the American Red Cross. All employers should consider having at least one employee certified in CPR. (In fact, you might already have a certified employee on staff.) Depending on the size of your company and number of shifts, you might need more. Generally, certification takes only a few hours. To keep your skills up, you should repeat the training every two years. Post a list of CPR and first-aid certified employees at key locations in your building to ensure easy access during an emergency. An automated external defibrillator (AED) provides another tool to help certain heart attack victims survive until emergency help arrives. Experts estimate that 50,000 heart attack victims could be saved every year if rescuers had access to an AED. The most beneficial AED program is one that not only can provide an AED, but also integrates this life-saving equipment into a comprehensive program that includes clinical expertise and quality assurance to assure the highest level of responder preparedness. For more information, please contact the PCOC Insurance Program professionals of EPIC at (877) 860-7378 or, email us @ ProPest@epicbrokers.com. Also, check out our website: www.pcocinsurance.com. Paul Lindsay
Member News
Douglas Products is excited to continue our partnership with Pest Control Operators of California on a new contest that promotes professional structural fumigation. Introduced in 2019, the Website Contest recognizes the growing importance of online promotion to help make homeowners aware of the threat of drywood termites and the proven solution to eliminate all colonies in a structure. The contest begins Monday, April 8th and runs through Friday, May 31st.
OBJECTIVE: • Share your fumigation services and company story with website visitors. CONTEST DETAILS: • Enter by submitting your company website URL. WEBSITE REQUIREMENTS: • Must show evidence of how your website links to Fumigationfacts.com. CONTEST ENTRY SUBMISSIONS MUST INCLUDE: • Website URL. CONTEST JUDGING: • A third-party marketing and communications services agency will review the submissions based on the judging criteria and nominate the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th place submissions. WEBSITE WILL BE JUDGED ON THE FOLLOWING: • How structural fumigation is communicated and promoted. HELPFUL TIPS: • Make it easy to find structural fumigation information on the website. CONTEST AWARDS: • 1st Place: $2,500 towards a paid Google AdWords campaign*, two co-branded Vikane® literature pieces and co-branded fumigation facts business cards**. *Google Ad Campaigns will need to be submitted & approved by Douglas Products prior to reimbursement. Douglas Products will not be running the campaign on behalf of the winner(s) but will be reimbursing the identified amount depending on 1st or 2nd place price amounts towards a Google Ad Campaign. **Literature pieces and business cards will be provided as print-ready files. Douglas Products will not provide printed copies. Co-branded literature pieces will be selected from current Douglas Products Literature.
®Trademark of Douglas Products. Vikane is a federally Restricted Use Pesticide. Always read and follow directions. ©2019 Douglas Products. (04/19) District News
MaySAN GABRIEL DISTRICT SAN FERNANDO VALLEY DISTRICT BIG VALLEY DISTRICT – May 22 @ 7:00 a.m. DIABLO VALLEY DISTRICT – May 28 @ 6:30 p.m.
JuneSAN BERNARDINO/RIVERSIDE DISTRICT VINTAGE COASTAL DISTRICT BAY AREA DISTRICT ORANGE COUNTY DISTRICT SOUTHERN VALLEY DISTRICT - June 13 @ 6:30 p.m. Frequently Requested Information
*NEW* NPMA Login for Joint Membership (Through June 30, 2019)
LOGIN: Email or Personal ID PASSWORD: npma Frequently Asked-For WebsitesDepartment of Fish & Game Department of Food & Agriculture California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) DPR on Facebook DPR on YouTube (see "playlists" for videos pertaining to new surface water regulations) DPR on Twitter DPR LinkedIn Healthy Schools Act Structural Pest Control Board Find Your Legislator NPMA's QualityPro Accrediation Application One Thing in Web Marketing
When it comes to SEO, there’s no easy answer for how to achieve online success. The journey to the number one ranking on Google differs for lots of different industries and lots of different markets. It’s safe to say strong title and meta tags, quick page load speed, and quality content are the safe bets for SEO growth. These strategies make it easy on Google to match searchers with content that is most relevant to them. On the other end of the spectrum, there are absolutely things you shouldn’t be doing to boost your ranking. Over the years – and through countless Google updates – SEO tactics have grown and changed as search engines become smarter. Perhaps the first step to understanding how to get to page one of Google is to know what practices kill your ranking. The following are some of the SEO tactics of yesteryear which can unfavorably affect your pest control Website’s ability to show up well on Google. These tactics range from simply being outdated to straight up bad news for your Website’s place in search results. Duplicate Content One of the more common SEO blunders small businesses commit is using duplicate content. This refers to text that is identical on multiple pages. The main reason this isn’t recommended is because of the strain it puts on search engines. Google wants to provide searchers with the most relevant and accurate pages as possible. When the same content about termite control exists on multiple pages of your site, it puts the search engine in a position where it has to choose one page over the other. As a result, both pages with the content in question take hits in visibility. Duplicate content can also describe when your company has multiple Websites that you have yet to merge. A good SEO strategy makes finding your Website as easy as possible, so make sure you have all of your unique content on one Website. Keyword Stuffing (and Other Black Hat SEO Strategies) If you aren’t familiar, Black Hat SEO refers to strategies used to boost your site’s ranking that violate search engines’ terms of service. While they were more common in the past, these tactics definitely don’t fly nowadays and will surely tank your ranking if you don’t eliminate them from your site. More often than not, businesses with Websites that use Black Hat tactics are unaware of these violations; they usually just trusted some SEO “expert” (notice the air quotes) to get their Website on Page One as quick as possible. The following are the most common Black Hat Strategies:
If your Website is guilty of either of these, you’ll want to clean this up ASAP to improve your ranking! Slow Page Load Speed We aren’t accusing anyone of purposefully slowing their Website Page Load Speed (the speed it takes for every part of your Website to load on computers and mobile devices), but your Website may feature some content that is doing just that. Google knows no one likes to wait for a site to load, which is why they favor faster-loading sites in search results. If your Home page features large photos, videos that play automatically, or third-party widgets such as YouTube videos or Twitter feeds – chances are it’s taking a little long to load that page. Your Home page is usually the page you need to worry the most about, so make sure to keep things simple when adding content to it. Make sure you optimize your photos so they are clear but not a huge file size. As far as featuring a video, we recommend only adding one embedded YouTube video – any more might be overkill. To get a get a free, detailed look at your Website’s Page Load Speed, enter your URL on Google’s PageSpeed Insights. If you would like help understanding the report, we’re happy to help. Outdated Content Part of keeping your Website fresh in the eyes of Google is checking in on and updating the different aspects of your site. One of the most common things we see on Websites is broken links; these can be outdated YouTube videos, links to affiliations that no longer exist, or just an incorrectly formatted link. While they may have worked correctly at one point, broken links tell Google that your page is outdated and in need of an update. Another thing to look out for is pages with a low word count. Perhaps you had planned on adding more content to your “Rodent Control” page at some point but never got around to doing it. It’s recommended your page have at least 300 words to best get the page’s point across to Google. The more detail you provide in your content, the easier it is for search engines to match your Website with its related search terms. Also, remember that pest control threats are always growing and changing, meaning that your Website’s content should be doing the same! For every good SEO practice, there’s an equally harmful tactic that can tank your rankings. While it may seem difficult at first, the main idea of a good strategy is simple: keep your content updated and relevant to people searching for it. The more you stay on top of your SEO strategies, the easier it is for search engines to notice you and put your Website in front of the people that should see it.
Alain Parcan, Director of Marketing for Market Hardware, Inc., contributed this article. Alain brings nearly 10 years of experience in educating businesses so they can market themselves more effectively. Market Hardware helps small businesses compete on the Web and offers special discounts for PCOC members. You can Reach Alain’s team at 888-381-6925. |
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It’s that time of year again when we are getting ready for our showcase event, the PCOC Expo in Carlsbad on June 18th through the 21st. I hope you have all targeted this date on your calendar because we expect another great turnout with all of our great sponsors and exhibitors along with a terrific list of speakers for our general membership meeting on that Friday. I think you will find that our keynote speakers, along with our breakout discussions, will touch on relevant issues important to our industry. I would also like to announce that Mr. Carl Doucette will be the PCOC Lifetime Achievement Award winner this year, which we plan on presenting to him at our banquet on Friday night. There is no one more deserving, and Carl has been a leader in this industry for the past half century. We look forward to celebrating this evening with him and his family. Hope to see you all there! 
